Carl Wells Books

But who is Ruth Suckow?

I’m glad you asked!

Ruth Suckow is a writer who died 61 years ago. She is largely (not entirely by any means!) forgotten now, but she had her day of fame and success. Her writing was even championed by H. L. Mencken. She was born in Hawarden in northwestern Iowa on August 6, 1892. She died in California on January 23, 1960, at the age of 67. However, she was buried in Cedar Falls, Iowa. She had come home to be buried.

She was and is associated with Iowa, and deservedly so. Iowa was where her character was formed, and Iowa was frequently the location for her stories and novels.

I was alerted to the existence of Ruth Suckow when rereading Bill Kauffman’s excellent Ain’t My America. Mr. Kauffman had a quote from Suckow’s novel Country People, which inclined me to seek out that novel.

I did seek it out, and I’m glad I did. Country People (1924) was Ruth Suckow’s first novel. It is short–213 pages with large print–and is a quiet book which held my interest well. I read it in three sittings.

There are not a lot of exciting things going on in the book. Suckow’s characters are country people. They work hard. They court and marry. They have quite a few children. Some of the children flourish better than others. Change comes, and the change is not always for the better.

The two main characters are August and Emma Kaetterhenry. They are German Methodists. When we came to southern Indiana six and a half decades ago, we immediately began to get to know German Lutherans. When I hear Mrs. Kaetterhenry say ‘”a’ready,”‘ I remember hearing the same word often among our German Lutheran friends! They too were hardworking people. In fact the German Lutheran presence remains strong in our area. Their children are strong in scholarship–and in athletic ability, to the benefit of our local high school sports teams.

August Kaetterhenry has a rude awakening when the U.S. entered the (First) World War against the Germans.

“Then the taunts, the talk about Huns and Boche, made farmers like August for the first time actually realize their German ancestry. August had always taken it for granted that he belonged in this country. They awoke a deep racial resentment that could not come flaring out into the open but had to remain smoldering, and that joined with the fear of change, the resentment at interference, into a combination of angry feelings.

“This centered in a deep opposition to the draft. To have someone tell his boys to do this and that! To take away his help on the farm just when he needed it most! To have somebody just step in and tell them where they had to go! Was that what happened in this country? Why had his people left the old country, then, if things were going to be just the same?” (pp. 102-103)

Two of August’s sons are drafted. They return from the war, one seemingly unaffected, the other somewhat harmed psychologically, never quite the person he could have been.

We learn when reading about Ruth Suckow’s life that she found World War I profoundly disturbing. In fact her relationship with her father, a Congregationalist pastor, was damaged because of his activities in support of the war. Later in life, in World War II, she established contacts with conscientious objectors, and she joined the Quakers in California. It is good to hear that she did not swallow the warmongering spirit of far too many American Christians. The way American Christians, in their idolatry of the U.S., have baptized all the idiotic American wars, is a disgrace to the name of Christianity.

Ruth Suckow does not idealize her country people. Far otherwise. She is trying to paint an honest picture of their lives. A second reading of the book may cause me to revise my evaluation, but what I see from this first reading is a lot of people who have a sort of subdued Christianity that does not really apply to all of life. That hampers their ability to act with biblical wisdom. Sound familiar? What else do we have in this country, for the most part, but a sort of quasi-Christianity which seldom encourages us actually to apply what the Bible teaches?

The marriage of August and Emma is good–but we get hints that it could be so much better. This is indicated subtly. Near the end of the book we have a contrast between August Kaetterhenry and his father-in-law Grandpa Stille. Grandpa Stille had not been as great a success in life as had August.

Now, late in his life, Grandpa Stille is mostly confined to one room. He often can be heard praying. He can be heard singing old German hymns. He is not demanding of his daughters or of life. Emma, lately made a widow by August’s death, ponders all this in what for me is the key passage of the book.

‘Emma thought about it as Carl was driving her home between the September fields of dusty gold in the late afternoon. She could still hear those faint, far-apart, devout German words. August had always said that if her father had been more of a farmer and less of a preacher, he’d be better off today. August had despised him in a dispassionate way. But the old man had had something, she hardly knew what, that had lasted him when his work was over.

‘”He’s got something to think about,” she thought.

‘It was that something, she could not name it, which she had missed all her married life.

‘She remembered the pathos of August, coming in from the farm and saying bitterly that everything had to go Carl’s way now; of him sitting about the house, trying to look at the farm journal, not knowing what to do with himself. Her father, what a frail man he had been when he had first come to live with them years ago! And here he was living still, contented with the little that he had, and well, and August was the one who was gone.’ (pp. 197-198)

Her own life no doubt nearing its end within a few years, Emma is vaguely conscious that there was something “she had missed all her married life.” Something which her father’s more committed brand of Christianity had given to him. There is sadness in this book, and a clear-eyed honesty. We respect and admire August and Emma. But Emma understands, to some extent at least, that things could have been better.

This is the first Ruth Suckow book I have read. I plan to order another later today. Country People is not inexpensive on the Internet. The best price I could find today was about $19.00 (shipping included, but sales tax extra). I saved my money and read the book through inter-library loan, but that keeps me from underlining passages.

Other books by Ruth Suckow are less expensive. If the second one I read is as good as the first, I will be encouraged to keep on reading. In Country People, Ruth Suckow has given us an admirable, honest, moving, thought-provoking book. It is a superb first novel.

Ruth Suckow shared one interest with Sherlock Holmes. Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective, she became powerfully interested in bee keeping. She even ran an apiary for part of her life.

Ruth Suckow, at age 37, married Ferner Nuhn, but they were childless. Their marriage seems to have been happy. To read more about Ruth Suckow, follow the link below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Suckow

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has been dead twelve and a half years. But he is going to continue to be important to us forever. Today I just want briefly to discuss a handful of his books.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian writer. He was born Dec. 11, 1918, at the beginning of the Russian Revolution, and died Aug. 3, 2008, almost seventeen long years after the end of the Soviet Union in December of 1991. He was instrumental in the overthrow of that communist totalitarian state.

Before we examine a few of his books, let’s listen to Solzhenitsyn about why the disastrous things connected with the Russian Revolution all happened. It is a brief summary.

‘Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”‘

The U.S. has been having some wretched things happen. If we ask why, is not Solzhenitsyn’s answer–it was also the answer of old people when he was growing up!–really the answer for us as well? “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). This was the short novel that brought him fame. It recorded an ordinary day in the life of prisoner Ivan Denisovich, a man trying to survive in one of Stalin’s prison camps. If you have never read anything by A. Solzhenitsyn, here is something short to get you started.

In the First Circle (1968/2009). 1968 marked the publication under the title The First Circle; the latter date marks a more recent edition under a slightly different title, with some of material left out of the first edition restored. I have read both versions. Either one will work, but I would recommend the second version, as it is more faithful to S’s original intent. This is a novel about men who are in the Soviet prison system, but are favored by their position in that system. Scientists, they are being treated better than men like Ivan Denisovich, so that they will use their knowledge and skill to help further Soviet scientific projects. S himself spent time in a place like this. The first circle means the first circle of hell–it is indeed hell, but it is not as horrible to endure as circles lower down.

The Cancer Ward (1968). Another novel. This is my personal favorite of the books by S that I have read so far. S himself spent time in a cancer ward, before he became a famous writer. His life was threatened by cancer, but God preserved him. God preserved his life for S, but He also preserved his life for the rest of mankind. Thank God that He allowed this man to live and to bring us numerous thought-provoking books.

The Red Wheel (1971-1991). This is a long cycle of novels comprised of several works. August 1914 was followed eventually by November 1916 and March 1917 with Lenin in Zurich also fitting in there somewhere. I have read only 1914 and Lenin, and both so long ago that I need to begin again at the beginning with 1914 and press on to the end. These books discuss the days just before the Russian Revolution.

The Gulag Archipelago (1971-1975). Three long volumes. Solzhenitsyn called this, in his subtitle, An Experiment in Literary Investigation. He investigate the Soviet prison system from 1918 through 1956. The research done is monumental. S was always an incredibly hard worker. He had to work very hard to compile, write, and protect these books. I used to say that if I could encourage people to read one book, it would be volume one of The Gulag Archipelago. It would teach people so much history, plus it would alert them to how easily man becomes wicked. I see no reason to revise my recommendation. My second reading of volume one, a year or so ago, was rewarding again. The other two volumes I have read only once, but they are excellent also.

The Oak and the Calf (1975). This is a memoir of S’s battles against the Soviet state. How many writers are equally gifted in writing fiction and non-fiction? Surely only a handful. S is one of the few. This is a wonderful book.

Warning to the West (1976). This is a book comprised of five speeches gathered together in one short book, in which S tries to warn the West of our own problems. Yes, the Soviet Union was wretched in its treatment of people, but that did not mean that we in the West necessarily had everything figured out. Those of us who are old enough can remember the West’s arrogant assumption that we were more sophisticated and wiser than S. However, he nailed us. A generation later it is obvious how empty of Christian wisdom was and is the West. Our emptiness was on display in our childish response to S’s warnings. Not everyone was so foolish, of course. But it was visibly obvious that our “elite” was childish and arrogant and ignorant, even four and a half decades ago.

From Under the Rubble (1975). This was a book which contained essays by several men. S contributed only three essays and a forward. I list it here because I am going to quote from one of his essays, “The Smatterers,” below as I close.

Between Two Millstones: Book I: Sketches of Exile 1974-1978 (2018). Thrown out of the Soviet Union, S traveled several places before he ended up in the Vermont woods–working as hard as ever to get his books out. I felt this was a magnificent book. I got carried away in reporting on it. I devoted eight blog posts to covering this book, March 5, 2020 through April 23, 2020. Rather than read my eight segments discussing Between, it would be simpler for you just to read the durn book. You won’t regret it. You’ll learn a lot about not just S, but also about the U.S.A., and the West in general. The news is not all bad!

Between Two Millstones: Book II (2020). I have not read this yet, but I hope I will be able to do so soon.

“The Smatterers” is a long essay, but I want to quote just a small part. S gives his Russian people advice. This, remember, was in 1975, sixteen years before the Soviet Union fell. The Soviet Union in 1975 was a totalitarian state. S tells his readers what needs to be done.

“And if we set out in capital letters the nature of the examination we are going to set our fellowmen: DO NOT LIE! DO NOT TAKE PART IN THE LIE! DO NOT SUPPORT THE LIE!–it is not only the Europeans who are going to laugh at us, but also the Arab students and the ricksha-drivers in Ceylon: is this all that is being asked of the Russians? And they call that a sacrifice, a bold step, and not simply the mark that distinguishes an honest man from a rogue?

“But it is all very well for the apples in another barrel to laugh: those being crushed in ours know that it is indeed a bold step. Because in our country the daily lie is not the whim of corrupt natures but a mode of existence, a condition of the daily welfare of every man. In our country the lie has been incorporated into the state system as the vital link holding everything together, with billions of tiny fasteners, several dozen to each man.

[. . . .]

“What does it mean, not to lie? It doesn’t mean going around preaching the truth at the top of your voice (perish the thought!). It doesn’t even mean muttering what you think in an undertone. It simply means: not saying what you don’t think, and that includes not whispering, not opening your mouth, not raising your hand, not casting your vote, not feigning a smile, not lending your presence, not standing up, and not cheering.” (pp. 275-277; my ellipsis in brackets; italics and capitals are those of S)

I think you see where this is going. History may not repeat itself exactly, but it does rhyme. We ordinary people in the U.S. have come to a time in our national history in which the Powers That Be are pressing upon us a Narrative. The Narrative is a lie. (Example: Black Lives Matter is an honorable group. That is an example only; The Narrative has many facets, all of them lies.) If we go along, we can get along. If we refuse to go along (to lie), we may be “cancelled.” It could cost us our job. We could be called moral monsters.

Countless people are going along with The Narrative. Many of them have managed to persuade themselves that The Narrative is true. S, a brave man himself, who took on the entire establishment of the Soviet Union–while also offending most the elite of the West–is not asking too much of us. (Or is he?) He just tells us not to lie, not to go along with the lie. That is going to take courage, however, as he well knows.

You and I are apples in our own barrel, and we know how we can be crushed. It is going to take courage on our part to refuse to go along with the lie.

But note this encouraging fact: as powerful as the Soviet Union was in 1975, by late December 1991, the Soviet Union had disbanded. As powerful as the Powers That Be in the United States are right now, as our elite pushes The Narrative on us via the media, education, politics, Hollywood, sports celebrities, and whatever else, those Powers That Be may not be as powerful as we think. Just maybe, if we refuse to support the lie, we can have an honest public scene someday, and sooner than we think. If that means the break up of the U.S. (remember that the Soviet Union broke up), so be it. A few non-Narrative zones are better than what we have now.

S, I think, was correct. He was a prophet, a truth-teller. A key for us is if we can develop the courage to refuse to lie. He wrote “The Smatterers” for the Russian people, but really he wrote for all mankind. He wrote for us in the United States. May God grant us the courage not to lie.

My mother’s death at age 101 10/12 is a good time to reflect on aspects of both her life and death.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago. It was a slow-growing form of cancer. At first we were considering surgery for her, but second thoughts proved better. She was willing to delay, and that proved wise. So she managed to live with breast cancer for a significant handful of years, without pain.

She was always concerned for the well-being of her children. She worried that caring for her was too much of a burden for us near the end. She was quite willing to go to a nursing home, and advised us to send her there when things got too tough. The misery that she was going through was no fun for her, but what made it worse for her was that the children were having to go through the misery also. However, we were able to keep her at home till the end (thanks largely to the continual superb care by my sister Peggy).

That reminds me of one of my mother’s classic comments, from just a couple years ago, before her health took a seriously downward turn. I was taking her on a wheelchair ride–good exercise for me and it got us both out of the house into the fresh air–and she spoke up and said, “I’m just afraid I won’t live long enough to go to a nursing home.” Hilarious, but I knew exactly what she meant. She had always felt like she would flourish at a nursing home. She pictured herself as organizing card games and using time in the nursing home as a chance to interact with other people in a good manner. And she is correct–she would have been a wonderful nursing home denizen, as long as her health permitted. She would have livened up the place. If she couldn’t find bridge players, she would have settled for euchre players. However, I’m glad we were able to keep her at home to the end. It worked out for the best for all of us.

My mother was the child of Italian immigrants. She was glad to be of Italian heritage. But there were limits to her identification as Italian. She had been given the name Anna at birth. When she was in about the third grade, she began to sign her school papers with the name Anne. Why? Anna sounded too foreign. She wanted to be an American. That desire to identify as an American stayed with her the rest of her life. The name Anne stuck. I don’t think she had to say anything more about it. Everyone just went along with Anne instead of Anna. And, like Anne of Green Gables in the classic novel, she definitely wanted there to be an e at the end.

My mother was thoughtful for other people. If she saw something in a newspaper or magazine on a topic which she knew a family member or friend would find of interest, she would cut it out and mail it to him (her). The U.S. Postal Service is going to miss her; their budget has taken a hit.

I have commented before on the great benefit of having siblings, even when sibling relationships are far from perfect. The final months of my mother’s life were more proof of the value of siblings. There are four of us living children. The burden of caring for my mother fell principally on my sister Peggy (who lived with my mother). Secondarily it fell on me, since I lived next door to them. We both were encouraged when Jill or Tom came down (or up) to support us, which they did often. Their drives were not short, but they made them, and Peggy and I felt the benefit. It took some of the burden off of us, both physically and psychologically. We felt supported. My brother Tom made an insightful comment. He said that he knew beforehand that he was appreciated, but all this with the challenging last days of my mother made him feel needed, which was good for him to feel. A good point. We all want to be loved, but also we all need to be needed. It was good that Tom realized he was needed. Anyway, my advice is, have big families. I’m glad we were four living children, and I’m glad to have hope that there are two other siblings waiting for us in heaven. I look forward to meeting them–although I’m willing to put off the meeting for quite a while.

My mother’s health was pretty remarkable, all things considered. As noted above, she fought breast cancer and, really, won the battle. She endured decades of diabetes, and fought to no worse than a draw. She had her eyesight all the way to 101 10/12. Her hearing held out also, although with some loss of quality in latter years. She walked with a walker the last few years, and always got to the bathroom by herself, until the last year or so. Finally it was necessary for my sister to help her to the bathroom, and then eventually it took two of us to get her there. But for well over 99% of her life, she was able to get around on her own. She had her mind her entire life, except for brief intervals in the last few weeks.

My mother was not without faults. We would be here for a while if we listed them all. Her life would have gone better in some ways had she had more knowledge of the Bible, and more obedience to its teachings. That can be said of any Christian, I suppose. She, like all of us, is going to be saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, or not at all. If she is in heaven, as I hope, it is by the grace of God. In heaven whatever faults she had will be corrected.

She was a person who never doubted her salvation. Such faith is not granted to all of us. Was she afraid to die? She acknowledged some slight fear, but it was minuscule. As she noted, millions of other people had done it before her. If they could do it, so could she.

Off and on during those last three months, she had considerable suffering. Most of the times were not all that bad! But there were some tough times, both for her and of course secondarily for those of us trying to take care of her.

Why, we can ask ourselves, would a good God let a helpless, powerless 101-year old woman experience suffering to that degree? Is He not there? Was she a person destined to be cast away, after all?

I am going to say some things that may sound like speculation here. I discuss these issues at more length in my two books What Are God’s Goals? and If: God’s Covenant of Grace. I don’t think Christians in general pay much attention to what the Bible teaches on a lot of things. We kind of make up a theology which pleases us, rather than look at what the Bible teaches.

What I am going to say may be just speculation rather than biblical exegesis, but my ideas are based on what I read in the Bible. Think for yourself. Anyway, here goes, briefly.

Jesus Christ warns us in Luke 12:42-48 that Christians may get lashes. If we know God’s will and don’t do it, we may get more lashes than the person who did not know His will and didn’t do it. We Christians were given much, and so, reasonably, much was expected of us. Whereas non-believers were not given as much, so not as much was expected of them.

In 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, Paul warns that when we build on the foundation Jesus Christ, we may build wisely or not so wisely. Our building blocks may be gold, silver, or precious stones. Or they might be wood, hay, or straw. The value of our work will be tested by fire. We could have our works burned up, but still be saved, “yet as through fire.”

Many other places give a similar message. (Buy my books if you want more on the topic.) Putting this all together, there is much to scare us–and perhaps much to console us. We Christians may have to accept some stripes–which we will know to be well-deserved, when we know everything about God’s evaluation of our behavior.

And possibly, God gives us some stripes while we are still living, so that He does not have to give us stripes after we die. I am hopeful that my mother got her stripes while she was living. When she died, perhaps she did not have to have more stripes. She no doubt had a lot to learn and many ways in which she would have to improve her thinking. But she may have gotten all her stripes out of the way while she was living on the earth. If my theory is correct, my mother may have been able to enter heaven without receiving more stripes after death.

Luke 12:42-48 also gives us hope that maybe not as many people face torture as mainstream Christianity seems to believe. I am not a universalist, but I also do not believe God is tormenting millions or billions of people in hell for eternity. This is not the place to try to defend my opinions, but I will say that my opinions are based on reading the Bible text and believing the Bible text.

One thing about my mother’s suffering that was beneficial to the four of us children is that it helped us to get prepared for her death. If she had had perfect health all the way to the end, we might have felt cheated. Instead, we had time to get ready. Had she lived another five years in the same state of off and on suffering, that would have been pretty rough for her, but also pretty rough for us. It was better for her that her suffering months were few, but it was also better for us that they were few. So the death, when it came, was also a relief. We will miss her, but it is time for God to figure out what to do with her. The ball is in His court now, and that is good. I remember thinking, during those tough times with my mother, something to the effect that if there is no God, it doesn’t much matter what happens, whereas if the God of the Bible really exists, then it will all make sense. Routine thoughts, but perhaps not unreasonable.

She had always wanted to be cremated. Her discussions with various pastors supported her opinion that there was nothing wrong with such a desire. We readily acquiesced in her wishes. There was no funeral service, but we still may have some sort of gathering to celebrate her life.

March is an important month in our family. My mother had always considered March 1 as the unofficial but real start of spring. Some of the rest of us went along with her on that point. Also, her 102nd birthday was going to be March 8. She fell slightly short of making that on earth. We hope she will be celebrating in heaven. We won’t forget her, and we are grateful we had her for so long. Anne Wells, rest in peace.

Well, finally I am an orphan, at the very advanced age of 74. My Aged Parent, my mother, died on Jan. 14, 2021. Anne Margaret Morrone Wells lived to be 101 10/12 (b. Mar. 8, 1919-d. Jan. 14, 2021). She fell only 53 days short of making it to 102. When she celebrated her 101st birthday in March of 2020, I probably would have bet that she would make it to 102. And I thought she had a puncher’s chance of going seriously beyond that. However, it was not to be. From about mid-October onward, we knew that things were trending downward, and that most likely she had only weeks or months. So it turned out. She lived only three more months after we began to see the handwriting on the wall.

In this column I want to mention various aspects of my mother’s life and death. Certain things come to mind. This will likely be disjointed. Something a little less disjointed is the obituary written by my sister Jill, to which I give a link below. Jill did a good job with it.

https://www.hagueandzabel.com/obituary/Anne-Wells

Jill had been praying that my mother would pass peacefully. This was a wise prayer, and God granted it. My mother died peacefully in her sleep. The hospice nurse pointed out my mother’s posture at her passing. Her limbs were relaxed and quiet. An excellent observation.

This reminds me of my father’s death. My father, not a Christian, had always wanted to die working. His preference was granted to him, in 1992. We found my father’s body at the place where he was smelting lead. By the posture of his limbs, I could tell he had died instantly without any pain at all. (I could tell that because I had done the same job my father was doing, and if he had experienced any pain, I knew his arms would have been drawn up to his chest. Instead his hands were in position to move the ingots of lead when they were finished being formed.) God let my father die working, and without pain. My mother died peacefully in her sleep.

When my mother was a young married woman, she suffered a long bout of depression. I was her first-born child. (Hey, that’s not why she was depressed! I hope.) But after that she suffered two miscarriages. This I think is what prompted her toward depression. What she did at this point was very intelligent, and showed an instinctive understanding of how reality is put together by God. What she did was to tell God, that if He would heal her from her depression, she would honor Him by her life from that point on.

She was thinking covenantally. (It wasn’t a word she was likely to use.) She believed in God. If He was there He could help her. In return it would only be fair that she try to honor Him. God honored her attempt at a covenant. He healed her depression, and He granted her three more children.

In her long life, she never really had to deal again with depression. She could get very discouraged for a brief time, but she was resilient and she bounced back quickly. She said that when troubles hit, one should indulge oneself only three days, then it was time to move on. This reminds me of Jesus Christ. He was in the tomb only three days, and on the third day He rose, a victor over death. My mother instinctively picked three days as the limit for being discouraged; after that it was time to get back to regular life.

My mother didn’t dwell on, or even think much about, her two miscarriages, the rest of her life. I think that means that if the God of the Bible exists, as I hope, that she had a very great and very wonderful surprise as she entered the afterlife. I think her two children lost to miscarriage were there to greet her. The joy of that meeting must have been astonishing. Such a meeting was not something she was counting on or even thinking about. I think she received it anyway.

In her last weeks she had many ups and downs. The Thanksgiving meal was wretched. She had no appetite and stayed at the table briefly. But for Christmas day, weeks later, she had a good appetite and was thinking clearly. At times during these last months she was thinking poorly and her speech was slurred. But when her grandchildren and great-grandchildren made their last visits, her thinking was good and her speech was clear. It seemed as if God was going out of His way to make sure she and the family had really good times together as the end was approaching.

For some days she hallucinated. What was she seeing? Bridge hands. She learned to play bridge at age 10 when her older sister Fran came back from college with a knowledge of the game. My mother loved the game immediately, and was a bridge player and fan of the game the rest of her life. My father played also. He used to say he didn’t want to play bridge with my mother as partner, because he couldn’t afford a divorce. (This was a joke, but with a healthy dollop of truth to it. It was better for both of them that they not pair up at the bridge table.) He didn’t say that because she was a bad player. She was a good player–often placed highly in scoring compared to others, even at her advanced age–but apparently was unorthodox in both bidding and playing. That is what we would expect of her–she was never really orthodox in how she lived.

When her days of hallucination stopped, she had no memory of having seen countless bridge hands that were not there.

My sister Jill theorizes that in heaven my mother will discover that of course everyone in heaven plays bridge.

In my blog post for March 14, 2019, when I celebrated my mother reaching age 100, I discussed three ways in which she surpassed many people in her thinking and behavior. I went into some depth there, and here I will only briefly note those three ways.

1/She understood that abortion is murder. She never faltered.

2/She understood that it was wrong to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

3/She had great generosity of spirit toward her in-laws. She would never have been even tempted to be jealous of the times her daughter spent with her in-laws rather than with our family.

Many people, Christians or non-Christians, could not match her thinking and behavior in those three categories. She was not a deep Bible-reading theologian, but she got some things very right–things which supposedly sophisticated people could get very wrong.

She kept her sense of humor. In these latter months, I would sometimes tease her that she was over the hill. “At least I’m not under it” was her refrain as often as I said my half of the cross-talk act.

Rather than try to squeeze all the “aspects” of my mother’s life and death that I want to talk about into one post, I will plan to go with part II next week. Meanwhile, Anne Wells, rest in peace.

I have listed seventeen disasters in U.S. history. Now it is time to try to come up with several morals to all this. I will offer six that I can see.

1/Despite all the disasters, we are still here. We’re alive. Most of us have decent health. We can work, provide for our families. We have a large measure of freedom. The disasters were real, but they have not ended life in the U.S. They ended lots of individual lives at home and abroad, yes, but life itself has not been ended. We can think and act in the present and in the future. What I am not saying is, “See, we can overcome disasters and still be a great country. We’re still the greatest country in the world, and will continue to be so.” No, the United States is finished. Stick a fork in it. There will be no reuniting of the country. I think the republic died in 1861. Then the country died in 1973, when it was decided that it was okay to kill unborn children. The empire . . . well, the empire has not died yet. But that death is coming. No, I am not saying that we can shrug off these disasters and still be a great country. But we as individuals, families, and churches are still here, still alive, and still capable of functioning. God is still real, and still good. We can have hope, and can have a giggle or three as we go along.

2/What is chiefly striking about the seventeen disasters is that they were all avoidable. We could have made different choices in how we thought and acted, and had we made those different choices we could have avoided the disasters. We could have not had a “Civil War.” We could have stayed out of World War I, to the benefit not only of ourselves but also to the benefit of world history. We could have refused to permit 61,000,000 unborn children be murdered. And on and on, through all seventeen disasters.

Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. That, at least, is what we are constantly told. That implies, “Yeah, sure, you can see that it was a disaster now. Big deal. Where were you when we had to make a decision?” Well, I want to speak up in defense of hindsight. I think hindsight gets a bad press, and very much undeservedly so. A key fact about hindsight which we don’t seem to appreciate is that hindsight allows us to look back in quietness and calmness and see where we went wrong. That is, we can see if we are willing to open our eyes and look. We should have been able to see that dumping the Articles of Confederation for the Constitution had been a serious error. But most of us don’t see it. We are not taking advantage of hindsight’s offering to us. “No thanks. You’re too late to do us any good.” No, we could have and should have learned from hindsight. Our intervention in World War I was one of the most foolish acts any country has committed, and it has had devastating effects on world history. If we could have seen that and admitted it, we could have avoided making the same mistake in World War II and in subsequent foolish wars. Anywhere along the line, hindsight offered to be our friend. Nope. We refused to listen. But we don’t have to keep on living like that. Hindsight, thank you for trying to help us. It’s not your fault we have ignored you.

3/Another thing we have learned from all this is that our capacity for self-deception is almost infinite. We call disasters triumphs. Abraham Lincoln is a hero to many of us. He “saved the union.” No, he ended the republic. He is the most disastrous person in U.S. history. But somehow even most conservatives and Christians still manage to consider Abraham Lincoln a great and good man, and we consider the idiotic war by which he ended the republic to be a great historic triumph of goodness. Look at all seventeen of the disasters. They are celebrated as wonderful by huge numbers of people. Our self-deception is so immense that the only reasonable explanation is that mankind as a whole (not just U.S. citizens) bathes in self-deception, luxuriates in self-deception, has its being in self-deception. Fyodor Dostoyevsky said man is “the ungrateful biped” (Notes from Underground), and he was correct. But we might also call man “the biped which lies to itself.” And is ungrateful, of course. But our self-deception seems equally prominent in our character.

4/Secession is part of the answer. We don’t have to go on like this. It is impossible that people so opposed in their definition of good/evil can get along over the long haul. Let the baby-killers have most of the country. We can have our small Neanderthal enclaves of Christian idiocracy, and if we can’t make it on our own we will come crying to momma and beg you to take us back on whatever terms you decide.

But secession is only 3% to 5% of the answer. It is a start only. Anyone walking the Appalachian Trail does not celebrate unduly because he walked the first mile successfully. The first mile is an excellent start! But the goal is to go 2,190 miles, over many days. Secession is a start. But the goal is to build a country which honors God and allows people to live in freedom and responsibility over centuries and even over millennia. Secession is the first day on the Appalachian Trail. If we make it the first day, that does not mean we will make it all the way.

5/One thing we learn from viewing all these disasters is that thoughtful, honorable people of high integrity are very rare. People that spoke up against the looming disasters were always few, and correspondingly precious. And that is going to be our problem in the present and in the future. Again, this is like the problem with self-deception–it is a universal fact of reality that truly thoughtful, principled, brave people are very rare. A Ron Paul is rare. An Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is rare. The rest of us are not likely to attain to the heights of those men. But we need to climb as high as we can. We need not be fools. We can improve our ability to think God’s thoughts after Him. We need to be very intentional in seeking to become more of what God would have us to be. We may have little influence in our churches, but perhaps we can have influence among our family and friends. The warfare for Christian civilization is ongoing, and every soldier, even the lowest private, is needed and important. Informed, thoughtful, brave, honest, principled privates are not to be shrugged off as unimportant, because they are not unimportant. They are important. We need every one.

6/One sad moral which forces itself upon us from looking at the seventeen disasters in U.S. history, is that our brand of Christianity is the root cause of our problems. Our Christianity is not very Christian. “There’s no there there,” as Gertrude Stein said about Oakland. As dark as this truth is, there is a flip side which should encourage us hugely. That is, a wise applied Christianity would have permitted us to avoid these seventeen disasters. We weren’t ready with wisdom, but that was not the fault of God the Father, of His Christ, or of the Holy Spirit. If we had read God’s word the Bible, and had been ready to apply it, we could have thought His thoughts after Him. And our actions would have permitted us to avoid the disasters, to the benefit of countless millions of people at home and abroad.

There is other good news. Our brand of Christianity stinks, but nevertheless for many people our Christianity is real. Perhaps 70% of professing Christians have never been converted, but still that would leave 30% of us who are believers, and we have tremendous potential for good. Most of the Christians I know have barely begun to scratch the surface of their potential ability to think and act with biblical wisdom.

So by all means we have to give up the continuing self-deception that American Christians currently frolic in from dusk to dawn, that our Christianity is powerful and wonderful. No, our Christianity stinks, and it is the reason our country has done so much evil. But as we honestly face our lazy wickedness, we should take heart that our potential for good is very high if only we decide to obey God from the heart.

That concludes our discussion of seventeen U.S. disasters, and of the morals we can draw from pondering those disasters.

I will conclude by predicting that we will have one more disaster. We may have more than one, of course. The country may stay around long enough to have several more disasters before the end comes. But one final disaster, somewhere along the line, seems to me to be almost certain. That will be the disaster which leads to the break-up of the United States.

That disaster will have to be big. Almost nobody is going to be ready psychologically to leave the U.S. until the warfare/welfare state fails in some extremely visible fashion. The failure is going to have to be very big. As long as the welfare checks keep coming (public education and Social Security are included in the category of welfare) and we keep eating without too much trouble, no one (except a nutcase or two like me) is going to be willing to see the country break up. So it is going to have to be something big. Perhaps a bomb which kills tens or hundreds of thousands of people. Perhaps a losing war in which we lose many thousands quickly. Perhaps hyperinflation which wipes out everything we own. Perhaps something else. But it will have to be big. People in this country are still not in a hurry to see the U.S. end. Which shows practical wisdom, because the devil we know may be better than the devil we don’t know. While I want the U.S. to cease to be one huge powerful irresponsible country, I know that the way the U.S. ends could be very painful for me. It could mean the loss of my savings, or it might mean starvation, or death by violence.

Reality exists, however. The U.S. has been acting in such a way as to call down God’s further judgment. That means something big is coming, whether we like it or not. I hope I’m still living on the other side, and that I can be among those who help rebuild Christian civilization. But if I am too dead to help with that, the Bible seems to teach that God will find a way to build His kingdom on earth somewhere. Why not on a part of the North American continent?

We are looking at seventeen disasters in U.S. history. We are trying to put in perspective the disaster of Biden/Harris becoming president and vice-president. Whether or not the election was stolen–personally, I think it was–the elevation of these two people to our highest offices is a disaster. As the next four years will prove, I think. But we’ll see. We are ready for disaster number 11.

11/The Vietnam War 1960?-1973. This cost us 58,000 dead, countless wounded, and untold treasure. For a losing war. If it had been a winning war, that would have been very little better. Perhaps even no better at all. Vietnam is not our country. If countries insist on going communistic, that is their decision. Communism won’t work–ask the Soviet Union, ask Red China–but hey, knock yourself out. How would we feel if Russia, China, or Canada said, “We think you people in the U.S. are going down a very wrongheaded path with your politics, therefore we are going to come into your country and straighten things out.” They would be correct that we are going down a wrongheaded path. But that is our problem. We would be furious at the military intervention of Russia, China, or Canada, in our country. We are not their business. Neither was Vietnam our business. It cost us many dead and crippled, to do something that should never have been done.

12/The Great Society 1965-present. It is built into the way mankind is wired that we flourish best as people when we work to provide for ourselves. You can blame God for this, or you can blame the universe, but it remains a fact. Once you start taking away the personal responsibility to earn a living, you start to ruin the people you are supposedly “helping.” You are not helping them; you are destroying their ability to function wisely in the world. This does not mean that all charitable giving is foolish and counterproductive. But charitable giving has to be done voluntarily and with careful practical wisdom, or it can backfire. A welfare state in which non-workers are financed by tax money extorted from workers at the point of a gun is not charity, and it is not wise, and it destroys the recipients. This of course does not mean the underclass are the only people being corrupted. Medicare, Social Security, public education at any level, farm subsidies, unemployment compensation–all these are aspects of the Great Society’s attack on personal responsibility. Of course some of these programs started well before 1965. But the Great Society only intensified the desire of most of us to live at the expense of other people. Almost everyone is now a thief at heart. Sounds like something called communism, doesn’t it?

13/End of gold standard, 1971-present. We don’t have any backing for our dollars. They are printed out of thin air. Why not print up a lot, and pass them out? We’ll all be rich! Well, maybe. This is not going to end well. Inflation (the increase in the money supply via dollars backed by nothing) gradually impoverishes those who work for a living. As a nation we are already bankrupt. When we discover that, it may be a hard landing for most of us. Dishonest money comes about because we have dishonest hearts. Do I detect a pattern here?

14/Roe v. Wade abortion decision, 1973-present. This is not rocket science. You can’t go around killing babies, and expect to get away with it. You kill 61,000,000 babies, and there are bad consequences. A country willing to kill its children, is a country committed to ending itself. It is a country not worth preserving. It is a country made up of self-absorbed, hard-hearted people. Children can be annoying, and difficult to take care of. Sometimes they are noisy, and sometimes they are sticky after tea, as one of E. F. Benson’s characters might say. But anyone who doesn’t like children need not make them. If you make them, it is not a practical solution to the inherent problem of their existence, to kill them. You wouldn’t go down to the local school and kill fifty children because they are sticky after tea. And you would be upset if some screwball did that, as some screwball occasionally does to great national anger. Then why would we permit the murder of 61,000,000 unborn children who probably would have proven to be sticky after tea if they had been born? We do it because we are totally nuts.

15/Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq 2001-present. Here we go again. Well, it is hardly worth complaining about. So far we’ve lost only about 6,700 killed. That is basically a rounding error from zero. Unless you happen to be one of the ones killed, or the family of one of the ones killed. Or one of the people in Afghanistan or Iraq killed. Or their family. Or someone crippled by the wars, rather than killed, whether you are from the U.S. or from Afghanistan or Iraq. Of course these wars have also cost a lot of money. But these wars have brought great benefits to the U.S., for example . . . okay, give me a little time here. There must have been benefits. Okay, I thought of one! We have been able to introduce transgender bathrooms to Afghanistan and Iraq, which otherwise would be so backward as never to consider having such a thing. We have in that fashion and no doubt in many others brought the blessings of “our democracy” to these backward people. So maybe these wars were not such a disaster after all.

16/The bailout of 2008. A thoughtful commentator who goes by the name of Bionic Mosquito has pointed out how in 2008 the calls by ordinary Americans were running highly against the potential bailout. The percentage of us opposed was through the roof. But it didn’t matter. Congress ignored us. They did what they wanted. The fix was in. So $787 billion was passed out, in typical crony capitalism style, to the in crowd. It is hard for us to process such numbers. But it is a lot of money. I did the math for one chapter of my book Getting Ready for Secession in 2016, and I figured out that if that $787 billion had been spread out among the 305,000,000 people in the U.S. (rough estimate at the time), each of us would have been bailed out to the tune of $2,580.00. I don’t know about you, but I would have felt bailed out to receive such a check. I was not advocating such a passing out of free money; it would have been very foolish to send out such checks. But at least each one of us would have received some personal benefit from such a bailout. No, instead the money went to corporate welfare recipients. The major point is: Congress is a complete disaster. We knew it before 2008, but they proved it conclusively with their bailout bill. How can any country survive when the political Powers That Be are completely corrupt?

17/The election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. These are people at enmity with Christian morality. Such enmity has been building in our elite class for a long time, but Mr. Biden and Mrs. Harris seem to be a further step in the direction of Satan. They hate Christians, but most of all they hate God. They have no good principles. Their only principles are to do the most wrongheaded thing they can think of among the ideas recommended by the most left-wing of their supporters. As I write, we are beginning the second day of the rule of Biden/Harris. Well, at least it should be interesting.

Those are seventeen disasters the U.S. has experienced. Each one was serious–is serious, because they continue to have consequences.

I promised to give several morals at the end. I hope to do that next week in the concluding segment of this series.

Last week we began discussing disasters in U.S. history. This was prompted by the fact that Biden/Harris will take office on January 20, 2021. Many of us believe that the Nov. 3, 2019 election was stolen. But assume for the sake of argument that the election was as pure as the driven snow. In either case, their elevation to office is a disaster. These are thoughtless and irresponsible people, baby-killers. Even before they take office, we can easily see these are bad, bad people, and that their effect on our national life is almost certain to be horrific.

But disasters are commonplace in U.S. history. So far we have looked at only three. We’re ready to examine number 4.

4/The Spanish-American War (1898)/The Philippine-American War (1899-1902). We will lump these two wars together, since the first sort of led to the second, and they happened very quickly, back to back. The U.S. had always shown an unhealthy interest in what other countries were doing. (Example: the Monroe Doctrine, 1823.) But these two wars showed that we were ready to put our great goodness to the task of beginning to run the world. A generation after the so-called Civil War, we had recovered to the point that we were fat, sassy, prosperous–and full of urine and vinegar and righteousness. We would cheerfully take the beam out of our neighbor’s eye. Please, don’t thank us. Just be grateful that we exist and that we know how other countries should be organized. We had moved completely into our empire stage–a stage we have never left, and probably never will leave until we cease to exist as a nation. For which, stay tuned.

5/Federal income tax ratified, 1913. Once you give the national government the ability to tax its citizens at any level to be determined by the ones doing the taxing, in order to fund programs of undetermined nature but almost certain to be bad, you have opened us up for disaster. They confiscate what they want. You don’t approve of a high percentage of the things they do with this confiscated money? Tough toe-nails. They are going to do those things anyway, without your approval–but very much with the money you unwillingly provide.

6/The Federal Reserve created, 1913-14. The elite can be trusted to do what is best for all of us, of course. Well, maybe not. Maybe they do what is best for them, and we take the consequences. For an in-depth discussion of how the Federal Reserve came to exist, and what that means for us, please see The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, by G. Edward Griffin. Since 1913-14, the dollar has lost approximately 95 to 97% of its value. That value will continue to drop.

7/World War I 1917-18 (U.S. involvement). Europe was involved in a suicidal war. It was our privilege to look on in horror. No, that wasn’t good enough for the second most disastrous man in U.S. history, Woodrow Wilson (edged out only by Abraham Lincoln). He yearned to straighten out Europe and the entire world. Clearly he and his fellow Americans had the wisdom to do this! So, instead of WW I coming to a natural end, with the possibility that the exhausted European participants would take time to think about what they had done and maybe, just maybe, plan never to do it again, Wilson got us into the war. He was killed in battle, dying bravely on the Western Front. Oh no, wait, it wasn’t him, it was 53,000 of his fellow citizens. They died so that World War I could turn into the bigger and better World War II only about 21 years later. Wilson’s involvement in making the Treaty of Versailles was–of course–disastrous. The world has never recovered from World War I. The recovery would have been incredibly difficult even if we had stayed out of the war, because the war was first of all a symptom of Europe having turned its back on biblical Christianity. The millions of dead were only the consequence; the root cause was that our civilization (including the U.S.) had turned its back on biblical ways of thinking. We made everything much worse by our foolish and harmful entry into the war.

8/The New Deal 1933-1938?. This was an horrific lurch leftward, away from freedom and responsibility, and toward fascist/communist bossing other people around. Franklin Roosevelt was the leader, but he had lots of help.

9/World War II 1941-45 (U.S. involvement). Wait, this wasn’t really our fault, right? Japan attacked us, and we had to defend ourselves. Well, only sort of. In fact Franklin Roosevelt (again with lots of help) was eager to get us into war on the side of the Allies. We poked Japan foolishly, with our policies. Once again we would straighten the world out. If that meant we had to go to war to teach other people how they should behave, so be it. We lost about 405,000 killed, about 671,000 wounded and crippled. We helped win the war, but somehow or other we and Europe have managed to lose the peace–even after the Soviet Union disbanded in 1991, which should have made winning the peace a piece of cake.

10/The Korean War 1950-53. About 36,000 more of our people dead, in another chapter in our attempt to run world history. How come it seems like every time the elite people running our country want to do good by running world history, tens of thousands of our ordinary people end up dead, while the elite people never end up dead? Do I detect a pattern here?

Well, we still have a few more disasters to go, but I will pick this up again next week, Lord willing.

Well, to the total surprise of just about no one, it seems that the Biden/Harris coup d’etat engineered by the Democratic Party and their familiars is going to be successful. It seems clear to the meanest intelligence that the election was stolen outright. The Democrats planned ahead this time (unlike 2016), and with the media completely unwilling to smell a rat–with pencils intentionally shoved up their noses to make sure they couldn’t smell anything at all–and unwilling even to consider trying to find out the truth, the actual winner of the election (Donald Trump) will be sent packing in a couple weeks.

This is a disaster of great consequence. If Biden/Harris actually won the election fairly, it would still be a disaster, because these are two of the least principled people the U.S. has ever put in high office–and the competition for that honor is very fierce. But of course it is much more of a disaster if elections mean nothing and from now on the Deep State simply appoints the winner ahead of time. Which, admittedly, might be simpler and easier.

So, whoever actually won, we have a disaster. We have a worse disaster if the election has been stolen, as it seems obvious that it was. Here is one summary, by Paul Craig Roberts, which shows how stolen the election was:

The Proof Is In: The Election Was Stolen

But the point I want to make in this space is that the U.S. and A. (to use L’il Abner’s name for us) has had lots of disasters in our history. Disaster is nothing new. Disaster is commonplace, routine, and by now should be expected–although we are usually surprised, and moreover we have a knack for calling disaster a wonderful success. Which does not keep disaster from really being disaster.

So what I would like to do in this space is list seventeen disasters in U.S. history, in the order in which they happened. These are just the major disasters. No doubt we could name dozens of other disasters which we might call minor. And I would not be shocked to discover that I have failed to note one or several major disasters, just because I have not been paying attention enough.

At the end I will give the moral of the story. Oh, what the heck! I’m feeling generous; I’ll give several morals at the end.

Some of these disasters you may have been used to considering as triumphs rather than disasters. And perhaps our unwillingness to see disaster as disaster is the biggest disaster of all, and why we keep on having more disasters. But feel free to disagree with me on what is a disaster and what is a triumph. Think for yourself.

Statistics given are rounded off and open for argument, if argument is something you enjoy. I don’t particularly enjoy arguing, myself. I am trying to give the big picture here. Exact accuracy on numbers is going to be incredibly difficult to come by. I admire exact accuracy, but I likely won’t have it. Please be patient.

So anyway, here are seventeen disasters in U.S. history, in historical order. (It’s one d— thing after another, as Bertie Wooster would say–censored slightly for a family blog.)

1/The American Revolutionary War. This cost us 8,000 combat deaths, 17,000 other deaths, for a total of 25,000 deaths, and many additional wounded. (One might also mourn for the British dead and wounded, if one had a tender heart–most of the British were just ordinary saps like the rest of us.) We won our “freedom”–which means we won increased taxation far above what we were paying under British rule.

Canada and Australia managed to become their own separate countries (still in the British Commonwealth, of course) with violent revolutions costing 36,000 and 42,000 death respectively . . . oh wait, I guess that didn’t happen. They became their own separate countries with no violent revolutions at all. It seems certain that the U.S. also could have become its own country without violent revolution, if we had simply waited for circumstances to lift us to “freedom.” No doubt we would have proven just as able to be ridiculous as Canada and Australia are proving themselves to be–but all without warfare.

25,000 dead is a pittance, of course. Except it wasn’t really, at the time. One website said that the American Revolutionary War cost us 1% of our population at the time. Picture that in 2021 terms. If we are a nation of 320,000,000 (approximately), 1% of our population lost to warfare would be 3,200,000. That is a lot of dead people. It’s actually about eight times as many dead as we lost during the entire time of World War II. Then picture perhaps another 6,400,000 wounded, sometimes crippled. (Not to mention the unlamented British dead and wounded and crippled. Oops, I guess I just mentioned them. Sorry.)

The American Revolution was a disaster–our first, but far from our last. We were just warming up.

2/The American Constitution. The Articles of Confederation were ratified by the thirteen states in March of 1781, late in the American Revolution. The Articles arranged for a very limited central government, with most authority remaining with the individual states. That was one of the smartest things we’ve ever done. So immediately, within about six years, we threw out the Articles, and replaced them with the Constitution.

The Biden/Harris coup d’etat was not the first coup in U.S. history. The first took place when the founding fathers pretended they were going to revise the Articles of Confederation, and instead threw them out and whacked out the Constitution (as Huck Finn might say). Lots and lots of people at the time knew it was a mistake, a disaster, something that was going to cause endless misery down the road. Such people were and are called anti-federalists. They said what they suspected would happen, loud and clear and voluminously. Surprise, surprise–they were right. But hey, it’s only 240 or so years. We’ll figure this out eventually. Just give us a little time.

The Constitution meant that we are much, more more of a centrally organized nation than the Articles had permitted us. Given human nature in regard to holding power, what could possibly go wrong? Only everything. With the Constitution, the days of the republic were numbered.

3/The Civil War. Otherwise known by many names, including The War to End the Republic of the United States and Replace it With an Empire. (Okay, I made that up just now, but it fits.) The South had a perfect right to secede. Hate them if you want to, because they held slaves, but don’t insult your own intelligence by claiming that they had no right to secede.

Secession runs in our blood. (And it should; it should run in everybody’s blood.) Go back to 1776. We seceded. It was foolish in that case, and it led to a war which should not have been fought, but we wanted to secede–and if we could not do it peacefully we insisted on doing it violently. No state would have signed on for the Constitution if they thought they were giving up their right to be a state all by themselves. Organizing as one country seemed to offer advantages to the individual states, but no honest person would claim that signing up to join the United States under the Constitution was the end of all history with secession never ever again permitted.

The South had a right to secede. The North had a right to secede. The North should have been glad to get rid of the crackers. But led by the most disastrous man in U.S. history, Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. refused to allow the South their right to go their own way. The South in turn was too eager to go to war.

This cost a total of about 655,000 dead. Again we ignore the wounded, the crippled, and the blinded. (Quit bringing your whining around here, wounded and crippled and blinded.) We ignore the physical destruction of property. We ignore the rapes. Just count the dead. One website said this was 2.1 percent of the population at the time. That translates to 6,720,000 dead if we lost that many dead in 2021 terms.

All for what? To end the republic once and for all, to make the U.S. an empire without humility or self-restraint.

Could slavery not have been phased out gradually, without violence? Of course it could. That happened in countless places around the globe. It is only the U.S. where the Powers That Be insisted on a violent war to end slavery. They got the end of slavery, all right–or at least the end of one form of slavery. But they got it at an exorbitant cost which they need not have paid.

If God had wanted to devastate the South because their form of slavery was unbiblical, He could have been trusted to do that in His own timing. Being smarter than God, the North took vengeance on the South–and slaughtered their own people in the process, along with ending the republic once and for all. Maybe it might have been smarter to wait for God, meanwhile seeking non-violent means of ending slavery. It’s just a thought.

We will stop there for today, and plan on picking this up again next week. So far we have discussed only three of the seventeen major disasters the U.S. has inflicted on itself. So we have a bunch to go.

We’ve come to the end of 2020. 2021 starts tomorrow. Many of us like to make New Year’s resolutions, which gives us something else to feel guilty about when we fail to keep them. Anyway, I thought of a number of potential New Year’s resolutions for my readers, to a total of 14 (resolutions to a total of 14, readers to a total probably far less than 14). These are for Christians and non-Christians. You’ll be able to figure out which potential resolution might apply to you. Some might apply to me. They are in no particular order, except that I have kept the most challenging and perhaps even the most controversial for the last three.

1/Increase your church giving by 1% of your income. The Christian organization emptytomb.org has research that shows that the American Protestant church as a whole currently gives about 2.5% of its increase to the church. (Roman Catholic giving is similar.) The figures from capital letter challenged emptytomb show 2.9% giving in 1916, 3.2% in 1933, 3.2% in 1955, and 2.5% in 2007. Here is a link:

http://www.emptytomb.org/fig1_07.html

So if you are typical, and giving 2.5%, you might consider giving 3.5% in 2021. Granted, you will probably starve to death, but Columbus took a chance and it worked out for him; it might for you also. Christians are bitterly upset that the state taxes away our wealth from us at an horrific rate, but we steal 75% of God’s tithe from Him. He might be telling us: theft is a round game, and more than one can play.

If you are a non-Christian with no desire to support any Christian church, consider upping your charitable giving by 1% to some group God would approve of if He existed, which of course He doesn’t, but if He did He would approve of it. You’re smart enough to figure out what that might be. Hint: not a pro-abortion group.

2/Resolve to read six pretty good books in a year. That is only one every two months, so it is not an impossible goal. Here are some potential options:

2a/Read at least one famous novel which you’ve heard of but never got around to reading. A suggestion? Of course. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) Or David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

2b/Read at least one unread children’s classic. If you need a suggestion, I’ll volunteer Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. In the last year I know of two adults over 65 who read it and loved it. You might be a third adult to love it.

2c/Read one book of straight history. History gives us a perspective on life which we need. Life is more than just what is happening in the world right now. We tend to get lost in the constant present.

3/Walk one mile a week. Our bodies are meant to be used. I remember when I was in my mid 20s one day I suddenly got an urge to walk outside a little bit. The walk probably was around one-half mile, longer or shorter, but I’ve never forgotten it. I learned a lot that day. Again, perspective is provided. The world is a wonderful place, and a walk helps us remember that.

4/Turn off Main Sleaze Media completely, for as long as you can stand it. They are lying liars telling us lies. They are clueless as to how the world is put together. Begin to free your mind from these trite scumbags.

5/Do one house or yard project in the course of the year.

6/Battle to lose five pounds. I didn’t say lose five pounds. I said battle to lose five pounds. It probably won’t be easy, but a key is never giving up.

7/Be on time for things.

8/Cut your normal TV viewing by some reasonable goal. From 20 hours a week to 15? Fine. Don’t set an impossible goal, but set a goal. Then even if you miss the goal, you have come close and you have made a start. Most television is drivel. Begin to free up more of your time. Remember, you might be plugged into #2, so you may need more time to read. Or, #3, you may need more time to walk.

9/Write a thank you note to someone. It could be a teacher you admired in grade school or high school. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s man from underground told us that the scientific definition of man is “the ungrateful biped.” Pretty doggone close. We seldom say thank you. But usually we have a lot for which to be thankful.

10/Invite one person or one family to your home for a meal. Top off the night with a DVD or perhaps just conversation. We seldom make a real effort to get to know people well. We need people, and they need us. (They haven’t realized that yet, but then neither have we.)

11/Read the Bible all the way through in a year. The Bible is not easy reading, and is pretty long, so there is no disgrace in cutting your goal to reading half the Bible in one year, half in the next. This goal is appropriate to both Christians and non-Christians. Few Christians have read the Bible very much. Non-Christians? The Bible is central to our western civilization. At the worst, you can begin to see what all the fuss was about.

12/If you are a non-Christian, attend church at least once in the year. Wear a tie (just so you’ll be different), listen quietly, be polite, and put $10.00 in the collection plate.

13/Whether you are a Christian or non-Christian, pray intermittently through the year for one person who is either an enemy of you or an enemy of God (or an enemy of both). Or alternatively, pray intermittently for one person who may have some very good qualities but who still needs practical wisdom or needs salvation, or needs something.

14/Pray intermittently that God would send American blacks 10,000 people, young and old, male and female, who want to love Him and obey Him, and who will learn to stand bravely for His truth. This Black Lives Matter stuff is horrible. Woke white liberals hate God, and don’t respect black people. Black people are going to have to turn to God as He really exists in the Bible, and stop believing lies–or accept the (bad) consequences of believing and acting on those lies. Nothing is going to change for the better until you turn to God.

Well, there they are–14 potential New Year’s resolutions. They are all free, and no salesman will call. Or think of something that you know you really should be doing in the year ahead, and then make a start toward doing it. Even failure is better than not trying.

Also, don’t assume that 2020 was uniquely bad. We can do worse than that. Besides, we had a chance to learn a lot in 2020. An elbow to the ribs can be necessary and helpful.

Have a great year in 2021.

Countless people are fans of multiculturalism. “Diversity is our strength,” and so forth. You will be “shocked, shocked,” to find out that multiculturalism is not necessarily a wonderful thing. And I am sure you will be equally shocked to find that those people who think multiculturalism is so wonderful are people who suppress the truth about the problems of multiculturalism. And you will be shocked also at the same time to discover that the fans of multiculturalism are people who don’t give a rat’s posterior about the physical or sexual safety of hundreds of thousands of English schoolgirls ages 11 to 16 approximately. Wait, you’re not shocked at all? Wow, you are hopelessly cynical.

You may have heard a truncated version of the sordid story. Bad things were going on in Rotherham, England. Muslim adult males were seducing English schoolgirls, and then selling them as prostitutes. This went on for a long time (decades, actually) before something was done about it. Rotherham had really messed up.

But that is only the propaganda version of what happened. Yes, Rotherham officialdom was horribly at fault. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. The same thing was happening in numerous towns. The Powers That Be would like us to think that horrible things happened basically only in Rotherham, and maybe a little bit here and there also. That is a lie. What happened in Rotherham was ubiquitous in England. The way Muslim men treated the girls is not a one-off oddity: it is part of the warp and the woof of Islam. That is shown clearly in the book Easy Meat.

I have just finished reading Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal, by Peter McLoughlin. This was the 2016 update on a book first published in 2014. I think this may be the most depressing book I have ever read, in my entire life. It is a very good book, and Mr. McLoughlin deserves enormous kudos for doing the research and for giving us the truth. But it is depressing because the facts that he recounts are so horrible.

Yes, it is horrible that countless thousands of young girls have been seduced, raped, prostituted. But the book gives us many other things that are horrible. Reality can be painful. I am going to list some facts that are painful and depressing. We may be tempted to think that this reality applies only to England. I think that would be a huge mistake. The problems are worldwide.

So here are some conclusions I drew after reading Easy Meat. I’ll try to keep them brief.

1/Everyone official failed these schoolgirls. That includes teachers, social services, police, politicians. Lots of people knew these things were going on, but they were much more afraid of being considered politically incorrect, than they were concerned about the welfare of the girls. So they just let things go on.

2/The media are a pack of lying liars. They covered up what happened because it exposed their politically correct multiculturalism as a lie about reality. They are still covering it up as best they can.

3/Political correctness is a moral failing–and a very large moral failing, at that.

4/The Christian church is conspicuous by its absence. It doesn’t appear that the church was involved in the cover-up. But neither was the church involved in exposing the lies of officialdom and in trying to rescue and protect the girls.

5/Parents were unable to protect their own children. Granted, when parents tried to raise a stink about what was going on, they met a stone wall of indifference from officialdom. But one might have hoped that parents could have done more.

6/Courage to tell the truth is in incredibly short supply.

7/Of all the religions in the world which have a belief in the supernatural, Islam is the worst religion of all. Muslims act with wickedness because their religion is foundationally wicked and encourages its practitioners to do bad things. Even those Muslims not involved in the seduction and rape of schoolgirls were very willing to protect the worst predators among their number. Now, it is possible that non-supernatural religions such as communism and Nazism are worse than Islam. That is a topic for discussion. But of supernatural religions, Islam is the worst in the history of the world.

8/A nation which encourages the entry of Muslims (other than as visitors for a brief period) is suicidal.

9/England is almost certainly finished as a nation. The moral rot is too great. A nation which refuses to protect its schoolgirls from seduction and rape is morally dead.

10/Multiculturalism is a lie. There is no such thing as the separation of religion and state. Muslims, curiously, understand that better than Christians or humanists. Muslims want sharia law. Christians want mushy thinking and “a place at the table.” Christians need to grow up. It is Christ or nothing. That does not mean we bully other people. It just means we need to let other people find their own level while at the same time we build our own small nations where we protect our children and tell monsters to go somewhere else.

11/The U.S. is not exempt from the problems England has encountered. We may think we are, but that is self-deception. Islam is dangerous wherever it gets strong enough to be dangerous. Courage to tell the truth is in short supply in this country just as it is in England. Our media is just as corrupt. We, like England, have shrugged at the murder of unborn children. Is it likely that we will protect our children any better than England has? Transgenderism, anyone? No, we are in as grave a danger of being finished as is England.

I will close with two quotes about Easy Meat from the back cover. The first is from the Englishman Paul Weston, chairman of Liberty GB.

“A non-Islamic society society which allows its young women and girls to be raped, beaten and treated as literal war-booty by Muslim males is a society teetering on the brink of irrelevance. A non-Islamic society which goes out of its way to suppress the truth behind the Islamic gang-rape scandal and which actively sides against the non-Muslim victims is a society on the brink of extinction.”

The second quote is from Theodore Dalrymple, another Englishman, and one of the leading essayists of our time:

“Those who think that political correctness is only a harmless absurdity perpetrated by intellectuals will soon be laughing on the other side of their face when they read this book.”

Both men have hit the nail on the head.

Easy Meat is a very important book. It is depressing, but we needed to know all this. I found myself underlining great swaths of the text. I could devote three or four more blog posts to just quoting significant passages from the book. But I have made it a goal to get done in just one segment. The topic is too painful to write about more, for me.

Easy Meat is not cheap. (It might be a good candidate for borrowing via interlibrary loan.) The best price I could find today was $18.53 (a paperback, shipping included, but sales tax extra) at AbeBooks. Read it at your own risk. You will find yourself grateful to the author . . . as you slip into depression. Are we really so suicidal as to desert our civilization to barbarians living the most despicable theistic religion in the world?

Yeah, maybe.

[I informed Mr. McLoughlin that I had reviewed his book, and asked him to tell me if I needed to correct anything. He responded on Dec. 27, 2020. The news is not encouraging–but it is what we could have expected. The cover-up continues. I appreciate his input. Part of his response is quoted below:

“I’ve not much to add to your summary of the book. Just a couple of points.  When 1st edition came out 104/119 convictions were Muslims; when 2nd edition came out 170/191 were Muslims; currently it is 344/409 (there have been almost no prosecutions since the first lockdown).  http://pmclauth.com/grooming-gang-statistics/gangs-jailed  If you see the bold lines in the left column, those are the trials which received no national media attention. I predicted in Easy Meat that this was how they would square the circle — appear to give justice to those victims who insist on their rapists being prosecuted, whilst concealing from the public the true scale of the scandal. This pattern of prosecution-with-concealment was evident already in 2015. . . . [Carl’s ellipsis]

“The elite in UK put the immigrant population above the indigenous population. There is nothing else we can conclude.  I don’t believe the truth will ever come out. And I believe that the reach of these grooming gangs will just extend. They know the authorities are complicit. Sadly most of the public has probably been deceived by the joint cover-up by courts/news media.”]