religious persecution

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.

Turned to ashes

By Steve Woodward

“Progressives think that hating not only (Donald) Trump but all conservatives settles their debts and cleanses them of sin,” writes Lance Morrow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “It gives them a certain moral luster.”

But Morrow does not go so far as to dismiss their hatred as off-the-rails hysteria. Like many who never became comfortable with Trump’s ascendency to the White House, who were quick to cringe over a Rosie O’Donnell tweet but slow to celebrate a policy triumph, he gives progressives something of the benefit of the doubt.

“Whatever else one may say about Jan. 6, it was one of the stupidest afternoons in American history,” Morrow writes. “(Four centuries ago) Russia’s new (religious) orthodoxy eventually burned the archpriest (patron of the ‘old believers’) at the stake. The 21st-century left would do the same to Mr. Trump if it could. It may not be necessary. He’s a burnt-out case, an exhausted volcano, in Disraeli’s phrase. Let Palm Beach have him.”

This is where Morrow misses the source of the anger that sent thousands to Washington two months after the curious developments surrounding the Nov. 3, 2020, election. Their swarming of our Nation’s Capital never was driven by Trump’s “rhetoric”, the central talking point of the Left serving media. These were patriots, not zombies. It was fueled entirely by the many cases of voter fraud that were mounting ahead of and during Georgia’s Jan. 5 special elections for U.S. Senate seats (cases which in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania are being fortified by audits and investigations).

Nevertheless, the stupidity to which Mr. Morrow eludes in his June 18 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “America’s Old Believers Need to Move Past Donald Trump”, I would acknowledge could be properly assigned to those massive throngs gathered on and near The Ellipse on January 6.

Why might I agree with Mr. Morrow’s harsh criticism? Because many – including myself — did not layer adequately to protect themselves from bone-chilling, gusty winds as President Trump spoke. Quite stupid, for sure. Thus, plans to parade to the U.S. Capitol were scrapped in the name of practical concerns such as warmth and restrooms. It is a shame. Had thousands more trekked to the Capitol to assemble and hear from speakers – as was the intent by organizers – the contrast between militants assigned to “storm” the building and the rest of the assembled would have been even more stark. It would have been quite obvious that the vast majority had come to rally peacefully and to display unity.

But if we give credence to Mr. Morrow’s conclusion, that some of these acted stupidly, how then do we characterize the Marxist rioters, looters, arsonists and murderers who devastated American cities across a long violent summer of 2020? Are theirs the actions of merely stupid, misguided youth? While the Trump era certainly is not reduced, as Mr. Morrow contends, to smoldering embers; the burnt-out small businesses, restaurants and public squares of urban America are today boarded-up, vandalized memories, ashes scattered to the winds.

Trump 2.0

By Steve Woodward

What I learned at the North Carolina Republican Party Convention in Greenville:

Ernie’s Sub Shop (since 1980) is legitimate, and the best alternative to the NC GOP’s offerings, which left delegates craving airline food.

The ballroom of the Greenville Hilton is a cramped and stifling venue in which conducting a convention is not advisable. It surely was designed by a radical Lefty because it divides people and limits their ability to be heard.

President Donald Trump is reflective but not defeated six months after his inexplicable “loss”, and no longer opposes Joe Bidden as a “sleepy” adversary but as an enemy of our nation’s core values.

His Saturday night (June 5) address to dehydrated convention delegates and donors was, in many ways, vintage Trump. Our “45″ chided the media (which was assembled en masse), China (and its clear role in unleashing the Wuhan virus), and the Biden administration’s already collapsing economy and stature around the world.

What Trump did not do to any significant degree is belabor Biden’s obvious physical and mental limitations, other than mentioning Biden’s talent at falling “up” the stairs to the door of Air Force One. He pointed to the debacle caused by Dr. Anthony Fauci’s deceit, which fueled Wuhan virus hysteria. He acknowledged that he made a huge “bet” when directing the federal government to underwrite the launch of Operation Warp Speed, which ultimately delivered on his promise of virus vaccines in record time by sidestepping normal Food and Drug Administration testing.

Those like me who were at the White House ellipse on January 6, shivering in bitter cold, and in the Greenville Convention Center on June 5 shivering under blasting air conditioning, could not have escaped the conclusion that Trump has bounced back from the November election outcome more so than many of us.

That is reason enough to enter the road to 2022 and beyond rejuvenated and determined. The man who remains the heart and soul of the Republican Party is counting on that. (Not to mention the inspiration we can draw from South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who spoke with the eloquence of a leader and the common sense of a rancher during her June 5 convention luncheon appearance).

As demonstrated in Greenville, even if Trump never again runs for elected office, the sheer force of his personality will assist state parties in raising millions of dollars to support Republican campaigns. NC GOP chairman Michael Whatley informed delegates that Trump’s presence guaranteed that last Saturday’s fundraiser would reap the largest collection in party history. By four times, in fact.

In the unlikely event that Trump decides not to run for President in 2024, he will have positioned the Republican Party’s conservatives to rise up in defiance of the Socialist tsunami sweeping upon our shores. As our culture crumbles, constitutional rights slip away, religious freedoms evaporate, inflation soars and economic growth stagnates, we must look to the Trump example. We stand firm. We don’t back down. We elect candidates who execute on their promises from day one. We make America great again. Again.

One path

“Blessed is the man who (will not walk) in the counsel of the ungodly.”
Psalm 1

By Steve Woodward

Americans increasingly are asked to chose a path. Go in one direction or the other. We must chose.

Apart from earners of university degrees during the past 20 years or so, many Americans (74 million, at least, whose votes for Donald Trump’s re-election were miraculously counted) see but one choice: protect and defend the United States in which we were blessed to be born and raised. The alternative choice, formerly a decision about voting (Republican or Democrat), is the certain dissolution of these United States. From the mountains to the prairies.

The Democratic Party is not any longer concerned with sustaining democracy. It has been subverted, taken over, by the Left. The party of slavery in the 19th century is the party of Socialism in the 21st century. Today’s Democrat Party, notes radio talk host Chris Plante, is closer to Lee Harvey Oswald than John F. Kennedy on the ideological spectrum.

“Reaching across the aisle,” was how lawmaking got done in a bygone Washington. Today, it’s impossible. Arms can not reach across a chasm.

The choice has become ever more stark, to the point where choosing is not viable. Look no further than what Biden-Harris voters chose. A southern border humanitarian crisis. Childhoods ravaged by isolation and neglect during an ill-advised lockdown of American life. Even amid recovery from the Wuhan virus’s economic devastation, businesses that can not operate because employees, intoxicated by government “paychecks”, refuse to come back to work. Israel facing a scorched spring triggered by America’s betrayal, erasing the blossoming of peace under Trump.

The 2020 election outcomes, from the White House on down, laid bare that we still have a two-party political system but only one choice going forward if we hope to recognize our nation a decade hence.

“This is evil that we’re facing,” said 2022 U.S. Senate candidate Mark Walker, a Republican from Guilford County, NC, of the Left.

A former pastor, Walker referenced another Psalm, Psalm 139, during a recent Sandhills visit. “If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!They speak of you with evil intent.”

Or speak not at all. Issuing a proclamation on May 5, the National Day of Prayer, Biden did not reference God. Read more. He did, however, urge a coming together as a nation (except if you see someone not wearing a mask, berate and assault him).

The guidance of the Psalmist to reject “the counsel of the ungodly” seems a particularly timeless piece of advice amid the rapid emergence of the Left’s new obsession: Critical Race Theory. The most important thing to know is that nothing is theoretical about it. If a circle of tedious academicians were merely writing papers about CRT, they would be properly relegated to obscurity.

But it’s worse than that. It is creeping into K-12 curricula in counties and states across the nation. To ensure that CRT achieves maximum saturation, the Biden administration is proposing a national mandate through the U.S. Department of Education. The essence of CRT is that public education can not exist in its current state, that it must be overhauled so that every element of learning is presented through the lens of race and the nation’s shameful “white supremacy”.

“The Biden administration now plans to supercharge (imposition of CRT) through federal rules and regulations, access to billions in taxpayer funding (for school systems), and the imprimatur of the federal government,” writes Lindsey Burke and Inez Stepman for The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal.

Karl Marx never revealed the end game of Marxism for the same reason that CRT supporters push back on their many critics. Yet the CRT lexicon does not veil its objectives: Rejecting “whiteness”; identifying “micro-aggressions”; “racial mapping”; locating where a given teacher lands on an “oppression matrix”; and encouraging “equity teams” in classrooms (because equity sounds similar to equality, although it is not similar).

Christianity long ago was banned from the classroom. Now, the Left is coming for the rest of our values as Americans, and using children as its pawns to complete the job.

In a 1964 speech during a rally for Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, an up-and-coming figure named Ronald Reagan warned that we had come to a crossroads, a time for choosing. The choice he described was not merely Goldwater or incumbent Lyndon Johnson, and it was not even as black and white as Republican or Democrat, back when the differences were narrowly ideological. The choice was the American way or Communism. It was the specter of the latter that had driven Reagan out of the Democratic Party.

The choice in 1964 involved a threat from a distant land and its dictators. The choice before us today is the threat to our God given freedom posed by the power obsessed, Socialist, ungodly Left. It is not a distant threat. It is surrounding us. The threat is made worse because so many do not recognize it, even after a year of unprecedented Wuhan virus tyranny.

Reagan’s warning so long ago rings with alarming truth: “When the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically.”

Unless we choose the only viable path.

The greatest force

By Steve Woodward

Martin Luther King, Jr., a champion of black equality, urged that Americans be judged by “the content of their character”, regardless of skin color or ethnicity.
American history, as well as the history of mankind, has known untold numbers of people who have occupied this planet while demonstrating a complete character void.

In contrast, the great American experiment has revealed the goodness endowed in us by our Creator, and has seen America in a relative blink of an eye become the greatest force for good and redemption the world has ever known.

This is the overarching lesson that every school child should be taught despite the flaws of humanity that have scarred our history. The character that is our foundation always has overcome our shortcomings and sins against God.

Therefore, in the 21st century, we have a duty to oppose those who seek to present America’s history as little more than a story of perpetuated racism and inequality.

If we fail to reject the hijacking of public education curricula by Marxists and Socialists, we will have destroyed education and transformed classrooms into indoctrination centers.

And, sadly, this hijacking is well under way before our eyes.