Archive for the 'Personal' Category

Sorry for the light posting.  I was out of town yesterday, last night and today on business, and no connectivity.  Back home now.

Talk amongst yourselves, and back to regular posting tomorrow.

Wikileaks:

NOTE: No present Wikileaks staff, including our editor, have medical, psychological or drug conditions which could lead to sudden death.

For the record, neither do I.

This is what the view looks like at Chestnut Knob Lookout on a partly cloudy day.

The view in Wilson Canyon, Sedona, Az.

Mike Vanderboegh has passed away.  We knew this was coming, but it’s still bracing and reflective at the same time.  Since I’m going to link a number of articles and commentaries at the end, I see no point in recapitulating what’s already been said.  Instead, I have some (what I hope to be) unique reflections to make about Mike.

I’ve heard it said that such-and-such a man had “redeeming qualities.”  Hogwash.  Men don’t have redeeming qualities.  Men are themselves redeemed, or they are lost.  The God-man Christ Jesus saves men or they perish without Christ but with all of the punishments due to them, and all men are under judgment.

That’s the sweet thing about Mike.  He knew this, and he believed it.  Mike didn’t do a single thing to redeem himself, but he trusted Christ and the vicarious atonement for his very life.  That means that it was a life well-lived.  Everything else is wasted.

But if man cannot redeem himself, that doesn’t mean he cannot redeem what’s around him by taking dominion of the world for God’s glory.  Mike did exactly that, and today he is in heaven with his Lord.  I don’t believe in the phrase “rest in peace” (and Isaiah 57:2 isn’t discussing ethereal floating of one’s spirit for eternity).  I also don’t believe that man’s body cools to ambient temperature and that’s the end.  Mike didn’t believe that either.

In heaven there is worshiping, and there is work.  It’s just that work won’t be done by the sweat of our brow and we won’t be fighting sin, either in ourselves or others.  No, Mike is active, and you can bet your soul on it.  Thankfully, his son, Matthew Vanderboegh, told me that his friends should call him, and gave me the direct line into where he and Rosie were.  Mike was too weak to speak, and Rosie sounded exhausted, so the conversation was one way and very short.

But I told him that they were planning a party in heaven, and he was wasn’t a guest, but the newest resident.  He was almost home, and he would soon see our Lord.  “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful servants” (Psalm 116:15).  That party is now underway, and Mike is casting his crowns down at the feet of his savior, giving Him all of the glory.

In case you haven’t gotten the picture by now, I am claiming that Mike did the Lord’s work.  I advocate a Calvinian world view, in which, following Christ, redeemed man is prophet, priest and king.  What we do during the day, how we work, the attitudes we take to our calling, is as holy a practice and activity as administering The Lord’s Supper (communion) or baptizing a newborn.  I’ve made no secret of the fact that I view liberty and proper government a function of our calling before God, and that when covenants are broken, the Biblical justification for separation is clear.  Thus is was with the American war of independence.

Mike saw what he did as a calling as well, and so he took it very seriously.  So I took his acceptance into the community of bloggers as a sign of both affirmation and his good judgment.  When I left military blogging (for reasons I’ve outlined before but won’t here), I began advocating duty of self defense, liberty and constitutionally limited government.  It wasn’t long before I ran across Mike.  It didn’t take Mike long to start linking my work, and when he did, I always looked forward to his clever titles, his pithy observations or his lengthy analyses.  Seriously, with a cup of coffee, it was first on my list every day.

I say good judgment about Mike’s acceptance of me and my work because Mike has his detractors, and the liberty movement has its imposters who fly fake flags.  I pay no attention to those men, and I’m not one of them.  When I advocate something, you can bet I’m being serious about it.  This is a labor of love for me.  Mike knew that in short order, and he was right.  He was a good judge of character.

And concerning the detractors, I mock them to myself and my close friends, and I ignore them on the pages of my blog.  They want attention, and I studiously avoid giving it to them.  I’ll offer up one final observation.  Mike traveled, wrote, spoke and blogged under his own name and true identity, just like I do.  The liberty movement is filled with men who are a former spook, former special forces or special operations, former lawyer, former dish washer of ditch digger (you continue the list yourself), and while I don’t really know whether these men are who they say they are, I suppose I get a little from their writing from time to time, but I mostly ignore them too.

I mean no offense, I just don’t give much credence to someone who tells me the world is going to hell, I have to plan and train, I have to do my part to save my piece of it, and oh by the way, you don’t even know my real name because I’m using a nom de guerre.  So maybe I don’t really believe it after all, or maybe I’m just running my mouth, or maybe while the world goes to hell and I want people to save their piece of it, I’ll be hiding.

You know them.  They blog, write and comment anonymously.  They are “gray man.”  Matt Bracken had some words for gray man.

Same here. If everybody goes “gray man,” the tyrants win by default. We need to stand on the roof and be seen by everybody, on all sides. Others can go gray man, that’s fine, their choice. But we all can’t hide forever.

I don’t use a nom de guerre, and Mike wasn’t gray man.  If I put myself on the line every day I write, Mike did in the superlative.  He did it with humor, grace, and wisdom.  I will miss him, truly I will.  He leaves behind quite a legacy, but you again I say, you can bet everything that he is busy today.  There is no rest for Mike, there is just rest from a sinful world.

Other:

SSI

WRSA

WoG

Ammoland

The Kansas City Star

David Codrea has the scoop.  The video is non-functional, but the audio works fine, and it’s very good to hear Mike again.  Mike and I had reached a tentative agreement that the upcoming trip to Connecticut would see him spending a day at my place on the way back.  I am sad to say that it won’t happen.

Listen to the whole interview.

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.

David Codrea:

I drove down from my home in Ohio to see Mike Vanderboegh this weekend at his home in Alabama. I was able to spend some time with him on Friday night and again on Saturday morning.

His appearance is about what you’d expect for a man who told us a week ago the doctors have given him four weeks to live – there’s no need to dwell on that here. After years of friendship, it was important for me to see him face-to-face, and to show him how much I valued the blessing of knowing him. In fact, grim and sad as the reason for my trip was, I told Mike I not only considered making it one blessing, but two: That there are people in my life I care enough about to make such a trip for, and that I have the means and the capability to do it.

It’s about 12 hours each way (with stops for gas and to get the circulation going again), meaning I had time Friday evening to visit with Mike, and his steadfast wife, Rosey, for a little over an hour. Mike was lying on the couch for the duration. Pain is being managed, such as it can be, with a patch. I kept the visit short, not just because I didn’t want to overdo things for him, but I was also pretty tired. I returned to their house Saturday morning, where they were joined by their loving daughters, there to help with a garage sale. For that, I was happy to see him able to sit in a chair, supervise the goings-on, and engage with people …

We also talked about the transition of his beloved Sipsey Street Irregulars blog to his son Matthew, who is off to a strong start, and I committed to doing what I can to support the continuation of the legacy.

I’m quite jealous of David, but I could have decided to commit the time to do this.  It’s been very hard and busy lately, with pressing issues at work, family business, graduations, an upcoming marriage in the family, sickness with my father, and so on.  I regret not having met him in person, but as I said before, we’ll meet in the new heavens and the new earth as old friends who recognize each other but in bodies that never get sick.

I’ve already exchanged email with Matt, and he sent me a very kind reply, very lengthy and very worthy of a long reply back again.  I have a lot of things to say to him.  I will find the time to do just that.

I haven’t watched much of the republican debates, but I have occasionally passed through while my wife was watching.  Tonight was one such time.  I heard Trump say something like, “You aren’t endorsed by a single Senator …  You should be ashamed of yourself!”

I heard that and thought, “You have got to be kidding?  Did you just say that?  Seriously?  Seriously?”  The one who has claimed that he will bring everyone into the Oval office and cut deals, but who has previously sworn to burn it all down according to his bot followers, has hurled the insult at Cruz that he isn’t loved in Washington.  Reality is more bizarre than fiction.  I couldn’t have made this up if I tried.

A couple of days before the primary in South Carolina, I heard the following men speak: Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Mike Lee, and Dave Brat (Congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina was there and praised by Ted Cruz, although he didn’t speak), and others (Mark Levin, etc.).  I listened intently to Louie Gohmert describe the events leading up to the death of the “gang of eight bill.”  I am a political wonk, and I keep up with these things.  Even I didn’t know some of what he told us.  I cannot give you all of the details, but I can provide a summary.

Gohmert described the intense strategic meetings to plot the death of the bill.  The meetings were held between Cruz, Lee, Brat, Gohmert, Duncan and others.  When the bill hit the House, it was all but a done deal because the gang had a pretty new face to put with it, i.e., Rubio.  It was very hard to turn it back.  America doesn’t know how close we were to having the gang of eight bill as law.

One of the tactics was a poison pill by Ted Cruz placed into the bill during deliberations between the House and Senate, but it also required much work in the House proper.  And all of this was led by whom, you asked?  Why, it was led by Ted Cruz, with all the meetings in Ted’s office.  If Louie Gohmert was lying, Mike Lee, or Congressman Brat or Duncan could have stopped Gohmert.  None did, because Gohmert was telling the truth.  You don’t have a gang of eight law because Ted Cruz led the effort to kill it.  Why doesn’t America know this?  Well, Ted is trying ever so hard to tell them, but they can’t hear it for the confusion of the mob of monkeys as they screech and bark and howl and sling their feces everywhere.

That’s why Ted Cruz is hated in Washington.  And I’ve thought about my own life this evening in terms of being hated.  In a way, a man’s measure is found in his enemies.  I drifted off this evening to what my grave marker might read.  If it reads something like this: “Herschel was an objectionable and loathsome man but for the sovereign grace of God.  He led a nondescript life.  In fact, he wasn’t worth much even after God saved him … except that he was hated in Washington,”  I would die a happy man.

How do I do that?  How do I make it to 33rd degree blogger-hated-in-Washington?  I so want to be hated in Washington.  Good heavens.  If someone hurled that insult at me, I would wear it as a badge of honor.

David Codrea:

Understanding that no activist can take the hard line Mike has without ruffling feathers and making enemies — including within the Second Amendment community — the appeal was specifically made to those who consider themselves his friends, and to readers who have received value from his work. As such, Mike’s readers are not being asked for charity — they’re being asked to make gratitude offerings acknowledging that they have regularly personally benefited from Mike’s work.

Those people who don’t appreciate Mike aren’t being asked for a thing. Those who do can show their appreciation by sending contributions to him at PO Box 926, Pinson, AL 35126, or by transferring funds to georgemason1776@aol.com via Paypal, and also by spreading the word to notify other gun rights activists.

I had initially intended to send a check (periodically) to Mike.  But my wife convinced me that Paypal would be a better approach, and I have to admit, it is fairly straight forward and also a very fast way to get money where you intend it to go.

Give it a shot.