Posted on 09/17/2025 4:24:54 AM PDT by EBH
This morning, just as the first light crept over the trees, I heard the barred owl. Not the playful “who cooks for you” cadence, but the long, searching whooooo. A contact call, the owl’s way of saying: I am here. Where are you?
Earlier this summer, the valley answered back. Adults and fledglings filled the night with their location calls, a chorus of presence and reassurance. Today, there was only silence.
Isn’t it funny? An owl today. A creature recognized for centuries as a symbol of wisdom. And that’s what struck me: wisdom calls. The long whoooo was not just a location call, but a reminder. Wisdom is still calling to us — calm, insistent, unchanging. The tragedy is not that wisdom has gone silent. The tragedy is that too many have stopped answering.
That silence echoes far beyond the treeline. It’s the silence many of us feel as we stare at the latest YouGov poll: one quarter of the very liberal now say political violence is acceptable to silence opponents. Twenty-five percent. That number lands like an unanswered call in the dark.
Think about it: one in four people on the Left are comfortable with the idea that you could be assaulted, maimed, even killed for holding an opinion or wearing the wrong color. It’s not a rumor or a meme. It’s now verified data. And it lays bare a chasm in our nation that is not a feature, but a flaw.
Strong conservatives, so often demonized as the “dangerous ones,” are actually the least likely to condone violence, only three percent. Strong liberals, by contrast, are the most likely — twenty-four percent! That isn’t symmetry. That’s an abyss. And an abyss does not stabilize a country. It swallows it.
Some will argue it’s only 25% of the extreme fringe left. But that’s a dangerous assumption. Another 19% are waffling; not firmly rejecting violence, not firmly embracing it, just waiting to be swayed. For years we’ve been gaslit to call this “mostly peaceful protest.” But we know better. A party that excuses broken windows today will excuse broken bodies tomorrow. That 19% is like the owl hearing the call and not answering back. Flirting on the edge of the forest, they open themselves to the darkness, to being pulled in until they too are lost.
This is the real danger in the leadership of the Left right now: the constant attempts to rationalize, to deflect, and, in some cases, to quietly condone what should never be excused. When a party’s leaders shrug off shattered storefronts as “the cost of justice,” or rebrand street violence as “mostly peaceful protest,” they aren’t calming the mob, they are grooming it. They create moral cover for the 25% who openly embrace violence and leave the 19% in the middle with an easy excuse to drift further into the dark.
By refusing to draw a bright line, they blur it. By refusing to condemn, they normalize. By refusing to name evil, they invite it deeper into their ranks. And the message that trickles down is devastatingly clear: as long as it is done in our name, we will find a way to excuse it.
This is not silence. It is strategy. It is a leadership choice — one that weaponizes ambiguity and allows radicals to believe they have permission. A broken window becomes a political statement. A Molotov cocktail becomes a symbol. And before long, the broken body is treated the same way: regrettable, perhaps, but understandable in the grand struggle.
That is the unanswered call. Not because they cannot hear wisdom, but because they have chosen not to answer it. And their refusal to answer is itself the confession.
That is why the owl’s call matters. Wisdom is still calling. Civil society is still calling: Come back. Leave the darkness. Return to reality. Roughly three-quarters of Americans overall still say political violence is never justified. Even among the very liberal, a majority — 55% — reject it outright. But if the other twenty-five disappear into that forest of rage, and the nineteen percent on the edge refuse to answer, the call will go unanswered.
The owl calls into the silence, searching for a reply. So does wisdom. So does civil society. The unanswered call is their soul's confession of where they stand.
Blogging here is anonymous — that’s the point. I’m not chasing credit or clicks, and I’d rather my name never matter. I write from what I see and hear — coywolves laughing in the night, owls calling in the morning — and I set those images beside the chaos of our politics. Call it field notes, not vanity. If the words sound polished, it’s only because the times deserve more than quick takes.
Did you know Barred Owls eat frogs?
A most interesting bird.
Yes — frogs, small mammals, even the occasional fish if they’re near water. Opportunistic hunters. That’s part of why their call carries such weight in this moment.
They are symbols of wisdom, but also survival.
The owl doesn’t just call into the night it acts. That’s a reminder for us too. Wisdom isn’t passive. It feeds, it protects, it endures.
Just a FYI, there are no owls at hooters
Your post reminds me of Proverbs 1:20-33, which starts:
“Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice;...”
You win!
Proverbs 1:20-33
New International Version
Wisdom’s Rebuke
20 Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
she raises her voice in the public square;
21 on top of the wall[a] she cries out,
at the city gate she makes her speech:
22 “How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
23 Repent at my rebuke!
Then I will pour out my thoughts to you,
I will make known to you my teachings.
24 But since you refuse to listen when I call
and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand,
25 since you disregard all my advice
and do not accept my rebuke,
26 I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you—
27 when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
28 “Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
they will look for me but will not find me,
29 since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the Lord.
30 Since they would not accept my advice
and spurned my rebuke,
31 they will eat the fruit of their ways
and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm.”
👍
FYI, I quoted from the English Standard Version (ESV).
I think it is important to note that Wisdom does rebuke and sometimes it is very harsh and hard lesson.
Agreed.
I should have said this earlier, but your original post was well done.
The left springs to the defense of the spotted owl who is more devastated by the barred owl than by humans. Conservatives, not so much.
“…one in four people on the Left are comfortable with the idea that you could be assaulted, maimed, even killed for holding an opinion or wearing the wrong color.”
Change “could be” to “should be”, for accuracy’s sake.
Those numbers represent the percentage of people polled. A poll is only as good as its sample.
So it’s not “1 in 4 people believe...”
It’s “1 in 4 people polled believe...”
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