before you tear down another statue....

What is more important than how the Civil War began?

How it ended! Or more specifically THAT it ended.

The war ended with surrender, defeat and an occupation, than when the correct conditions were met reconciliation.

So the destructive war, devastating in blood and treasure ended in 1865.

In 1898 just 33 years, later a Unified America defeated the Spanish Navy and took a place as the predominate power in our hemisphere.

In 1917, just 52 years later, America tipped the scale in a long standing world war and took its place among the world leaders.

And just 80 years later America become the world’s greatest power defeating the combined Axis powers in WW2.

So when we begin to tear down the symbols and monuments to the conflict that nearly destroyed us we also tear down the remembrance of the unity and reconciliation that it spawned. We were tried in the crucible and we came out refined. The dross of slavery was removed from the silver of our liberty and at the cost of blood we came closer to the founding principle that all men are created equal.

We remember confederate generals, and soldiers not because we wish they had won but because once they lost, they laid down their arms and became Americans again. And America was made stronger because of it.  

“Men Do Not Follow Titles, They Follow Courage”

A favorite quote from my favorite film (Braveheart 1995), today we have a vacuum of courage and since none of the heroes of our time were willing to fill that vacuum a villain has arisen for “Nature hates a vacuum”.

The vacuum was created by a long and unjust lockdown, the crippling of our economic system and the undermining of the constitutional foundation of our Republic. Men and women hoarded toilet paper and whimpered behind locked doors afraid of a virus that even the most rudimentary data showed was serious but was not in any way to be confused with the Black Death of antiquity. The vast majority of people soon realized the “cure of shutting down was causing far more harm than the disease itself”. We needed a William Wallace like character to stand up to the sudden tyranny of fear that gripped the late “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave”

That hero could have been the police: there could have been a swelling of protest as governors and mayors of all political persuasions began using the police as their own personal Stasi. Cops could have rallied around Port of Seattle officer Greg Anderson who was suspended for speaking out against the lockdowns, but they didn’t many probably quietly agreed but were unwilling to risk their own careers. No one seemed to publicly question orders to arrest barbers for conducting lawful commerce on private property, moms were harassed for letting kids play with other kids and officers never proclaimed they were doing so under protest, even when dads were dragged off in handcuffs for playing catch with their own sons. Texas police could have refused to set up a sting operation to bust up a “ring “of two 20-something manicurists illegally doing ladies nails so that prosecutors could seek 6 month prison terms against them.  I could continue for paragraphs unending about the misuse of police power over the last few months but I can site very few policemen who stood up against it. Eliminate Officer Anderson and a handful of local sheriffs who have to face reelection and the police showed the people they swore to protect and serve and the constitution they swore to uphold no consideration whatsoever. Of course when the trouble started it was those same politicians who wanted a policeman to count the heads at every BBQ and enforce social distancing on every back lawn in the country, who were willing literally to throw the police to the mob, and those poor hardworking citizens whom the police willingly and unlawfully harassed who stood up for them. Policeman could have been the heroes but allowed themselves to be cast as the villain instead.

But surely if the police won’t stand up for us the citizen is perfectly capable of standing for themselves. We can be our own heroes, can’t we? The constitution is there to undergird our freedom; we have the 1^st amendment the 2^nd amendment the 4^th etc. to protect free speech, freedom of association, and our private property rights. If people in one state, one community had simply banded together and said “no more” and opened shops and businesses en masse what would governors have done? And If they arrested us all we should have used our 1200$ government hush money to make bail and went right back out the next day and did the same thing. It would have been the easiest bloodless revolution of all time, and I believe the most effective, Americans opening shops going to work going to church deciding for ourselves how to be individually responsible for our own health while ineffective little dictators scolded us like substitute teachers who had lost control of their classes and while the media attempted to shame us over everyone who got sick, we could have stood firm and proclaimed in terms so loud and unmistakable that everyone from Nancy Pelosi to the Dallas dog catcher would have never forgotten the American slogan of freedom “DON’T TREAD ON ME”. But alas this was not the case we were tread upon and we took it we didn’t bite the heel of our oppressor we licked his boot hoping that if we did he might let us open our business with enough restrictions that we might not starve or go bankrupt.  Even when someone like Shelly Luther led the way, we cheered we sent her some money but she stood alone, she went to jail alone and she won her ultimate victory alone. We the People should have been the heroes but we chose to play the victim instead.

But one nation under God can always count on the Church to be there, right?  Men of faith will never be intimidated by governors or virus alike. When fear grips the nation, when unrest abounds, when people need a specific stability that wonderful church will always be there, come Hell or high water the doors to God’s house will never be closed. Four months ago I would have written these words from my heart now they are a bitter satire as people are turned away from locked doors and directed to online resources in their hour of desperation. A few churches have opened but with such restrictions that they cannot possibly be effective as masked parishioners huddle in family groups and distance from each other like lepers. The nation desperately needed the Church to be the hero, but the church chose to write themselves out of the story completely instead.

Enter Black Lives Matter. With their anti-cop message, their open desire to dismantle the traditional family, which will only magnify the problems of the black community, their support of LGBTQ nonsense which has far lower support in the black community than in the nation at large, their utter disregard for private property et al. But they are bold. Evil but bold. Destructive but bold. Men do follow courage not cowardice. If those who support law and freedom and faith do so from a position of fear, they will be ignored but if rioters and looters show courage then people will throw off their restraints and give in to their baser natures, and before long cowardly legislators will bow their knee to mobs of anarchists within the halls of democracy.

I am not attempting to explain the existence of Black Lives Matter, nor am I attempting to address the issues that lead to its creation. It is the phenomenon of BLM that I am addressing how they have so quickly supplanted all the civil rights organizations that fight for justice and equality, how they become so strong so quickly while all others were weakened. If Christians, conservatives and cops won’t lead the way someone else will, and we won’t like where they take us.

We have lost the first battle in what will be a long war, A war which will turn bloody if not stopped by other means while there is still time. Are we willing to save our country as founded, at risk of our own safety? If I were Antifa or BLM I would feel pretty safe betting against it.