“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”
–St. Augustine.
Today I am in Chatmoss, the most lovely spot in Southside Virginia. This week is the annual Member-Guest golf tournament. My long time playing partner John Bays will be here on Wednesday. Hopefully, we will be hoisting the winners’ trophy on Saturday. Most likely, we will be hoisting martini glasses full of gin.
“There is no worse material poverty, I am keen to stress, than the poverty which prevents people from earing their bread and deprives them of the dignity of work.”–Pope Francis
“Honor lies in honest toil.”
–Grover Cleveland
“All wealth is the product of labor.” — John Locke
“No great achievement is possible without persistent work.” – Bertrand Russell
“There is no substitute for hard work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
Today is Labor Day. The very notion of celebrating “Labor Day” was once envisioned as a day to advance the rise of Marxism and collectivism through the guise of celebrating the American working man. Unfortunately for the Left, American workers have always striven to succeed, and believed [correctly!] that they could advance in the economy based upon their merits. Thus the Left was thwarted, as the sin of envy has never taken hold amongst our citizens the way it has in other so-called “advanced” countries such as France.
Sadly today, there are fewer American working men, and the sin of envy is rising among the indolent. The labor force participation rate is at a historically low point. Men in the prime working ages (25-55) are increasingly spending their time outside the workplace, living in their parents’ basements, not getting married, playing video games, watching internet porn, and living off government benefits. This is a terrible development, which is being encouraged by the Democrats’ increased social spending which subsidizes idleness and sloth, and discourages industry. This is a product of America’s generous and unconstitutional welfare State. It is a trend which must be reversed.
There is dignity in being self-sufficient. There is dignity in work. There is dignity in providing for yourself and your family. There is no dignity in sitting on the couch playing video games, and brushing pizza crumbs off the fabric.
We need a societal change. In 2026 America, poverty is a choice. That choice needs to be eliminated. We need to make it uncomfortable to be lazy and unproductive. We need to quit subsidizing those who wish to live in a drug and alcohol induced haze. We need to encourage, nay, we need to demand, that every able-bodied man engage in work, and support himself and his family. These expectations are Biblical in nature, and these expectations are what saved the Jamestown colony from extinction in 1608-09, and, similarly, the Plymouth colony, some 14 years later.
The world owes no one a living. Socialism is a lie, a failed ideology which has caused more poverty, angst, and death in this world than all the wars combined.
Beginning this year, let’s make Labor Day great again. Let’s make it a rallying point for putting more men back to work, and for them to become self-sufficient. This change alone would do more than any of Zohran Mamdani’s, Gavin Newsom’s, Elizabeth “Lieawatha” Warren’s, or Bernie Sanders’s vaunted (and flawed) government initiatives to grow our economy. This change alone would go a long way to changing people’s hearts, in a positive and sustaining way. The change alone would renew the promise of the American dream.
If you are going to wear white, I hope you got it done the weekend. Come tomorrow, white is no more until Memorial Day 2027. Yes, Frank, this includes you. But not your golf shoes.
And please; do not send me any correspondence concerning “Winter white”. There is no such thing. I don’t care what your favorite fashion magazine writes. White is white is white. See you next May.
“Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”
–St. Augustine.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ENGLISH! YOU ARE JUST AS PRETTY AS YOU WERE WHEN I MET YOU. AND YOU REMAIN THE MOST INTERESTING PERSON IN THE ROOM, WHEREVER I MAY BE.
Today, September 6, is English’s birthday. She will join me in Southside later this week for an extended celebration. Her birthday always occurs during Chatmoss Member-Guest week. English is a very good sport, as this has been going on for the last 23 years. She always takes it with good grace, and I will be thrilled to have her here. Because, English is the love of my life, the mother of our daughter, and my best friend. It is her birthday, but I am the one receiving the gifts. Happy Birthday sweetheart!
Dudley is less of a good sport. He will be here too, but grumpy about it. It is not that Dudley does not like Chatmoss; rather, Dudley dislikes riding in the car. And going to Chatmoss means a 8-10 hour round trip. Nevertheless, he will settle down in his favorite comfortable spot, where English will pamper and love him.
Today in Church we continue reading from S. Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia. We might recall that the reason for this letter was to admonish the Christian community in Galatia. He had established a Christian presence in this Roman province on either his first (southern Galatia) or second (northern Galatia) missionary journey to Asia Minor (now modern Turkey).
However, since his departure, the young Christian community had been co-opted by those claiming apostolic authority, but who were in fact promoting a Judaic form of Christianity, imposing adherence to the Mosaic Law on all converts. These were the so-called “Judaizers.” They were a perennial distraction to the Apostle’s work, and a cause of much conflict in the spread of the Gospel.
Previously in this epistle, S. Paul argued that the rite of circumcision, required to enter into the Abrahamic covenant, had been superseded by the rites of the New Covenant. The sacrament of Holy Baptism not only replaced the rite of circumcision but opened the doors of grace to both men and women. Further, S. Paul argues, all of the requirements of the Old Covenant have been fulfilled in Christ. (This point is made clearly in the Epistle to the Hebrews.) The inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven brings to an end the necessity to follow the precepts of the Mosaic Law as a requirement of the Christian faith.
S. Paul then makes a distinction between the ceremonial law and the moral law. While Christians are no longer obligated to follow the ceremonial law (as this was fulfilled in the perfect offering of Our Blessed Lord upon the Cross), the moral law still stands and becomes the foundation for our “walking in the Spirit.”
In the Epistle for today, S. Paul turns to the struggle that takes place within the Christian – that between the Spirit of God given to us in Baptism (and sealed in Confirmation) and our fallen human nature that draws us towards sinful behaviors. We have a choice: we can either “walk in the Spirit” and find authentic freedom, or we can give into concupiscence and become enslaved to our baser passions.
When we respond to grace, either through the Sacraments, prayer, the reading of Scripture or the encouragement of other Christians, the Holy Ghost builds a moral character based on virtue, and drives out the vices that would seek to drag us down to hell.
It is important also to note that S. Paul includes the possibility of a Christian forfeiting his inheritance in Christ. S. Paul warns that our salvation is in jeopardy should we quash the voice of the Spirit of God by following our own baser passions. Holding on to mortal sin and being unrepentant will bar us from entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. This is explicitly stated in his first letter to the Corinthians, which we read on Trinity IX.
In Baptism, we are united with Christ in His death and become dead to our former fallen nature. In this great Sacrament, we “have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” Our weakened nature makes absolute victory over our passions anything but a foregone conclusion, but it is possible! Desiring to do what is right is where we must begin. God will do the rest.
Responding to the claim that ‘the Jews killed Jesus’
God loves the Jewish people
BY: Everett Piper, The Washington Times (August 30, 2026).
The antisemitism of the horseshoe right continues to run rampant.
By way of example, one proponent of Tucker Carlson’s view that modern-day Israel is the worst of all nations known to man posted the following to my Facebook page: “You keep arguing that we should read our Bibles. Please quote one book, chapter, and verse that says Christians must support the Christ-rejecting nation of Israel.”
Challenge accepted. Here is just a start.
“All the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.” (Genesis 13:15)
“I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant. … And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:7-8)
“I will give [this land] to you as a possession, and I will give it as an inheritance to your offspring after you.” (Genesis 48:4)
“My covenant with [Israel] shall endure. … I will not withdraw my faithful love from him or betray my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant or change what my lips have said. Once and for all, I have sworn an oath by my holiness; I will not lie to David. His offspring will continue forever.” (Psalm 89)
“He remembered his holy promise, and Abraham, his servant … the covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant, saying, ‘To you I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance.’” (Psalm 105:9-11)
“I will plant [the Jews] on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I have given them, says the Lord your God.” (Amos 9:15)
“They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children’s children shall dwell there forever.” (Ezekiel 37:25)
“This is what the Lord says: The one who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of moon and stars for light by night; Who stirs up the sea and makes its waves roar, The Lord of Armies is his name: If the fixed order departs before me — this is the Lord’s declaration — only then will Israel’s descendants cease to be a nation forever.” (Jeremiah 31:35-36)
“So, what advantage does a Jew have? Considerable in every way. … If some are unfaithful, will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? Absolutely not. Let God be true, even though everyone is a liar.” (Romans 3:1-4)
“Has God rejected his people? Absolutely not! Do not boast that you are better than the branches. … You do not sustain the root, but the root sustains you.” (Romans 11:1-18)
“For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” (Romans 11:29)
Finally, there is the quintessential verse as cited by Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, on “The Tucker Carlson Show,” for which he was relentlessly mocked: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” (Genesis 12:3)
These verses are just the tip of the iceberg. Dozens upon dozens of passages in the Psalms and the Prophets, as well as the entirety of the New Testament from Romans to Revelation, make the same point very clear: When God makes a promise, he keeps it.
Whether it be land for the state of Israel or salvation for the Body of Christ, God does not break his word.
Many will respond by parroting the likes of Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes and argue that it is only dopey dispensationalists who believe such eschatological nonsense. Do not be distracted by such mockery. Christians need not be pigeonholed into such manmade theological camps.
Scripture says what it says, and two things can be true at the same time. God can keep his promise to the Jews while also extending salvation to the world, through Christ. God is God. He can do both.
A final note to the smug supersessionists who walk among us: As to your claim that contemporary Israel is a sinful nation and has forfeited God’s promises as a result, where does it ever say that in the Bible?
Sure, it’s true that, by and large, Israel is a “Christ-rejecting” nation, but where does it ever say that the Jews are any more guilty of this sin than you or I, your nation and mine?
I have news for you: It wasn’t Israel that killed Jesus any more than it was Rome or Greece or you or me. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. … None are righteous; no, not one.”
Maybe, just maybe, it is time to start looking in the mirror and stop looking out the window and screaming about “the Joooos.”
Neither a monopolistic, anti-Christian capitalist nor a hardline atheist communist respects the human person. Both piggish capitalists and tyrannical politicians anoint themselves gods, abuse individual persons, and depress inalienable rights and freedom. Particularly since the dawn of the Industrial Age, which dramatically flipped the economy from rugged ruralism to mechanized urbanization, connivers from both camps have ensured only a few own or control most of the fruits of labor. Mega tightfisted corporations restrict the advancement and liberties of the majority of their employees. They frequently squash or absorb small start-ups in all areas of the economy. Opportunistic governments burden budding independent, small businesses, as well as their citizens, through myriad regulations and taxation, so the majority of the populace gets zapped by both extreme powers.
This glaring reality reared its ugly head most recently with New York Mayor Mamdani’s declared intrusion into the small grocery store business of his city in a way that threatens to destroy numerous independent and smaller bodegas and other individually owned markets by the hammer of manipulative government. G.K Chesterton might be gnashing his teeth if he were alive today. “The Catholic Worker” Servant of God Dorothy Day would likely be printing stories in her newsletters deploring this blow to the spirit of subsidiarity and God given rights of workers. How? A bit of background first:
The plight of the “assembly line” employee caught the attention of one particularly astute Pope in the late 1800s. Pope Leo XIII’s superior Church encyclical on genuine social justice: Rerum Novarum (1891) sparked debates about a socio-economic structure that best balanced the rights of both the business entrepreneur and the average family man attempting to survive if not thrive, in an increasingly dehumanizing work environment, it should not surprise that even then Catholics flirted with socialist solutions. Clever minds magnified the Pope’s empathy for the working man, and we still see that one-sided perspective today, though he also defended private property ownership. In other exhortations, Pope Leo XIII and other great Popes denounced communism. Still, tension between government and the citizen and corporate tycoons and the average worker intensified. We also witnessed massive attacks on persons, families and Faith through numerous tyrannical governments that starting emerging especially in the early 20th century under the falsehood of uplifting the people.
Some prominent early 20th century Catholics attempted to strike a balance with an economic theory known as Distributism. In a nutshell, champions like G. K. Chesterton—prolific Catholic writer and apologist— formed an ideal of subsidiarity, as outlined in Catholic teaching, that called for widespread ownership of production (agricultural and manufacturing). In other words, the more that average, local workers owned, controlled, and hopefully grew their own justly profitable enterprise, the better.
Chesterton would be joined by many others who insisted on keenly balancing the rights of laborers with due justice for those who provide means for production and employment. The superlative reason and logic of G.K. Chesterton, and the decades long advocacy for workers by Servant of God Dorothy Day, along with complementary input by other Catholics who understood the distinction between excessive capitalism and godless communism, framed a sound balance between public and private sectors. These wholly Christian idealists proposed an economic perspective that defended and promoted workers’ rights to success and ownership, whether on the farm or in the city against ruinous monopolies or suffocating government. (Chesterton favored redistributing farm land for the benefit of the many, and one can only imagine his dismay at whole corporations and even other nations controlling so much of it.)
A model of such, to some degree, is found in New York City, wherein a number of conscientious and bustling persons addressed a need for localized food access, including those known as bodegas, serving immigrant populations. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond their control, inflation and other negative factors reared its ugly head, and they are not experiencing barriers to delivering goods at affordable prices. Here was a perfect opportunity for government to assist, but that is not what has happened. Mayor Mamdani’s horrific scheme would have government overtake their consumer base. What Mamdani and his city cohorts are doing is as wrong as any nationalist farmland gobbler or mega franchise puppet master.
How is New York City government any different than mega supermarkets that have wiped out so many local markets while forcing able persons—not infrequently more talented than the corporate managers—to work for minimum wages? How many intelligent and capable risk takers could be participating in “spreading” opportunity and wealth for personal growth and well being but will now be absorbed as cogs in the larger machine of our economy?
Yet, that is not the worst of it. Consider that if Mamdani succeeds in this ill conceived take over, the eventual disappearance of the the small grocery stores and bodegas will not just end dismally for the city. These state controlled stores have never historically succeeded, but when they collapse, only the bigger chains like the Walmarts, Safeways, and Aldis will be able to rescue the delivery of food goods to the local population. So, the fate of the conscientious smaller grocer will be thrust from one extreme to the other—from communism to already wealthy capitalists. Of course, the average consumer is thereby also deprived of choice, even as their taxes will increase to cover the cost of government interference. A double if not triple whammy.
Let us recall and restudy the religious, intellectual, and advocational leaders who crafted the principles of Distributism because they deplored both excessive state intervention or intrusion into businesses and capitalist overlords securing, hoarding, and profiting by manufacturing and distribution of goods and services in top down control. Distributism promoted (and still does)) the redistribution of the means of production to as many people as possible. Though imperfect, like any theory, it is still the best one to ponder and infuse throughout our society.
I am praying for intercession by all holy souls, but including Pope Leo XIII, Dorothy Day and G.K. Chesterton who understood that power, no matter how benign it may disguise itself, or regardless whether in the private or public domain, is always a treacherous threat against the common good.
An Angel with an Umbrella: When Rain Became a Blessing in Disguise
BY: Christy Romero (September 2, 2026).
“We are called to let go and allow Him to take control. He will send us all we need, and we must humbly accept the help of others.”— Julie Dortch Cragon, Talking to God
I am not a morning person. Waking up early to go for a walk requires an enormous sacrifice.
Usually, my husband is the one who pushes me out the door. He is my complete opposite—a determined morning person who loves to walk. Once I’m finally out of the house, I actually enjoy it. I love those morning walks with him: the quiet conversations, the shared prayers, and yes, even the occasional disagreements.
A month ago, my husband fractured his foot, leaving him unable to walk. This has been really hard on him, as well as on me, because I temporarily lost my favorite walking partner.
Heading out alone has been tough, but I found motivation by offering up my walks for his recovery, and using the time to listen to some really inspiring faith podcasts which feed my soul.
One morning last week, I woke up a little later than usual. By the time I was ready, the sun was already shining. I was very tempted to skip the walk altogether, but I knew I had to overcome my morning laziness and get myself to the golf course where I usually walk.
As I parked, I paused to pray. I offered up my walk for my husband—who would give anything to be walking beside me—as well as for a friend in the ICU after a stroke, another friend paralyzed in an accident last year, and a third one recovering from pancreatic cancer surgery. Carrying their suffering in my heart, I was ready to tackle the walk.
Stepping out of the car, I noticed a dark cloud looming to the east, so I headed west. I hadn’t gone a block before it started to sprinkle. “It’s just one cloud, keep walking,” I told myself.
Another block in, the skies completely opened up. Within minutes, I was drenched from head to toe. I took cover under a tree—which I knew was a bad idea, even without signs of lightning. I looked up toward the heavens, but the black cloud had expanded so much that I couldn’t even see a patch of blue sky.
“Seriously, Lord?” I said out loud. “I left the comfort of my bed, offered up my walk for all these people who would give anything to be here, and this is how You repay me?” I felt a bit like the prophet Jeremiah, crying out in frustration: “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped” (Jeremiah 20:7).
Since the tree wasn’t offering much shelter anyway, I decided to turn around and head back to the car. Amid the downpour, I heard a voice shouting. Assuming it wasn’t meant for me, I kept walking with my head down. But then I clearly heard in my native language: “Señora, le ofrezco una sombrilla!” (“Lady, let me offer you an umbrella!”)
I turned around. Parked in a nearby driveway, at a house that’s being remodeled, was a humble construction worker sticking an umbrella out the window of his car. I was already soaked to the bone—an umbrella couldn’t undo the damage—but his kindness touched me deeply. I walked over, took the umbrella, and thanked him with all my heart.
By the time I reached my car, the torrential rain was already subsiding. Sitting in the driver’s seat, watching the sun break through the clouds, a quiet realization washed over me. God had permitted the rain so I could experience a holy moment from a complete stranger: an angel with an umbrella.
And maybe… just maybe… He was also protecting me from something I couldn’t see.
It made me think of the stories from September 11th—like the executive who survived because dropping his child off at preschool made him late to work. How often do we view life’s little disruptions as curses when they are actually quiet protections?
The next time your kids are slow getting ready, or you are stuck in traffic, or you can’t find your keys, try not to stress or get angry. You might be exactly where you need to be. The next time a black cloud threatens your plans, thank Him anyway because maybe… just maybe… the dark cloud might just be a blessing in disguise.
I had hoped to pay it forward by passing the umbrella along to another drenched walker, but by the time I pulled out of the parking lot, the sun was shining brightly. No one needed it anymore. But the lesson remained: we so easily overlook the quiet miracles around us, yet a small, simple act of kindness can shift our entire perspective.
It took an unexpected downpour—and an angel with an umbrella—to remind me of that truth.
“Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.”–St. Augustine.
The U.S. economy created 169,000 new jobs in August, more than 3x the projections. WINNING!
The Trump Administration will cancel a school’s tax exempt status if they employ affirmative action in their administration. In other words, if schools discriminate on the basis of race, they will have to pay taxes.
Hey! If it was good enough for Bob Jones University . . . .
The Communist Party USA has endorsed California’s proposed wealth tax. SURPRISE!
At this year’s Burning Man festival–a veritable orgy, where drug addled hippies and wannabes gather in the Nevada desert to engage in all sorts of hedonism–a group of Christians were evicted, removed from the premises in the middle of the night. It seems that the presence of the pious was harshing the buzz of the pagans.
A new poll shows that, among New York City residents, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is more popular than Comrade Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.). Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
The majority of U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico’s (D. Tx.) campaign cash has come from . . . California. Well, what do you know?
Southern Methodist University has canceled an “Unapologetically Muslim” youth conference organized by CAIR-Texas that was scheduled to bring high school and college students to its Dallas campus, citing Texas’s designation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a “foreign terrorist” organization. That is good, BUT . . . what idiot booked this conference in the first instance?
“We did not come here to coexist. We are superior to everyone else and will not be surpassed. No one is above us. If other religions want to live with us, they have to worship Allah. The Prophet Muhammad said, ‘Islam is always superior and should never be surpassed.’ Islam is raised high and nothing is raised above Islam. We can’t think of Islam that it came to live with these other religions in the sense that Islam is a religion among those religions and they have a share with the truth and they have a share of justice and they have a share of the correct worship. Islam came to correct all of that . Islam came to remove the oppression of all those religions. And it is the only truth and it is the only way to justice.”
–a Chicago, Illinois based Islamic scholar.
Huh. Then why did U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D. Mi.) say this:
“Nobody is pushing for Sharia Law.”
Is he ignorant? Or is he lying?
There is a coming ideological war between Islam and the West. Either we choose to stand up for our country, our culture, and our Judeo-Christian heritage, or we fall.
Former conservative cable news host Tucker Carlson endorsed Abdul El-Sayed for election to the Senate, stating that he would not vote for Republican Mike Rogers “at gunpoint”. Tucker Carlson called Mike Rogers “a tool of Israel”, and praised El-Sayed for “taking on AIPAC” (the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee).
If Islam ever takes over America, Tucker Carlson will be among the very 1st infidels to die.
Richmond, Virginia Democrats want the General Assembly to lower the blood alcohol level for a presumption of drunk driving from .08 to .05. Why not just lock up everyone who gargles with Listerine and then drives to work?
Southern Living magazine rated Boars Head the best sliced commercially sold cheese. Runner up was Sargento’s.
Beer thieves have struck again! This time in Great Britain, where 70,000 pints (2 tractor trailer loads) of Guinness were stolen from a Liverpool distribution center. Oh, my!
The Full and Equal gathering, celebrating 50 years of progress toward full LGBTQ++ inclusion in The Episcopal Church, is taking place Sept. 3-5, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Thank goodness The Church is still celebrating sin!
Now before someone gets in a snit over that last observation, let me be clear. The Church is for sinners. To grow and repent. The Church is not for throwing a party to celebrate the commission of sins. Are we clear?
The U.S. Coast Guard stopped a fishing boat off the coast of California. It did not find any fishermen or fish. But it did find drug smugglers with $3 million worth of marijuana on board. HA! Senator Tim Kaine (D. Va.) was not available to comment on the development.
The United Nations has directed Great Britain to erect statues of Africans, and of Britons of African descent. This “reparatory justice” guidance was created by the UN’s Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). The committee insisted that Britain and other former slave-trading nations had a moral and legal “obligation to repair” the damage of slavery. To help atone for slavery, former colonial powers have been told “public spaces should honour the contributions of people of African descent”, which could include installing artworks and statues. Sigh.
U.S. OUT OF U.N. NOW!
The Canadian government awarded millions worth of contracts to the son of Iran’s former vice-president, despite an ongoing investigation into allegations he helped the Islamic Republic evade sanctions and develop missile systems, documents obtained by Global News reveal.
Since founding two companies in Alberta, an Edmonton resident named “Sal Ghafouri” has received more than $2 million in federal and provincial contracts, including from the RCMP and Department of National Defence, public records show.
But according to newly released records, Ghafouri is actually Mohammad Reza Ghafouri Fard, an Iranian who has been the subject of a long-running Canadian investigation into his alleged work for Iran’s military and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The son of Hassan Ghafouri Fard, an Iranian politician who served as the country’s vice president, Ghafouri was “involved in the research and development of Iranian military technologies.”
Before immigrating to Canada in 2013 and going into business as “Sal,” Ghafouri allegedly helped develop a guided anti-aircraft missile system and a jamming tool to “confront American aircraft” for the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guard, or IRGC.
But, but, but . . . the Canadians are so nice! They are our friends! Hmmmmm.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert is out at the end of the season. Perhaps she can use her spare time to figure out just what constitutes a woman.
Wake Forest University All American defensive back Alphonso Smith has died at age 40. R. I. P.
Complaints of White privilege are a losers’ lament
Also a way to make White liberals feel superior
BY: Don Feder, The Washington Times (August 30, 2026).
From the basketball court to the Smithsonian museums in Washington to Cambridge University in Britain, accusations of White privilege are becoming as thick as flies on a decaying carcass.
In July, a congressional hearing erupted in outrage after the revelation that a Smithsonian online publication referred to politeness and objectivity as “defining characteristics of White supremacy culture.” So remember, if you do not want to be accused of racism, be as obnoxious and irrational as possible.
In an Aug. 8 Women’s National Basketball Association game between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever, Chicago player DiJonai Carrington, who is Black, hit White Fever player Sophie Cunningham across the face and neck so hard that she knocked her to the floor.
For this flagrant foul, Ms. Carrington was ejected from the game. She later posted on Instagram the words, “WHITE PRIVILEGE” (all caps), tagging the Indiana Fever.
This is absurd. Black athletes dominate professional sports, including basketball.
Is White privilege responsible for minority quotas in education and employment? Did White privilege give us Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Juneteenth or Black History Month? And when is White History Month anyway?
Also in August, former Cambridge University professor Jason Arday, who was Black, died after being exposed as a plagiarist and compulsive liar. Arday was Baron Munchausen in a cap and gown.
His lies were so preposterous and his plagiarism so outrageous that a White academic who was guilty of similar conduct would have been summarily dismissed and sent to do research in the Arctic Circle.
Instead, Arday was allowed to resign. His death led to claims that he had been persecuted — that those who had the audacity to expect honesty and integrity from scholars regardless of race were responsible for his suicide.
Of course, there were the predictable charges of racism. We were told that bigots could not accept this talented young Black man’s success — appointed a professor of sociology at one of the world’s most prestigious universities at the tender age of 37.
In reality, Arday’s race was a combination hall pass and get-out-of-jail-free card. Neither his colleagues nor the university wanted to question his obvious plagiarism or his preposterous lies. In his memoir, he claimed that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days.
His publisher, Simon & Schuster, never fact-checked the claim.
Charges of racism or White privilege color many of our political debates.
Proponents of open borders claim that the sole purpose of immigration enforcement is to keep people of color out of the country and that it has absolutely nothing to do with public safety.
So if hordes of blond-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavians were living here illegally, upon discovery, each would get a Cadillac and Caribbean cruise for honoring us with their presence?
Crime is another area where charges of racism collide with reality. Cashless bail — whereby criminals awaiting trial are released on their own recognizance — has led to countless atrocities. Proponents of the reform argued that minorities were disproportionately impacted by cash bail. That might be because they disproportionally commit crimes.
Of the 7,964 cases of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter recorded in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports in 2019, 3,650 were committed by Whites, while a majority (4,078) were committed by members of a group representing 13% of the population.
The ultimate victims of the White privilege scam are Black Americans. Why strive if you will always be held back by White privilege? Whatever happens, it is not your fault.
However, if White privilege is a reality, why are there so many White failures and Black success stories?
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was raised by a single mother and his maternal grandfather in the segregated South. His grandfather taught him the importance of hard work and self-reliance. Instead of embracing victimhood, he took responsibility and went on to become one of the great Supreme Court justices of our generation.
White privilege is the greatest scam going. It is an all-purpose excuse for personal failure and bad behavior. At the same time, it makes White liberals feel all superior for courageously acknowledging their supposed entitlement.
As punishment for exposing Arday’s plagiarism, Nathan Cofnas, a White academic, was suspended from his position at Ghent University in Belgium. More White privilege?
“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”
–St. Augustine.
A proposed Constitutional Amendment limiting the number of seats on the U.S. Supreme Court to 9 (the current number) failed. Naturally, the vast majority of Democrats opposed the Amendment.
The number of justices has remained constant at 9, for more than 157 years. Democrats want to change the number to 13, because the current Court adheres to the Constitution, instead of inventing “rights” and distorting the Constitution. Because the Democrats cannot enact their policies through legislation, hence the need for the courts to side with them against the American people.
“Oh my God! It’s so exhausting. Over and over again.”
–Left wing podcaster Leigh McGowan, on CNN.
Miss McGowan is apparently very tired of hearing about illegal aliens committing murder and other heinous crimes against American citizens. Where is our understanding and compassion?
“It’s exhausting for you because your daughter wasn’t the one strangled. But it’s not exhausting for the parents of Americans who watch their children get murdered by illegal aliens.”
—Federalist reporter Brianna Lyman, responding on CNN to Leigh McGowan’s frustration.
I would like to point out that the CNN panel discussion was focused on how awful ICE is, because a Haitian illegal alien committed suicide because a judge forced him to wear an ankle bracelet so ICE could track his whereabouts.
For the Left, illegal aliens receive all their compassion. American citizen
Failed South Carolina U.S. Senate candidate, Representative Ralph Norman (R.) is advising undecided voters to write him in on November’s ballot, instead of voting for U.S. Senator Darline Nordone. What a loser! Ralph Norman lost his race for Governor earlier this year, finished second to Darline Norman in the Senate primary, and ultimately lost in the run-off. Apparently he cannot imagine not getting a government paycheck. Sigh. Ralph Norman is the John Cornyn of South Carolina.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that a mother could not take her daughter to church, over the father’s objections. Moreover, the mother was directed not to read Bible verses to the child, or allow the child to read The Bible. What the . . . whatever happened to religious freedom?
In Lake Elsinore, California, a woman angry that her order was taking too long, charged into the local In-N-Out restaurant, armed with a large piece of wood. The woman swung the club wildly, chasing most all the staff into a back storage room, when a brave fry cook confronted the woman, carrying only a spatula. The fry cook parried with the woman, fending her off with his spatula, until he was able to disarm and hold her until police arrived. How ’bout that?
The movie The Passion of Christ is being re-released on September 10, through September 17. The re-release is in preparation for next year’s release of 2 movies which will focus on what happened after Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.
After more than 12 years, Maria Bartiromo is out at FOX News. Wow.
In 2025, Ford Motor Company killed the electric Ford 150 pick-up truck. The company lost so much money on every sale, and determined that EVs were not the future. So what happened, as Ford just announced it was going to introduce an electric Ford Maverick pick-up truck in late 2027. Sigh. I thought Ford was a for-profit company.
The newest Buc-ee’s opened in Benton, Arkansas. Beaver nuggets for all!
McDonald’s is bringing back its spicy chicken nuggets, for a limited time only. Why not all the time?
Kentucky Fried Chicken has a new dipping sauce. Hot ranch is a blend of garlic and ranch dressing with chili powder. Hmmm.
USA Today has compiled a list of the top 10 college football stadiums in the country. Ranked #1 is Auburn University’s Jordan-Hare stadium. Will Smith agrees with this pronouncement.
Despite losing his drivers license for 5 years, Eldrick Woods can still drive
Feminist activist Gloria Steinem has died at age 92. R. I. P.
“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”
–St. Augustine.
Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll has resigned. He issued a statement praising the leadership of, and changes implemented by, Secretary of War Hegseth. There’s a story you won’t find on cable news or in The Washington Post.
The U.S. House of Representatives censured Representative Chuck Edwards (R. N.C.) for inappropriate behavior towards his female staffers. Sigh.
The House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning socialism. All but 8 Democrats voted against the resolution. Sigh.
“I fear Senate Republicans are undermining congressional races across the country by refusing to fully embrace the movement that put them in power.
MAGA voters did not elect Republicans so they could manage the decline of America with slightly lower taxes.
They elected Republicans to secure the border. Deport illegals. Restore law and order. Rebuild the military. Protect religious liberty. Stop the transgender insanity. And dismantle the Deep State. We elected Republicans to secure the ballot box. We elected Republicans to put Americans first.
In other words, they elected Republicans to enact the Trump agenda.
So here’s my warning to the Republican Establishment: You had better decide which side you’re on.
Because if Republicans lose Congress and President Trump’s agenda is stopped dead in its tracks, MAGA voters are going to start asking questions.
And the first question will be this: Did the Democrats defeat President Trump — or did Republicans stab him in the back?”
–columnist Todd Starnes.
Hunter Biden said he was “48% gay”. I’m sure that his wife, Melissa Cohen, is thrilled.
Pamela Cisneros, 49, stabbed Erin Piacenti, 32, and Tak Kam, 68, Monday afternoon in New York City’s Times Square. Afterwards, video showed her being surrounded by police and threatening to kill them with a large knife in each hand. When she lunged at police officers with her knives, 2 officers shot her dead.
Erin Piacenti, a young mother, celebrating her 2nd wedding anniversary is dead. Tak Kim is hospitalized in serious condition, but is expected to survive. And Pamela Cisneros, the deranged attacker is dead. A senseless tragedy all around.
The reaction of Pamela Cisneros is . . . interesting. Her brother insists that she was not violent and would not have hurt anyone, all evidence to the contrary. Her mother criticized the police, wondering why they did not just grab her by the arm and take the knives from her. Why did they have to shoot her? Sigh. Because we already had enough dead bodies. We did not need to add to the body count.
San Diego, California City Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert (D.) is running for Congress, promising to return the country to China Joe’s Golden Age. She is in favor of DEI, claims that American oppresses women and minorities, and pledges to solve the problem of so many businesses being owned by white people. Good golly Bob!
Florida has banned Flock surveillance cameras on its highways. Good!
Private companies that wish to contract with the City of Chicago, Illinois are required to 1) provide data on the racial and sexual composition of their workforce; and, 2) any contracts, involvements, or dealings with ICE. Number 1 is illegal and unconstitutional. Number 2 is just obnoxious and stupid.
Senator John Cornyn (R. Tx.) continues to play the role of sore loser, refusing to support primary winner Attorney General Ken Paxton (R. Tx.). Texas Republicans are not pleased.
U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico (D. Tx.), speaking before the Sierra Club, said capitalism is an “oppressive system” that “contributes to climate change”, and supports “white supremacy”, calling for capitalism to be “dismantled”. The gift that keeps on giving.
All Saints Cathedral is an LGBTQ+-affirming congregation in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with an average Sunday attendance of about 70. Micah Cronin joined its staff as dean. And he is thought to be the first transgender dean of any Episcopal cathedral and also one of the youngest. Because “he” is a “she”.
Fun fact: There is no such thing as a “trans”. God made man and woman. You are one or the other, and you cannot choose to change your sex. But All Saints Cathedral thinks otherwise. Which is why it welcomed the mentally disturbed Micah Cronin as dean. It also explains why its Sunday attendance is so puny.
Canada is not happy about the U.S./Venezuela oil deal, as it lessens any leverage Canada has in trade negotiations. That is such a shame.
The United Nations said on Monday that countries are legally obliged to consider reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and other measures to address what it says is the enduring legacy of racial discrimination. The heck with the United Nations.
U.S. OUT OF U.N.! NOW!
The owner of the Los Angeles Rams has purchased baseball’s Los Angeles Angels. Interesting.
Former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and current CBS announcer (?) Tony Romo plead no contest to drunk driving. He apologized, and was appropriately punished. He should not lose his job. At least not for that infraction.
Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick accused the National Football League of “performative racism”. He has a point.
The NFL’s social justice campaigns and messaging are performative. Painting “End Racism” in the end zones and approving “Black Lives Matter” on helmets were ways for the league to signal its virtue. They were public-relations decisions, perhaps even financial ones, designed to avoid potential backlash from sponsors and consumers.
But Colin Kaepernick is a hypocrite. The former quarterback has spent the past decade performing, pandering, and spreading propaganda. His entire claim to activism is fraudulent. Most notably, Kaepernick participated in a Netflix docuseries in which he compared the NFL scouting combine to a slave auction. Yet despite the slave auction comparison, Colin Kaepernick desperately sought to rejoin the NFL. Sigh. Colin Kaepernick and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell deserve each other. The NFL can do without either of them.
Eldrick Woods entered into a plea agreement involving his DUI charges. He was found guilty of reckless driving, and lost his drivers license for 5 years. The roads are so much safer.
Former N.Y. Jets assistant coach Kippy Brown has died at age 71. R. I. P.
“It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.”
–St. Augustine.
On September 2, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur and his Japanese counterpart signed the official surrender documents of the Imperial Empire of Japan. The signing ceremony occurred on the U.S.S. Missouri battleship, anchored in Tokyo Bay. The Second World War was over.
There has been much hand wringing over the use of the United States’ use of atomic bombs to force Japan’s surrender. Most of the wailing comes from the Left, lamenting how we could not just use conventional weapons to win the war. Well, that is simply answered; U.S. military estimates were that an invasion of Japan would cause between 1 and 2 million casualties. That number dwarfs the number of casualties suffered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Those Americans who speak apologetically over our nation’s use of the atomic bombs are ahistorical morons. The Japanese Empire started the war against America, bombing the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, and Wickham Air Base. The Japanese military was an incredibly dedicated force, willing to die in the defense of their homeland. They had already demonstrated their zeal through their suicidal use of kamikaze submarines and airplanes to strike at American warships. And when the Americans invaded Okinawa, a Japanese occupied island more than 300 miles from Japan, it became the bloodiest battle of World War II. The battle lasted 82 days, and more than 242,000 died. And this was at a time when the tide of war had turned, and the Japanese military was back on its heels. If the Japanese military would fight this hard to defend a rocky island so far from its homeland, how hard would it fight to defend its main island home?
Below is an insightful article by the esteemed Victor Davis Hanson, outlining the use and justification of the United States’ use of atomic weapons to subdue the Japanese Empire. I think you will find it informative.
Every August, debate renews over both the wisdom and the morality of dropping the two American atomic bombs, 81 years ago, on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945). This August has been no exception.
As ever, many critics have faulted the United States for the bombings: two gruesome blasts — aimed at dual-use military and industrial targets in both cities — that may have caused some 100,000-120,000 immediate deaths among combatants and civilians.
And not all these critics are on the Left. Two years ago, podcaster Tucker Carlson blasted the Truman administration’s decision, alleging that the atomic bomb was not the result of decades of sophisticated nuclear physics research or the dividend of a two-billion-dollar Manhattan Project investment to rapidly develop an atomic weapon in a race to beat the Axis powers’ nuclear programs before they themselves developed such existential weapons.
Instead, Carlson claimed the atomic bombs were demonic, tools of innate evil, and thus apparently created through the supernatural intervention of dark powers. Unlikely — but perhaps Tucker was echoing themes from Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project. After the first successful test of the bomb on July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer quoted (and mistranslated) a famously chilling line from the great Hindu epic, the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Why Did the U.S. Drop Two Atomic Bombs on Japan?
Indeed, from the moment the bombs were dropped, there has been an intense, 80-year debate, from which all sorts of conspiracy theories have since emerged.
No one denies that the two bombs, dropped within three days, shocked the Imperial Japanese junta into conceding surrender on August 15 — a decision ratified formally and officially on September 2, 1945, ending the Pacific War. Nonetheless, almost immediately, contemporary critics objected to their use on a variety of grounds.
Many claimed the bombs were unnecessary. They argued that the previous devastation of Japan by the U.S. Army Air Forces and the U.S. Navy had made a quick surrender inevitable.
Some declared that racism had prompted their use against the Japanese alone.
Of course, all these arguments were only offered with the benefit of hindsight, and they often failed to consider the dire conditions that U.S. military planners were confronted with at the time.
First, the bombs were originally envisioned to stop the Third Reich and end the costly conventional Allied bombing campaign over Germany (over 80,000 dead British and American airmen, along with some 15,000 bombers lost). But producing a deliverable bomb took far longer than anticipated and was realized only after Germany surrendered.
Second, the military, the Truman administration, and the American public were still in a state of shock over the devastating losses suffered at Okinawa, declared secure just six weeks before Hiroshima. The invading U.S. land, sea, and air forces had suffered 50,000 casualties, including 12,000 dead — in what had initially been expected to be the least costly of a half-dozen bloody American amphibious landings.
Before Okinawa, planners believed they had learned from the overconfidence that had nearly proved to be catastrophic at Iwo Jima, Peleliu, and Tarawa. Yet despite those lessons, a weakened Japanese military, and total U.S. air and naval supremacy, Okinawa became the deadliest island operation of the entire Pacific war. And because it was the last major land battle, stunned U.S. planners in summer 1945 shuddered about what might come from a planned invasion of the entire Japanese mainland. As a general rule, the closer the Americans got to the Japanese homeland, the more they died.
Okinawa had been defended by about 120,000 Japanese soldiers and Okinawan conscripts, most of whom fought to the death. The defenders had launched about 2,000 kamikaze suicide-attack aircraft — each a veritable cruise missile — sinking 26 ships and killing nearly 5,000 Navy personnel.
Given some 2.3 million Japanese troops on the home islands, fully mobilized for an American invasion and backed by 12,000 combat aircraft (including 9,000 kamikazes), as well as a militia of some 25 million combatants, American planners believed the invasion of the Japanese homeland would easily cost one million casualties — the equivalent of 20 Okinawas.
That fear of massive American casualties, combined with growing public weariness after four long years of Japanese diehard ferocity and atrocities — the Germans had surrendered three months earlier in May 1945 — prompted the Pentagon to explore alternatives against an enemy that, despite being almost entirely defeated, still had no intention of surrendering unconditionally. We now forget that 1945 — the last year of the war — was the deadliest to the U.S. military in the Pacific Theater of Operations.
Few now remember that, of all the belligerents in World War II, it was the Japanese military that achieved the highest kill-to-loss ratio. Japan suffered total fatalities of somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million combatants and civilians, but it caused the deaths of between 15 and 20 million Allied soldiers, Chinese, other Asians, and Pacific Islanders. By summer 1945, the Japanese military abroad was executing, killing, or starving 15,000 people a day.
There was therefore an understandable desire to end the war as quickly as possible, by any means necessary, to save thousands of lives. Each day of war was literally a matter of life and death for thousands.
Other postwar critics claimed the bombs were dropped only as a gratuitous signal to shock and awe and deter Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union from further communist aggrandizement.
But between Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) and the first Soviet atomic bomb test four years later (August 29, 1949) — when America alone had a viable atomic weapon — Stalin was certainly not deterred. By 1948, he had already broken his word and turned all of the Soviet-occupied nations of Eastern Europe, as well as North Korea, communist. And by summer 1949, it was clear that the USSR had helped ensure the impending communist takeover of China.
Moreover, U.S. intelligence and investigative agencies were already surmising by August 1945 that Soviet spies were embedded within the Manhattan Project and the U.K. government, along with captured German physicists sent back to Russia.
In other words, the Pentagon had already accepted that dropping atomic bombs would likely not deter its then “ally,” Joseph Stalin, from acquiring his own nuclear weapons. The U.S. therefore expected soon to face a deadly nuclear rival — and one eager to retaliate in kind if America had used or threatened to use its nuclear monopoly to thwart Soviet agendas.
Were the Bombs Really Necessary?
Still other critics claimed that the U.S. government should have frightened Japan into surrender by detonating one atomic bomb in Tokyo Bay. But earlier ideas to drop a demonstration bomb in an uninhabited area were scrapped over fears of what would ensue if the bomb proved to be a dud, leaving only a single bomb available for combat use. Would one atomic bombing of a Japanese target prompt total surrender? After the two available bombs, at most one additional atomic bomb was likely to be delivered to the Pacific before October or November.
Atomic bombs, in fact, did not simply emerge complete and intact from the head of Zeus — or Satan. Building and delivering still-experimental bombs to the front was not easy, safe, or assured. The tricky enriched-uranium Hiroshima bomb (“Little Boy”) had never been tested. It was so dangerous to handle that it was armed only in the air to prevent an atomic blast if the Enola Gay crashed on takeoff.
The later B-29 Bockscar that bombed Nagasaki almost ran out of gas because of a failed fuel-transfer pump, a 45-minute rendezvous delay, and the fact that the initial target was obscured by clouds. Nagasaki, the alternate but similarly cloud-obscured target, was a last-minute adjustment that almost ended in failure, if not total catastrophe.
The cruiser Indianapolis, which delivered components of the 9,000-pound “Little Boy” to the B-29 base on Tinian in late July, was blown up by a Japanese submarine just four days later on its journey back to the fleet — killing nearly 75 percent of the crew. Only luck had prevented the Japanese from sinking the Indianapolis days earlier, along with the atomic-bomb components on board.
Yet even after the moonscape at Hiroshima, the Japanese high command still argued over capitulation, with some generals convinced that the bluffing Americans might not have another bomb. And, in a way, they were right. After the second bombing at Nagasaki three days later, the tiny American nuclear arsenal was temporarily exhausted.
Nor had even the second atomic bomb convinced the Japanese military to surrender.
Instead, on August 15, 1945, disgruntled dead-ender officers launched an attempted military coup to prevent Emperor Hirohito from addressing the nation about Japan’s intention to surrender unconditionally.
Some of Truman’s top generals and admirals later expressed criticisms of the bombings. But often their objections arose because they felt their own forces had already doomed the Japanese. A dramatic atomic end to the war had thus overshadowed the hard prior work of their conventional forces in defeating the Japanese military.
Pacific B-29 forces commander General Curtis LeMay, hardly a dissident, objected that his B-29 fleet had already destroyed half of Japan’s urban areas and much of its industry — and could easily and rapidly force a surrender through further conventional incendiary bombing.
Indeed, LeMay had planned to supplement his then-current force of 1,000 B-29 bombers stationed on the Mariana Islands, some 1,500-1,700 miles distant from most Japanese targets, with a huge new force of additional B-29s — at war’s end, some 5,000 were on order. Veteran bomber crews from the Eighth Air Force, reassigned from postwar Europe, were to augment this massive force.
After the German surrender, the British, in Operation “Tiger Force,” also planned to send over some 150 to 200 heavy Lancaster bombers to join the Americans at their new bomber bases on newly conquered Okinawa — a mere 1,000 miles from Tokyo.
With such a huge bomber armada and flight times cut nearly in half, LeMay assumed that he could have ended the war within weeks without the atomic bombs, albeit at a far higher cost to the Japanese people and his own air crews.
LeMay’s March 9-10 firebombing of Tokyo remains the deadliest single day of warfare in human history, likely accounting for more than 100,000 Japanese deaths; moreover, it was far more lethal than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Indeed, the incendiary bombing campaigns killed at least twice as many Japanese as died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
Chief of Naval Operations Ernest King also joined LeMay in regretting the use of atomic bombs. On similar personal grounds, he argued that his vast fleet of submarines, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and carriers — by 1945 larger than all the navies of the world combined — had already blockaded all of Japan’s ports. They had mined its waters, sunk most of its merchant marine, and destroyed the Japanese navy. Thus, King believed his ships could starve the Japanese into surrender.
Saving, Not Destroying, More Lives
Yet, despite these even more ruthless alternative proposals, the real reason the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the Truman administration’s sincere belief that the new weapon was the only way to shock the Japanese into ending the war as quickly as possible and thereby prevent — as it had announced at the time — the likely horrific invasion of Japan that otherwise would have been needed. Indeed, it is likely that the two bombs saved tens of thousands of Allied and millions of Japanese lives by averting a two-pronged, two-year invasion of the Japanese homeland.
All controversies about the atomic bomb’s initial creation aside, in the 81 years since the end of World War II and its 70 million deaths, there has not been, as feared and often predicted, a World War III. The Cold War was not hot because shared fears of mutually assured nuclear destruction deterred the first use of the massive Russian arsenal.
The current worry about nuclear proliferation is not so much an inherent terror of these horrific weapons themselves. None of the current nine nuclear nations have used any nuclear weapons since their inaugural appearance in 1945. The real fear is instead that rogue states, autocracies, and dictatorships — without voter, media, or opposition oversight — will acquire or have already obtained them and are more likely to do something stupid by launching a preemptive nuclear strike.
In other words, the world does not actually believe that the democratic U.S., France, the United Kingdom, Israel, or India will start a nuclear war. It is more concerned that a nuclear-armed strongman in China, North Korea, Pakistan, or Russia — or a terrorist group that gains this unchecked power — will do the unthinkable. The problem, historically, has not always been the appearance of a new deadly weapon but rather the type of state or ruler who possesses it.
Still, despite all this, nuclear weapons are now seen as taboo and associated with national or even global annihilation. And so the world currently scorns even the mere talk of deploying them. But what is truly frightening at the moment is not so much the eight-decade-old nuclear age as what might follow from it.
In our globally connected, post-biolab-spawned-pandemic era — full of Star Wars-like lasers, AI-controlled drone swarms, nearly 17,000 active satellites overhead, and sophisticated biological and chemical agents — terrorists, rogue nations, and delusional autocratic governments may well conclude that nuclear weapons are just one deployable asset in their multifarious arsenals of mass death: sometimes vulnerable to antimissile defenses and often not unique in their lethality.
In short, we may consider nuclear weapons, along with other weapons that are just as deadly, to be Satanic, but they certainly were not first created by the devil.
Rather, on balance, good people sometimes invented bad weapons to stop far worse people from killing innocents.
“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” — St. Augustine.
August is gone. September is here. How time flies!
“September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn.” ― Rowland E. Robinson.
GOOGLE Maps has already renamed Lake Ontario Lake America. WINNING!
The United States Supreme Court ruled that President Trump could continue with building The White House ballroom. The vote was 5-4, with the always disappointing Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the 3 Leftist justices.
The Supreme Court’s decision was not on the merits. It was a recognition that the plaintiffs in the case lacked standing to sue. In other words, the plaintiffs did not suffer a concrete injury such that they could benefit from prevailing in the civil action. A usually simple analysis. Chief Justice Roberts is just a Trump hating buffoon.
“Let’s be clear: this isn’t a win. This is proof Trump put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies. Putting our soldiers’ lives on the line for private profit is a gross dereliction of his constitutional duty.”
–Senator Chris Van Hollen (D. Md.), criticizing the United States plan taking majority control of Venezuela’s oil reserves.
Yes, what a loss. The United States takes down a communist led narco State which destabilized its neighbors, ran drugs into the United States, and worked hand in glove with China, and then we take control of their massive oil reserves. If only we had more such losses.
“Will prices come down for Americans? Who knows but likely not as much as Trump has forced them up thru his idiotic Iran War. But here’s a guarantee—this will pad the pockets of Trump family and Big Oil companies and delay transition to cleaner energy. Bottom line—Using our troops for a private oil grab is corruption at epic scale!”
–Senator Tim Kaine (D. Va.) bloviating about how horrible that having more oil will prevent Democrats from forcing everyone to drive an electric vehicle and put solar panels on their house roofs.
Tim Kaine is not just an awful Senator. He is an awful person. Just a despicable human being.
“If we elect a Democrat in 2028, I will do everything in my power, whether inside or outside of the government, to unravel Trump’s illegitimate oil deal with the illegitimate dictatorship in Venezuela. I hope CEOs of American companies tempted to get involved in this Trump deal instead think about the long term financial interests of their shareholders and the reputations of their companies. Exploiting resources of the Venezuelan people without their permission is both immoral and not a sustainable economic play.”
–former U.S. Ambassador to Russia under President Obama, Michael McFaul, clearly auditioning for a cabinet position in a future Democrat presidential administration.
Congressional Democrats are not just threatening to “pack” the United States Supreme Court if they regain control of Congress. No, no, no. Congressional Democrats are also discussing imposing term limits on justices (unconstitutional), ethics and recusal standards (unconstitutional), and holding hearings investigating nebulous and false charges against the conservative justices such as Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The Democrats are clearly committed to destroying our federal government.
Representative James Clyburn (D. S.C.) dismissed Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s long and distinguished service. Representative Clyburn believes that Justice Thomas is a race traitor. Mr. Clyburn is a disgrace. He is not fit to carry Justice Thomas’s briefcase.
Senator Rand Paul (R. Ky.) introduced legislation do deny ANY social welfare spending to, or for the benefit of, non-citizens. Naturally, the Democrats in Congress are melting down. If they cannot promise non-citizens the money of American citizens, how will they ever retain power?
“I’m good. I don’t miss them. I don’t. I love them. I’m going to see them tonight for dinner. I love them. But Barack cried when they went to college. I was like, ‘Bye, little — goodbye.’ Now I . . . now Friday nights aren’t wrecked with terror and fear about, ‘Where are you? Where are you?’”
–Michelle Obama, discussing her delight over her daughters leaving home for good.
What an absolute narcissist! She cannot be bothered to have her children around?
Holland went away to boarding school at age 13. She has been at SMU in Dallas for more than 4 years now. English and I made decisions which we deemed to be in her best interests–not ours. Because the truth is, we both miss Holland every day she is away. We love having her at home. But keeping her at home, that would be selfish, as it would not be best for Holland.
Michelle Obama is selfish, in a very different way. She cannot be bothered with the presence of her children. She is a horrible, terrible, no-good woman. Unbelievable.
California is poised to close schools for two Islamic holidays — Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha — and state employees and community colleges could also get those days off. Moreover, public schools will be expected to provide instruction into the positive aspects of Islam. There are positive aspects to Islam? Sigh. Welcome to the Islamic Republic of California.
California wineries are being hard hit. Adult drinking habits are changing. But there is a bigger problem than adults drinking more liquor and beer than wine. And that problem is government overreach. Like most everything good in California, Sacramento wants to regulate and tax it to death. Before taxes, regulatory compliance for vineyards and wineries amounts to more than 12.5% of all production costs. Then there are the taxes, which are sky high. And now the California government wants to impose more taxes, and restrict irrigation of grape vines. At this rate, your favorite wine will not come from Napa or Sonoma. It will come from France.
Baldwin Park, California is the home of the original In-N-Out hamburger restaurant. But Baldwin Park is also now known as the home of Councilman Ricardo Pacheco, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for public corruption, as he took bribes for certain acts in his position of authority. Councilman Pacheco’s case was not helped by the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation found $62,900.00 buried in his backyard.
Governor Kathy Hochul (D. N.Y.) loves to lecture Americans on feminism. Then why did she recently don a hijab, a symbol of subjugation, in a meeting with Muslims? Hmmmm.
“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”
— Lavretiy Beria, Chief of the Soviet Secret Police under Josef Stalin.
A senior prosecutor in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office announced that he was directed to focus his work on investigating and charging President Trump, his family, and those individuals and companies associated with him, with crimes.
On August 11, severe thunderstorms hit Gary, Indiana, knocking out power, leaving more than 100,000 in darkness. As of today, it is still dark in Gary.
Local Democrats are blaming the lengthy power outage on “storm racism”. What?
Gary is not experiencing storm racism. Gary is experiencing complete incompetence, and the storm laid it bare. Democrats run Gary, and have for years. There are a few reasons Gary remains in a position of suffering.
First, people literally shot at the power company. NIPSCO (Northwest Indiana’s energy provider) has reported that multiple bullets struck their vehicle as employees tried to navigate the streets of the city and make repairs.
Second, people are abandoning their homes in search of air conditioning, gas, and electricity, leaving property vulnerable to thieves and home invaders. Many refuse to leave their homes for fear there will be nothing to come back to. They must choose between suffering and theft.
U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn (I. Ne.) insists that he is a “conservative independent”. He’s not. His campaign is financed by Democrats. Democrats purposefully did not field a competing candidate. And on CNN, Mr. Osborn admits that he agrees with much of the Democrat platform and playbook. The mask is slipping. Dan Osborn is a big, fat phony.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro insists that the Democrat Party is the “party of freedom”. Well then why is Governor Shapiro having his Health Department enact regulations reminiscent of The former Current Unpleasantness? By Governor Shapiro’s directive, government officials would have the ability to enter your home without a warrant or obtain your private health information without your consent. The regulations would also give the Department of Health the freedom to enter a school and interview any student in private, without parental notification. It would also grant authority to institute mask mandates in schools or the broader community.
The question is . . . why? Why does Government Shapiro want to curb the liberties and freedoms of Pennsylvanians?
“Where we reside here at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menomonie homeland, right on the southwest shore of Michigami. For more than 500 years, Native Americans have demonstrated incredible resilience in the face of violent attempts to separate them from their land, culture, and history. We acknowledge that we stand on land taken from its rightful stewards.”
–Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate David Crowley (D.).
Mr. Crowley is supposedly the “moderate” Democrat candidate. He sure does not sound very different from the far Left radical Francesca Hong, whom he barely defeated in the primary.
All these Democrats “acknowledge” that we reside on “stolen lands”. Well, again I ask, why do they not give the land back?
U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico (D. Tx.) is fond of promoting himself as a “true Christian”. He promises to represent Texas, and to legislate, based on his Christian beliefs. So what does Mr. Talarico’s church believe?
Mr. Talarico has gone to St. Andrew’s Presbyterian in North Austin since he was 2 years old, and he’s preached there himself while at seminary. St. Andrew’s calls itself “Presbyterian & Progressive,” which is putting it mildly. Pull up the homepage and there’s no scripture, no sin, no salvation, nothing that would’ve made sense to a Presbyterian fifty years ago. Just a pledge to “affirm the full participation of all ages, sex and gender identities, races, color, and ethnicities in all our endeavors,” like an HR seminar broke into the sanctuary and started redecorating.
St. Andrew’s is a “More Light” congregation, the PC(USA) label for churches that fully affirm and ordain LGBTQ clergy, and the church says outright it exists to help congregations “lead LGBTQIA+ service and advocacy.” It’s partnered with Out Youth Austin, an outfit built around “youth of all sexual orientations and gender identities.” So when Talarico told his own congregation in 2022 that “our trans community needs abortion care, too,” nobody there should’ve blinked. He was quoting the mission statement.
St. Andrew’s also holds a formal designation as a “Reproductive Freedom Congregation,” a badge abortion-rights groups hand out to churches that fall in line. It’s stapled right next to the LGBTQ material, same page, same self-satisfied tone, like unrestricted abortion access is just another item on the parish activity calendar.
So if anyone doubted The Observations’s prior writings about Mr. Talarico, this revelation should dispel those doubts. He is not a serious Christian, if he is a Christian at all. He is a radical Democrat who believes in murdering innocent children, sodomy, DEI, and, of course, socialism. James Talarico is a delusional and dangerous man.
Iceland’s voters rejected a referendum to begin negotiations on joining the European Union. Smart move!
The State of Alabama is in the top 10 of America’s poorest States. Canada–an entire nation–is poorer than Alabama.
The U.S. economy is superior, our form of government is superior, we have more freedoms and liberties than exist in Canada, we have the NFL, MLB, and the NBA, and a better health system. AND, the U.S. men’s and women’s ice hockey teams beat the Canadian teams in the last Winter Olympics. We beat them at their own game! So in the grand scheme of things, who gives a damn what Canadians think about the United States? We are great, and they are not. They are just jealous.
“The Archangels serve the will of God, bringing guidance and protection to all in need.”
–St. Michael.
The President signed an Executive Order directing the Secretary of the Interior to take all appropriate steps to rename Lake Ontario, Lake America. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Democrats are going nuts over the President’s Executive Order. House of Representatives Democrats are introducing legislation to reverse the naming of Lake America. Representative Debbie Dingell (D. Mi.) said she “deeply resents” President Trump for naming Lake America.
Representative James Clyburn (D. S.C.) told NBC News that if the Democrats retake the House of Representatives, they will focus on impeaching President Trump and packing the United States Supreme Court. Of course they will.
When we last visited Representative LaMonica McIver (D. N.J.), she was attempting to storm an ICE Detention Center, and in the process, assaulted and battered ICE agents. She was criminally charged, and sought to have the charges dismissed, claiming she was immune from arrest. The federal district court in New Jersey did not buy that claim, and so she appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She fared no better there. She should not even think of seeking reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court.
“It is bigger than Trump. Because whenever we do the work of ousting the occupant of the Oval Office, the Confederacy is still alive and well. That’s all my thing. White supremacy is still alive and well. Anti-blackness will still be alive and well. Xenophobia, anti-LGBTQ.”
–Representative Ayanna Pressley (D. Ma.).
Oh, wow. If you are a supporter of the President, you are a latter day Confederate, a white supremacist, a xenophobe, and you hate homosexuals. Did you know that?
Poor Representative Ayanna Pressley is so misinformed. She does not know that it was her party–the Democrat Party–that formed the Confederacy, defended slavery, created the KKK, created and enforced Jim Crow laws, voted against immigrants, and oppressed homosexuals. She just does not know what she does not know. Then again, there is so much that she does not know.
“Today’s arrest is the first of many to come. Unfortunately, because states like California allow non-citizens to easily register to vote and receive a ballot by mail, there’s no telling how many non-citizens are currently registered to vote.”
— First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli, announcing that Honduran national Darwin Jonathan Rivera Flores was charged with two felony counts and could face deportation if convicted, while criticizing California’s current voter registration safeguards and renewing DOJ demands for a voter roll audit.
Someone stole a tractor trailer hauling 34,000 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer from a Montclair, California distribution center. That is a lot of beer.
“Street vending is a quintessential part of LA’s world-class food scene and a livelihood for thousands of hardworking Angelenos. Supporting LA’s street vendors is more important than ever given ongoing attacks by ICE.”
–Los Angeles, California Mayor Karen Bass (D.).
Mayor Bass directed the LAPD to stop enforcing the laws against illegal, unlicensed street vendors, largely because so many illegal aliens are involved in this trade. Because she is more concerned with illegal aliens’ welfare than she with law abiding citizens.
If you were a licensed, taxed, and regulated brick and mortar business in Los Angeles, how would you react to the Mayor’s directive? If you were a licensed, taxed, and regulated restaurant in Los Angeles, would you be happy?
“My thoughts are with his family and loved ones as they grieve this loss.”
–New York City Comrade Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.), on the death of a murderer held in Riker’s Island correctional facility. Not a word from Comrade Mayor about the victim and his family.
Former Atlanta Mayor and current Georgia gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms (D.) is sponsoring a children’s Halloween event that will feature LGBTQ++ themes and drag shows. Sigh.
The Franklin County, Ohio Municipal Court judges issued an order preventing ICE agents from arresting illegal aliens in or near the courthouse. That is not going to work out well for the judges.
U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico (D. Tx.) believes that Christians are “villains” and “mean people”. Of course he does!
Representative Jasmine Crockett (D. Tx.) refuses to campaign with or for Mr. Talarico. That is how bad he is as a candidate.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D.) called a press conference to announce 2 measles related deaths in Lancaster County, and to denounce the Trump Administration as the cause of these deaths. One (1) problem; the Lancaster County Coroner announced that there had been NO measles related deaths in the country for more than 35 years. Huh. Who do you believe, a Democrat Governor possibly running for President, or a doctor who sole job is to investigate deaths and their causes?
The Franklin County [Virginia] Sheriff’s Office arrested Mexican national Jorge Gilberto Zamorano-Burciaga on August 12 in Rocky Mount after an investigation. Zamorano-Burciaga has been charged with nine counts of possession of child pornography, six counts of produce/make child pornography with a child less than 15 years old, three counts of reproduce/sell child pornography, two counts of possessing obscene material using minors, and one count of reproduce/transmit/sell child pornography. ICE has lodged a detainer with Virginia, and asked Governor Spanberger (D. Va.) not to release him, but to turn him over to it, for deportation. Will she comply? I’m not holding my breath.
Virginia State Senator Louis Lucas (D.) sponsored a bill raising Virginia’s minimum wage to $15.00 per hour. She said that the State requiring employers to pay employees more was the right thing to do. EXCEPT, Senator Lucas is quite disturbed that construction companies building data centers are paying their workers more, attracting construction workers from building things that Senator Lucas prefers, such as low income housing. Hmmmm.
What arrogance. What makes elected officials think that they are the ones to determine who works where, and how much they should be paid to do the job? Politicians create nothing, run nothing . . . all they do is make things worse by interfering with those in the private sector who do create and run things.
In Harrisburg, Missouri, locals used to gather at a local gas station/restaurant for breakfast and to socialize. But the local gas station/restaurant closed. So grandmother Katie Kite started serving coffee and breakfast for her neighbors who wanted to stop by and visit. Eventually, much of the town of 300 wandered by, some regularly, some occasionally. Katie Kite did not sell coffee or food, though many left her tips to help her pay for the groceries. It sounds like a lovely situation, kind of like Barney regularly stopping by Andy’s house in the morning, when Aunt Bea would fix him coffee and food. Actually, it was a lovely situation. The Boone County Department of Health got wind of the locals enjoying each other’s company and Katie Kite’s hospitality, and threatened her with jail if she did not become a licensed restaurant. Remember–Katie Kite was not selling food, she was providing it to her neighbors. But unless she submitted her home to licensing, health inspections, regulation, and installed a commercial kitchen (est. price, $100,000.00), she would lose her home and her freedom. So Harrisburg locals no longer have a place to gather in the mornings. But the Boone County bureaucrats are patting themselves on their backs for shutting down this grandmother as a threat to good public order.
Christ Episcopal Church in Dearborn, Michigan is partnering with Mother of the Savior Lutheran Church, to fight alongside Muslims for social justice and against “xenophobia”. Wonderful.
Southern Living magazine has once again named Duke’s Mayonnaise as the very best. Of course it did! The competition cannot come close to Duke’s!
“It is the practice of the CBC to exercise extreme caution before using the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism.'”
–Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Public Affairs Director Kerry Kelly, defending the network’s editorial decision to not refer to the 9-11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center as a terror attack.
It is a &#^$! wonder that more Americans do not hate Canada. What a useless &#^$! country.
“Economic sanctions by the United States against Iran, regardless of their name or title, are completely illegal and illegitimate actions that violate the United Nations Charter, international humanitarian law, and human rights. On this basis, all countries are obligated to refrain from implementing such sanctions. In continuation of its hostile and illegal policies against Iran, the U.S. government unveiled a new wave of economic terrorism under the title ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ against Iran on Monday . . . which amounts to U.S. state terrorism against Iran and the world. While condemning U.S. economic terrorism, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasizes the determination of the Iranian nation to utilize all capacities to defend the homeland against military, economic, and hybrid aggression.”
–Statement by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Iran–the world’s largest State sponsor of terrorism, since 1979–is accusing the United States of being a terrorist? Ha, ha, ha, ha. Good one!
The United States struck a deal with Venezuela, giving America control over 65 billion barrels of oil. WINNING!
The Venezuelan oil deal will significantly lower gasoline prices in the United States. Everyone should be happy, correct? No, no, no. The Democrats are outraged over the deal. Representative Ro Khanna (D. Ca.) took to the airwaves to denounce the deal as “colonialism”. Sigh.
There was horrible flooding in Nepal, killing hundreds with thousands missing. It was a horrific tragedy.
Of course the Left took the occasion of the Nepal flooding to blame it on “climate change”. Of course.
The United States Treasury Department cut off Egypt’s 2nd largest bank, Banque Misr, from access to the U.S. financial system. Maybe Banque Misr should not have been supplying Iranian connected companies with funds. President Trump warned them.
U.S. military trial judge Lt. Col. Michael Schrama ruled that 9-11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s 2007 statements made to FBI investigators were not voluntarily given, citing “severe coercion”. Sigh. Let’s just hang the S.O.B.
The WNBA continues to spiral out of control over the issue of men playing in the league. The WNBA commissioner claims that “no man has ever set foot on a WNBA court.” Well, not so fast. Layshia Clarendon played in the league for 11 seasons. Layshia Clarendon is a man, who thinks he is a woman. Huh.
College football is back. WOO HOO!
The Tarheels football team went all the way to Dublin, Ireland, with everyone expecting them to lose to TCU’s Horned Frogs. ESPN’s Paul Finebaum was pondering how long UNC head football coach Bill Belichick would keep his job. Well UNC beat TCU, to avenge the beating it took last year in the season opener. How ’bout that? Gus Barber and Bill Sibbick are ecstatic.
Stanford beat Hawaii. Virginia dominated N.C. State. Florida State beat the Little Sisters of the Poor.
USC began its football season as usual, playing a cupcake in San Jose State. And USC beat the Spartans into the ground. Before an empty stadium. How embarrassing! Hmmmm. Here’s a thought; if you want to draw the fans through the gates, try scheduling a quality opponent.
Memphis beat UNLV. Sacramento State lost its first ever Division I FBS game to Eastern Michigan. But North Dakota State won its first ever Division I FBS game over Jacksonville State.
Congratulations to Scottie Scheffler on winning the Fed Ex Cup. He won the Tour Championship at East Lake Country Club in Atlanta, Georgia, edging out Viktor Hovland.
Martinsville, Virginia Sheriff Steve Draper has died. He joined the department in 1973, and following his election as Sheriff in 1994, he became the longest serving Sheriff in the Commonwealth. R. I. P.
Former Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Larry Christenson has died at age 72. R. I. P.
Former Boston Red Sox catcher Rich Rowland has died at age 62. R. I. P.
BY: Noel S. Williams, The American Thinker (August 28, 2026).
Canadian politicians wallow in multiculturalism; they want to be all things to all people. The leftist idiot Justin Trudeau, for example, said it was a “good thing” that Canada has no core national identity.
Their current Prime Minister, the effete wussy Mark Carney, could also use a thorough regimen of testosterone replacement therapy. Then, maybe he could grow a pair and effect some “muscular liberalism” as expounded by ex-U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron.
Lacking identity, Canada is a confusing hodgepodge of cultures. In addition to the indigenous natives, their roots are mainly British, but also French. The last is particularly problematic.
About 22% of Canadians speak French. Many live in the province of Quebec. Another heavily French-influenced area is Ontario, particularly around Ottawa, where the federal government is situated. This is very problematic — it’s bad enough we have to deal with the French in France, but the Frenchies in Canada are equally supercilious.
By contrast, the regions of Canada that enjoy more British influence are relatively more sensible. Alberta and Saskatchewan, for example, benefit from early British and Commonwealth settlement patterns. Alberta in particular has strong cultural and economic ties to the U.S. The province is widely considered the most U.S.-friendly and culturally American-leaning province in Canada.
There is a non-binding vote pending on whether Alberta should secede. Current polls indicate secession support could be as high as 30%, and after decades of Alberta subsidizing the rest of Canada, one can understand why.
The Canadians are testing the rationale of sovereignty in the nation-state era. After all, how can a nation be a nation if it has no national identity (or border)? They may thumb their noses at us for political expediency (they have upcoming elections and also want to influence our midterms), but they’ve got another thing coming if they think China will be a reliable trading partner.
Today we direct our attention to S. Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia. This was a region in Asia Minor (now modern-day Turkey), just west of Cappadocia. S. Paul had evangelized this area, along with S. Barnabas, during his first missionary journey around A.D. 46. Soon after, so-called Judaizers came in and began to distort S. Paul’s teaching. S. Paul held that salvation was open to all people – both Jew and Gentile – freely. While practicing Jews, who also came to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, could maintain their Jewish rituals and practices, these were not necessary to salvation, according to S. Paul. Gentiles turning to Christianity could do so without any Jewish preconditions.
Certain Jewish adherents to the Christian faith taught that it was necessary for Gentiles to conform to the essentials of the Jewish faith. Before a Gentile could become a Christian, he first must be circumcised and follow the precepts of the Mosaic Law. This sect of Jewish Christians was known as Judaizers. They were both zealous for the Law and also feared losing their Jewish identity should the Law ever be superseded. Most likely, they were centered in Jerusalem, and came under intense scrutiny from the Sanhedrin (Jewish leadership).
The apostolic leadership, along with S. Paul, met in council at Jerusalem to discuss this important matter around A.D. 50. Their conclusions are recorded in the Acts of the Apostles (chapter 15). Here they concluded that it was not necessary for Gentile converts to first convert to Judaism, but required of them only that they adhere to four basic tenets devised to avoid scandalizing potential Jewish converts to Christianity: 1) to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols; 2) to abstain from eating the blood of animals; 3) to abstain from eating meat from animals that have been strangled; 4) to abstain from fornication (sexual immorality). These precepts seem to have been based on the provisions of the Noahic covenant (found in Genesis, chapter nine) that reach back before Moses and therefore apply to humanity generally. The Apostles were making a distinction between Mosaic coventental obligations and universal obligations belonging to all of humanity under God’s primordial order.
As mentioned last week, several serious problems arose out of the Judaizer controversy. The first and foremost was that it voided the principle that our salvation was given by and through God’s grace towards man, not by anything man might do. Given the reality that it was impossible to keep all the precepts of the Law, if not by action at least by intention, this became an unattainable undertaking. This is why God needed to intercede and provide a means of salvation that stood outside of this conundrum by Christ Himself fulfilling the Mosaic Law faithfully and fully.
The second concern was the matter of table fellowship. Practicing Jews could not enter into the home of a Gentile, nor could they dine with Gentiles without becoming ritually unclean. How could the Church – Jew and Gentile – come together in the Supper of Our Lord, or even practice ordinary hospitality, if this standard was to be maintained? This would necessitate two churches, one Jewish and one Gentile, the very antithesis of both Our Lord’s teaching and the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. This is why S. Paul fought so vociferously against this distortion of the Gospel.
S. Paul makes the point in today’s Epistle that our salvation is not dependent upon adherence to the Law, but manifests itself in our lives through faith. He uses Abraham as the example. Abraham lived centuries before the Law was given to Moses but yet entered into a covenant with God – through faith. Because this covenant precedes that at Mt Sinai, S. Paul argues that it is superior. It isn’t that the Law is of no value, for God gave the Law for our good – it instructs us in the particulars of sin – but adherence to the Law is not what saves us.
What relevance does this have to our lives and the struggles we experience in our attempts to be faithful Christians? Sometimes we simply need to acknowledge that we are broken by sin. We cannot live as we ought, just as those under the Law could not fulfill perfectly all of its 613 precepts. We have only two precepts – to love God with all our heart, mind and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, as expressed in this Sunday’s Gospel. Yet we consistently fail.
When we rely on our own efforts to win favor with God, we must admit failure. But this is no reason for despair. When we acknowledge our failings and openly confess our sins, we then experience – when we act in faith – a renewal of our covenant with God. Man is incapable of fulfilling perfectly the terms of this covenant. But the perfect man, Jesus Christ, has done just that. So when we live in Christ, that is, when we place our trust in Him, He gives us confidence to stand before the Father.
This is the good news S. Paul desires to share, not just with the Galatians, but also with us. While sin breaks our relationship with God, when we come to Our Lord in faith and with a contrite heart, we can be confident that we will be restored to the Father. Not through anything we have done, but through our faith in the mediation of Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate.
In this period of St. Michael’s Lent, it is particularly appropriate to reflect on the legacy of St. Augustine. The article below sheds light on his effect on Christianity.
The 75-year-old bishop’s condition was worsening. He was trapped inside the Vandal-besieged city of Hippo, for three months. He was struck by a fever and confined to his bed. Fellow bishop St. Possidius, writes about his final moments. His excellency Augustine (354–430 AD) withdrew, allowing only physicians and those with food to enter. Sources provide no precise modern diagnosis beyond fever and progressive decline. He remained mentally clear, with his sight and hearing intact. Today, this North African city is Annaba in Algeria.
5 Key Effects on Christianity
Doctrine on Grace and Original Sin. In his debate with Pelagius, St Augustine split the hairs to show human vulnerability and dependence on divine grace. His life and teachings evidence how—salvation is impossible without God. This has become central to Christian theology as demonstrated in CCC 1996-2005.
Theology of the Church. St Augustine contrasts the City of Man with “The City of God”. He writes of pilgrim souls, journeying together toward the eternal city. In 1684, St Augustine’s concepts were hijacked by the anti-Catholic protestant preacher, John Bunyan in The Pilgrims’ Progress. One of Bunyan’s cruel. elderly giants is named “Pope.”
Integration of Faith and Reason. St Augustine used orthodox interpretations of Plato which helped later theologians like St Thomas Aquinas. Augustine demonstrated that faith and reason are allies, not enemies as referenced in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Examination of Conscience via Spiritual Biography. “Confessions” is a compilation of 13 books. Not only is it a theological masterpiece but it pioneered the way for Western autobiographies. It models the Catholic practice of conscious examination and seeking God’s mercy in the Sacraments. This free spiritual therapy is not offered by any other faiths.
Pastoral Leadership. He was made a doctor of the church because he used his authority as a bishop, to address heresies, guide his flock through political turmoil and leave behind sermons and letters that inspire Catholic preaching today, see Augustine’s Sermons. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI,
St Augustine remains, “a man of passion and faith, of the highest intelligence and tireless pastoral care,” whose voice still echoes in the life of the Church today.
Summary. St Augustine did not only write abstract theology—he wrote from the heart, wrestling with questions of sin, grace, and the human longing for God. His ability to articulate the inner life of the soul have made his works timeless. St. Augustine’s legacy is not just in the doctrines he clarified, but in the way he demonstrated how the “human heart is restless until he rests in God.”
Annaba, Algeria—August 28, A.D. 430
Spending his final days in prayer with the penitential Psalms of David, St Augustine’s soul was taken by the angels. The last recorded prayer associated with him was his plea that God would either:
deliver Hippo from the Vandals,
give His servants strength to endure or
“take me from this world unto Himself.”
As they watched and prayed, St. Possidius wrote that the bishop now “slept with the fathers.” At that time, this giant-among-men’s headstone, was inscribed as below.
“Wouldst know that poets live again, O traveller, after death? These words thou readest, lo, I speak! Thy voice is but my breath.”
People need meaning in their lives, and the decline in faith and uptick in socialism mark a very dangerous shift in that search
BY: Allan J. Feiffer, The American Thinker (August 26, 2026).
The West is losing faith in God, individual responsibility, and the institutions that restrain our worst tendencies. In their place, an increasingly secular culture is bending the knee toward collectivist ideas. Collectivism falsely promises to solve problems that neither human beings nor traditional institutions have. In doing so, it completely forgoes history’s lessons.
As a belief in God declines, people are not abandoning a desire to believe in something larger than themselves; instead, they are looking to the collective—in a misguided belief that government, society, or some other institution will magically deliver equality, justice, security, belonging, and moral order.
This ongoing transposition is accompanied by a loss of faith in individualism and institutions built on individual liberty, private property, voluntary association, and personal responsibility. Increasingly, individualism is viewed not as the cornerstone of a free society, but as the source of inequality, injustice, and social disorder. The collective, by contrast, is portrayed as society’s savior.
Western civilization did not achieve its wealth and power accidentally. Our best features—individual liberty, private property, limited government, and the rule of law—are bedrock requisites for a civil society, developed through centuries of painful trial and error. Human beings are imperfect, and the power of the state is an omnipresent danger to our essential freedoms.
Our founders did not assume perfect individuals would lead us. To the contrary, they assumed that leaders would frequently pursue their own self-interest, that governments might become oppressive, and that even the best of us might abuse their position. Our system is not perfect; however, it was designed to be realistic: intended to prevent imperfect people from acquiring too much power over one another. These are the classic checks and balances collectivists wish to dispose of.
Collectivism is diametrically opposed. For socialists and communists, the collective claims control over economic resources. It’s rational—economic equality is essential; labor is central to economic justice; capitalism is exploitative and ultimately fosters inequality; economic decisions should be subject to collective control; individual freedom is subordinate to collective objectives.
Socialism is Communist lite; fundamentally, it’s only a question of scale that ultimately tilts toward harsh and repressive communism as the means to enforce edicts humans will ultimately reject when they discover they’ve been enslaved.
But underneath the economics is something more fundamental: a different conception of the individual. Collectivists don’t care a whit whether individuals are good or bad. Collectivists simply lack confidence in an individual’s ability to govern themselves. Individual choices are seen as heavily influenced by economic circumstances, culture, class, institutions, and other factors. The individual therefore becomes someone who must be managed, corrected, indoctrinated, and protected from his limitations.
The collective became that answer. This is where the relationship between socialism and religion becomes important. Marx’s intellectual framework was fundamentally materialist. He viewed religion as a false truth arising from human social and material deficiencies. Communist regimes subsequently went further, frequently treating religious faith as a competing source of authority and allegiance to be eliminated.
There is an intriguing contemporary parallel. In a 2021 survey of nearly 13,000 members of the Democratic Socialists of America, roughly 60% identified as atheist or agnostic. The broader ideological divide is striking as well. Gallup found in 2022 that 94% of conservatives said they believed in God, compared with 62% of liberals.
This doesn’t prove that secularism causes socialism, nor that every socialist has rejected God. It does, however, raise a more interesting question:
What happens when people lose faith in God but desire to believe in something larger than themselves?
They still want meaning, moral purpose, and to believe their lives matter. The collective claims it can provide these things by fooling people into believing they are part of a historic struggle and that they, and only they, understand how to produce a superior and just society. It can then justify demanding sacrifice from the individual in the name of the greater good.
In that sense, collectivism can become more than an economic theory.
It becomes a substitute for faith.
However, there is a fundamental difference between religious faith and secular collectivism. Traditional Judeo-Christian traditions start with the concept of imperfection.
Man’s burden is the duality of being capable of extraordinary good as well as extraordinary evil. We therefore place moral limits on everyone—including those who govern us.
Collectivism places its faith in institutions rather than the individual. That distinction matters. If the problem is human nature, changing the economic system doesn’t eliminate it; it merely shifts who has the power to impose it.
The Soviet Union did not abolish human selfishness by abolishing private property, nor did Mao’s China eliminate inequality by collectivizing agriculture. Communist regimes never believed in individual freedom, yet they produced new elites, new privileges, coercion, and enormous human suffering.
Yet those failures have not killed collectivism. Collectivism itself is extraordinarily resistant to a reckoning with its own failures. When socialism or communism fails, believers blame corrupt leaders, insufficient commitment, hostile outsiders, poor implementation, inadequate planning, or something else, but the essential belief lives on like Count Dracula. This time will be different. This time the right people will be in charge. This time the lessons of past failures will finally be applied.
For many adherents, the problem isn’t that the experiment has repeatedly failed. It is that they don’t know—or don’t want to know—how often it has failed and why. And that is where the misunderstanding of history becomes existentially dangerous.
We were never ignorant of inequality or indifferent to suffering. Our systems were constructed because earlier generations understood something that modern collectivists seem to have forgotten: the greatest threat to freedom is not simply inequality; it is concentrated power.
Private property gives each person a stake in the system, while economic independence provides political independence. Voluntary association allows us to separate ourselves from the state, while religious institutions provide moral authority outside it. At the pinnacle of society, the rule of law constrains those who govern us.
Remove these restrictions on wanton power, and the individual becomes nothing more than a subject. That is the paradox of modern collectivism: by seeking to address economic inequality, it gives institutions control over people’s lives and concentrates the power to allocate resources, assuming whoever receives that power will use it wisely. History reveals this fallacy.
The real danger is not simply that Americans might become socialists. Eight percent of Americans describe themselves that way, but most Americans remain far from embracing collectivism. Today’s danger is that the intellectual foundations that kept collectivism in check are being undermined.
When a majority of people desire to give up their independence in favor of the state, no longer understand the importance of private property and individual responsibility, forget why institutions were designed to restrain power, and replace faith in God with faith in government’s ability to perfect mankind, the American experiment will end.
We’ve been down this road before. The destination has not changed simply because a new generation has lost its way.
Faith, science and free enterprise gave the world prosperity that collectivism never could
BY: Robert Knight, The Washington Times (August 23, 2026).
For thousands of years, people typically had short lifespans and were at the mercy of bad weather, crop failures and tyrants. By modern standards, life was “nasty, brutish and short,” as philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it in 1651.
Today, we can barely imagine life before electricity, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, jet travel, automobiles, smartphones, modern medicine and dentistry, and the internet.
All of these things came out of the free market West, which for centuries after the Greco-Roman period was simply called Christendom. None of it came from socialism, which was born during the atheistic and murderous French Revolution in 1789.
Fifty-nine years later, socialism was given monstrous force by Karl Marx’s and Fredeich Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto.”
A perversion of Western philosophy, socialism operates like cancer in otherwise healthy tissue.
Socialism was weaponized by Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Kim Il-sung, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, Daniel Ortega and others who used it to tyrannize their fellow countrymen and spread misery.
Socialists refuse to acknowledge their debt to Western civilization. Beijing now has electricity thanks to Michael Faraday, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse. Much of the world has air conditioning thanks to John Gorrie, Willis Carrier and General Electric. Cars are affordable (at least, they were) thanks to Henry Ford. And so on, up to computers and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The free West’s inventions have benefited billions of people. Socialism does not create wealth or spawn original discoveries. It is why the Soviet Union had to steal and adapt. It is why the Chinese communists work so hard to hack Western technology.
At the heart of socialism, Nazism and communism is hatred of God. The Bible sacralizes life and marriage, defends property ownership and truth, and puts government under the authority of heaven.
The Old Testament proclaims the sovereignty of God over man and the promise of a messiah. The New Testament teaches that redemption flows from the wounded hand and side of Jesus Christ, not the grasping hand of government.
To this day, leftists portray Christianity as the enemy of science and equality. That view filters down to schoolchildren via Marxist-educated teachers. It is one of the main reasons that so many young people have benign views of socialism and negative views of Christianity and capitalism.
What the students are not told is that Christianity, far from being a hindrance, has been the key to progress, as explained by Stanley L. Jaki in his 1988 book, “The Savior of Science.”
Jaki was a Catholic Benedictine priest and physicist who earned his Ph.D. at Fordham under the tutelage of Nobel laureate Victor Hess, who discovered cosmic rays. The book explains that the biblical concept of a God-created, predictable order laid the groundwork for the scientific method.
Other societies, such as China, India and Egypt, excelled at some early discoveries such as algebra, architecture, paper and fireworks, but they hit a theological wall at some point.
“They all were dominated by a pantheistic concept of the universe going through eternal cycles,” Jaki wrote. In other words, why bother if it is just an endless cycle of rinse and repeat?
“The pattern is the stillbirth of science in each of them in spite of the availability of talents, social organizations, and long periods of peace,” Jaki said.
Islam, he noted, preserved Greek math and science, such as from Euclid and Archimedes, and created elements of beauty. However, Muslims became content with a capricious reality conferred by Allah — a God whose creation, according to some Islamic scholars, cannot be predicted.
As such, Muslim science began declining in the 11th century, never to recover.
By contrast, the biblical concept of an ordered, discoverable universe has propelled science, with Christians such as physicist Isaac Newton opening up new worlds.
Over the centuries, the West evolved, birthing the Industrial Revolution. In 1776, America’s founding was grounded in the understanding that people are created in the image of God and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.
Against this, what did socialism offer? Divisive envy harnessed to political power aimed at making government a virtual god. This diabolical doctrine appeals to man’s vices, including sexual excess, while punishing virtues, such as forming God-centered families and self-governing communities. It hates independent thought and life.
Socialism is sold as fairness and compassion, but in practice, it spreads misery while enriching a few at the top. It operates like a man who watches another man build a house, then taxes him out of it, giving the home to people who hail the tax man as a hero.
It is also prone to violence. From the 2020 George Floyd riots to ongoing acclaim for Luigi Mangione, who murdered Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, in cold blood on a Manhattan street, the left hums with an undercurrent of savagery.
How else can you explain the coven of Democratic women happily applauding Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, as she signed a law allowing the killing of unborn babies right up to the moment of birth?
It is only by God’s grace that any of us can escape the urge to blame our problems on others and take what is not ours.
To the extent that it interferes with our growing in the admonition of God and opening our hearts to his offer of mercy, socialism is doing the devil’s work, and Americans need to put it behind them.
“The Archangels serve the will of God, bringing guidance and protection to all in need.”
–St. Michael.
Our golf team accomplished all our goals yesterday. We finished, very important. We all had fun, extremely important. And no one got hurt. What a great day!
“I’d like to propose that Los Angeles consider a pilot program for free hygienic sexual relief clinics, primarily serving the homeless and unhoused. This means equality, it means private sexual relief through masturbation or where appropriate and consensual with a partner, all funded by public tax dollars and managed with professional oversight.”
–An unidentified speaker at a Los Angeles, California City Council meeting.
California is on the verge of passing legislation that would allow sex offenders to hold public office, including on local public school boards. Who does not want a sex offender serving on their local public school board?
“In about 10 to 15 years, we are all going to be sitting here with smiles on our faces. And I’m going to have a paperweight sitting on my desk. And do you know what that paper weight’s going to be? It’s going to be a piece of the [White House] ballroom after we blow it up.”
–Philadelphia, Pennsylvania District Attorney Larry Krasner (D.).
These people are sick. They are pure evil.
William Lawrence (D. Mi.) is a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. He believes that the U.S. should not be a global power. He also believes that the U.S. human rights record is far worse than that of China. He believes that the U.S. should permit China to eclipse us both militarily and economically. So, of course he is the Democrat nominee.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court has blocked the city from installing two 10-foot statues of St. Michael the Archangel, the patron saint of police officers, and St. Florian, the patron saint of firefighters, outside its new public safety building. The Left demands that God be banished from the public square, in order to satisfy its atheistic following.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger (D.) admitted that there are more than 300,000 illegal aliens living in Virginia. She laments the fact that federal changes will make them no longer eligible for Medicaid. And she lamented the fact that so many lacked compassion for these “Virginians”.
First, these illegal aliens are not “Virginians”. They are illegal aliens. Second, why should illegal aliens be given government benefits, paid for by hard working Virginia taxpayers?
More than 1/2 of all murders committed in Fairfax County are committed by illegal aliens. Governor Spanberger, and her ally, Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano (D.), protect these illegal aliens, refusing to cooperate with ICE, dropping or lowering criminal charges, and allowing them to roam the streets at will, until finally someone dies. “Someone” is a U.S. and Virginia citizen, who deserves better from their State government.
Make Abigail Go Away!
“I applaud the Greene County sheriff for working with ICE to make that we don’t have illegals on our roads, illegals out here committing crimes and things of that nature, unlike our attorney general, who’s the chief law enforcement officer of our state out here picking fights with sheriffs over illegal immigrants.”
–Virginia Delegate Terry Kilgore (R.).
It seems that Attorney General Jay Jones (D.) is investigating the Greene County Sheriff for cooperating with ICE agents, in rounding up illegal aliens in the Commonwealth of Virginia. How can this possibly be construed as a bad thing?
The Smithsonian Institute’s National Zoo has been pushing a radical Leftist agenda for years. Instead of educating visitors about animals and their habitats, the administrators have been pushing the “climate change” agenda, even configuring in DEI, insisting that a lack of cultural diversity in society contributed to “climate change”, which was man-made, which would destroy the planet. And what would a radical Leftist agenda be without an obligatory shout out to the LGBTQ++ crowd? Sigh.
Sometimes, it is nice just to walk around and look at the pandas, elephants, tigers, monkeys, and penguins. I used to do that regularly, smoking a cigar, and just relaxing. Sadly, the National Zoo banned smoking some years ago, even though it is outside.
I tried the Chick-Fil-A chicken and waffles sandwich. It is a chicken breast filet between 2 tasty waffles. It comes with maple syrup and bacon. And they put the sandwich in a napkin so that your fingers to not get sticky from handling it. It was quite tasty, and I heartily recommend that you rush to your nearest Chick-Fil-A and try it out. You will not be sorry.
The P.F. Chang’s restaurant at Fashion Island shopping mall in Newport Beach, California, is closed. That was the very first P.F. Chang’s restaurant I ate at, and I recall it being delicious. It is hard to believe that that was more than 30 years ago.
Meta (Facebook, Instagram) agreed to pay more than $17 billion to several States over claims it designed systems to “addict” young users. Meta also agreed to implement technical safeguards in its programs. Sigh. Yet another shakedown of business by government.
Why are children on Facebook and Instagram? Because of their parents. The parents purchased the phones. The parents fail to supervise their children’s use of the phones. This is not a Meta problem. This is not an injury to government. This is a parenting failure.
Ontario, Canada Premier Doug Ford threatened to cease electricity exports to the United States. Huh. How about if the United States bombs the sh*t out of Ontario? What do you think, Doug?
The National Football League has finally, mercifully, terminated the annual Pro Bowl game. Thank you!
PGA Tour Champions golfer Matt Gogel has been suspended for 6 months, for gambling on PGA Tour sponsored events. To be clear, Matt Gogel never bet on any event in which he played. He cooperated with the investigation, and has apologized for his actions. Still . . . .
Bill Maher exposes J.D. Hall’s nonsense about Muslims and Christians
Young Americans need real history, not TikTok myths and Ottoman revisionism
BY: Everett Piper, The Washington Times (August 23, 2026).
Recently, comedian Bill Maher, in discussing the history of Israel and the Middle East, said the following on his show: “Young people [are learning] everything about Israel on TikTok. They don’t know s—-, and their leaders are not standing up and saying, ‘Kids, you don’t know what’s going on here.’”
Of course, Mr. Maher is right about all this, with one exception. Everything the burgeoning political class knows about the Middle East is not learned just on TikTok. Unfortunately, much of it is derived from pseudo-intellectuals such as disgraced Baptist minister J.D. Hall.
As I wrote two weeks ago in this column, Mr. Hall is a former pastor from Sidney, Montana, who was indicted in 2024 on charges of drug abuse, domestic violence and felony embezzlement. As a result of pleading “no contest” to these charges, he received a reduced sentence and an expunged record if he complied with all the conditions of his probation.
Today, Mr. Hall boasts of never “technically” being convicted of any of these crimes (again, because of the terms of the plea deal). This is the “theologian” Tucker Carlson featured on his show to discuss all things related to Islam, Israel and the Middle East and how Muslims have historically treated Christians.
Although the dialogue between Messrs. Carlson and Hall lasted an hour and 44 minutes, it can be summarized as follows. After spending about 54 minutes describing the evils of evangelical dispensationalists (people Mr. Carlson has said he “despises more than anyone else”), Mr. Hall began to laud how “kind” the Ottoman Empire was to Christians versus the “hostility” and “violence” perpetrated against believers in the modern state of Israel.
Mr. Hall’s curious example of Jewish animus versus Islamic love was his claim that Tel Aviv taxes the Christian church while Muslims have never taxed it.
In fact, here is exactly what he said: “The Muslim rulers didn’t tax churches. During the Ottoman period. They were very kind to Christians.”
Is this true? Were Muslim rulers in pre-British Palestine and its ancillary region very kind to Christians? And is it accurate to say that the Ottoman Empire never taxed the church?
The answer is unequivocally no. This is not true.
First, any fair reading of history quickly dispels the notion of Islamic “kindness.” Even Muslim artwork depicts the barbarity of the Ottoman reign. Beheadings and crucifixions were common practices. Christians who refused to renounce their faith were also impaled, drawn and quartered and burned at the stake.
Women were raped, and children were conscripted into slavery. Even as recently as the 1860s, the “kindness” of the Muslim massacres in Lebanon and Damascus resulted in thousands of men and women being summarily executed simply because they were followers of Christ.
What about Mr. Hall’s claim that Islam has never taxed the church? Well, that is also pure fabrication.
Take, for example, the practice of Islamic apartheid, otherwise known as the “millet system.” This was a segregationist scheme dreamed up by the Ottomans to abuse, humiliate and subjugate all the non-Muslims they had, for whatever reason, chosen not to kill.
Under this caste system, these “very kind” Muslim rulers essentially forced all Christians into ghettos (i.e., “millets”), where they were required to pay three kinds of taxes in exchange for being allowed to live.
First, there was the jizya tax. This was imposed on all non-Muslims (otherwise known as “dhimmi”) who refused to convert. The jizya was a “poll or tribute” that Christians were required to pay in exchange for being allowed to live in their now-conquered towns and villages.
Failure to pay this tax resulted in serious penalties up to and including fines, imprisonment, even death.
Second, there was the kharja tax. This was a tax on all private property held by Christians. It was often so overwhelming that it led to foreclosure and the confiscation of property so that it could be redistributed to local Muslims as a result.
Third, there was the devshirme, otherwise known as the “blood tax,” and it was the most pernicious of all. This was a “levy of children” imposed by “kind Muslim rulers.” It forced Christian parents to “pay a tax” of one (or more) of their sons to the Ottoman state so these little boys could then be marched off and trained to become jihadis for the Muslim empire.
Refusing to pay the devshirme was considered an act of treason and punishable by death.
As a former minister (defrocked though he may be), Mr. Hall surely knows that the church is not the four walls of any given building. Rather, it is the collection of believers otherwise known as “Body of Christ.” Furthermore, he must know that his claims about Ottoman rulers being “very kind” and “never taxing” it are patently absurd.
Mr. Maher’s basic premise is spot on. The “kids” today don’t know anything about Israel, Islam, Christianity and the Middle East, and for two reasons: Either their education is no deeper than TikTok or, worse, they are getting their information from discredited men such as J.D. Hall.
DSA and late-term abortion reflect the same depravity
BY: Don Feder, The Washington Times (August 23, 2026).
In Luigi Mangione — who confessed in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — we see the grinning face of evil staring at us from the abyss.
Pleading guilty in federal court to interstate stalking resulting in death, Mangione said he knew that what he was doing was “illegal,” a word better suited to describe littering or jaywalking. He did not say that it was immoral or evil because he did not believe it was wrong.
He also expressed no remorse for taking a man’s life, making that man’s wife a widow or making the man’s children fatherless.
An alarming segment of the population condones Mangione’s malevolence.
According to an Emerson College poll, among 18- to 29-year-olds, 41% believe the murder was either somewhat or completely acceptable.
America’s sane center is eroding. A CloudResearch survey showed that 20% of Democrats thought the murder of conservative leader Charlie Kirk was justified. That figure rose to 32% among Democrats younger than 30.
The week that Mangione pleaded guilty to cheering onlookers, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a far-left Democrat, signed a bill allowing abortion up to the moment of birth. Late-stage abortion involves either poisoning the baby in the womb or crushing its skull and extracting the pieces — depravity committed in the name of a woman’s right to choose.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat and an enthusiastic proponent of late-term abortion, said of Mangione’s crime, “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far.” Still, if people are pushed so far — say, by high insurance premiums or companies not responsive to claims — why can they not push back, and why can that response not involve violence?
This is the left’s standard rationale for bloodshed.
Israel’s presence in the Gaza Strip is deemed repressive, so the murder of 1,200 civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, is either somewhat or completely acceptable. The death of George Floyd was an outrage, so burning down whole city blocks is either somewhat or completely acceptable.
The left believes morality is shaped by ideology. God has no place in its universe.
In the 1946 drama “Dragonwyck,” set on a 19th-century estate in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York, Gene Tierney, whose character was raised in a devout farm family, asks her husband plaintively, “Don’t you believe in God?”
Vincent Price, the powerful landowner, replies, “I believe in myself.”
We later learn that he murdered his first wife and is planning to murder Tierney in pursuit of an heir. An unrestrained ego leads to a morality of convenience.
Ideological killers such as Mangione and Tyler Robinson (currently at the preliminary hearing stage of a trial for Charlie Kirk’s murder) believe there is no law higher than themselves. The Unabomber and Charles Manson would concur.
The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky warned, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” He meant things like the Reign of Terror, the Holocaust, dismembering a child in the womb and shooting an innocent man in the back to protest “the deadly, greed-fueled health insurance cartel,” in Mangione’s words.
The Ten Commandments ordain “Do not steal” and “Do not murder.” One logically leads to the other. That is what makes the Democratic Socialists of America so dangerous.
Socialists start with theft and often end in mass murder.
If you can take a man’s property, why not take his life too? The Bolsheviks, Nazis, Maoists and Khmer Rouge followed the logical progression from robbery to murder.
The blood-drenched 20th century is a testament to the relationship between the two.
Under the Bolsheviks, correcting the “unequal distribution of wealth” led first to confiscation, then to collective farms, then to planned starvation and finally to gulags.
The heroes of the DSA include Hamas and Fidel Castro.
In a recent interview with The New Yorker, DSA co-Chair Megan Romer called the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel by Hamas “the inevitable backlash” to Israeli policy. You can push people only so far, right?
On the 100th anniversary of his birth, the DSA website called the late Cuban tyrant “a stalwart symbol of the anti-imperialism struggle and self-determination.” Castro brought untold misery — including starvation and brutal repression — to Cuba.
Given half a chance, the DSA will do the same to America.
When asked what a sinner was, St. Bernadette of Lourdes said that “a sinner is one who loves evil.” In America today, there is a lot of love in the air.
In a way, we should be grateful to Luigi Mangione for putting a human face on the evil that pervades our society.
