Drain The Swamp – RESOLVE

20 + 1

By Steve Woodward

Although far too many Americans know nothing about our nation’s history, we would not have one — a nation or a history — were it not for a determined collection of men, who might in another era have been celebrated for their intellect but were, because of the time in which they lived, best known for their courage.

The Founding Fathers. I suppose, today, we might encounter more than a few in academia who dismiss these men as racist white supremacists. They were indeed supreme. They envisioned a nation born of independence from tyranny — an idea that in that day was seen as ludicrous.

Here we are in 2023. History is repeating. Twenty members of the U.S. House of Representatives gathered their ranks, stood in the breech and, in the spirit of our founders, said, HELL NO!

It has been hilarious to watch cable TV morons calling out the “chaos” being imposed on our government because 20 Americans, duly elected, decided to crush the status quo. Who elected them? Why were they elected? To carry out the will of citizens across the land who have no voice.

The 15 rounds of voting that resulted in Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becoming Speaker of the House were not a side show, were not disruptive, were not scandalous. The Declaration of Independence was not etched with a rubber stamp. It was fought for by wise individuals who knew how to deliberate.

The “20” have restored the fight inside the corridors of power and in doing so honor our Founders. Among them was North Carolina’s Dan Bishop, who represented Moore County during his just concluded term and was elected to represent a different district (NC-08) in November.

During 11 rounds of voting for Speaker, Bishop stood firm against McCarthy. On January 5, Bishop (photo nearby) nominated young up-and-comer Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL). After “the 20” squeezed McCarthy’s camp on concession after concession to empower conservatives on key House committees, Bishop relented on the 12th vote and swung to McCarthy — but not without having the last word.

“Let me help my colleagues in the minority understand, we are doing the peoples’ business,” Bishop said. “We are committed to (bring) change to this institution that has lost its way. It is epitomized in the $1.7 trillion omnibus rammed through this institution just two weeks ago. Ladies and gentlemen, I came to fix this broken system.”

Challenges to McCarthy led by Reps. Lauren Boebert (CO), Matt Gaetz (FL) and Chip Roy (TX), among others, were not personal in nature. They were designed to restore order to the governing process and end the operation of the House as a “fiefdom”, as observed by Real America’s Voice contributor Frank Gaffney.

To prove that he is serious and was not merely caving under the intense scrutiny imposed by Freedom Caucus zealots (which are needed in greater supply), McCarthy now must shepherd through an extensive “rules package” that he agreed to to preserve his ambitions to be Speaker. These are not ground breaking new rules that will remake the House but are, in fact, a return to fundamental tenets of governance. In other words, a complete denunciation of Pelosi-era iron fist rule.

Accepting his ascendency to Speaker in the wee hours of January 7, McCarthy revealed that there was a 21st individual who helped sway the outcome. He also is known as 45. President Donald Trump. McCarthy said Trump influenced a scenario in which five others joined Florida’s Gaetz in voting “present” on the 15th vote for Speaker, which lowered the number of votes McCarthy needed to prevail.

McCarthy praised Trump for being “with me from the beginning.” On that point the Speaker missed the point. It is more plausible to assume that Trump’s artful dealing behind the scenes intended to defang McCarthy and impose rules on House conduct that will contain impulses among uni-party Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) to betray conservatism.

Seems that rumors of MAGA’s death were greatly exaggerated.

Betrayal

By Steve Woodward

North Carolina Republican Party chairman Michael Whatley described Sen. Richard Burr’s vote to convict President Donald Trump after his Senate impeachment trial as “shocking and disappointing”.

Allow me to respectfully disagree. Burr’s track record during the Trump era strongly suggested he would, ultimately, join six other Republicans in voting against Trump’s certain acquittal. Nothing shocking about it. Disappointing? How about revolting? Or, vile. And, perhaps worst of all, calculated.

Who can doubt that a career swamp creature such as Burr would be tempted by a deal with the Devil? Consider this sheer coincidence: an investigation of Burr’s trading of 33 stocks timed around Wuhan Virus vaccine development was dropped by the Department of Justice the moment the Biden administration seized power. Or, perhaps, no coincidence. Wink, wink.

While the media and the Left conveniently forget about events of a week, or a month, or even years ago, as if they never happened (Ukraine’s extortion of $1 billion through then-Vice President Biden), even Republicans seem to not recall the manner in which the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Burr before his forced resignation amid insider trading allegations, aided and abetted the Russian hoax.

The Federalist’s Tristan Justice, writing in May 2020, referred to the revelations about the committee’s conduct in an early 2018 column put forth by a Federalist colleague.

Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway wrote in March that the recent (stock trading) scandal is only the latest reason Burr should be stripped of his powerful chairmanship after perpetuating the grand Russian collusion conspiracy theory implicating President Donald Trump was an agent of the Kremlin.

“The only notable thing to have happened in that committee over the course of the Russia collusion hoax was the arrest of one of its staffers for lying regarding his leaks of information to reporters he was intimate with,” Hemingway wrote.

But Burr assured Americans in an April 2020 statement that the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Russian “collusion” was solid and indisputable.

Burr: “In reviewing the ICA, the Senate Intelligence Committee looked at two key questions: first, did the final product meet the initial task given by the President, and second, was the analysis supported by the intelligence presented? We found the ICA met both criteria. The ICA reflects strong tradecraft, sound analytical reasoning, and proper justification of disagreement in the one analytical line where it occurred.”

The fatal flaw in this assessment is that the ICA was informed from the outset by an infamous document known as the Steele Dossier. The genesis of the Steele Dossier discredited it from day one.

“The Clinton campaign and the (Democrat National Committee) paid 12 million dollars to an American company called Fusion GPS for the purpose of digging up dirt on then candidate, Donald Trump,” writes former CIA station chief Brad Johnson, founder of Americans for Intelligence Reform. “It was Fusion GPS that then hired Steele. In so doing GPS would have obviously kept much of that $12 million for themselves. Neither the Clinton campaign, nor the DNC directly hired Steele.

“There has never been any announcement, or evidence presented, as to how much of the $12 million GPS kept for itself, and how much it paid Steele to further the ‘opposition research project’.”

Here is the bottom line on Richard Burr. Career politician. Complicit in advancing the Russia collusion hoax to bring down President Trump. Although not alone on Capitol Hill, not opposed to “selling off up to $1.7 million in stocks following classified congressional briefings on the coming pandemic from the novel Wuhan coronavirus” (The Federalist, May 14 2020). One of seven Senate Republicans whom history will record as voting to impeach a private citizen in defiance of the Constitution.

Just be glad you are not his book agent.

Channeling C.S. Lewis

By Steve Woodward

Following Nazi Germany’s relentless bombing campaign in 1940 and 1941, Londoners would face many more years of hardship until World War II ended in 1945. There was fear of occupation. There was rationing. And, everywhere, there was destruction.

Through it all, Brits had come to depend on the reassuring counsel of C.S. Lewis, arguably among the most famous writers of the era, first as a novelist and by the 1940s owed to his writings on Christianity. The Irish-born, former atheist was an accidental celebrity to say the least. The Village Chapel’s Pastor John Jacobs, a Lewis expert, says he seemed to appeal to readers across the spectrum of religious allegiances because he wrote about his newfound faith as a lay person, not as a theologian.

In 1941 the British Broadcasting Corporation, through its director of religious broadcasting, asked Lewis if he would agree to deliver brief radio commentaries to its listening audience. He accepted. In the years to follow, the 15 minutes Londoners spent with Lewis on Sunday nights were viewed as sacred; an appointment not to be missed.

The gift Lewis gave to his war-weary citizens was quite the opposite of the inspiring, rhetorical flourishes delivered by Winston Churchill. Lewis made common sense out of Christianity and made it relevant to the vulnerable.

“What’s the sense of saying the enemy is in the wrong,” Lewis said, “unless right is a real thing?”

Here in 2021, do we not repeatedly ask this question, knowing that it is the central question? But I would ask another question first. Do we have a yet undiscovered C.S. Lewis in our midst in the 21st Century in America?

We have Anthony Fauci, a Swamp creature annoyed by all of us because we want to live as free citizens. We have Rush Limbaugh. We as conservatives are blessed to have Rush as our ideological voice but the other side was thrilled by Limbaugh’s lung cancer diagnosis a year ago. We have Franklin Graham, who honors his father’s legacy by delivering God’s love tangibly to the world’s suffering. We have Tucker Carlson, to whom we owe our gratitude for crushing hypocrites and exposing deception at every turn.

But what America desperately needs today is a C.S. Lewis, a scholar who dreaded the scholarly, an author who wrote not for peers but for real people, and who stepped forward as a servant of God at a moment in history when no else could have served as well. Imagine, today, fringe talk show host Bill Maher, a witty, far Left atheist, converting to Christianity. That would be a wake up call.

First, it must be said that Great Britain, in 1941, identified entirely as a Christian nation. In 2021, the U.S. is a Judeo-Christian nation teetering on the brink of becoming a Socialist nation in which religion has long been marginalized and is increasingly persecuted, even despised.

If we have in our midst a C.S. Lewis he will not be invited by the establishment media to come forward to console us. He will emerge at a considerable risk to his livelihood, his security and his reputation.

Perhaps we delude ourselves thinking there is one such person in this social media age. Perhaps the answer to our dilemma is not found in a person but in a chorus.

Why unity?

By Steve Woodward

In his inauguration speech, incoming President of the United States Joe Biden intoned that he seeks “the most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity.”

Upon which his administration took steps to support more abortion of babies, more gender reassignment rights, less energy independence and more mandates to crush the U.S. economy under the guise of “saving” us all from the Wuhan Virus.

This raises the question: What is unity? And another question: Why do we desire it?

Should we sign on for unity if it strips us of our religious liberties guaranteed under the Constitution? Should we uphold absolute unity if it empowers rogue, unemployed young Americans to rampage through cities, hurling bricks through storefronts?

Unity has to be two-sided, yet policy executive Ryan Anderson notes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that Biden has made clear that his administration will not negotiate on transgenderism.

“Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time,” Biden said. “There is no room for compromise.”

Unity is the Left’s end game because it actually equates to submission. If you want harmony, do as we say. But if Republican Conservatives are honest — there a few of us — we shine a light on the hypocrisy of this unity narrative. The Left is guided only by radicalism. The Left has no use for the Constitution. The Left can not fathom that our nation is founded “under God”. The Left seeks to overturn the First Amendment so that we no longer can expose a corrupt American media.

Unity is smoke and mirrors. The president of the Ethics and Policy Center said it best.

“While the moniker ‘cultural warrior’ seems to be applied only to those on the right,” writes Ryan Anderson in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “We aren’t the ones who imposed abortion on demand up to and even during birth, forced Catholic nuns to pay for abortifacients, redefined marriage, harassed evangelical bakers, or declared it ‘unlawful discrimination’ to refuse to put a confused child on puberty-blocking drugs.”

Unity? How?

Liberty and death

By Steve Woodward

A physician and UCLA academic writing in The Wall Street Journal lays out the near future in the clearest terms: “If we can’t shut down (the United States) for 18 months on the gamble that an effective (COVID-19) vaccine will arrive, how long will it be worth committing millions of families to poverty and uprooting lives, education and every other part of the economy?“

If a life is not worth living, is it worth saving?

This is the question no one wants to ask in a thriving free society. But is must be asked.

Give me liberty or give me death. This is the original bumper sticker assigned to the American experiment. But does anyone actually embrace it? We will know soon.

Because liberty is being drained even as the Swamp stands strong. Americans are yielding rights and freedom because one person in a community, a person with many health issues, might contract COVID-19 and die. This is the justification for governors — who are more capable of denying us liberty than we previously knew — decreeing shut downs of churches, restaurants and other thriving businesses. Stay safe! Yet America was not built on the presumption of safety. We are a strong nation because we believe in God and his will, which will deliver different fates across humanity. We are a great nation because we have sent young men and women into battle, knowing many would not come back, We did not assure them of safety. We did not say, “Sign up and stay safe”.

If a life is not worth living, is it worth saving? Ronald Reagan famously said, “Our’s is a rendezvous with destiny.” And if you doubt it, look up and face destiny. Reagan didn’t say we would like it, the rendezvous. But here we are.

Is it a choice or an obligation? To preserve liberty even in the face of a health crisis? Do we stand by as the federal government plunges our society into debt? Do we stand by as governments prohibit us to assemble to worship on Easter Sunday, and beyond? Do we relinquish our God given right to be free of government tyranny?

No one knows how many will die in the weeks ahead. But now is not the time to cower in fear. Our founding fathers risked everything, their careers, their riches, their way of life, and very lives, to give birth to our nation. Today, our nation is just getting started, and again it faces turmoil.

We must ask, as did our founders, why do we want to live if life is shackled by tyrants who claim to know better than we, who threaten penalties if we hug a fellow human being, visit a restaurant or worship inside a church?

Give me liberty. Death is inevitable.