This is beautiful. Love the blue-collar dad move of having a disproportionate-force tool for any job.

This video is absolutely worth watching. It's a beautiful story and I hope it's true.

This is a WOW piece of writing. This is a story of truth, of love, of loss, of what it means to be alone. Wow.

I think this is the path forward. But will anyone listen?

America has a gun With (very few) apologies to Brian Bilston England is CCTV. France, a cop with lock and key. Greece, once free, now bends the knee. But, America has a gun. Sweden jails the ones who fight. Germany fines bad words at night. Spain forbids the wrong to write. But, America has a gun. Holland fines what words you say. Canada takes your knives away. Australia says, "you must Obey." While America has a gun. Japan will bow and not resist. Scotland bans what they won’t miss. Freedom bleeds, but still exists Because America has a gun. Better risk the fatal cost Than find that liberty was lost. The price is high, The fight, embossed Because America has a gun.

Democrats will shout and scream, call you a bigot, nazi, fascist, racist, misogynist, sexist threat to democracy, then lose their ever-loving minds and call you “divisive” when you come to the logical conclusion that maybe we’re no longer “fellow citizens” simply debating issues. Understand something. The name-calling is not hyperbole, those names are what they think we actually are. The real tactic at this stage is them feigning outrage when you notice. They need you to see this as the same old debates between left and right so you don't see this for what it has become. A clash of diametrically opposed worldviews that can't coexist with one another. Don't believe me? Ok…how do you share a constitutional republic built upon Christian morality, English common law traditions, property rights, and limited government with a political movement that not only doesn't want those things, but believes they are oppressive tools of the patriarchy that must be “decolonized” and replaced with a largely Marxist interpretation of economics and a hedonistic interpretation of morality? When John Adams said our Constitution was written for a moral and religious people and is totally unsuited to the government of any other, that wasn't just flowery political talk. He wasn't making a campaign speech. He was making an observation about objective reality. And by the way, that opinion is not just shared by those of us who admire Adams, it's shared by those who hate him. The DSA agrees that our constitution is “totally unsuitable” for the country they want. Which is why they openly talk about fighting, dismantling, and replacing it. In a recent poll, 59% of Democrats said they support the DSA. So this is not some insignificant “fringe” on the left. It's the emergent wing that Democratic leadership recognizes it is dependent upon to take control. So understand that their outrage at you seeing this fight for what it is, is how they keep you from fighting it the way it needs to be fought. What's sad is their tactic might just work.

It’s not about the zoo tickets, it’s that at some point I looked up from my paycheck and realized OH, cool, I’m apparently funding the welfare state, Big Pharma, foreign countries, “Learing Centers,” government programs I’ve never heard of, Planned Fucking Parenthood, and seventeen layers of bureaucracy whose primary function appears to be emailing each other PDFs; meanwhile, I pay taxes when I earn money, taxes when I spend money, taxes to employ people, taxes on property I ALREADY OWN, taxes go up every year anyway, the school district discovers another $75,000,000 it absolutely cannot survive without, and if I so much as raise my hand and ask whether maybe, possibly, perhaps somebody could spend slightly less money, I am informed that I hate teachers, children, puppies and probably literacy, and NOW after financing civilization itself I’m also supposed to smile and subsidize someone’s trip to see the giraffes. Know what I mean?

This is one of the biggest wins for our 2nd Amendment rights in US history. After the August federal court ruling in the Silencer Shop case, the ATF has now issued guidance saying *all* Americans no longer need to register SBRs, SBSs, and suppressors under the NFA. This means they will now be treated like every other firearm purchase with just a background check. The ruling previously only applied to plaintiffs in that case, but the ATF expanded it to everyone. Historic.

When Jews were being slaughtered in Europe and Russia, they didn’t invade anyone, they went home, they bought land, legally. The region had no sovereign state at the time, only centuries of occupation under foreign empires. They drained swamps, built cities, created infrastructure, and that success attracted migrants, from Egypt, from the Levant, from the Arabian Peninsula, who came seeking opportunity in the land they were reviving. When the Ottoman occupation ended, everyone in the region got a state. The Maronites in the north got Lebanon. The Hashemites got Jordan. Iraq was born. Syria too. So Jews asked for one state, just one, but they were told no. They still agreed to share the land, even though they were offered the worst half, mostly desert. Their neighbors still said no. Then came 1948. Five Arab armies invaded to wipe them out. They fought, survived and won. Then they offered peace again, but the Arabs answered with the Three No’s of Khartoum: No peace. No recognition. No negotiations. Arabs tried again in 1967 to destroy them. Jews survived again. They captured more land, not out of ambition, but necessity. But when peace was possible, they gave land back. They returned Sinai to Egypt. They withdrew from Southern Lebanon. They offered to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank. They offered the Palestinians everything they asked for in 2000. Yet, Palestinians walked away. In 2005, they unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. In return they got rockets, terror tunnels, kidnapped civilians. Then came October 7, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Civilians slaughtered, babies burned, women raped. So I ask: What do you want them to do? Because “Never Again” means never again. You don’t get to massacre their people and then cry about the consequences. You don’t get to raise your children to hate them and then blame them when war comes. They will not apologize for surviving, they will not apologize for fighting back. Never Again means Never Again.

Still the most wholesome account on X.

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe Presented here in full, for free. Made by me. These are real characters and sets, not videos generated by prompts. Part 1 of a 3 part "Classic American Spooky Stories" anthology I am making for Halloween.

Our True Wealth With all that culture and civilization, we are forgetting one fundamental thing: we are living organisms. And that defines what the most important thing is – what our true wealth is about. Let’s put a few things in order: 1. As living organisms, our most important goal is to expand our life form – to reproduce. For most of us that simply means children. Our true wealth. Think about it: every one of your ancestors, back to the beginning of life, managed to pass life on. Not one of them failed. You are the latest link in a chain that has never been broken. 2. Then the family – the first arrangement that makes children possible: two people who commit, a home, a table, someone to raise them. The smallest institution, and the only one that produces people. 3. Then the community and the nation – families that share a language, a memory, and a willingness to protect each other. A nation is families who have agreed on what to pass on. 4. Then culture – the stories, standards and common sense that tell each generation what works and what is worth wanting. Culture is the instruction manual for raising the next generation well. 5. Then civilization – law, markets, science, medicine: the large-scale arrangement that lets millions of families live together in peace and grow richer than any family could alone. 6. Then the economy – money, work, careers. A means. Not the goal – just the fuel. 7. And at the very end, the state – the servant that protects all of the above. Not the master. Not the parent. The guard at the door. Culture and civilization are there to help us do that, as a collective arrangement. Not the other way round. Now look at what we did. We turned the order upside down. The state at the top, telling families how to live. The economy next – the career as the meaning of life, children as a cost. A culture that tells young people the planet would be better off without them. And at the bottom, almost forgotten, the thing all of it was for. A civilization that forgets what it is for does not collapse in a day. But it simply stops. Beautiful museums, excellent infrastructure, and nobody to inherit them. So here is a simple test for any institution, law or idea: does it help people have and raise children – or does it stand in the way? In previous times you needed a lot of material wealth to keep the heritage of your family alive – land, a library, tutors. That is not the case anymore: the books, the archive, even the tutor are practically free. Now you just need to spend the time to transmit. So for the first time in history, any family can be a dynasty. Not of land. Of transmission. The only price is time. The catch: time is exactly what modern life takes from you – the career, the commute, the screen. The thief now fits in your pocket. Once, keeping a heritage alive took an estate. Today it takes evenings. The excuse is gone. The new aristocracy is not made of land. It is made of time. Money compounds for decades. A family compounds for centuries.

Let’s see your boat/ship captures ⛵️📷 From small rowboats to massive ocean liners, or anything that floats

VOTE THE PLATFORM OR SHUT UP My Pap ended the most heated political argument our family ever had with four words. "Who'd you vote for?" My Pap was a lot of things. Stubborn. Proud. Army veteran. The kind of man who said what he meant and meant every word of it. I was lucky enough to be there when he took his last breath, and I would give anything to hear his voice one more time. He and my dad got into it one day over politics. It got heated the way it always does in our family. Then Pap went quiet for a second, looked my dad dead in the eye, and asked, calm as a Sunday morning, who he voted for. My dad admitted he hadn't voted. Pap didn't yell. Didn't lecture. He said, "You chose not to have a voice for your country. You have no say in this conversation." And that was the end of it. My dad never forgot that. Neither did I. I have been thinking about Pap a lot lately, because I keep running into two kinds of people this election season. The first kind will not vote at all and will spend November through 2028 complaining on X at 11pm. Pap already handled them. The second kind is harder to spot, because he means well. THE FRIEND WHO SHOWED UP SEVEN MONTHS LATE I have a friend who is evaluating every candidate on his ballot to figure out which one is the most BIBLICAL. Noble instinct. Wrong election. Your window for deciding WHO represents you closed months ago. It was called the primary. That is the entire purpose of a primary: you fire the Republican you do not want and hire the one you do. If you skipped it, or you lost it, the job interview is over. You are now standing in the general election conducting a character audit on a hire that has already been made. That ship has sailed. It is somewhere past the horizon, waving. We have a two-party system. I do not like it either, but my dislike has about the same effect on reality as my opinion about gravity, and I teach physics, so I would know. In November you are not voting for a man. You are voting for a PLATFORM, and that platform is going to vote whether your preferred candidate is a saint or a scoundrel. So my friend wants a biblical standard. Good. Let us use one, and let us point it at the thing actually on the ballot. THE RUBRIC IS ALREADY WRITTEN Proverbs 6:16-19 (LSB): "There are six things which Yahweh hates, yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly to evil, a false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers." That is not my list. I am just the guy grading against it. HAUGHTY EYES. They know better than parents how to raise children, better than doctors what treatment is acceptable, and better than teachers what kids need. I teach in a high-need district where most of my students qualify for free lunch. In all my years there, not one person from the left has asked me what is actually broken. They already KNOW. That unearned, top-down knowing is first on God's list, and I suspect it is first for a reason. A LYING TONGUE AND A FALSE WITNESS. Democrats made the ACA subsidies TEMPORARY in the American Rescue Plan Act in March 2021. Zero Republican votes. They extended those temporary subsidies through 2025 in the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. Zero Republican votes. Then, when their own law expired on the date THEY wrote into it, they went on television and blamed Republicans. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (@SenatorWarnock) has done this repeatedly, from a Senate seat, while pastoring the church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Exodus 20:16: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." That is the Ninth Commandment, and James 3:1 says those who teach "will incur a stricter judgment." He has staff. He can read a roll call. Which is Jim Quinn's Sixth Law of Liberalism at work: FACTS ARE THE ENEMY OF LIBERALISM. The subsidy story dies the second someone opens the vote tally, so nobody on that side ever mentions the vote tally. The facts are not argued with. They are avoided, the way a vampire avoids a sunny afternoon. HANDS THAT SHED INNOCENT BLOOD. What is next, a political party parking an abortion clinic outside its own national convention and announcing it like a food truck at the county fair... wait, I was just told they already did that. Chicago, 2024. Planned Parenthood ran a mobile clinic offering free medication abortions down the road from the DNC and publicized it. Psalm 139:13 (LSB): "For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb." Jeremiah 1:5: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." Luke 1:41 uses the Greek word brephos for unborn John leaping in Elizabeth's womb, the same word Luke 2:12 uses for newborn Jesus in the manger. Scripture makes no distinction. The platform makes it a convention amenity. Isaiah 5:20: "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil." That woe has been sitting on that verse for 2,700 years and it has not expired. A HEART THAT DEVISES WICKED PLANS. A welfare system built so that benefits shrink when a husband moves into the house. A government that made fathers a financial liability, and then acted shocked when fathers left. In 1965 roughly a quarter of Black children were born outside of marriage. Today it is around 70 percent. On January 10, 1963, Congressman Albert Herlong Jr. read 45 Communist Goals for America into the Congressional Record. Goal 40: "Discredit the family as an institution." Achieved, and then the rubble was blamed on racism. Quinn's Law Number 1 says liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent, and I cannot think of a cleaner lab result. FEET THAT RUN RAPIDLY TO EVIL. Organized activists in Colorado helping a convicted child rapist dodge ICE. Protesters honking horns to obstruct the arrest of a child sex offender, then going home to post about protecting kids. DHS reporting assaults on ICE officers up roughly 1,000 percent while elected Democrats called those officers terrorists on television. Proverbs 1:16: "For their feet run to evil and they hasten to shed blood." ONE WHO SPREADS STRIFE AMONG BROTHERS. Splitting the country by race, class, sex, income, and zip code, because a divided, frightened public never stops to ask Thomas Sowell's questions: compared to what, at what cost, and what hard evidence do you have? Strife is the product. Romans 16:17-18 warns about exactly those who "cause dissensions" and "by their smooth and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting." Seven for seven. I did not grade on a curve. THE HISTORY THEY TOOK OUT OF THE TEXTBOOK I am a teacher, so this part is literally my job. Republicans pushed the 13th Amendment through the House while most Democrats voted no. Not a single Democrat in Congress voted for the 14th or 15th Amendments. Democrats wrote Jim Crow. Senator Robert Byrd, a former Klan recruiter and a Democrat until the day he died, filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for over fourteen hours. The method of control changed over the years. The party doing the controlling did not. Goal 27 from that same 1963 list: "Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with social religion." When a Reverend preaches government dependency from a pulpit that once preached repentance, you do not need a conspiracy. You just need to read the list and then read the news. THE VERSES THEY WILL BRING TO THE REPLIES "JUDGE NOT." Matthew 7:1, amputated from verse 5, which tells you to remove the plank from your own eye SO THAT you can see clearly to help your brother. The command is to judge accurately. And Matthew 7:16, eleven verses later: "You will know them by their fruits." Jesus handed us the diagnostic tool Himself. "JESUS ATE WITH SINNERS." He did. He also told the woman caught in adultery, "go and sin no more" (John 8:11), and Matthew got up from the tax booth and left it for good. Association is not endorsement. That is a non sequitur wearing a church hat. "JESUS CARED ABOUT THE POOR, SO VOTE DEMOCRAT." Finish John 6. He fed five thousand, the crowd tried to force Him to be their king, and He left for the mountain. When they tracked Him down for round two, He told them in John 6:26 they were only there because they "ate of the loaves and were filled." In Acts 3:6 Peter told a lame beggar, "I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you," and the man walked. Restoration, not a monthly deposit. 2 Thessalonians 3:10: "if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat either." Paul's word is WILLING. He made room for those who cannot. He made none for those who will not. "BUT MY CANDIDATE ISN'T A CHRISTIAN." Now we are back to my friend. GOD HAS NEVER NEEDED A CHRISTIAN IN THE BIG CHAIR If God required His people to be governed only by believers, the Old Testament would be a very short book. CYRUS, a Persian pagan, is called "His anointed" in Isaiah 45:1 and "My shepherd" in 44:28. In 45:4 God says, "I have called you by your name... though you have not known Me." Cyrus sent Israel home and funded the temple. NEBUCHADNEZZAR, the man who burned Jerusalem, is called "My servant" three separate times in Jeremiah (25:9, 27:6, 43:10). PHARAOH is told in Exodus 9:16, "for this reason I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power." ARTAXERXES wrote the letters that sent Nehemiah home with timber and safe passage (Nehemiah 2:7-8). JOSEPH ran Egypt for a pagan king. DANIEL served Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius, and Cyrus. That is four administrations and zero covenant believers, and Daniel 2:21 says it is God who "removes kings and establishes kings." Then Paul writes Romans 13:1, "there is no authority except from God," while NERO is on the throne. Nero. The man who would later have him executed. God has never required His people to be ruled by the righteous. He has required His people to be WISE. I AM HIRING A VOTE So here is my entire test for November: IS THIS PERSON GOING TO VOTE THE WAY I NEED HIM TO VOTE? That is it. I am not marrying the man. I am not making him godfather to my kids. I could not care less if he is an atheist, and I would not trust him to watch my dog. I am hiring a vote. I hire the vote that protects the unborn, keeps the family intact, enforces the law, and tells the truth about what bills actually do. His personal theology is between him and his Maker. My ballot is between me and mine. Pap would have understood that immediately. He never once asked who was the nicest guy on the ballot. He asked whether you showed up. So show up. Vote the platform. The character audit was due in the spring, and if you skip November entirely, Pap has already told you where you stand in the conversation. But what do I know. I am only a grandson who still hears his Pap asking "Who'd you vote for?" and a science teacher who reads the whole chapter instead of the verse that fits on a bumper sticker. @TPUSA @TPAction @JoJoFromJerz @atrupar #MAGA #Veterans #Trump

In response to the clip going around with the African lady saying 'WHAT WHITE CULTURE!?!' Because I can explain it in more detail than anyone else... here are the main things that create western civilisation. The principle, the law of nature that is an adaptation to and what operation it creates in our civilisation. THE WESTERN CIVILISATION STACK Western civilisation can be understood as a set of adaptations to the laws of nature that allow millions of people to cooperate, solve problems and innovate together. 1. SOVEREIGNTY — Let people act. Law of nature: Knowledge and ability are distributed among individuals. No ruler or institution can know everything everyone knows. Sovereignty gives people freedom to choose, experiment and solve problems for themselves. That creates millions of independent problem-solvers instead of waiting for one authority to find the answer. 2. RECIPROCITY — Don’t impose your costs on others. Law of nature: Cooperation survives when it benefits both sides. Freedom cannot mean freedom to steal, defraud, injure or force others to carry your costs. Reciprocity means pursuing your interests while respecting the same right in others. It turns conflict into cooperation and makes peaceful life among strangers possible. 3. RESPONSIBILITY — Make people accountable for consequences. Law of nature: Every action produces consequences. Freedom works when the person making a decision also bears responsibility for its results. When people can keep the benefits of their choices while forcing the costs onto others, cooperation breaks down. Responsibility reconnects choice with consequence. 4. PROPERTY — Make control and consequences clear. Law of nature: Resources are scarce and cannot satisfy every competing use at once. Property establishes who controls something, who may use or exchange it, and who bears the consequences of those decisions. That reduces conflict, encourages people to improve what they possess, and makes investment and long-term planning possible. 5. TRUTH — Correct error faster than reality punishes you for it. Law of nature: Reality does not change because we believe something false. Truthful testimony, open criticism and evidence allow people to discover mistakes before those mistakes become catastrophes. A civilisation that can criticize and correct itself can learn faster than one that protects comforting falsehoods. 6. CONTRACT — Make cooperation possible across time. Law of nature: Cooperation requires predictable future behaviour. Promises backed by reputation and law allow strangers to trust one another enough to cooperate. Contract lets one person invest today because another can credibly promise performance tomorrow. That makes enormous networks of specialization, trade and investment possible. 7. RULE OF LAW — Replace arbitrary power with predictable rules. Law of nature: People have conflicting interests, and power creates opportunities for predation. Law provides a common procedure for resolving disputes without violence or personal rule. When rulers and citizens are both constrained by known rules, people can cooperate, invest and experiment without constantly fearing arbitrary interference. 8. DUE PROCESS — Test accusations instead of trusting authority. Law of nature: Human beings are biased, mistaken and sometimes dishonest. An accusation is not proof. Evidence, defense, confrontation, impartial judgment and appeal create an adversarial process for discovering error. Due process protects both society from wrongdoing and individuals from arbitrary punishment. 9. DECENTRALISATION — Let many solutions compete. Law of nature: No one knows in advance which adaptation will work best. Families, firms, towns, institutions and governments can try different solutions to different problems. Failures can remain local while successful solutions spread. Decentralisation therefore turns society itself into a continuous experiment. 10. MARKETS — Let reality select among competing solutions. Law of nature: Evolution advances through variation, selection and retention. Markets allow people to try different products, services and ways of organising resources. People select among them through voluntary choice. Successful solutions attract resources; unsuccessful ones disappear or improve. Markets turn millions of choices into continuous social learning. 11. SPECIALISATION — Let differences become advantages. Law of nature: People differ in knowledge, ability, resources and circumstances. Instead of everyone doing everything badly, specialization lets people become exceptionally good at different things and exchange the results. Cooperation converts human differences from a source of conflict into a source of increasing productivity. 12. SCIENCE — Institutionalise error correction. Law of nature: A false model eventually fails when tested against reality. Science turns doubt into a productive institution: observe, propose, test, criticize, replicate and correct. Knowledge therefore does not have to depend upon authority or tradition. Every generation can discover where the previous generation was wrong and build upon what it got right. 13. CAPITAL — Preserve successful adaptations. Law of nature: Progress compounds only when successful adaptations survive. Tools, businesses, infrastructure, institutions and knowledge allow yesterday’s successful experiments to become tomorrow’s starting point. Each generation does not begin again from zero. It inherits accumulated solutions and adds another layer. 14. EDUCATION — Transfer accumulated knowledge between generations. Law of nature: Individuals die; knowledge does not have to. Writing, schools, apprenticeships and universities allow discoveries to survive their discoverers. Instead of every generation rediscovering mathematics, engineering, medicine and law, it begins with thousands of years of accumulated learning. 15. COMMONS — Build things that make everyone more capable. Law of nature: Cooperation can produce benefits no individual could produce alone. Courts, roads, standards, security, scientific knowledge, infrastructure and trustworthy institutions multiply everyone's ability to act. A successful civilisation does more than protect private interests: it continually creates shared capital that makes future cooperation cheaper and more productive. THE RESULT These principles form a system: Sovereignty creates experimentation. Reciprocity makes it peaceful. Responsibility makes it sustainable. Property makes interests clear. Truth corrects error. Contract creates trust across time. Law suppresses predation. Decentralisation preserves alternatives. Markets select successful solutions. Specialisation multiplies productivity. Science accelerates discovery. Capital preserves what works. Education transmits it. Commons multiply everyone's capabilities. That is the deeper logic of the Western stack: Stable rules + distributed freedom + relentless error correction = cooperation at scale and accelerating innovation.

Please post something encouraging and beautiful. Having a rough day and need something to smile about. Thanks!

Monday, 14th September Today's Daily Picture Theme is 'Hidden' Reply or RT with your own photo Tomorrow's theme will be 'Indentation' #DailyPictureTheme My image: a Green turtle wedges herself under a rock near Hawksnest Bay on St. John, US Virgin Islands. She really thinks she's hidden!