He posted on the 21st.
https://freerepublic.com/tag/by:nathanbedford/index?brevity=full;tab=comments
Of February. Oops.
Why not ping him?
Prayers for NB to be OK.
Nathan Bedford died October 29, 1877.
Oh. You mean the Nathan Bedford of Free Republic.
He is not a constant presence on FR, but he is one of its brightest lights. When he posts you always have to take it seriously.
Concern ping, hope you are well.
I have had many conversations with NathanBedford over the years.
I judge him to be a good man, if our discourse is any indicator.
I always found him a thorough analyst of any situation he took the time to put his hand to pen on, thoughtful, deliberate, and capable of teaching me something every time.
I have prayed for him, and hope to see his return.
Anonymous
Some sort of malevolent humor intended.
A serious man, unlike myself.
To all:
I am touched by your concern, flattered by your remarks and cheered by your prayers. I have not been posting but I have been daily lurking because it is not lack of interest but want of energy with my fourscore years and two.
It seems to me that when we post we owe a duty to contribute some sort of value-added to the subject beyond adding our, “me too.” That commitment drives one to ponder underlying and first causes.
It seems that our duty to ourselves means that we must think hard about our present state of national embarrassment and offer more than bromides or indulge in the soothing echoes of an amen chorus. Drive-by posts and chirping in with, “ me too”, ain’t enough.
Do campus riots tell us that we have lost the generation of elitist college kids? Have we lost generations of all classes across-the-board? Is the nation on the verge of losing its way?
Is the problem race? Remember Nathan Bedford’s first maxim of American politics: all politics is not local but ultimately racial. Since Barack Obama and perhaps because of Barack Obama, animosity among the races has rarely been worse.
Is the problem class? The gap between the grotesquely rich and the bulk of the middle class living precariously from paycheck to paycheck is growing ominously wide.
Is the problem China? One drives through the Midwest Rust Belt, and increasingly in our ag-land, where one sees cancerous decay, decadence and fentanyl induced despair. Our most elite universities have been suborned by Chinese money that whore after Confucius Institutes. Does China for all practical and essential purposes own Congress? Is the President of the United States on the take from China? Was Donald Trump unhorsed in 2020 because he broke so many rice bowls?
Is the problem metastasized corruption? Every American institution is simply corrupted. Our national healthcare system betrayed us when the test was Covid. Together with our medical profession, our legal profession has abandon its sacred oath whether sworn as prosecutors, on the bench or on ethics committees. American media would be a laughingstock if it’s corruption were not so ominous. The Fed has become one more example of regulatory capture that has devolved into an institution dedicated to massive transfers of wealth to the already massively wealthy.
Is the problem the breakdown of our institutions? Our executive agencies, similar to the Fed, have become objects of regulatory capture. The public rightly despises even our most revered institutions such as the FBI and now even our military cannot meet quotas of recruitment or even quotas of ammunition stockpiles.
It is the problem that it is just too late? That is, are we in a self-inflicted doom loop that cannot be retrieved? Even assuming an unlikely predicate that we can as a republic muster the resolve to deal with our public and private national debts, are we too late to pay down the debt, save the dollar, fend off any aggressive foreign adversary, and indeed save a capitalist, market economy? Can we save the remnant of the economy and preserve our constitutional way of life within the protection of the Bill of Rights? In short if financial Armageddon comes, can our Constitution survive the Man on Horseback?
Finally Pogo, is the problem us? Are we so spiritually damned that we need salvation, a national epiphany rather than well-meaning solutions? Are we to be compared to Rome at the fall or to Israel earning God’s judgment? If so, the only meaningful response is to look inward and upward and that requires a wrenching, heavy lift indeed.
So here is a list of a few of the perils that confound and confront us every day all as chronicled on Free Republic. Challenges to which many of us have devoted decades and many others have encouraged us with some really perceptive and valuable contributions. I promise to do my part better as long as I can.
In pondering these things I have come to believe that there is some tissue that connects all of them so that I, as both a secular optimist and a Pilgrim with a thirsty soul, still believes will somehow be revealed.
Thank you all for who you are and for God’s work that you so often do on Free Republic.
Nathan
PS-the baleful logo does not work anymore, if any Freeper knows how fix it please advise.
Dick