< img width=50 src=https://ironbrigader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Gen.-Nathan-Bedford-Forrest-CSA-224x300.jpg>
-PJ
Posted on 04/29/2024 4:33:55 PM PDT by Jim Noble
Has anyone seen or heard from FReeper Nathan Bedford? I haven't seen him on the site in quite a while
It was a joke, my friend. Unfortunately for some, I am still alive. I need to retire and tell the whole story. But, have to be retired first and there is a reason.
A serious man, unlike myself.
Well then I am much relieved! Sorry I didn't catch the joke. Nowadays so many people say crazy things in all seriousness that I have lost the ability to detect sarcasm or dark humor.
I need to retire and tell the whole story. But, have to be retired first and there is a reason.
I commiserate. I would like to tell my real name and talk about my life and what I do, but experience has taught me that it is dangerous to do so.
Better check his posting history before posting something like that.
/rimshot
Well worth the re-read.
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
Best wishes to you and yours, sir.
L
You, as always, make very good (and pertient) points, and are not a "me too" poster, as often as many of us are.
Of everything you wrote, this was what stood out to me:
"Are we so spiritually damned that we need salvation, a national epiphany rather than well-meaning solutions?"
I have long believed in the statement by John Adams:
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
< img width=50 src=https://ironbrigader.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Gen.-Nathan-Bedford-Forrest-CSA-224x300.jpg>
-PJ
You can probably download it to your computer and upload it to a hosting site like imgur or dropbox, and then link to it from there.
-PJ
The method of execution must be public hanging for the most effect and as a deterrent:
Galatians 3:13: 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”
Deuteronomy 21:22-23 22 “If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, 23 his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.
Don't scare us like that!
:)
I am touched by your concern and the remarks of those on this thread. I have not lost interest but energy as I venture into my 80s. I promise to get back on the job and try to add something worth reading.
Nathan
bttt
Glad you’re OK. I might not always agree with you, but your posts are always worth reading and pondering.
-PJ
-PJ
Thanks for checking back in. I was wondering where you had gone. I’ve enjoyed the handful of discussions we’ve had in the forum over the past few years and have much respect for your intellect and integrity.
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