I invite you to take a look at books I have authored. Most of them are of a historical nature and contain much of what has been important in my life.
If you are wondering about my books and who I am, click on the image of my Amazon Book Store just above and read “About Donald L Johnson.”
For a more detailed and intimate look at me, my autobiography is at: A Yearning for Publius – The Breadcrumbs of My Life Two versions – now on Amazon. The paperback is in black and white. The Hard cover is in color.
Click on the image below
I’ve added a chapter on heroes – 13 people who have made a significant impact on my life over the years.
I’ve also updated to include a section on our new life back in the Big Sky of Montana.
Sam Jankovich – A Sports Legend. Written by Sam Jankovich. Edited and published by Don Johnson. The life story of a remarkable man. Beginning his career as a hard-rock miner in the depths of a mile deep copper mine in Butte Montana to national championships in collegiate football to CEO/GM of the New England Patriots. And a very fine man and dear friend.
It wasn’t always like this, and it doesn’t need to be like this.
For forty years, we lived close to the Mexican border. Many of those years were less than 15 miles from the border in south San Diego County.
The current situation shows migrant encounters at border in December 2023: 371,000 people. This is three years into the Biden administration.
In July 2020, there were 38,536. This was in the final year of the Trump administration.
Let me tell you about the time we lived in Bonita CA, at the southern edge of San Diego, with much open undeveloped land between us and the Mexican border. This was in the 1980s.
Our house was along San Miguel Road which going east, took you into the back country of San Diego, and to the Mexican border.
San Miguel Road offered a relatively easy access from the border into San Diego County, notwithstanding the fact that most of the illegal entry along that route was by foot.
On occasion we did see illegals walking along the road. But this was a trickle – a drip. Certainly not the many thousands we are seeing now and in the past several years of the Biden administration.
Here are a couple of personal stories of encounters I personally had during those years along San Miguel Road.
One cold and raining January morning, I opened the garage door and there stood three shivering men in t-shirts. They were trying to talk to me, but I had no Spanish skills, so I called Diana out to help. They were saying “riday” – “riday,” which Diana quickly translated to ride, ride. They were asking me for a ride.
So, I put them in my car and drove them up to North County where they were working either in a housing project, or in the orchards up there. I was not fearful or nervous with them on this journey, and they directed me to an unfinished house where I left them.
The second encounter was when a couple men showed up at our door and asked for a ride. This time it was a ride to a church in a neighboring community. Somehow, they had the idea that I was a pastor. I was not, though we attended a church in the neighborhood. Again, I was not fearful or nervous.
Then, one morning we found a bag full of freshly picked oranges, a gesture of thanks.
Would I do this today? Absolutely not. What I did back then was certainly illegal, but my attitude was to help these people who were simply trying to make a living.
On occasion we would drive down to Mexico to get diesel, to the dog track, to the Jai-Alai games, to a Mexican meal, or to enjoy the ocean at Rosarito Beach. We also helped at an orphanage in Ensenada.
Our time along San Miguel Road was also a time for off-road motorcycle riding. There was great riding not far from the house and at time we would ride close to the border, and on occasion we crossed over into Mexico to a taco stand.
For ten years of our 40 years in Southern California we lived in the Mojave Desert town of Ridgecrest. Often, we would travel back and forth to San Diego and would pass through a Border Patrol check point on Interstate 15. I think back now to that check point and contrast its minimal activity with what I see in today’s border checkpoints, and indeed places like the police stations in Chicago where migrants are jammed in.
With the millions of illegal immigrants, many who are military age males from dangerous parts of the world, what could possibly go wrong?
. What I expect and fear is that sometime in the not distant future, we will experience a large scale and widespread terrorist attack. Such an attack would be nationwide or nearly so. If millions of people are unaccounted for, who are they? What are their intentions? What are they capable of? Are they controlled by sinister agents? And if there are multitudes of these getaways – protentional terrorists – here now, what about the weapons that may be coming across the border or already in place? Will we be seeing mass shootings against civilians at public gatherings, against neighborhoods, against infrastructure?
Remember September/11/2001. Remember October 7, 2023. It could very well happen here.
Our vote in November of this year could very well be a turning point back to sane and proper border enforcement we had prior to Joe Biden (or whoever is controlling him) coming into power. Or our vote could further accelerate the destruction of our republic.
The radical left, and its operational and political arm, the Democrat Party, along with co-conspirators in the Mainstream Media (MSM) has attempted to demonize the former president and leading 2024 Presidential candidate Donald Trump and his supporters with a variety of attacks. Chief among these attacks thus far was the Russia collusion hoax initiated early in the tenure of President Donald Trump. This hoax, as it turned out, was a fraud perpetrated by failed candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of the fake Steele dossier. This fraud was the opening salvo of the real insurrection (not J6) aimed at overturning the election of Donald Trump.
The years long Mueller investigation found no such collusion between Russia and anything Trump. And yet, Hillary Clinton has never been held accountable for her active part in this attempt at insurrection.
The major thrust of this Russia hoax was an implied treason of Donald Trump with his political loyalty split between the American Constitution and a foreign nation known to be adversarial to American interests. The benefits expected by Russian President Vladimar Putin I presume were to be fleshed out by the Mueller investigation and subsequent congressional impeachment investigations and proceedings.
Putin worked as a Soviet Union KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. This is the same Soviet Union credited with the deaths of 10s of millions of civilians during the roughly 70 years of the life of the Soviet Union. Now we see the Democrat Party and the American left seeking to move Donald Trump into that tyrannical orbit.
Having failed in the Russia Hoax, and various attempts at labeling Trump as racist and other forms of “__ist” and “__phobia” (fill in the blank), we now see the Democrat Party and the left attempting to align Trump and his supporters with the tyrannical and genocidal Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. This Nazi attack is a grotesque lie and shows that the Democrat party, and Joe Biden in particular will use any tactic, no matter how low to retain and consolidate power.
To see this lie in context we must have an understanding of the actual evil unleashed on the word, and in particular the evil unleashed in the Holocaust where Hitler and the Nazis brutally annihilated some 6 million Jews in their attempt to eliminate Jews from the human race. We must also have an honest understanding of the record of President Doanld Trump. In the four years of his presidency, Trump showed no indications of being a dictator. On the contrary, during the COVID pandemic he quite often deferred to the private sector and various states in solicitating solutions to the pandemic. He could have seized total federal control, but his first instinct was to rely on the Constitutional federal system of government. Another key difference between Donald Trump and Hitler and his Nazis is seen in Trump’s success in bringing peace treaties between Israel and a number of the surrounding Arab nations. This is known as the Abraham Accords.
Finally, is the irony of the Biden family gaining riches from Hunter Biden’s collusion with the communist Chinese government.
____________________________
What follows below is the text of President Biden’s opening 2024 salvo attempting to move Donald Trump into the orbit of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany of the 1930s and 1940s.
I have a number of problems with this presidential speech, however in the interest of space I will be selective and highlight these comments as such —
[DLJ: My emphasis and comments on the Biden speech are bolded as such.]
Today, the topic of my speech today is deadly serious and I think it needs to be made at the outset of this campaign.
In the winter of 1777, it was harsh and cold as the Continental Army marched to Valley Forge. General George Washington knew he faced the most daunting of tasks, to fight and win a war against the most powerful empire in existence in the world at the time. His mission was clear: liberty, not conquest. Freedom. Not domination. National independence. Not individual glory.
America made a vow: Never again would we bow down to a king.
Months ahead would be incredibly difficult. But General Washington knew something in his bones. Something about the spirit of the troops he was leading. Something, something about the soul of the nation he was struggling to be born. In his general order, he predicted, and I quote, with one heart and one mind, with fortitude and with patience, they would overcome every difficulty, the troops he was leading. And they did. They did.
This army that lacked blankets and food, clothes and shoes. This army, whose march left bloody bare footprints in the snow. This ragtag army made up of ordinary people.
Their mission, George Washington declared, was nothing less than a sacred cause. That was the phrase he used. A sacred cause. Freedom, Liberty. Democracy. American democracy.
I just visited the grounds of Valley Forge. I’ve been there a number of times since the time I was a Boy Scout years ago.
You know, it’s the very site that I think every American should visit, because it tells the story of the pain and the suffering and the true patriotism it took to make America.
Today, we gather in a new year, some 246 years later, just one day before January 6, a day forever seared in our memory because it was on that day that we nearly lost America, lost it all.
Today, we’re here to answer the most important of questions. Is democracy still America’s sacred cause? I mean it.
[DLJ:Like President Biden, my great question and fear in the beginning weeks and months of the COVID-19 Pandemic was “what will liberty look like in America at the end of this pandemic?” What I have documented in my book “Losing Liberty” is clear. American Liberty has been seriously damaged. That damage has come from Biden and the political and cultural left, and not from Donald Trump.
This is not rhetorical, academic or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time.
And it’s what the 2024 election is all about.
The choice is clear.
[DLJ: based on what I have documented in my book “Losing Liberty“, yes – the choice is clear – the Democrat Party is the clear and present danger to the American republic, and as a nation, we must electorally minimize or eliminate the Democrat Party. However, we must not replace it with a similar single party rule of Republicans.]
Donald Trump’s campaign is about him, not America, not you.
Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power.
Our campaign is different. For me and Kamala, our campaign is about America. It’s about you. It’s about every age and background that occupy this country.
It’s about the future we’re going to continue to build together. And our campaign is about preserving and strengthening our American democracy.
Three years ago tomorrow, we saw with our own eyes the violent mob stormed the United States Capitol. It was almost in disbelief as you first turned on the television.
For the first time in our history, insurrectionists had come to stop the peaceful transfer, transfer of power in America. First time.
[DLJ: A riot yes. However, not one person has been charged with the crime of insurrection. There were no guns involved. But the charge of insurrection has been leveled in the court of public opinion, and President Trump and his supporters (including me) have been presumptively found guilty of insurrection, but without due process.]
Smashing windows, shattering doors, attacking the police.
Outside, gallows were erected as the MAGA crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.”
Inside, they hunted for Speaker Pelosi. The House was chanting as they marched through and smashed windows, “Where’s Nancy?”
Over 140 police officers were injured.
Jill and I attended the funeral of police officers who died as a result of the events of that day.
Because Donald, because of Donald Trump’s lies, they died because these lies brought a mob to Washington.
He promised it would be wild. And it was.
He told the crowd to “fight like hell” and all hell was unleashed.
He promised he would write[?] them, write[?] them, everything they did. He would be side by side with them.
Then, as usual, he left the dirty work to others.
He retreated to the White House.
As America was attacked from within, Donald Trump watched on TV in a private, small dining room off my oval, off the Oval Office.
The entire nation watched in horror.
The whole world watched in disbelief.
And Trump did nothing.
Members of his staff, members of his family. Republican leaders who were under attack at that very moment pled with him.
Act. Call off the mob. Imagine had he gone out and said, “Stop.”
Still, Trump did nothing.
It was among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history.
An attempt to overturn a free and fair election by force and violence. A record 81 million people voted for my candidacy and to end his presidency.
Trump lost the popular vote by 7 million.
Trump’s claims about the 2020 election never could stand up in court. Trump lost 60 court cases. Sixty.
Trump lost the Republican-controlled states. Trump lost before a Trump-appointed judge, and then judges, and Trump lost before the United States Supreme Court.
All of it. He lost.
Trump lost recount after recount after recount and state after state.
But in desperation and weakness, Trump and his MAGA followers went after election officials who ensured your power as a citizen would be heard.
These public servants had their lives forever upended by attacks and death threats for simply doing their jobs.
In Atlanta, Georgia, a brave Black mother and her daughter, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, were doing their jobs as election workers until Donald Trump and his MAGA followers targeted and threatened them, forcing them from their homes, unleashing racist vitriol on them.
Trump’s personal lawyer. Rudy Giuliani, was just hit with a 148 million-dollar judgment for cruelty and defamation that he inflicted against them.
Other state and local elected officials across the country faced similar personal attacks. In addition, Fox News agreed to pay a record eight, 787 million dollars for the lies they told about voter fraud.
Let’s be clear about the 2020 election.
Trump exhausted every legal avenue available to him to overturn the election. Every one, but the legal path just took Trump back to the truth, that I’d won the election and he was a loser.
Well, so knowing how his mind works now, he had one, he had one act left.
One desperate act available to him, the violence of January the sixth.
Since that day, more than 1,200 people have been charged with assault in the Capitol. Nearly 900 of them have been convicted or pled guilty. Collectively to date, they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison.
What’s Trump done? Instead of calling them criminals, he’s called these insurrectionists patriots. They’re patriots. And he promised to pardon them if he returns to office. Trump said that there was a lot of love on January the sixth.
The rest of the nation, including law enforcement, saw a lot of hate and violence.
One Capitol Police officer called it a medieval battle.
That same officer called vile, was called vile, racist names.
He said he was more afraid in the Capitol of the United States of America, in the chambers, than when he was fighting as a soldier in the war in Iraq. He said he was more afraid inside the halls of Congress than fighting in war in Iraq.
In trying to rewrite the facts of January sixth, Trump was trying to steal history, the same way he tried to steal the election.
But he, we knew the truth, because we saw it with our own eyes. So it wasn’t like something, a story being told. It was on television repeatedly. We saw it with our own eyes.
Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent assault.
They were insurrectionists, not patriots.
They weren’t there to uphold the Constitution. They were there to destroy the Constitution.
Trump won’t do what an American president must do.
He refuses to denounce political violence.
So hear me clearly.
I’ll say what Donald Trump won’t. Political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States political system. Never, never, never.
It has no place in a democracy. None.
You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American.
You know, Trump and his MAGA supporters not only embrace political violence, but they laugh about it.
At his rally, he jokes about an intruder, whipped by the big Trump lie, taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi’s skull, and echoing the very same words used on January 6th. “Where’s Nancy?”
And he thinks that’s funny. He laughed about it. What a sick …
My God.
I, I think it’s despicable. Seriously. Not just for a president, for any person to say that.
But to say it to the whole world listening. When I was overseas, anyway …
Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past. It’s what he’s promising for the future. He’s been straightforward.
He’s not hiding the ball.
His first rally for the 2024 campaign opened with a choir of January sixth insurrectionists singing from prison on a cellphone while images of the January sixth riot played on the big screen behind him at his rally.
Can you believe that?
This is like something out of a fairy tale, a bad fairy tale.
Trump began his 2024 campaign by glorifying the failed violent insurrectionist, insurrection at our, on our Capitol.
The guy who claims law and order sows lawlessness and disorder.
Trump’s not concerned about your future. I promise you.
Trump is now promising a full-scale campaign of revenge and retribution, his words, for some years to come.
They were his words, not mine. He went on to say he’d be a dictator on day one.
[DLJ: What Trump actually said was that he would be dictator only on day 1, after which we would no longer be dictator. Was what Trump said any different than what Joe Biden actually did on his very first day as president by signing so many Executive Orders, many of which nullified policies of his predecessor. I have used similar words in saying that if I became king one day I would make so many changes that the very next day I would be assassinated.]
I mean, if I were writing a book of fiction, and I said an American president said that, and not in jest.
He called and I quote, the terminate, quote, this is a quote, the termination of all the rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the U.S. Constitution should be terminated if it fits his will.
It’s really kind of hard to believe.
Even found in the Constitution, he could terminate.
He’s threatened the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the death penalty.
He says he should be put to death because the chairman put his oath to the Constitution ahead of his personal loyalty to Trump.
This coming from a president who called, when he visited his cemetery, called dead soldiers “suckers and losers.” Remember that?
Sometimes I’m really happy the Irish in me can’t be seen.
It was right around the time was at Beau’s grave. Tommy.
How dare he?
Who in God’s name does he think he is?
With former aides, Trump plans to invoke the Insurrectionist Act, Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy, he’s not allowed to do it in ordinary circumstances, allow him to deploy U.S. military forces on the streets of America.
He said it.
He calls those who opposed, oppose him vermin.
He talks about the blood of America’s is being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.
[DLJ: Under president Biden’s open border policies, millions of illegal aliens have entered the US. Neither the government nor us citizens know who these individuals are, where they are, or what might motivate them. Diseases and deadly drugs such as Fentanyl also have been unleashed due to these border policies.]
He proudly posts on social media the words that best describe his 2024 campaign. Quote, revenge, quote, power, and quote, dictatorship.
There’s no confusion about who Trump is, what he intends do.
I placed my hand on our family Bible, and I swore an oath on the very same steps of the Capitol just 14 days after the attack on January the sixth.
As I looked out over the capital city, whose streets were lined with National Guard to prevent another attack, I saw an American that had been pushed to the brink, an America that had been pushed to the brink.
But I felt enormous pride, not in winning. I felt enormous pride in America, because American democracy had been tested.
American democracy had held together.
And when Trump had seen weakness in our democracy and continued to talk about it, I saw strength.
Your strength, it’s not hyperbole.
Your strength, your integrity, American strength and integrity.
Ordinary citizens, state election officials, the American judicial system, had put the Constitution first, and sometimes at their peril, at their peril.
Because of them.
Because of you.
The will of the people prevailed.
Not the anger of the mob or the appetites of one man.
When the attack on January sixth happened, there was no doubt about the truth.
At the time, even Republican members of Congress and Fox News commentators publicly and privately condemned the attack.
As one Republican senator said, Trump’s behavior was embarrassing and humiliating for the country. But now that same senator and those same people have changed their tune.
As time has gone on, gone on, politics, fear, money, all have intervened.
And now these MAGA voices, who know the truth about Trump on January sixth, have abandoned the truth and abandoned the democracy.
They made their choice.
Now, the rest of us, Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans, we have to make our choice.
I know mine, and I believe I know America’s.
We’ll defend the truth, not give in to the big lie.
We’ll embrace the Constitution of the Declaration, not abandon it.
[DLJ: Recall that new President Joseph Biden shit-canned the 1776 Commission report, and the commission itself, on the very first day of his presidency. The report is a concise history of the very Constitution and Declaration that Biden claims to embrace. Read the report yourself earlier in my book “Losing Liberty“.]
We’ll honor the sacred cause of democracy, not walk away from it.
Today, I make this sacred pledge to you: The defense, protection and preservation of American democracy will remain, as it has been, the central cause of my presidency.
America, as we begin this election year, we must be clear: Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.
Yes, we’ll be voting on many issues: on the freedom to vote, and have your vote counted. On the freedom of choice.
The freedom to have a fair shot.
The freedom from fear.
And we’ll debate and disagree.
Without democracy, no progress is impossible. Think about it.
The alternative to democracy is dictatorship. The rule of one, not the rule of we, the people.
That’s what the soldiers of Valley Forge understood.
So was me, we have to understand it as well.
We’ve been blessed so long with a strong, stable democracy, it’s easy to forget why so many before us risked their lives and strengthened democracy.
What our lives would be without it.
Democracy means having the freedom to speak your mind, to be who you are, to be who you want to be.
Democracy is about being able to bring about peaceful change.
Democracy. Democracy is how we open the doors of opportunity wider and wider with each successive generation, not notwithstanding our mistakes.
But if democracy falls, we’ll lose that freedom, we’ll lose the power of we, the people, to shape our destiny.
If you doubt me, look around the world.
Travel with me as I meet with other heads of state throughout the world.
Look at the authoritarian leaders and dictators Trump says he admires. He out loud says he admires.
I won’t go through them all. It would take too long.
Look, remember how he first, how he refers to what he calls love letter exchanges between he and the dictator of North Korea?
Those women and men out there in the audience who’s ever fought for an American military. Did you ever believe you’d hear a president say something like that?
His admiration for Putin?
I could go on.
And look at what these autocrats are doing to limit freedom in their countries.
They’re limiting freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom to assemble, women’s rights, LGBQ rights, people are going to jail. So much more.
It’s true. The push and pull of American history is not a fairy tale.
Every stride forward in America is met with ferocious backlash, many times, from those who fear progress and those who exploit that fear for their own personal gain.
From those who traffic in lies, told for power and profit. For those who are driven by grievance and grift, consumed by conspiracy and victimhood.
From those who seek to bury history and ban books.
Did you ever think you’d be at a political event and talk about book banning, for a presidential and a presidential election?
The choice in contest between those forces, those competing forces, between solidarity and division, is perennial. But this time it’s so different.
You can’t have a contest, you can’t have a contest, if you see politics as an all-out war instead of a peaceful way to resolve our differences.
All-out war is what Trump wants.
That’s why he doesn’t understand the most fundamental truth about this country.
Unlike other nations on Earth, America is not built on ethnicity, religion, geography.
We’re the only nation in the history of the world built on an idea, not hyperbole, built on an idea.
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal.
It’s an idea, declared in the Declaration, created in a way that we’ve viewed everybody as equal and should be treated equal throughout their lives.
We’ve never fully lived up to that. We have a long way to go, but we’ve never walked away from the idea.
We’ve never walked away from it.
And I promise you, I will not let Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans force us to walk away now.
We’re living in an era where a determined minority is doing everything in its power to try to destroy our democracy for their own agenda.
The American people know it, and they’re standing bravely in the breach.
Remember, after 2020, January sixth insurrection to undo the election in which more Americans had voted than any other in American history.
America saw the threat posed to the country and they voted them out in 2022. Historic midterm election. In state after state, election after election, the election deniers were defeated.
Now, in 2024, Trump is running as the denier-in-chief, the election denier-in-chief.
Once again, he’s saying he won’t honor the results of the election if he loses.
Trump says he doesn’t understand, or he still doesn’t understand the basic truth. That is, you can’t love your country only when you win.
You can’t love your country only when you win.
I’ll keep my commitment to be president for all of America. Whether you voted for me or not, I’ve done it for the last three years and I’ll continue to do it.
Together, we can keep proving that America is still a country that believes in decency, dignity, honesty, honor, truth.
We still believe that no one, not even the president, is above the law.
We still believe the vast majority of us still believe that everyone deserves a fair shot at making.
We’re still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor.
I tell you from my experience working with leaders around the world, and I mean this sincerely, not a joke, that America is still viewed as a beacon of democracy for the world.
I can’t tell you how many, how many world leaders, and I know all of them, virtually all of them, grab my arm in private and say, “He can’t win. Tell me. No, my country will be at risk.”
Think of how many countries, Tommy, you know that are on the edge.
Imagine.
We still believe in we the people, and that includes all of us. Not some of us.
Let me close with this.
In the cold winter of 1777, George Washington and his American troops to Valley Forge waged a battle on behalf of a revolutionary idea, that everyday people like where I come from, and the vast majority of you, not a king or a dictator, that everyday people can govern themselves without a king or a dictator.
In fact, in the rotunda of the Capitol, there’s a giant painting of General George Washington, not President Washington.
And he is resigning his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
A European king at the time said after he won the revolution, now’s the time for him to declare his kingship.
But instead, the mob that attacked the Capitol, waving Trump flags and Confederate flags, stormed right past that portrait.
That image of George Washington gave them no pause, but it should have.
The artist who painted that portrait memorialized that moment because he said it was, quote, one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, end of quote.
George Washington was the height of his power, having just defeated the most powerful empire on Earth.
Could have held on to power as long as he wanted.
He could have made himself not a future president, but a future monarch, in effect.
And by the way, when he got elected president, he could have stayed for two, three, four or five terms till he died.
But that wasn’t the America he and the American troops at Valley Forge had fought for.
In America, genuine leaders, democratic leaders with a small D don’t hold on to power relentlessly.
Our leaders return power to the people and they do it willingly because that’s the deal.
You do your duty.
You serve your country.
And ours is a country worthy of service as many Republican presidents and Democratic presidents have shown over the years.
We’re not perfect, but at our best, we face on, we face head on the good, the bad, the truth of who we are.
We look in the mirror and ultimately never pretend we’re something we’re not.
That’s what great nations do.
And we’re a great nation. We’re the greatest nation on the face of the earth. We really are.
That’s the America I see in our future.
We get up. We carry on.
We never bow. We never bend.
We speak of possibilities, not carnage. We’re not weighed down by grievances.
We don’t foster fear. We don’t walk around as victims.
We take charge of our destiny. We get our job done with the help of the people we find in America, who find their place in a changing world and dream and build a future that not only they but all people deserve a shot at.
We don’t believe, none of you believe America is failing.
We know America is winning.
That’s American patriotism.
It’s not winning because of Joe Biden. It’s winning.
This is the first national election since January sixth insurrection placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy. Since that moment.
We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is who are we?
That’s what’s at stake. Who are we?
In the year ahead, as you talk to your family and friends, cast your ballots, the power is in your hands.
After all we’ve been through in our history, from independence to civil war to two world wars to a pandemic to insurrection, I refuse to believe that in 2024 we Americans will choose to walk away from what’s made us the greatest nation in the history of the world.
Freedom, liberty. Democracy is still a sacred cause, and there’s no country in the world better positioned to lead the world than America.
That’s why, I’ve said it many times, that’s why I’ve never been more optimistic about our future, and I’ve been doing this a hell of a long time.
Just to remember who we are.
With patience and fortitude, with one heart, we are the United States of America, for God’s sake. I mean it.
There’s nothing. I believe with every fiber there’s nothing beyond our capacity if we act together and decently with one another.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
I mean it. We’re the only nation in the world that’s come out of every crisis stronger than we went into that crisis. And that was true yesterday.
It is true today. And I guarantee you will be true tomorrow.
God Bless you all. And may God protect our troops.
_____________________
Another take on this fear mongering Biden speech is at:
So, there we have it – a repeat of the Russia Hoax, but with different villains to be paraded arm-in-arm with Donald Trump. And note, that these villains are among the most vicious and hideous of histories villains.
First, we have the Russia hoax, with Donald Trump associated with communist regimes credited with the deaths of over 100 million citizens (not military).
And now in 2024 we are presented with the Hitler/Nazi Hoax with Donald trump being associated arm-in-arm with the Nazi regime credited with the massive destruction of World War II, including the deaths of some 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
Fear mongering of the worst kind.
Now, contrast the records of the two presidents.
In the four years of the Trump administration, we had no major wars. In the Trump years we saw the Abraham Accords brokered by the Trump administration, with normalization agreements between: Israel–United Arab Emirates; Israel–Bahrain; Israel–Sudan; and Israel–Morocco; with Saudi Arabia seen as a possibility in the near term. See Joel Rosenberg’s book “Enemies and Allies:” presents a fascinating account of the fulfillment of these accords under the Trump administration.
In contrast, in the three short years of the Biden administration we have seen two major wars; the Russian-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas war. Further, we are seeing an increase in Iranian sponsored attacks against American forces in the Middle east, and attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Further, Biden has resumed the Iran nuclear deal which likely will accelerate the Iranian nuclear weapons delivery capability. Biden (as did President Obama) has also delivered massive amounts of cash to the Iranians.
Here is a picture of activity on the bridge of a US Navy destroyer with the ship’s captain in command as it engages adversary forces. This depicts the sort of clear and decisive leadership needed for our military units.
Now imagine Joe Biden as commander of that ship as it encounters adversary forces. Clear and decisive leadership is simply not in evidence.
The recent barbaric and satanic actions of Islamic Hamas against Israel has prompted me to update my examination of Liberty in the context of these current events in the Middle East.
“In each and every generation they rise up against us to destroy us.”
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This is an excerpt from the Haggadah, a written guide to the Passover seder. Passover is a yearly celebration commemorating the rescue of the enslaved Hebrews from the slavery and tyranny of the Egyptian pharaohs.
Have non-Jews really tried to destroy Jews in every generation?
Consider:
1430 BCE Slavery in Egypt. (Passover)
356 BCE Haman attempts genocide of the Jews. (Purim) Read the book of Esther.
138 BCE Greek government outlaws the practice of Judaism in Israel. (Chanukah)
486 CE Monks and mobs burn synagogue, dig up a Jewish cemetery, and burn bones.
624 Mohammed watches as 600 Jews are decapitated in Medina in one day.
640 Jews expelled from Arabia.
1096 First crusade: Thousands of Jews tortured and massacred.
1146 Second crusade: Thousands of Jews, including women and babies, are butchered across Europe.
1200s Jews ― blamed for causing the Black Plague ― are murdered in Frankfort, Speyer, Koblenz, Mainz, Cracow, Alsace, Bonn, and other cities.
1290 Jews expelled from England.
1306 Jews expelled from France.
1349 Jews expelled from Hungary.
1391 Spain: Seville, Majorca, Barcelona – tens of thousands killed.
1394 Second expulsion from France.
1400’s Jews accused of murdering Christian children and baking matzah with the blood.
1421 Jews expelled from Austria.
1492 Jews expelled from Spain; Inquisition.
1496 Jews expelled from Portugal
1500s Marranos are burned in Mexico, Portugal, Peru, and Spain.
1553 The Talmud is burned in Italy.
1648-66 Cossacks, Poles, Russians, and Swedes massacre Jews.
1744 Jews expelled from Bohemia and Moravia.
1818 Pogroms in Yemen.
1840 Blood libel in Damascus.
1862 General Ulysses S. Grant expels Jews from Tennessee.
1882 Pogroms in Russia.
1930s-40s Official Canadian reply to most Jewish pleas for refuge: “Unfortunately, though we greatly sympathize with your circumstance, at present you cannot be admitted. Please try some other country.”
1939-45 Six million Jews are annihilated across Europe. Babies serve as target practice, women are human guinea pigs for doctors and scientists, beards are torn from men’s faces.
1948-67 Arab nations launch attacks to annihilate the States of Israel. Fearing for their lives, Jews flee Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt.
1917-91 The study of Hebrew is a “crime against the state” in the Soviet Union.
2023 Hamas, from Gaza, launched a savage and barbaric attack on Israeli civilians, killing and torturing over 1400 men, women, children, and infants. Babies were decapitated, and some were baked in ovens.
So yes, the words of the Haggadah have been fulfilled across many centuries and continues today. What is happening in 2023 is not only a continuing of the Nazi Holocaust, but a continuing of such atrocities back at least to the Exodus.
The above is an excerpt from a new edition of my book. Take a look:
In my view, transgenderism is probably the most serious threat to American culture and liberty today. Perhaps in all of American history.
Let us review what our 2nd president and founder John Adams had to say about our republic:
“We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge, or Gallantry would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Are we seeing a full-frontal Demonic assault on the American Republic? Here’s how I see it.
Political Correctness such as the ever more influential and destructive LGBQT++ movement is the very sort of Whale that John Adams was referring to. It is peer pressure and the fear of the loneliness of being rejected by the crowd. Our Constitution, and thus our nation and our freedoms are under direct attack by the Political Correctness we are witnessing.
Unless it is stopped, our nation is headed to the same destruction as Israel/Judah in the time of the prophet Jeremiah. Hearts and minds need to change. Is the Asbury University Revival the beginning of such a change?
Transgenderism is a direct attack on the God of the Bible, and thus our faith …
In Genesis we read: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God, he created them male and female he created them.”
Then Satan, in the form of the serpent says “You will not certainly die … ”
In the New Testament Jesus says … “Haven’t you read,” he [Jesus] replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’’” Matthew 19.
Today’s Wokeness (the serpent) says … “Has god really created only two genders?”
We should be about affirming the distinct yet complementary and necessary differences in our genders – both of them.
Transgenderism is a direct attack on family – A parent is given a false choice between a live “trans” son/daughter or a dead daughter/son.
Transgenderism is a direct attack on individuals in the form of lifelong mutilations and neutering. Regret and suicide often follow.
Transgenderism is a direct attack on women – Men are encroaching on women’s sports and beauty contests. A man wins Miss Netherlands and Miss Nevada titles.
Transgenderism is a direct attack on culture – Dividing “us vs. them” and creating enemy classes.
Transgenderism is a direct attack on science. The biological fact of cell differentiation is denied in favor of often changing feelings.
Transgenderism is a direct attack on education with demands that ‘proper’ pronouns be used. More and more we read about transgenderism being promoted in the classrooms of America, often excluding parents and their rightful role as parents guiding their children. Educators are fired.
Transgenderism is a direct attack on the medical industry – Medical schools are teaching gender affirmation, including surgery. What happened to ‘First Do No Harm!’
Transgenderism is a direct attack on business:
$16 billion in lost Bud Light stock value.
Disney stock lost $16 billion in value.
Target losses more than $10 billion in its stock value.
Transgenderism is a direct attack on the military. Recruitment is down substantially, partly because of “wokeness.”
Proper teaching of the Biblical and American values of individual liberty, along with biology, anatomy, and physiology would negate much of this transgender thinking among the young.
This is what the science of biology tells us about “what we were born as.”
•We should be about affirming the distinct yet complementary and necessary differences in our genders – all two of them.
In 2007, America had one pediatric gender clinic; today there are hundreds. Testosterone is readily available to adolescents from places like Planned Parenthood and Kaiser, often on a first visit—without even a therapist’s note.
How did we get to this point? How is it that we are all supposed to pretend that the only way you can know I’m a woman is if I tell you my pronouns? How did we get to an America in which a 13-year-old in the State of Washington can begin “gender affirming” therapy without her parents’ consent? How did we get to an America in which a 15-year-old in Oregon can undergo “top surgery”—elective double mastectomy—without her parents’ permission? And what can we do about it?
. . .
This spike is not unique to America—we see it across the Western world. To offer just one statistic, there has been a decade-to-decade increase of over 4,400 percent in the number of teenage girls seeking treatment at the United Kingdom’s national gender clinic. Across the West, teen girls are now the leading demographic claiming to have gender dysphoria.
What is behind this is social contagion—the spread of ideas, emotions, and behaviors through peer influence, one more instance of teenage girls sharing and spreading their pain. There is a long history of social contagion with this demographic—anorexia and bulimia are also spread this way. And we know that teen girls today are in the midst of the worst mental health crisis on record, with the highest rates of anxiety, self-harm, and clinical depression.
The teen girls susceptible to this social contagion are the same high-anxiety, depressive girls who struggle socially in adolescence and tend to hate their bodies. Add to that a school environment where you can achieve status and popularity by declaring a trans identity. Add to that the teenage temptation to stick it to mom. Also add the intoxicating influence of social media, where trans activists push the idea that identifying as trans and starting a course of testosterone will cure a girl’s problems. Put those together, and you have a fast-spreading social phenomenon.
I’ve spoken to families at top girls’ schools who attest that 15, 20, or in one case 30 percent of the girls in their daughter’s seventh grade class identify as trans. When you see figures like that, you’re witnessing a social contagion in action. There is no other reasonable explanation.
.
_________________
Some further references on this gender phenomena:
The Backlash to Biden’s Transgender Orders Is Brewing
In the 1776 Commission report, in particular the role of the family, we read:
When children see their mother and father hard at work, they learn the dignity of labor and the reward of self-discipline. When adults speak out against dangerous doctrines that threaten our freedoms and values, children learn the time-tested concept of free expression and the courageous spirit of American independence. When parents serve a neighbor in need, they model charity and prove that every human being has inherent worth. And when families pray together, they acknowledge together the providence of the Almighty God who gave them their sacred liberty.
For the American republic to endure, families must remain strong and reclaim their duty to raise up morally responsible citizens who love America and embrace the gifts and responsibilities of freedom and self government.
Contrast that with the distain Black Lives Matter treats the role of family: [2]
An excerpt from the article:
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization’s “What We Believe” page asserts that these goals can only be achieved through the disruption of the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement,” the site declares, “by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.” The word “fathers” is deliberately excluded, replaced by the gender-neutral “parents” despite already naming “mothers” as pillars of the family.
The statement goes on to denigrate male influence on the family as oppressive. “We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered,” the group says, calling single mothers’ “double shifts” of working and parenting a “patriarchal practice.”
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It saddens me that the joys of family, the joys of parenting, the joys of grandparenting, the joys of being a grandchild, the joys of play with cousins, the joys of family gatherings around the dinner table, the joys of children playing with pets, have been lost on so many of my generation. This BLM picture of the family is sad. And it is disturbing that they are actively trying to extend such family destruction across more of America.
Seemingly a question with an obvious answer. But search for and watch this disturbing and alarming documentary.
Finally, know this: Transgenderism legislation is NOT anti-trans hate! It is legislation to protect vulnerable youth that are heading towards that cliff of transgenderism.
[1] Gender Ideology Run Amok – Imprimis (hillsdale.edu)
I came across this graph at the VA hospital at Ft. Harrison just outside Helena.
I was drafted in late 1963, and as you can see the US presence in Vietnam was quite small. The way the draft worked, was that when drafted, it has highly likely that I would be sent to an Army combat infantry unit. However, there was a grace period where if I could find an alternatives, Air Force, Navy, Marines, I could sign up for something different.
So I drove back to Butte from Minneapolis to fulfill my draft obligation. I was 1A, the highest draft category and passed my physical, with nothing that would exempt me from the Army.
Mind you, this was just one short year after the Cuban Missile Crisis when we were at the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
I had visions of crawling through the jungles of Cuba shooting at Communists and them shooting back at me, so I decided to see if I could join the Navy Reserve instead.
I went to the Navy recuiting office in uptown Butte and asked about joining the Navy Reserve, a two year stint. The old chief looked at me and said “there is no such thing” and tried to sign me up for four years in the regular Navy.
But I knew better. The Navy Reserve Training Center was just a short walk from home, and I used to go to Boy Scout meetings there. They signed me up and my Cuba worries fadded away.
By then it was 1964 and I was off to a Navy adventure of some sort. As you can see, 1964 was the beginning of a huge spike in the troop build up for Vietnam. I don’t recall knowing anything about a country named Vietnam, nor anything about war raging on that far side of the world including a buildup of the US Navy 7th Fleet of which I was destined to join.
After bootcamp. I had the opportunity to attend a Navy Technical school for Fire Control Technicians. FTs were those sailors that operated and maintained the guns aboard Navy ships. The catch was that I would have to extend my enlistment out to 4 years. So I opted to extend. At this point in my life I had no skills or education that I could offer to future employers, except perhaps to became a hard rock miner in the depths of the mines in Butte.
Part way through the A School at Mare Island, they shortened the school duration and gave me the option of keeping the 4 year extension or going back to the 2 year deal. I opted to go back to my original 2 year enlistment with 4 additional years of active reserve. Again, looking back at the graph above, I can see the reason for the short school duration. As you can see, 1964, the year of my school, there was an almost vertical ramp-up of troop strength, and they were moving troops and sailors to Vietnam as quickly as they could. I was part of that. My first sea assignment was January 1965 aboard the USS PORTERFIELD (DD-682) . The graph shows the buildup in Mid 1966 when I left the Porterfield and ended my active duty. I made one Westpac cruise off the waters of Vietnam supporting the troops on the ground, as well as the aircraft launching off the carriers.
Had I kept the 4 year extension, that would have put me toward the top of the buildup, 1968 the year of the Tet Offensive a nationwide attack of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamize Army.
I made it through those years and didn’t have to crawl through the jungles of Cuba of Vietnam, though I now know several here in Montana who did exactly that in the Jungles, mountains and swamps of Vietnam.
I have no regrets on my service in those years.
Not that many years later, here we are, Mom and me enjoying the mountains somewhere, probably Montana – cute huh?
“A wave of discriminatory State laws is targeting transgender youth, terrifying families and hurting kids who are not hurting anyone.”
Yes, there is a wave of State Laws targeting this recent wave of transgenderism. But let’s step back and take a look at the whole picture.
There are two groups of youth that we need to see in this transgender picture. We can view these groups as floating down the river of life towards a dangerous waterfall, and downstream from that waterfall a rocky and turbulent pool and rapids flowing downstream.
In one group are those who have fallen over the falls into the mayhem below.
The other group are still upstream from the falls but very much in danger of the crash into the rocks and swirling pool below the falls.
Along the river we see other groups, adults influencing the youth as they flow towards the precipice.
One group is on the riverbank cheering those kids towards the falls. A prominent leader of this group is the pagan President of the United States, Joe Biden. Others in this group are local school boards and teachers, and university professors. Others are doctors and hospitals providing “gender affirmation” procedures including genital mutilation surgeries. Still others are state and local political leaders passing laws and ordinances allowing the youth to plunge over the precipice. Everywhere there is a demonization of those who oppose the agenda of transgenderism.
Those who have crashed into the turbulent pool below the precipice indeed face a myriad of problems: thoughts of suicide with many taking their own life; permanent life changing surgeries; post transition regrets; no chance of future children; and more.
Many of those youth still floating down the river but not yet hearing the transition cheerleaders remain in danger of being sucked into the roaring current heading for the falls. They see and hear their classmates and friends happily anticipating the joy of plunging over the falls into a brand-new life where they can “celebrate who I really am.” As the number of those peers increase, more and more are recruited into a lifestyle that will please those friends destined for or already in and over the falls. The numbers of youth claiming gender identities different from what they have known all their lives has increased dramatically in recent years, and these numbers vary depending on location, an indication that this phenomenon is social contagion (peer pressure) and not organic.
Again, the President of the United States:
“Together, we also have to keep challenging the hundreds of hateful State laws that have been introduced across the country, making sure every child knows that they are made in the image of God, that they are loved, and that we are standing up for them.”
Also, along the riverbank, with some actually in the river, are many who seek to keep the youth from plunging over the falls. Among these are: parents; teachers; conservative media personalities and commentators; clergy; political leaders; governors and legislators.
These are not hateful people passing hateful laws. In the case of state legislators and governors, they are passing laws to protect multitudes of innocent youth who have not yet fallen victim to the demonic forces luring them into life changing chemical and physical mutilations.
Pagan President Joe Biden invokes God and the Biblical phrase “in the image of God” thus claiming Biblical authority for his proclamation and policies. But which God? Read what the Bible actually says in Genesis 1:27, the first book of the Bible – “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Jesus repeated this saying “… from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.”
What is the President of the United States telling those transgender people, and all Americans? He is telling all of us, “The Bible teaching of man and women is false, and therefore the Bible is false – trust me and not an ancient fable.”
Pagan President Biden expresses a sort of love for those who have fallen over the falls into chaos but makes no mention of the multitudes of youth who are in danger and under great pressure from peers and those in authority to continue on over the falls into a destructive future. Nor does he offer any suggestions as to how those who are “binary” can cope with their pressures, or how societies institutions and help these youth as they float down this river. This is not love!
What does science say?
Biological science says that there are two sexes, male and female, two genders male and female.
Physiology, the branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts is generally divided into organ systems that perform different functions in the body. Each body system works with the others to keep us alive. Let’s look at the main body systems that physiologists study a bit more detail.
Cardiovascular System
Digestive System
Endocrine System
Immune System
Muscular System
Renal System
Nervous System
Respiratory System
Reproductive System
Sex organs called gonads and other supporting organs make up the reproductive system. The goal of the reproductive system is to produce offspring to ensure the survival of the species.
Below are images of the female and male reproductive systems, distinctly different but complementary in the overall scheme of human reproduction.
Our body consists of millions and millions of cells of different types. They are all formed from the genome of a single fertilized egg. The process by which a less specialized cell becomes a more specialized cell type is called cell differentiation. This is a process which is seen in multicellular organisms. Here, right from the time after fertilization, the zygote begins to differentiate into a specialized network of cells. Differentiation is a common process in adult stem cells that divide and differentiate into specialized daughter cells. This process holds true for all of the human organs, some differentiate to skin, some to heart, some to brain, and some to our reproductive organs, male or female.
Biological scientists and educators all know this process. They all know that this process of cell differentiation determines “how I was born that way.” This is what science says!
And yet, in the very neighborhood of Yale University, a high school student says, “It’s not like [transgender students] just chose this lifestyle, this is what they were born as, and it’s only right that they are able to feel free to use the right bathroom.”
Yale is a very prestigious university and has departments of Biological and Biomedical Sciences offering the following programs: Cell Biology / Cellular & Molecular Physiology / Computational Biology & Bioinformatics / Experimental Pathology / Genetics / Immunobiology / Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program / Microbiology / Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry / Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology / Pharmacology / Translational Biomedicine. And yet, none of the esteemed professors (some Nobel laureates?) stepped up to challenge this ever-expanding phenomenon of transgenderism being advocated just down the street from their offices, lecture halls and laboratories. No one stepped up to challenge what was said by this high school student based on their own expertise in the biological sciences they teach, perhaps in future years to this very high school student.
AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) President and CEO David J. Skorton, MD, issued the following statement about the importance of allowing doctors to provide gender-affirming care to transgender youth:
“The AAMC is committed to ensuring access to high-quality care that treats all people, including transgender individuals, equally and with respect, and providing training to physicians and other health care professionals that is consistent with those values.
In medical decision making, the doctor-patient relationship must be paramount, and the needs of the patient must be given precedence. Efforts to restrict the provision of gender-affirming health care for transgender individuals will reduce health care access for transgender Americans, promote discrimination, and widen already significant health inequities.
In addition to harming some of the most vulnerable patients, efforts to restrict care undermine the doctor-patient relationship and the principle that doctors are best equipped to work with patients and their families to arrive at shared decision-making.
The AAMC is committed to improving the health of all people everywhere, and we will continue to oppose any effort to restrict the health care community’s ability to provide necessary care to any patient in need.”
Notice this statement says nothing about surgeries that result in physical mutilation of the sexual organs of the not yet fully transitioned youth, those sucked into this by social contagion. Nor does it speak of the growing number of youth experiencing regrets and de-transitioning.
What do Europeans know that American medical elites don’t — or, worse, won’t even consider? Western and Northern European countries are generally much more restrictive in transgender treatments for children, with several recently becoming sharply more so. Yet America is doubling down on invasive and irreversible medical interventions for minors at steadily younger ages — with rare exceptions like Utah, which just banned such treatments this weekend.
In my home state of Montana, a bill has passed in the state legislature which bans gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, prohibit drag shows in public places, and define “sex” in state law based on reproductive characteristics. The Governor is expected to sign the bill into Montana law.
Folks, in my opinion transgenderism is the greatest threat to our republic in generations, if not ever. Read my article Transgenderism for my rational.
Thanks for your time in reading this. And … please do your own homework.
Mom and I saw this movie (Jesus Revolution) a few weeks back, and it sparked some memories and emotions from years past. The Jesus Revolution depicted in the movie and described in this article, preceded our own Jesus Revolution by a number of years, though the parallels between the years, and also the parallels to today’s world are unmistakable and well presented in the article.
No we weren’t hippies though brother-in-law Gordon was a prototype hippie from those days, but missed the Jesus part. We weren’t into the drug scene though at Gordon’s frequent urgings I did step into the Hell of a psychedelic journey with mescaline and a few disappointing tries with marijuana.
That ‘trip’ into the psychedelic Hell of ‘expanding my mind’ was the most terrifying experience of my life – no exaggeration. We spent the night at an all night coffee shop in San Diego and I was in and out of sanity and insanity throughout the night. During insanity I would look across the table at Gordon and his features would melt away into an evil skeletal face grinning at me. In those periods where I regained sanity, my fear was that my next ‘trip’ into insanity would leave me there forever. Fortunately, the last trip into sanity was final and ended my experiment with mind altering drugs. A BAD TRIP. And all this during finals week of my senior year.
Returning to the movie and the Jesus Revolution, a key character at the heart of the revolution was a hippie from the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, a city noted for its role as a main center of the hippie movement and a hotbed of the drug culture.
Lonnie Frisbee, a hippie from Haight-Ashbury, infiltrated the life of a middle age conservative preacher in Southern California and sparked the Jesus Revolution. The movie captures this radical transformation of Pastor Chuck Smith’s small church into something unrecognizable and changed the lives of millions in the resulting outfall.
Our encounter with Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel church came a number of years later following my long flirtation with atheism. Pastor Smith on his radio program, The Word For Today, was one of a number of radio Bible preachers and teachers we would listen to in drives to and from work as our Christian faith grew in those early days. And by that time, Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel had become somewhat mainstream in the Christian world.
A new church in the neighborhood became our transition from a secular world view into Christianity. For me, having very little religious knowledge or experience, it was both a blessing and a struggle as I was learning things that were contrary to my going in ideas. Our congregation was a young congregation. We were in our mid 30s as were many of our new friends who became lifelong friends.
_____________________________
So what was the reason for this radical Jesus Revolution among the disaffected youth of the day and spreading far beyond to someone like me? Let’s take a look at a few excerpts from the narrative in the article linked at the top.
[my comments] “ … why is this film such an unlikely success? There are no simple answers to questions like this, but I would like to hazard one, which I think is also connected to the remarkable phenomena that just unfolded in rural Kentucky [the recent Asbury Revival]: Jesus Revolution speaks to our nation at a time at least as, if not more, divided, hopeless, and troubled than the era of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison.
Drug epidemics and overdoses rage, penetrating every racial group and social class, while suicides, mental illnesses, and sexual and gender confusion among young people climb. Social media makes us sicker and more divided as people retreat to echo chambers when they are not shouting, denouncing, or “canceling” those with whom they disagree. Educational institutions are increasingly Orwellian ideological training centers rather than places dedicated to communicating true knowledge and literacy. Young people are abandoning religion — not for atheism but for vague personal spirituality that is little more than repackaged ancient paganism. Elites in and out of government keep lying to and manipulating us. We cannot trust our FBI or intelligence services, and now even the venerable CDC has betrayed us.
Trust in our major social institutions has hit new lows, and rightly so. Urban race riots returned with a vengeance in 2020, along with now-chronic violence in cities where woke politicians are no longer able to put public safety ahead of ideology and businesses cannot protect the wares on their shelves from shoplifters and flash mobs.
The international scene looks less stable and more dangerous than it appeared 50 years ago. Will China invade Taiwan? Will Putin or Kim Jong-un launch nukes? Will the brutal invasion of Ukraine draw us into World War III? The reservoirs of strength available to us half of a century ago, which Nixon accurately called “the silent majority” in 1969, are grossly depleted. Our brokenness extends across the political, ideological, and cultural spectrum.
[I was drafted in late 1963 just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis when we came close to nuclear war with the Soviet Union who was placing ICBMs in Cuba aimed at American cities. A few years later I was on a Navy destroyer off the coast of Vietnam.]
For many of us baby boomers influenced by the Jesus Movement, the hope we felt through our first “born again” president [Jimmy Carter]— and then on through the Reagan years and beyond — is now replaced by disappointment, cynicism, and fear. Those of younger generations vacillate between focusing on personal material welfare, comfort, and safety and getting caught up in social justice causes and tribal identities with simplistic views of reality rooted more in slogans and emotions than facts and logic. Historically low marriage and birth rates in our nation are poignant evidence of young people allergic to commitment — but perhaps even more just paralyzed by fear, mistrust, and lack of confidence about the future. At least hippies were searching for “truth”; millennials and beyond increasingly do not believe it exists anywhere beyond their own preferences.” [I can relate to the struggles of this young generation – there is nothing new under the sun.]
I was greatly relieved at the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-90. My children would not face the prospect of fighting the Soviet Union and the threat of nuclear war was greatly diminished.
So I am not surprised at those young students at Asbury and elsewhere where revivals are occurring. I can imagine they are looking around at their world with much dismay. What is my future? What is the future of my nation? Will I still have freedom? Will I still have opportunity? What can I do? Who can I turn to for truth and answers? Where can I find hope in a badly broken world?
The loss of hope is deadly as we see in our personal lives and in the world around us. As in the Jesus Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, those young people at Asbury are seeking hope in the author of hope, Jesus Christ.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.. – 1 Peter 1:3-5
This is a fantastic book. The authors combine their experience into a very comprehensible and detailed look at the incredible symphany of the millions of machines in our bodies from the cellular level on up to our completed and functional bodies.
As a software developer/system engineer for many years, part of my experience was in interconnected systems which communicated over datalink distances through sophisticated messaging protocols. Messages were transmitted and received in packets bracketed by series of start and stop bits. A stream is scanned, and when a start bit pattern is detected, the data is clocked into memory until a stop bit pattern is detected. The data content is then passed on and used by downstream processes.
The picture below shows a similar biological mechanism at work in our bodies with start and stop codons bracketing biological packets of one sort or another.
My favorite biological machine is the Kinesin Motor. Take a look at this amazing animation.
I met a researcher from Penn who actually worked in this arena and was able to ask him a few questions: (1) How close to the real world are these animations? (2) Is our technology capable of actually seeing these machines operate in real time? (3) Why the animations?
His answers:
These animations are based on observations and studies of what they actually see in the actual real world.
Yes, tech knowledge is very good and researchers are able to see these amazing machines, and others in real time. This was confirmed on a later trip through the Philadelphia airport where I saw large photos of this researcher on prominent display. These photos were of actual Kinesin videos. Confirmation also came when I attended a lecture at Yale with a researcher from MIT who also worked in the micro-biology world. I asked his the same questions and his answers were the same as the Penn guy.
The reason for the animations is to allow researchers to isolate the machines which are in the crowded midst of literally millions of other things including other machines. They are able to tweak the animations and gain insight and propose what-if scenarios when changes are made to the inputs to the animations.
So there is a snapshot of one of my passions in life.
Likewise, responding to a message I recently received is extremely difficult for me to write, but I must respond. I will endeavor to respond civilly to the issue at hand and as much as possible stay away from emotion, though I understand that disparate views are held with passion.
I never would have thought, even just a few short years ago that this would become such a major issue confronting America, and in my opinion is perhaps the most destructive to the cultural and political fabric of America.
First, there is an oath that medical professionals supposedly sign up to – the Hippocratic Oath.
“First do no harm” is a popular saying that derives from the Latin phrase, “primum non nocere” or “primum nil nocere.” The term is particularly popular amongst those involved in the field of healthcare, medicine, or bioethics, and among popular accounts of the medical field, since it is a basic principle taught in healthcare-providing classes.
The takeaway point of “first do no harm” is that, in certain cases, it may be better to do nothing rather than intervening and potentially causing more harm than good.
Lots to cover, so let’s get to it.
This is the (edited) message I received:
This [Prager’s article] is a BS article. If you knew people who were trans you would know that you are being used as a pawn to distract you from matters of actual democracy that really are of issue. Pleas stop posting trans issues. [redacted] … and I will not accept this narrative about the “liberal left” anymore. It’s garbage not founded by any evidence. It’s also quite harmful. The suicide rates, the actual evidence that supports good medical CARE for these young people, is out there, should you look for that instead of these articles. [redacted] … But please, stop posting about trans issues. You’re not an expert at being trans. Trans people are. Their medical professionals are.
First, my positions on the issue of transgenderism are widely held by many around the world and across the millennia of time. Views such as mine need to be said and heard and not suppressed and censored, neither self-censored nor media-government censored – there is too much at stake, both culturally and at the individual level. Secondly, I will appeal to the idea of first principles – that is boiling things down to fundamental parts that are true and building up from there.
Dennis Prager’s article is called BS, but here is an interesting excerpt from it: “In England last October, the National Health Service (NHS) announced, in the words of the Daily Mail, that “Children who believe they are trans are probably just going through a short-lived phase.” Therefore, logic and morality say, we should not make permanent life-altering changes to their bodies with drugs and surgery.” It would seem that other nations are seeing the destructive outcomes of this American transgenderism and are having serious second thoughts about it. As Prager’s article points out, many European nations are rejecting America’s transgender thinking and policies – Switzerland, England, France, Sweden. A friend in Budapest responded to Prager’s article stating, “Absolutely right! Yes Don. We try to reject the idea of the left but it is very very difficult. We have to suffer all the attacks what is possible especially from the EU. We have never thought that this can happen. We wish you both a Happy New Year.” We met this man in Budapest when we attended Adam von Dioszeghy’s funeral. He was Adam’s contemporary at the time of the revolution but could not get involved because his father was president of the university where the revolution began, and this would have put his father and his entire family in great danger. Perhaps there is much to learn from some of their experiences. Do your own homework and investigate these stories from across the pond.
Prager’s article as quickly labeled as BS, but perhaps you should know a bit about the man. Take a look: Biography – The Dennis Prager Show
Further, it is asserted that I am being ‘used as a pawn to distract from matters of actual democracy’, I don’t understand what is meant by that. I have been a student of history most of my life though not a professional and have a good understanding of the two basic forms of government humanity has seen worldwide and through the millennia of time: representative (democratic) constitutional republics such as ours, and tyranny which has prevailed widely in various forms everywhere and at all times. My three-book series ON LIBERTY covers much of that. Book 1 “Yearning For Liberty” tackles the fundamental question “what is this thing called Liberty?” Book 2 “Losing Liberty” is a frightening cataloging and itemizing of a variety of accelerating events in recent years that are threatening our Liberty. History did not begin a week ago last Thursday. Freedom depends on a free people understanding where we came from – the good, the bad, and the ugly of a very long history.
When I finished Yearning for Liberty, I asked the question “What will liberty in America look like on the other side?” I now ask, “What will liberty and culture in America look like on the other side?”
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Let me address the idea of gender and sex as being fluid and non-binary with a multitude of genders as assigned somewhat arbitrarily by an individual to his or her status as a human being. This can be illustrated with an article from The Yale Daily News awhile back. From the article: “Several students from High School in the Community expressed concerns to the administration earlier this week, said [JC], a senior at the school. [C], a member of the LGBTQ community, met with school administrators on Wednesday along with a few other students to discuss bathroom options for transgender students. He said he was particularly concerned about the rights of transgender women, who might be placed in an unsafe situation if forced to use men’s bathrooms. The administration assured him the district would continue to protect and support transgender students, he said.
“It’s not like [transgender students] just chose this lifestyle, this is what they were born as, and it’s only right that they are able to feel free to use the right bathroom.”
“… this is what they were born as”
These assertions of the “truth” of transgenders being born “that way” go unchallenged in the midst of major universities with of Biological Science, and programs in ‘Cell Biology’, ‘Cellular & Molecular Physiology’, ‘Microbiology’, ‘Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology’. This is truly astounding and scandalous.
The “truth” of being born “that way” is actually to be found in those biological science courses being taught just down the street from this conversation. It’s called cell differentiation. A little study of the process shows a process of creating an intelligently designed human being. This is easy for lay people to grasp and understand
Why aren’t those medical doctors and PhD biology professors coming forward to help these young people through some very difficult times?
Why aren’t doctors who specialize in gender specific medicine, such as gynecologists, not stepping up to explain the specific but complementary differences between the male human and the female human?
Why aren’t those with detailed hands-on knowledge of the development of humans from conception to adulthood coming forward and teaching young people the biological and physiological facts about how their various organs are actually developed via cell differentiation, and actually show them what and how they were born as?
Why aren’t PhD psychologists with knowledge and experience coming forward to help young people through the most often temporary and very personal questions and concerns about their own personal sexuality?
Why aren’t school administrators actively seeking out real-world results of this thing called gender affirmation and presenting those results at school assemblies, preferably with real-world testimonies.
Why aren’t these experts sitting down with these young people and helping them through very troubling times with encouraging words such as “I understand you are going through very troubling times with many questions and concerns – I would like to help you get through all this. I will seek to help you, and first, I will do you no harm.”
A good resource I’ve found recently is Your Designed Body co-authored by Steve Laufmann, a computer scientist, and Dr. Howard Glicksman, a medical doctor. These authors examine the extreme complexity of the human body across 30+ million cells and hundreds of systems and subsystems from the cellular level to the completed body and its various organs. This book offers a good discussion of the development of male and female sexuality (chapters 15-18). These chapters are not that difficult to understand and offer a good look at cell differentiation as mentioned above. They discuss what is called the XY female where the external appearance is that of a female, while internally the male sexuality dominates. Thus, this would be a legitimate case of someone being born in the wrong body. However, the authors point out the rarity of such disorders as “about 1in every 20,000 female births.” A search in the web site Obgyn Key estimates the occurrence in the range of 1 in 40,000 to 60,000 births. So, the idea that a significant number of students in the same classroom, school, or school district are “born in the wrong body” is simply wrong and should be made known to students, parents, teachers, school administrators, school boards, and politicians, including President Biden.
You can see Dr. Glicksman’s extensive series on The Designed Body by clicking on this link. I have enjoyed following him online for quite some time, and this series covers much of what’s in the book. Steve Laufmann’s online articles are here.
“first, do no harm” – What I see here is harm being done to science and the educational process of teaching basic human biology, anatomy, and physiology.
“… first, do no harm”
Next, we come to the issue of actual physical and mental harm. Here is where liberal/progressive transgender values cross the line to inflict permanent harm in individuals.
We see this harm in medically unnecessary surgeries such as removing breasts from young girls leaving them unable to nurse babies they may have in the future.
We see this harm in so called “bottom surgeries” where the sexual organs of males and females are removed or artificially created. See for example this excerpt from a transgender website: “On this page, “phallus” means the erectile organ called the clitoris or the penis. This section is about creating, removing, or otherwise changing a person’s phallus. Depending on what kind of body they started out with, a person can have one or more kinds of these surgeries, if there is something they want or need to change about their phallus.”
These surgical procedures are in the main irreversible, meaning that once performed the trans person is stuck with the change regardless of the results, and any regrets they may have. I don’t know how to describe these procedures other than mutilation.
As time moves on, we see more and more transgenders coming to regret their decision and attempting to detransition. Many of these are speaking out publicly in efforts to warn others of the harm and dangers they personally have experienced. Detransitioner Chloe Cole’s story is an eloquent example of stories that undoubtably will tragically be heard more and more as time marches on. An excerpt from her story:
… after her surgery, she said she felt “like a monster.” Cole then said she regrets how “the beauty of motherhood” was lost to her forever at an age when she should have been playing softball and going to pop concerts with her parents. “At 15, I wasn’t really thinking,” she says. “I was a kid, just trying to fit in. I was not thinking about the possibility of becoming a parent.”
Read more of Cloe’s story. Here are a few excerpts from an interview:
“Social media introduced this idea that I could be a boy,” Chloe Cole says.
Cole began telling her friends and family that she was a boy when she was 12 years old after she was introduced to gender-identity ideology through social media. She started taking testosterone and puberty blockers at 13 and had a double mastectomy at 15.
At school, I was getting bullied a lot from a young age. I tended to struggle in my classes and with socialization. In fourth grade I finally managed to make a group of friends and that was kind of the first time that I ever really felt, I guess you could say, included with my peers. But then I had to move schools pretty quickly after that and I was basically back at square one.
The second elementary middle school that I went to, there was a lot of favoritism among students and I was not one of the favorite students. I was actually getting mistreated by both students and staff. So I was pretty lonely. I turned to the internet and I got my first phone when I was 11 because it was quite difficult for me to make friends.
Social media introduced this idea that I could be a boy. A lot of the feminist content I was seeing alongside the LGBT content that I was exposed to painted a very negative picture of being a woman, being feminine.
Despite being tomboy, I had a feminine side, but I was ashamed of it because a lot of cartoons and other children’s content I would consume growing up kind of was focused on boys and it kind of portrayed girls and especially feminine girls as stupid and not really contributing anything to the story and just being a nuisance. I wanted to be something more than that, you know?
Then there is the issue of trans suicides. Yes, this is a very tragic aspect in the trans community. Young people are so often confused by many things in life, including their own identity and who they are. I know I was. It doesn’t help that so often they see no hope in life. I remember a time at a men’s breakfast at church where a young man spoke about his struggle with addiction. I asked him “how much a factor in your story and struggle is hope and a loss of hope?”“Big time factor!” he answered. This is where faith can help, and the loss of faith can hurt in catastrophic ways. I’ve long held the view that although there are no guarantees in life, the closest we can get to a guarantee is to get involved, with our children, in a Bible believing, Christ honoring church. My wife and I have tried to do that.
When I enrolled in the VA Health Care system a few years back, I was asked a series of questions such as: have you had thoughts of suicide? Me-yes. Have you ever attempted suicide? Me-no. Would you like to meet with a professional psychiatrist? Me-yes. And I did. Yes, I have had thoughts of suicide, none of which are from any military trauma I encountered in my time in the Navy. These thoughts mainly come from personal insecurities, issues and struggles. I struggle through these thoughts, and two things have been primary in warding off these thoughts: my Christain faith and the woman I married so many years ago. If these were absent in my life . . .
An aspect of the trans suicide tragedies that bothers me a great deal is what I see as attempts to shift blame to those who are oppose to the trans agenda. I understand that there is hatred and bigotry aimed at trans people, but I also understand that there are many who are genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of trans people and harbor no hatred against them – parents are chief among those concerned and are being excluded in many places by school system policies and practices. Calling us haters and bigots is wrong and only deepens divisions.
Cloe: When my dad asked, he asked what the regret rate looked like, and they gave him a figure of around 1% to 2%, if not less. And they never talked about what would happen if I were to regret my transition and go back on that decision. They told them that if I wasn’t affirmed in my identity and allowed to transition as I wanted, then I would be at risk of suicide. So they were pretty much coerced into allowing this to happen.
“… first, do no harm”
Then there is the issue of peer pressure and bullying, especially common and strong among the young. In very recent years there has been an alarming increase in young people claiming to be transgender. Thus, many are recruited into this worldview/lifestyle unnecessarily. Where is the concern for those who are drawn in as they fall victim to gender affirmation procedures? Is it school district and government policy to “continue to protect and support transgender students” at the expense of those students who are peer pressured or bullied into this lifestyle?
And the biggest bully of all is our pagan president who has the power of enforcement.
“… first, do no harm”
How many families are damaged or destroyed as an outfall of this transgender phenomena?
“… first, do no harm”
It appears that our local public education systems are also being corrupted with transgenderism. So often I read where schools and school districts are actively grooming students under their care in the transition process. Here is an excerpt from A guide published by the Oregon Public of Education (ODE)
In the 48-page document, the guide tells students to hide their gender identity from parents as well as pushes the woke ideology queer theory and the idea that a person can be a different gender from what they were biologically born. Titled, “Supporting Gender Expansive Students, Guidance for Schools,” explains what to do if students are concerned about their parents finding out about their gender preference. “Students who are not publicly asserting their authentic gender identity may have privacy concerns about students, school staff, community members, or their families finding out before they are ready to share their identity more widely. Parent and family support is the goal when supporting gender-expansive students, but may not be possible in all situations,” the guide reads.
Read now this chilling account of another government takeover of school children. This from Nazi Germany and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), the German theologian who was hanged in April 1945 by the Nazis for spying on and opposing Hitler’s regime. Some excerpts from the book “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy” by Eric Metaxas.
Bonhoeffer’s mother, whom one cousin called “the soul and spirit of the house.” A devout woman, she had a deep-seated (and impressive) distrust of the German public school system, refusing to allow her children to attend them at a young age. She was openly distrustful of the German public schools and their Prussian educational methods. She subscribed to the maxim that Germans had their backs broken twice, once at school and once in the military, she wasn’t about to entrust her children to the care of others less sensitive than she during their earliest years. This was of course decades before teachers were required to swear oaths of loyalty to National Socialism, but Paula understood the risks of educating her small, impressionable children in the state’s schools. A skilled teacher, she was able to educate her children herself, teaching them an assortment of hymns, poems, and folk songs. She also allowed them to learn and explore on their own in the natural environment around Breslau and in the Glatz Mountains near the Bohemian border where the family often vacationed. As a result, when her children did eventually enter the public school system — with a foundation of solid values — they excelled.
Education Freedom Begins When Government Compulsion Ends
Unfortunately, a subsequent generation of German mothers would not have this luxury. In 1920, school attendance was made mandatory in Germany. This of course would play right into the hands of Hitler, who abolished primary schools run by churches.
There is much talk from the left about the threat to “our democracy” posed by what is now called the “radical MAGA Republicans”, but on closer examination such as the two preceding articles, we see quit a different picture.
“… first, do no harm”
Last, but not least is the damage to Biblical faith. From Genesis and throughout the Bible, we see the truth of binary – male and female – humanity.
Genesis 1:27 “God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”
Genesis 5:2 “He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created.”
Mark 10.6-9,13-16 Jesus said, ‘From the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
Rejecting these ancient teachings that have carried through humankind for millennia and throughout pretty much all cultures around the world would seem to me to me the height (or depth) of human arrogance. I am not one to reject them for some form of modern (actually ancient) form of wokeism.
I am just a short year from 80 years. In some eyes that makes me a dinosaur or a fossil. But in those years, I have seen many things about my nation, my American culture, and the world we live in – the good, the bad and ugly. I seek to protect, improve and propagate the good, defend against the bad, and understand the ugly.
I have presented here some thoughts and evidence for my views from a variety of perspectives and sources. Does this evoke a verdict?
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
A Yearning for Publius 