The Ice Age of the Republic

By Charlie Johnston

I see a lot of stories these days that say various policies pushed from on high will have a “chilling” effect on freedom or public discourse. Seriously?! I suppose you can have a chillier wind blow even when it is already 20 below zero, but most rational folks do not use that rather gentle phrase to describe such a thing.

The only reason America is not already a totalitarian nightmare is because the left moved way too fast to authoritarianism without establishing a soothing normalcy first. They never gained sufficient control to impose totalitarian control – but they are trying. Their efforts provoke more and more pushback – kind of a self-defeating prophecy. And yet, they could still succeed.

When the left argues it must ban “misinformation,” far too many conservatives and Christians are arguing about the definition of misinformation and who decides. While it is true that the government and the media have peddled FAR too much nonsense to be anointed arbiters of truth, the larger truth is that, in America, censorship is unconstitutional and forbidden. If our argument boils down to how to properly administer censorship, we have already lost. When leftist officials and public health officials argue they have power to arbitrarily impose rules on all to ensure safety – and they can unilaterally decide what is and is not a public threat, our liberty is already gone unless we give them an unambiguous no. When the FBI and the Justice Dept. cannot stop a terrorist even when they have weeks of advance notice of a plot (out of fear of whatever flavor of …ism of the moment) but can relentlessly track down dissidents, jail them without bond or habeas corpus, and put them in solitary confinement indefinitely awaiting trial, we are not free. If Republican and Christian leaders do not fight with public vigor and unshakeable resolve to stop these abuses, we are squandering a winning hand.

Where are the leaders who are forcefully demanding the release of those folks who were merely trespassing at the Capitol on Jan. 6?  Who are the leaders who are demanding that the censors – both public and those private entities which receive benefits from the government for enforcing a narrative on the regime’s behalf – be jailed and stripped of their assets? Who are the leaders demanding that all public federal officials who engage in such violations of individual rights be impeached and forever banned from holding a position of public trust? Alas, the left is filled with passionate intensity while the right (and the Church) lack all conviction.

In his masterwork of historical fiction tracing Russia’s descent into Soviet Communism, Dr. Zhivago, author Boris Pasternak noted grimly that, sometime in the second year of the revolution, a horrifying artificiality shrouded the whole society: people were required, on pain of imprisonment or death, to believe absolute absurdities that everyone, including the revolutionaries who enforced them, knew were preposterous lies. “(Must he) spend all his life never hearing, year after year, anything but these unchanging, shrill, crazy exclamations and demands, which became progressively more impractical, meaningless, and unfulfillable as time went by?” (Chapter 13, Section 3, Hayward-Harari Translation). Pasternak came to understand that the enforced lies were simply a means for exerting control and for distracting from the complete collapse of civil society the revolutionary’s incompetence had produced. For over a decade we have had nothing but lies piled on lies coming from our institutions and press. In the last year, we have been ordered to pretend to believe the lies or face cancellation – or even prison time – and the attempted coercion gets more frantic by the day.

I understand the left’s panic: the smarter of them know they pulled the trigger too soon and this has become an existential battle for them. If they cannot successfully force the folksies to submit, the best scenario for the left is that many of them will go to prison or into forced exile. Most national leaders on the right are doing what they usually do: a few are screaming, most are capitulating – and it is much sound and fury, signifying nothing. I don’t blame them or hold them in contempt (except for the Quislings). Events have already outpaced them and they don’t really know what to do other than the same old, same old. Already, members of the military and other key elements of society and law enforcement are quietly segregating into red and blue, in case it comes to that – and it will. Citizens have been quietly stockpiling guns and ammunition at a record-smashing pace.  Decisive power has already devolved back to the states, though most – including the officials of the states – do not yet realize it.

Unless the left stands down from their enforced lies and fantasies, there are only three possibilities for America: Submission to tyranny, civil war, or separation. The left is not going to stand down. I will not submit, I do not want war, so I have focused since the start of the year on separation – secession as a sort of panic room to preserve a remnant of freedom until the madness passes or is so discredited by the brutal hellholes the blue states are on their way already to becoming that even the slow learners who make up the left’s base realize that they are starving and destroying themselves. It won’t take as long as most people think, though a multitude of the left will be bitter-enders, hunkering down in the bunker like Adolph Hitler as the society they assaulted collapses above them. We cannot stop the left from immolating themselves on their noxious vanities and power trips, but if we don’t act to protect normal God-fearing people, the left will create a lot of collateral damage among us as they implode.

The southern states from Texas to Florida will almost certainly be free states, as will the northern bloc of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas. The west coast, New England, New York and Illinois will almost certainly become captive command states. The rest are up for grabs – and there are probably a few surprises there. A problem I have is the only governor I fully trust to take the side of his citizens is Ron DeSantis of Florida. Unfortunately, if there is going to be a Free Republic of States to carry us through the crisis, I think Texas must take the lead to give us the best chance of success.

Texas is the only state which has the right to secede guaranteed in its original compact with the United States. Left-wing scholars (I know that is an oxymoron, but I’ll indulge their pretensions for the moment) insist that that provision was abrogated by the result of the Civil War. If so, it was abrogated by one of those endless “penumbras” and “emanations” lefties are always making up to substitute for actual evidence. Texas also has it own power grid – and massive energy supply. Yes, I know it failed significantly last winter – but that was largely due to succumbing to leftist “green energy” fantasies being pumped out of Austin. What it is NOT vulnerable to are efforts by a coalition of command states cutting it off – and that invulnerability will help protect others in the Free Republic States as Texas can extend energy pipelines to them, if necessary. To put it baldly, Texas starts with the infrastructure necessary to support a nascent free nation and extend help out to others that join such a republic.

Most people think that Texas is a solid conservative bastion of liberty. I know Texas. I think that is a fair assessment of the majority of its people – but not of Republican political leadership. Gov. Greg Abbott is a nice enough fellow, but he is an establishment Republican, only as conservative as he is pushed to be to survive. He has raised his conservative bona fides the last few months, but that only came after former State. Sen Donald Huffines entered the race. Most of the conservative agenda Abbott has supported these last few months – including finishing the wall and enforcing it in Texas – comes directly from Huffines’ public agenda. I’m glad Abbott is feeling the heat and doing his best to enact Huffines’ program, but it does not come naturally to the current governor – and I do not expect him to sustain it very long. He is a ‘jobs and contracts’ establishment Republican, not a natural defender of individual liberty under natural law.

Over the next year, a lot of hard decisions are going to have to be made. I want a conservative leader in Texas who feels it in his bones and won’t hesitate to stand with and for the people of his state – and if necessary – with all the people of a Free Republic if the old nation degenerates completely into tyranny. I should note that the whole Huffines family are dear friends of mine and we talk regularly. I was deeply grateful when I first met them four years ago, as I thought even then that Texas would be the linchpin if we got into the sort of deep national trouble I expected – and would need real leadership. And yes (as some of you have asked), Deirdre Hairston, the young pregnant mother who the Priest called the police on for not wearing a mask at Mass in Dallas, is one of the Huffines’ daughters. Mary Catherine, Don’s wife, will probably give me an earful because she never wanted that event connected with this political situation (I promised her at the start of that controversy that I would not disclose the family relationship until well after Don announced his candidacy, at least). But you should know that is the type of family they are.

The fact is that the left and the Democrats are trying to put our liberties, natural law, the fear of God, and the love of family and patriotism in the deep-freeze. The “chilling effect” of these things coming constantly from the left is not a flaw in their plans, but the very point of it. They want to make us subjects of their rule. Very soon, if any part of the North American continent is to remain free, we must openly fight the aspiring tyrants on the left or flee their depredations to preserve liberty where we can. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to preserve liberty for all who value it with the least amount of open conflict. I believe we are past the point of no return; that the left will rule or ruin what our ancestors bequeathed us – and it is up to us to keep the light of liberty burning, under God, in the extreme circumstances of American officials conspiring with each other and other institutions to destroy America as it was envisioned. It is time to start thinking very seriously about the unthinkable.

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Decades ago, a friend of mine who was a recovering alcoholic with several years of sobriety told me he did not even realize he had a serious problem until he was at a party with the biggest bunch of drunks he knew – and three of them took him aside later and told him he needed to get his drinking under control. Doing his best Jeff Foxworthy impression he said, “When the biggest drunks you know tell you you need to get your drinking under control, you MIGHT have a problem.”

I couldn’t help but think of that when this story was released about a prominent French atheist philosopher who took Pope Francis to task for trying to put the Latin Mass on the road to ultimate extinction. Here’s to hoping Pope Francis realizes that when even atheists tell him, “Dude, you need to dial it back,” he MIGHT have a problem.

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Our friend, Desmond Birch, appeared on the U.S. Grace Force Podcast with Fr. Richard Heilman and Doug Barry last week. The three had a rollicking good time together – and there were almost as many laughs as there were deep insights.  

It struck me as weird that the most common criticism of the show among commenters was that the three laughed too much. Seriously?! You think people cannot talk about serious matters without being somber and gloomy? Ah well, that was one of the most common criticisms of Abraham Lincoln, too – that he was too inclined to laughter and his little jokes in the midst of the Civil War. Of course, he actually won the war and freed the slaves while his critics could only accuse him of not being gloomy enough about it.

It is not the doomsayers and monster-shouters who are going to get us to the other side of this great crisis, but men and women who can laugh at themselves as they go seriously about their work.

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David Daleiden celebrated the sixth anniversary of the release of the first undercover videos revealing the depth of depravity in Planned Parenthood with this brief recap video on July 11. Alas, it did not get much coverage. But who could have expected it to in this age of shadow-banning and outright cancellation, where disinformation is the official party line and actual facts are called misinformation?

I know that a lot of things are going wrong these days – that we are drinking from a dystopian firehose that gets stronger each day. But my stars, if we can’t rise in unison and in horror at the revelation that some intact babies are being killed by dissection after being born, as was revealed during the trials, we fully deserve the scourging and chastisement God has promised us.

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It’s going to be a busy week. I’ve got a piece coming that will give you some pictures and stories from the CORAC conference, along with information on some notable upcoming regional events. I’ll be taping a new “Talkabout” Series with MP later this week. I’m going to do a full piece on questions that you need to ask about the Covid fiasco and about the Covid jab that they call a vaccine. I dumped Twitter years ago. If Facebook bans any questions I ask, I’ll dump them, too – and you’ll have to find me at MeWe. It’s time to take Nancy Reagan’s advice from the 80’s – Just Say No.

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