NEO-Confederate swimming in a sea of black?

FlagandBanner.com owner Kerry McCoy said she’s recently changed her mind about selling the Confederate Flag. In a blog post Wednesday, she pointed to recent local and international news stories, as well as the historical significance of the downtown building in which her business is housed. Taborian Hall at 800 W. Ninth St. is steeped in “black history.”

After the 2015 shooting in Charleston she defended selling the Confederate flag. She said at the time that it was a matter of free speech and her reluctance to censor what people can buy and sell.

But now McCoy’s view on selling the Confederate flag has shifted, she explained: “Historically, the Confederate battle flag had nothing to do with the Nazi’s. Now, it was being equated to a symbol used to incite genocide. I was taken aback.”

The retail space once taken up with Confederate merchandise may be filled with gay-pride flags, as well as French flags, according to an Arkansas democrat Gazette article.

DALLAS CHANGING ANOTHER SCHOOL NAME?

This week, the Dallas Independent School District’s (DISD) board of trustees received a name change request from campus volunteers and school leadership at Oak Cliff’s Roger Q. Mills Elementary. The campus – which will be converted into a magnet school for talented and gifted students in the fall – has asked to be renamed “Trinity Heights Gifted and Talented School.”

Lester Houston, the president of the Zoo Creek Park Neighborhood Association – one of the organizers for the name change – said his community had been working on the issue for seven months.

If the change is approved by trustees later this month, which is expected, it will be the sixth time in the past four years that DISD has removed a name affiliated with the Confederacy from one of its campuses.

MONUMENT VANDALIZED

Red paint and the phrase “they were racists” were discovered on a Confederate monument in a Nashville, Tennessee, park.

Police say they found the vandalism Monday at the Confederate Private Monument in Centennial Park. Red liquid was doused on the statue and the phrase was scrawled on a plaque with the names of more than 500 Tennessee Confederate soldiers.

News outlets report police are reviewing footage from cameras in the park.

ANOTHER VANDALIZED – CULPRITS CAUGHT

23-year-old Charles Chandler and 29-year-old and Kayleigh Roberts were arrested near the Confederate monument in Charleston after they were identified by witnesses to have thrown red paint on the Confederate Defenders of Charleston monument’s shield, leg and base.

They were charged with damage to real property and jailed awaiting trial. Workers have cleaned the statue.

UTAH CITY BANS SONS

A Salt Lake City suburb has changed its rules for what groups can participate in a city parade after a Confederate group marched last year.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports the Midvale City Council unanimously approved a policy Tuesday that allows groups to walk in its parades “by invitation only.”

The group Soldier Summit Grays, formerly known as the Sons of Confederate Veterans, marched in the Midvale parade last year and in other area parades while flying the Confederate flag. The group did not respond to request for comment Wednesday.

City communications director Laura Magness says the group is not expected to be invited.

SUBSCRIBER TAKES A STAND

Mark Velder, a city employee in Independence, Missouri spoke at this week’s city council meeting, to criticize the display of the rainbow pride flag by the Mayor, stating that he would be fired if he flew his Confederate Flag.

“We just did the Pledge of Allegiance, which says ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag.’ The flag. ‘The’ is a definitive article. That is my flag,” Velder said pointing to the American flag. “Not the LGBT flag,” Velder added while holding two Confederate flags. “I work at the city of Independence. If I put [the Confederate flag] up tomorrow, I’ll be fired.”

“Yet we’ve got a flag outside of the window, right up here that gives me a sense of discrimination. Something that’s not for equal rights, it’s a violation,” Velder continued. “That flag does not represent me, I keep hearing it’s for everybody. It does not. That represents people who have surgically removed part of their anatomy because they don’t know what kind of bathroom to go to … I’m normal. I’m normal.”

He added, “I’m asking can we get [the pride flag] down or just put mine [the Confederate flag] up. Just put this one up, I would love to see this one up tomorrow morning when I come to work.”

NON-HERITAGE NEWS AFFECTING THE SOUTHLAND:

A biotechnology company out of California called Senomyx specializes in the development of food flavorings using aborted embryonic cells for the production of food chemicals. Research by Senomyx into the use of “HEK-293? aborted human fetal cells as a flavor enhancer, was published in pubmed in 2002, after which several patents were filed by them. Additionally, this company has partnered with numerous major processed food manufacturers including Kraft, PepsiCo, and Nestle.

Processed food isn’t the only hidden source of additives made using aborted human fetal tissue – many so-called “beauty products” and vaccines are also loaded with aborted baby tissue-derived additives. According to EndAllDisease.com, Neocutis “beauty” products and anti-wrinkle creams are made from aborted male baby cells collected after a 14-week gestation period.

Many vaccines, including Merck & Co.’s MMR II vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, as well as ProQuad (Merck), Varivax (Merck), Pentacel (Sanofi Pasteur) and Havrix (GlaxoSmithKline), also contain derivatives of aborted human babies.

Oklahoma Senator Ralph Shortey has introduced legislation in early 2012 to prohibit the normalization of widespread cannibalism, yet it still continues to this day. The only way to truly stop it is to stop supporting the companies that are making human beings eat their own dead babies. Can anybody say Soylent Green?

Debi Vinnedge, of the pro-life group Children of God for Life:

“What they don’t tell the public is that they are using HEK 293 – human embryonic kidney cells taken from an electively aborted baby to produce those receptors. They could have easily chosen animal, insect, or other morally obtained human cells expressing the G protein for taste receptors.”

The exact same flavor enhancing chemicals could just as easily be produced using animal or insect cells, yet they choose to use cells from aborted babies.

Boycotting Cannibalism: Foods Containing Dead Fetal Cells

Every time we eat any of the food sources listed below (and any time we eat the flesh and blood of another sentient being), we are participating in a satanic ritual. It’s time to say ‘no’ by never purchasing products made with dead babies again.

The following products are manufactured using aborted fetal cells:

PEPSI BEVERAGES:

  • – All Pepsi soft drinks
  • – Sierra Mist soft drinks
  • – Mountain Dew soft drinks
  • – Mug root beer and other soft drinks
  • – No Fear beverages
  • – Ocean Spray beverages
  • – Seattle’s Best Coffee
  • – Tazo beverages
  • – AMP Energy beverages
  • – Aquafina water
  • – Aquafina flavored beverages
  • – DoubleShot energy beverages
  • – Frappuccino beverages
  • – Lipton tea and other beverages
  • – Propel beverages
  • – SoBe beverages
  • – Gatorade beverages
  • – Fiesta Miranda beverages
  • – Tropicana juices and beverages

NESTLE PRODUCTS:

  • – All coffee creamers
  • – Maggi Brand instant soups, bouillon cubes, ketchups, sauces, seasoning, instant noodles

KRAFT – CADBURY ADAMS PRODUCTS:

  • – Black Jack chewing gum
  • – Bubbaloo bubble gum
  • – Bubblicious bubble gum
  • – Chiclets
  • – Clorets
  • – Dentyne
  • – Freshen Up Gum
  • – Sour Cherry Gum (Limited)
  • – Sour Apple Gum (Limited)
  • – Stride
  • – Trident

CADBURY ADAMS CANDIES:

  • – Sour Cherry Blasters
  • – Fruit Mania
  • – Bassett’s Liquorice All sorts
  • – Maynards Wine Gum
  • – Swedish Fish
  • – Swedish Berries
  • – Juicy Squirts
  • – Original Gummies
  • – Fuzzy Peach
  • – Sour Chillers
  • – Sour Patch Kids
  • – Mini Fruit Gums
  • – Certs breath mints
  • – Halls Cough Drops

NEOCUTIS “BEAUTY” PRODUCTS:

Neocutis uses aborted male baby cells after a 14 week gestation period in their anti-wrinkle creams. The following creams they sell contain aborted fetal cells, but we need to boycott all their products.

  • -Bio-Gel Prevedem Journee
  • -Bio-Serum Lumiere
  • -Bio Restorative Skin Cream

VACCINES:

  • -MMR II (Merck)
  • -ProQuad (MMR + Chickenpox – Merck)
  • -Varivax (Chickenpox – Merck)
  • -Pentacel (Polio + DTaP + HiB – Sanofi Pasteur)
  • -Vaqta (Hepatitis-A – Merck)
  • -Havrix (Hepatitis-A – Glaxo SmithKline)
  • -Twinrix (Hepatitis-A and B combo – Glaxo)
  • -Zostavax (Shingles – Merck)
  • -Imovax (Rabies – Sanofi Pasteur)

OTHER MEDICINES:

  • -Pulmozyme (Cystic Fibrosis – Genetech)
  • -Enbrel (Rheumatoid Arthritis – Amgen)

IN OTHER NEWS

The Office of Special Counsel, unrelated to Robert Mueller’s now closed office, said Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act by advocating for and against candidates in a 2017 election. This is an attempt to remove the last of the President’s original staff members from the White House.

US HELLBENT TO START WAR AGAINST IRAN

On Monday, the Pentagon said it has approved the deployment of 1,000 additional troops to the Middle East “for defensive purposes.” The move comes hours after Iran said it plans to enrich more uranium before the end of June.

IS ALEX JONES BEING SET UP?

Infowars founder Alex Jones and his lawyer, Norm Pattis, are claiming that Jones and his organization were the target of a malware attack that left child pornography embedded on his servers, a move which they say sparked an FBI investigation.

The “child porn” files were allegedly “discovered” when Jones turned over file access to attorneys for the Sandy Hook families as a part of a “discovery” motion in their lawsuit against him. Jones is currently being sued by the families of Sandy Hook victims who say he has profited off of spreading claims the massacre was a hoax.

On his Infowars broadcast last week Friday Jones outright said that he was framed by someone tied to those suing him. He repeatedly singled out Christopher Mattei, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who currently represents the Sandy Hook families, and also said that other Democrats were working against him.

Pattis said the FBI had already been conducting an investigation into the matter for several weeks after a company tasked with screening Infowars’ emails found 12 threatening messages that contained images of child porn. “These were emails that if you, me or one of your workers had opened we would have been subjected to five years in federal prison,” Pattis said, adding that no one at Infowars had opened any of the infected files. But in the initial investigation Jones and Infowars were the victim and not the culprits.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Connecticut should therefore release a statement declaring him a victim in the matter, no doubt if it were anyone other than Alex Jones they would have already done so.

“I’m not into kids like your Democratic party,” Jones said, “I am so sick of their filth and living off the dead kids of Sandy Hook.”

A FATAL MERCY
by Al Benson, Jr.

Al Benson, Jr., is the Editor of the Copperhead Chronicle. In addition to writing for Southern Patriot and other publications, he is a member of the Confederate Society of America and the League of the South.

This book is a work of fiction, historical fiction, about a family from the low country of South Carolina at the time of the beginning of the War of Northern Aggression and for over half a century after that. Having said that, let me hasten to add that it is good historical fiction, good because it has a fascinating story to tell, and good because Mr. Moore knows the history he uses for the backdrop of this story. Once I started reading, I had a hard time putting it down and it seemed to get better as it went along, in spite of the sadness of some of the incidents written about.

The main character is Drayton FitzHenry, the middle son of a family that raises rice on their plantation in the low country of extreme eastern South Carolina. The story covers the period from January, 1860, all the way through to July, 1913, when Drayton, his older brother, Cabell, and Tommy, his grandson, go to the 50th reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Although he was initially reluctant to go to the reunion, Drayton was eventually talked into it by his older brother, and it was good for him that he did go, for it allowed him to unburden himself of a secret about the battle that had haunted him ever since 1867. It was a burden he needed to get rid of.

Let me say this here. I have been to Gettysburg three times over the years, going all the way back to 1961, and then twice after that. I have been across most of the battlefield from the Confederate side to the Yankee side. I’ve stood where Chamberlain’s men stood as they fired on the attacking Confederates, trying to get a feel for what happened to our boys as they crossed that wide open stretch marching into the Yankee guns. I guess, in my mind’s eye I wanted to see if I could see them coming. I couldn’t bring up the vision at that time. But, then, I still had a lot to learn at that time.

One thing I will say about Mr. Moore’s description of the battlefield and the battle, it made me feel Gettysburg all over again as I had on our visits there. It was a mark of the caliber of this book that it made me feel what I had experienced previously only on the battlefield.

Our protagonist, Drayton FitzHenry, marries the one love of his life, his first wife, Cecelia before he goes off to war. She is a Northern girl, in South Carolina with her father, a professor from the North, yet she marries Drayton, initially against the wishes of both her father and his. Yet once married, she becomes part of his family and remains with them the rest of her life, short though that unfortunately is.

Neither Drayton or his family really wants to see this war come. Yet, when it does come, Drayton, his older brother, Cabell, and his younger brother, Ranse, all go off to fight in defense of their native State.

Cecelia extracts from Drayton the promise that he will not let the war make a heartless brute out of him, but that he will exercise mercy as much as is possible in whatever situation he finds himself. To his credit, Drayton does this, but the doing of it, which happens at Gettysburg, is something that causes him heartache for all the years until he goes back to Gettysburg in 1913.

Drayton’s problem begins on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, when General Longstreet, for whom Drayton is a courier and scout, is asked by the general to scout the Yankee army’s left flank to see if there is a way to get around the Northern army that the Confederates can use to turn the Yankee left flank and change the course the battle seems to be taking.

In the course of his scouting, Drayton comes to Little Round Top, and as he scouts out this area, he discovers that there are no Yankee soldiers on Little Round Top. As he is about to depart to inform General Longstreet he hears a noise and discovers that two Yankee officers have also gotten up to the top of Little Round Top. He gets into the trees out of sight and observes them. With him he has a Spencer repeating rifle that has been appropriated from the Yankees in battle, and his first thought is to shoot the two Yankee officers who are up there with him. But then, the admonition of his wife to show mercy wherever possible comes to him and he hesitates to shoot two men in cold blood from ambush, and so he eases his finger off the trigger and the Yankees leave. At that point, Drayton leaves also and gets back to Longstreet as quickly as he can. But he has further to go than the two Yankees do. He gets back to Longstreet and tells him what he found, but before Longstreet can really do much in the way of moving troops there, the Yankees have already started moving men up to the top of Little Round Top, and we all know the rest of that story. And so, for the time being, although Drayton is sad that the Yankees beat us to Little Round Top, he doesn’t think all that much more about it. His future reflections on that situation come two years down the road.

In February of 1867, Drayton gets to visit with former Confederate General Edward Porter Alexander when both are teaching at the University of South Carolina. Alexander shows him an article written for the New York Times, a tribute to Union General Gouverneur Warren, written in July of 1865.

The article explains that General Warren was the Union officer, part of Meade’s staff, who was responsible for securing Little Round Top for the Yankees, which made the difference in the outcome of the battle. This was the officer that Drayton had seen up there and declined to shoot from ambush, and that act of mercy, a fatal mercy, made the difference in the Battle of Gettysburg, and eventually in the war as a whole. At this point, Drayton feels the eventual loss of the war is his fault for his act of mercy. He lives with the horrific burden on his shoulders until 1913, when he goes back to Gettysburg and is able to unburden his soul at that point in a speech to his comrades in arms of fifty years ago. And while a handful of them react with anger, the majority do not.

Drayton’s second wife, Annalee, (his first wife, Cecelia, the real love of his life) died in 1864 of typhoid fever while he was away fighting and later on Drayton ends up marrying Annalee. She is no carbon copy of his first devoted wife. She is a control freak who wants to dominate every aspect of his being and she does not want him going to Gettysburg for this 50th reunion because he is out from under her control while he is gone. His whole relationship with Annalee and their “marriage” is an interesting sub-plot in this story, but it would drag this review on too long to go into it in detail here. It’s one of those fascinating parts of this book that you will have to get the book to discover. In the end, Drayton is able to resolve it to his (and our) satisfaction.

You may be able to tell from this review that I really enjoyed this book. I have always enjoyed good historical fiction and this book filled that bill. I hope Mr. Moore will go on and do more work in this area. Good historical fiction always imparts a certain amount of historical knowledge and this book does that. I recommend it strongly.

It was published by Green Altar Books, which is a division of Shotwell Publishing in Columbia, South Carolina.

THE GMO THREAT
by Walt Garlington

Walt Garlington is a chemical engineer turned writer (and, when able, a planter). He makes his home in Louisiana and is editor of the ‘Confiteri: A Southern Perspective’ web site.

Genetically engineered crops have been grown in large numbers across the States since 1996. These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are created by taking a gene (or genes) from an unrelated species like a bacterium and splicing it (them) into a crop like corn or cotton with the intention of improving some aspect of it (to protect against herbicides, drought, etc.). These GMOs have received the Food and Drug Administration’s label of ‘Generally Recognized as Safe’, but as Southerners, as a people with a strong Christian and agrarian heritage, we need to examine that claim.

The Southerner’s first guide will naturally be the Holy Scriptures. What do they tell us about how we should approach the creation? In the opening chapter of Genesis, the Holy Prophet Moses writes this about the plants and animals God made:

[11] And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

[12] And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

[20] And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

[21] And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

[24] And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

[25] And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
-Gen. 1: 11-12, 20-1, 24-5

The implication here is that every species of plant and animal will reproduce ‘after his kind’, i.e., that mixing of species was not God’s intention for His creation. But let us test that against the Church Fathers. They see more deeply into the meaning of the verses of the Bible than ordinary folk do. How do they understand those we have just quoted? St Ambrose of Milan (+397) writes,

What pure and untarnished generations follow without intermingling one after another, so that a thymallus produces a thymallus; a sea-wolf, a sea-wolf. The sea-scorpion, too, preserves unstained its marriage bed…. Fish know nothing of union with alien species. They do not have unnatural betrothals such as are designedly brought about between animals of two different species as, for instance, the donkey and the mare, or again the female donkey and the horse, both being examples of unnatural union. Certainly there are cases in which nature suffers more in the nature of defilement rather than that of injury to the individual. Man as an abettor of hybrid barrenness is responsible for this. He considers a mongrel animal more valuable than one of a genuine species. You mix together alien species and you mingle diverse seeds.

-Hexaemeron, quoted in Fr Seraphim Rose, Genesis, Creation, and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision, 2nd edn., Hieromonk Damascene, ed., Platina, Cal., St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2011, p. 185.
St Basil the Great (+379) adds,
The nature of existing objects, set in motion by one command, passes through creation without change…. …it continues to preserve each of the animals by uninterrupted successions until the consummation of the universe. No length of time causes the specific characteristics of the animals to be corrupted or effaced, but, as if established just recently, nature, ever fresh, moves along with time.

. . . from seeds spring forth plants related to the seeds sown. Thus, what was put forth by the earth in its first generation has been preserved until the present time, since the kinds persisted through constant reproduction.

-Hexaemeron, quoted in Fr Seraphim, pgs. 182-3.
Our hunch about Genesis 1 is here confirmed by the Fathers: The mixing of species, whether plant or animal, was not God’s intention. Each species was meant to remain separate and distinct ‘until the consummation of the universe’, and, furthermore, that mingling them would result in harm for nature in some form.
This last word from the Fathers is being confirmed in many disastrous ways. GM crops are leading to all kinds of diseases and deformities:
But what we do know is that a number of scientific studies seem to indicate that GMO food is not healthy. According to a paper released by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, animal studies have linked GMO food with a whole host of health problems…

“Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system.
Sadly, the health consequences from eating GMO food may not just be temporary. In fact, one study found that the effects of eating genetically-modified food could last for a lot longer that anyone had anticipated…
The only published human feeding study revealed what may be the most dangerous problem from GM foods. The gene inserted into GM soy transfers into the DNA of bacteria living inside our intestines and continues to function. This means that long after we stop eating GMOs, we may still have potentially harmful GM proteins produced continuously inside of us. Put more plainly, eating a corn chip produced from Bt corn might transform our intestinal bacteria into living pesticide factories, possibly for the rest of our lives.
-Michael Snyder
William Engdahl puts forward even more of these nightmarish effects.
The Southern States, one after another, through the Grace of God and their good sense – Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana – have lately been passing stout pro-life legislation (heartbeat bills and the like). But the raising and eating of GM crops is begetting more and more sickness and death for men, women, and children alike, as well as for the wider sphere of the creation: bees, butterflies, earthworms. It is time the Southern States took the pro-life cause a step further by casting out from their borders any and all GMOs. Why should we bring more Southern children into the world only to poison them from the day they are born to they day they die with this kind of ‘food’?

That will not do. It is a denial of who we are as a people: Southerners do not sacrifice the good of others for the idolatrous sake of the work of our minds and hands. Rather, we sacrifice ourselves on behalf of other men and the creation, in imitation of Christ Who was crucified that they all might be renewed (Rom. 8:18-22). The way forward is clear: Return to traditional methods of farming, for the well-being of mankind and of the creation he was made ‘to dress and to keep’ (Gen. 2:15).

ABORTION & GAY RIGHTS AMERICAN VALUES?
by Dr. Pat Buchanan

Pat Buchanan is a columnist who worked in the White House as a speech writer for Presidents Nixon and Reagan.

“My religion defines who I am. And I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life,” said Vice President Joe Biden in 2012. “I accept my church’s position on abortion as … doctrine. Life begins at conception. … I just refuse to impose that on others.”

For four decades, Biden backed the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of the tax dollars of Joe’s fellow Catholics to pay for what they view as the killing of the innocent unborn.

Last week, Joe flipped. He now backs the repeal of the Hyde Amendment.

Ilyse Hogue of NARAL Pro-Choice America welcomed home the prodigal son: “We’re pleased that Joe Biden has joined the rest of the 2020 Democratic field in coalescing around the Party’s core values — support for abortion rights.”

But when did the right to an abortion — a crime in many states before 1973 — become a “core value” of the Democratic Party?

And what are these “values” of which politicians incessantly talk?

Are they immutable? Or do they change with the changing times?

Last month, Disney CEO Bob Iger said his company may cease filming in Georgia if its new anti-abortion law takes effect: “If (the bill) becomes law, I don’t see how it’s practical for us to continue to shoot there.”

The Georgia law outlaws almost all abortions, once a heartbeat is detected, some six to eight weeks into pregnancy. It reflects the Christian conservative values of millions of Georgians.

To Iger and Hollywood, however, Georgia’s law radically restricts the “reproductive rights” of women, and is a moral outrage.

What we have here is a clash of values.

What one side believes is preserving the God-given right to life for the unborn, the other regards as an assault on the rights of women.

The clash raises questions that go beyond our culture war to what America should stand for in the world.

“American interests and American values are inseparable,” Pete Buttigieg told Rachel Maddow. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Claremont Institute: “We have had too little courage to confront regimes squarely opposed to our interests and our values.”

Are Pompeo and Mayor Pete talking about the same values?

The mayor is proudly gay and in a same-sex marriage. Yet the right to same-sex marriage did not even exist in this country until the Supreme Court discovered it a few years ago.

In a 2011 speech to the U.N., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “Gay rights are human rights,” and she approved of U.S. embassies flying the rainbow flag during Pride Month.

This year, Mike Pompeo told the U.S. embassy in Brazil not to fly the rainbow flag. He explained his concept of his moral duty to the Christian Broadcasting Network, “The task I have is informed by my understanding of my faith, my belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior.”

The Christian values Pompeo espouses on abortion and gay rights are in conflict with what progressives now call human rights.

And the world mirrors the American divide.

There are gay pride parades in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, but none in Riyadh and Mecca. In Brunei, homosexuality can get you killed.

To many Americans, diversity — racial, ethnic, cultural, religious — is our greatest strength.

Yet Poland and Hungary are proudly ethnonationalist. South Korea and Japan fiercely resist the racial and ethnic diversity immigration would bring. Catalans and Scots in this century, like Quebecois in the last, seek to secede from nations to which they have belonged for centuries.

Are ethnonationalist nations less righteous than diverse nations likes ours? And if diversity is an American value, is it really a universal value?

Consider the treasured rights of our First Amendment — freedom of speech, religion and the press.

Saudi Arabia does not permit Christian preachers. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, converts to Christianity face savage reprisals. In Buddhist Myanmar, Muslims are ethnically cleansed.

These nations reject an equality of all faiths, believing instead in the primacy of their own majority faith. They reject our wall of separation between religion and state. Our values and their values conflict.

What makes ours right and theirs wrong? Why should our views and values prevail in what are, after all, their countries?

Under our Constitution, many practices are protected — abortion, blasphemy, pornography, flag-burning, trashing religious beliefs — that other nations regard as symptoms of a disintegrating society.

When Hillary Clinton said half of all Trump supporters could be put into a “basket of deplorables” for being “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,” she was conceding that many Trump’s supporters detest many progressive values.

True, but in the era of Trump, why should her liberal values be the values America champions abroad?

With secularism’s triumph, we Americans have no common religion, no common faith, no common font of moral truth. We disagree on what is right and wrong, moral and immoral.

Without an agreed-upon higher authority, values become matters of opinion. And ours are in conflict and irreconcilable.

Understood. But how, then, do we remain one nation and one people?

FROM THE EDITOR

Dr. Ed is a pastor, author, public speaker, radio personality, lobbyist, re-enactor, and the Director of Dixie Heritage.

To put it bluntly, the government simply does not work the way our founders set it up to work. And that is why most lobbying efforts fail.

Traditionally, when a group wants to accomplish something they go to the nation’s capitol and make appointments with Congressman or they go to their State capitol to hopefully speak to members of the State Legislature or maybe even the Governor. The problem being that they spend a lot of TIME and energy getting appointments with very busy people who havn’t actually ran anything for years.

Bottom line, the government (local or federal) is run by bureaucracy. Yes, the legislative branch still passes bills which are then sent to the executive to be “signed into law.” But have you looked at the “laws” coming out of Congress and Legislatures for the last two decades or so. Increasingly, they are simply creating or empowering or instructing various “agencies,” or, in other words, bureaucracies.

By doing this the people who are supposed to be running the country can easily excuse themselves from any work or responsibility. The “agency” carries the load of execution and when it goes bad the politicians just blame the bureaucracy. In the case of a Congressman, he can “advocate” on behalf of his constituent to the very bureaucracy he helped to create and come out looking like the hero in the process.

Anywhoo, the “legislative process” is very intense and we do not have the financial or manpower means to attempt to drive it. Add to that our cause is one that even a sympathetic Congressman does not want to be identified with or against. All tallking to a Congressman will get us is a private word of sympathy at best or a public condemnaton at worst.

So in my efforts, more often than not, I make my appointments within the bureaucracy. Or I just walk into their office and start talking. In either event, I’m actually talking to the people who will remove a monument, or who can gum up the works so to speak delaying or preventing the removal with “red tape.” The same bureaucrats will decide who can or cannot get on an agenda to speak to these issues at public meetings, who will or will not get “permits” or “exemptions,” what will or won’t be “grandfathered,” etc. They also compile the “statistics” that politicians will use to make their decisions.

And you’d be amazed at how many bureaucrats are sympathetic to our monuments but will publically state whatever is politically correct to keep their jobs. Given the opportunity, they will gum things up pretty good (which, for example, is why we have several statues in place long after the politicians ordered them removed).

The reason I do not mention the names of the politicians and bureaucrats with whom I meet is because as soon as I do they will come under a state of analysis (politicians) or could just be fired (bureaucrats) or in other words, if I were to call attention that someone may be helpful to us they would immediately be placed in a position where they could no longer be helpful.

Not that all bureaucrats are helpful. While some are, many are not. For example, on my recent trip I was in Virginia, D.C., Annapolis (Maryland), and a European country with a monument that is so off the radar I dare not call attention to it by identifying its location. While I was received favorably by some and not so much so by others, I never felt “endangered” and there was no perceived problem even in failure.

But on Monday that changed. I had driven to the capitol of Florida (Tallahassee) and noticed a State Trooper who had followed me out of the government office area and continued to do so for several miles. I even made lane changes and left turns before he finally hit his lights and pulled me over on the pretext that “license plate covers are now illegal in the State of Florida.” But strangly, he did NOT write me a ticket. That I could have chalked up to the price of doing business, paid, and moved on with life. He wrote me a summons to appear. This means that a black Trooper has filed papers with a black Clerk ordering me to appear before a black Judge, to, I can only assume answer for why I am a “neo-Confederate”? Or maybe this is all just a big “misunderstanding” on my part and I’m blowing everything way out of proportion?

I am scheduled to appear in August. If there is a Tallahassee area attorney reading this who would consider representing me please reach out to me by reply eMail.

As you are reading this on Friday I am likely back in Tallahassee. I had scheduled a return visit on Friday and feel the need to go, if for no other reason, so I do not appear fearful for not doing so. Pray that today’s trip is without similar incident.

The harder the enemy tries to silence us, the LOUDER we must become!

Until Next Week,
Deo Vindice!
Chaplain Ed

Dixie Heritage
P.O. Box 618
Lowell, FL 32663