Thanksgiving 2025
"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband.
"In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered.
Actually, Winston wasn't very interested in ... View MoreThanksgiving 2025
"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband.
"In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered.
Actually, Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington. Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world", Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.
Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey. Even though it was the best type of VeggieMeat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce, and mincemeat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey.
And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020, to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday has lost a lot of its luster.
Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the Tofu Turkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating that all thermostats, which were previously monitored and controlled by the electric company, be set at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.
Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family.
Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October when she had used up her legal allotment of life-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government healthcare program.
And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. "The RHC's resources are limited," explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. "Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I'm sorry for your loss."
Ed couldn't make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of combustion engines - for everyone but government officials. The fifty-mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn't want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there.
Thankfully, Winston's brother, John, and his wife were flying in.
Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added "inconvenience" was an "absolute necessity" in order to stay "one step ahead of the terrorists."
Winston's own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via the Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for "unequal scrutiny," even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost.
The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. "A living Constitution is extremely flexible", said the Court's eldest member, Elena Kagan. " Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example," she added.
Winston's thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she chose to ignore him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week but got over it.
His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombardment he received in public school that led him to believe global warming, the bird flu, terrorism, or any of a number of other calamities were "just around the corner." However, Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn't help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5,000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13.
The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to "spur economic growth."
This time, they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.
Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement.
At least, he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before the government promises to make life "fair for everyone" realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn't happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them. He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2011, when all the real nonsense began. "Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough is enough' when we had the chance," he thought. Maybe so, Winston.
Maybe so.
https://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2025/09/we-the-states-vs-we-the-people-the-constitutions-real-design-to-sideline-the-states/
Constitution vs Articles of Confederation? Instead of a government th... View Morehttps://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2025/09/we-the-states-vs-we-the-people-the-constitutions-real-design-to-sideline-the-states/
Constitution vs Articles of Confederation? Instead of a government that acted through the states, the Constitution created something radically different – and almost no one today understands what that change really was. But the Framers told us, over and over.
We the People vs We the States: The Constitution’s Real Purpose | Path to Liberty Podcast
Constitution vs Articles of Confederation? Instead of a government that acted through the states, the constitution created something radically different - and almost no one today understands what that
Chet McAteer
OBAMACARE OPEN ENROLLMENT-
[WHY THE DEMS ARE IN A PANIC...OF THEIR OWN MAKING]
The Democrats’ Affordable Care Act, rammed through in 2010 by a partisan Congress under Nancy Pelosi and Ha... View MoreChet McAteer
OBAMACARE OPEN ENROLLMENT-
[WHY THE DEMS ARE IN A PANIC...OF THEIR OWN MAKING]
The Democrats’ Affordable Care Act, rammed through in 2010 by a partisan Congress under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and signed by Barack Obama with zero Republican support, never truly fixed health-care affordability; it merely kicked the can down the road with limited, made healthcare and costs less reliable than it was prior to its passage.
The so-called permanent subsidies that left middle-income families paying crushing premiums once they crossed 400% of the federal poverty level.
Then, in 2021 and 2022, the same Democrats—now led by non other than Joe Biden—cynically super-sized those subsidies with the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act, dangling near-free insurance like election-year candy while deliberately baking in a brutal sunset clause that expires December 31, 2025, knowing full well it would detonate a cost explosion for 22 million Americans.
As open enrollment hits today, November 1, 2025, these same Democrats have plunged the government into its second month of shutdown, holding federal funding hostage primarily to force through another unaffordable extension of their own temporary giveaway rather than admit their original ACA was a half-baked failure.
The result: average subsidized families face premiums more than doubling from $888 to $1,904 next year, millions poised to lose coverage entirely, and States from West Virginia to Alaska mailing panic-inducing notices—all because Democrats designed a ticking time bomb, refused to defuse it responsibly, and now paralyze the nation to cover their tracks.
The Demicrats caused the Problem and they simply want to hide their errors behind a shutdown, all the while blaming the Republicans for their own idiotic mess.
-cmcateer
Mindy Wilcoxen Esposito
·
THE LOST CAUSE OR THE RIGHTEOUS CAUSE: WHICH ONE IS THE MYTH?
A Southern Perspective for Historical Debate
After the War Between the States ended in 1865, two opposing inter... View MoreMindy Wilcoxen Esposito
·
THE LOST CAUSE OR THE RIGHTEOUS CAUSE: WHICH ONE IS THE MYTH?
A Southern Perspective for Historical Debate
After the War Between the States ended in 1865, two opposing interpretations of the conflict emerged. The victorious North claimed the struggle as The Righteous Cause—a moral war to preserve the Union and end slavery. The defeated South was said to have created The Lost Cause—a so-called myth to glorify rebellion and excuse defeat. But to Southerners who lived through it, their cause was neither lost nor mythical; it was the defense of liberty, local self-government, and the right of free people to determine their own destiny.
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Secession Did Not Begin in 1860
The concept of secession had been woven into American thought since the early Republic. It was not born in 1860 but had been sewn since 1832, when South Carolina nullified federal tariffs it deemed unconstitutional. Even then, President Andrew Jackson threatened invasion, and only a compromise tariff prevented war. Many Southern statesmen—including Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, and later Robert E. Lee—believed the Union was a compact among sovereign states, and that each retained the right to withdraw if that compact were broken.
The Southern position rested on the same principle Thomas Jefferson had declared in 1776:
> “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
When that consent was withdrawn, secession was viewed not as treason, but as a peaceful act of self-determination—exactly what the American colonies had once done toward Britain.
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Slavery: A Coincidence of Timing
Thomas Jefferson, himself a Virginian, foresaw the problem generations before. He wrote:
> “We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.”
Jefferson recognized slavery as a dangerous inheritance—something America did not create, but could not easily end without upheaval. By 1860, less than 3% of Southerners owned slaves. The vast majority of Confederate soldiers owned none at all. They fought because their states were invaded, not because they sought to preserve an institution they had no part in.
Slavery existed in the North as well, though gradually phased out through compensation or by selling enslaved people southward. Northern merchants, banks, and textile mills had long profited from slave labor, and the infamous slave ships of New England carried countless Africans to bondage. Slavery, therefore, was a national institution—an inherited evil, not a Southern invention.
As President Lincoln himself wrote to Horace Greeley in 1862:
> “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.”
If emancipation was not the Union’s initial goal, it cannot honestly be said that slavery was the sole or even primary cause of the war.
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Economic and Political Motives
The South’s fertile lands and exports—especially cotton—were the economic backbone of the nation. The industrial North depended heavily on that trade but sought to dominate it through tariffs, centralized banking, and federal control. Southerners saw their independence threatened by an expanding federal power that no longer represented them.
When seven states withdrew peacefully, the Union government chose to wage war—not to free slaves, but to preserve its tax base and territorial control. Lincoln himself said he could not allow the Union to “be broken into fragments.” The resulting invasion was less a moral crusade than an assertion of authority.
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A War of Attrition
Once the war began, the Union waged a war of attrition—grinding down Southern armies and civilians alike by cutting off supplies, destroying farms, and targeting rail lines and cities. The South was outnumbered four to one, outgunned, and eventually starving, yet her soldiers fought on for four long, desperate years. The endurance of men and women who had lost everything stands among the most remarkable displays of courage in American history.
General Lee’s army fought until the very end with honor, discipline, and faith, even as food and ammunition vanished. They were not fighting for conquest or plunder—but for the right of their homeland to exist in peace.
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The So-Called Myths
Unionists and modern historians often call the “Lost Cause” a myth, accusing Southerners of romanticizing defeat and minimizing slavery. But Southerners see the Righteous Cause as the greater myth—one that rewrites motives to justify the Union’s destruction of states’ rights, local economies, and civilian life.
The “righteousness” of the Northern cause is further undermined by the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave in Union territory—only those in Confederate lands where Lincoln had no authority. If the war were truly fought for moral liberation, such half-measures would make no sense.
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Why Southerners Defend the “Lost Cause”
For Southerners, the “Lost Cause” represents not denial but dignity. It remembers a people who fought against impossible odds for principles they believed in—honor, liberty, and the right of self-government. It honors women who rebuilt their homes from ashes, children who grew up amid famine, and men who faced overwhelming might without surrendering their convictions.
To dismiss that story as myth is to deny the humanity and complexity of half the American experience. The South’s cause was lost in battle, but its spirit of independence and honor endures.
---
Conclusion
The true history of the War Between the States cannot be captured by slogans of “righteous” or “lost” causes. It was a conflict of philosophies—between centralized power and local sovereignty, industrial empire and agrarian independence, conquest and consent. The South stood where the Founders once stood: for the right of free people to govern themselves.
Her sons and daughters fought not for slavery, but for home and country—believing, as Jefferson did, that liberty must never be surrendered, even when the cost is everything.
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Bibliography
Jefferson, Thomas. Letter to John Holmes, April 22, 1820. (Library of Congress)
Pollard, Edward A. The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. E.B. Treat & Co., 1866.
Lincoln, Abraham. Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862. (Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 5)
Davis, Jefferson. The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Appleton, 1881.
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative. Random House, 1958–1974.
Catton, Bruce. The Coming Fury. Doubleday, 1961.
McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press, 1988.
Calhoun, John C. The Works of John C. Calhoun, Vol. 6, D. Appleton & Co., 1851.
Simkins, Francis Butler. A History of the South. Knopf, 1947.
Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb. Louisiana State University Press, 1943.
M. Esposito 07/20/2025
https://mrchrisarnell.com/p/if-we-classified-driveby-shootings
If we used the government’s own numeric threshold, four or more people shot, but removed the political asterisk that excludes drive‑bys,... View Morehttps://mrchrisarnell.com/p/if-we-classified-driveby-shootings
If we used the government’s own numeric threshold, four or more people shot, but removed the political asterisk that excludes drive‑bys, the geography of “mass shootings” would shift overnight from the suburbs to the inner city.
The United States sees roughly 2,000 drive‑by shootings each year, injuring or killing nearly 3,000 people. About a third wound multiple victims; five hundred separate events that would qualify as mass shootings under the same definition applied to suburban massacres. In Chicago, more people are shot in multi‑victim drive‑bys each summer than die in all the school or workplace shootings broadcast nationwide. Yet none of them appear in the mass‑shooting tallies cited by politicians, because bureaucrats quietly add a clause: “excluding gang or drug incidents.” One rule for the urban poor; another for everyone else.
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