wuhan virus – RESOLVE

Nice try

By Steve Woodward

I was wrong. After Governor Roy Cooper issued a statewide restaurant lockdown order — without consent as required by the state’s constitution — on March 17, 2020, I was asked to articulate my greatest fear about what was to come.

The topic was local restaurants. All of them were shut down at 5 p.m. on St. Patrick’s Day. Some immediately accommodated carry-out only. Others were not ready for an overnight transition.

My biggest fear was “that they won’t be here” in a few months. I feared many of our restaurants, both long established and newcomers, would go out of business. I was wrong. We lost very few in comparison to the nationwide averages; several reinvented themselves and soldiered on, adding delivery options, improving carry-out operations. A few new places opened despite the lockdowns and are thriving.

In early 2020, local restaurants battled to survive on take-out orders and gift cards.

They did so despite promises of federal support evaporating. They did so despite banks demonstrating they were ill prepared to keep up with demand for funds moving through the pipeline from Capitol Hill to Main Street. They did so even as fattened unemployment checks disincentivized staffs from returning to work as restrictions on dining eased.

Local government finally awakened to the dire circumstances after a few vocal elected leaders stood up and proposed expanded outdoor dining, using parking spaces that often are unoccupied during evening hours. Southern Pines led the way; Pinehurst soon followed.

My forecast was wrong because I did not give enough credit to living in Moore County. We were under the same tyrannical lockdowns as the other 99 counties, but, apparently, we are blessed to live in communities with fewer hysterical residents than those who bowed at Cooper’s feet in places like Mecklenburg and Wake. Our locals recognized that adhering to a stay-at-home “order” was not practical and, potentially, the first step toward economic suicide and sweeping malaise.

Many, not all, ventured out to visit restaurants they’d never tried before. They learned that carry-out dining is not such a bizarre alternative, and when local dining spots added delivery options using smartphone apps we all discovered ever more great places across our dining spectrum. Additionally, customers heeded the call to buy gift cards with every order, to infuse more cash into the restaurants. Our Moore Republican Party then collected stacks of those cards and delivered them to frontline healthcare professionals at FirstHealth. A classic win-win.

Restaurant owners and chefs rarely wear their ideological persuasions on their sleeves. But we staunch conservatives share in common with these now heroic figures qualities that surely brought us together during the slog that began one year ago this week. We are capitalists. We believe in and defend personal responsibility, loyalty and liberty as protection from the iron boot of government. We prefer to earn a living, rather than living to be bailed out.

This story does not have a feel-good happy ending. Not by a long shot. One owner told me his retirement plans were set back five years. Many of the charitable pursuits that bind our restaurants to the community have ground to a halt, which means those in need have been temporarily left wanting. Some restaurants that closed temporarily are now closed forever, taking jobs with them. And owners of dining establishments and other retail businesses now know how easy it is for government tyrants to lock us down without regard for consequences, immediate or long term. American resilience proved too much for the tyrants this time. Nice try.

Thankfully, that is not the only awakening trigged by China’s unleashing of a global virus. There is this: The pursuit of absolute safety is the enemy of freedom, and a futile pursuit, indeed.

Miscalculation

By Steve Woodward

Set this scene in your mind. Two high level Chinese government apparatchiks, chain smoking in a conference room. Their frustration levels are high.

What is it about this “American spirit”? These American farmers keep farming even when we punish their exporting potential with tariffs. Their manufacturers keep producing. Their consumers keep buying. Their citizens keep worshipping a god. And they elected Donald Trump, a man who mocks us, as their President.

We have flooded the United States with addictive fentanyl. We have flooded their pharmaceutical industry with tainted generic drugs. We have robbed their corporations of intellectual property. We have compromised them at the highest levels of their government. We own Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And Biden’s son.

What more can we do? Cigarettes at the ready, they contemplate more deeply.

One inhales a cloud of nicotine. “We have the lab in Wuhan.”

Seven months into the Great Wuhan Virus Lockdown in the United States and across the world, intelligent people have attempted to connect the dots between the origin of the virus and the objectives of its perpetrators. These attempts repeatedly are shot down by the Left in our country as conspiratorial, anti-science and, in all cases, irrelevant because the virus is here, and we’re all doomed. And, since it’s convenient let’s just blame President Trump.

Maybe Chinese researchers were not actually so evil to the core that they willfully unleashed a mysterious virus across the planet. Maybe it was accidental. But what is no accident is how quickly the Left and the corrupt American media turned on a dime to exploit the virus right on cue in an election year.

The Biden “campaign” is calculating that it can run out the clock, blame Trump for all of the collateral damage inflicted by the Wuhan Virus, then sit back and let the media pile on. It is so confident that this will play out that even the emergence of Hunter Biden’s scandalous business deals with China and Ukraine have been no cause for overt panic. (Hopefully, this week’s presidential debate will force Joe Biden to explain why he brokered these deals for his son and the Biden family).

Federal, state and local Democrat candidates, incumbents and challengers alike, are supremely confident as well. As long as they have a death toll and daily cases to magnify, they will assure themselves that Americans will oblige and vote for Democrats as a vote for life and a permanent presumption of absolute safety. They’re just as certain voters will ignore the Left’s endorsement of Black Lives Matter’s Marxist anarchists.

We watched last week, during a pro-freedom rally ahead of the Moore County Board of Education’s scheduled meeting as Democrat U.S. House candidate (NC-52) Lowell Simon shouted down a registered nurse for daring to inform the assembled of his recent experiences. The nurse said cases of patients being treated for Wuhan Virus minus accompanying health conditions at Moore Regional numbered no more than eight. “That’s a lie,” retorted Simon, his rage masked, literally.

The Left can swarm our communities with virtue signaling mask police all it wants, but it will never succeed at masking the carnage imposed on our country and its largely healthy people when it leveraged the Wuhan Virus so deceptively so many months ago.

There is something else spreading as a result: Outrage among people lining up even now at early voting sites. Citizens are outraged by a crippled economy that was robust seven months ago; outraged by the devastation of Governor Roy Cooper’s savage lockdowns, which are compromising public education, forcing parents to quit jobs to stay home with their kids; and outraged by a Democrat-infested Moore school board that says K-5 students will not return to school on a regular schedule until January 2021, at the earliest.

We are “science deniers,” scolds the Left, hiding behind science-driven theories proven wrong so often. But what they cannot hide has been their lust to impose tyranny on the American people, and they’ve miscalculated the fallout. You read it here.

Proactive patriots

By Steve Woodward

It is understandable that millions of Americans do not know that the Middle East’s sovereign nation of the United Arab Emirates in August established diplomatic, “normalized” relations with Israel. Bahrain followed earlier this month. Saudi Arabia’s royal family is debating a similar decision.

The United States is leading the discussions and brokering the historic breakthroughs. The New York Times, believe it or not, acknowledges that the Bahrain-Israel pact “leaves open the possibility that more Arab states will follow.”

For Americans who’ve followed closely the game changing achievements domestically and abroad during the Trump administration since 2017, re-electing President Donald Trump this November is a no-brainer.

But as the countdown to early voting dwindles to a matter of days (beginning Oct. 15) there is much to talk about beyond the realm of U.S. foreign policy and America’s fast recovering economy in the era of Wuhan Virus hysteria.

When we look over the two-page sample ballot now in circulation there are 31 other choices to make beyond President and Vice President. A ballot really is much more than a roster of names and multiple choices. It is a series of questions: How much does a strong economy matter to you? Do you demand choices in matters of health care, education for our children and energy consumption? Or, are you OK with higher taxes to punish capitalists, fewer thriving charter schools and severe environmental restrictions impacting daily life?

With the radical Left now firmly in control of a 21st Century Democrat party, these questions do not exaggerate the choices before us as Americans in Moore County, N.C. And the radical left is deeply embedded in our state. They came here for the quality of life, the moderate climate and the business friendly environment. But when the welcome mat was rolled up, they set about to transform and “re-imagine”, and here we are. Living in the American South but occupied by the Left.

Vote the ballot, all the way, from back to front. Or front to back. Please finish the ballot. In order to do this, you just might need to become a proactive patriot. You will need to “read up” on the candidates who, if elected, will protect North Carolina from a silent coup. We have a web site and a link therein that will introduce you to all of the fine men and women running to be re-elected or elected for the first time. Here it is: moore.nc.gop.

Silent coup? Marxist militants aligned with Black Lives Matter are not silent. In fact, they’re quite the opposite. But while their terrorism fills up our new cycles, their enablers quietly, silently, funnel millions of dollars into races for North Carolina Governor, U.S. House of Representatives, state Supreme Court, N.C. Secretary of State and Superintendent of Public Education. And they sit back and count on us to block out the “noise” of election ads, complain about yard signs and, worst of all, to fail to flip the ballot over and vote to the end.

Countless American patriots have risen to the challenges of their times. They’ve risked everything. They’ve sacrificed. They’ve taken up arms to oppose tyranny. They’ve died on desolate battlefields. Today, we are asked only to read, to be informed, to comprehend the magnitude of the choices before us. At the worst, this effort might subject you to a paper cut. Take that chance.

Let’s surprise these arrogant manipulators. Let’s make their heads explode on November 4, the morning after Election Day. Let’s not give them the ability to declare the races are “too close to call”.

Let’s celebrate as the virulent Left tears away its masks to scream to the heavens as defeat courses through its veins, at last. And, in that moment, the virus will disappear from our daily discourse.

Censored

By Steve Woodward

This post is comprised of two Letters to the Editor submitted to The Pilot. To date, they have not been published despite their timely subject matter.

Written August 24, 2020

How many times an hour does mainstream media breathlessly remind us about the deadly coronavirus? Every chance it gets, with an emphasis on “cases”, any one of which might prove to be, you guessed it, deadly, and could indicate a new wave of positives. “Could” and “might” are vital armaments in virus weaponization and the war on common sense.

Perhaps if we paid serious attention to what else is actually deadly we’d recognize that Dr. Anthony Fauci would not have the market on fear mongering cornered. Have we seen these headlines very often? Ever?

Deadly Black Lives Matter Marxists fuel gun violence in Louisville, New York, Portland, Seattle.

Deadly Chicago weekend: five killed, 61 shot.

Deadly Sanctuary Cities see surge in crime, murders, disease spread.

Deadly Planned Parenthood performed record 345,000-plus abortions during 2017-18.

Attacks on police officers on the rise nationwide with often deadly outcomes.

Potentially deadly side effects of depression amid virus mounting.

A drug with 60-year record touted by President Trump, hydroxychloroquine, could be deadly. Virus vaccine expected to be approved in months, 100% safe, should be mandatory.

President Obama endures media firestorm as deadly 2009-10 H1N1 pandemic claims lives of at least 540 children in U.S.

As vice president, Biden supported Obama’s refusal to secure Benghazi compound resulting in deadly consequences on September 11, 2012.

These are just a few of the many headlines rarely written or remembered. What this year’s hysteria is rooted in is a presumption of absolute safety to which remarkably large numbers of us seemingly adhere. But the reality is this planet of ours is a killing machine both owed to nature’s fury and man’s evil. Cowering at home with layers of masks and barrels of hand sanitizer cannot protect anyone from his destiny.

*************

Written July 13, 2020

With my wife and mother, I worshipped inside the historic walls of The Village Chapel in Pinehurst on July 12. It is one of very few area churches exhibiting faith and courage by re-opening.

What does this say about our culture? I believe it says that religious persecution is escalating. Amid virus hysteria, clergy and church elders should denounce government-imposed bans on in-person worship. Instead, they cower and comply even while disingenuously paying lip service to divine provenance during Facebook Live “services”.

Pushing back against tyrannical government figures requires gathering on Sundays in the presence of God to call upon him to embolden Americans and fill us with the spirit of our founders. A classic hymn contains these words: “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before.”

If Christians are afraid to march through the doors of a church, the battles ahead will be mismatches. These battles will come. They are raging in American streets. Monuments are toppled without consequence. Businesses are looted in the name of racial inequality. Masked citizens meanwhile hide in shadows, washing their hands of responsibility.

What will believers do when religious statues and churches are targeted, as surely they will be? Why? Young Americans are emerging from universities as trained Marxists, God despising, undeterred by societal norms.

In July, a Catholic church in Ocala, Fla., was set ablaze during mass. The perpetrator, 24, drove his vehicle inside and used gasoline to fuel a fire. He said he is on a mission.

And he is not alone. Has a lifetime of worship and sermonizing prepared American believers to oppose our persecutors, both soft tyrants and violent militants? Or must we acknowledge that the freedom for which generations fought and died is defenseless against anarchists and a politicized virus?

Certainty

By Steve Woodward

In these “uncertain times”, I never have been more certain about so many things.

I am certain that if you live in this world expecting certainty you will be perpetually disappointed. If we did not know that before China unleashed the Wuhan Virus, we do now.

I am certain that if we do not exit our comfort zones and march into our communities extolling the virtues of the Trump administration (not the Orange Man, but the substance), we will be less free than any Americans in our history in short order.

What does that mean? It means that the Moore County Republican Party should not have to beg and arm-twist likeminded (patriotic) citizens to put aside your “routines” and join us in the fight of our lives. When we announce that door knocking brigades will head out, we mean brigades that include you, and your neighbor, and maybe even someone who never has done it before. These folks might never have the chance to do it again, at which time they will regret their apathy as an iron boot suffocates them.

I am certain that citizens must inform our Moore County Board of Education, in no “uncertain” terms, that re-opening our schools 100% can not happen soon enough. Think about this. I’m a kid who lives in a trailer. Every day I am not in school there likely is no parent working with me to complete lessons online. I am not eating lunch some days because I am not in school. They tell me I am safer at home. But for how long will I compromise my personal development and mental well-being to sustain a presumption of “safety”. This is not hypothetical. I know this kid. He has a name.

I am certain that more small businesses will close. They’ve held on as long as possible. They’ve cut payroll. Cut hours they are open. They’ve invested in sanitizers, gloves, masks. But their customers, hysterical because the mainstream media tells them to be, are not persuaded. Even the farmers who sell their fresh produce at the farmers markets — beneath Carolina blue skies in the great outdoors — are wearing masks and encountering masked customers, but fewer of them.

I am certain that if we do not embrace unwavering faith in the God who blessed the founding of this nation, the God from whom we received inalienable rights as free citizens, the God who implores us to have faith and trust His will, that our nation will be unrecognizable as the last, best hope of man on Earth.

There is no place to go from here. Of that I am certain.