When the mafia extorts money from you to allow you to live, they call it "protection money." When the government does it, they call it "consumer protection." Either way, you are paying for protection from someone who has the power to take everything you have.
"And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign to you: You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger." Luke 2: 10-12.
The title of this post comes from our newest novel, being released Christmas week, about an overworked, unhappy young man whose life suddenly and dramatically changes when he receives an invitation from a stranger to begin a new life precisely at midnight four days before Thanksgiving.
The Invitation is an allegory of the greatest invitation ever extended to mankind. Two thousand years ago in Bethlehem the Son of God came to earth to invite the world into a relationship with Him. The angels who announced his birth extended this invitation to "all people"--everyone is invited. From shepherds guarding their flocks by night, to wise astrologers in distant lands, from fishermen to kings--everyone, rich and poor, great and small, male and female is invited to be forgiven of sin and reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. The invitation that was extended that night was to become part of God's family--to find hope, and freedom and peace and forgiveness and to enter into a relationship that never ends with the God who made everything. No one is excluded, but no one is automatically included. Each invitation must be received and accepted, individually.
In the story, invitations from Kinsman go out regularly but most are never opened. Many of those who do open the invitation do so only to have a specific problem fixed in their lives. They have a health problem, or a financial need, or some situation that they want resolved. Once the recipients have their need met, they do not see any additional need for Kinsman and so they move on, never to participate again.
But the goal of Kinsman is not to hand out wishes like Santa Clause. The goal of each invitation is to redeem the life of the one who receives it. Each invitation, if used properly, redeems a debt, restores a life, and eventually transforms a person who is in desperate need into a person able and willing to help redeem others.
Too often in real life we treat God's invitation with as little regard as the recipients in the story. We want our need fixed, but we refuse to recognize that the greatest gift God gives us is Himself. The invitation He offers is not merely to have our financial situation improve or our relationships restored or ailments healed. True, He does do those things for us, but the real gift of Christmas is the gift of Jesus and the relationship we can have with Him.
This Christmas, you are invited to begin a new life through a relationship with Jesus Christ. If you choose to accept God's invitation, you will experience the greatest gift that has ever been given.
Alexandra and Joyce Swann's newest novel, The Invitation, is set for release Christmas of 2016. For more information, visit their website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Every Thanksgiving for as many years as I can remember, my mother had a tradition at Thanksgiving dinner. After my father prayed over the food, my mother asked each of us to name one thing that had happened in the last year that we were thankful for. As I got older, knowing that I would have to state what I was grateful for, I started thinking about the year a couple of weeks in advance of the holiday, and I found that even in difficult years, I had a lot to be thankful for. My mother's tradition, which she continues to this day, has helped me to really think about the meaning of Thanksgiving each year.
Having come through a stressful year and one of the most stressful election seasons of my life, I can look back at 2016 and be grateful for many things. So in the annual tradition of this blog, I list here what I appreciate most at the end of the year.
1. Hillary Clinton is not now and never will be president of the United States. I am Never Trump and have been from the beginning. But I have long suspected that the Trump supporters were right in saying that there was a lot more support for him than the press was admitting. Last week I voted on Tuesday in the down ballot races and I wrote in a third party candidate for President. Here in Dallas/Fort Worth there was broad support for Trump and I knew that from talking to hundreds of people this summer. I fully expected him to win Texas, and knowing how unhappy Americans are, I believed that he had a really good shot at winning the presidency.
But I do have to admit that nothing could have prepared me for the happy glow I felt watching Hillary Clinton lose and knowing that after 25 years of grasping and scheming, her presidential dreams are forever gone. Not only is she too old to repeat this debacle in four years, Hillary now has to live with the distinction of having run one of the most expensive campaigns in history, with the support of the entire elitist establishment and the mainstream media, only to lose to a man who turned the campaign for President of the United States into his own personal reality show. There's just no coming back from that.
2. Mike Pence is Vice President. While I did not and would not vote for Donald Trump, I do like and respect Mike Pence. I would have absolutely voted for him at the top of the ticket. And who knows--if he does a good job he may be at the top of the ticket in a few years.
3. Republicans have, if they will take it, a real opportunity to turn back the big government agenda of the past 8 years. If they will make the changes they need to make they can shrink the size and scope of government from the mammoth beast it has grown into down to a manageable creature.
4. We should be able to look forward to just a little over two months of peace! There is no lame duck session of Congress making midnight deals with Obama, there will be no last minute Supreme Court nominees, there should be nothing happening whatsoever on the political front. And that is cause for great joy.
5. Dallas/Fort Worth has proven to be a more wonderful place to live than I could have ever imagined or hoped. I have met wonderful people here in this amazing city. Just before Thanksgiving, all of the little communities here don themselves in their finest holiday sparkle and I am really looking forward to enjoying the holiday finery with family and friends.
6. Frontier 2000 Media Group is now 6 and a half years old as an entity, but it was 7 years ago that I went for a walk on the weekend after Thanksgiving and decided to bring the company back. Seven years later we have accomplished more than I could have hoped. This week we are introducing the second installment in our series, "N" and we are hoping for an additional release of a new project right at Christmas time. It has been very exciting to see this work come together.
7. God hears us. No matter how dire our circumstances may appear or how desperate we may feel at times, we are never alone when we know the Lord. I went through years of extreme sadness, loss and stress and to not be in that place any more is a huge gift. I spent so much of this year praying for the elections and it felt at times as if those prayers could not be answered. I still don't like Donald Trump as president, and I never will. But I trust that God has this and that He hears us when we call out to Him for help. So I will continue to pray for America and ask Him to save this nation. And I will continue to trust that He sees both the big circumstances facing our nation and the individual circumstances of our lives and that He cares equally about both. "Don't worry about things--food, drink and clothes. For you already have life and a body--and they are more important than what to eat and what to wear. Look at the birds! They don't worry about what to eat--they don't need to sow or reap or store up food--for your heavenly Father feeds them...And why worry about your clothes? Look at the field lilies! They don't worry about theirs. Yet King Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as beautifully as they. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't He more surely care for you....So don't be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time." (Matthew 6: 25-34 TLB)
Now that's something we can be thankful for every day! Happy Thanksgiving.
This marks the sixth annual edition of "Do you want to see something really scary?" The recurring title of this post is, of course, a tribute to Twilight Zone--the movie. I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the young man who is driving.
Over the past five years that I have been writing this post, I have used it to highlight the scary problems in our political world. And every year there is more and more to fear. The real life events taking place in our country today are worse than any scary film plot ever hatched in the mind of any Hollywood producer.
In three weeks either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be elected president of the United States. That's horror film stuff in and of itself. I am #NeverTrumpandNeverHillary and I said in July that if she were the nominee she would definitely win the election this fall. However, after having gone through this entire season I now would not be shocked if he pulls off a last minute win. Today the HuffPo headline is that Texas is in play because Hillary Clinton is only 3 points behind in a new poll. Yet, EVERY person I know here in Texas with the exception of TWO is going to vote from Trump. Some are going to vote for him because they love him and see him as the savior of this country--others are going to vote for him because they don't like her. I have met a lot of people who should be Hillary's demographic--young, socially liberal, etc.--who are choosing Trump because of his stance on immigration and because they don't want to see welfare expanded. Polls aside--there is a lot of support for Donald Trump, and I think the final vote is going to be a lot closer than the pundits predict.
To me, the scariest part is not that either Trump or Hillary will be president--although that is pretty scary. What is scarier still is the way that Americans on both sides of the aisle have completely abandoned all traditional values to support wholeheartedly two of the most corrupt candidates in history. To prop these two up, we had to completely disregard the rule of law (Hillary) and the laws of decency (Trump). Although she loudly denies this, Hillary was NOT vindicated by the statements made by James Comey. Instead, he told Americans that if WE committed the same crimes she had committed and mishandled classified documents, WE would be in prison. But those crimes are not a problem for HER because she's Hillary Clinton. Neither, apparently, is selling State Department favors via the Clinton Foundation, or deserting the ambassador of Libya and three Americans to die brutally in Benghazi. That a woman who had to call on the super delegates and the full force of the-DNC to dispatch Bernie Sanders--a 74-year-old self-proclaimed socialist--could actually be weeks away from becoming president is astonishing. Through revelations of thousands of emails showing her contempt for the American people, for the rule of law, and even for the voters in her own party, we have seen that Hillary is exactly who we thought she was--a vicious, hateful woman bent on gaining power at all costs. And that the media could give her cover and shore her up after everything she has done is even more astonishing.
On the Trump side, we have a man who has cheated and defrauded trusting students through Trump University, sexually harassed scores of women, bragged about his affairs with married women, insulted and demeaned candidates who were far superior to him, told little girls he will be dating them in a few years and spoken of his own daughter in crude sexual terms and the American churches are supporting him as a great guy. This election has laid bare the corruption of a society where people are so immoral that the son of the late Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, who also shares his father's name, says that he does not care if Donald Trump has raped women--everyone at Liberty University supports him anyway. The amazing irony here is that the Moral Majority was based on a notion that there was a large block of Americans who did not accept the leftist standards of promiscuity and abortion and obscenity and that they would stand together to support a man who stood for their ideals. Falwell Jr. apparently understands that today most Americans comprise an Immoral Majority who think traditional values are stupid and that they just want a strongman who will promise to fix their lives. They are voting for the candidate who can make them believe that he or she will make their individual lives great again--forget America.
What I think Falwell, and Robert Jeffress, and Franklin Graham and all evangelicals supporting Trump are conveniently forgetting is that they have abdicated their right to speak out on moral issues for all time. By throwing their support behind this man who is a sewer of indecency--"for the good of the country"--and overlooking his behavior they have lost the authority to say that any behavior is wrong or corrupt or indecent. They will continue to have big churches and big rallies and big meetings, but very simply when they speak on any issues of morality no one is going to take them seriously--ever again.
Two years ago, in this post I wrote that at the time the GOP had a good shot of taking over the Senate and stopping the progression of Socialism in America. But what I failed to understand was that when the GOP did take over the Senate they would just stall Obama until the next election. They would not make any big changes or reverse anything--partially because they did not want to change anything. They just wanted to tread water.
Today, faced with two very bad choices, we have a lot of Americans who believe that Trump is the answer to righting all of the wrongs in their own lives, and a lot of Americans who believe that with Hillary the world will continue on as it is today. The election in three weeks will really come down to who is able to get their voting block out to vote. Both Hillary and Trump are the political equivalents of Freddy Krueger--no matter what happens to them they just keep coming back, so we can't really discount either one of them as they have both been resurrected from political suicide too many times to count.
The worst part about this whole mess is that whoever wins, we have diminished ourselves and our nation through the process. We have thrown away a sacred precept dating back 811 years (since 1215 when King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta in Runnymeade) that the leader of our nation is not above the law. In fact, we have extended being above the law to men and women seeking the office of leader of the nation. We have thrown away the principle that the leader of the nation should be moral or should be a role model. In doing so, we are creating a ruling class where those who lead are exempt from all rules--moral, social and legal, and we the people have abdicated our authority to hold them responsible for their actions. And that is really pretty scary.
Alexandra Swann has a master's degree in history with emphasis on the French Revolution. Her novel,The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
This marks the sixth annual edition of "Do you want to see something really scary?" The recurring title of this post is, of course, a tribute to Twilight Zone--the movie. I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the young man who is driving.
Over the past five years that I have been writing this post, I have used it to highlight the scary problems in our political world. And every year there is more and more to fear. The real life events taking place in our country today are worse than any scary film plot ever hatched in the mind of any Hollywood producer.
In three weeks either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be elected president of the United States. That's horror film stuff in and of itself. I am #NeverTrumpandNeverHillary and I said in July that if she were the nominee she would definitely win the election this fall. However, after having gone through this entire season I now would not be shocked if he pulls off a last minute win. Today the HuffPo headline is that Texas is in play because Hillary Clinton is only 3 points behind in a new poll. Yet, EVERY person I know here in Texas with the exception of TWO is going to vote from Trump. Some are going to vote for him because they love him and see him as the savior of this country--others are going to vote for him because they don't like her. I have met a lot of people who should be Hillary's demographic--young, socially liberal, etc.--who are choosing Trump because of his stance on immigration and because they don't want to see welfare expanded. Polls aside--there is a lot of support for Donald Trump, and I think the final vote is going to be a lot closer than the pundits predict.
To me, the scariest part is not that either Trump or Hillary will be president--although that is pretty scary. What is scarier still is the way that Americans on both sides of the aisle have completely abandoned all traditional values to support wholeheartedly two of the most corrupt candidates in history. To prop these two up, we had to completely disregard the rule of law (Hillary) and the laws of decency (Trump). Although she loudly denies this, Hillary was NOT vindicated by the statements made by James Comey. Instead, he told Americans that if WE committed the same crimes she had committed and mishandled classified documents, WE would be in prison. But those crimes are not a problem for HER because she's Hillary Clinton. Neither, apparently, is selling State Department favors via the Clinton Foundation, or deserting the ambassador of Libya and three Americans to die brutally in Benghazi. That a woman who had to call on the super delegates and the full force of the-DNC to dispatch Bernie Sanders--a 74-year-old self-proclaimed socialist--could actually be weeks away from becoming president is astonishing. Through revelations of thousands of emails showing her contempt for the American people, for the rule of law, and even for the voters in her own party, we have seen that Hillary is exactly who we thought she was--a vicious, hateful woman bent on gaining power at all costs. And that the media could give her cover and shore her up after everything she has done is even more astonishing.
On the Trump side, we have a man who has cheated and defrauded trusting students through Trump University, sexually harassed scores of women, bragged about his affairs with married women, insulted and demeaned candidates who were far superior to him, told little girls he will be dating them in a few years and spoken of his own daughter in crude sexual terms and the American churches are supporting him as a great guy. This election has laid bare the corruption of a society where people are so immoral that the son of the late Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, who also shares his father's name, says that he does not care if Donald Trump has raped women--everyone at Liberty University supports him anyway. The amazing irony here is that the Moral Majority was based on a notion that there was a large block of Americans who did not accept the leftist standards of promiscuity and abortion and obscenity and that they would stand together to support a man who stood for their ideals. Falwell Jr. apparently understands that today most Americans comprise an Immoral Majority who think traditional values are stupid and that they just want a strongman who will promise to fix their lives. They are voting for the candidate who can make them believe that he or she will make their individual lives great again--forget America.
What I think Falwell, and Robert Jeffres, and Franklin Graham and all evangelicals supporting Trump are conveniently forgetting is that they have abdicated their right to speak out on moral issues for all time. By throwing their support behind this man who is a sewer of indecency--"for the good of the country"--and overlooking his behavior they have lost the authority to say that any behavior is wrong or corrupt or indecent. They will continue to have big churches and big rallies and big meetings, but very simply when they speak on any issues of morality no one is going to take them seriously--ever again.
Two years ago, in this post I wrote that at the time the GOP had a good shot of taking over the Senate and stopping the progression of Socialism in America. But what I failed to understand was that when the GOP did take over the Senate they would just stall Obama until the next election. They would not make any big changes or reverse anything--partially because they did not want to change anything. They just wanted to tread water.
Today, faced with two very bad choices, we have a lot of Americans who believe that Trump is the answer to righting all of the wrongs in their own lives, and a lot of Americans who believe that with Hillary the world will continue on as it is today. The election in three weeks will really come down to who is able to get their voting block out to vote. Both Hillary and Trump are the political equivalents of Freddy Krueger--no matter what happens to them they just keep coming back, so we can't really discount either one of them as they have both been resurrected from political suicide too many times to count.
The worst part about this whole mess is that whoever wins, we have diminished ourselves and our nation through the process. We have thrown away a sacred precept dating back 811 years (since 1215 when King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta in Runnymeade) that the leader of our nation is not above the law. In fact, we have extended being above the law to men and women seeking the office of leader of the nation. We have thrown away the principle that the leader of the nation should be moral or should be a role model. In doing so, we are creating a ruling class where those who lead are exempt from all rules--moral, social and legal, and we the people have abdicated our authority to hold them responsible for their actions. And that is really pretty scary.
Alexandra Swann has a master's degree in history with emphasis on the French Revolution. Her novel,The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
I saw the funeral procession yesterday for Officer Zamarripa. I did not know that Saturday was the last funeral--I actually thought the funerals had finished in North Dallas and Plano on Wednesday. I was working in that area on those days and heard the road closures on the radio. So as I headed down I-20 to Arlington yesterday I was initially stunned to see that the eastbound entrance to the freeway was again closed and that people who had parked their cars along side the highway were climbing the hill to face the freeway.
And my initial thought was irritation. Another protest--another excuse to tie up traffic and inconvenience the populace over grievances. But as I carefully merged into bumper to bumper traffic headed west, I saw first the American flags of the people standing on the overpasses, and then the American flag atop the fire trucks, and then the TxDOT sign telling me that there was another Dallas Police Department funeral.
Then I saw them--on the opposite side of the freeway. The motorcycle procession was first--hundreds of motorcycle cops riding two abreast with their lights flashing. Behind that were hundreds of cars of law enforcement. Sheriffs and local police had come from as far away as Jefferson County (about 90 miles from Houston) Harris County (Houston, Texas which is about 4 hours away), Wichita Falls, Texas, San Angelo, Texas. Last night the news reported that 300 law enforcement had come from all over the nation and from Canada to attend the last funeral of the last police officer killed in the shoot out at El Centro campus.
I have a family member working at El Centro so this shooting has touched me personally more than most. I have prayed for the families and for the wounded, but something about seeing that procession in person yesterday touched me more than any news story. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to make a 20 minute commute, but by the time I arrived I was so moved that the time spent sitting in traffic seemed inconsequential compared to what was happening around me.
This week on Facebook and Twitter I saw a lot of posts from Black Lives Matter supporters using the argument that it may be true that all lives matter but if there are a series of houses in a neighborhood and one is on fire, you concentrate on the one that is burning down--not the others that are fine--even though in theory all houses matter equally. From their perspective, the issues of injustice against blacks trump all other considerations.
But if you apply that logic, the people with their houses on fire right at this moment are the law enforcement. We lost five souls on Thursday who went to work and never came home. They were doing traffic control for a peaceful protest when a gunman ambushed them. As I write this today, 3 more officers at least are dead in Baton Rouge. So if the issue is imminent need, the imminent need is for safety for law enforcement since we have lost at least 8 in a week and a half.
Although it enrages BLM for anyone to say this--ALL lives matter. A life in a uniform is not worth intrinsically less than the life of a civilian. Wholesale war on the police is a war on the fabric of society. It cannot be tolerated; it cannot be excused.
I don't know what the answers are. I know what they are not. The answer is not more gun control. A madman in Paris just drove a truck through a crowd and killed over 80 people. A citizen with a gun might have been able to stop him. A citizen with a concealed carry permit DID stop a criminal armed with an AK-47 in Desoto (a suburb of Dallas) this week after the criminal robbed a business and customers patronizing the business.
The answer is not to stop freedom of assembly. The constitution guarantees that, along with freedom of speech, and press and religion. As long as the assembly is peaceful, citizens have a right to gather.
The answer is not to suspend the constitution. The constitution keeps our republic functioning.
The only answer may be to return to respect for human life--a respect that all of us have long since abandoned in a society that focuses on ourselves.
And as a part of that, we have to respect the law. We have a society where the laws apply only to some and not to all and certainly not equally. Our society is now brazen enough that the director of the FBI had the boldness to declare that Hillary Clinton had broken scores of laws and yet she would not be prosecuted. So we are now a nation of lawlessness and a nation of lawlessness leads to violence and totalitarianism--which is where we are headed next.
The Bible describes law enforcement as instruments of God. Paul did not write his oft-quoted description of law enforcement to a world where law enforcement was perfect. In fact, he wrote it to a world where law enforcement was a thoroughly corrupt arm of a thoroughly corrupt world government, yet he entreated Christians to respect the authority of police. If the apostle Paul, who was unjustly imprisoned for years on end, beaten repeatedly without cause, and finally executed for being a Christian, could encourage us to honor the government and its law enforcement entities, surely we living in a free nation with elected officials of our own choosing and a system of checks and balances on abuse of power can honor and respect those who maintain order in our country.
Pray for the families of the officers who died a few days ago in Dallas. Pray for the families of those in Baton Rouge who died today. Pray for America. If we don't change course we won't survive.
Alexandra Swann has a master's degree in history with emphasis on the French Revolution. Her novel,The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
Hillary Clinton is a human being with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Her husband was thoroughly lawless as president. Her huge achievement as Secretary of State was Libya, which culminated in our ambassador and four marines being butchered while our embassy was under attack. She has been under FBI investigation for a year over mishandling classified information. Now following a very public meeting between Bill Clinton and attorney general Loretta Lynch, the FBI has announced that while Clinton is actually guilty of all of the crimes of which she has been accused, she did them without intent to harm the country so therefore she will not be charged. Legal standards don't apply to her, just as they did not apply to her husband. The Clintons are simply above the law.
None of this should surprise us. What should surprise us is that this horrible human being is well on her way to becoming president of the United States--a feat which would have seemed impossible a year ago. It's bad enough that we have a leading candidate so openly crooked, so completely indifferent to the rule of law, and with so many years of scandal after scandal. And it's not as if the public is unaware of her failings--she is so unpopular that Bernie Sanders, the avowed Socialist who should have been the butt of crazy old grandpa jokes everywhere won primary after primary against her. Even the people I know who are voting for her are not really voting for HER--they are voting for the fond memory of Bill--whom they like to believe will secretly run the country from the background and return our nation to a state of economic bliss. As one of my liberal friends explained it, "With Hillary you get Bill."She should have NO chance of winning an election as dog catcher in New York City and yet there is a high probability that she will be president of the United States. And it's all our fault.
By "our" I do not mean #NeverTrump, of which I am a part. That movement has brought the only voice of reason to an otherwise lunatic process. I mean the American people and specifically the GOP. The GOP started out in 2015 with a field of excellent candidates, any of which would have made a good president. We had governors with strong executive experience. We had moderate conservatives--like Bush--and fiery conservatives like Ted Cruz. But instead, we gave our party over to a buffoonish con man named Donald Trump because he could get Democrat cross over votes. Never mind that the Democrats were crossing over to vote for the ONE candidate who consistently lost to Hillary Clinton in the polls. Never mind that Trump is the 2016 Archie Bunker--spewing crass, racist, uncouth, impolitic blather while pretending to be smarter than the rest of the world. Never mind that, like the character of Archie Bunker created so long ago, Trump's racist, misogynistic rhetoric gave evidence to the charges that had been labeled against conservatives for 50 years--that we are in fact a party of racist bigots who hate women and people who look different from us. Trump became the embodiment of every negative, hateful stereotype that had ever been floated about the GOP. But he drew crowds and media attention and the promise that he could bring in a new wave of disillusioned Democrats. And soon the GOP leadership had prostrated themselves before Agent Orange and forced all other candidates off the field. The minions who supported Trump told us that he was tough and although terribly flawed he would make short work of the Clintons.
Well it's been two months now, and The Orange One has not done much of anything. Many of us knew that the press would excoriate him for his past sins and misdeeds including Trump University and that was true. Many of us suspected that he would not run an aggressive campaign. But even I am surprised that Trump is actually not campaigning at all. He appears to be ceding the race to his long term friend Hillary by simply sitting down in the road and letting her lumber unopposed toward the presidency.
Consider this horrifying email that I received last week from a SuperPac supporting Trump:
"Did you catch this shocking Campaign 2016 revelation on NBC's Meet
the Press?
Host Chuck Todd made it all too clear during the guest
panel discussion -- Crooked Hillary Clinton and her surrogates
have already secured more than $43 million in television
advertising during these crucial Summer weeks...
...And pointed
out that ONLY ONE pro-Trump group -- including even his official
campaign -- has purchased ad time to fight back: Great
America PAC"
SuperPacs raise money. But if I were in charge of the Great America PAC I would be wanting to know WHY Trump's official campaign is not purchasing ad time for TV ads. After all, this is the man who claimed that he could self-fund the whole campaign. This is the man who said he could sell a building in New York City if the RNC were not "nice to him." This is the man who does not need anyone to win--not the conservatives in his party whom he disregards completely, not the RNC donors and not the RNC itself. And this man is refusing to run. With Hillary's RealClear Politics average 4.6% ahead of Donald Trump, we have a problem. And no one seems to care...
Trump's refusal to compete in the general election is so blatant now that even Newt Gingrich--his early surrogate and possible VP pick, commented on it to NBC:
"Everything the Clinton campaign is doing to suppress Trump will, in the short run, suppress Trump — because he's not trying," the former speaker of the House said.
"The thing she's got to worry about is if he is still alive as a candidate on the first of October," Gingrich continued.
Remember, this is Gingrich trying to put a positive spin on a hopeless situation. If Trump is not trying now, at what point does he start trying? During the convention? In August? In September? Three weeks before election day "if he is still alive as a candidate" while early voting is taking place? That's too little way too late. That's a sure fire formula for Hillary for President 2016 so that we can look forward at least four years of Clinton's illegal shenanigans and the continued destruction of freedom and the constitution.
It is time for the GOP to wake up from our collective self-induced coma and recognize that we have been conned. Trump would make a terrible, lawless president in his own right, but he's never going to get that far. He's going to sit by on the sidelines and let Clinton win. Maybe that was the plan all along, or maybe he just never expected to get this far. Maybe Trump is the yapping dog who chased cars until he finally caught one and now he has bitten off more than he can chew. Either way, he lacks the honesty or the grace to bow out on his own, so we the party need to show him the door. It is time to #FreetheDelegates.
Alexandra Swann has a master's degree in history with emphasis on the French Revolution. Her novel,The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
In the C.S. Lewis' children's classic, The Chronicles of Narnia, a family of four children is magically transported to the kingdom of Narnia which is ruled by the cruel White Witch. Under the control of the Witch, Narnia has become a desolate land where "it is always winter and never Christmas". The children find themselves involved in an uprising against this vile ruler, but one of them, Edmund, is jealous and angry and feels ignored and demeaned by the oldest brother, Peter. Sensing this anger and his desire to lash out against his brother, the White Witch takes Edmund into her carriage to sit beside her and feeds him Turkish Delight. Flattered by her attention and greedy for sweets, Edmund betrays his entire family and the fledgling freedom movement in Narnia. In a later scene, Mr. Tumnus, who has been arrested and tortured for his part in the revolution, is brought before the Witch and Edmund.
"Do you know why you are here?" she demands of Tumnus.
"I am here," the battered faun lifts his head and looks directly at the queen, "because I believe in a free Narnia."
"No," answers the witch coldly "You are here because he," pointing at Edmund, "sold you out for sweeties!"
I have thought of that scene a lot lately and was reminded of it again yesterday as I talked to a Donald Trump supporter after a real estate meeting. This woman was the stereotypical Trump supporter in the 55-70 age group that makes up his core base. She used to live in California, where she made a lot of money in real estate and now she is living in Texas and working part-time in real estate and making very little money. One by one, she cornered people in the room to share her political opinions until finally she stood in front of me to explain how dangerous Hillary and Bernie are and how only Donald Trump can make America great again.
I listened politely but after a few minutes I told her, "I think Donald Trump is very liberal. He is going to govern just like Hillary." She looked so disappointed. "Why would you say that?"
I told her that he is FOR universal health care. She shook her head and asked me why I thought that, and I told her I thought that because he has said so, on more than one occasion. I told her he was FOR big government and expanding the role of government. She said she did not agree with me about that either--why would I say such a thing? I answered that he has SAID so--that his positions all call for more government. I told her that he is AGAINST the North Carolina bathroom bill--a position so outrageously out of step with conservatives that even Michael Savage, one of Trump's most ardent supporters, came out against Trump on this issue and said he was wrong. She told me that I was wrong--he thinks it's just a states' rights issue and states can do whatever they want. I told her he is FOR raising taxes "on the wealthy"--something every liberal Democrats runs on which translates eventually into raising taxes on everyone who works. She actually did not argue that one since he just made this statement last week.
"He is friends with Hillary Clinton; he has given money to Hillary Clinton's campaign and to other liberal Democrats," I cautioned.
"Sure," she responded confidently, "He's a business man. He had to do that."
And then she went on to tell me that he will bring jobs back to America.
"He doesn't even hire American workers for his own hotels," I contradicted. "This came up at the debate. He hires people on H1B visas to work at the hotels seasonally and then he gets rid of them."
"He has to compete," she responded. "And he is not responsible for the subs his general contractors hire." (This was in response to my telling her that he hired Polish immigrants to build one of his casinos).
Finally, I said, "He is a narcissist."
Her eyes widened, she smiled at me brightly and answered, "Of COURSE he's a narcissist!" At that point I gave up. At the end of our conversation she shook her head again and told me that she hoped I was wrong about all of this and that he would be the wonderful president she is counting on him to be.
For what it's worth, I would like to be wrong too--but I'm not. These are not accusations other people are making about Donald Trump. These are statements he himself has made and made quite recently. Now granted, Donald Trump has been known to reverse himself and change positions on a single issue four or five times within a 24 hour period, so I can understand how there could be confusion on where he stands. But these are recent statements--they have not been repudiated and they reflect where he is today. And none of them matters even slightly to a woman who self-identifies as conservative--perhaps in the same way that we now allow people to self-identify their race, gender and other formerly immutable characteristics.
This woman gets her information from Fox News--she told me that at the beginning of the conversation. And this in fact is one reason she is so completely ill-informed about who Donald Trump really is. Fox News protects and provides cover for Trump in the same way that the MSM protected and provided cover for Obama. So when I tell her that he is a liberal, she just chooses not to believe it. If that were true, Fox would say it. But Sean Hannity and gang have supported and protected and fawned over Trump in a way that they have not fawned over any other candidate in history. They have whitewashed him to cover his faults, slavishly endorsed his every nonsensical remark and campaigned for him to the tune of billions of dollars worth of advertising. So it is no surprise that Fox viewers like this woman don't know who Donald Trump is. They are just drinking the Kool Aid.
This election cycle has been painful to watch, frustrating and exhausting, but it has revealed the true thoughts and motives of a lot personalities who have self-identified as conservative--again in much the same way that Caitlyn Jenner self-identifies as a woman. They dress up in conservative attire, and they spout conservative sounding ideals, but they are NOT conservatives. They are opportunists. Being against Obama got them attention. Speaking out against Obama actually revived some people's careers. So they were against Obama. Now they are for Trump. If the AntiChrist shows up next week they will be for him. What they really support is themselves--their own careers, their own success. We have suspected this about many of them for years--Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham were given away in part by their friendships and close associations. After all, do we really think that Ann Coulter is actually a conservative when one of her best friends is Bill Maher? I don't think so. Rush Limbaugh was a little more of a surprise, but not much. He who hangs around Hollywood friends all the time is not going to hold permanently tightly to conservatism. It's just too unpopular. Whatever principles these people had, they sold off to buy friendship with celebrities and a place at the table with the "important" people years ago.
After the 2012 election, conservatives like Jim DeMint argued that we could not communicate our message effectively and that is the reason we lost. But now I am beginning to understand that the real reason we lost is that the messengers who are supposed to communicate that message are not conservative themselves. They don't believe that conservative principles work. They don't believe that the Constitution has any value at all. Like Edmund in Narnia, the Trump supporters, in and out of the media, are angry people who feel disenfranchised and want to punish those who disenfranchised them. But also like Edmund, Trump's media arm, be it Fox News, Breitbart, or Drudge, want to sit next to the White Witch as her favorite and stuff themselves on Turkish Delight (which is very bad candy by the way--I tried it after the movie came out and it is a sickeningly sweet, gooey concoction that should not seduce anyone. I think that is actually part of Lewis' point: "He hadn't eaten his share of the dinner because he was thinking all the time about Turkish Delight--and there's nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food so much as the memory of bad magic food.")
For Fox News, Drudge, Breitbart, and Trump's other surrogates: Sarah Palin, Robert Jeffress and all the others who have wholeheartedly abandoned their principles to get the nomination for Trump, their Turkish Delight is the concept that they could be kingmakers. Rather than sitting on the sidelines, they could be to Trump what NBC and CBS and MSN were to Obama. They can have the inside interviews and exclusive scoops. They can be his personal advisors and private chaplains. They can have the positions of honor that have always eluded them.
What they have forgotten in their mad love affair with Trump is that while Trump is a smarmy New York liberal, he's NOT Obama. He's not even Hillary. He's an old, out-of-shape white guy wearing too much spray tan who says inappropriate things. He's the Archie Bunker of this election cycle--a potential butt for every joke and comedy skit imaginable. And Fox News is not CBS or NBC. There is already a smarmy New York liberal running for president and when this primary cycle ends, she is going to have the complete attention and devotion of the entire mainstream media EXCEPT for Fox News, Breitbart and Drudge. Fox News at the end of the day is just a cable channel--a cable channel that has alienated a lot of its core base of true conservatives by showing itself to be just another opportunistic liberal media machine. When the primary process is over, the MSM will no longer give Trump a pass the way they did Obama--they will skewer him for his affairs, his chauvinism and his scandals including the Trump University fraud case. And Trump's never ending barrage of stupid statements will give them all the ammo they need--all they have to do is stick a microphone in front of him every 24 hours to have plenty of grist for the next day's news.
Only Fox, Breitbart and Drudge will be at his side. True conservatives who have vowed #NeverTrump will not support Trump or his minions. The Democrats who joined the party to make him the nominee--like the 60,000 who switched party affiliation in Pennsylvania to vote him in--will turn around and vote for Hillary Clinton. According to polls released the day after the Acela primary on Tuesday night, 25% of the people who voted for Trump on Tuesday will not vote for him in the general election. They were only there to put in the candidate they wanted; now their work is done. It's going to be a bloodbath.
In Narnia, Aslan the lion ultimately redeems Edmund and his bad choices and rescues the kingdom. The story is an allegory of salvation. In real life, I don't know whether the huge betrayal by the media and the conservative movement will or can be redeemed at this late date. I pray that it is and that America can actually have a conservative president who will make America a constitutional republic again. But no matter what happens, we will never forget those who sold us down the river for their version of Turkish Delight. What happens now is on them.
If you want a good laugh, watch Andrew Klavan's piece on this:
Alexandra Swann has a master's degree in history with emphasis on the French Revolution. Her novel,The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
We conservatives are often accused of being against more than we are for. We are against abortion, against same sex marriage, against big government, against socialized medicine, against public sector unions...etc., etc., etc. We are good at telling the world what we are against--it is when we have to tell you what we are for that it gets a little trickier.
Such is the case with #NeverTrump. Now don't get me wrong--I genuinely loath Donald Trump. I have gone from incredulous amazement that he has garnered a single vote to deep disgust for his antics, his vulgarities, his bragging and his narcissism. The man is an unabashed racist, a misogynistic bully and a fascist. He would take our current president's level of disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law to new heights. Trump is the worst boss, worst relationship, worst relative, worst person we have ever known rolled into one bloated combo.
So I too am #NeverTrump--like many others I would rather not vote than stand before God and explain why I threw my support behind this vile, vulgar buffoon. I am against Trump, just as I am against abortion and same sex marriage and big government because Trump is destructive to our society and repugnant to our national sense of decency, I stand with my fellow true conservatives in saying that I will never support him--ever. But as with all other negative positions in life, #NeverTrump is not an end in itself. The question becomes--what, or who, am I for?
The title of this post came from a tweet circulating this week. #NeverTrump is not on any ballot--pick a candidate. My candidate is Ted Cruz. I heard Ted Cruz speak in August of 2014 at Americans for Prosperity in Dallas. It was an amazing experience. Cruz spoke for about 30 minutes with no notes and no teleprompter. He is a compelling speaker who makes a compelling case for conservatism. He lays out a convincing map of what needs to happen to restore America to a constitutional republic. Before I heard him speak I respected him; after I heard him speak I realized he could actually become president.
So, in the vein of answering those who say that conservatives are great at articulating what they are against but not what they actually support I will tell you why I am FOR Ted Cruz. I am FOR Cruz because I believe that our nation should be governed by the Constitution of the United States. I am FOR Cruz because I believe that small, limited government best serves our nation. I am FOR Ted Cruz because I am against Agenda 21, the United Nation's plan to impose totalitarianism disguised as climate change prevention. I am FOR Ted Cruz because I believe the sovereignty of the United States is paramount and because I believe that Americans should not be tried in the World Court for actions in our own borders, because I believe in the necessity of protecting the bill of rights and specifically our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, assembly, press and religion and our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Ted Cruz has openly and publicly stood on the right side of each of these issues, both before becoming Senator and since. Therefore, I stand with him.
I am FOR Ted Cruz because I believe that in keeping with the fifth and sixth amendments of the bill of rights no American shall be detained or deprived of life or liberty without the right to counsel and trial. Ted Cruz agrees--that is the reason he consistently votes against the reauthorization of the National Defense Authorization Act which contains provisions allowing indefinite detention of American citizens.
I am FOR Ted Cruz because I believe that marriage laws should be left up to each state to decide for itself. While I am opposed to same sex marriage I recognize that many in our society are not. I believe that each state should have the right, by the vote of the people, to pass their own laws regarding marriage. States with populations supporting same sex marriage should be allowed to have it and states with populations that oppose same sex marriage should have the right to reject it. But no population that objects to same sex marriage should have same sex marriage forced on it.
I am FOR Ted Cruz because I believe that the government has no right to force me to buy health insurance or to fine me if I don't. I do not want single payer health insurance; I do not want Obamacare. I believe that I can take care of myself better than any bureaucrat ever will.
I am FOR Ted Cruz because I believe that personal character and responsibility matter. I believe that a decent man with a nice family who professes Christianity will make a better president than a foul-mouthed swindler who brags about his affairs with married women, humiliated his own wife of many years with a very public affair with a younger woman, cheats people out of their savings by promising to make them wealthy and brags about his sexual prowess on a debate stage. I believe that the president sets the moral tone for the nation, and we need to choose carefully what tone we choose to set.
I am FOR Ted Cruz because we are electing a president--not crowning a king. We need a man who understands this is a job (and in the words of that great movie, Dave, only a temp job at that.) I am voting for a man who understands that he is being hired to serve the people, not to reign over us.
I am FOR Ted Cruz because #MakeDCListen is not just a hashtag for me. I believe that the government of the people by the people for the people needs to listen to the people while defending and protecting the constitution of the United States of America. This is an important distinction from the Trump crowd who supports government for the people by the people of the people no matter how egregious or in error that will may be at any given moment.
I am FOR Ted Cruz because I am not an Anarchist or a Nihilist. I have no desire to burn down the Republican party or the United States. I do not love chaos--I am not aching to see Armageddon. I want to elect a man who can do the job and restore the rule of law--not a man who will destroy us. I want to leave America a better place for my nieces and nephews and I believe Ted Cruz is the man for the job.
Since the moment he announced he was running, we have been hearing that Ted Cruz cannot win. To date he has won six states. As of early this morning he was separated from Donald Trump by 70 delegates. Yet, all pundits have dismissed him. Fox News is astoundingly rooted in Trumpism. Headlines yesterday from Fox basically said that although Ted Cruz had a good day, Trump will win for sure. I had to go to NBCNews.com to find a story that acknowledged what a feat Cruz's victory yesterday actually was. Cruz not only won Kansas by 25 points and beat Trump soundly in Maine, he moved up 12 points in Louisiana. One article I read this morning said that while Trump was leading double digits in early voting in Louisiana, Ted Cruz won the vote that came in yesterday. That is a major achievement for a candidate who has been written off by everyone.
Populism is appealing. The will of the people sounds great. But the will of the people has to be tempered by the law and justice and common decency and morality. Otherwise we have mob rule. In 1789 in France the will of the people was to send everyone in the aristocracy and all aristocratic sympathizers to the guillotine. In the 1930's in Germany the will of the people was to punish Jews--and ultimately to send six million people to their deaths. In the Middle East right now, the will of many people is to support ISIS--the terrorist group is very popular with ordinary Middle Easterners because they equate ISIS with strength. Any student of history knows that the will of the people is often to do what they perceive is best for them at everyone else's expense. Populism can and has led to terrible crimes against various minority populations at various times in human history. The fact that most people were on board did not make what happened right.
Last night Jeanine Pirro said that the two man race that is emerging is a contest between conservatism and populism. She is an open supporter of Trump and says plainly that Ted Cruz can't win on a national stage. I agree with the first part of her statement--this is a contest between a dangerous mob rule mentality bent on anarchy and revenge versus the rule of law and order and a return to constitutional principles. I disagree strongly that Ted Cruz can't win this fight. He showed yesterday that he can--he can win from Kansas to Maine and back again if Americans who are disgusted by Trump's vulgarity and fascism will rise up and go vote.
#NeverTrump is a great hashtag, but it's not on the ballot. Vote for the constitutional conservative.
Alexandra Swann has a master's degree in history with emphasis on the French Revolution. Her novel,The Planner about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.
I write this post on the day of the New Hampshire primary, as HuffPo announces that Trump still leads GOP voters nationwide, although elections results from three tiny towns in New Hampshire have Trump, Kasich and Cruz in a dead heat.
The last eight years have been awful for the U.S. and for many of us personally. We have experienced one of the greatest wealth transfers in the history of our nation, massive unemployment hidden by creative accounting, loss of property and recession that does not end. I read a few weeks ago that as of 2014, 93% of U.S. counties had not recovered from the recession.
Living here in North Texas it is easy to forget that--one new person moves to North Texas every five minutes. Jobs and growth are here because of a government committed to conservative principles. But for many places in the U.S., the recession will never end--the jobs and industries that those counties relied on to drive their economies are gone permanently. Happy days not only aren't here again--they aren't coming back.
One of the great ironies of the last eight years is that the rise of Obama and his signature bill Obamacare--which has increased taxes and cost jobs across the country--also gave rise to a major grassroots movement to reform the country--the TEA Party. Across the country, millions of Americans came together to demand smaller, more conservative government, the repeal of Obamacare, and the return of common sense government by the people for the people.
From that movement came first a Republican Congress led by the highly disappointing John Boehner, and then a Republican Senate led by the equally disappointing Mitch McConnell and now a field of GOP candidates. We have a genuine principled conservative--Ted Cruz; a moderate but well spoken candidate--Marco Rubio, and a loutish liberal fraud--Donald Trump. Unfortunately, it is the loutish fraud who has apparently deceived the staunchest defenders of conservatism.
I never paid much attention to the buffoonish Trump. Anyone who is famous for shouting, "You're fired!" at hapless reality show contestants who debase themselves by groveling in front of him is, in my opinion, a big-mouthed blowhard. Trump is like the worst boss/ex/neighbor/coworker you have ever had--rolled into one person. He is rude, abusive, and treats the people around him like dirt.
I would have never believed that he would have had massive appeal with Americans simply because of his rude, overbearing obnoxious nature. And yet, today, the reality star who used to have his own reality show contestants groveling and debasing themselves now has conservative icons doing the same.
Consider what this means in real terms. Phyllis Schlafly--who fought to end ERA and to preserve traditional values--has endorsed wholeheartedly a man who supports partial birth abortion, who has been married three times, who left his first wife for his pregnant lover, has engaged in numerous affairs, and whose current wife posed nude for a magazine. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, where I currently attend church--gave a de facto endorsement in the form of a very enthusiastic introduction, of this same candidate while saying that he is the ONLY candidate who can defeat Hillary Clinton. It is truly befuddling--Donald Trump--who said he has never needed to ask for forgiveness in his life, has the enthusiastic backing of a Baptist pastor who teaches weekly that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and can only be reconciled to a relationship with that same God through forgiveness offered by Jesus.
Perhaps the deepest cut of all, Donald Trump supports a single payer healthcare system. That is not rumor or gossip. I listened very carefully during the last debate to exactly what Trump actually said about his healthcare plan and he absolutely does plan to repeal Obamacare but he is going to replace it with a singlepayer government system. And yet, he has the endorsement of Sarah Palin--the darling of the Tea Party movement which was started for the sole purposes of repealing Obamacare! If that is not proof that we have lost our way, I don't know what is.
And it is not just leaders who are enamored with Trump--a lot of every day voters are too. I talked yesterday to a man I have known since I moved to Dallas. He leans more libertarian than conservative but he supports Trump. He was telling me that at a meeting he had hosted last month, the speaker told the crowd that Ted Cruz is a real conservative and Trump is only about 60% conservative but Cruz can't get his agenda passed while Trump can get about half of his agenda passed and 50% of 60% is better than nothing.
When I pressed my friend about what that agenda truly is, I asked him if he understood that Donald Trump is backing a single payer healthcare system. "I've heard that. He must not understand what a single payer healthcare system is. He can't understand what it is--it is so counter productive." That is where Donald Trump supporters are--when he stands for partial birth abortion, or single payer health care, or higher taxes, or bigger government--he really doesn't mean it. That reminds me of another candidate who convinced Americans that he did not mean when he said when he promised to fundamentally transform America eight years ago.
The irony of all of this "only Trump can beat Hillary" rhetoric is that Hillary may not be the nominee. In the first three towns to provide election results this morning in New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders won handily. Over 40% of Democrats now self-identify as Socialists. As much as baggage as Hillary is dragging behind her, Bernie seems to many be a picture of integrity--a pure socialist who promises to rob the rich and give to everybody without the Wall Street connections and the blood of dead soldiers in Benghazi to muddy the waters.. Interestingly, a group of students from Communist China in Iowa for the caucuses were asked which candidates they liked and overwhelmingly they chose Sanders and Trump. Why not? China has billionaires too--and its communist, repressive government guarantees that the few will always control the many. Is that so different from what Trump wants?
If Sanders does win, the choice on one hand is open Socialism. What do we want to offer as option 2? Socialism light? The rich guy who is the smartest guy in the room but can't seem to understand how anything works or offer any real solutions or any real plan for how he is going to "Make America Great Again"? Or do we offer a real choice--smaller government--more power to the states, and a real action plan for reforming the country? Do we want another Reagan? Or do we just want a less open Socialist who will keep growing government, raising taxes and tearing away at the fabric of our nation. What do we still believe? What do we still want? And are we willing to vote for it? Or has a nation obsessed with entertainment completely sold out to the reality show president?
When the Tea Party movement and the conservative resurgence began, it was in part a reaction against a corrupt system which buys and sells politicians. Washington's love affair with money had led to so many dirty deals and so much selling out that everyday Americans were saying "ENOUGH."
Unfortunately, it was not just D.C. having the affair. America as a whole is in love with money. Donald Trump's entire campaign could be summed up with "I'm rich--vote for me." Sanders' campaign could be summed up with "I'll take from the rich and give to you--vote for me." In both cases, it is a message based on money. Trump's supporters are willing to overlook everything he is not in favor of all that he is--a rich bully who threatens and demoralizes anyone who opposes him and has a tantrum when he does not get his own way. Very presidential.
I hope there are still enough of us left who are not enamored with "The Donald" to turn this around. Your turn to vote is soon. Choose wisely.
