Yesterday, the Olympics mocked God. Since the close of the opening ceremony in Paris, and probably for the next few days at least, people worldwide have argued about the tableau vivant or “living picture” of drag queens in the opening ceremony. In the tableau vivant, drag queens are seated along a table with a Christ-like figure, complete with a halo, at the center. This is similar to the Last Supper painting by Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci.

Founded in 1837, John Deere is the world's largest farm equipment manufacturer with revenue of over $61 billion. The company manufactures tractors, combines, backhoes, excavators, seed drills, and more and sells them on every continent. Simply put, John Deere makes and sells the equipment that farmers and other working men need. Earlier this month I reported on how Tractor Supply Company had retreated from Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), LGBTQ events, and climate change philosophy after a rural customer backlash. Now it has come to light that John Deere has adopted similar progressive policies.

Rural Americans are different than those from the big coastal cities. Tractor Supply Company just discovered that. Tractor Supply is a Tennessee-based retailer known for selling animal feed, farm tools, workwear, and even live chicks and ducks. It is one of the last companies in the nation that you would expect to go woke, but it did. On October 20, 2021, CEO Hal Lawton wrote an Op-Ed in The Tennessean newspaper titled, “Why businesses should follow Tractor Supply’s push for diversity, inclusion, and climate change prevention.” Lawton led Tractor Supply with the philosophy that Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) was a necessary good and that climate change was an existential threat.

On July 1st we started our Independence Day celebrations with the raising of two flags. There are two flagpoles along the driveway to our home and I like to change the flags for various holidays and events. In this case, we raised the Betsy Ross flag and the “Appeal to Heaven” flag.

Osan Air Force base commander, Colonel William McKibban, has authorized base personnel to wear a “pride morale patch” on their military uniforms. The colonel states “The patch represents the advancement of the Air Force’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, dignity, and respect within the mission.” The mission of the United States military is to deter war and ensure national security. The only commitment our soldiers, sailors, and marines should have is to win wars when called upon. All else is a needless distraction.

Faith, marriage, and family are at the core of American values, but like a vampire sucking the life from its victim, the secularization of our culture has weakened it and threatens to destroy it. Nearly every day some new progressive idea is thrust upon us; defund the police, prosecutors that don’t prosecute, biological males in women’s sports and locker rooms, new pronouns, choose your gender, child genital mutilation, and the ever-growing LGBTQ agenda. The pervasiveness of the progressive ideology can be seen in the backlash against the commencement address given by Harrison Butker.

I’ve lived in both big cities and small towns. In big cities, I’m usually anonymous and can blend in as just another nameless person on the street. Most people don’t even really see me. There are some advantages to that but for more than twenty years I’ve lived in rural southwest Washington State. Here you get to know people. I can hardly go to town without stopping to talk with an old friend or two. I’ve finalized business deals by shaking hands. I go to church and community meetings with local elected officials and count several as friends. At this level, reputation and integrity matters.

Perhaps that’s why I don’t put much faith in social media.

Imagine that the cartels took control of Mexico and every year for the last twenty years fired at least a thousand rockets into the United States raining fear and death down on San Diego, Yuma, Tucson, El Paso, and other cities. Then the Mexican cartels conducted a barrage of over 3,000 rockets on American targets. They followed this with an armed invasion. Before the U.S. military could push them out, the cartels killed a total of 1,139 Americans including more than 695 civilians, including thirty-six children, and kidnapped more than 240 hostages. All of that is hypothetical but I ask the reader, what would the United States do if it suffered such an attack across its southern border?

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post titled, Worldview Wars. In that post, I discussed how Tamillia Valenzuela, a self-described “neurodivergent Queer” and member of the Washington Elementary School board in Arizona made national news by opposing the board’s cooperation with a Christian University. Valenzuela opposed cooperating with the university because of the school’s “Biblically-informed values.” Ms. Valenzuela knows her worldview and, through her opposition, defends it. Few Americans can define worldview much less provide support for it.

Today, my wife and I live in Western Washington State, a land of many rivers, streams, wetlands, and rain. So, the danger of flooding concerned us as we searched for property. The house we built sits atop a large hill. Several times the hill has become an island in a sea of flood waters, but the house has never been touched. For me, prepping is like insurance. I buy what I think I need. Our land on this hill is my flood insurance.

I’ve met and talked politics and policy with all three of the commissioners for my county. I thought they were a fairly conservative group, but appear to have been mistaken. Five years ago, a local church established a mobile needle and syringe exchange program here in Lewis County. Such programs enable drug abusers to maintain a safer, but still addicted, lifestyle. Enabling drug addiction and the related homelessness and crime is not what I want for this county.

The next day we knew much more about the situation in the Denver metro area. Thousands remained without heat and light. Many roads were washed away or flooded. We knew all of that about Shaffers Crossing because we were living it. According to radio reports, hundreds of repair crews were working to fix the problems around Denver. No one seemed to be aware that we were also without power and phones. Perhaps, since there were so few of us, we were merely low on the priority list. Armed with more questions than answers my father left to try and find a way out of the hills and valleys where we lived.

In the late 1960’s my parents moved to the tiny community of Shaffers Crossing, high in the Colorado foothills. There along with my older sister and her daughter, we lived on thirty acres of forest and pasture land. The looming slopes that surrounded the tiny community would be called mountains in most other states. Those lofty peaks blocked most of the radio and all television reception from our little valley. Cable TV hadn’t arrived in Shaffers Crossing and satellite TV and cellphones hadn’t been invented. News reached us via the more powerful AM stations, shortwave radio, and the weekly newspaper from the nearby town of Evergreen. We shared one phone line with the seven other households and less than fifty people who made up the community.

On a sunny day last week, I revved up my chainsaw and trudged out just beyond our garden and henhouse to cut down several trees. I notched a large dead tree and then began the cut on the other side. Suddenly the tree snapped near the ground and fell. With chainsaw in hand, I stumbled backward. Fortunately, the tree fell in the general direction I wanted. After my heart slowed to a normal pace, I began cutting on another dead tree. This went well until I heard the snapping of wood and the tree wobbled. Unsure where it would fall, I again stumbled backward, but this time my feet tangled in bramble, and I fell. The tree thundered to the ground across two fences and terrorized our chickens but missed me.

Conservative radio host, public speaker, and author Eric Metaxas has written a new book titled, Letter to the American Church. This bestselling book calls upon the American church not be silent like the German Church was during the rise of the Nazis. He exhorts the American church to speak out against abortion, gay marriage, critical race theory, and the Marxist ideology that he believes is behind it all.

Alex Jones, a radio talk show host, doesn’t like globalists or any group that wants to control humanity. I don’t want that either. Jones uses his radio program, websites, and books to spread his message but, many call him conspiratorial. I’d prefer to avoid that label so, until recently I hadn’t paid much attention to Jones or his favorite targets such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Klaus Schwab. The WEF and its progressive, liberal members are convinced that if they ruled the world it would be a better place but are they a real threat?

Less than three years ago, I wrote an article about a tiny company that had allowed users to set custom filters to block explicit content on streamed movies. As you might think, the big studios didn’t like someone filtering swear words and nudity from their movies. In 2016, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, and Warner Bros. filed a federal lawsuit against the upstart company and in 2017 VidAngel was forced to file for bankruptcy protection. But that isn’t even close to the end of the story.

Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation, is the latest book on American education by Pete Hegseth, co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend on Fox News. For this release, Pete has teamed up with classical educator David Goodwin.

As a teacher, I had a growing awareness of problems in American education even before such concerns spread like wildfire during the pandemic lockdowns.

My great-uncle Paul Sullivan, an outspoken, self-educated World War I veteran, ranted for years about his spineless, weak-willed father who allowed his mother to be railroaded into a mental institution so that relatives could raise her baby girl as their own.