~4BC – Forced to stay in the equivalent of a modern stable due to all the inns in the city of Bethlehem being full up because of a census and taxing ordered by the Romans, Mariam, the wife of Yosef ben Yakov gives birth to a son they name Yeshua.

 

Christmas Was a Declaration of War

We have sanitized Christmas. We’ve wrapped it in twinkling lights, hot chocolate, and nostalgia. We’ve made it anodyne and soft as a pillow — and with understandable reason. We want our holidays to be sweet and picture-perfect, and Christmas is no exception.

We even varnish the Christian celebrations of Jesus’ birth a little too much. Our nativity scenes have perfect layouts, and they’re often childlike in their simplicity and design.

Some of our carols sterilize the account of Jesus’ arrival into the world as well. “Silent Night, Holy Night?” “…but little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes?” Come on! He was fully God, but He was also a fully human baby. Of course, He cried, and of course, His birth wasn’t easy for Mary as a first-time mom. Who are we kidding?

We like to think that Jesus’ birth was sentimental. Instead, it was provocative. Christmas didn’t calm the darkness. It enraged the powers of Hell.

Let’s look at a remarkably different retelling of the birth of Jesus:

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.

She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.
—Revelation 12:1-6 (ESV)

It gets even more dramatic:

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying,
“Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.

The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth.

Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea. —Revelation 12:7-17 (ESV)

A dragon? Warfare? The sea (which represented chaos in Hebrew culture)? This isn’t the typical portrait of Christmas, is it?

Some scholars believe that the second passage points to the great tribulation of the future, but it also certainly reflects the spiritual warfare that Jesus’ birth brought. It all sounds more like Game of Thrones than scripture, doesn’t it?

I can almost guarantee that your pastor won’t read Revelation 12 at your church’s Christmas Eve service. But what appeared in Bethlehem as a baby in a manger registered in hell as a declaration of war.

 

One of the actions that took place after the Magi visited Jesus demonstrates the cruelty of evil attempting to silence good.

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” —Matthew 2:16-18 (ESV)

Herod’s slaughter of the innocents was more than the cruelty of a power-mad tyrant; it was the dragon lashing out. The king’s victims were collateral damage in the spiritual battle of good versus evil.

Our Christmas hymns understand the notion of Jesus’ birth as an act of war against the powers of darkness. Take a look at “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.

Sure, the phrases “captive Israel” and “lonely exile” refer to the Israelites’ troubled trajectory in the Old Testament. But it’s also the language of violence against God’s chosen people. Another verse ups the ante on siege theology:

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o’er the grave.

This isn’t the stuff of Hallmark cards. This is language that frames the incarnation as a liberation mission.

 

Let’s look at some of the phrases from “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”:

Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

These lines tell us that death is the enemy, and resurrection is the counteroffensive. Christmas points straight to salvation, and the first coming points to the second coming.

And “Joy to the World” carries this same theme:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.

This is the reversal of the curse in Genesis 3. The King that the earth receives — God’s Son — is the One who will reclaim the territory the enemy took when Adam and Eve sinned. The serpent of Genesis 3 is the dragon of Revelation 12, and the baby that the woman delivers is the One who vanquishes the enemy.

For generations, our churches have been singing about ransom, tyranny, exile, and victory. Our Christmas hymns have always known that this was a war.

I’m not suggesting that you replace your nativity with a dragon or read Revelation 12 to your kids and add, “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” But when you remember that Jesus’ birth was a declaration of spiritual war, the season comes into sharper focus. The light of the world invaded the darkness. Christmas wasn’t meant to make evil feel comfortable. It was meant to announce that its time was already running out.

“Liberals take positions that make them look good and feel good — and show very little interest in the actual consequences for others, even when liberal policies are leaving havoc in their wake.”
— Thomas Sowell

Why Did it Have to be … Guns?

L. Neil Smith –

Over the past 30 years, I’ve been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I’ve thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote.

People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker, and a single- issue voter, but it isn’t true. What I’ve chosen, in a world where there’s never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician — or political philosophy — is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.

Make no mistake: all politicians — even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership — hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it’s an X-ray machine. It’s a Vulcan mind-meld. It’s the ultimate test to which any politician — or political philosophy — can be put.

If a politician isn’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash — for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything — without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn’t your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn’t genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody’s permission, he’s a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude — toward your ownership and use of weapons — conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn’t trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

If he doesn’t want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?

If he makes excuses about obeying a law he’s sworn to uphold and defend — the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights — do you want to entrust him with anything?

If he ignores you, sneers at you, complains about you, or defames you, if he calls you names only he thinks are evil — like “Constitutionalist” — when you insist that he account for himself, hasn’t he betrayed his oath, isn’t he unfit to hold office, and doesn’t he really belong in jail?

Sure, these are all leading questions. They’re the questions that led me to the issue of guns and gun ownership as the clearest and most unmistakable demonstration of what any given politician — or political philosophy — is really made of.

He may lecture you about the dangerous weirdos out there who shouldn’t have a gun — but what does that have to do with you? Why in the name of John Moses Browning should you be made to suffer for the misdeeds of others? Didn’t you lay aside the infantile notion of group punishment when you left public school — or the military? Isn’t it an essentially European notion, anyway — Prussian, maybe — and certainly not what America was supposed to be all about?

And if there are dangerous weirdos out there, does it make sense to deprive you of the means of protecting yourself from them? Forget about those other people, those dangerous weirdos, this is about you, and it has been, all along.

Try it yourself: if a politician won’t trust you, why should you trust him? If he’s a man — and you’re not — what does his lack of trust tell you about his real attitude toward women? If “he” happens to be a woman, what makes her so perverse that she’s eager to render her fellow women helpless on the mean and seedy streets her policies helped create? Should you believe her when she says she wants to help you by imposing some infantile group health care program on you at the point of the kind of gun she doesn’t want you to have?

On the other hand — or the other party — should you believe anything politicians say who claim they stand for freedom, but drag their feet and make excuses about repealing limits on your right to own and carry weapons? What does this tell you about their real motives for ignoring voters and ramming through one infantile group trade agreement after another with other countries?

Makes voting simpler, doesn’t it? You don’t have to study every issue — health care, international trade — all you have to do is use this X-ray machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to get beyond their empty words and find out how politicians really feel. About you. And that, of course, is why they hate it.

And that’s why I’m accused of being a single-issue writer, thinker, and voter.

But it isn’t true, is it?

Gov Sanders rejects demand from legal group to undo Christmas closure: ‘I will do no such thing’
The Freedom From Religion Foundation took issue with Sanders’ Christmas message

 Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is firing back at a legal group who took issue with her recent move to close state offices on Friday, December 26 to celebrate Christmas and give employees more time with their families.

After issuing a proclamation closing state offices for Christmas, Sanders received a letter from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a group focused on the separation of church and state, calling for her to reverse the move and claiming it was unconstitutional.

In a response letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, Sanders told FFRF she “will do no such thing.”

12.19.25-freedom-from-religion-foundation-response-letter

Senator Mike Lee’s idea, noted back in February gathers notice.

Avast, Me Hearties! Lawmakers Want Congress to Issue ‘Letters of Marque’ to Go After Cartel Drug Boats

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wants to revive an ancient and honorable custom: grant Congress the authority to issue Letters of Marque that would allow U.S. citizens and others to legally interdict drug boats and other cartel-owned ships and property, to be sold off. At least some of the proceeds would go to the “privateers.”

The idea of giving Letters of Marque to employ private citizens to police the oceans isn’t new. As recently as Sept. 11, 2001, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) introduced a bill to grant Letters of Marque that would have legally allowed American citizens to go after Osama Bin Laden and his assets.

During the Revolutionary War, the U.S. didn’t have much of a Navy. It was up to privateers operating with Letters of Marque, raiding British shipping and occasionally attacking British warships, to show the flag and gain much-needed hard currency for the American cause.

Reviving the custom would not be welcomed by our allies or enemies.

“Cartels have replaced corsairs in the modern era, but we can still give private American citizens and their businesses a stake in the fight against these murderous foreign criminals,” Lee, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said. “The Cartel Marque and Reprisal Reauthorization Act will revive this historic practice to defend our shores and seize cartel assets.”

“Corsairs” were pirates operating near the Barbary Coast in North Africa in the early 19th century. They routinely stopped American ships, stole the cargo, and held Americans for ransom.

Congress can issue Letters of Marque, having been vested with the power in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. It gives Congress the power to “declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”

The Declaration of Paris in 1856 supposedly abolished “privateering” and Letters of Marque. It was signed by almost all the major seafaring powers except the United States. Does this mean the U.S. can hire privateers anyway?

There’s nothing in American law that would forbid the practice. While the U.S. could theoretically issue a letter, doing so would likely be seen as a violation of customary international law. “Customary” international law refers to the fact that, because the U.S. hasn’t issued any Letters of Marque for more than 200 years, we have tacitly acknowledged the legality of the law and are a de facto signatory to it.

China has a long history of engaging in irregular coercive activities, including harassing neighboring countries’ oil and gas exploration, fishing fleets, and replenishment of military installations.

Other nations might treat American privateers as pirates rather than lawful combatants, meaning they wouldn’t have the legal protections typically given to military prisoners of war. That’s only one headache Donald Trump would have if Congress went ahead and authorized the issuing of the letters.

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BLUF
What am I getting at? If you look at what Pete Hegseth has actually done, it was long overdue, and he’s doing it very well. And the criticism against him has two themes: It’s entirely political, and it’s not symmetric. Everything they said about Pete Hegseth in a negative context could have been applied to both the Obama and Biden administration, and much more egregiously.

Hegseth Did What Biden Called ‘Impossible.’

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. A lot of officials in the Trump Cabinet are under a lot of criticism, as we’d expect, from the Left. But one has, I think, both got more criticism and more unfair criticism than any other Cabinet member. And that’s Pete Hegseth, the secretary of war—the newly renamed Department of Defense.

Let’s just review a little bit of his record because it does not justify the level of invective that the Left, and even some people on the Right in Congress and the Republican Party, have unfairly attacked him.

We were told during the Biden administration that the recruitment for the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, and even in one case, I think one year, the Marines, was off some 40,000 to 50,000 recruits. And the Pentagon’s reaction under Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was, as we heard this echoed by a lot of the four-star admirals and generals, well, people are out of shape. They’re in gangs. They take drugs. They are wanted by private enterprise.

We have to compete with all of the excuses other than the real cause. The real cause was, as Pete Hegseth said when he came in, that people felt that the military was not emphasizing combat, battlefield efficacy. It was turning into a social justice “program.”

The subtext of Pete Hegseth’s point was that there was a particular demographic, white males from rural and often southern locales. They had died at twice their numbers in the demographic in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they weren’t joining.

Some of them were not joining because of the 8,500, maybe 8,000-8,500, that had natural immunity from prior COVID-19 infections. And yet, they did not want this experimental mRNA vaccine, and they were drummed out en masse. The majority of those fit this demographic.

The others felt that under the DEI obsessions with race and sexual orientation and gender, that people would be recruited, retained, promoted on criteria other than battlefield efficacy. So, they just stayed away from what they felt was a hostile environment. Didn’t help when then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin told the nation before Congress that they were going to invest white supremacy following the death of George Floyd.

That’s over with. There is a record number of Army recruits. The military has met all of its recruiting. That is equivalent to the dramatic revolution on the southern border. Nobody thought we could close the border. We did. Nobody thought we could get recruitment back. Pete Hegseth did.

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Nope. Not going to agree to anything that will keep the NFRTR registration. If they want to tax sales of NFA firearms for medicare funding, do it like they do with Pittman-Robertson funding for wildlife restoration, an excise tax at the point of sale.

Health Care for Gun Rights? Bill Would Reverse Silencer Tax for Medicare Funds

A coalition of Democrat legislators is backing a move to rewind last summer’s repeal of the NFA tax on suppressors, short-barrel rifles, and similar items to fund their own health-care initiative.

These sponsors are backing the so-called Medicare Investment and Gun Violence Prevention Act, which would repeal the hard-fought removal of NFA taxes established by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. The scheme would then reinstitute the tax and direct the funds to pay for Medicare costs.

Current backers include Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and a host of blue-state senators like Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). They claim the re-removal of Americans’ gun rights would scrounge up some $1.7 billion in taxes over the next decade.

“This legislation is a 2-for-1 response to Republicans driving up health care costs and letting guns invade our communities,” claimed Sen. Alsobrooks. “When Republicans snuck in tax cuts to the Big Ugly Bill on gun silencers and short-barreled rifles, they made their position clear: guns matter more than Americans’ lives. At a time when health care costs are skyrocketing, and just days after yet another tragic school shooting, now is the time to act. Our bill will repeal the unnecessary tax cuts on deadly weapons and use the money saved for Americans’ health care, which has been decimated by Republicans.”

Of course, it is not “money saved,” as Sen. Alsobrooks claims. It is money taken, via a defunct tax mechanism, from Americans exercising their constitutionally protected Second Amendment rights. Ironically, it also attacks proven hearing safety devices like suppressors in the name of better health care.

The move to snatch back gun rights via NFA taxes is backed by a host of anti-gun interest groups, ranging from Newtown Action Alliance and Brady to Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence.

While the plot is an extreme long shot in the currently Republican-controlled House and Senate, many Democrats are eagerly looking to next year’s midterm elections. At the moment, it is hard to take the barely 2.5-page bill seriously, but 2026 is just around the corner.

A good ‘edged tool’ can be of use for many different things.

Person attacked outside Bally’s Casino, stabbed attacker in self-defense

The Second Amendment was not written in isolation. It sits on the same foundation as every other right.
You do not get free speech if the state decides who may speak.
You do not get due process if the state decides who is dangerous.
You do not get bodily autonomy if the state decides what is “reasonable.”
When one amendment is treated as optional, the rest follow.

History is clear.

Governments do not restrain themselves. They are restrained when they hit resistance. The Constitution is a package deal. You either defend all of it, or you lose it piece by piece. Rights do not exist because the government allows them. Rights exist because the people already had them.
– John “TIG” Tiegen Semper Fi