The Wages of Sin is Death!

In 1976 the death Penalty was re-instituted in the United States. A few days ago, North Carolina carried out the 1000th execution in the US, since 1976, and our sister state to the south, South Carolina, carried out the 1001st execution.

There were no celebrations. No bells, whistles, and confetti. We’re not that kind of people.

We are, however, people who believe that American is a land of laws. We profoundly believe that if a person takes the life of another, in an act of homicide, the murder’s life is forfeit.

We are not an overly pious people. We’re not a bunch of Bible thumpers, either. What we are, however, is a people who believe that for a society to thrive there must be law… and there must be enforcement of the laws. If you break the law, then you will pay the price.

Look, America asks very little of it’s citizens and demands even less. In America we have the most freedom of any nation on earth. And for that freedom, the state, which is made up of your fellow citizens, demands that we obey the laws that are made by men and women from our communities.

We know that human beings, being what they are, will chaff at some laws and seek to find ways to avoid obeying them. We also know that some people will rebel at some laws, and seek to break them, as an outward sign of rebellion against the authority of society.

An so, society instituted punishment meant to be a deterrent against law breakers and those who find they have a great deal of difficulty co-existing with their fellow man.

The most heinous crimes will receive the very worse punishment. The worst is forfeiture of the criminal’s life.

You may argue that sometimes the courts make a mistake and the wrong person is put to death, or imprisoned. You would be correct in that assessment.

The answer… that is the risk we all take for our society to be as reasonably safe as is humanly possible. I don’t offer that as an excuse. It is simply offered as a reason. Nothing more.

Whether you choose to believe it, or not, there is pure evil in our world. As a former cop, and a former newsman, I have seen it… up close. One of the costs of dealing with evil is death. Sometimes it is the death of an innocent person.

It is never an easy thing for "God fearing" folk to take the life of another... when not in the heat of passion.

Whether the death penalty serves as a deterrent, or not, is still being argued among the citizens of this country.

One thing is for sure. It will deter the person being executed.

“Longstreet”

And, then, There's the French!

(This Post first ran January 23rd, 2005)





What is all the noise about our ally, France? Since when has France been an ally of the US? I mean, when… exactly?

Remember the “French and Indian War”? They durn near killed our First President during that war. We hadn’t even gone to war with the mother country yet and there we were fighting France. Oh sure, they showed up at Yorktown, in the nick of time, but that was because we were fighting, perhaps, their oldest enemy, Great Britain.

The French are self-delusional. Always have been. They really believe they are a “challenger” to the US for leadership of the world. They actually believe that. Over in the “old world”, they are really making a grand push to head-up the “United States of Europe”, if they ever get that one up and running. If they manage that, they’ll screw it up as they have so many other grand endeavors they conned themselves into.

Many of us, on this side of the pond, have had our fill of pulling their chestnuts from the fire over and over again. The cost is simply too high. Not to mention it is a thankless job.

Somebody once said: “Next time there's a war in Europe; the loser has to keep France.” I agree. Next time, let the Germans keep Paris!

There’s an old joke making the rounds again. It’s something like this: “How many Frenchman does it take to drive the Germans out of Paris?” The answer: “Nobody knows. It’s never been tried!”

I read recently that France’s best general was a foreigner and her best soldier was a teen-age girl! Well………

Even Napoleon Bonaparte himself said: "The French complain of everything, and always."

Perhaps Mark Twain put the stopper in the bottle with his remarks on France. He said: "France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks, it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes."

And finally, my personal favorite, from General George Patton: "I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me."

So, next time Paris gets it’s back up, remember this remark by US Senator John McCain of Arizona: "You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who was still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it."
So, you see, it’s just a tad difficult to be serious about France.

“Longstreet”

Airheads of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy!

(This post first ran in July of 2005.)

The “airheads” of Hollywood are beginning to feel the wrath of the “silent majority” out here in the hinterlands.

We are fed-up with their self appointed expertise in diplomacy, and in politics in general. Their slobbering after the Clinton Administration was the beginning of their fall. Their rabid attacks of the current administration has underscored their vacuous, brainless, emotion based hate of anything even approaching Conservative. Their hedonism is held up to the light for all to see, and they attack the light because the truth of who, and what they are, nearly destroys them.

It is fear that motivates them. Fear that their Godless existence will tarnish their carefully molded personas and mark them with the “Mark of the Beast”.

No single community in America has done more to destroy this nation than Hollywood. None. Their efforts have lowered the morals of America’s youth to the lowest common denominator… and then lowered it some more.

No longer does the public believe they create movies for the sake of the art of entertainment. Now we know they create movies as propaganda, as “How To” instruction for all sorts of crime and debauchery.

Their utter disregard for morality is disgusting. When we think they have sunk as low as it is possible for one to sink, they sink even lower.

And now… they want to dictate, to average Americans, how their government should conduct the people’s business. They call into question the veracity of a President, and a government, duly elected by the people of the US, and undermine the war efforts of this country by propping up dictators and publicly slandering the US while visiting other countries abroad.

While many of the top tier actors, and actresses, haven’t even a high school diploma, they know they are smarter than you and I because they can ACT AS IF THEY ARE. They have come to believe their own press releases!

Their disgusting, degrading, products have polluted the minds of our youth long enough. It is time they got their comeuppance.

Hollywood has been asking for this for a long time.

“Longstreet”

Torture is Just Fine With Me!

Whatever it takes! Toothpicks under the fingernails, 12 volt automobile batteries hooked to the testicles, sleep deprivation, I do not care! Whatever it takes to get the information we need to find and kill the terrorists who threatened this country.

Look, if you want to delude yourself into believing that if we don’t torture our enemy combatants, the enemy won’t torture ours, then you go right ahead. But don’t ask me to swallow that load of malarkey. I live in the REAL world where enemies of the United States torture and kill members of our armed forces at every opportunity. In the world in which I live, (the real one) the image of the US is worth spit! And… unless, and until, we get serious about winning the war on terror and commit to whatever means are necessary then we will continue to have our service men and women picked off one, or two, at a time until those jelly spined political prostitutes in Congress force the President to withdraw our troops… in other words… "cut and run". The very idea is sickening to me.

Do, I sound angry? I hope so, because I’m way past angry! I’m fuming at the lack of strength in our Congress to pursue this war much more aggressively. Forget a strategy for withdrawal. We have a strategy! Victory, for heaven’s sake! We win and THEN we come home. If we don’t utterly destroy that mass of cancerous tissue in the human body called “Islamofacists”, we will only find ourselves right back where we are today... with more American lives given, and more blood shed, to finish the job we should have finished this time!

Come on, folks! How difficult is that to understand. Take off the rose-colored glasses and see the world for what it is. A rotten, dangerous place. Hey, we’re the good guys! We’re trying to make the world safe for democracy!

Take a look at the right side of this page, in the sidebar. Notice the yellow box which carries a running total, updated as often as necessary, of the number of terrorist attacks since 9-11. That's reality, Dear Reader.

This is certainly not the America I grew up in. That was an America that would have taken the battle to the enemy’s doorstep and knocked down their house. That was an America that would, and did, use nuclear weapons to save the lives of thousands upon thousands of American lives. That was an America that did not cut and run! That was an America, whose people valued their freedom for they understood what it meant to be free.

I understand there are only 14 members of Congress who have sons or daughters serving in the Middle East. That tell you anything?

We cannot disengage with this enemy. It cannot be done. If we withdraw, the bloodletting will only follow our troops home to the shopping malls, the hotel ballrooms, the schools of our children, the sports arenas, the transportation hubs, the largest cities, and on and on. No, understand folks, this is a war in which the last man standing wins! This war will go on for decades… and then some. As long as there is a nutcase Islamofacist out there he, or she, will come after us. They want you dead! They want me Dead! They want your kids dead! They want America dead, and gone, and in it’s place a Caliphate of Islam in which you will bow your head to the ground five times a day toward Mecca. Is that what you want? Well, is it? For that is exactly what we are trying to stop, right now, with the war in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and remote places all around the globe.

Believe me, there is no alternative for America but victory. We cannot survive defeat. If we lose this war, we lose our country. Everything we are, everything we have been and everything we hope to become in the future wil be gone. There will be no America

So, ask me to rethink my position on the use of torture.

OK. I have re-thought it!

I’m still for it. I’m also for battlefield nukes, and white phosphorous, and “Daisy Cutter” bombs, and whatever else it takes.

There is only one way to fight a war! Fight to win! There is no acceptable alternative. None at all!

“Longstreet”

The War on Christmas and Christianity!

OK, let me make it as clear as I am able right up front! I am not interested in “multiculturalism” and I am even less interested in “inclusivity”. I am an Isolationist at heart, but a realist… out of practicality.

Having cleared the air, I can get on with this post.

It is time for America to celebrate Christmas. For those of the Christian community it is a grand time of celebrating the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ from whose name the word Christmas, or “Christ Mass”, is derived. I am of this community.

I care nothing for your celebration of anything else. I care that you have the right to celebrate Hanukkah, or that newly invented secular holiday for Afro-centric African Americans, Kwanzaa. You are guaranteed that right by the Constitution, which was, itself, guaranteed by Christians.

I know, I know! I can see the “comments box” filling up even as I write this. That’s OK. Just keep it clean.

In the year 2005 one would have to be a disconnected, isolated, idiot to believe that Christmas is not under attack in the western world, especially in the United States.

If you read my Thanksgiving post you already know that I believe that Christians founded America as a Christian country. As a Christian country we are tolerant of other religions. That does not mean that individual American citizens must approve of any particular religion or practice thereof. In a Christian country a citizen is not compelled to be a Christian or a subscriber to any religion, for that matter. That right was guaranteed all Americans in that aforementioned Constitution. And that, Dear Reader, is where we mis-stepped. That “right” we celebrate, and hold so dear, has come back to bite us on our collective “Christian butts”.

Any antagonist, worth his salt, uses his opponent’s weakness against him. The opponents of Christianity, no slackers they, have learned to use our weakness of tolerance for other religions, or no religion, against the Christians of America.

Christian symbols are being relegated to the closets, and basements, of public buildings not to be displayed on the walls of, or grounds of, such public buildings as, for instance, Courthouses.

Put up a Crèche Scene, in honor of Christmas, in the town square, and you’d better have a Menorah, a Christmas Tree, A Santa Claus, a Kwanzaa something or other, and on and on. The idea is simply to dilute Christmas in a mass of other religious, and secular, celebrations and lessen its influence on the average American. The more timid among us are even afraid to utter that time honored “Merry Christmas”.

No more Christmas break for our public schools. It’s now the “Winter Break”. A phrase reminiscent of the pagans of Western Europe. Gone is the Christmas Tree in many of those same schools.

Now, I could go on, and on, citing example after example of the battles being waged all across America against Christmas and, collectively, Christians.

Currently we are in a worldwide war with Islam. Oh, you may argue, we are at war with only the fundamentalist Islamic! I beg to differ. This is a war between Islam and Christianity. The Muslims know this. Only those of us of the Western Christian countries have deluded ourselves into believing we are in a war with some splinter group of Islam. Hopefully we will awaken to this fact before it is to late to recover from our mistake and take the battle, for our very existence, to the enemies of Christianity.

Meanwhile, back here in America, we have our hands full dealing with our own internal enemies. The War on Christmas is just a symptom of the greater war on Christianity. Until we recognize that fact, and begin to fight back, we will continue to lose our Christian symbols, our Christian holidays, and eventually our practice of the Christian faith.

In the meantime, allow me to be among the first to wish you, and your family, a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Longstreet