The Devil Came Down to Limon

By Charlie Johnston

Last Tuesday, the Lincoln County Health Dept. informed us we will not be able to hold our conference in Limon. Oh, let me correct that…they informed us that we can hold it so long as we never have more than 10 people in a single room, all wear masks at all times, and maintain physical distancing of six feet from one another – and that if we go forward, there WILL be enforcement officers there to make sure we comply with all regulations.

After discussion with the board of CORAC, I decided to cancel the physical conference for this year. This is the second time that, though other local officials were favorable to what we are doing, a county health department has effectively shut us down. At this point, my nightmare scenario is that we get everything in order and, two days before a conference began, a bureaucratic agency shut us down for “health” reasons. Of course, officials assured us that the shutdown order had nothing to do with the content of our conference. Right. While the Lincoln County Health Dept. is handing out exemptions like Halloween candy to secular applications, I am sure that “public health” was the only reason they decided there was no way a conference of overtly public activists of the Christian and conservative persuasion could be allowed to be held with any semblance of normalcy.

Even in conservative counties and conservative states, bureaucratic agencies with little to no accountability have taken plenary authority over citizens in their jurisdiction – and are almost all dominated by far-left ideologues who are far more concerned with exercising and augmenting their power than to fairly and objectively adjudicate the public welfare.

It is not going to get better this year, only worse, as the insane left pulls out all the stops to suppress the basic rights of speech, public assembly and worship for all who are Christian or conservative – in hopes that that suppression can let them take victory in the fall elections and make their oppressive regime permanent and total.

Here then, is what we are going to emphasize for the rest of this year:

• Fill out the Regions. Quickly fill all regions with either a Regional Coordinator or a Primary Regional Contact (an interim coordinator) and give them the tools they need to establish communications and collaboration with those committed to defending faith, family and freedom throughout their region. To this end, I will hold ZOOM conferences with volunteers in each region to get to know the folks there. (I held a conference with the Florida folks last week and have one scheduled with the California folks Sunday afternoon.) And I will hold regular ZOOM conferences with all the Regional Coordinators, so they establish contact with each other and can share information and ideas.
• Put emphasis on small, local, collaborative projects. I am a big believer in the idea that small victories are the father of large victories. Simple things such as Rosary Walks, clever protests and quiet demonstrations give people the chance to work together for a common cause, get a little victory to savor, and get to know each other. It is a form of boot camp where camaraderie and cohesion is built. Also important, if electronic communications are significantly disrupted or become spotty in the future, you are WAY ahead of the game if people already physically know each other and how to get in touch without modern devices. As we go into late fall, I will hit the road to participate with regional groups in their endeavors in person. Around this country, however dark things become, the people of CORAC are going to have a glorious Christmas in anticipation of the renewal that we have already signed on to.
• Develop practical tutorial videos and podcasts. Using the genuine experience and expertise of people we already have in our ranks, put together videos that offer positive lessons on specific things such as home crafts that are largely lost, how to procure, prepare and store foodstuffs in difficult conditions, how to organize small self-supporting communities, the nature of the evil and assaults we face and how to head them off and defend against them.
• Establish the interactive website. This will be the place where tutorials are archived, events can be highlighted, and volunteers can register and be connected with their regional organizations. It will incorporate internal private forums where national and regional organizations can communicate with each other both internally and across regional lines, along with discussions of particular issues and techniques – including a place for the prayer teams to connect with each other both inside and across regional boundaries.

Election day will not resolve as many things as some people think. What it will do is reveal the nature of the battle we face going forward.

At the beginning of the Obama administration, then chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel said he never let a crisis go to waste – always using it to advance his political agenda. We are now seeing the logical progression of that doctrine: if there is no crisis to exploit, manufacture one. This year the left has manufactured several.

Even in local communities we are now primarily governed by self-serving leftist bureaucracies who seek to rule with an iron fist. It is government of the bureaucracy, by the bureaucracy and for the bureaucracy. I know we have some wonderful public employees in our audience and among our ranks, some who may take offense. Don’t. All of you know that your agencies have been taken captive by ideologues who use the agency’s stated purpose to accomplish their ideological aims. It has become the great leviathan that has already strangled liberty under God. We cannot just wound the beast; we must destroy it. The left features looters and rioters as moralists, engages in virtue-signaling without virtue, and has “experts” without expertise lecturing us and demanding we submit. Enough. A free people can never have their liberty taken from them by official fiat. It must be taken from them by seduction or force. Our decision now is whether or not to let it be taken – and that decision will be made by the things we do, not the things we say.

If Donald Trump and the Republicans take a sweeping victory, the temptation will be great to just let bygones be bygones with bureaucracies and minor officials who have badly abused their power against ordinary people, hoping things will go back to normal. Bad idea. The old normal is what got us to this point in the first place. While I will vote Republican this year, the Republicans, with very few exceptions, have done nothing to earn my vote. I am being forced to choose between a pack of demons (the left) or a pack of eunuchs (Republicans). Given that choice, I will vote for the eunuchs without deceiving myself that the defense of my liberty and that of all God-loving people still rests firmly in our hands and is our responsibility. The eunuchs will do nothing except feather their own nests.

I believe that we have three to four years of very serious strife ahead. It is a time when we must choose whether or not we still have the civilizational confidence to stand for faith, family and freedom or whether we will surrender to a long, dark night of tyranny and chaos. I am in it for the long haul and will – as a great Democrat once said, pay any price and bear any burden to see that the light of liberty is not extinguished.

We have brutally tumultuous times ahead of us, however the election goes. That is not prophecy; it is simply a rudimentary grasp of the painfully obvious. A friend who knew what had happened this week told me that we have been forced to become a semi-underground movement – and that underground movements don’t hold public conferences until they are victorious movements.

I tell you that the people of the kingdom, and the people of heaven, will rise together in these times and God SHALL rule. That is the battle before us. And I look forward to having a public national conference that the left dares not choke after we have put together a lot of little victories that have them hissing like vampires at a Crucifix.