Presidents Day 2026
The Presidents Day 2026 edition of The Status Quo: An Electronic Newsletter is dedicated to the women and girls of Iran. It is no secret that this Veteran has been a strong proponent of an attack on Iran’s ruling elite but there is only one man who can deliver for Iran’s women and girls. As such, let this President’s Day be remembered as the day the American President delivered a blow Iran’s mullahs never imagined possible. As for those who advocate such an attack would be a violation of the rule of law, maybe you should travel to Iran with your wife and daughters, Russia with your sons, or China with the intent to seek redress for the crimes the state has committed against Jimmy Lai and learn what the rule of law means in those places. Who knows, maybe you might also learn that sometimes people yearning to be free need help from abroad. It seems there was a fledgling democracy in need of help from abroad when French land and sea forces came to help our forefathers 250 years ago.
The Light of the World III
As 2025 dawned, the Lord came to my rescue again. Acutely depressed for a number of reasons but none more painful than the thought my sacrifices in His name had come to nothing. The realization that the American people remain indifferent to the plight of other people’s children continues to haunt me. After dedicating years to preaching Jesus’s message of the importance of eliminating all obstacles placed before His little ones, I believed my sacrifices were for nothing. As this sense of failure was deepening, I prayed for help in overcoming this persistent and pervasive sadness. Just when I thought all was lost, He answered my prayers.
As I held one of those little ones Jesus loves above all others, I realized I had succeeded in delivering His message as my words and deeds will resonate across time and cyberspace. The children spared the horrors of being raped and the peace provided to so many men in MI and elsewhere who finally confronted their demons changed the future of their lives and no amount of spin can change that fact. I also learned something else that day. Sacrifices in His name are never meaningless. They are what make us Christians.
The Will to be Free
From Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking, many of humanity’s most brilliant minds have expressed the belief that free will is an illusion. Countless other brilliant minds of science, art, literature, and academia have voiced opinions proclaiming free will a myth. They offer a myriad of explanations why free will is a myth, but the truth is we are free to choose how we live our lives. We have the power to choose kindness and reject cruelty. We have a choice to murder girls for how they wear their hair just as we have a choice in allowing our elected officials to bankrupt our country. Our choices define our lives and we, as Americans, need only look around to see where our choices have taken us.
With minds like Einstein and Hawking, it is possible they could not accept the idea of free will because they could not solve the problem mathematically or measure it scientifically. Hawking was an atheist. He believed the laws of nature explained the origins of life as well as our actions. Hawking most certainly utilized the utmost mathematical rigour to prove the existence of free will but failed thus leaving the only explanation to be that free will is a myth. Einstein, on the other hand, was a “determinist” who believed everything is part of a “chain of cause and effect” governed by natural law. Free will did not fit into their understanding of either the natural or theoretical world. Like Hawking and mathematical rigour, Einstein could not prove it existed by the scientific method so it must be a myth. Free will is not a myth.
Free will is a gift from our creator and can only be understood by combining faith and our own life experiences. I believe this faith in the freedom of action and thought of our species is at the core of Judeo-Christian teachings. This writer learned that free will separated us from the beasts whose lives are governed by raw instinct. This writer was also taught that free will was how we demonstrated to others our actions, our choices represent who we are as human beings. For example, men and women in Australia are exercising their free will today by prohibiting minors from accessing the internet. Other countries are in the process of doing the same but in America, career politicians will exercise free will by ensuring that the online monetization of the American teenager continues unabated. We need only look at our elected officials’ deeds, not words, to see that free will is not a myth but a real commodity for sale to the highest bidder.
Another example of free will which continues to stress this Veteran to no end is when America’s Neo-Christians decided it is acceptable for children to suffer needlessly because of the misguided notion that unfettered access to firearms is a sacred right that can never be infringed. Traumatizing His little ones for the sake of political expediency is becoming fashionable to so many in the land of the free, home of the brave. So fashionable in fact that many demand that access to the most lethal firearms be secured even for those who would use this “sacred” right to slaughter His little ones. To these conservatives, what happened at Uvalde, Texas in 2022 is an acceptable price to pay when the issue is the sanctity of the Second Amendment. How sacred can an amendment be when the document it amended is shredded daily in the name of political expediency, greed, and a lust for power.
Free will is the tool God gave us to make the world a better place to live or a more dangerous place to live. Of course human beings are not perfect and good people make bad decisions, but it is free that allows us to make amends when we fail to act when we know we should. Dante Alighieri, author of Divine Comedy, described a Mountain of Purgatory with seven ascending terraces each identifying the seven deadly sins. A simple review of those sins perfectly describes so many pretend Christians in America 2026.
Yet, there are other words written by Dante that are more applicable to this President’s Day than gluttony, pride or greed. In addressing those who sit on the sidelines during times of crisis, he stated; “the darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain neutrality in times of moral crisis.” Dante knew free will is what makes us human and he loathed those who failed to exercise their free will to aid others who are suffering. He could not have known he was describing the most powerful nation-state in history 400 years before her birth. A nation-state so powerful that she can only be defeated from within, which coincidently, is exactly what is happening this President’s Day 2026.