Remember Them

It was a hollow voice. Such a cold voice I barely heard carried across the veil between us. Even in faintness, it arrived as the crisp sound water makes in the stream of a cave.

“You stand at the foot of my grave,” it whispered, “but I cannot determine what I see. I have played my part and can ask this same of you, in whose charge now the country I served falls: Do you dwell on your duties as I attended mine?

“Do you elevate men and women who deserve to command my loyalty? Is this America where I rest, made yet today from many into one, or has it fallen to division and wretched selfishness? Do you build on the sacrifice I have sown into this hallowed ground?”

Then came another, as if from even greater distance: “Are you instead content to only lap up the gravy of liberty? That, you know, is your freedom mixed with the blood of heroes!”

The first returned, now more solemn: “My part is done and yours remains. I know the price of what I bought. Generation by generation here in this silent earth they came as I have now. Row on row, in death as we stood in life: together.”

“We are watching,” more and more of the voices agreed. They all murmured their accordance: “We are watching. We are watching.”

*****

May it be for you a peaceful Memorial Day Weekend and an observant Monday.

Choose to love, -DA

More Than Being Here

You’ve heard it more than once: “We’re all Americans.” The phrase is a standardized rhetorical tool, and it’s used often by those attempting to foist another questionable narrative on bystanders surrounding the arena of ideas. Premises dubious and solid comprise political discourse in this county. Mere embrace of this particular canard is prima facie evidence of civic illiteracy at best in the current environment, where granting such benefit of doubt is often tantamount to willing denial.

No, we’re not all Americans. Not even close.

America is an ideal, a construct of interrelated ideas. America formed in the minds of men and women at a time where the capacity for deliberate thought was the valued measure of intellect, and whose survival of rational criticism led to its adoption and proliferation out of a sense of morality, and destiny, and shared benefit.

America, as an ideal, stands as a bright shining inspiration and aspiration set as a goal pursued by those who understand it. As such, this apex philosophy of human governance—proliferated through its ideology—rests in the premise that just powers derive from the consent of the governed. It was a radical concept at the end of the age of the supposedly divine right of kingship, and it endures here in opposition to the tide of globalized homogenization those who presume to be a ruling class envision for the future.

America was founded by folk who understood the concept of a ruling class not only reflects base instincts of humanity’s sin nature, but denies the actual divine bestowment of human rights they attempted to delineate in our founding documents. Thought, remember, was a valued process at the time, refined and arrived at through an established regimen of construction and examination.

And when the founders were finished, they went to war against those who thought otherwise. That, too, reflects a state of affairs, again due to the aberrations of will manifesting in human nature, which will never be otherwise. It’s our Constitution. Come and take it, mother lovers.

No, we’re not all Americans. We’re all citizens, a status conferred at birth (to those whose parents are not under the authority of a foreign government, but that’s another discussion). As such, we as a body of citizenry are Americans, or victims of the divisive politics of envy and identity, and/or globalized socialists, communists, reprobates, and/or outright traitors. As in the LGBTQ∞ lexicon, the listing will never be complete, because there are innumerable ways to do anything incorrectly.

“Do you think we don’t love our country?” I was, once, posed that question by a state district court judge whose politics reflected her ignorance, not treason. She herself declared wards of the state children loved by their parents, who were endangered by their continued custody. Likewise, applied ideological Americanism is going to disenfranchise those whose ambition far outstrips their common sense, capacity for servant leadership, or patriotism.

Accountability is the prime mover of representative democracy, which is why the current administration is struggling after the short-term gains reaped from an obviously and undeniably fraudulent and stolen 2020 election. The Democratic Party is a potentially terminal illness putrefying the body of American governance, and their excision is their nation’s route toward healing. They did it to themselves and will do more and worse.

Here, and in the truck-choked arteries of Canada, and in the streets of European capitals filled with citizens who have had enough presumption from the self-appointed “ruling class,” political ideologies embracing liberty under the consent of the governed are undergoing resurgence. The maintenance of freedom, as our founders intended, is the realm of an engaged and involved citizenry. Tyrants thrive under the delusion that the people will do as they’re told, when the natural state is quite the reverse.

The principle has been stated here before: the extension and institutionalization of a false premise eventually leads to systemic collapse. It will be so for the Democratic Party, their doddering, unnaturally elevated and demented figurehead Joe Biden, for Big Pharma’s COVID narrative, and for the intransigent moral weakness of Justin Trudeau.

There is an ordained order of loyalties to The God Who Is, and to one’s nation, descending through the institution of natural marriage and resultant family and community. All follow the delineated virtues whose embrace forms a stable foundation for the life to follow. The benefits of faith, fealty and dedication to that beyond our immediate self result and manifest in strength emanating from the inside out and produce a personal effect an order of magnitude beyond self interest.

The effect is that of a fulfilled soul. That store of wealth is eternal: the compounded interest of investment of talents Jesus declared essential.

We, invested with free will as well, embrace or reject each virtue and vice in the matrix of character and are measured as loving or evil, intelligent or limited, cognizant or ignorant, servant or enemy. The results will be evident in our personal lives, our communities, and our countries. Faith says we shall, at the end of our days, be called to account for how we have lived.

We, here in the States at least, are for or against the tenets of ideological Americanism, and being so is the measure of whether or not we deserve to claim the title of American. The unifying inclusiveness of the ideology crosses national boundaries and may bear other titles. But as the current surge in populism reflects, those who presume to lead in disregard of the consent of the governed have sufficiently cautionary examples in history to conclude that the age of tyrants is over, and that freedom, like water, may crash as well as flow.

There is, as Paul implied, above a certain level no male or female, no one enslaved or free, none Jew or Greek. We in our ideal state are souls cognizant of the rights granted to us at our Creation, for a purpose designated therein and under a duty to edify and elevate one another toward a common noble destiny. As ever, we have love, hate and indifference beckoning along the way … and it never was any more complicated than that, really.

Choose to love. -DA

*****

In production news, the Editress is approximately three-quarters along in her processes of editing the seventh title of Boone’s File, Two Years With Master Quan. Boone’s first adventure and final novel appears to remain on track for a second-quarter publication date and before predictable summer doldrums descend on the industry. More updates as we  may!

September 11, 2021—Remember Always

Revisiting this post, which originally appeared here ten years ago. Nothing at all, unfortunately, needs updating:

I remember on hearing of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center’s North Tower that it reminded me of another aircraft incident, the 1945 impact of a B-25 bomber into the Empire State Building one foggy morning. We all thought the first onslaught in the morning of September 11, 2001, a horrid accident. We kept that thought until the second impact a little more than fifteen minutes later, when it was obvious that we were under attack.

Business stopped. We crowded around a small TV in the office, watching the video of the impact on the South Tower and the horrible events afterward. People speculated about the responsible organization. Those of us who followed current events knew that it was Al Qaeda under Bin Laden’s direction, knowing what we did of the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The only comment that I remember making, standing there with my tie loosened, was “You mother[censored]. You want a Holy War, that’s what you’re gonna get.”

This was not exactly an appropriate comment for someone in a government leadership position. No one ever said a thing about it, except one of the younger employees that I supervised, whose response was to look at me and say, “Dude.”

A lot has happened in the last ten years. The Peace Dividend that we had looked forward to with the end of the Cold War evaporated instantly, and the War on Terror began. The world has taken on a far different form than we expected at the beginning of the third quarter of 2001. Faith wavered, and our national will was turned by the incessantly whining voices of the Left, until they gained power. The next four years was spent by a liberal political majority gorging at the trough of the American economy. A binge of insatiable government spending wilting the economy, the crushing economic consequences of the collapse of the Left’s interference in mortgage lending, and a nation weary of the costs of war all helped in the election of the current President. Some of the most pathetic years in the history of the office have followed.

Much like the human disaster of September 11th, the economic and cultural disaster of the current administration will leave rubble in its wake. It will have other aftereffects as well. More people than ever are politically active, and the most of the energy is from the conservative, hyper-competent elements of society. Constitutional government and free-market capitalism is in resurgence, now that the antithesis has been proven by its results so unworkable. People have clear comparisons to draw and harsh lessons to remember in which political and economic philosophies produce progress and folly. The lesson is of generational scope, and soon the landscape of American politics will change, just as the world scene has changed after 9/11.

In each case enemies of freedom came at us to make us weaker and made us stronger instead. Adversity does that. It is the seedbed of character. Without circumstances to overcome, we would be complacent. Without embracing the victims of disaster, we could not experience empathy. Nobility and courage would have no opportunity to prove their worth. These are all part of the eternity of answers that are available whenever the question “How can a loving God let this happen?” is asked.

We remember, and we have tried to learn from that day. God works yet in history to bring about His own ends, and faith brings strength, while hate, faithlessness, delusion and feckless self-interest hasten our demise. We continue to hope, as generations of the faithful have throughout history. We pray that somehow— this time— the lessons will be remembered.

Choose to Love, -DA

*****

With all respect to the day, there is production news, as the Editress has finished her efforts on Daniel Sean Ritter’s concluding novel, his return to Bosnia in Sister’s Shadow. File formatting and final quality checks are ahead before a publication date will be announced, but I anticipate a release this month, God willing. Updates here ASAP.

The Impeachment of Sin

I grew up in another time. We were disciplined, subject to expectations, and led the day in school with the Pledge of Allegiance. We were not cowards, and common wisdom was more evident then. Faith prevailed, and we were blessed. The days were therefore as they should be, but we missed the blessing of that, not imagining it could be any other way. It doesn’t take much intellectual spark these days to see the state of affairs has taken a turn for the worse.

I write this shortly after President Trump has been acquitted in a second show trial inflicted on the country by the political Left. As with every egregious transgression, it was revealing, defining, and an object lesson for those of us determined to go forward in the business of a faithful soul. We are the ones who pay attention to such things and add derived conclusions to our store of wisdom.

For a newly freed believer, once the Spirit pulls back the hood the world has weaved, one sees how the embrace of sin has an aura to it. Wretchedness is evident in the eyes, words … and deeds most of all. That is how faithful people know something terribly wrong has happened to our country.

Guilt settles on sinners. It manifests in regret for those who feel the burn of their conscience, but settles deeper in those for whom grace has never been sought. There, it sinks deep into the soul to become an ever-growing lesion warping what once should have been an continual, lifelong edification of the Spirit. The weight of it repels wholesome thought and twists perspective to steer the lost soul into just the course its patron spirit of death longs to accomplish: company in perdition, for hate’s sake.

Hate burns an exhaustible supply of fuel. It consumes its bearer on the inside first and then, when the outer shell of the soul is perforated, its spark spreads to whatever else is fated to combust. Those flame-weakened souls are now in charge, having sunk to new lows in the pursuit of power on a scale not seen previously. It was a coordinated effort across the country as gleefully documented by Time magazine and, the Spirit says, directed from a lower plane as well. God’s soft and still voice is not the only one active in the world, to the misfortune of the vulnerable who attend the brashness of His enemy.

The American ideal was formulated by our Founders for a committed citizenry of active, involved, cognizant and faithful folk. Our freedoms were recognized as bestowed by our Creator, not granted via consensus in a manner that could be revoked at the whims of those in power for the moment.

For the next two years, the American obligation to We the People will be diminished. In the reprobate minds of trash herders and opportunists, contentment is found in empowering themselves through the continuous spiritual erosion and resultant dependency of their voting base. The consolidation of power through manipulating the tabulation of votes allowed by the resultant lack of scrutiny has been leveraged to ensure this; there is no guiding principle on the political Left except to win, and no fix to soothe their addiction to control other than accumulating ever more of it.

The spirit of the enemy is moving in America, inspiring the treason of election fraud and shoring up the walls behind which installed figureheads will shelter for a time. Those walls stand around the Capitol now, a barrier built out of the fear of consequences of governing against the will of the people and as a testimony to their intent to do just that.

Guilt does such things. The state of possession in which a reprobate mind dwells feeds on hubris as compensation, seeking to convince its victim soul that all is well, when every indicator and fruit of wrongheaded action screams otherwise. Sin, even when institutionalized, remains as wretched in convention as it was in aberration, with the same inevitably encountered consequences as set by natural law in The Way Things Are.

We will watch an inevitable dynamic play out again as indefensible premises are extended into folly unable to bear the load of the world of actualities. Systemic collapse is coming, on a scale more unfortunate than would have been if fortitude had prevailed anywhere in the chain that foisted this national disaster on us. From the local governments who allowed inflated vote counts to stand, to the state houses certifying what the overwhelming preponderance of evidence indicated was fraud, to the courts who refused to hear the appeals of those who stood against the lie that was the election of November 2020, we were betrayed.

The weight of that cumulative transgression in pressing down now on the governance of this nation. It has evolved from hidden guilt to the empowerment of evil evident now in every branch of national government. The Deep State goes deeper than even its core denizens know, for this is no longer a political battle only. This is the revelation of evil arising as prophesied.

People are afraid, and understandably so; I have painted a bleak picture of the present day just now. This is the world in which Jesus warned us we would have trouble, and it is fulfilling its part in His plan. And this is His plan, one set in place before the empowerment of the enemy to corrupt the thinking of his victims, one set in Divine motion above and in advance of any desperation of hate His opposition will ever muster.

God—our Creator, Author and Finisher, the great I Am, Yahweh, the Craftsman—set in time and outside Himself this great work of life to flourish and refine his servants. Its temporal limitation confines His enemies, and defines each and every soul through the actions that will eventually divide them to His right and left hands in final judgement.

This work of His was conceived in love to seek and winnow out those who would love Him in return and so dwell with Him forever, as He at the beginning did not wish to be alone. It is for the sake of those who will that He endures those who will not.

There will be no excuses at the end. They have the same Word we were given, but have not listened. Some will eventually, when the weight of their transgressions and the atrocities of their camp break through the thickest plaque of delusion and guilt to convict them of the sin that imprisoned them. Others will not, and are destined to be bundled and burned with the other tares of the field. It has never been and cannot be any other way.

Outside the corrupted Beltway of the District of Columbia there are states, and those composed of local governments ever less removed from the people they serve. There, the illusion that citizens exist to be directed rather than obeyed is more difficult to sustain; you were meant to be effective there as a citizen: communicating with your representatives the values of faith and ideological Americanism. Clearly state that there will be consequences to disregarding or defying our founding principles just as in every breach of natural law.

There are levels of government to hold to account, just as there are corresponding strata of faithfulness to fulfill in living as we should. In our communities and state governments reside the strength that can right the ship of national policy. You are far from alone in your outrage, and in seeking others of your same sort you will find this a another battle that can be won, once those who think otherwise are thoroughly convinced.

So get to it, America. This is only the beginning of what we will show them.

Choose to Love. -DA

*****

In production news, the Editress continues winter’s work on timeline and fact checking in the downhill portion of Content Edit for the final novel of Sean’s File, featuring his return to Bosnia in ‘Sister’s Shadow.’ Once this is complete, progress in production editing is more predictable, allowing a projected publication date currently anticipated for late summer 2021. Like always, I will keep you informed here, as it is readers who best rock my world.

Tough Going / 24HTM

Writing’s not the difficult thing. Deciding what and how to write is the hard part.

Since November, we’ve been watching a tortuous process play out in my nation’s politics. Despite evident, rampant and blatant election fraud, the process is grinding on. It’s worse than tiresome, it’s tiresome by design, and that is why you haven’t seen a Vae Obscurum post in a while.

Engagement is a necessary duty of free people. Our Constitution was designed for a cognizant and engaged citizenry, by folk intensely interested in ideals that motivated them to produce our founding documents. The same valid faith that birthed this nation and defined and enumerated our rights as God-given is the reason His enemies hate us so much.

The political Left in this country and across the world, motivated as they are by the voice of a patron spirit who wants them dead, are now nothing more than golems driven by forces other than reason. There are no checks and balances in such mentalities, and this has been proven in some of the darkest chapters of human history.

Faith says such mindless and shocking third-world-style election fraud won’t withstand the scrutiny of free people. Despite what trials wait directly ahead of America, I cannot believe otherwise than that the last best hope of humankind will prevail again, as it has against equal challenges in the past.

One thing, at least, is certain. Those of us who survive will find out.

*****

Still, there’s news. In a matter of only thirty-eight months since inception [laugh track] and nine months after releasing Boone’s latest, Ghosts of the Republic, we’ve produced Daniel Sean Ritter’s fifth title. Twenty-Four Hours to Midnight is now available where your e-books come alive, and his Big List of Links will be found at the bottom of this post. Despite everything, 2020 is officially a Two Novel Year.

24HTM’s 2003 chapters fill the gap in Ritter’s chronology between gaining General Peter McAllen’s patronage in The Yemeni Package (set in 1999) and my first novel, The Anvil of the Craftsman, which takes place in 2006. A dual-timeline structure also links his present day with his previous appearances in Boone’s File novels. The man is in fact the only character to appear in every title to date, and for good reason.

Here’s the blurb:

“Today is built on the past. Eight hundred enemy face him. A thousand civilians shelter behind him. The conflict was personal then, and nothing has changed.

Daniel Sean Ritter, operating in an environment where neither InterLynk nor an uncommitted United States government can help, seeks to safeguard his wife’s Iraqi family during an ISIS advance. There, he learns the enemy campaign is led by One Who Got Away during his Iraq War.

Haunted by memories of rare setbacks a decade ago but unwilling to again disengage from an unresolved contest, Ritter takes up arms with his stepson Gabir. With a handful of isolated local militia, a single honorable course of action remains: to do what they can, where they are, with what they have.”

It’s ironic and unplanned that 24HTM is set in this very time of year. If Die Hard is a Christmas movie (and it is), then this will be my Christmas novel. Celebrate with giving I say, and while you’re at it, feel free to grab a copy for yourself.

Sean’s File No.5, Twenty-Four Hours to Midnight, is available now though the following retailers:

Kindle – Paperback – Apple – Nook – Kobo – Scribd

Merry Christmas. Stay in the fight. Choose to love. -DA

Bullies and Bloodings

It’s July Fourth here: America’s Independence Day. Two hundred and forty-one years have passed since men decided they’d had enough of unjust power, derived from sources other than the consent of the governed. The founders were being bullied, and being men and women of virtue chose to handle the situation in the only pragmatic fashion.

Portions of the news media are playing the victim lately by decrying ‘bullying’ from various actors in the White House. Gravitating toward reflexive complaint stems from moral, physical, and intellectual weaknesses generally defining the political Left. Strong and capable people neither make such claims nor are they as a rule susceptible to bullying at all. Should someone try, an aggressor is likely to have the tables turned instead, as when our forefathers eventually saw the fight through to Yorktown.

Such action requires individual initiative backed by grounded values engendering the confidence to oppose and overcome an aggressor. Conviction is the foundation of character, and if not present at the onset of conflict had better develop prior to facing any critical disadvantage. As always, natural law has no court of appeal, and it’s hardly surprising that when put to it snowflakes would call for their mothers instead.

Character is not an attribute only for hard times; it should also display as much in positions of advantage as under adversity. We should not be indistinguishable from what we oppose. One would think that a political figure who could truly embody the courage, strength and dignity of the American ideal would own the political scene. Half of us, however, reside on the left side of the bell-shaped curve and are being unfortunately accommodated in policy by the ideologically irresolute, even though they are empowered in Washington. Nothing better speaks of weakness so in contrast to the strengths of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence than leaders bullied while holding the high ground.

The spirit preventing such contemptible flaccidity, as is becoming apparent, is bestowed or withdrawn as we deserve. My character and Bosnian journalist Luci Crnjak, in Novel8/Sean3 King of a Lesser Hill, observes, “There has to be some difference between what they are and what we become. How does it matter who wins, otherwise?” Once patriotism is given over to statism—and the designators of supposedly oppositional political parties lose their distinction—the only choice left to a citizenry unwilling to transition to servitude is starting over.

An American conscience will neither submit nor compromise a righteous position, which is why so much effort is being put toward degrading its definitional values. A concurrent grail of the political Left, for example, is coercing faithful public servants into violations of conscience with the mantra “Do your job!” Being ungrounded, they have no concept of conscience as a higher order of loyalty than ruling or legislation and so are making the same mistake as did Britain in the eighteenth century. We can hope this will end the same way, though the dignity of Cornwallis surrendering his sword, even if undertaken by an intermediary, is more likely this time around to be replaced by another display of screaming denial accompanied by hysterical snot bubbles.

Strengths are cultivated individually, one soul at a time, with the aid of God’s Spirit to those seeking Him with their whole heart. Are there enough of us left? The winnowing of natural law never ceases, nor does it take notice of philosophical outrage in defiance of its canon. Only another time of crisis will judge us worthy, or not, should the Lord tarry in the interim. It never has been or will be any other way.

Choose to love, -DA

*****

In production news, being that Boone’s fourth novel is on the street, Daniel Sean Ritter’s next title has entered Content Edit. CE, unlike primary editing, is of an unpredictable span, though past performance by the Editress suggests a possible first quarter 2018 release, God willing.