Sometimes, when I’m in the mood for immediate feedback, I post to Facebook or Instagram. There has been so much to talk about recently, that I went overboard.  Here’s the good stuff..
–Jim Riley

Christian Nationalism..

Don’t let anyone scare you away from the term “Christian Nationalism,” or sell you the LIE that it is really “White Nationalism.” People who have no plan for American renewal can only slander those who do. These are people who conjure their own nightmare fantasies — dire-faced Puritan divines demanding church attendance, frowning at short hemlines, shutting down dance halls. They don’t know their history. The Puritans had a better sex life than most of you, and they built new churches with a barrel of rum or hard cider on the new floor. Their emphasis was on the “weightier matters of the law,” so, yes, rapists were executed, murderers faced the gallows. You could have a drink but you would pay the price for a drunken bar fight.
Gasp! What a world!
The term merely expresses the general stamp of American history — a “Nation” mightily influenced by the eternal kingship of Christ, a “Nation” taking its cues from Biblical wisdom. “Christian Nationalism.” Far worse things could happen to a country. You could endure a godless “workers paradise” and spend years in the Gulag for saying the wrong thing. You could languish in a proudly secular state like the modern UK, where Muslim rape gangs are protected and you face arrest for an open conversation.
Yes, the young American nation was a denominational mix, with many passionate theological differences, so, it’s true: they didn’t want a state church. They wanted an open conversation, but, clearly, they expected the broad wisdom of Christianity to influence their law. I have a copy of New Hampshire law from the late 18th century. The first 12 pages of criminal code are embroideries on the Ten Commandments.
You don’t have to embrace the concept, but you would be a moron to be afraid of it.

Farm News…

We are developing a kind of “raw land” store here on the farm — black oak, poplar, and mulberry seedlings, firewood, applewood chips, decorative pruning branches, grafted apple trees, greenhouse produce, organic gun powder from chicken poop, (just kidding). I’m scouring the back country (the uncultivated parts of the farm), to see if there is some marketable mineral or plant out there. I really wish we could sell our water. It is so good.
Patriot Camp: we designed this for 4th – 7th graders, so that they won’t grow up to be America-hating weirdoes, but, guess what? A LOT of parents and grandparents want to be included, so we might re-think our plan.
Saturday Revamp: Our Saturdays in the fall work almost TOO well. We love the crowds, but we’re worried we can’t give you enough love and attention. We close on Sundays, so the only real day, over the rest of the year, to attract most working people would be Saturday. I’m trying to re-think what would bring you up from Riverside, Redlands, or Hong Kong for that matter. Music? More Living History? Our food is so good that every single pie tin is licked clean, so we have that part down. We offer tomahawks and archery and candle-dipping. We usually have live music in the tavern. What am I missing? (And, if you are someone who hates me because I ridicule DEI, drag-queen story hour, and Minneapolis anarchy, we don’t want you here anyway, so bug off.)
Long term plans: My brother, Scott, and I are making good progress on our “Tier 1-4” plan. Prayers appreciated. A law firm that helped with one of our winning Ninth Circuit appeals, and filed late for our Supreme Court appeal, reminded me about a bill I owe in excess of $100,000. They want me to come up with $12,000 a month to pay them. I don’t have that, and I need to urge them to be reasonable. Over the course of this 7 year long battle, many law firms worked with reduced pay, but we still had to come up with far more than we could really afford. (You have to be super-wealthy to fight a First Amendment case of this sort. We’re not. If someone knows Elon Musk, get word to him.)
A Liberal Friend: I have a good friend from high school I correspond with regularly. It’s an “iron-sharpens-iron” thing because we don’t descend in to name-calling (of each other anyway), and we actually reason out the issues. He had a very powerful, high-level entertainment industry career, but he’s open to hearing from an old farmer friend. I felt pleased today. He condemned Don Lemon and his henchmen too. His synagogue has high level security, but he told me he would be angered by such an intrusion. SOMETIMES discussion works.

On Invading Churches and Interrupting Worship..

As someone who has paid (and continues to pay) a very HIGH price for defending the First Amendment, I can say–as sure as the sun rises–that the degenerate, vulgar Don Lemon and his friends, who INVADED A CHURCH during worship, are profound enemies of the Bill of Rights.
You simply can’t enjoy any divinely-ordained human right if your neighbor can cancel it, silence it, paralyze it, in selfish obedience to their own misplaced priorities. Anti-ICE protesters could stand on the sidewalk, wave signs, express themselves, but if they PREVENT YOU from worshipping in your own sanctuary, they deserve to be perp-walked into prison. These are brown shirt tactics, and if you agree with invading a house of worship, please, stay away from the farm and Oak Glen.
YOU are the Nazis, clearly, now.

On God Hardening Hearts..

There’s a series of passages in the Bible that “people of the book” have wrestled with for centuries. When the children of Israel cried out for deliverance from Pharoah, the Lord promised Moses that HE (God Almighty Himself) would “harden” the king’s heart. That hardening of heart meant that Pharoah would deny the request of Moses for the freedom of Israel, and bring dire plagues upon the king’s people — bloody rivers, frogs, flies, boils, hail, darkness and finally the death of the Egyptian firstborn. This hardening, moreover, is emphasized at least 10 different times in scripture. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature: God stirs up conflict, and God restrains free will, according to a divine calculus we might not see as “fair.” I think it takes enormous devotion, and faith, to say along with wounded Job, “though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”
This divinely imposed blindness isn’t limited to evil kings. Sometimes an entire people can be made blind, (or made to see), for reasons only God can tell.
When I see otherwise compassionate people willing to call immigration problem-solvers (Trump, ICE, policy-makers) “Nazis,” I see the same hardening of heart, the same imposed blindness. Nazis, Bolsheviks, Chinese Communists would all have you gutted with bayonets for obstructing traffic and interfering with arrests. Pol Pot’s disciples would put a plastic bag over your head and suffocate you in front of your children. Castro’s “judges” would put their boots up on the rail, smoke a cigar, and sentence you to 20 years of hard labor. Try insulting North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, or his henchmen, with the same language. You would be tortured for sport.
The real “tyrants” are the deluded and heart-hardened mob — deluded women dragging law enforcement officers with their vehicles, gang members beating them, Antifa trashing vehicles, stealing weapons and doxing officers. They look precisely like Bolsheviks — a small, violent, remorseless, and very minuscule fraction of the American population. If THEY take over, watch out. You will get to see some genuine fascists. (Hitler got his start, need I remind you, with beer hall riots.)
Consider, if you can, what it means to have a “hardened heart,” and pray God delivers you from the curse. We’re doing our best to reason with you, but you just might be bringing down plagues.

Furthermore, when God “hardened” Pharoah’s heart, we are blessed by a glorious, opportunity made possible by this side of His nature.
The apostle Paul told the Corinthians (1 Cor 11) that heresies MUST come about. Wait? What? Bad teaching MUST take place? Why? Wouldn’t God be opposed to false understanding?
Read Paul’s divinely inspired sentiment..
“For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.”
There “must” be “heresies” so that..
God’s faithful may shine, so that those who love God can demonstrate their faithfulness. I’ve read and re-read the history of the American Revolution, and I’ve always been struck by this reality: King George III had so many opportunities to soften his grip, to reason with the colonists, to show clemency. He had opportunities to evaluate their complaints. Instead, he scorned them, laughed at them, and encouraged his ministers to do the same thing.
This royal arrogance, and cruelty, allowed a generation of Christians to show their courage, and their faithfulness, in a way that would not be possible if the king hadn’t been prodded, by GOD HIMSELF, to play the villain.
Ponder this. Why let the Philistines field a nine foot tall monster against the armies of God? So that a 14 year old shepherd could show Israel how much he loved his Lord. Why would Samson ask his parents to pick a wife outside of his people?
“To pick a fight.”
Happy Lord’s Day..

Not enough math in the universe..

Picture this..

Your wife, and her friends, have cornered three picnic tables under an oak tree in a grassy park next to the river. Red-checkered table cloths, simmering corn on the cob, melting butter, and towering, messy hamburgers, built with seasoned ground beef, barbecue sauce, bacon, lettuce, sliced pickles, and big, salty beefsteak tomatoes. The flavor and the texture pass with each crunch beyond just your body and into your soul. Why? Because, in the feast, you are measuring the exotic layers of God’s love, His care for you, the incredible beauty He ordered into creation — grain and vinegar and thin butter lettuce. It’s a kind of symphony, made even more ecstatic by the laughing children your wife gave you, and the friends on all sides of you telling stories.

Over the last few years, I’ve marveled at this process of small, dull, dry, seemingly dead seeds growing into complicated beauty. I have celery and calendula flowers growing downstairs. I once thought it was just the soil, but, really, it’s mostly light and water and temperature — ordered by DNA into a specific kind of creation. Years ago, as a young dumb agnostic, Darwin’s theory seemed elegant, but, lately, I’ve come to understand the beauty of math proving the impossible. There simply isn’t enough math in the universe for a frog to “accident its way” into a woodpecker.
First tomato blossom today..

The Mark Kelly Comedy Hour

We should all be clear about something: there **IS** such a thing as a “legal mutiny.” Some of you service members with a legal background could enlarge on the matter, but if the commander of a carrier task force suddenly went stark raving mad, (and didn’t know he was mad), his junior officers would be obliged to relieve him of command and take over.
The hilarious thing about the Mark Kelly comedy?
He refuses to make his case. He refuses to give soldiers and sailors a specific example of orders that should be defied.
Kelly: “All right, Commander Queeg, we are taking over the ship!”
Trump: “I’m not Commander Queeg.”
Kelly: “But you could be, and I — as a patriot — need to remind young soldiers they can defy orders.”
Trump: “What orders?”
Kelly: “Well, I’m not going to go into details. We’ve got a mutiny going. Illegal orders.”
Trump: “What orders?”
Kelly: “You keep saying that, but I’m a patriot astronaut and you don’t follow the Constitution.”
Trump: “How so?”
Kelly: “Listen, it’s important to remember that you COULD issue unlawful orders and –”
Trump: “Such as?”
Kelly: “Well, you’re asking me to get down into the weeds.”
Trump: “No, I will ORDER you down into the weeds if you keep committing treason.”

Trump: “So are you leading this mutiny?”
Kelly: “No, of course not. I’m a US Senator with a pension and all that. I’m just encouraging it from the sidelines.”
Trump: “So you want all these frontline soldiers to make a Constitutional decision on their own?”
Kelly: “Exactly. They need to know you COULD give an illegal order.”
Trump: “But you don’t have an example of any such order?”
Kelly: “I was a combat fighter pilot and a patriot astronaut.”

On Evil Measuring Sticks

Since the 1940s, the “Nazis” have been the trusty measuring stick for evaluating evil. Personally, the “Stalinists” and “Maoists,” if we go by the sheer number of innocents murdered, represent a darker poison, but let’s just acknowledge everyone’s need to compare contemporary politicians and policies to some ultra-dark standard. This comes with some peril: On the one hand, we don’t want to trivialize the Holocaust, cattle cars, interrogation by torture, racial supremacy, and all the other dark realities of the Third Reich. On the other hand, we don’t want to find ourselves in the middle of another Holocaust–kicking ourselves for not having made comparisons, and warnings, earlier.
The problem with the progressive left, these days, is that they don’t appear to have any millimeter or 1/8″ markings on their scale. Their “Nazi” meter is like a pregnancy test kit — you either are or you aren’t. It’s getting too absurd for belief. When you compare ICE immigration enforcement to the Gestapo, you make a mockery of simple, reasonable law enforcement and your fellow citizens doing that work, AND you actually make the Gestapo a little more cute and cuddly; you batter history and effectively apologize for true evil. It reveals how bad your vision really is. Do you folks need to be reminded that if ICE really were the Gestapo, you wouldn’t be able to make that comparison at all? YOU WOULD BE STRUNG UP IN SOME COLD, BRICK PRISON WITH PIANO WIRE AROUND YOUR NECK.

All True Americans Hate Communism

A few years go, one of my children let me know that a fellow homeschool friend had taken to posting on his social media, with warm approval, pictures of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and the Communist Manifesto. I got to wondering how a young Christian kid could so thoroughly embrace historical figures who are not only evil, but responsible for the death of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people through totalitarian, collectivized agriculture and production schemes.
The New York mayoral election seems to confirm this personal, anecdotal observation: we are getting, as a nation, less and less historically informed, less willing to engage in critical thinking, and, to put it plainly, more and more stupid.
When I posted on China’s “Great Leap Forward,” the other day, telling the story of a 12 year old boy who took an extra spoonful of rice, and then had to suffer being buried alive by his father, who had been forced by demonic Communist overlords to do their bidding, an Instagram friend wrote this..
“My wife grew up during this time in China. She tells me stories of children being kidnapped to eat or the weakest child was sacrificed.”
People tell me to stop talking, stop reminding them about danger, but if smart, wise people (like me) stop giving you warnings, guess who fills in the void? Communist weirdoes.
ALL TRUE AMERICANS, ALL TRUE CHRISTIANS, HATE COMMUNISM WITH EVERY FIBER OF THEIR BEINGS.
Happy Lord’s Day..

A Right to Food and Water??

(This one seemed to be a hit on Instagram (150k views) and Facebook (125k views))

The men who composed the American Bill of Rights didn’t write the words, “you have the right to clean water and good food.”

Why?

Because getting clean water and good food is very hard work. You should try it sometime. Dig a well. They say a good well-driller, by the end of his life, has usually lost three fingers. (The machinery is powerful, and a little nasty.) It takes a lot of money to sink a shaft 300 feet into the ground. It takes a lot of fuel to pump the water out, and then deliver it. It is not “free.”

Likewise, growing crops and livestock is fickle, mean, difficult work. A mountain lion can kill a dozen sheep in one night. Apple trees get fire blight. Tomatoes get fungus. Late spring frosts can kill off all the blossoms. Coddling moth, if not controlled, fills the apples full of worms. Food is not “free.”

I just read some weird Maduro supporter talk about “everything would be fine if we just shared resources.” Think about that. Even if we “shared resources,” some sturdy oil man, some farmer firing up his combine at 4 in the morning, some guy in debt up to his eyeballs with a packaging plant would have to FIND and DISTRIBUTE those resources.

I AM SO TIRED OF STUPID, COVETOUS MARXISTS who have NO IDEA what it takes to feed and house all of us.

Crack a book, America. A LOT of you have you no idea what incentivizes people to collect all the goodies you take for granted.

A follow-up..