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No Greater Love

Art DeJong

No Greater Love

2000 years ago in Israel, Jesus taught, “Love God above all and your neighbor as yourself.” One month ago, the same country experienced its opposite—a blitzkrieg of murder, rape, and pillage.

I for one, though jaded by the daily body count in our own cities and the slaughter of entire Christian villages in Africa, was shocked by the savagery of the attack, but not so much by the reaction of our own leaders. Our tenured academics as usual excused the brutality, hiding their hatred of Jews and Christians behind globalist rhetoric. Our president immediately called for a “cease fire,” concerned more about placating his liberal Jewish supporters and rabid Dearborn constituents than by either the American hostages or international justice. Our thousands of federal administrators, entrenched in the safety of their agency fiefdoms, treated the massacre as just a minor distraction from their more important job of micro-managing every detail of life in this United States.

The facts remain: the same hatred that came for Israel is coming for us, the even “greater Satan;” no country can be safe without secure borders; and no people can be safe, even from their own neighbors, without the rule of laws that defend liberty. It is also a fact that we now must depend for our defense on leaders who have opened our borders to our enemies, ignored our laws, and have fed hatred for America on our campuses.

The good news is that the unity and courageous response of the Israeli people to this massacre gives us hope, hope that we too can stop squabbling long enough to defend America. Maybe we too can summon the will and courage to get back into fighting trim. Maybe we can elect leaders to defend our own borders and to enforce our own laws and elect a Congress that will defund and delete entire agencies that are bankrupting our country, inflating our currency, limiting our liberty, and eroding our vitality.

It’s a tall order, but, if not now, when? Defending and reviving the old free America will not be easy but neither is fighting in the streets of Gaza and blasting into Hamas bunkers to defend your people. We are inspired by those Israelis who are practicing that other ancient truth, “There is no greater love than this; that a person would lay down his life for the sake of his friends.”

Art DeJong
Sheboygan

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Take Back Sheboygan County--Why?

Art DeJong

Background

Several hundred years ago our nation’s founders established a completely new system of government. Because every society is too complex to be centrally micro-managed and power always corrupts, governments that used the old top-down systems had short, chaotic lives and usually died horrible deaths. (Communist and fascist dictatorships, monarchies, oligarchies). While these systems featured constant struggles for power with coups and countercoups, rioting, revolutions, and mass incarcerations and executions, the U.S. with its new system muddled along quite peacefully. What was its secret?

The secret was a system that carefully separated four types of government to enable citizens to govern from the bottom up, not top down. The first and most important part was the family, in charge of raising the next generation; the second, town and county elected boards that did most of the governing. The third, state government, dealt only with issues which couldn’t be handled locally, while the final, federal government, was just in charge of national defense, foreign policy, and relationships among the states. This new system worked so well that it became our country’s greatest export.

In recent years, however, Democrats, believing that they could run state, local, and even family life, in addition to foreign policy, took over the federal government and set out to control all four from Washington. The Democrat controlled media stopped paying attention to state and local government because governing now was to be done by Washington, not local citizens. State government and local boards were simply to enforce the policies of wise federal Democrats, they thought. Without media coverage they quietly began to take over local government. Few noticed the shift because the machinery was still in place; but now it was to be used to enforce the policies of federal Democrats, not the will of local people. They had reversed the system; bottom-up had become top-down.

But citizens started to notice that things didn’t seem to run well anymore. Was it nostalgia? They noticed that we were lurching from crisis to crisis, that we expected federal borrowing to pay our bills, that our cities were becoming warzones, that hordes were invading our southern border, and that weird “woke”, DEI, and transexual obsessions were showing up on local boards and in our suddenly failing schools. The media told citizens to calm down, explaining that federal failures were just minor glitches caused by the Covid, climate change, or Republicans. Soon, however, citizens could no longer ignore the chaos and started to look more closely at what was happening to our system of local governance. Local findings, found in takebacksheboygancounty.com, make for interesting reading, to say the least.

Conclusion

Hoping that federal politicians can save us is the root of the problem, not the solution. True, managing local organizations the size of Sheboygan County with its $180 million budget, the Sheboygan Area School District ($160 million), and the City of Sheboygan ($125 million) is not for the faint of heart, nor is the job of forcing the federal government to do its job of defending the country, not ruling it. But we have no other choice. Self-government requires that we do just that--take responsibility for ourselves, our families, and our local government. The alternative is for counties to drift down the path of obedience until we reach the end, the death of the great American Dream.

This spring we will elect all 25 members of the Sheboygan County Board of Supervisors, 5 out of 10 members to the Sheboygan Common Council, 3 out of 9 members to the Sheboygan Area School District Board, and dozens on various other boards throughout the county.

If you can help to save, or in some cases take back, local government by serving-- or if you know people who may be able to serve-- or if you are willing to help someone else campaign for office, please take that first step toward national recovery and contact Russ Otten at ottenruss@reagan.com or (920) 207-3894.

The clock is ticking
Nomination papers—December 1, 2023 to Jan 2, 2024
Spring Primary—February 20, 2024.
Spring General Election—April 2, 2024

Art DeJong, Sheboygan, WI

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Orks Again on the Move

Art DeJong

After reading about Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Jericho and the Jordan for a lifetime, my wife and I were thrilled to set foot in Israel itself when our cruise ship Norwegian Jade docked in Ashdod several weeks ago. Having heard Israel to be in a tough neighborhood, we were surprised by the calm of the people, the lack of an obvious military or police presence, and the normalcy of its busy streets and highways.

Shortly after returning from a too short visit, we were shocked to see body and dash cam video of terrorists slaughtering entire families in their bedrooms and gunning down commuters in their cars near where we had just visited. It reminded us of my wife’s father describing how he and his shipmates felt after complaining about missing the Sunday dance at Pearl Harbor because their aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington, had pulled out a day early on December 6.

Like the Israeli people today, these young sailors knew that they were in big trouble when they returned and saw the smoking ruins of their home port. They knew that they were alone in a vast ocean, outclassed by an enemy that was closing in for the kill after having made short work of their row of obsolete battleships. They had no idea how the story would end--of the bloody battles in the Coral Sea, at Midway, and in “the slot” near Guadalcanal where so many of them died. They knew only that evil never sleeps, that they must pay with blood for the gifts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of girls at Sunday dances.

The Israeli men and women, now taking up arms to defend their small nation from the genocidal hatred of their enemies who surround them, know that too. Suddenly their political battles between rabid socialists and independent tech entrepreneurs, between advocates for the rule of law and the rule of judge have been forgotten. Even their gun control liberals now reach across their aisle to share a full mag of ammo with their opposition.

Like the dope slap of Pearl Harbor woke up our sleeping giant years ago, the Israeli people have awakened and will not go quietly into the ovens. Yet our own woke leaders continue to snooze, babbling divisive DEI and utopian nonsense while funding those who have sworn to murder us all. They open our borders, hire America-loathing professors to teach our young, and of course, urge surrender to gain peace for our time. Their suicidal self-loathing is not rational; it is simply evil in the guise of incompetence.

Our grandfathers, surveying the wreckage of Pearl Harbor, knew that they were fighting for their lives and for that of civilization itself. The resounding wisdom of J.R.R. Tolkien again speaks as the evil Orks once again swarm out of Mordor to wipe out the world of men.

Art DeJong, Sheboygan, WI

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Imagine All the People

Art DeJong

Few are surprised by the blitz of indictments against our last Republican president. We got the point when Washington Democrats tracked down and imprisoned Republicans, often for years without trial, for “trespassing” while their own shock troops burned and looted our cities and violated our borders with impunity. Sentencing “proud boy” Enrique Tarrio to 22 years in a government gulag for “seditious conspiracy” adds a nice, Joe Stalin touch. The old southern Democrats are back on the plantation, cracking the whip--selectively.

Imagine the hundreds of thousands of white Republican abolitionists resting in northern civil war cemeteries who, with their president Abraham Lincoln, died that we might be only one nation with only one race, the human race. Think of their laughter at being labeled “white supremacists” by the woke Democrats who occupy Washington 150 years after the civil war.

Imagine the thousands of the black people who, after that war, freed themselves, county by county, from their old Democrat masters, often with help of the most honest of the civil rights groups, the NRA. What would they think of the compliance of their descendants to the Democrats who rule their cities today--cities without decent schools or law enforcement--cities where black men have a better of going to prison or the morgue than to college?

Imagine those long dead pastors, politicians, and academics who championed for the sanctity of every human life and the rights of every person. What would they say to those leaders today who fear to stand against the genocidal abortionists, the race-baiting diversity industry, and the brutal Marxist academics?

And what about those courageous revolutionary war mothers who refused to allow their children to be indentured to the British crown? What would they think about the willingness of today’s “college educated suburban women” to sell their children into lives of servitude to their big spending Washington masters?

Republican abolitionists may not have freed the slaves, but they made it possible for slaves to free themselves. Republicans today can’t free us from the “vote early vote often” Democrat machines that control most major cities and many states today, but their citizens can. Imagine what we could do if they and the new Americans who fled their own corrupt, lawless states and countries were to work with Republicans for that old, and ever new, miraculous dream of a country that really is one nation, under God—indivisible because it stands for liberty and justice for all.

Art DeJong, Sheboygan, WI

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Honoring Our Very Thin Blue Line

Art DeJong

A passing neighbor recently spotted a blue line police flag flying from our porch and shouted to my wife, “You don’t really believe that do you??”

When she answered, “I certainly do,” the neighbor looked away and marched on. She didn’t stop for a neighborly chat about how the “thin blue line” of local law enforcement is as vital to our city and county as referees and umpires are to sport.

There was no talk about the fact that no game can survive without the courage and integrity of referees and umpires who refuse to be intimidated or bribed, and no recognition of the fact that without them there can be no game at all—no super star athletes, no celebrity coaches, no stadiums packed with fired up fans.

When the blue line breaks or is corrupted, our great cities, our stadiums of commerce, collapse, leaving empty office towers, bankrupt banks, looted stores, and streets--homes for addicts, mentally ill vagrants, and violent felons. The same is true for countries.

Yet, in the face of seemingly insurmountable chaos, our homecourt officials go on duty each day to maintain order and to keep the ball in play. We honor the routine heroism of those who make up our very thin blue line.

Art DeJong, Sheboygan, WI

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A Spanish Lesson for America

Art DeJong

A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, A Spanish Lesson for Europe, commended Spanish voters for rebelling against their dictatorial Covid era government. The “Spanish lesson” is one that the United States has been teaching the world for hundreds of years but failed to practice itself during the “Covid-era”.

Our founders, no strangers to pandemics, wars, disunity, and the struggle for survival, developed a resilient, decentralized constitutional system that, by releasing the ingenuity, ambition, and altruism of every free citizen, created a nation so peaceful and successful that it challenged the “old world” to follow its lead.

However, when faced by the Covid ”emergency,” we abandoned this system and reverted to the worst possible system, the arbitrary orders by panicked or self-serving politicians, bureaucrats, and their corporate cronies.

We all paid the price--suffering incalculable damage from draconian lockdowns, one size fits all mandates, and politically formulated treatment protocols. Now, rather than learning from the painful lessons, the chaos continues as we turn the old, authoritarian sledge hammers loose on our energy and transportation sectors.

The failure of the Covid era policies illustrate that just like we cannot have liberty without law, we cannot have unity and prosperity without our decentralized, constitutional system. As Spain appears to be coming to its senses, I suggest a more appropriate headline for the lesson to be, A Spanish Lesson for America.

Art DeJong, Sheboygan