The ICE Shooting In Minneapolis

Minneapolis again has become ground zero for a national controversy. In 2020, state police officers followed their training to a T when apprehending a worthless criminal and drug addict who died of an overdose, and they were convicted of murder in a kangaroo court that obeyed the mob rather than the law. In this new year of 2026, a federal ICE agent shot and killed a woman who was interfering with deportation efforts, and the mob again is howling for blood. Most people are missing the point by focusing on the dynamics of the incident, such as whether the agent acted in legitimate self-defense upon being struck by the woman's vehicle. That makes little difference to me because she was doing something far worse than threaten the life of a single man -- she was threatening the life of the nation, which is more important than any individual or even the federal government (which is meant to serve the nation). She was giving aid and comfort to foreign invaders, meaning that she was committing treason and deserved the death penalty. She got it swiftly, without the fanfare and wasted years of a trial and endless appeals and habeas petitions. 

If this sounds harsh, consider how the people mourning the woman's death have celebrated the unjustified murders of Ashli Babbitt (who was unarmed and not a threat to anyone's life) and of Charlie Kirk (who was guilty only of hurting their feelings). Consider how these people have praised Luigi Mangione for the cowardly act of shooting an unarmed man in the back. No, I don't shed a tear when one of their kind is executed for treason. I just hope the dog in the back seat was unharmed.

A Few Words On Venezuela

President Trump has abducted Venezuelan president Maduro and hauled him before a United States court to face criminal charges for drug trafficking. As usual, people's opinions on this matter track people's biases: leftists condemn it because they admire Maduro's socialism, and conservatives cheer it because they hate Maduro's socialism. Also as usual, I stand alone because I condemn what has happened even though I am highly conservative and hate Maduro's socialism. 

For one, Trump has committed an act of war against a foreign nation without obtaining congressional approval, so he has usurped the war power and violated the United States Constitution (as every president has done since the end of World War II). 

For another, Trump has violated the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, and customary international law governing the use of force -- all of which the United States was instrumental in establishing but hypocritically ignores on a regular basis. International force may be used in defense of one's own nation or other nations when an armed attack occurs or is about to occur, none of which are the case here. The only other allowance is when the UN Security Council approves the use of force, which also isn't the case here. For the United States to act in such a manner while condemning Russia for violating these same rules is both hilarious and disgusting. Indeed, Russia had far more justifiable reasons for invading Ukraine, which borders Russia and was being transformed into a NATO staging area. No such threat emanated from Venezuela, so what Trump has done is less justifiable (even though less violent).

For another, national sovereignty is the cornerstone of not only international law, but of human freedom because any sort of global hegemony would cut off our escape from abusive governmental practices. All free and intelligent men yearn for a multi-polar world where political power is dispersed as far and wide as possible, in as many separate sovereignties as possible, to prevent the monopolization of political power on the world stage. This is similar to antitrust law, but applied to governments rather than mere corporations (which are far less dangerous). It makes no difference whether Maduro is a dictator or "illegitimate," for there can be no freedom without independence. To argue that an invasion of a sovereign nation is necessary to make it free is a complete contradiction. Our own Declaration of Independence acknowledges this principle, but the federal government has desecrated it many times over (such as when invading the South from 1861 to 1865, when invading all the States on a regular basis to destroy their self-governance under the guise of the 14th Amendment, and when invading foreign nations).

For another, the federal drug laws at issue in Maduro's prosecution are themselves unconstitutional. No constitutional amendment empowered the federal government to conduct a war on drugs, though a constitutional amendment was passed (and later repealed) to conduct a war on alcohol. We don't bother with amendments anymore. Too inconvenient to the powers that be.

For another, it's rather odd to condemn Maduro for violating one nation's drug laws when the prosecuting nation has violated its own constitutional law and the law of nations in general. Who is the bigger criminal here?

For another, I find it odd that Maduro's immunity as a head of state is being ignored to prosecute him, when considering that Trump's immunity as a head of state is what has prevented his own prosecution. The hypocrisy coating this entire ordeal is stifling.

For another, it is obvious that the swamp has consumed Trump rather than he drain it as originally promised. He is no different from George W. Bush, John McCain, or any other neoconservative stooge. This just goes to show that, as I've argued for decades now, we have an unlawful and irredeemable government. Elections cannot get us out of this. 

Finally, this belligerent conduct reeks of desperation and is typical of dying empires. We have rejected the virtues that once made us prosperous and strong, and our obscene deficit spending has led us to the point where other nations are poised to ditch the dollar. Force is all we have left, but its time is short. 

More Random Reflections

It's a new year, and I finally found some idle time to share some idle thoughts on the intensifying insanity around me.  

If it is impossible to define what a woman is, how can anyone claim to be one? If there is no objective definition and it's just a matter of feeling, then why isn't my feeling that you're not a woman just as valid? How can your subjective beliefs fill you with so much certainty that you treat them as objective truths that bind other people and trump their beliefs? The only answer is that you're a lunatic and trapped in a self-serving feedback loop of doublethink. Just like the feedback loop in a microphone, this explains why you're so shrill about it.

The recent fascination with AI reveals just how lazy and shallow most people are. These machines are not thinking; they are gathering, synthesizing, and vocalizing mainstream narratives (garbage in, garbage out). Since that's what most people do anyway, I suppose AI makes sense for them as a labor-saving device -- not to save them from thinking, but from having to pretend to think. This laziness feeds a hunger for data centers that has grown so ravenous that more people are now willing to set aside their silly and sanctimonious obsession with "climate change" to generate more power. I would respect these people more if they stuck to their guns rather than sold out, but alas, people are motivated by self-interest before anything else. So, AI has helped expose widespread hypocrisy along with laziness and shallowness.

I've often wondered why we are born when and where we are. For instance, I could have been been born in the Stone Age, in the Pax Sinica, or in ancient Rome, but here I am. And what a strange time and place it is. Many of my ancestors fled the corrupt Old World and risked everything to cross an ocean and build a society out of nothing (they were not "immigrants," a term that describes people who flocked here long after my ancestors had succeeded in building something worth flocking to). I admire my ancestors very much, yet I am surrounded by people who condemn them as evil while feasting on their achievements. My contemporaries make me sick for a variety of reasons, but their ingratitude is one of the biggest. For whatever reason, fate placed me among these ingrates, and I am forced to bear witness as they gnaw the last bits of sinew from the bones of my ancestors' incredible legacy. 

Speaking of immigrants, I find it ironic that so many people are outraged at how the federal government is doing some of the very few things it is supposed to do, such as enforce the law, protect the border, and expel invaders. How twisted that this is what gets modern Americans motivated enough to resist the federal government, not the mountain of other activities that are completely unconstitutional yet are illegally perpetrated by the federal government on a daily basis. The irony is even thicker when noting that the federal deportation efforts are quite mild and would be far more forceful in a healthy society. For example, a healthy society would not tolerate citizens who interfere in deportation efforts and give aid and comfort to invaders. This is actual insurrection, not the fake kind from January 6, and a healthy society would charge these people with treason and swiftly hang them. Any public officials acting in the same manner and propping up "sanctuary cities" would receive the same treatment. Indeed, military force and martial law are fully justified when a country is under foreign invasion, especially when the invasion is receiving treasonous domestic assistance. The removal of habeas corpus is much more justified now than it was during the Civil War (when martial law was used by the federal government to support an invasion, not to repel one).

I don't want to hear arguments for immigration from anyone whose ancestors arrived here after the Revolutionary War, and certainly not after the Civil War. Your roots in this nation are too shallow to appreciate or understand it. A nation is a people unified by blood, history, language, and religion (the very word "nation" stems from "natal," as in being born together). You are step-siblings at best and outright enemies at worst. A favorite retort of the latecomers is to invoke the Indians (who are not "Native Americans") and claim that they have greater rights to this land than I do. Yet the very logic of this argument recognizes that my rights are greater than yours and that you lack standing to talk to me about this. As for the Indians, I have partial ancestry in the Cherokee nation, so some of my roots begin even before Jamestown or Plymouth Rock. Moreover, the Indians are not a monolith but rather a multitude of different nations themselves. Immigration activists cannot claim to speak for them all, and many of the Indians fought alongside my ancestors in the Revolutionary War and in the Civil War (on the good side both times, i.e., the ones resisting foreign invasion). The very fact that Indians fought against foreign invasion should serve as an example for us to do the same, not to surrender and wallow in guilt while invaders sweep over us.

The government shutdown in October shed more light on how dependent and depraved Americans have become. Everyone was fretting over the curtailment of SNAP, a federal welfare program that is not authorized by the Constitution and should not even exist. When I reflect on how large numbers of people demand an unlawful government program of this sort while condemning a lawful (and vital) program such as border protection, I feel intense disgust. 

More generally, people no longer have the ability to distinguish between rights and privileges. For example, many people believe that the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from pulling funding from universities, denying visas to foreigners, or firing government employees based on their speech. Yet federal funding, visas, and jobs are not rights and may be denied for any reason (indeed, federal funding for universities is blatantly unconstitutional and should not exist at all, like SNAP). Freedom of speech means merely that the federal government cannot prevent you from speaking; it does not mean that the federal government must continue supporting you even though you engage in offensive or harmful speech. Freedom and responsibility are a package deal. If you want freedom, then you need to stop depending on federal favors. But no, the people today are so craven that they demand both freedom and funding (i.e., freedom with privileges and without responsibilities). To make matters worse, the judiciary agrees with all this and has transformed privileges into rights, making reform within the system impossible. 

It's hard not to notice that the left is becoming quite bloodthirsty lately. They have cheered the execution (or the attempted execution) of several prominent individuals, often for nothing more than uttering controversial ideas. The left's grotesque celebration over the murder of Charlie Kirk was instructive, for it showed to a wide audience that it is pointless to engage in civil discourse with these maniacs. Civil discourse is for the civilized, not for barbarians. The left's thirst for blood shouldn't surprise anyone, though. For one, leftism rejects God and the supernatural to fixate on the things of this world, and the things of this world can never fill the spiritual hunger that everyone carries within him. Attempting to do so just makes the hunger even worse and more destructive. For another, leftism embodies just about every weakness and vice in human nature: envy, vanity, laziness, pride, vulgarity, wrath, etc. Leftism is attractive because it is easy and places no restraints on the id or the ego, which can be bloodthirsty when they don't get their way. In other words, leftism is the belief system of a spoiled child rather than a dignified adult. Any leftist over the age of twenty is a pathetic case of arrested development. Just consider a few differences between real virtue and leftist "virtue":

• Giving some of your belongings to the needy (real virtue). Demanding that government forcibly redistribute wealth to the needy (leftism).  

• Engaging in civil discourse in a sincere effort to change people's minds (real virtue). Shouting down, canceling, or killing people who disagree with you (leftism). 

• Exercising self-control in an effort to improve yourself and, by extension, the world (real virtue). Doing nothing to improve yourself while demanding that governments threaten, prod, and punish other people into acting how you think they should act to make the world a better place (leftism).  

Something else about the murder of Charlie Kirk is that it likely resulted from his growing reluctance to support Israel, which infuriated the owners of official conservatism who financed his rise to fame. Charlie forgot that he had made a Faustian bargain and that his soul no longer belonged to him; when he tried to reclaim it and follow his conscience, it was too late. If leftists were smart, they would find common cause with Charlie because they themselves are experiencing a backlash for criticizing Israel.

On a related note, I am sick and tired of the widespread notion that leftists are intellectuals while conservatives are simpletons. The leftist "intellectuals" who infest academia and the professions (my own included) depend heavily on government activity and funding for their parasitic existence, which is precisely why they always advocate for more government (though they dress it up in the language of idealism, as all tyrants and parasites do). A true intellectual embraces ideas even when they offer no personal advantage, and the fact that modern "intellectuals" cling to leftism proves that they are just as basic and self-interested as pretty much everyone else. These "intellectuals" are also driven by vanity in that they yearn to feel more important and better than everyone else, so they reflexively embrace beliefs contrary to those of the ordinary, conservative folk whom they look down on. A core distinction between conservatism and leftism is this: conservatism is humble wisdom gained from centuries of history and experience; leftism is arrogant rejection of history and experience to re-invent the world according to a supposedly rational design (which never works but piles up many bodies by trying).

Another interesting aspect of leftists is that they they claim to reject religion in favor of science, yet they embrace beliefs that are non-scientific and religious in nature. For example, there is nothing scientific about opposing racism or sexism; instead, a purely scientific worldview would be highly racist and sexist. Leftists display an irrational sentimentalism that resembles Christianity, yet they reject Christianity because they are too stupid to realize that their own ideas were enabled by it and stem from it. 

A Muslim socialist is perhaps the most anti-American creature imaginable. The fact that one was elected as mayor of New York is just one of many signs that this country is cooked.

Regarding socialism, it is growing more popular despite its blood-soaked history because most people are too foolish to realize that our multiplying problems are the result of too much government, not too little. We do not have limited government, the rule of law, free markets, or capitalism anymore (indeed, we rejected them at least a century ago), so it is impossible to accuse any or all of these things of having failed.

Even if someone could convince me that giving government even more money and power to enact socialism will work if done "right," I would not want to live under it. I'm an American. I want to live a life of personal freedom and personal responsibility, which means there should be no artificial barriers above me and no safety nets beneath me. I would rather be free and destitute than unfree and prosperous. So would any red-blooded man. Freedom is not for the faint of heart, which is why it took an extraordinary people (my ancestors) to create a country devoted to it. But most people today are weak, dependent, and depraved, so they fear personal responsibility and are eager to live in the equivalent of a prison where they don't have to worry about where their next meal comes from. I should not be put in shackles to make life easier for spineless worms, no more than Gulliver deserved to be staked down by the Lilliputians. It's already bad enough that government plunders me to support the unlawful welfare/warfare state. 

Many "Americans" are so far gone in their love affair with socialism that they admire Luigi Mangione for allegedly murdering a health-insurance executive by shooting him in the back. Luigi denies doing it, but people praise him for such a cowardly act because it supposedly strikes a blow for "free" (socialistic) healthcare. Consider how they praise this sort of violent behavior while condemning the peaceful behavior of Charlie Kirk, who used only words in his quest for reform. This alone should demonstrate that anyone who admires socialism is sick, twisted, and evil.

I've become fascinated with police bodycam videos. These were demanded by the BLM crowd in one of the biggest own-goals in history, as the videos clearly show that large numbers of barbaric thugs roam this land and are often treated too mildly by the police. Many of these thugs are not hardened criminals, but ordinary citizens who become obnoxious, belligerent, and violent when confronted with any semblance of authority. 

Speaking of criminal justice, there is a good explanation for why America embraces the death penalty but Europe rejects it. It comes back to the notion of personal responsibility, which is the main pillar supporting personal freedom. Europeans reject these things and prefer to live as wards of the state rather than as free men. Quite naturally, they are soft on crime because they don't truly believe that criminals are responsible for their actions. Instead, they view people as children to be taken care of in a sickening sort of paternalism. In America, we believe (or used to believe) that people are responsible for their actions and that this is precisely what entitles them to freedom. If people abuse freedom and act irresponsibly, they must therefore be held accountable. This means that if you take a life without justification, you have surrendered your right to your own. Any society that disagrees with this can never truly be free. 

Again, I find myself living in a bizarre time and place, and this leaves me with little role to play other than a disillusioned critic. I would have loved being a professor, a judge, a father, or a husband, but none of those paths were truly open to me. Academia would require me to accept and endorse the virulent leftism that reigns there. The judiciary would require me to uphold and enforce laws that I know to be unconstitutional. Fatherhood and marriage would empower the family-court system to invade and destroy my life on the whims of a woman (a bullet I already dodged once). I will not subject myself to those things or legitimize them by participating. One benefit of inhabiting a sick society, though, is that it frees me to be myself and do my own thing. I don't have to fulfill any of the traditional roles that a healthy society would require, and the fact that this society alienates honest and productive men like me will hasten its demise. From those ashes, something good can emerge again. 

In the meantime, perhaps the only way to slow down or pause the decline would be a Pinochet-style dictatorship that makes the hard choices that lily-livered politicians cannot (e.g., expelling invaders, punishing their helpers, slashing and burning the welfare state, etc.). The rule of law is already dead anyway, so we might as well make the most of it and do some good.

 

My New Statement Of Faith

When I was 14 years old, I handwrote a statement of faith as part of my confirmation into the Presbyterian church. After working on several drafts, I felt impressed with how articulate the final product seemed. This was vanity on my part, for I missed the entire point by failing to discuss Jesus Christ and the meaning of his short time on Earth (I discussed the Book of Exodus and how God manages human affairs to serve larger goals). My faith was not truly confirmed yet.

As years went by, I forgot about such matters and focused on growing up and making my way in the world. I had my share of successes and failures, but I noticed something that initially troubled me and eventually became a crisis. I have an active mind. I enjoy searching for the truth that often hides beneath the surface of things, regardless of whether I gain any benefit from it. It didn't take me long to see that this is not how most people operate, as they tend to explore ideas only to the extent they are useful, and their ideas never stray far from their interests. I provoked hostility whenever I shared my own ideas about deeper truths. It made no difference whether the issue was big (such as politics or religion) or small (such as movies or music). It made no difference whether the conversation took place in a classroom, in an office, or on a beach. It made no difference whether I was tactful and refrained from sharing my ideas unless invited to do so. Upon uttering my thoughts about a deeper truth, people would lash out at me, often in the form of personal remarks about my motives rather than the merits of my thoughts. I was steadily learning that my reluctance to accept things at face value angers people, which baffled me because I always enjoyed hearing other people's views even if they differed from my own. 

This was especially troubling for me while in college and then law school. Surely, these places were havens of free thought and the open exchange of ideas. They proved quite the opposite. I endured the open hostility of classmates as well as the covert hostility of professors, who would penalize me whenever I expressed something that did not echo their worldview. For instance, I once prepared thoroughly for an exam on constitutional law, so much so that other law students would ask me for help on what a particular decision or line of precedent meant. The exam was a breeze, and I was delighted that the professor had included a question inviting us to rewrite any major decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. I chose to rewrite one of the decisions from the 1970s that ordered interracial school busing, since this was pure social engineering and a matter of public policy rather than constitutional law. I put a lot of thought and feeling into the essay to argue that forcible integration is just as wrongful as forcible segregation, perhaps even more so because a court rather than a legislature was doing it. Even though I knew I had aced the exam, the professor gave me a middling grade while awarding high grades to the very students who had asked me for advice. I knew it was because he disagreed with my essay, and it stung because the transcripts would suggest that the other students understood constitutional law better than I did, even though that was false. This sort of thing happened in other classes as well, where I naïvely shared my thoughts and thereby damaged my career prospects.

When it came time to leave law school and join the practice of law, I encountered not only the expected hostility from opposing counsel, but also the unexpected hostility from my own colleagues. For instance, I developed a talent for winning all or part of my cases in the early stages with motions to dismiss or for summary judgment. Rather than congratulate me, my colleagues scorned my approach and often refused to follow it because it might close the file before they could bill it as much as they wanted. On another occasion, a partner instructed me to build a legal theory to support a lawsuit on behalf of a new and wealthy client. After performing the research, I informed him that the legal theory was hollow and wouldn't work. He was very upset and drummed me out of the firm shortly after that. Years later, I learned that the client was suing him for malpractice because he had pursued the lawsuit to an unsuccessful and costly conclusion, and my internal memorandum advising against it had become a major piece of evidence. I chuckled, but at the same time I lamented that this was why I eventually had to give up on working in law firms and build a practice of my own. 

But nothing was as painful as the destruction of my marriage. My ex and I are both from Florida but no longer cared for it and decided to leave. We chose Montana because of its natural beauty, open spaces, and other good qualities for starting a family. This meant I would have to take the Montana bar exam even though I had been practicing law for ten years, since Montana did not have reciprocity with Florida. So, while working a full-time job in Florida, I studied as much as possible in my spare time and searched for jobs in Montana. Everything fell into place miraculously, as I passed the exam and got a job offer during the same trip. My ex and I stood under a starry sky while hugging each other and yelling, "We're moving to Montana!" We made the move, and I settled into my new job while enjoying the beautiful spring and summer. As autumn arrived, I noticed she was growing more distant. She became argumentative and hostile, and she suddenly declared that she wanted a separation so that she could return to Florida and spend time with her family. As she left the house I physically collapsed, powerless and miserable. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. I accessed her emails and saw that she was telling lies about me to her family and friends, claiming that I was being cruel and refusing to go to counseling. Everyone was showering her with sympathy while criticizing me. Then I found that she was talking to another man through a website devoted to a depraved subculture. Not only was the man married, but he lived in Florida, and she was planning to meet him in person under the cover story of visiting her family. I felt a murderous rage rise within me. The lies, betrayal, and humiliation were all too much to bear. I contacted her father and told him the truth, which is when her mask dropped and she declared without hesitation that she wanted a divorce. She soon placed photos on social media of her out partying with friends, celebrating what she had done. Our vows to love, honor, and cherish each other forever meant nothing. I was alone in Montana as autumn turned to bitter-cold winter. Only two things were certain to me: I would never speak to her again, and I would never marry again. Other than that, I was lost and felt as if I did not even belong in the world.

At some point I began reading the Bible again, particularly the Gospel, and I arrived at the moment when Pilate confronts Jesus in John 18:37 and 38 (Revised Standard Version):

Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

These words hit me like a lightning bolt and made me understand the source of my troubles in life. Jesus was not referring to a particular truth, but to the very concept of truth. For his part, Pilate was not asking a sincere question, but rather was mocking the very concept of truth. The world, like Pilate, sees truth as meaningless or counter-productive because it does not serve the world's interests. The world, like Pilate, sees only winners and losers, predators and prey, or masters and servants. From this perspective it makes no difference whether the servant has truth on his side, for he remains beneath the master. From Jesus's teaching, the servant can be right while the master can be wrong. This is why Jesus was hated and condemned by His own people, for He spoke truth rather than tell them what they wanted to hear. He threatened their special status as the chosen people, which mattered far more to them than any universal truth that might unite everyone as children of God. Jesus signifies truth, which is why the world hated Him and still hates Him today. If you embrace truth, the world will hate you as well, just as it has hated many martyrs and heroes down the centuries. 

This gave me a deeper understanding of how the love of truth must be otherworldly and of divine origin because it is so incompatible with this world, which is the domain of knaves and fools. Truth serves no practical benefit here. Plants and animals are oblivious to truth and flourish without it. Humans are capable of ascertaining truth but have strong reasons to ignore it because it plays no favorites and can harm or destroy you if you stand by it rather than cater to what everyone else wants. To love truth in such a hostile environment means to be in the world but not of it.

My persistent feeling of not belonging was well-founded because this, indeed, is not my home. As Jesus also said to Pilate, “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world.” This means we all have a choice to make: to serve truth and sacrifice what we have in the world (even life itself), or to serve the world and sacrifice truth. This choice confronts people every day, and they often choose the world over the truth. The love of truth in my heart and many other hearts -- even though it is so impractical and brings so many earthly miseries -- convinced me that its source must be divine and that Jesus Christ embodies it. At long last, my faith was confirmed.

None of this means that I am perfect or even particularly good. To the contrary, it motivated me to look deeper within to find uncomfortable truths about myself. I have lied, cheated, and stolen. I could have been a more attentive and affectionate husband, which might have kept my wife from getting sucked into that despicable website. I could have tried harder to build relationships with people at school and at work even though we disagreed on many things. I have harbored bitterness toward people who have wronged me, overlooking that many people likely harbor bitterness toward me for wronging them, and it does no good to cling to it. 

It makes no difference whether I can change the world or the other people in it, since the only real power I have is over myself. I will use that power to be as truthful as I can, with myself and with others. If that brings me earthly troubles, I can bear them because I will never be alone again.

Random Reflections

It's been a long time since I posted, as I stay focused on my life while casting sidelong glances at how society is coming even more unglued. Rather than make a detailed argument or thesis (which would fall on deaf ears anyway), I will offer some random reflections of a sane man inhabiting an insane time.

Why is Western civilization collapsing? The answer is quite simple: because the people inhabiting it are no longer civilized. Your average Westerner today is hedonistic, belligerent, slovenly, profane, smug, spiritually impoverished (in the world and of the world), entitled, yet guilt-ridden for imagined sins committed by his far more impressive ancestors. All the buildings and technology around us are the mere trappings of civilization and are on borrowed time, the same as a body whose soul has fled. Only when those trappings have collapsed and Western people are forced to confront harsh reality will sanity return. The vast majority of people are only as virtuous as they must be to survive (which is to say they are not virtuous at all).

Anyone with a working brain knows it's a bad idea to ingest an experimental substance that lacks any long-term data to support its safety. Some people were compelled to take it in violation of domestic law and the Nuremberg Code, and I feel sorry for them. Other people avidly lined up to take it while attacking those of use who politely declined, and for them I have very little pity. As for the medical establishment, it proved itself to be as corrupt and dishonest as every other major institution today. This is a deep problem that science cannot solve, for it involves metaphysical and spiritual questions regarding the flaws inherent in human nature.

Few things are more pathetic than a self-styled conservative who runs to federal court whenever a state or local law displeases him. All this accomplishes is greater oversight and control by the federal government, whereas a true conservative values decentralization of power as commemorated by the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment. There can be no freedom without independence, even if that independence is exercised unwisely. Conservatives fail to grasp that the Bill of Rights was designed as a check on the federal government rather than the States, who retain independent and plenary power to restrict speech, guns, drugs, and any other number of matters. By enticing conservatives to run to federal court, the powers-that-be have pulled off a judo maneuver by using the enemy's own force against the enemy. If you believe that a federal court can strike down a State's gun laws, you necessarily also believe that a federal court can strike down a State's abortion laws or obscenity laws. You cannot have it both ways. Such principled thinking, though, is beyond the modern and blinkered mind. 

Russia supposedly has violated the "rules-based international order" by invading Ukraine, at least according to the government that has desecrated the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles countless times since the end of World War II. I detailed several of those examples in my second book, Unlawful Government: The Gathering Threat Of Global Hegemony, so forgive me for not taking the hypocritical condemnations of Russia more seriously. If anything, Russia is far more justified in what it is doing, since it is protecting its ethnic brethren while protecting itself from relentless encroachment by an outdated military alliance and a puppet government on its doorstep. When the federal government rampages through other countries on a regular basis, it does so far away from home and with no discernible benefit to the American people. Besides, Russian force is aimed at preserving a God-fearing society, while American force is aimed at spreading an increasingly Satanic society. Last but not least, the federal government has no business policing the borders of a faraway country. A major purpose of the federal government is to protect America's borders, yet it refuses to do this while wasting taxpayer money on another country completely beyond its mandate. This is the essence of betrayal.

I've been noticing the deepening deterioration of people's ability to communicate in a coherent manner. Even news stories and court filings are littered with misspellings, run-on sentences, improper tenses, pronoun disagreements, and similar errors that make it difficult to decipher what is being said. These are supposed to be professional documents, but they read like a sixth grader's book report. When it comes to emails and text messages, the situation gets even worse. People who cannot speak clearly also cannot think clearly, and there is plenty of evidence for the death of clear thought. 

On a related note, profanity assaults my eyes and ears wherever I go. I can barely step out of my front door without hearing gutter talk or seeing it strewn across an automobile or a T-shirt. It's a depressing reminder of how modern man rejects the divine and embraces the animal. After all, profanity concerns animal functions such as urination, defecation, and procreation. We do not do those things in public, so there is no good reason to evoke those images in public either. Then again, I've seen more news stories lately about public defecation, so perhaps more people are being consistently vile.   

Lately there have been numerous news stories about UFOs. While I do believe in the possibility of intelligent and extraterrestrial life, the sudden emphasis on this subject by the powers-that-be is very suspicious. I wager that the current fixation on UFOs is yet another attempt to unify power on the world stage and do away with national and local sovereignty (as with "climate change," COVID, and other hobgoblins). Recall the popular film Independence Day when square-jawed Bill Pullman announces, "We can't be consumed by our petty differences any longer." That's what the powers-that-be really want, a Tower of Babel that they can single-handedly control from on high. This is something else I alluded to in Unlawful Government: The Gathering Threat Of Global Hegemony: 

Societies thrive on a unique sense of shared history, as well as on a sense of differentiation from one another; “global society,” however, has no cultural ethos with which to define itself, and no alien culture from which to differentiate itself. The absence of known, hostile societies beyond the sphere of our world frustrates the cohesive spirit that might otherwise give birth to a worldwide identity or corresponding political order.  

We are told that sex (biological) and gender (sociological) are totally unrelated. If that's the case, why is it that people who choose to "affirm" their mental gender also feel the need to alter their physical anatomy? The insistence on such a physical alteration is a clear admission that sex and gender are linked. And it so happens that you cannot change your sex. Your chromosomes remain the same no matter how you mutilate yourself. If you were born male, you are and will always be male. If you were born female, you are and will always be female. I have no duty to participate in your insanity.

"Reparations" for slavery is gaining traction lately, and it is overwhelmingly offensive for a host of reasons:

• Slavery is an ancient institution that was wholeheartedly embraced by numerous peoples, including within Africa. The people of the West dabbled in slavery for a short time but then (uniquely) decided to abolish it wherever they could. We deserve gratitude, not punishment.
  

• The Kingdom of Dahomey (modern-day Benin) is where the West purchased most of its African slaves. It so happens that Dahomey often murdered whatever war prisoners it couldn't manage to sell. The West saved countless lives by purchasing slaves from Dahomey, so their descendants should be grateful that they're alive at all. No good deed goes unpunished.
  

• There are plenty of Africans who would love to move to the West. Those Africans who made it here should thank their lucky stars, just as Muhammad Ali and Zora Neal Hurston openly did.
  

• Whatever problems modern blacks suffer in the West are not the result of slavery. Blacks in the West prospered immensely for an entire century after slavery was abolished. The serious problems such as illiteracy, crime, bastardy, etc., erupted with the arrival of the 1960s and the welfare state, which was its own form of (wrongheaded) reparations anyway.
  

• Whites have treated blacks for better than blacks have treated whites (or how blacks have treated each other). If you consider the rampant violent crime committed by this small demographic in the West, whites are more entitled to reparations than blacks are.
  

• Even if the whites of yesteryear did something uniquely wrong against blacks (which they didn't), it is a moral abomination to penalize the innocent descendants of those whites. It is even more offensive to penalize large segments of the modern population who are not even descended from those whites.
  

• Even if I personally could be blamed for the imagined sins of my ancestors, I would gladly accept all of that blame if I could get only half of the credit for all of the good things that my ancestors bestowed on blacks and the world. I would still come out far ahead. 
  

• A punishment imposed by legislation is blatantly unconstitutional as a bill of attainder, prohibited by the explicit language (not tortured precedent) of Article I, Sections 9 and 10.
  

• Last but not least, modern Americans have no basis to condemn slavery because they wholeheartedly embrace it, day in and day out, with fervent demands for a paternalistic government to take care of them by the use of force. The people who most loudly demand reparations for slavery are the same ones who demand that slavery persist and grow in an even worse way (i.e., public and universal, not private and limited).
  

Most people who describe themselves as "rebels" are anything but. Such people believe themselves bold when they attack the nuclear family, flout rules, destroy taboos, embrace the profane, and generally allow themselves to be governed by their passions. Yet the only thing this accomplishes is what the wealthy and powerful want, namely the destruction of civil society so that atomized and vulnerable individuals are all that remain. In other words, most "rebels" are useful idiots. A true rebel defies his nature, uses his mind to conquer his passions, thinks for himself, and recognizes the importance of rules and hierarchies to restrict the arbitrary abuse of power. The greatest revolution in modern times was the American Revolution, which was a conservative cause.

On a related note, rules are liberating rather than confining. With rules firmly in place, people can plan and carry out their activities with the confidence of knowing that they will not be arbitrarily punished or dispossessed. Tyrants hate rules for this very reason, and it is no accident that clear and firm rules are vanishing from all sectors of public and private life while tyrannical power is increasing. If you pride yourself on breaking rules, you're a villain rather than a hero.

A friend of mine once was preaching about how all humans are the same underneath, with the same color blood, sinew, and bone. This is a noble sentiment designed to convey how any differences among us are only superficial. However, it so happens that virtually the only people who share this sentiment are white. Non-whites do not often think of themselves as part of giant global family, but rather as members of their specific tribe, and they openly express hostility toward me simply for being white. Yes, I was raised to judge people on their merits rather than their physical traits. But if I'm the only one doing this, it's a sucker's bet that paints a giant target on my back. Either we all judge each other on our merits, or we all revert to tribalism and prejudice. Since everyone else has opted out of color-blindness, they cannot demand that I continue practicing it. And for the record, we are not all the same underneath. AI already has proved itself capable of identifying race based merely on X-ray images.

The craziness engulfing the modern West was foreseeable (and actually foreseen) by me and similar thinkers. We are not prophets. Instead, we are people who think in terms of timeless principles, while everyone else fixates on immediate circumstances. For example, if the driver of a speeding car along a straight highway nudges the wheel slightly off-center, I can predict that the car will eventually wind up crashing, while everyone else ignores the danger until it's too late (while attacking me for trying to warn them).

I'm tired of hearing how Westerners should be wracked with guilt for committing "genocide" of the various peoples who dwelled in the Americas before our arrival (and no, they are not indigenous because they came here from somewhere else, as we all did). Those peoples brutalized and slaughtered each other on a regular basis; indeed, they often helped Westerners make war on their rivals. The differences between them and us are that 1) we were far more effective, 2) we were far more merciful, and 3) we actually experience guilt for whatever wrongs we committed. Nobody else expresses guilt for their historical sins or subsidizes the conquered to the pathetic extent we do. If we truly had committed genocide, we wouldn't have to hear all of these pathetic complaints or demands for relief and recognition. Our mercy has earned us perpetual enmity, just as with our unique accomplishment of ending slavery. The childish epithet "colonizer" truly means a civilizer.

One of the reasons I have come to believe in the deep truth of Christianity is that it provokes so much resentment from the world, which is very depraved. Christianity draws unique scorn because it is a unique religion, i.e., it requires internal virtue and reflection, not mere external rituals and utterances. Most people are far too in love with themselves and with sin to uphold personal virtue, so they latch onto "virtuous" political causes that impose burdens on everyone else. It is quite easy to demand an end to "climate change" or "racism" or "homelessness" while patting yourself on the back. It is far more difficult to avoid greed, envy, sloth, gluttony, lechery, wrath, or pride while nobody else seems to notice or care. Christ provoked extreme hatred from the world precisely because He embodied and spoke truth, whereas the world thrives on lies. Every truth teller in history has experienced something quite similar.  

On a related note, pride is a sin. Taking pride in sin is compounded sin. Bullying the entire public to celebrate compounded sin for an entire month is despicable. And using taxpayer money to celebrate compounded sin on public property is criminal. Once again, the powerful delight in pushing this garbage because it destroys families and leaves everyone without a moral compass, making them more pliant as consumers, employees, and subjects.

On another related note, a lot of modern people reject Christianity (and all supernatural religion) because it is "irrational." But human beings are irrational by our very nature. The question isn't whether to be rational versus irrational. The question is what type of irrationality will you allow to govern your life. Will it be a constructive irrationality or a destructive irrationality? The historical record is quite clear that Christianity is a constructive type of irrationality, as shown by the unequaled prosperity, beauty, and humanity of Western civilization (and by the way, Christianity is what inspired the abolition of chattel slavery). People who reject Christianity are hardly rational by comparison, as they flock to various flavors of insanity such as socialism, anthropegenic global warming, transexuality, or the notion that two plus two can equal five. "When a man stops believing in God, he does not then believe in nothing. He becomes capable of believing in anything."

I have run into a large amount of literature online discussing the "socio-sexual hierarchy" and how men can be designated as "alphas," "betas," or any number of other labels to determine where on the totem pole they sit. This hierarchy is portrayed as patriarchal and a force for male empowerment, but it is the exact opposite. After all, the totem pole is built around what women want and what women find attractive, thereby motivating men to value or devalue themselves based on women's feelings. This is obvious matriarchy, which is downright dangerous because women adore what is worst in men rather than what is best. A patriarchy imposes what is necessary to maintain a just and virtuous society, regardless of (and often contrary to) what women want

On a related note, the "alphas" need to consider for a moment the deeper reasons that women prefer them. Women view themselves as superior to men (more intelligent, perceptive, beautiful, etc.). The chest-thumping "alpha" reinforces women's narcissistic view rather than challenges it, since he is governed by his impulses and makes for a very useful weapon or beast of burden. To borrow from H.G. Wells, women see themselves as refined Eloi and men as brutish Morlocks. What truly intimidates women is the self-possessed and intelligent man who will not be manipulated by them, but rather will follow his principles and his conscience regardless of what women want. This sort of man threatens the matriarchy that the "alpha" unwittingly supports. 

The Supreme Court actually did something right by overturning Roe v. Wade and recognizing that the States retain the power to deal with this issue however they see fit. A lot of idiotic conservatives won't leave well enough alone and want to federalize the issue with nationwide restrictions, committing the very sin that Roe was guilty of (usurping the power of the States and destroying their independence). As for the morality of abortion, I will say that it perfectly represents the modern demand for freedom without responsibility. If you engage in behavior that results in a pregnancy, you have exercised your rights and now must embrace your responsibility. If you don't want such a responsibility, do not engage in the behavior that might create it. Rights and responsibilities are a package deal. If you try to get rid of one, you will also have to get rid of the other (i.e., throwing the baby out with the bathwater). 

People who oppose tipping are pathetic. Your money is what pays the servers' salaries. The only question is whether you will retain some discretion over how much you pay, or whether you will surrender that discretion to someone else. It's no wonder that Europeans hate tipping, as they dislike having to make decisions for themselves and always prefer to delegate power to someone else. The self-starters left Europe centuries ago, leaving it even more lazy and corrupt today.

Remote workers who are employees have no right to resist going back into the office. I'm a remote worker, but I earned that right because I took the plunge to become my own boss. If you're an employee, you work at the pleasure of others, so ditch the entitlement and return to the office unless you're willing to take the chances I did.  

What happened on January 6, 2021, was not an insurrection. The owners of this country (i.e., the people) paid a visit to their employees (i.e., the elected representatives) because the employees had gone rogue. An insurrection is when the servant disobeys the master, and the elected representatives are servants. They are the ones who engage in insurrection when disregarding the Constitution on a daily basis, and who (in 2020) gave aid and comfort to thugs around the country who were attacking us, the masters.

America began as a Protestant nation, which has important religious as well as legal implications. For instance, a Protestant does not rely on a priest in a black robe to tell him what is God's law. By the same token, a Protestant does not rely on a jurist in a black robe to tell him what is man's law. In both cases the Protestant is willing and able to think for himself. As Protestantism has faded, so has people's willingness or ability to think for themselves when confronted by weighty matters. Consider how the latest Supreme Court decision is always touted as "the law of the land," which is an abject lie because we can and should come to our own conclusions about these things. The court is merely one branch of the government and inferior to the law of the land, which is the Constitution that we can read and understand for ourselves.   

That's all I've got for now. I think I'll be back again, though, because it's refreshing to get these things off my chest.