United States Soccer Players Forget What It Means to Play for Something Greater than Themselves.

The U.S. Soccer Federation will no longer require players to stand for the national anthem. 71.34 percent of National Council members voted on Saturday 02/27/2021 to repeal a 2017 rule that had been put in place as a response to Megin Rapinoe’s kneeling for the anthem before a 2016 match against Thailand. The rule stated that, “All persons representing a Federation national team shall stand respectfully during the playing of national anthems at any event in which the Federation is represented.”

The USSF president Cindy Parlow made sure to clarify during the meeting that the repeal of this policy is not meant to disrespect the flag or the military. She stated, “This is about the athletes’ and our staff’s right to peacefully protest racial inequalities and police brutality…”

Is it supposed to be some sort of conciliation that the stated intention of the repeal is not in line with the effect of the action itself? I wonder if this same logic would satisfy Ms. Parlow if some mugger shouted back at her as he ran away, “I never meant to shatter your sense of safety or relieve you of what is yours!” Would she care at all, I wonder, about the stated intention of the mugger, or instead might she realize the overwhelming significance in the effect of his actions?

The mugger analogy may be extreme, but the logic is identical. If you are saying your intentions are “X” but your actions have the effect of “Y” then there are only a few possibilities. Perhaps you do not possess the faculties of logic and reason at all, in which case pity is appropriate. Or, more likely, you are hoping that the people you are trying to fool either do not have the courage to speak against you, or they are too stupid to see the blatant illogic of your position. To provide ample helpings of the benefit of doubt, I suppose we should allow for a fourth possibility, that you really do not understand that your actions have inherent meaning within them that no amount of disconnected intention can negate.

To kneel during the National Anthem is disrespectful. It is not that intention does not matter at all, but it certainly has no effect on whether the act of kneeling is or is not disrespectful. We know this because we have a practice already for how to properly respect the National Anthem that is known by everyone involved in this debate. There is no argument here. If what you mean to portray is respect, then you will stand with your hand over your heart. Here is another hot take for you while we are at it, if you do not mean to start a fight, do not disrespect a man’s mother just before last call at the local dive bar. We could go on and on with obvious statements of actions leading to their natural effects and outcomes. Still, somehow, silly people like Ms. Parlow are allowed to promulgate this idea of intention overriding effect and move on like they did not just say something insane.

Even though it is insane, we cannot overlook the specific excuse given by Ms. Parlow. She says that “…this is about the athletes and our staff…” No Madam President is it not about you, your staff, or your right to peacefully protest. When you put on the jersey that says “USA,” you and your fellow players are representing the nation for which you play. Your cause is greater than what it was before the fabric touched your skin. Your actions are laden with more meaning than they were before you stepped out onto the field. Your will, your efforts, everything you are is now joined with your teammates and ordered toward the glory of your team, your nation, and your God through honorable competition.

Perhaps this is the crux of the issue, that Parlow and others in the USSF have forgotten what it is they are doing on that field when they put on the jersey and display their God-given talents to the world. They lost their way and started to think that true glory, true happiness is in service to self, not to others. They are now of a mindset in which being a part of something greater than themselves, representing proudly the nation that is so free, so prosperous, and so “inclusive” that they can make a living playing soccer, now takes a backseat to their own need for attention. The “ME, ME, ME!!!” mentality of leftism claims another notch in its belt.

It should be noted that this author cannot even get through the utterance of the phrase “President of the United States Soccer Federation” without chuckling uncontrollably at the idea that such a thing even exists. So yes, one could say that a red-blooded, American conservative making a fuss about this recent decision by the USSF seems silly or unnecessary. This is precisely the point, however. This is the culture. This is the fight in which we must participate. If conservatives ever hope to stop the endless yielding of cultural ground to the left, then we must do just that, and stop yielding ground without a fight. Let us remind everyone that will listen of how incredibly full of meaning and worth they truly are, and therefore how powerful a statement they can make with their actions.

We Need to Reclaim the Education of our Children.

Democrat Lawmakers Push Bill to Teach Children Difference Between Fake and Credible Media
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/02/09/democrat-lawmakers-push-bill-to-teach-children-difference-between-fake-and-credible-media/

McLachlan says, “lawmakers need to help school children identify fake news and disinformation, since many have access to Facebook, Twitter, and other sites where information is not always accurate.” McLachlan’s colleague Cutter elaborates to miss the point in an even more comically terrifying fashion saying, “We just want to give them the tools so they can figure it out and understand what makes a credible source and then they can form their own opinions about that information.” Lawmakers need to stay away from school children. I would argue strongly that we should homeschool and help each other fund tuition for private schools. Still, regarding public schools, even if we accept and understand that we are sending our kids to a government building to be educated by the government, those statements by McLachlan and Cutter are immensely flawed and miss the point.

Teachers and parents, through the education they provide to their children, should be arming them with everything they need to identify false information. By providing kids with a strong liberal arts education, they will understand history, philosophy, logic, and reason so that they can determine for themselves which information rings true and false. If kids are given a quality education, they will come out of it with that important instinct that all of us should have to stop and think for a moment, “hmm, I wonder if this is true in exactly the way it is being told to me?” We do not need big brother here (or big sisters as the case may be) to determine a “trustworthy index of sources” in typical leftist authoritarian, top-down fashion. We need a better liberal arts education.

The picture chosen for the article is heartbreaking enough. At the risk of sounding like I am “out of touch”, I see no reason why the kids in that picture, as young as they look, should have access to smart phones. No child that young should have a Facebook, Twitter, or online presence of any kind really. I and other 90’s kids can probably testify to the potential for damage, confusion and perhaps life-long struggles that arise from exposure to the Internet too early, and I did not have my first cell phone until age 15. Part of the problem with our society is that we have forgotten the dire need to protect children, to shelter them from the myriad terrible influences of society. This is not to say that they should be kept in a bubble. At the very least when they happen upon some crazy new thing they have never seen before that they do not understand and do not know how to reconcile with their current worldview, should not the parents be around to help with that process? Even if we cannot be everywhere with our children, could we at least try to limit their exposure to a bit less than the “fire hose method” of handing them a smart phone and sending them off to school?! This solution alone puts to bed the initial justification by McLachlan in the article. If they did not have access to the Internet via pocket-sized devices everywhere they went, big sister McLachlan would not be able to use that as a justification for increased top-down government influence on children.

We need to take back this culture folks. This need is shown most strongly in our schools. How can we expect to raise the next generation of Americans as a generation that will be able and willing to carry on the founding values of this nation if we are signing over that responsibility to politicians like McLachlan and Cutter? Take the pay cut, forgo the “benefits” of a dual-income household whenever possible, help each other financially to be able to do so, etc. so that our children can be brought up by their parents, not by the government. By banding together and forming groups at Churches and other local community centers we can reclaim this most important responsibility.

Let us Exorcise the NFL and BLM from America like the Racist Propaganda Demons They Are

Articles:

Super Bowl ratings 2021: Numbers for Buccaneers-Chiefs plummet from last year
https://nypost.com/2021/02/09/super-bowl-ratings-2021-numbers-plummet-from-last-year/
WATCH: Super Bowl LV Kicks Off with ‘Black National Anthem’
https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2021/02/07/watch-super-bowl-lv-kicks-off-black-national-anthem/

My Commentary:

Football became the new American pastime, because it was a glorious opportunity for every American to come together and watch our modern gladiators fight for dominance. It was an opportunity to leave aside all the disagreements of politics. The Super Bowl used to be one of the most patriotic events imaginable with huge American flags, a beautifully sung National Anthem, flyovers by our pilots, people drinking beer, eating hot dogs, and cheering together etc. Now, much of that still takes place, but with a sickly undertone of wokeness and racism (but I repeat myself).

The NFL betrayed America when it allowed players to kneel during our national anthem. Worse than that, the NFL commissioner came out in support of the Black Lives Matter narrative during the rioting of 2020. The league has also had the so-called “Black National Anthem” played at games, including this year’s Super Bowl.

Some might say “how hypocritical of you to support the patriotic messaging but be against the free speech of players when they want to put forward the Black Lives Matter messaging.” To that I have a simple response. One of those messages is good and true, while the other is false and insidious. Black lives do not matter. I will say it again, BLACK LIVES DO NOT MATTER. WHITE LIVES DO NOT MATTER either, because there is no such thing as a black or white life. The true conservative message cuts through the BLM lie like a super-heated steak knife through butter. We are all unique, beautiful creations made in God’s image with inherent dignity, worth and rights. To even say “black lives matter” is to make the horrible, offensive assumption that we did not already believe that our black American brothers and sisters are also made in God’s image. Of course, they are. To play a “black national anthem” is to tear asunder the fellowship and comradery that should come from a shared belief in true American, western Judeo-Christian values that built this nation and allowed these players to get paid millions of dollars to play a game. There is just one National Anthem and it is the anthem of black Americans, and Americans of every color and kind. To embrace the “cause” of BLM is to accuse every American who is not themselves fooled by the racism and fascism of wokeness as being racist themselves.

No one in America watched the video of George Floyd and thought “oh that’s fine, nothing to see there, nothing tragic about it at all.” If you want to fight against police brutality, then show me the individual instances of brutality by potentially bad cops and I will support you. What I will not do is accept your unfounded and unevidenced narrative that policing in general is racist, that black people are killed without cause all the time by cops who regard them as cattle, that police officers themselves are evil, or that it would somehow be a good societal change if we defunded police departments. The thinking that says that policing and police officers are evil and racist because there may be bad apples is the EXACT SAME logic used by the K.K.K. to conclude that an entire race of people is somehow inferior and deserves less rights and differential treatment.

The “fix” or the “cure” for this thinking, for this rift forming in our nation, is the same as it has always been. It is the same, consistent, conservative ideal that began the declaration of independence, and that has been progressively more perfectly realized by the nation that resulted from it. All men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. This is true no matter the color of someone’s skin or their ethnic background. A truly post-racial society, where each person is properly regarded and valued by their humanity, their merit, and their achievements, is the natural destination of this philosophy. That thinking, and that vision, is truly joyful, so much brighter than the revenge racism of BLM and leftism. Let us defeat this woke racism and the organizations that propagandize on its behalf by allowing the NFL to fail, and perhaps be replaced by something better.

Capital Punishment and Virginia’s Tragic Decision to Abolish It

Virginia Lawmakers Vote to Abolish Death Penalty
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/virginia-death-penalty-capital-punishment-democrats/2021/02/05/id/1008819/

Capital punishment is one of the most clear-cut, legitimate uses of the authority and power of the state that one can fathom. This decision by the State of Virginia is disappointing. Some might wonder how a Catholic conservative could so strongly defend capital punishment. Others might say “but you’re pro-life, aren’t you? How can you be pro-life and pro-death penalty?” Let us start with the article and go from there.

The first thing you notice about the decision in the Virginia legislature is that it was driven by Democrats and will be signed into law by a Democrat governor. The same people who enjoy facilitating the murder of innocent children within their mother’s womb (and after birth as one Democrat governor is famed to have once described on a radio show) also support the abolition of the death penalty. If I am inconsistent for being pro-life and pro-death penalty, then these Democrats are inconsistent in exactly the opposite fashion, no? Neither side is being inconsistent in this case but is rather following their philosophy to its logical endpoint.

Either we are moral beings with free will who can merit reward and punishment for our actions, or we are not. If the former is true, then law and punishment make sense. If the latter is true, then no one merits anything, let alone punishment for their actions. We can disagree about where the line is, for which the death penalty is appropriate, but if you agree that we have free will and can merit punishment then you must necessarily grant that there can be crimes for which the death penalty is the only proportionate punishment. Otherwise, you are left to an incoherent position where, for example, repeat violent offenders who did not kill or rape anyone somehow deserve the exact same punishment as the serial killer who rapes and murders his victims, life in prison. How is that just?

Leftists are being consistent when they seek to abolish the death penalty because their philosophy (or anti-philosophy) and its logical endpoints drive one to a position where human beings do not have inherent dignity and worth, nor do they truly merit proportionate punishment for their actions. Instead, we are all simply cogs in the machine, and if you put the right people in control of the machine, then you can somehow “fix” human nature and forcefully provide the most equitable good for the most identity groups. Why not murder a baby in the womb? It has no dignity. Why would we put to death a serial rapist and murderer? His victims had no dignity or worth and therefore they “merit” no retributive justice.

To be caught in the trap of believing that it is somehow merciful and just to abolish the death penalty is to give up the farm entirely. We cannot allow the left to trick us into accepting their premise that human beings cannot merit proportionate punishment for their actions. If we do, then we are also admitting that they cannot merit rewards and therefore everything the left says about how the government, not the individual or God, should decide their worth, their wages, their purpose, etc. goes with it.

Today in the News – 02/05/2021

Student Group Pledges to Re-Up Yale Lawsuit Tossed by Biden DOJ
https://freebeacon.com/campus/student-group-pledges-to-re-up-yale-lawsuit-tossed-by-biden-doj/

This is of course an immoral and unjust decision by the Biden DOJ, but I would have been more surprised if they decided to continue this lawsuit. As Blum says “…[it] had exposed Yale’s illegal use of quotas to achieve racial and ethnic proportionality…” We know from some of Biden’s first words as President that he and his administration are big fans of racism. “We need to make the issue of racial equity not just an issue for any one department of government; it has to be the business of the whole of government…” So therefore, not only does Biden not care to prosecute what Yale is doing, he will probably give them more federal funding if they promise to increase their racial quota efforts.

What the left does with our language is immoral, but genius. Everyone inherently understands, to an extent, that “equality” is a principle of The United States. Because of the leftist massacre of language, however, “equality” and “equity” are sometimes used interchangeably, and both suffer from semantic overload, meaning that when you say them, we must ask you to clarify what YOU mean.
Conservatives would say that “equality under the law” is the ideal toward which we strive because we correctly hold that each individual human being is a unique creation with inherent dignity, worth and God-given rights. Those rights must be protected by law. Leftists say “equality of outcome” is more desirable because they believe we should be considered as merely cogs in a machine, members of an identity or victim group differentiated only by skin color, ethnicity, sexual preferences, etc. To them, it is the “outcome” for the broader group that matters, and the just treatment of the individual falls by the wayside.

Edward Blum and the Students for Fair Admissions do have a good legal argument, and I would say a good moral argument as well. The issue we face now, with the radical leftists in power, is not simply an executive branch that refuses to enforce laws that were written with the proper understanding of racism and its evil, but worse than that we have an executive branch that openly proclaims that its “business” IS racism and the furthering of racist ideology.

Today in the News – 02/03/2021

CNN Prime-Time Ratings Crash 44% In First Week Of Biden Era
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2021/02/02/variety-cnn-prime-time-ratings-crash-44-first-week-biden-era/

Yes, this story is satisfying simply because of the headline, but there is more to this than meets the eye, more that conservatives especially need to take from this piece as a lesson.

Rage/outrage porn is a strong temptation. The CNN and MSNBC audience has lived off it for 4 years. Let us not fall for the same temptations now.
It is relieving, in a way, that we will play offense now against an evil ideology instead of constant defense of a just ideology being acted out by a flawed man. We must never forget our principles even in the heat of justified, provoked (rhetorical, peaceful) counterattack.

When I say we must avoid the outrage temptation, I am not saying we should not be angry. There is plenty already about which to have righteous anger regarding the Biden Presidency. He is sending our money over sees again to murder babies, he is deleting women’s sports by allowing men into them, Fauci is still on TV, etc. The CNN and MSNBC folks were so enraged for 4 years that they lost the ability to hear a piece of news and then simply to take a split second “step back” from the emotion and consider “hmmm, I wonder if that is 100% true in exactly the way in which it is being told to me?” We must never lose that instinct, no matter how much evil is perpetrated in front of our eyes by useful idiots and confused leftists.

We must never lose our Christian instinct to give those people the benefit of the doubt. Until they prove to us otherwise, we should regard them as misled, philosophically incorrect, and logically weak, but not evil. They are the ones who regard us as evil people with evil ideas at times, at least on their news stations. We are better than that. We know they are not inherently evil people but have been convinced of false ideas with incredibly evil logical endpoints and outcomes.

Run Hide Fight – Movie Review

Run Hide Fight was not just a movie. It was an experience, a “life event”, something I will remember and think on for years to come. It is rare that a movie leaves me so deeply in thought and awe that I let the credits run all the way through. Not only that, but this movie served as a slap in the face, a wake-up call to remember what truly matters, to really look at the people in my life who care about me and realize anew their beauty and worth. The movie did all of this without becoming a cheesy Sunday-school lesson like what certain folks might say about God’s Not Dead or some other movie in that genre. It is no wonder Hollywood’s critics hate this movie. Let us list the reasons why:

(SPOILERS!)

The antagonists prove through their evil the truth and necessity of Western, Judeo-Christian values and serve as a powerful critique of the leftism and secularism that is eating away at our society.
The story is “inclusive” in the true, conservative sense because it shows many varied and unique characters from all backgrounds, ethnicities, etc. coming together over their shared values and cause rather than being lumped together into a meaningless categorization by some diversity equity and inclusion “expert” who places them in the same victim category or identity group.
The heroine, Zoe, is gorgeous but takes no part in the stereotypical “girl power, watch a 100-pound woman knock a grown man across the room” trope. Instead, she wins the day through grit, determination, and plenty of help from the many heroes that rise to their own challenges throughout the story.
The idiocy of a “school security guard” that is expected to keep the entire school safe from harm without a gun is put on full, despicable display.
Etc. Essentially it just has too much truth in it for Hollywood to swallow.
The final moral question posed to the audience is profound. What does justice look like for someone who just committed such an atrocity? Even the anti-death penalty, “release the prisoners” crowd, after seeing everything they have just seen, must question their absolutist approach. On the other side, even the Conservatives question whether there could have been a more measured resolution involving law enforcement or even if the shot could have been placed differently, at least those are thoughts I found floating around in my head. Mostly though, I find myself wondering if I would have the balls to do the same in Zoe’s shoes. Would I see that young man for the rabid animal that he has allowed himself to become and have the courage to put him down?
This movie is amazing and deserves every award. It is more real and more effective at making the audience think and consider things that should be considered than anything I have seen in a long time, perhaps ever.

Watch it at The Daily Wire

Hello World

The United States of America and the values that founded her are good, true, and just, but conservation is not enough. It does not suffice to defend our ideals by defeating our opponents with logical, evidence-based argumentation, always on defense. It is not useful or “nice” to accept their premises. Leftism is illogical, cares nothing for truth, and will not stop its “progress” until it rots away every institution from the inside and reduces this nation to an empty shell.

The left gives their vision of utopia openly. We must provide an alternative, show and describe what it means to live the life of an American conservative. We must comment in an unapologetic fashion on the news and happenings of the day, to consider the cultural and philosophical meaning behind them. Our values bring joy to life and freedom to nations. They must be shared.

To that end I will write about news, politics, theology, life, etc. I am a Roman Catholic convert, and not just because I wanted to marry my beautiful wife. I meant what I said and I said what I meant (a very good elephant once said) when I stood in front of the congregation to proclaim that “I believe what the Catholic Church teaches to be divinely inspired by God.” This is the perspective from which I write, my bias.

I try to keep my mind open, willing to be convinced if an argument is sound. How else would those crazy Catholics have convinced me?! So please feel free to use the contact information provided to agree or disagree. Unlike the tyrannical left, I welcome debate and alternative perspectives, because I seek to find THE truth, not “my” truth.