Sipsey Street Irregulars, Mike Vanderboegh:

For many years I have introduced myself as a Christian libertarian who believed in God, free men, free markets, the rule of law under the Founders’ Republic, and that the Constitution extended to everyone regardless of race, creed, color or religion. As I take my leave from this existence, I must admit that the Constitution, as the Founders crafted it, is now or soon will be dead — killed by corruption and collectivism and mostly by our own sloth and moral cowardice in opposing its enemies.

Yet if the Constitution is dead as an organizing and unifying force in this nation, the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights can never die as long as there remain free men and women who believe in the Founders’ vision. This is the essence of the Three Percent, that no matter how small our numbers are — if we remain armed and determined — we may yet preserve the flickering flame of liberty.

However principled, you must still be clearheaded about the realities facing us. We are on the brink of chaos that will make the agonies of the former Yugoslavia look like child’s play. Anyone who believes otherwise is whistling past the graveyard of history. There will be no deliverance from the rigged game of national politics. If any of our traditional liberties are to be saved it will be on a local basis of community, county and church, secured by your own efforts, your own organization, with your own friends and neighbors according to the principles enunciated by the Founders. I envisioned the Three Percent movement with that local focus in mind, as a philosophy, a discipline, of the armed citizenry. I enunciated some of these in the Three Percent Catechism. The growth of the concept has been startling. Yet many of those who claim to be “Three Percenters” haven’t a clue about the principles upon which the movement was founded.

It’s with very mixed emotion that I read these words.  I’m happy to see Mike still with us, but I’m apprehensive about what this “valediction” means.  I would like to think that Mike will always be there writing prose, making speeches, leading us in thought-mining the current scene, and in general crafting phrases that no one else seems to be able to create.

But I know that’s not the case, not with Mike, and not with me either.  Not with any of us.  No man knows the day or hour.  But what we do know is that for Mike, he had various and sundry regrets about earlier exploits and wanted to contribute as much as he could since then.  But what’s true of Mike is true of any of us – without God’s salvific intervention, none of us will live.

Life is granted as a gift, a free gift based on the vicarious atonement, so none of Mike’s works serve towards redemption.  They are works of love for his savior, and I know that not only because of Mike’s belief system, I know it from his actions.

Read this entire commentary, pray for Mike, and be thankful that we had him for a short while.