Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By Dr. Laurie Roth —— Bio and Archives—June 15, 2020

We are in an unbelievable season where our nation’s cities are being attacked and held hostage by shipped-in, paid rioters and protesters.  We are under siege with anarchists hiding behind George Floyd, a few bad cops and the endless sea of acting out leftists who hate Trump simply because he breathes air.

We are seeing some burning flags in protests and the infamous ‘take a knee’ movement is growing with taking a knee cropping up at public spaces,  thanks to the NFL and other leagues at more sporting events.  Just last week, Roger Goodell reversed his position about not supporting NFL players ‘taking a knee’ during the traditional singing of the Star-Spangled Banner.  Nascar did the same, allowing drivers and teams to ‘take a knee’ during the national anthem.

Now, rather than show a moment of respect during the performance of the Star-Spangled Banner and traditionally standing with your hand over your heart, the players and drivers now have the right to ‘take a knee’ if they want to and protest against the Star-Spangled Banner and Flag.

Not only did the NFL and NASCAR not lead with this horrible and un-American decision, but they have betrayed hundreds of thousands of service men and women who have given their lives for our freedom. They have stirred the fire of even more disrespect and hatred against our flag and country that will cascade down through all our schools and other public events.

Barack Obama should be thrilled about more NFL players and NASCAR drivers taking a knee during the national anthem.  It is just one more ‘apology tour’ that Obama (thankfully) wasn’t able to finish doing.  Shame, embarrassment and disrespect for the flag, God and freedom is what the wet knee on the grass is saying.  Those knees are pressing on the necks of our fallen heroes and the countless people of all colors who made it possible for the NFL superstars to make millions of dollars and say what they please.  All the knee on the grass will do is give a player grass stains and reveal his arrogance, lack of understanding and treachery for what is real and great.

George Floyd was horribly killed by a knee to the neck causing him to suffocate and die.  Countless leftists, and America haters are now taking a knee to the neck of our freedom, our heritage, our flag and sacred traditions by acting out.

It was just ‘Flag Day’ and I sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in church with my music friend Cy.  I did this after sharing the miraculous story that led up to the penning of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ by Francis Scott Key.”  What the ‘Take a Knee’ folks don’t seem to understand is that a young America was fighting for freedom against the monster of Great Britain who out gunned us at every turn.  After the signing of America into existence in 1776, Britain started losing ground in the years that followed but they still attacked everywhere they could.  In August 1814, they took vengeance on Washington DC and viciously bombed the White House and many federal buildings.  President James Madison and his wife had to flee the city.

A group of 19 British warships loaded with cannons and the best weapons available at the time planned another major attack on the military base protecting Baltimore, Fort McHenry.  They had collected many American prisoners who were held on their ships during the previous months.  One of the prisoners asked a Baltimore attorney, Francis Scott Key to negotiate their release.  He was able to do this over a week’s time.  However, the British said before they released the prisoners, they were going to attack Fort McHenry.

As the attack started in September 1814, bombs all aimed at the fort,  lit up the night sky from 19 British ships.  The fort flew a large 32 by 42-foot flag out in front. The prisoners on board and Francis Scott key could only pray and watch the bombs exploding on the fort all night long.  As the sun rose, they were shocked and tearfully excited that the massive flag still waved proudly in the wind and all the Fort walls were still up.  Out of 1,000 soldiers in the fort, only 4 were killed.

It is high time to stop ‘taking a knee’ and time to ‘take a stand.’  Join me and take a stand for our God, our Constitution, our freedoms, our real history, our flag and legacy.  Be not ashamed but be thankful and proud, acknowledging God’s hand in our making and survival.

No more caution and hidden carefulness about praying…. pray boldly and without shame.  Stand with respect and attention when the Star-Spangled Banner is sung.  Don’t wither to a knee.

No more 50-yard line, compromised apologies.  Stand and worship.  Stand and pray. Stand and make a real difference and stand for your country.

Take a knee only if you want grass stained pants.

Stand.

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By Bob Hoye —— Bio and Archives—June 15, 2020

Throughout history, prosperity has been built upon individual freedom and limited government. And now, the global economy has suffered the fastest setback – ever – the first caused by monstrous bureaucratic intrusions. The record includes many economic busts, but the only comparable collapse occurred in London in 1665. Shockingly, the important trade center suffered the Bubonic Plague with some 25 percent of the population dying. Naturally, finance and business collapsed, but not by destructive government restrictions. Diarist Samuel Pepys, recorded on October 16, 1665:

“But Lord, how empty the streets are, and melancholy, so many poor sick people in the streets, full of sores and so many sad stories overheard as I walk…And they tell me in Westminster there is never a physician, and but one apothecary left, all being dead – But that there are great hopes of a great decrease this week. God send it.”

Today’s economic world is upside down

The ultimate in ironies is that the path to freedom began in towns in the 1200s and became one of the keys to ending the serfdom of feudalism. But through the last century, cities have been corrupted into destroying not just prosperity but the abilities to create it. Resulting in the modern welfare state, with both reluctant funders and recipients becoming serfs.

Today’s economic world is upside down.

Cities have changed from creating prosperity through competence to confiscating the other guy’s prosperity through political power. And recently mobs have physically destroyed businesses and buildings; the means of making a living.

The world is now facing the equivalent of a real Plague lockdown for a death rate similar to the Hong Kong Flu in 1968. Such disproportion is due to control freaks using any crisis to impose authority.

A long-running government promotion has been the notion that the Fed can prevent recessions. There have been 18 since it started in 1914. Another pitch has been that without taxes going to the United Nations, for the very first time in our planet’s history, warming is harmful to life. The latest control gambit has been to use an influenza to shut down the world’s economy, region by region.

If that shock was not bad enough, American activists turned protests into riots, which could be part of an insurrection.

Obviously, with the economy so plagued, the cure has been worse than the disease. And in New York and other cities, the panic was that there would not be enough hospitable beds, so COVID cases were sent to nursing homes. A mindless tragedy. But lockdowns have curtailed regular traffic to general hospitals such that doctors and nurses have been laid off.

Military medical ships and field hospitals were provided but not needed. In a hysterical rush, politicians made one impractical decision after another. Soon to be widely condemned. In the early 1600s, bureaucratic errors were condemned as Tyrannical Duncery.

Small towns or remote communities did not suffer the worst of the disease but suffered the almost full infliction of authoritarian remedies.

And this illustrates the danger of upside-down politics. No longer governable, too many cities are troubled. Elsewhere—as in “Fly-Over Country”—folk are still competently self-governing, but seriously unemployed by intrusion coming from the cities.

Beginning in the 1200s, cities offered the escape from Medieval Marxism, otherwise known as feudalism. Thus, the renaissance of prosperity, which was enhanced by the Medieval Warm Period. Leaving the manor and going to town was the path to freedom. Getting there was one thing, but a serf had to be competent enough to earn a living. For a year.

And over centuries such meritocracy worked, resulting in magnificent cities and individual prosperity, each according to his ability.

Perhaps Rome anticipated today’s corruption. Free trade in the forum was symbolically offset by political atrocities committed for mobs in the Colosseum. Eventually the ungovernable governing classes trashed the economy. Not being in a natural trading location, when tribute stopped flowing the city’s population collapsed. Rather impressively from a million in 300 AD to 30,000 in 550.

Florence arose at a natural trading point and determined to be free became wealthy. And ordinary citizens did well. While Florence enjoyed magnificent buildings, there was no colosseum for authoritarian ritual.

By the 1500s, Antwerp had become the financial center. Again, voluntary and what was it like to live there in 1570? Letters by merchants tell us. No mention of stadiums.

Young men in advancing in business, would take up golf and get involved in charities. A French merchant wrote that individuals could safely walk the streets at night. The moment he arrived his serfs became free. You could criticize the government. And what’s more—you could take all your money with you when you left!

Sovereignty of the individual and limited government has been corrupted by today’s “liberals”

Today’s dictates of the politically correct have forced tiresome restrictions upon free speech.

As with today, freedom was deplored by authoritarians who controlled the Spanish Netherlands. Infamously called the “Spanish Fury”, troops massacred some 7,000 Antwerp citizens in 1576.

Eventually and voluntarily, London became the next financial and commercial center of the world. Science and engineering flourished. Stadiums were built for football.

And prosperity grew. Becoming practically and philosophically its finest into the late 1800s and described as Nineteenth-Century Liberalism.

Regrettably, sovereignty of the individual and limited government has been corrupted by today’s “liberals” to the opposite. The state and its ambitious custodians have abused the profound concept of an independent press into a colosseum run by the MSM. As unrelenting promoters of intrusive government.

Some consider that having the seat of government close to the center of finance is practical. Business sense would guide political ambition. In America it was “government by the people”, but it was Alexander Hamilton who arbitrarily placed the seat of government in the then demographic center of the country. Sadly, those bucolic fields have become a corrupt swamp. Which is confirmed. While hosting very little business or investment acumen, D.C. is America’s wealthiest region.

Obviously with political leaders in cities using hysterical threats to dominate ordinary folk as well as productive businesses, it really is a political economy that is upside down. In the past, change was forced by popular uprisings, responding to too much in-your-face and in-your-wallet bureaucrats.

The last successful one was in 1989 when tearing down the Berlin Wall anticipated the collapse of murderous Communist governments.

History is ripe for another flipping reform.

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By Scott Powell —— Bio and Archives—June 15, 2020

President Trump just delivered the 2020 convocation speech at West Point, congratulating the cadet graduates and reminding the world that the U.S. has rebuilt its military forces with such high-tech capability as to have unchallenged superiority in any theatre.  While the President’s speech was entirely appropriate, it is ironic that it comes at a time when it’s wholly apparent to most observers that America’s greatest threat now is not external, but internal. And while the response to the recent urban chaos and violence requires more effective National Guard, police action and law enforcement tactics, strategically what is most important are soft power initiatives that invalidate false narratives and reduce misunderstanding and division in the country, which would in turn diminish issues and opportunities for exploitation by bad actors.

In addition to Antifa, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and the “swarms” of lesser known leftist and anarchist militants, many of the crazies in the streets are ignorant opportunistic hoodlums. The elected officials who have enabled the chaos created by the aforementioned in various municipalities are the product of higher education institutions that have failed to inculcate a basic appreciation of the American system and an understanding of the responsibilities required to protect freedom and rights in ways that maintain order, protect property and keep things working. Their views are reinforced and sustained by most of the media—in both traditional channels and the social media outlets—in ways that perpetuate politically correct narratives being accepted by a large portion of our population.

The chief problem in need of a solution is succinctly stated by Kyle Shideler,  the director for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy:  “With the successful promulgation of the radical message [the narrative] of America as bastion of white supremacy by presidential candidates, cable news anchors, and generations of tenured professors, Antifa is unlikely to lack for recruits and support—rhetorical or otherwise—any time in the near future.”

One of the important goals of these narratives is to reinforce white-guilt and self-doubt, resulting in large sectors of society becoming demoralized and paralyzed. And this has serious consequences when in many urban localities, hostility and disrespect toward police undermines their morale and determination to do their job to enforce the law.  And when police can’t do their job, they too get demoralized, and resignations and early retirements go up. The outcome of all this is invariably diminished public safety and increased lawlessness, which is the radical left’s goal.

As it stands, leniency—after successfully neutralizing the police and committing horrendous destruction of property, ransacking big box retailers, upscale shopping districts, and looting the very stores and brands that symbolize the fruit of what law and order and capitalist success bring—empowers the left to do more and bigger things that advance their long-term goal, which is the total transformation of America.

Compounding the problem of bringing about a corrective and restoring balance is the fact that competing views and alternative narratives are being increasingly marginalized, censured and blocked. And we are now at a point when Americans who exercise their first amendment rights to express views that go against the dominant politically correct narratives are not just silenced through shaming and bullying, but increasingly they are being fired from corporate jobs, professional sports teams and other employers and venues.  The First Amendment that is at the heart of our Constitutional freedom and differentiates America from almost every other county is being progressively diminished.  And when that freedom is gone, surely others will soon follow.

Is it a coincidence that theCOVID-19 shutdown and attendant nullification of Americans’ Constitutional rights have been followed by an outbreak of urban warfare and assault on police and authority?  We can’t know, but it’s clear that the leaders of Antifa and BLM didn’t miss a beat in organizing immediately after the death of George Floyd, and in subsequent days, continued to work in a well-funded and highly coordinated fashion. They targeted cities, carried out the logistics of transporting people, arranging for the delivery of pallets of bricks, bats and gasoline to break windows and start fires, knowing that the energy levels of non-affiliated urban hoodlums and opportunists after nearly three months of pent-up frustration from sheltering and being cooped up would likely result in extreme violence, destruction and looting.  It succeeded.

What this period of urban chaos and destruction has revealed is that the narratives that have turned Americans against America have worked to increase both the number of street revolutionaries and the numbers who are passive in the face of the anti-law and order, anti-business and anti-American violence.  And we should assume that leaders of Antifa, BLM and other radical groups see this success as confirmation to move forward with next steps to seed the collapse of America and gain more power.

While they applaud concessions like shifting public spending and defunding the police, the radical left finds its greatest motivation in actions that move the country closer to the end game. A central part of that is to delegitimize American institutions of authority by erasing and deconstructing history, so as to further disorient and disconnect Americans from their heritage.  That’s why targeting the desecration, tearing down and removal of national monuments is an important next objective.

In Wilmington, Delaware city officials took the statue of Columbus down before anyone could dismember or destroy it.  In St. Paul, Minnesota and Richmond, Virginia statues of Columbus were toppled by radical activists.  In Boston, the statue of Columbus was beheaded, jihadi-style.  It matters not that Columbus was an evangelist and strong advocate of Christian kindness. Neither does it matter that he never saw nor set foot on the North American continent, and therefore never enslaved or abused any indigenous native Americans. With the white supremacist colonial narrative having long been established, Columbus is an easy target.  But make no mistake: toppling Columbus is just a stepping stone to desecrating and removal of even more high value targets such as the memorials and statues of founders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who were slave-holders.

At his West Point address, President Trump paid tribute to George Washington, whose statue can be found on the campus, noting that Washington called West Point “the most important post in America.”  After serving two terms as the nation’s first president, Washington renounced serving a third term and left office with a “Farewell Address,” in which he stated his belief that the greatest threat to America would be internal and not a military threat from overseas.  President Trump would do well to develop a battle plan for victory against internal enemies around that Farewell Address—what Washington called “a warning from a departing friend.”

While prophetic in nature and reprinted more than the Declaration of Independence, the Farewell Address, was a penetrating articulation of three threats to freedom and the republican form of American democracy:

• the failure of institutions to keep people informed and enlightened;
• the problems of factions and hyper-partisanship;
• and the decline of religious obligation and national morality.

Applied to today, what’s needed in the Trump battle plan is accelerated reform of the K-12 public school system, the universities and the media to ensure more balance and the upholding all the protections associated with the First Amendment. Obviously, this means individuals cannot be fired for exercising their free speech rights, but equally important it would help citizens and aspiring politicians develop critical faculties and become better informed and enlightened. Second, more can be done outside public policy initiatives to elevate the value of religious obligation and practice, which strengthen families, mitigate juvenile delinquency and crime, and provide a higher purpose and meaning in life where bigotry has no place and tolerance is more abundant. All of this over time would provide a more enlightened population from which leaders would arise and get elected better informed and equipped for bipartisan cooperation around policies that actually solve problems.