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4/20/26
Swords and Scriptures: A Critical Examination of What the Bible Says About War
Swords and Scriptures: A Critical Examination of What the Bible Says About War
The Bible is not a pacifist manifesto. Nor is it a consistent manual for just war theory. Instead, it is a collection of texts written across centuries, reflecting the shifting theologies, tribal ambitions, and imperial traumas of ancient Hebrew and early Christian communities. From the commanded genocides of Canaan to the apocalyptic violence of Revelation, and from the Crusades to modern ethno-nationalist conflicts, the Bible has been used both to sanctify slaughter and to advocate for peace. This article examines what the texts actually say, free from theological apologetics, and traces how those texts fueled centuries of religious warfare.
Part I: The Old Testament – Divine Sanction for Total War
The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) contains some of the most explicitly violent war mandates in religious literature. Warfare is not merely permitted; it is often *commanded* by Yahweh as an act of divine judgment.
Herem: The Ban of Total Destruction
The core concept is herem (often translated as "devoted to destruction"). In passages such as Deuteronomy 7:1-2 and 20:16-18, God orders the Israelites to annihilate the seven nations of Canaan: the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. The command is unambiguous: "You shall not leave alive anything that breathes."
- Joshua 6-11 depicts the execution of this policy. Jericho is sacked: men, women, children, and livestock are slaughtered. Later, Joshua "left none remaining, but devoted all to destruction" (Joshua 10:40).
- 1 Samuel 15 goes further:
When King Saul spares the Amalekite king Agag and the best livestock, the prophet Samuel rebukes him: "The Lord sent you on a mission... Why did you not obey?" Samuel then hacks Agag to pieces. The text explicitly states that God regrets making Saul king because Saul showed mercy.
From a non-theological standpoint, these passages describe divinely justified ethnic cleansing. Apologists often argue these were unique, historical judgments against "exceptionally wicked" cultures. However, the Bible provides no independent moral framework to distinguish this commanded violence from genocide. The text is clear: Yahweh is a "man of war" (Exodus 15:3).
King David and the Imperial Wars
Beyond the conquest narratives, the united monarchy under David expands its borders through continuous warfare. 2 Samuel 8 describes David defeating Philistines, Moabites, Arameans, and Edomites, taking vast quantities of bronze and gold. The Deuteronomistic historian presents this as God-given victory. There is no critique of war as an institution; only failures to fully execute God’s war commands are criticized.
Prophetic Visions of Peace (And Their Limits)
The Bible also contains famous anti-war imagery. Isaiah 2:4 prophesies that nations "shall beat their swords into plowshares" and "neither shall they learn war anymore." Micah 4:3 echoes this. However, these passages are eschatological they describe a future, messianic age, not a present command. In the same book, Isaiah 13:15-16 gleefully describes the Babylonian massacre: "Everyone who is captured will be thrust through... Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes."
The Old Testament does not condemn war. It regulates it (Deuteronomy 20 offers rules for consensual wars vs. Canaanite wars), celebrates it, and at times rejects it (e.g., the pacifism of Jeremiah’s Recabites). The dominant voice is that war is a primary tool of God’s justice.
Part II: The New Testament – Ambiguity and Apocalypse
Christianity emerged in a Roman-occupied province where armed rebellion (like the Jewish Revolt of 66-70 CE) led to catastrophic destruction. The New Testament reflects this tension.
The Pacifist Strain: Jesus’ Teachings
The historical Jesus, as reconstructed by critical scholarship, likely taught radical non-violence.
- Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7):
"Blessed are the peacemakers" (5:9). "Do not resist an evildoer. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other also" (5:39). "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (5:44).
- Peter’s Sword (Matthew 26:52):
When Peter cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Jesus commands, "Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword."
These verses are the foundation of Christian pacifism (held by groups like the Quakers and Mennonites). There is no exception for "just war" in Jesus’ recorded speech.
The Military Problem: Centurions and Soldiers
However, Jesus never explicitly tells a soldier to quit the military. The centurion of Capernaum (Matthew 8) is praised for his faith; John the Baptist tells soldiers in Luke 3:14, "Do not extort money... and be content with your pay." He does not say, "Throw down your arms." This silence has historically been read as tacit approval of military service.
The Violent God of Revelation
The New Testament ends not with peace but with the most graphic war imagery in the Bible. The Book of Revelation describes:
- Christ as a warrior with a sharp sword coming from his mouth to "strike down the nations" (Revelation 19:15).
- A great battle of Armageddon (Revelation 16:16) where blood flows "as high as a horse’s bridle" for 200 miles (Revelation 14:20).
- The lake of fire for all enemies.
This apocalyptic war is divine, not human, but it established a template: God’s final solution involves mass slaughter of the wicked.
Part III: From Text to Sword – The Crusades
No discussion of the Bible and war is complete without the Crusades (1096–1291). From a non-Christian perspective, the Crusades are a case study in scriptural reinterpretation for political violence.
The Ideological Engine: Holy War
The Crusaders did not rely on the New Testament’s pacifist verses. Instead, they fused Old Testament *herem* with papal authority.
- Old Testament Precedent:
Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont (1095) explicitly invoked the Maccabees (Jewish rebels from the intertestamental period) and the conquest of Canaan. He argued that Christians were the new Israel, and Jerusalem was their inheritance. The cry "Deus vult!" (God wills it) echoed Samuel’s command to Saul.
- The Gospel Twist:
Crusaders were promised a plenary indulgence the remission of temporal punishment for confessed sins. Effectively, killing Muslims in the Holy Land was framed as an act of penitential charity. Bernard of Clairvaux, the era’s most influential theologian, wrote that a Christian who killed a non-believer was not a "malefactor" but a "executioner of Christ’s enemies."
The Sack of Jerusalem (1099): Scriptural Reenactment
When Crusaders breached Jerusalem, they slaughtered nearly every inhabitant Muslims, Jews, and even Eastern Christians. Chronicler Raymond of Aguilers wrote, "Piles of heads, hands, and feet lay in the houses... It was a just and wonderful judgment of God." This was not an accident; it was a conscious reenactment of Joshua’s conquest of Jericho. The Bible provided the script.
The Fourth Crusade (1204): When Scripture Fails
The Crusades also exposed the Bible’s irrelevance when realpolitik intervened. The Fourth Crusade, excommunicated by the Pope, sacked Constantinople a Christian city raping nuns and looting churches. No biblical passage justified this; it was raw greed. But the ease with which crusaders abandoned Jesus’ commands for plunder shows that the Bible’s peace teachings were never binding on most medieval Christians.
Part IV: The Reformation and Wars of Religion
The 16th and 17th centuries saw Christians slaughtering Christians by the hundreds of thousands, each side quoting Scripture.
- The German Peasants’ War (1524-25):
Initially inspired by Martin Luther’s "priesthood of all believers," peasants cited 1 Corinthians 7:20-24 for social freedom. Luther responded with Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, quoting Romans 13 (obey the governing authorities) to justify the nobles slaughtering an estimated 100,000 peasants.
- The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648):
Protestant and Catholic armies devastated Central Europe. Both sides used Old Testament models (Israel versus the Philistines) to dehumanize the other. The result: 4-8 million dead, mostly civilians. The Treaty of Westphalia effectively conceded that the Bible could not resolve war; only state sovereignty could.
Conclusion: A Book of Contradictions
From a non-biased, historical perspective, the Bible does not offer a single, coherent doctrine of war. It offers a library of contradictory texts:
- Total annihilation (Joshua, 1 Samuel) vs. Non-resistance (Sermon on the Mount).
- Just war (Deuteronomy 20) vs. Apocalyptic genocide (Revelation).
- Love your enemy (Luke 6) vs. Dash infants against rocks (Psalm 137).
This ambiguity is not a bug; it is a feature. It allows the Bible to be used by pacifists (Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr.) and by crusaders (Pope Urban II, American slaveholders justifying Nat Turner’s rebellion). The Crusades were not a "corruption" of the Bible; they were a selective reading of the Bible specifically the violent passages that mainstream Christianity chose to emphasize while de-emphasizing the pacifist ones.
Ultimately, the Bible’s role in war has less to do with divine revelation and more to do with human interpretation. As the historian William T. Cavanaugh noted, "The problem is not that religion is particularly prone to violence, but that the myth of religious violence serves to legitimate the violence of the modern state." The Bible can sanction war only when readers choose the verses that serve their earthly ambitions. It is a sword that cuts both ways and it always has.
#Bible #TheBible #Christians #Christianity #God #Jesus #MiddleEast
Titanic exhibit at Volo Museum floods on anniversary of famous ship's sinking
CHECK THIS OUT! The place FLOODED on the 114th Anniversary of the sinking and it happened at THE SAME TIME ... The place is also on high ground ... CREEPY ...
Titanic exhibit at Volo Museum floods on anniversary of famous ship's sinking
4/19/26
OBAMACARE Was and Is a DISASTER
OBAMACARE Was and Is a DISASTER:
Premiums went up 400%. We have 50% less Doctors. We have 50% less hospitals. We have 50% less nurses. We have half as many Medical Insurance Companies. And the DEMOCRATS are blaming Republicans for the failed plan. NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR OBAMACARE. Why us it Republicans fault??? DON'T LET THE GAS GO UP YOUR ASS ... And Be GASLIT ...
OBAMACARE: The Broken Promise Disaster And Why Republicans Aren’t the Ones to Blame
In the long, sordid history of American political overreach, few domestic policy experiments have proven as costly, as disingenuous, or as structurally devastating as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act known colloquially as Obamacare. The law, rammed through Congress on a strictly partisan basis in 2010, was sold to the American people on a foundation of specific, verifiable lies. We were told it would bend the cost curve down. We were told we could keep what we cherished. We were told our wallets would get fatter. Over a decade later, the data is in, and the verdict from a conservative, free-market perspective is irrefutable: Obamacare was and remains a bureaucratic disaster of the highest order.
Yet, in the peculiar theater of Washington, D.C., the very architects of this collapse the Democratic Party have spent the last several years pointing a trembling, accusatory finger at Republicans. It is a case of political gaslighting so brazen it demands a thorough, cold-eyed examination of the ledger. We must revisit the promises made on the altar of "hope and change" and contrast them with the grim reality of skyrocketing premiums, industry consolidation, and diminished access to care.
The Foundational Lie: "If You Like It, You Can Keep It"
Let us begin with the statement that will forever be etched on President Obama's legacy, a phrase so infamous it was awarded PolitiFact’s "Lie of the Year."
"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Period."
This was not a gaffe; it was a deliberate, tactical deception required to calm a nervous public. The architects of the law knew full well that in order to force the "guaranteed issue" and "community rating" mandates—which force insurers to cover everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions at similar prices—they would have to blow up the existing individual market.
The Real Story is one of mass cancellations. By the fall of 2013, millions of Americans opened their mailboxes to find letters informing them that their individual health plans were being terminated because they did not comply with the new federal mandates. These were not junk plans; these were policies that real families had carefully selected and budgeted for. They were replaced by federally mandated, one-size-fits-all plans that carried deductibles so high they rendered the insurance effectively useless for anyone not facing catastrophic illness.
The Democratic response to this tidal wave of cancellations was, and remains, the height of elitist arrogance. The White House pivoted to saying, "If you like your plan, you can keep it if it hasn't changed since the law passed." That was a distinction without a difference, a legal loophole designed to let politicians escape accountability while families saw their networks shrink and their out-of-pocket exposure explode.
The $2,500 Premium Reduction That Never Was
The second pillar of the Obamacare sales pitch was pure fiscal fantasy. Candidate Obama promised the nation that his plan would "lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year."
The Real Story is not a reduction; it is a financial avalanche. While exact figures vary by state and demographics, the trend is uniform and brutal. According to data from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Kaiser Family Foundation, average premiums for individual market coverage more than doubled in the first five years of the law's full implementation.
But it is the claim of a "400% increase" in certain sectors that conservatives rightly highlight as the rule, not the exception. For the middle-class family making $100,000 a year those who earn too much to qualify for lavish subsidies but not enough to absorb endless premium hikes the situation is untenable. They are the ones who have seen premiums go from $300 a month to $1,200 or $1,500 a month, with deductibles soaring north of $10,000. This is not health insurance; it is a prepaid coupon book for a system you cannot afford to use.
The $2,500 promise was a political slogan. The reality is a $2,500 deductible before a single dollar of care is covered.
The Shrinking of American Healthcare Infrastructure
Perhaps the most underreported aspect of the Obamacare disaster and the one that should terrify every American is the severe contraction of the healthcare supply chain. The law's regulatory weight and reimbursement policies have done more to consolidate medicine into massive, soulless hospital conglomerates than any free-market force ever could.
Consider the conservative claim that we now have "50% less Doctors, Hospitals, and Nurses." While the raw headcount of licensed professionals hasn't been halved, the availability and independence of care certainly has. Here is the nuance that proves the conservative case:
The Death of The Private Practice:
Obamacare mandated the use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and imposed massive reporting requirements on physicians. A solo practitioner or a small independent group simply cannot afford the compliance army required to navigate CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) bureaucracy. Consequently, over the last decade, private practice ownership has plummeted. Nearly 70% of physicians are now employees of hospital systems or private equity-backed mega-groups. You didn't lose the doctor; you lost the choice of doctor, and you lost the personalized care that came with a small, independent office.
Hospital Closures in Rural America:
The law changed Medicare reimbursement formulas, penalizing hospitals for readmissions and pushing toward "value-based care." While well-intentioned in a PowerPoint slide, this has been a death sentence for small, rural hospitals that operate on razor-thin margins. We have witnessed a wave of closures in the heartland. When the nearest emergency room is now 45 minutes away instead of 10 minutes, access to care has been functionally cut by far more than half.
The Real Story is that Obamacare accelerated the creation of healthcare deserts, and the Democrats who designed those payment rules are blaming Republicans for the consequences.
Nurse Burnout and Staffing Shortages:
The administrative burden exploded. Nurses now spend more time staring at a computer screen documenting for federal compliance than they do holding a patient's hand. This is the direct result of a law that prioritizes federal data collection over bedside care. The exodus from the nursing profession is a direct consequence of the burnout created by the Obamacare regulatory regime.
The Great Insurance Cartel Consolidation
Finally, we must address the lie of "competition." Obamacare advocates crowed that state "exchanges" would create a vibrant marketplace where consumers could shop. Instead, they created a federally protected cartel for the largest insurers.
Real Story: We have half as many Medical Insurance Companies.
This is not hyperbole; it is market reality. The law's Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) rules capped administrative costs and profits, which sounds good on paper but made it impossible for smaller, nimble insurers to operate. The risk corridors and the unpredictability of the individual mandate penalty drove dozens of co-ops and smaller carriers into bankruptcy. We are left with a landscape dominated by the Big Five: UnitedHealth, Anthem, Aetna (CVS), Cigna, and Humana. In many counties across America, there is literally one insurance option on the exchange.
How do Democrats explain this? They tout "stability." Free market conservatives call it what it is: monopoly power enabled by government fiat. When there is no competition, there is no incentive to lower prices or improve service. The consumer loses. The insurer wins. And the Democrat gets a campaign donation from the insurer's PAC. It is a rot at the core of the system.
The Final Gaslight: Why Is This the GOP's Fault?
Here we arrive at the central, maddening irony of the current political discourse. The Democratic Party and their allies in the legacy media are relentlessly framing the current state of healthcare as a Republican failure.
We must state the historical record clearly and loudly: NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.
Zero. Not one. The bill passed the House 219-212 with 34 Democrats joining every single Republican in opposition. In the Senate, it passed 60-39 strictly along party lines using the controversial budget reconciliation process after Ted Kennedy's death.
How can a party that was locked out of the room, denied a seat at the drafting table, and unanimously opposed to the final product be blamed for the product's failure? The answer is that blame-shifting is the only political strategy Democrats have left. They cannot defend the premium spikes. They cannot defend the lost doctors. They cannot defend the $2,500 lie. So they must invent a boogeyman.
"Republicans sabotaged it!"
"Republicans won't fund the risk corridors!"
"Republicans repealed the individual mandate penalty!"
This is the gas being shoved up the collective posterior of the American taxpayer. The individual mandate tax which the Supreme Court only allowed because Chief Justice Roberts redefined it as a tax was the most unpopular part of the law. When Republicans repealed that penalty to zero, they were giving relief to millions of low- and middle-income families who would rather pay for food and rent than pay a fine to the IRS. If the entire Obamacare system collapses because you remove a punitive fine on people who can't afford the product, the system was always a failure.
Conclusion: The Road Ahead
The conservative perspective on Obamacare is not merely oppositional; it is diagnostic. We saw this disaster coming from miles away because we understand the laws of economics and the limits of central planning. You cannot mandate coverage of every procedure, force everyone into the same risk pool regardless of health status, impose thousands of pages of new regulations, and then act surprised when costs explode and choices vanish.
The Democratic Party owns this failure. They fluffed it. They lied about it. They passed it on a party-line vote. And now, they are gaslighting the American public by blaming the people who stood athwart history yelling "Stop."
The only way out of this mess is a return to patient-centered, market-driven principles: allowing insurance sales across state lines, expanding Health Savings Accounts, promoting transparency in pricing, and restoring the doctor-patient relationship free from the suffocating hand of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Until that day comes, let us remember the truth. Obamacare was a disaster. The Democrats built it. And no amount of rhetorical gaslighting will make the American people forget the promises that were broken or the premiums they can no longer afford.
#Obamacare #Healthcare
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4/18/26
A GAS LITE [TRUE] STORY About EAST PALESTINE
A GAS LITE [TRUE] STORY About EAST PALESTINE
I was listening to the East Palestine Mayor speak on the train accident and the lack of response from the Biden Administration while the Biden Administration blamed Trump. They blamed 'deregulation' from the Trump Whitehouse. Even Joy Behar said those people got what they deserved because they supported Trump. THEY GAS LIT YOU [UP].
Look here, this is what REALLY went down. OBAMA wanted to stickitvto the oil industry. He ordered a new regulation in the DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION -NOT THE EPA - that required trains carrying HIGH FLAMMABLE LIQUID PRODUCTS (PETROLEUM/OIL) to have a new, and more expensive brake system that applied the brakes to all cars at the same time. The previous brake system uses applied the brakes to each car individually. The new regulation cost more than the previous system. Here is the deal. The train that crashed in East Palestine wasn't required to have that new brake system. It wasn't carrying HIGH FLAMMABLE LIQUID PRODUCTS. The Administration knows this. They lied to us. They GAS LIT the country...like they ALWAYS DO
Now, in regards to the regulation: Complaints started coming in to the DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION that said the regulation was not cost effective. Those complaints came in during the Trump Administration. The DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION referred the complaints to CONGRESS, NOT THE WHITEHOUSE. CONGRESS told the Department of TRANSPORTATION to conduct a COST/ANALYSIS and give the data to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and have them write a report. Congress got the report and killed the regulation.
It had nothing to do with the EPA, TRUMP, or anyone in the Trump Whitehouse.
QUESTION EVERYTHING!!!
#EastPalestine #TrainDerailment #Obama
4/16/26
Hakeem Jeffries’s Linguistic Shell Game: Why Illegals Are Not Americans
Hakeem Jeffries Is Lying To You!!!
Don't Get Sucked In:
Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, is lying to you. The Trump Administration isn't cutting healthcare of Americans. They are cutting healthcare for ILLEGALS. Hakeem Jeffries and Democrats call ILLEGALS 'Americans'. US Citizens and ILLEGALS are not the same.
Hakeem Jeffries’s Linguistic Shell Game: Why Illegals Are Not Americans
In the grand theater of American politics, few performances are as predictable as the Democratic Party’s Pavlovian response to any enforcement of immigration law. The current melodrama centers on the budget adjustments proposed by the Trump Administration specifically, the clawback of federal healthcare dollars being siphoned toward individuals who have no legal right to be within the United States borders. At the center of this maelstrom stands House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a man whose rhetorical smoothness belies a deeper, more radical worldview that conservatives would do well to recognize: a worldview firmly rooted in the anti-national, class-and-race-obsessed framework of cultural Marxism.
Hakeem Jeffries is not a garden-variety liberal politician. His intellectual pedigree, his policy prescriptions, and most importantly, his linguistic deceptions reveal a man committed to dissolving the very concept of American sovereignty and national distinction. When Jeffries stands at the podium and accuses the Trump Administration of “cutting healthcare for Americans,” he is not making a factual statement. He is wielding a rhetorical cudgel designed to obliterate the line between citizen and non-citizen, between legal resident and illegal alien. He is lying, and it is a lie of Marxist precision.
The Background of a Revolutionary Mindset
To understand Jeffries’s comfort with this deception, one must look at his political formation. Jeffries did not emerge from the blue-collar, patriotic union halls of a bygone Democratic era. He is a product of New York City’s activist machine and the Ivy League echo chambers. He cut his teeth in a political environment where critical theory the academic cousin of Marxism was not merely tolerated but celebrated. Critical theory, as applied to law and governance, posits that American institutions are irredeemably oppressive and that the “nation-state” is an artificial construct designed to uphold white, capitalist power.
From this Marxist-Leninist influenced perspective, borders are immoral. National citizenship is a tool of exclusion. The “proletariat” of the modern age, according to this warped worldview, is not the American worker left behind by globalization, but the transnational migrant. Jeffries’s career demonstrates a consistent effort to deconstruct the legal and cultural barriers that protect American citizens. He has voted against measures to detain criminal aliens, supported sanctuary city policies that shield lawbreakers from federal authorities, and now, he is attempting to gaslight the American public regarding the allocation of their tax dollars.
#Hakeem #Jeffries #Congress #Government
Don't Hate The Rich
Don't Hate The Rich:
What someone else has has nothing to do with what you don't have ...
The Dow Jones Market was created in 1896. That would be '0'. When Bush 41 left office the Dow was somewhere between 3,000 to 3,500. Wealth was created. When Clinton left office the Dow had reached above 12,000. That much wealth eclipsed the amount of wealth created 3 times the wealth created between 1896 and 1992. I understand Clinton had the internet. Still, wealth was created and not TAKEN. On April 15th, 2026, The Dow reached a record high at 48,578.
TODAY, especially in New York, Democrats want to take more from the rich and take your tip money to pay for Social Programs and buy votes from Illegals.
One year Michael Jordan had to pay 17 Million in taxes. It doesn't matter what you make; no one should have to pay 17 Million to the Government. I bet Jordan could spend his 17 Million better than the Government could.
One more thing. The top 1% pay 50% of the tax revenue. The bottom 50% hardly pay anything. If you don't care about that you are probably a Marxist.
Has anyone 'Broke' ever gave you a PAYCHECK?
#taxes #Rich
The Zero-Sum Fallacy: Why the Left’s Obsession with What Others Have Ignores the Miracle of American Wealth Creation
There is a phrase circulating in the more contemplative corners of social media that cuts to the heart of the modern American political divide: “What someone else has has nothing to do with what you don't have.” To the conservative ear, this is not a platitude; it is the foundational principle of a free economy. It is the rejection of the zero-sum fallacy the corrosive, left-wing belief that for one person to gain a dollar, another must lose one.
The historical record, particularly the ledger of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, stands as a towering, unassailable witness against that fallacy. When Charles Dow first tabulated his average of a dozen stocks in 1896, the number was effectively zero. It was a blank canvas upon which the genius of American industry, risk-taking, and capital formation would paint the greatest wealth portrait in human history. That wealth wasn't "taken" from a fixed pot; it was created out of thin air by human ingenuity and freedom.
Consider the economic topography as we entered the 1990s. When President George H.W. Bush left office, the Dow hovered in the 3,000 to 3,500 range. Let that sink in for a moment. It took 96 years—from the Industrial Revolution, through two World Wars, the Great Depression, the rise of the automobile and the airplane—to build roughly 3,000 points of value in the most dynamic market on earth. That was the sum total of American enterprise as measured by the Dow at the dawn of the Clinton era.
And then, something remarkable happened. Over the subsequent eight years, the Dow exploded past 12,000. The wealth generated in that single decade did not just match the prior century; it *tripled* it. According to the data in the post referenced, the wealth created between 1996 and 2000 eclipsed the aggregate wealth creation from 1896 to 1992 by a factor of three.
Now, the progressive left will reflexively dismiss this. They will mumble, "Clinton had the internet." And yes, he did. But that admission is where the left’s argument collapses under its own weight. The internet was not a government program. It was not a confiscatory tax scheme or a redistribution formula drafted by a bureaucrat in Washington. The internet boom was the result of entrepreneurs in garages, fiber optic cables laid by private capital, and a policy environment that for a brief, shining moment actually restrained the regulatory state and allowed capital gains to flow toward innovation rather than the IRS.
Herein lies the conservative lesson embedded in the original post: Wealth was created, not TAKEN.
The distinction is everything. The left views the Dow at 3,000 and the Dow at 12,000 and sees only an opportunity for "fair share" extraction. They see the guy at the top and immediately pivot to what the guy at the bottom doesn't have. But the Dow crossing 12,000 wasn't a transfer of existing cash from a steelworker in Pittsburgh to a programmer in Palo Alto. It was the market’s valuation of new things that previously did not exist: e-commerce, search engines, digital communication, and increased productivity. The pie got bigger. Infinitely bigger. The person with a 401(k) who held an S&P 500 index fund saw their retirement security rise without requiring a single dollar to be taken from their neighbor.
Fast forward to the present. The post cites a recent milestone: On April 15th, 2026, the Dow reached a record high of 48,578. It is worth pausing to appreciate the symmetry of that date and that number. April 15th is Tax Day the day the federal government demands its pound of flesh, operating under the zero-sum assumption that to fund the public good, it must confiscate private capital. Yet even under the weight of that confiscation, and despite a regulatory apparatus that has grown obese since the Clinton years, the market roars toward 50,000.
From zero in 1896 to 3,500 in 1992. From 12,000 in 2000 to nearly 50,000 today. If wealth were a fixed pie, these numbers would be mathematically impossible. They are only possible because of the conservative economic truth that free people, operating in free markets, create value. The guy who invented the smartphone didn't steal the value of the rotary phone; he rendered it obsolete and created trillions in new utility. The companies driving the Dow toward 48,578 in 2026 whether they are in AI, biotech, or energy are not siphoning money from the lower classes; they are solving problems and increasing the standard of living for everyone.
The Politics of Envy vs. The Mechanics of Growth
The left's entire political strategy, however, is dependent on you forgetting this history. They need you to believe that Jeff Bezos's fortune is the direct cause of your struggle. They need you to look at the Dow at 48,578 and feel anger, not awe. Why? Because if you realize that what someone else has has nothing to do with what you don't have, you stop demanding that the government take it from them. And if you stop demanding that, the progressive machinery of control loses its fuel.
The conservative perspective acknowledges that life isn't fair and that opportunity isn't perfectly equal. But it insists on a different remedy. The remedy is not to burn down the orchard because one tree grew taller than the others. The remedy is to ensure the soil remains fertile and the gates remain unlocked. When the government confiscates wealth to "balance the scales," it removes the capital that would have been used to build the next 12,000 points of Dow growth. It removes the seed corn.
Look again at that timeline: 1896 to 1992. A slow, grinding, but steady climb hampered by world wars and, notably, the highest marginal tax rates in history. Then, the 1990s a period of freer trade and a lighter capital gains touch unleashed a tripling of a century's worth of value in just eight years. And now, despite the immense headwinds of national debt and inflation, the market persists in climbing higher because the human drive to innovate is stronger than the government's desire to regulate.
The post's closing image the Dow at 48,578 on April 15th is poetic. It is a reminder that even as the government takes its share, the private sector continues to build. The conservative response to this should not be smugness; it should be a renewed commitment to stewardship. We must protect that engine. We must push back against the zero-sum rhetoric that seeks to punish success.
What someone else has is a testament to what is possible in a free society. It is a scoreboard of creation. What you don't have is not a wound inflicted by them; it is a space yet to be filled by your own contribution to that great, ever-growing ledger of American wealth. Let us celebrate the record highs not because they make a few people rich, but because they prove that the system works for the many when it is allowed to work for the one.
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4/15/26
President Carter's Bad Energy Policy
PRESIDENT CARTER:
"We only have about 35 years worth of left in the world." ~ Jimmy Carter
There are over 100 Tankers headed to the Gulf of AMERICA right now to get OIL. CARTER is dead. Who told him that?!?!
The Limits of Malthusian Energy Predictions: Jimmy Carter's "35 Years" and the Triumph of American Production
In the annals of American energy policy, few pronouncements have aged as poorly as President Jimmy Carter's grim forecast that the world was on the verge of running dry. Looking back from an era where over 100 tankers steam toward the Gulf of America to load up on crude a scene touted by President Donald Trump as evidence of U.S. energy dominance Carter’s prediction stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when liberal scarcity ideology collides with free-market innovation and geological reality.
From a conservative perspective, Carter’s infamous declaration that the world had "only about 35 years worth of oil left" was not merely a statistical miscalculation. It was the logical consequence of a progressive worldview that trusts central planning over private enterprise, sees resource limits as static rather than dynamic, and consistently underestimates the power of human ingenuity when unleashed by market incentives. The tankers now lining up off the Texas and Louisiana coasts are floating monuments to the failure of that worldview.
The Speech That Defined an Era of Malaise
On April 18, 1977, President Carter addressed the nation in what became known as the "Moral Equivalent of War" speech a televised address that framed energy scarcity as the defining challenge of the coming generation. Carter did not mince words about the stakes. He warned that the energy crisis was likely to worsen progressively and could result in "national catastrophe." His solution was not to unleash American production but to impose government-mandated conservation, create a new Department of Energy bureaucracy, and ask Americans to accept a future of less.
The intellectual foundations of Carter's pessimism were widely shared among the liberal establishment of the 1970s. The CIA had produced reports projecting Soviet oil production shortfalls and global supply constraints . The Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" had captured the imagination of environmentalists and policymakers alike. The assumption was simple and, as it turned out, spectacularly wrong: resource reserves were fixed numbers, and consumption was on an irreversible upward trajectory that would eventually collide with geological reality.
Carter's specific warning that "we only have about 35 years worth of oil left in the world" placed the doomsday clock somewhere around 2012. Here we are, well past that deadline, and the United States is not only meeting its own energy needs but exporting record volumes to allies around the globe. What happened?
Why the Pessimists Were Wrong: The Resource Paradox
The fundamental error in Carter's analysis and in the broader Malthusian tradition of environmental pessimism is the failure to understand how resource availability functions in a market economy. Reserves are not simply geological facts; they are economic variables determined by price signals, technological capability, and the regulatory environment.
When prices rise or technology improves, previously uneconomic resources become viable. The shale revolution that transformed American energy in the 2000s and 2010s was made possible by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies that simply did not exist in the policy toolkit of the 1970s. Carter's planners could not have imagined that American engineers would one day unlock oil from rock formations previously considered impermeable.
This is not a minor oversight. It exposes the foundational conceit of centralized energy planning: the belief that bureaucrats in Washington can see further into the future than the collective wisdom of millions of market participants responding to price signals. As one academic critic noted as early as 1981, the CIA's projections were based on "questionable and indeed implausible assumptions," and questioning the existence of the energy crisis was met with "hostility and a sort of horror" . The conventional wisdom had hardened into dogma, and dissent was not tolerated.
The Gulf of America: A Living Rebuttal
Fast forward to the present, and the visual evidence of Carter's error is literally visible from space. Market intelligence firm Kpler is tracking 70 supertankers Very Large Crude Carriers, each capable of hauling 2 million barrels that are due to arrive at Gulf Coast ports in April and May of 2026. Last year's monthly average was just 27 such vessels .
This surge in demand for American crude is driven partly by geopolitical disruption in the Middle East, but the underlying reality is that the United States possesses the production capacity to respond. U.S. crude exports are on pace for a record 5 million barrels per day this month, and May is projected to set another record based on current tanker traffic . The nation's four major oil-export facilities in Texas and Louisiana are running near capacity, and ports are expanding to accommodate even greater volumes.
President Trump, in characteristic fashion, has seized on this imagery to highlight the contrast between Carter's pessimism and today's abundance. On social media, he applauded a map showing "a conga line of vessels sailing to the U.S." and touted American oil as "the best and 'sweetest' oil (and gas) anywhere in the World" . Whatever one thinks of Trump's rhetorical style, the substance of his boast is unassailable: the United States is an energy superpower, not the beleaguered supplicant Carter imagined.
The Conservative Alternative: Deregulation and Production
The path from Carter's scarcity to today's abundance was not inevitable. It required deliberate policy choices, many of them championed by conservatives over the objections of the environmental left.
When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he immediately set about dismantling the Carter-era regulatory apparatus that had stifled domestic production. Price controls were lifted. Permitting was streamlined. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve Carter had established as a defensive measure remained, but the broader philosophy shifted from managing decline to enabling growth.
This philosophical divide persists today. Conservatives argue that energy abundance is a strategic asset that benefits American consumers, strengthens allies, and provides leverage over adversaries. Liberals, by contrast, continue to approach energy policy through the lens of scarcity now framed around climate concerns rather than geological depletion, but with the same preference for government-directed conservation over market-driven production.
Even in areas like solar and renewable energy, the conservative approach emphasizes market mechanisms over subsidies. As one conservative commentator noted, the Carter-era embrace of solar panels on the White House later removed by Reagan did lasting damage to conservative perceptions of alternative energy by associating it with government overreach and symbolic gestures. Today's conservative approach to clean energy, where it exists, emphasizes deregulation and competition rather than the central planning model Carter embodied.
The Enduring Temptation of Central Planning
Carter's 35-year prediction failed, but the mindset that produced it has never fully disappeared from American politics. The same impulse that led Carter to declare the "moral equivalent of war" on energy consumption now manifests in calls for Green New Deals, bans on internal combustion engines, and restrictions on fossil fuel development.
Each iteration of this scarcity mindset makes the same fundamental error: it treats current technology and known reserves as fixed limits rather than starting points for innovation. It assumes that government planners can allocate resources more efficiently than markets. And it consistently underestimates the capacity of free people, operating in free markets, to solve problems that experts insist are insoluble.
Carter himself was not a bad man he was, by most accounts, decent and well-intentioned. But his energy policy represented the apotheosis of a technocratic liberalism that had lost faith in American dynamism. He asked Americans to accept limits rather than transcend them. He saw the future as a problem to be managed rather than an opportunity to be seized.
The tankers now crowding the Gulf of America tell a different story. They testify to an energy landscape that no government forecaster in 1977 could have envisioned: one where the United States does not beg for oil from the Middle East but supplies it to the world. This outcome was not achieved by following Carter's prescriptions. It was achieved by rejecting them.
Conclusion: The Lesson of 35 Years
Jimmy Carter is indeed dead, as the prompt notes, and so is the intellectual framework that produced his dire prediction. What remains is a lesson conservatives would do well to remember and articulate: human ingenuity, when freed from the shackles of government planning, consistently exceeds the expectations of experts.
The "35 years" warning was not merely inaccurate; it was wrong in a way that reveals the deeper flaws in progressive governance. It substituted bureaucratic modeling for market discovery. It privileged conservation over production. And it asked Americans to prepare for a diminished future when the real need was to unleash the forces that would create an abundant one.
Every tanker now steaming toward the Gulf Coast represents a quiet refutation of that worldview. Carter's prediction expired years ago. American energy dominance, born of deregulation and innovation, is the reality he could not foresee.
#Oil #Carter #JimmyCarter #Iran
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