These are the times that try men’s souls

It seems to be a perennial condition for the United States, with our experiment in liberty, limited government, and equality before the law.  Times that try men’s souls, so evocatively described by Thomas Paine in 1776, recur with us.

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

I submit that this is not because America is worse than other countries, as the modern Left’s agenda would too often have it, but because our experiment is better.  When we say “liberty,” we really mean liberty.

Memorial Day 2023

In pondering a holiday message each year, I go back and look at what I’ve posted for it in the past.  This year, on rereading the “Priorities, USA” article for 2022, I concluded that it’s still a timely message, and should be the bulk of what I advocate taking in this year.

As time passes, we are flicked more and more on the raw by the things we are having to face up to right now – epochal things, things of an entire age of the human journey.  We find we can’t flee them.  They come to find us.  They won’t rest unresolved.

The purchases of the blood shed for America, by the ones we remember on Memorial Day, still hang in the balance.

The American Spring will be forward, not back

A tweet caught my eye today, and stirred up a need to write about the American situation and where we ought to be heading.  The tweet promoted a Human Events opinion piece by Jane Coleman, which is well worth the time and easy to commend to your perusal.

"Why were we doing this in school, I wondered?" – @janebcoleman https://t.co/Xp7ocuW4tY…

— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) June 16, 2022

It’s about CRT as it is manifested in America’s schools,

Priorities, USA – on Memorial Day

People have asked in recent months why I haven’t been writing much about foreign affairs, geopolitics, military and strategic analysis, and so forth.

There’s certainly enough going on in the world to keep a foreign and security policy geek busy.  I appreciate the interest from those who’ve asked.

But the short answer – the best answer – is the one I will take the opportunity of our Memorial Day observance to give.

It’s simply this.  With all that’s erupting outside America’s borders,

Campaign against religious freedom: Orwellian? Demonic? Both?

Mocking freedom of religion, to weaken your commitment to it. (Image: 21alive Indianapolis)

A campaign against religious freedom – the central purpose for which America came into being – had been underway for some time before the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage case, on 26 June.  But the campaign went into overdrive with the news of that ruling, and it’s becoming increasingly furious and determined.

The principal method of the anti-freedom campaign is owning the terms in which it is discussed.  The anti-freedom contingent insists, in essence, that what traditionalist Christians want is not legitimate freedom, but a license to hurt people.

Fascist collectivism always makes its arguments in these terms, and the campaign against religious freedom is no different.  It picks a specific demographic target and vilifies the members of it, based on a garbled and inverted premise about social harm.