America Under Attack

The ask

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philippians 4:6-7

By Steve Woodward

“What should we be praying for?”

A friend raised this question as we parted ways recently, upon which it dawned on me that it was not entirely rhetorical. It was in fact timely.

Some will caution that we never should waste God’s time praying about the trivial. We should not be praying for a team to win a game, or a golfer to sink a putt. And we certainly should not bend a knee to pray for victory in the political arena.

Or, is this OK? “Dear Lord, please deliver a victory for Donald Trump in November.” We know God hears us, even a silent prayer for a presidential candidate. (An assumption here is that there are few prayers coming in for Kamala Harris. The Left is more agnostic than ever. If not full blown Godless. To whom do pro-abortion, gender fluid persons pray? About anything?)

But what is at the root of a prayer to return Trump to the White House? Is it rooted in human pettiness? In mere contempt for Harris and her ticket mate, the thoroughly Godless Tim Walz? In greed (in the hope of lower taxes and more disposable income)? In revenge?

Many of us contemplate the purpose of prayer in our lives. I certainly do. In my youth when I was a CHRINO (Christian in name only) I prayed only when boarding a commercial airliner, pre-takeoff. (Sometimes, I prayed in flight: “Dear God, I meant to say takeoff and landing”).

Millions of citizens of our nation, and the world, ignore “politics”. “They all lie, those politicians.” “Voting is a waste of time.” “I don’t watch the news.” “I wore a mask for my grandparents.” “We have to help everyone, even an illegal immigrant.”

American citizenship never can be reduced to a spectator sport. The sidelines of life feel safe only because they are so crowded by others doing the same thing. Standing there. Our founding fathers feared this day.

Thus, I further argue that we must pray. Continuously. But for whom or what must we pray? The media deliberately reduce politics to cults of personality and identity. Trump is the choice of white Christian nationalists. Harris is the choice who stands against systemic racism and for reproductive rights because she is “black” and female.

The reality is most informed Americans (by far a shrinking subset of the population) vote for a president to see desirable outcomes. If you find it unseemly to pray for a New York construction billionaire who has swagger and an ego, pray instead for outcomes that will restore American prosperity, the traditional family, our energy independence and homeland security.

Then it comes down to a clear choice. Either we are praying for the preservation of mankind’s greatest nation, and the freedom and security our national strength extends to the world (and, by default, conservatives in charge of policy), or we are praying for an entirely different set of outcomes (the lived experiences of many since 2021).

These outcomes ensure desperate families who can’t earn enough income to get by day to day; who can’t afford adequate food, or adequate energy to maintain homes; who are hardworking yet losing their jobs; who live with violence in our streets, both the visible violence terrorizing cities, and violence in the shadows (innocent victims of illegal immigrant invaders funded by drug cartels).

Go ahead, decline to pray for a party or candidate. But then ask why would an American hesitate to pray relentlessly for: Israel, and persecuted Jews everywhere, including our youth on college campuses; hardline U.S.-led diplomacy to end, or at least deter, Russian aggression (in Ukraine and beyond); Chinese leaders awakened to consequences of unethical trade practices; and a Mexican government that respects America’s sovereign border?

There is tangible evidence that prayer builds on itself, gathers like a storm, and eventually pays dividends. Many Americans have prayed continuously for the safety of President Trump. In an instant, as Trump’s head turned, prayers were answered on July 13, 2024, in rural Pennsylvania. No thinking person, and certainly no spiritual person, assigned poor marksmanship to the sparing of Trump’s life.

What to pray for is a personal choice. Our broken world answers the why.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

Illegals among us?

By Steve Woodward

A nondescript building along Highway 1 near Southern Pines, N.C., that is home to Sandhills Assembly Church is also the operational headquarters of a little known entity, Immigration Hope Sandhills.

While it is aligned with a recognized protestant religious organization, Immigration Hope Sandhills (IHS) is a nonprofit outreach seeking to assist people who reside in the United States illegally. According to its web site, IHS offers illegal aliens advice on paths to U.S. citizenship, English language and citizenship courses, and mental health counseling. Through a program coordinated by the U.S. Department of Justice, IHS trains volunteers who do not hold law degrees to provide low-cost legal advice and services toward navigation of the U.S. immigration process.

Under executive director Sarah J. Cortesio, IHS has operated under the radar since 2018 during a time when Americans have grown increasingly weary of illegal invaders. Undocumented and unscreened, they are overwhelming hospitals and emergency rooms, and arriving with children who generally do not speak English, vying for seats in already crowded public school classrooms. Americans are leery of the threat to public safety posed by adult illegal migrants. In a February poll by Monmouth University, 61% of those surveyed describe illegal immigration as “a very serious problem”.

IHS is one of 11 immigration service centers operated by the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) nationwide, and one of the few located in a rural location. Immigration Hope, according to its web site, has locations in Atlanta; Bloomington, Minn. (a Minneapolis suburb); Brooklyn, N.Y., where IHS launched in 2011; Gainesville, Fla.; and Santa Barbara, Calif.

The founding organization, EFCA, came into existence in 1950 after a merger of two U.S.-based EFC denominations with Swedish and Norwegian origins. As has been the case across numerous long standing religious denominations, EFCA has moved gradually down a path toward “woke” relativism and a so-called social justice gospel.

A professor on the faculty of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Jarvis Williams, attracted the attention of Baptist pastor Seth Brickley, who was raised and baptized in the Evangelical Free Church. Knowing that Williams has emerged in recent years as a social justice evangelist (some say he actually is part of a post-evangelical movement), Brickley was surprised when EFCA invited Williams to speak at a leadership conference. At the same conference, a member of the EFCA board of directors “encouraged pastors to promote political diversity, giving legitimacy to the harmful agenda of the Left,” wrote Brickley in a June 2023 article for TruthScript.com. The piece by Brickley, who left EFCA to pastor a traditional Baptist church seven years ago, was entitled, “Injustice In The Evangelical Free Church of America”.

A founder of the EFCA’s first Immigrant Hope ministry center, Roy Larsen, in a piece posted on an EFCA web site in 2011, did not attempt to veil its intent: “to give all immigrants among us — including the undocumented — the hope of the gospel, (and) help in finding a pathway to legal residency if possible (emphasis added).” In 2011, few Americans could have imagined that a sitting U.S. President and Democrat surrogates would willfully oversee an open border policy and permit the illegal crossing of tens of thousands per day, some encountered by border patrol, others not.

Even fewer could have foreseen the emergence of organizations deliberately setting up their own migrant processing centers near prime border entry points.

“Many of the country’s best-known (taxpayer funded) nonprofits, including Catholic Charities (photo nearby), the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the Red Cross, and United Way … and scores of lesser-known charities have instead worked to increase the number of illegal border-crossers dramatically,” wrote Lewis M. Andrews for The American Conservative on April 28, 2024.

“There is no special exemption (in U.S. law) which allows an employee of an American tax-exempt organization willfully to ignore his own country’s laws, as increasing numbers have been doing since Biden’s election. This is true no matter how well-intentioned that nonprofit staffer might imagine himself to be.”

The New York Post reported as long ago as 2022 that the federal government launders money through contracts with nonprofit charities to keep the illegal immigration pipeline flowing.

“Even before crossing the border, migrants still in Mexico are being handed debit cards loaded with $800 a month to enable them to pay for necessities,” reported former New York Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey in a July 2022 op-ed in the Post. “The gift cards are distributed by the non-profit Organization for Migration, thanks to money provided by the U.S. State Department.

“CARECEN, a far left group funded almost entirely by government contracts, and Catholic Charities … (provides) gift cards and food packages, direct migrants to shelters or hotel rooms, or helps them buy (air) tickets to other destinations. Who pays for all this? FEMA — the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a government agency that funnels money through the nonprofits.”

Immigration Hope Sandhills poses a threat to the security of Moore County by attracting migrants who will take all of the help they can get but typically have no inclination to assimilate or seek legal citizenship. A recent, tragic example is provided by the murder on June 17, 2024, of a Houston girl, age 12, who was strangled by two Venezuelan adult males who entered the U.S. through Eagle Pass near El Paso, Texas, earlier this year. After kidnapping Jocelyn Nungaray (photo nearby) in a convenience store, the men murdered her and hurled her body into a creek.

Walk in light

By Steve Woodward

Which is more frustrating? The sense we are getting that Duke Energy thinks power grid security should be turned over to government solutions? Or, that the Raleigh drag queens who infiltrated Southern Pines on December 3 are doubling down, promising to perform here in Moore County frequently next year?

Take your pick. As a practical matter, I guess I’d rather have lights shining on the continued decline of American culture. In which case, confidence that proactive measures will be identified and implemented to secure electric stations, close to home and nationwide, deserves priority over delusional dragsters and their rainbow protest mobs.

What is whistling down the alleys is word that law enforcement at all levels, while undeterred from trying to find the source of attacks on two Moore County sub-stations, are left holding a bag full of firearm shell casings and little else. (Some have surmised that the perps must have been less than sophisticated terror merchants for having failed to collect their shell casing. But does anyone really believe that Antifa- trained ninjas walk around with registered firearms? The casings are about as useful as discarded granola bar wrappers).

Meanwhile, local and state elected officials are said to be underwhelmed by Duke Energy’s upper management and support staff. Apparently, the Dukies feel comfortable restoring power but are less than inclined to restore confidence. Duke certainly dares not complain that security is unaffordable. In November, Duke announced it would be selling its commercial renewable energy assets for $4 billion — only five percent of its operations.

Duke Energy on December 1 bragged about giving away $1 million in social justice and racial equity grants to 40 organizations across North Carolina. Yet another investment that does everything but keep the lights on.

Rep. Richard Hudson, who soon will be sworn in as the NC-9 U.S. congressman (and will once again represent Moore County after a two-year break), is right to suggest that the federal government is long overdue in launching a nationwide initiative to protect America’s antiquated power infrastructure. But it’s hard to believe it’s going to happen in a nation that can’t/won’t secure it’s Southern border, and has willfully farmed out all of it’s manufacturing, textiles, prescriptions drugs and energy producing equipment to China.

Yet we are learning that the attack on Moore’s grid was not as random or isolated as first believed As reported by Wired.com, ”Duke Energy, reported gunfire at another facility, a hydroelectric power plant in South Carolina. And combined with two more incidents of hands-on sabotage of U.S. power facilities that occurred in Oregon and Washington in October and November, the vulnerability of the U.S. grid to old-fashioned physical harm has begun to seem like a serious threat.”

Meanwhile, Triangle-area drag “celebrity” Naomi Dix says she, too, is worried about attacks on power: on the power of LGBTQ deviants to attack the moral fabric of small-town communities. During a December 8 forum in Durham, Dix said that suspicions that the Moore power outage targeted her cast’s performance at The Sunrise Theater inspires her to bring additional shows here in 2023.

While Dix claims that drag shows are under attack — in Southern Pines the “attackers” read scriptures and prayed for the community at large — these so-called threats do not seem to be much of a deterrent to the hijacking of more and more community events. A December 10 “Christmas parade” in Shallotte, N.C., reports independent journalist A.P. Dillon, was interrupted by a leotard clad dance team led by a transgender coach who donned gay apparel that was merely a thong.

In Taylor, Texas, 35 miles northeast of Austin, Taylor Pride hoodwinked Christmas parade organizers when registering for a spot in the 2021 event. “The Taylor Area Ministerial Alliance … naively thought a group calling itself Taylor Pride was simply proud to be from Taylor,” wrote Taylor resident and political science professor Kevin Stuart in a December 9, 2022, op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.

So what happened this year? A new parade was created by a woke city management staff, acting without Taylor’s city council’s input. The 2022 parade ”ran right behind the traditional parade on December 3. It featured even more drag performers than last year, including one called Sedonya Face.“

Stuart concludes, “civic and cultural battles are sure to become more frequent and more intense” as social norms dissolve. “For those who simply want to work, worship God and raise their families in peace, this news is unwelcome.”

When darkness visits our towns we have no choice but to walk in the light.

Domestic jihad

By Steve Woodward

It was striking that Election Day and Veterans’ Day fell 72 hours apart last week. Both events, one a duty, the other a sacred observance, have reliably and boldly reflected American priorities and values across the years.

There was indeed much to celebrate among values-based conservatives after November 8, Election Day 2022. There was much for which to be thankful and sobered on November 11, Veterans’ Day.

In Moore County, the conservative values wave sent the left crashing into the jagged rocks of irrelevance. Voters overwhelmingly chose morality and stewardship when offered the alternative – cultural secularism and reckless spending. More on these triumphs later. Let’s simply say that where public schools and the Moore County Board of Education are concerned the status quo rubber stamp has been placed permanently in a drawer, and citizens who attend future meetings can rest assured they will not be subjected to metal detectors, masks, and intimidation by security personnel.

But the bigger picture is disheartening, and not for reasons about which the corrupt mainstream media would dare pontificate.

Two examples. Republicans did not seize iron clad majorities in the U.S. House and Senate because they ran too many tainted, Trump-backed “election denier” candidates who are not, and never will be, electable. BS.

Are we to accept this absurd notion even as The Big Steal 2.0 plays out before our eyes in Arizona, California, Nevada and Oregon? Election integrity is taking another hit out West, where “officials” are complacent and, likely, complicit.

The Left is not a wing of the Democrat party in 2022. The Left IS the Democrat party. Its candidates and its voters are not fixated on the so-called insurrection of January 6, 2021. Their fixation is abortion on demand, climate change, LBGTQ rights and gender fluidity. They do not care about our “institutions”, and they are not Never Trumpers. They barely noticed Trump because they never cared about low unemployment, peace through strength abroad, energy independence and restoring the greatness of America. Trump’s foe was and is corporate-owned media.

We can no more understand the radical Left than can we understand that which drives Islamic jihadists to commit acts of unthinkable terror. But we must acknowledge what drives them to vote, what inclines them to go all-in for John Fetterman (PA), Gretchen Witmer (MI), Mark Kelly (AZ), et al, allies of the Left who have no obvious popular appeal.

It’s not about ideology. They have no ideology. They have a religion that is untethered from Christianity, or even common sense. Common sense tells us that citizens of all political stripes would reject unbridled inflation, rising urban crime spreading into formerly “safe” neighborhoods, energy dependence on our enemies and crippling prices for gasoline and heating oil, a military significantly weakened by vaccine mandates, and endless January 6 commissions that crucify Trump but seek no remedies for election fraud.

Second example. It is the default mode among Americans of a certain generation to honor and salute military veterans. But the aforementioned Left views the military industrial complex, alive and well, as a channel through which wokeness and transgenderism will be further engrained. Thus, we honor our veterans one day a year but, should we lose focus, we will witness the demise of the brotherhoods that sustained them in times of war and peace. The Left is in charge in the upper ranks. The faces of valor they see in the black-and-white photos from past World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, leave them cold. They are not moved by these men and women who fought unconditionally. The woke military brass of the 21^st Century prefers conditions for those who serve. They must be vaccinated, indoctrinated, and emancipated from the past. Duty is not inherent; it is irrelevant. Duty gets in the way.

Savor we must the victories gained this first week in November that will subdue the march of the Left. Treasure we must military valor of ages past. But the stark reality of this moment is that we no longer can take for granted the absolute certainty of Election Day “results”, or the sanctity of future missions of those sworn to defend our homeland from enemies foreign and domestic.

In fact, domestic enemies are thriving in a perpetual open season, and they know it.

Alternative reality

By John Rowerdink

President Joe Biden’s August 31 speech on the Afghanistan withdrawal was ripe with statements requiring further examination.

He says it’s an amazing success but does that comport with what you’ve seen?
Then, in the next breath, he says there was no way to end this in some semblance of an honorable, organized way. It can’t be both an amazing success and an unavoidable mess. Which one have you seen unfold over the last couple of weeks? Who are you going to believe — Biden or your lying eyes?
He continues to confuse the decision and support for ending the war with the disgusting way he did it.
He continues to blame President Trump for this mess. Here are two questions about that:
- With all we know about President Trump, do you think he would let himself be viewed as weak by the rest of the world?
- Biden reversed all kinds of other decisions Trump made but he left this one in place. So where does that buck stop?
If you see the list of military equipment we left behind, it will make you sick.
How could the president, our diplomats and our military brass be so wrong about the Afghan army’s ability to hold the country for a few years? Did we not work with these people for 20 years?
He said we would get every single American out before we left. Did we do that? No.
We said we would protect the thousands of Afghans who worked with us and get them out if they wanted. Did we do that? No.
We got about 123,000 people out. 5,000 of them were Americans who wanted to leave; 6,000 of them were our troops; and by all accounts, not many of them were the 60,000 Afghans who helped us during the war (give him 12,000 of them). Who were the other 100,000 that we got out and how were they selected? How good was our rushed vetting process? Did we just take whoever the Taliban decided to allow into the airport? What’s the chance that some of them are terrorists?
We gave the Taliban a list of the Afghans who helped us during the war. What do you suppose they’ll do with that list now that we’re gone?
He says we will still get these people out. Yeah, right.
He talks about our support for women and girls. Go back to Afghanistan in a few months and ask women and girls how they’re doing under the Taliban.
In the days ahead, watch how many of our dollars the Biden administration is going to give the Taliban. So we fight them for 20 years, we then quit and leave them billions of dollars of our military equipment while we plead for them to help us. Then after we’re gone, we send them more taxpayer dollars. How disgusting is that? Is that what he calls an amazing success?
His military advisors wanted him to leave 2,500 troops there to assist the Afghan army, which they had been doing for many months with no loss of American life. The bipartisan Afghanistan Study Group in Congress recommended that we leave troops there. Military testimony to their 2020 report warned that a withdrawal of the remaining 2,500 U.S. service members from Afghanistan would result in “catastrophic consequences for the security and stability of Afghanistan, including the potential resurgence of terrorist organizations that could threaten the U.S. homeland”.
Our NATO allies wanted us to stay and continue to support this NATO mission.
We have 28,000 troops in South Korea more than 60 years after the Korean War, successfully keeping the peace. We have 320,000 troops in Europe more than 70 years after the end of World War II. Was it really so hard to keep 2,500 in Afghanistan?
But no, Biden wanted zero and this screwed up mess is what we ended up with.
The President of the United States is living in an alternative reality