Electricity is an amazing tool but, we are totally dependent upon it. I’ve been lucky where I live, the power rarely fails. However, a few years ago I awoke to a very cold house. The electricity had gone out during a nighttime snowstorm. Fortunately, my wife and I were prepared with plenty of stored food, a woodstove for heating and cooking, and a hand pump on our well. It did get cold as the fire in the stove burned down in the night but, we had plenty of blankets. We were fine, but not everyone had prepared. Thankfully, the outage only lasted five days. Imagine life without power for a month or longer. Would you survive?

Part Two of our Family Communication Series

It has been a week, and the power is still down. Water is scarce, and the food in your fridge has spoiled. You’re trying to eat everything in the freezer before it goes bad. The nights are growing colder. The local radio station is only on the air for a few minutes each day. You’re worried about friends and relatives and have growing fears about your own survival. How will you find food or medicine? How do contact those you love or call for help?

I didn’t want to see the Sound of Freedom. It’s a troubling film about a topic that decent people don’t usually discuss. But good people need to know that slavery is alive in the modern world and this multi-billion dollar crime network is growing. Each year hundreds of thousands of children are bought, sold, and used. This industry makes billions of dollars in profit for the criminals that traffic underage boys and girls.

Part one of our Family Communication Series

You wake up one morning and the power is off. Out of habit, you click on the TV, but the screen remains black. Your computer turns on but doesn’t connect to the internet. Your cordless phone is dead. Your mobile phone has service, but you can’t connect with anyone. Hopefully, you can hear news using a battery-powered radio. But, what if the news is bad? Help won’t come for days. An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), either natural or manmade, could shut down power for months.

This blog has always focused on the culture and politics of the United States. I’ve never discussed climate science, or any other science, before and I don’t intend to make it a habit. Most conservatives already know how they feel about global warming or what they now call global climate change. However, sometimes a topic, or a rant, just seems to flow from my fingers onto the screen. Suddenly, everything is there and all I need to do is press publish. That is just about what happened with this post.

Elise Ketch is not the typical person I report on in this blog. She has described herself as politically progressive and works for an organization that advocates for dismantling capitalism. Earlier in her life, she served as a Diversity and Inclusion representative for the Honors College of Virginia Commonwealth University. Later, she served on the Dean's Diversity board. I’m certain there are many topics on which we would disagree. However, in her current employment, Ketch is the Digital Content Creator for the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. The PAAU bio of Ketch states that she is best known for her zine, “A Young, Femme, Gay Leftist Handed You this Pro-Life Zine.” Yes, Elise Ketch is pro-life.

When transgender woman Dylan Mulvaney became an influencer for Bud Light, I wondered how long it would take Jeremy Boreing to start his own craft beer company. That hasn’t happened—yet. Boreing is the CEO of the Daily Wire, a conservative media company we have repeatedly featured on this blog. When Harry’s Razors pulled their advertising from the Daily Wire, Boreing started Jeremy’s Razors, When Disney fired Gina Carano because of her conservative viewpoint, the Daily Wire hired her and started making movies and, when the Hershey Chocolate Company celebrated International Women's Day by featuring a transgender woman, Boreing launched his own brand of chocolate using the IHateHersheys.com domain.

For the last seven hundred years the terms sex and gender have been synonyms. However, recently the world has gone crazy, and now, on many college campuses, if you ask how many genders there are the students would be hard-pressed to answer. For most of us, sex and gender still refer to a person’s biology. The LGBTQ movement would like to change the definition of gender into what people think, or believe, is their sexuality. They demand that society should accept that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, pansexual, asexual, genderqueer, aromantic, cisgender, genderfluid, pangender, non-binary, and hundreds of such terms should now be used to describe gender. Wikipedia currently lists 110 possible genders.

It sounds like many fans think horror movies have started to get lazy. Movie viewers say this because horror movies lean on jump scares and exorcism films have become repetitive. Nefarious utilizes none of that and oddly it’s a Christian horror/thriller movie written the hard way with no gore or cheap jump scares—and it works.

Recently my local community college decided it would host a “Queer Prom” and drag show. As far as I know, the college has never sponsored a prom for any other group but, apparently, they thought this would be a great idea. As word spread, dozens of people volunteered to write letters but didn’t know to whom. Also many were uncertain about how to write an effective letter.

Jacob's New Dress is a short picture book of twenty-nine colorful pages aimed directly at young children. The title gives away much of the story. The protagonist, Jacob, is a very young boy who enjoys playing dress-up. However, when he plays he enjoys being a princess. For Halloween, he dressed as a witch. He even made a simple dress using a towel. Many of the LGBTQ children’s books that I review contain graphic sexual content or images. This book does not have that but is it appropriate for a public or school library?

I recently went back to school. Well, sort of. I’m taking a class called Constitution Alive!, A Citizen’s Guide to the Constitution. During my high school days, teachers never did more than mention the Constitution. In college, I majored in political science and studied the philosophy of government, international relations, international law, and economics but, not the Constitution. There are less than 5,000 words in the entire document. I’ve read longer chapters in a book during an evening but, when I graduated from college I had never read this founding document of my country.

There was a time when a teacher asking students to write sexual fantasy stories would have faced firing or criminal charges. That time is not today. Current school teachers seem to be infatuated with sex, sexual orientation, gender preferences, pronouns, and identity. In this blog, I’ve written about books like Gender Queer and Let’s Talk About It that have been used in class and are in many libraries. These books are inappropriate for school-age readers but, they are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Let’s Talk About It is a graphic novel (comic-style) book by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan and is published by Penguin Random House. On the front cover the book is described as, “The teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human.” On the back, it states the book is, “Open, modern, and intelligent. An essential addition to any library.” Those are the claims but, is it appropriate for school libraries, public libraries, and children? As always, that is the question I want to answer for parents as I review the book.

While serving her first term on the Washington Elementary School board in Arizona, Tamillia Valenzuela made national news. She describes herself as a “neurodivergent Queer Black Latina,” but that isn’t what brought her to the attention of the media. Recently she stated that the board should consider “where our values lie.” She went on to state how “disheartened” and “opposed” she was to discover that the district had an ongoing contract with Arizona Christian University that enabled their student teachers to be placed in the district’s schools for field experience. The contract opened up opportunities for recruitment and hiring.

Is Angela Reading a security threat to the United States? According to Lt. Col. Christopher Schilling the leadership of nearby Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst believes, “[T]he current situation involving Mrs. Reading’s actions has caused safety concerns for many families. The Joint Base leadership takes this situation very seriously and from the beginning have had the Security Forces working with multiple state and local law enforcement agencies to monitor the situation to ensure the continued safety of the entire community.” What has Angela Reading, a previously law-abiding wife, mother, and member of the school board, done to require such scrutiny from the military and local law enforcement?

When I first heard of the New York Times editorial by American fashion designer Heather Kaye, I thought it would be another looney liberal expression of a misguided desire for authoritarian government control. Her opinion piece is titled, “China Helped Raise My American Kids, and They Turned Out Fine.” I figured the title told me all I needed to know and nearly stopped reading. Then I recalled the old adage, never judge a book by its’ cover, or in this case an article by its title. After reading the piece, I still believe Kaye is misguided—but she made some good points.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) recently defended a proposed government ban on gas stoves. In the embedded video she supports her own use of a gas stove and later said, “This is about a decision about what may be sold and regulations in the far future, OK? So everyone, just take the temperature down a little bit. No secret government agency is going to bust down your door and take your gas stove away.” She is probably correct about that but, only because the federal government has a better method to make you comply.

I like to spend money at places that appreciate my business. Often these are shops where I know the owner or, businesses that I hear of through my network of family and friends. Since I’m a conservative Christian, my friends tend to move in those circles. Redirecting my meager funds to support like-minded companies has been a slow-growing, but natural, part of my economic philosophy for years. However, I’m not the only one that has moved in this direction. The idea of a conservative Christian parallel economy has grown in influence over recent years. This has led to a surge of interest in creating a more distinct economic structure that reflects the values of this movement.

Christian Nationalism, A Biblical Guide to Taking Dominion & Discipling Nations, is a print-on-demand book of 105 pages by Andrew Torba, and Andrew Isker a pastor from Waseca, Minnesota. Occasionally, there is a book where both the subject and the author are of interest. This is such a case. Andrew Torba is the founder of the Gab social media platform which Wikipedia described as, “a haven for neo-Nazis, racists, white supremacists, white nationalists, antisemites, the alt-right, supporters of Donald Trump, conservatives, right-libertarians, and believers in conspiracy theories such as QAnon.”