By Charlie Johnston
I have always been a big believer in what I call “First Things,” foundational principles which you then use as your interpretive template on all extrapolations. (Imagine my delight when, in 1990, the late Fr. Richard Neuhaus founded First Things Magazine – a profoundly orthodox Judeo-Christian publication that often has profound intellectual depth and heft!) When you get the first things right, everything starts falling into place elegantly and you have a solid foundation on which to build a coherent, consistent intellectual palace. It also gives you early alert against seductive errors. If something does not fit, either it is errant or your foundation needs serious work. Get it right and, by its very nature, you are constantly both testing and fortifying it.
It requires that you ruthlessly challenge your own beliefs and assumptions, including your unconscious assumptions, which are just prejudices (though you don’t know it, at first). You lay those bare by constant internal attacks on your own belief systems, with unflinching candor. If you do that well, what survives this test of examination is brutally strong – and you can speak and act with great confidence.
If, however, you are given to taking small data sets and leaping to large conclusions, fueled by the vanity that whatever your latest whim is MUST be right, it is a formula for unending and ever-deepening error. Many true things are counter-intuitive. Too many minds see a small trove of data, make a potentially insightful connection, and think that it MUST be true. I garner such insights and usually think, it MIGHT be true. Time for more ruthless examination. Use plain, but precise, language in the effort. Do not suppress a nagging doubt – chase it to the end. I do not mind error. We are mere mortals and error must come. I HATE persisting in error because of foolishly and vainly thinking I must be right. That is not a strength, but a weakness. Persisting in it will prove you a blowhard.
As Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar, “There is a tide in the fortunes of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” The nagging doubt, the flaw in your conclusions, if not fully examined, are the flood tides that you are omitting – and will lead to petulant intellectual shallows. The miseries will be the constant evidence that you are not nearly as smart as you want to be.
When I was in daily public media, I knew I could not avoid mistakes at times. But my ethos and discipline was that as soon as I found I had erred, to proclaim it louder than the original error. Doing that stings, even when it is your ethos. It also prods you to research hard enough to make errors few and far between. Thinking that if you don’t mention your errors makes them go away and people don’t notice is just anesthesia for the reality that people are progressively assessing you to be a blowhard – because they do notice, even when you pretend not to.
Fortunately, God has given us an internal compass on right and wrong, so you don’t have to adopt this discipline. Unless, of course, you aspire to be a thought leader. Then, if you don’t adopt this discipline, you not only become a blowhard, but you disable your own internal compass. Eventually, it will not operate at all – and you grow farther from both God and your fellows.
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Three years ago, at a field day, a very enthusiastic woman asked me what we were going to do about the Jews. I asked what she meant. She told me they were the source of most evil in the world, lying to gain sympathy about a holocaust. In astonishment, I told her of course the Holocaust happened. She asked me why, if that were so, did Dwight Eisenhower not mention it in his memoirs, since he was the commanding general. I responded in even more astonishment that, of course he spoke about it – and at some length. She insisted he did not. I asked her if she had read his memoirs. She faltered and said, no, but a friend had told her. I told her I had read them; that, in fact, Eisenhower is the man who ordered his troops to film the conditions he found so no idiots in the future could deny it…and informed her that CORAC would never become an anti-semitic organization.
I got a few emails from people telling me they hope I wise up and get enough knowledge to know how evil the Jews are. Actually, now some are trying to tell me it is not the Jews, just the evil nation of Israel. Of course, Israel is the only country in the Middle East that guarantees freedoms to its resident non-Jewish citizens. About 10 percent of the Knesset (Israel’s legislature) consists of Arabs and Muslims.
I am well-versed in the ancient and modern history of Israel. If I ask some of these critics about some very basic facts, it is all crickets. They inform me how stupid and uninformed I am and they do not even know basic information. Frankly, I feel like an Oxford Don being lectured to by Kindergartners. Some even link to articles written by people they admire who I long ago dismissed as second or third-rate thinkers. I generally keep my thoughts on such things to myself unless it is truly critical – because many of the second and third-raters do have occasionally useful insights…and I don’t want to browbeat people or make them feel they must think as I do. I’m re-thinking critiquing the second and third-raters, though. Some of them are doing more damage than I realized.
But I will say this: you are completely flubbing it if you think I take the position I do because I am stupid and uniformed because I do not share your shallow animus. Read about 40 more dense tomes on the subject – including seven or eight contemporaneous with the founding of the Zionist movement a little over a century ago – and do a serious survey of world history and you still won’t catch up to me, but you’ll be in a league where you are capable of speaking coherently on the subject.
Yes, I know I am being very arrogant on this – but not half as ignorantly arrogant as those who are writing me these days. I didn’t say what I have said to prove who is smarter, anyway. I wrote to give you all a solemn warning that Jew-hatred, however you want to justify it, is the snake in your garden. It will, at best, dramatically increase your time in purgatory. And it hints at a temperamental penchant to seek out shallow, minor fallacies, then magnify them into towering truths. That is deadly, too.
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More than a few people have asked me to publish the protocol I used to successfully knock down my prostate cancer. I won’t do that, in part, because it is illegal for someone without a formal medical credential to publicly offer medical advice. I suppose I could figure out a way to explain what I did without it being construed as advice, but I still won’t do it. Perhaps surprisingly, I largely agree with the law.
With the Covid fiasco, I boldly recommended that authorities emphasize the use of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, which they were, instead, trying to ban. It was easy to do that as both have minimal and relatively innocuous side effects. It was easy to publish charts showing that countries and regions that focused on either got MUCH better results than countries that focused on the shots. While I danced around the line, I did not actually recommend publicly the use of Ivermectin, though anybody could easily figure out I favored it. During that period I had all manner of people recommend to me their preferred “miracle cure.” I spoke about next to none of these, because just a little research showed almost all had common and serious side effects such as kidney failure, blood poisoning, and death.
This was not a surprise to me, as I had long known that many, probably most, laymen make such medical decisions based on anecdotal evidence rather than scientific principles. You know…their Aunt Edna or Uncle Joe said…or they heard from a friend of a friend. Without knowing basic principles, medical experimentation is dangerous – often deadly so. Not one in a hundred laymen know that what is palliative for one person is damaging to another – and how to navigate that reality.
My biggest shock during Covid was not that laymen often count on unreliable anecdotal stories (that are also often apocryphal). Rather it was that a huge chunk of the medical establishment does the same, almost equally ignorant of actual science – and with more arrogant condescension. When you get government regulators involved in these modern times, at least in this case, they actively try to suppress treatments that are effective while pushing approaches that are deadly. As a clever wag said, what you get when you mix science and politics is…politics. It was a repudiation of both honor and intellectual rigor – and a betrayal of the general public. If betrayal became permanent policy, I would eventually have openly defied the ban on any but the credentialed class offering public counsel. I think, though, that the Trump Administration is trying to return objective science to the issue rather than political narratives to build control. If that is the case, we would be much better off reforming the existing system – knowing that some doctors and public health authorities are not nearly so concerned with public health as they are about having an unwilling public they can force their pet experimental theories on.
As much confidence as I have in Robert Kennedy as HHS Secretary, if I had my druthers, I would still eliminate and salt the ground over the remains of most County Public Health Depts. in the country. Almost every one of them went with narrative control over objective science – and did enormous damage to people they were supposed to serve – but sought to rule.
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One of the things that quickly emerged in my thoughts during the Covid fiasco was that this could be a means by which God would cull the enemies of faith from the human herd. It is tough – and I don’t think I have spoken of it publicly before. Again, I wrote here on Dec. 23, 2020 that the Covid shots would likely be the greatest medical disaster in history. All the peer-reviewed studies now are showing how it has increased myocarditis, cancer, and a dramatic rise in all-cause deaths…and the establishment (medical, media, and gov’t) is just beginning to admit what many of us figured out early on. It did not escape my notice that the people who were most enthusiastically submissive to the deadly political narrative were those on the far anti-God left.
Many innocents were caught up in the confusion, though, initially trusting institutions and authorities they were once able to trust. There had to be a mechanism by which they could be healed once they saw what reality was – and how they had been betrayed. I contemplated deeply on Moses and the Israelites and God’s instruction to him to mount a brazen serpent; that all who gazed upon it and sought healing would receive. I was inspired to write the Brazen Serpent Prayer. Our prayer team, under the direction of Sr. Bear, extrapolated that to develop the Brazen Serpent Prayer Rosary. If you got the shots, either innocently or because you were coerced – or even if you have just repented of it all – please have recourse to these devotional items.
The initial thought is proving out, though. Remember when, after Trump and Robert Kennedy noted the link between Tylenol and childhood autism – a link which the CDC and the manufacturers of Tylenol conceded there was profound evidence for, TikTok and other social media were lit up with leftist pregnant women taking Tylenol to “own” Trump. I guess their babies’ well-being and health were a small price to pay for their need to show Trump.
It is bizarre that, in modern times, people do not consider themselves smart based on their knowledge, logic, and wisdom. Rather, they base it on which political team of “experts” they choose to follow – and they will follow them defiantly, even when compelling evidence and data show they are dead wrong (pardon the pun). It is an utterly mindless and self-destructive definition of “smart.” I was taken by this essay by Anne Hendershott in the American Spectator. It began as a reflection on the shootings at Brown University, but ended as a deep contemplation on the wages of hubris, vanity, jealousy, and resentment. Hendershott will be someone I look for and read regularly now.
As brilliant as he is, the devil’s great weakness is that he can’t resist doing long term damage to his plans in exchange for the pleasure of venting a little transient spite at humanity. I clearly see demonic influence in so many people who are now doing the same. You know that if Donald Trump cured cancer, we would shortly thereafter see great crowds of people carrying signs reading, “Hands off our cancer!” and “Leave our cancer alone!” Their rage and spite has unhinged them – and so the devil leads them defiantly to their own destruction. They will NEVER accept healing and grace from people – or the God – that they hate.
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Merry Christmas, everyone. On Christmas Eve morning, I will reprint my story, The Pivot of Civilization and then on Christmas morning, I will reprint Joseph’s Way. Both are contemplations that involve the Christmas story. I like them – and like to revisit them every year at this time. I wrote Joseph’s Way 29 years ago. I wrote The Pivot of Civilization 14 years ago, mostly while walking through Louisiana during my pilgrimage. I hope you like them, too.
If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.
Find me on X at @JohnstonPilgrim
The Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC)
18208 Preston Rd., Ste. D9-552
Dallas, Texas 75252
A Sign of Hope 
I ask for Christmas blessings and graces for all of you! Hope you are still doing well, Charlie!
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Charlie thank you for this piece!!! It’s wonderful!!!
For the life of me I can’t figure out why so called, “good folk,” would think they were so right siding with the likes of Adolph Hitler! 😖. Eeeeeh ghads! That’s just Really horrible thinking!!!
Thank you for reminding me about ivermectin…the miracle drug!!!
I just got off a 5 day long grandson (Jaxy poo) hiatus (nights included) and then another grandchild (Reese cup) for the last night together!!! I tell them about you all the time and we have a chair you sat in called our Charlie Johnston chair! Ha! They love talking about Jesus all the time! (Both are 4 1/2 – born 6 days apart!) ha! But they were both super sick.., 🤒 Jax had strept and scarlet fever rash and Reese cup had a bad lung infection not sure what it was! I put myself on the zpak but not rebounding and so as of tonight started on the ivermectin too!!! I think I needed that reminder so I thank you so very much!!!
We took Reese cup to mass with us this morning! Her very first Catholic mass! She told her dad a week ago that she would be going to a Catholic Church in Ohio way before we all knew she’d be at our home Saturday night and into Sunday morning and that we would be bringing her to mass with us! They’re from Virginia and very Baptist so it was very different from what she’s used to but I tell you she never took her eyes off the altar and the Mass the whole hour!!! She was fascinated and in awe!!! I was in heaven watching her being so drawn into the mass! Father blessed her and I was so happy for her! I’ve never seen a toddler watch the mass so intently from beginning to end my whole life long! I told her grandma wants her to be catholic someday and she said ok! lol 😆
Merry Christmas Charlie!!! We are so grateful to you and for all the help you have given to us all for so very long now!!! We are blessed by you!!! You just take some time dear friend to relax and enjoy your beautiful family for the Christmas season!!! Thank you again for all you do all of us!!! 🥰🙏🕊️⛪️👼🎄🎅
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Merry Christmas to all here!
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Thank you for this paragraph and links, Charlie:
“Many innocents were caught up in the confusion, though, initially trusting institutions and authorities they were once able to trust. There had to be a mechanism by which they could be healed once they saw what reality was – and how they had been betrayed. I contemplated deeply on Moses and the Israelites and God’s instruction to him to mount a brazen serpent; that all who gazed upon it and sought healing would receive. I was inspired to write the Brazen Serpent Prayer. Our prayer team, under the direction of Sr. Bear, extrapolated that to develop the Brazen Serpent Prayer Rosary. If you got the shots, either innocently or because you were coerced – or even if you have just repented of it all – please have recourse to these devotional items.”
Sighhhhh, I’ve had direct conversations with our mostly rural public health department staff, and they haven’t budged. Sighhhhh.
Lord, please hear our prayer for healing!
God bless,
Sister Bear
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A very blessed Christmas to all!
God bless us, everyone, katey in OR🙏🏽🎄♥️🎶🌧️
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Merry Christmas everyone!!! 🎄👼🕊️🎅⛪️🙏😘
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I pray your Christmas is blessed, Charlie!
Can you please recommend books or articles that explain or express your thoughts on Zionism? I have sons who are very anti-Jew (no idea what they’re reading!) and I’d like to try and redirect them. Thank you!
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Ask me again after the first of the year, Jewel. I am frantically busy. The Zionist movement began in the very late 19th Century – and was just a movement to get a defensible homeland for Jews. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis was an early American advocate of Zionism. I would not argue that secularized ethnic Jews, who are actually atheists, have done a lot of damage in the last 150 years…but silly people are not hating on atheists. They are hating on Jews without any distinctions on whether they are talking about ethnic or religious Jews. It is a weird phenomenon, but it has been consistent forever. Low information people or those who pretend to high intellects have loved to make Jews scapegoats since time immemorial.
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I’ve always found anti-semitism illogical. I won’t get much into the theological debate of the chosen people and the claims of some Christians that Jews should still be despised because of the crucifixion of Christ. I believe that has been discussed and the special complicity in Christ’s death debunked by the Church repeatedly. I’m interested in the geopolitical discussion. It is factual to say that an oddly high per capita number of globalist oligarch types, international bankers, Hollywood and the godless left are Jewish (mostly European secular Jews and the descendants) There are a lot of deceived people in this number, but I see no evidence that they are seeking to rule the world because of or on behalf of their Jewishness. Most are atheists in reality and probably do gain some advantage from cultural alliances with other nominal Jews, but again they are likely not doing any of it because of some desire for Jews to rule. It’s therefore an error to speak of “the Jews” as a force of destruction. Even more foolish to blame the random people going to a Bar Mitzvah for the actions of George Soros.
The Israeli state is a more complicated debate. I haven’t read extensively on the foundations of the Jewish state, Zionism etc. Having been to Israel and most of its neighbors I can say that Israel has more tolerance for Muslims in Israel living as Muslims than any of the Islamic states have tolerance for Christians or Jews living their faith. Yes, Catholic churches function in most Islamic states (I just recently went to mass in Morocco, Dubai, Qatar and Oman…some of these parishes are very vibrant and have 4 daily masses per day and 10 on Sunday with standing room only in every weekend mass), but there is no chance for Catholics to have any political power. Most of the parishioners are closer to tolerated Roman empire slaves than active participants in the State. By the way while pro-Palestinian rallies rage on in Europe, guess how many of those happened in the 5 Islamic countries I just visited: Zero. Not a one.
Strange to see that the leftists who consider themselves the spokesmen of Liberal Democracy and lovers of European social democracy hate the only thing close to liberal democracy in the Middle East. Frankly if anything Israel is too European (highly secular i.e. 80% atheist, lovers of COVID repression etc).
With all that said I’m not an apologist of every single thing Israel does. I don’t like their excessively European ideas. I don’t like how in daily life they treat even Catholic Palestinians less than charitably. The difference between them and Europe is that they recognize what political Islam will do to them if they allow it to. Evidently that is lost on Europe, even though their demographics tell a similar story. I don’t love the secular Jewish state, however it is better than a Palestinian one. It would be better to see a faithful Jewish state, but the last thing you want is a faithful Palestinian state. Hamas knows what suckers Europeans and many Americans are. Don’t want to be one of those suckers.
Lake
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As usual, usnit, you give a nuanced and insightful perspective on this all.
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I have a couple points I would like to make.
First, Charlie’s comment here “Fortunately, God has given us an internal compass on right and wrong” can result in extremely serious trouble, because it is not true. 1-2% of the global population are psychopaths. This is proven research. These people have brain anomalies that cause them to act as predators, to seek control over others, and are motivated by malice. If you believe that everyone has an inner sense of good versus evil, these people will control and destroy you, because they do not. *Many* of those in positions of power these days are psychopaths. Beware.
Second, although Charlie and I cannot discuss our various protocols for whatever ails us, I can point you to several options that are worth checking out if you have cancer.
There is much information online about the Joe Tippens protocol. You can search for that, do your own research and decide about it. It helps a lot of people but not all, and you must test and design the protocol for yourself and of course, at your own risk.
Dr Frank Shallenberger uses high-dose melatonin to slow and stop cancer growth and then uses Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT) to get rid of the remaining cancer cells. Look up IPT, melatonin for cancer, or see him at his clinic in Carson City, NV. If you are in Florida, you can go to a friend of his, Dr David Minkoff, at his clinic in Clearwater, FL and work with his many options.
Dr Pat Soon-Shiong has made many headlines recently on his ability to wake up immune systems to get rid of cancer themselves. He has many clinical trials ongoing and can sometimes admit new people. Interestingly, he also owns the Los Angeles Times. He has several websites, and you can look him up online.
Dr Pierre Kory has treated many people with turbo cancers and others who have been injured by Covid vaccines.
In fact, there are now many clinics which use various different kinds of alternative and natural techniques to slow and heal cancers without going the damaging and extraordinarily expensive chemo and radiation route. Go online, do searches, talk to people who have tried different approaches, and there is now a high likelihood that you can track down an approach or a clinic that will work for you and be relatively comfortable and effective compared to current mainstream “standard of care”.
Have hope and be optimistic. Now go *dig*!
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Steve, I think there’s a big difference between having an inner sense of right and wrong and actually listening to it. Psychopaths are an interesting case but the general consensus from psychology is that they are perfectly aware of right and wrong, they just choose the wrong and feel no guilt about it. From a theological perspective I’ve always wondered how God sees them: do they choose evil because of a brain anomaly? What is the culpability? Or does the brain anomaly actually follow the evil choices? Hard to tell because most data come from brain scans of well-entrenched psychopaths in prisons. From a practical standpoint you can believe that a person has an inner sense of what is right but have no certainty they will follow that impulse.
Lake
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That’s a good point, Lake. You may very well be accurate in the idea that they know right from wrong and simply ignore the matter. What I get from my reading is somewhat different: that even the higher-functioning psychopaths feel contempt for those who are limited by useless moral considerations. They are predators. For example, they know the “what the law says is wrong” part of daily life but do not see themselves as bound by law and will indeed use the law itself to inflict damage on their prey. I suspect God’s Law is treated no differently by them. To me, the dark personality is not one of God’s Children and does not get hints from God the way normal people do.
But your idea is largely beside the point. Charlie’s remark is the second time in a week that I have seen such a blanket statement. It is incredibly difficult for normal people to even conceive that another human could be predatory toward them, and I therefore view the idea that we all have a sense of right and wrong as likely to make it even harder for a normal person to believe a person in their church or business or government could be as criminal, malicious and even demonically evil as psychopaths can be.
Whether psychopaths hear God and ignore Him (as many people who are not psychopaths will do sometimes) or are fully motivated by entirely different urges none of which are from God, they are *extremely* dangerous. I think this blanket kind of remark we are discussing disarms normal people, persuades them that psychopaths are just normal sinners ignoring God’s Word when in fact they are qualitatively different and often delight in abusing God’s Word and God’s children in order to prey on those normal people who are not given the tools to be able to see and avoid them.
In 2020 how many people could not conceive of the possibility that that jolly little elf, Tony Fauci, might be a psychopath who did not have their best interests at heart? How many have died because of that inability, that lack of training, to even consider such a possibility? I’m not accusing Fauci of being a psychopath, but I almost immediately held the possibility in my mind because I was not lulled by the idea that we are all capable of seeing and acting upon God’s Word for right and wrong. The worst psychopath model is the satan. Does it matter whether he no longer hears God or hears and still puts his own interests first every time? Charlie has said in other posts that the satan and also sinners who get very far into sinning actually lose touch with and can no longer hear God’s still, small voice. How do you reconcile that with this blanket remark? You can’t.
Just say something like, “Most people have a God-given inner sense of right and wrong that they pay attention to” and leave it at that. Such phrasing helps people wake up a bit and wonder about those who might not either hear God’s voice or pay any attention to God’s voice. Then they have a better chance to see evil or a human predator when it enters their life.
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One of the things I have found absolutely consistent in all serial killers is that they vastly over-estimate their own prowess (intellectual and otherwise) and are enraged that others do not see them for what they think is their proper worth. It is part of why I am terrified by unexamined self-regard. You really do not want to start down that road.
In politics, I got beat more than a few times…but I only ONCE got beat by underestimating my opponents – and that was in the first contested municipal race I ever ran – when I was 16/17. Never made that mistake again. (Oh, and it was seven people vying for three seats. My group lost two of the three…but my naive, young self thought we had it in the bag. So it was not a total loss…but it was a BIG repudiation of my assumptions.)
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I think that we may have forgotten that we all have a fallen nature and wrestle not against flesh and blood. Science has been trying to relabel this for a long time but usually concludes correlation does not necessarily lead to causation.
Evil is in us all.
Scripture tells us we all do the very same things and not to judge another- “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things”. (Roman 2:1) So what stops a “normal” person with the very same fallen nature as a sociopath from doing what the sociopath does?
Grace.
And this grace enlightens us through the Spirit.
“But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this.” (1 Corinthians)
Charlie seems to be saying what Scripture tells us about knowing “right from wrong, or, more directly that He IS!
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.” (Psalm 19).
“When Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.”
But Scripture also speaks of the “causation” of an evil, sociopathic heart:
“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
(2 Thessalonians)
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, spiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. (Romans 1:22).
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It’s interesting, Steve. When I say everyone, I mean all reasonably normal people.
BUT…I have always been fascinated by serial killers. Most everyone I can get a sense of…on what motivates and makes them tick. Serial killers I just can’t get inside of…except in a somewhat anthropological sense.
I have read almost everything ever written about Ted Bundy…and he is an interesting case, who challenges your generalization. After he escaped jail the second time he was determined to go somewhere and start a new life without killing women. BUT, before he escaped, he had asked his therapist (who he was always trying to outsmart) which states had the most consistently used death penalty. The therapist listed Florida as one of the big three. So where does Bundy go to start anew? Florida. He kept clean for about two weeks. Once he acted, he opened the floodgates.
Sometimes, I detected in Bundy the sort of existential despair I have seen in some alcoholics and drug addicts. And it struck me that he relocated to the state he had been told was, perhaps, the most harsh and consistent. Perhaps to give him motivation to truly stop…but it was punishing himself for his viciously aberrant behavior. On several occasions he made efforts to start over, to re-create himself without the killing. But in the end, he could never do it. Was it all just an attempt at self-help? Or did he know what he was doing was wrong and commit a sort of suicide by homicide in his final effort to re-create himself in a state that he knew would execute him if he couldn’t stop.
Again, the best I can come up with on serial killers is an anthropologist’s view. But it is fascinating. One of the few behavioral boxes I can describe, but ultimately cannot unlock.
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Yes, Charlie, I did assume you meant “normal people”. However, I think it is damaging to imagine that most normal people will naturally understand that distinction unless it is made clear, with possible serious damage arising from that lack of clarity. I don’t know any normal person, including you and me, who can truly understand and get inside a psychopath. However, once we are aware that they exist, it becomes (more) possible to identify and avoid them, a critical safety tip for the Reader.
I didn’t know that about Bundy, and it’s quite interesting. However, I would have to say that he is an outlier, more like an obsessive-compulsive than a true psychopath. A few narcissists (a subset of psychopathy, according to Karen Mitchell) do wake up and try to change, but it is extremely difficult, because there is nothing inside them but ashes. I recall you said that Obama would live through this time, somewhere in a small town in a small apartment, ignored by everyone (a living hell for a true narcissist) and that he would have an enlightenment experience late in his life, bringing him to God. Sounds unbelievable, but most narcissists are made, not born. Most psychopaths are born, or injured, not made after birth.
I’ve read numerous books and articles on psychopathy (but interestingly almost none on serial killers). From my perspective Karen Mitchell has the best book, actually her 2024 PhD thesis, that does a good job of putting the research into a coherent view. Most are *not* serial killers as we understand that concept, though they will maim, torture and kill for fun, out of malice, or for gain. Few will self-immolate or try to change in any way. It appears that the only time they will show intense emotion, actual emotion, is when they become enraged at being identified and resisted.
Just as we cannot get inside an emotionless predator, they have an equally impossible task when trying to get inside a person with normal emotions and will practice emotion displays endlessly as chameleon protection from discovery and to use acted emotions to manipulate normal people. It’s easy to be taken in by a psychopath, even if you are aware of the concept, because they practice their “craft” constantly, and some can get quite good at it. As you say, though, they lack creativity and skills and as such, are more cunning than intelligent/capable on average. They seek out positions of power over others, they recognize and will work with others of their kind, and high-level management in many organizations have much higher levels of these people than are average in the population.
I believe it is critical to make sure nothing I say or do causes a normal person to think such predators don’t exist or that they operate on the same rails that a normal person does.
If anyone is interested, Mitchell’s thesis is here:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/64910384d2da1763d7156043/t/65bc5a78ab4aef10b9901a25/1706842827397/Psychopaths+Narcissists+Machiavellians+Toxic+Leaders+Coercive+Controllers++Subsets+of+One+Overarching+Dark+Personality+Type++MITCHELL+PHD+THESIS.pdf
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I’m copying that down Stevebc! Thank you! Merry Christmas to you and to m mom!!!🥰🥰. It really is scary about psychopaths 😬 I’ve run into a few of them through the years😬
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Re the previous post about your anti-Marxist paper, at least the prof respected and didn’t let his personal opinions bias his grading as some professors today just obliterate any opposing views. I wouldn’t be surprised your paper pricked his conscience so much that he pummeled his pillow and tossed n turned a few nights.
Some Corac members market Lifewave patches; I noticed in one of his talks the founder sidestepped legal barriers by saying something to the effect of, ” I’m not allowed to tell you that A and B products may help symptoms of C or D.”
I have the same request as Jewel with a 35 yr. old son who’s done an about face also. (The photos of starving children got to him as his son had a rough first 2 yrs of life eating n digesting food and had to have a feeding tube temporarily.) He was happy to see that Pope Francis donated a popemobile transformed into a clinic for Gaza children.
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May God grant us all a happy and holy Christmas as we rejoice in His First Coming and await with joyful HOPE His Second Coming.
If I may be so bold as to make a few requests for prayer. I believe our guardian angels would love nothing more than to intercede before God and give us a few miracles at Christmas. (1) for the repose of the souls of my godfather and his brother, my own father; (2) for John to get a new job, a young husband and father of three who has been out of work for over a year; (3) for my Prodigal son to return to his family – it has been 3 and half years since he has erased me and his siblings and all his own extended family from his life – a senseless action that I have re-examined endlessly. May God allow me to get to meet and to know my 3 grandchildren someday before I die. May it be His holy will.
Peace to all in the new year. I pray for you, Charlie, Beckita and Steve and all here.
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Praying for your intentions, (maggie)
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JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU! … PS:
https://www.lifenews.com/2025/12/22/trump-overturns-biden-policy-letting-va-doctors-kill-babies-in-abortions/?cmid=ce862995-b348-413e-9a24-050815253054
I remember Sears & Roebucks, Monkey Ward’s and Lionel Trains CHRISTmas Catalogs …. I spent hours perusing them …. Back in The Day … On the whole … Better Days methinks? .. https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/12/22/the-sears-christmas-catalog-2/#more-386984
Hey Bishop! I want CRIMINALS to be afraid, VERY AFRAID!!! .. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/12/us-catholic-bishop-leader-slams-trumps-mass-deportations/ .. NGOs, including “Catholic” … YOUR TAX $$$$s .. https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2002615185954201693?s=20
https://defendingtherepublic.substack.com/p/merry-christmas-0bb
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/12/19/dumber-sicker-poorer/
https://www.wnd.com/category/front-page/
https://patriotpost.us/digests/123795-mid-day-digest-2025-12-22
https://patriotpost.us/humor/123796-groundbreaking-new-study-2025-12-22
https://hotair.com/
GOD SAVE ALL HERE!!
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JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU! .. Happy Day 😉 .. Pray & Prepare!!
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/12/the_profound_value_of_merry_christmas.html
https://redstate.com/rusty-weiss/2025/12/21/sleigh-it-aint-so-dem-mayors-nativity-takedown-fails-as-sc-town-keeps-baby-jesus-up-n2197359
https://catholicexchange.com/the-blessing-of-a-mothers-unnoticed-efforts/
https://www.ncregister.com/features/jeffrey-bruno-miracle-on-66th-street
https://catholicexchange.com/philo-judaeus-witness-of-piety-in-the-sciences/
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/a-sign-of-feminist-failure
https://catholicexchange.com/on-leaving-the-church/
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/why-i-am-only-sorta-a-traditionalist
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2025/12/canadas-euthanasia-kills-96-white-people.html
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/12/22/deep-state-apoplectic-with-trumps-use-of-emissaries-to-deliver-results/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/12/22/sunday-talks-trump-media-ceo-devin-nunes-talks-about-debanking-trump-targeting-corrupt-fbi-operations-and-more/
https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2025/12/21/exclusive-jan-6-defendants-dad-recalls-violent-raid-family-home/
https://www.newoxfordreview.org/
https://townhall.com/
https://thedailybs.com/news/
https://www.zerohedge.com
https://newsbusters.org/
https://www.newsmax.com/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/
https://justthenews.com/
GOD SAVE THE REPUBLIC & ALL HERE!!
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Whatever bug I was fighting and losing two days after adding ivermectin to it, I’m nearly all well!!!🥳
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JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU! … PS:
https://www.markmallett.com/blog/the-coming-effect-of-grace/
https://life-craft.org/three-ideas-for-a-richer-christmas-celebration-2/
https://weirdcatholic.substack.com/p/the-peculiar-christmas-custom-of-86a
https://catholicexchange.com/how-to-grow-in-joy/
https://www.newoxfordreview.org/documents/how-the-incarnation-transformed-history/
https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/guardian-covenant/
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/racing-to-irrelevance
https://www.wnd.com/2025/12/you-missed-point-inspired-governor-smacks-down-anti/
https://www.wnd.com/2025/12/awesome-church-goes-high-tech-christmas-uses-1000/
https://x.com/UofOklahoma/status/2003209457195741653
https://thefederalist.com/2025/12/22/new-docs-reveal-shocking-lengths-obama-and-biden-went-to-protect-hillary-clinton-get-trump/
https://nypost.com/2025/12/21/opinion/major-signs-of-another-coming-dark-age-collapsing-the-west-could-make-history-repeat/
https://floppingaces.net/2025/12/22/will-trump-be-julius-caesar-or-augustus-2026-is-his-last-chance-to-crush-the-deep-state-and-save-america/
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/12/22/democratic-despotism-the-left-moves-from-censored-to-compelled-speech/
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/i-christian-kid-hollywood-heres-i-learned-about-cancel-culture
https://thedailybs.com/2025/12/23/bs-daily-political-cartoons-santa-in-a-blue-state
GOD SAVE ALL HERE!!
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