I am not an extremist
I don’t know who needs to hear this right now, but you are not an extremist. I am not an extremist.
And don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise.
The spokeswoman for the executive branch of the United States government said this week,
"If you are not with where the majority of Americans are, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking."
There is nothing at all extreme about wanting your children to grow up in a great nation that safe, free, self-sufficient, and prosperous. There is nothing extreme about thinking babies shouldn’t be murdered before they are born as a form of birth control. (As is the case in 93% of pre-born murders.) There is nothing extreme about wanting to live where there are trees, chirping crickets (you never intend to eat), and stars visible in the night sky. There is nothing extreme about taking direct responsibility for your children’s healthcare. There is nothing extreme about refusing to abdicate their education to the Authorities. There is nothing extreme about rejecting their poisoned food, poisoned water, and wanting to serve real, unprocessed, wholesome meals to nourish your babies’ growing bodies… OR a willingness to grow it yourself if you can’t guarantee you can get access to it for them any other way.
The word “extreme” is actively in the process of being hijacked and redefined as you read this. This isn’t the first time the definition of words has been changed and it won’t be the last, but what’s disconcerting is the increasing frequency and force with which it’s being done in the freest nation ever known in the history of the world.
Watching this week the terrifyingly dark, threatening, and, yes, even satanic imagery (Coincidentally coupled with the word “soul”? I think not), one can’t help having a visceral, physical reaction. At the same time, we can realize, on a rational level, that reaction is exactly what was intended. It was meant to cause fear. The purpose was to cower the people into submission, silence any dissent, and herd the dumb sheep back into the fold.
“In a mind-dominated society, fewer and fewer people will posses independently the power or ability to make up their own minds. This is because dominance of mind always implies, politically and economically, dominance by somebody else’s mind - or, worse, by the “mind” of a government or corporation. - Wendell Berry
What it really was was utterly ridiculous. And riddled with blatant slander, hypocrisy, and lies.
But we won’t live by lies.
We will not have our minds dominated. We aren’t “destroying democracy” no many how many times it’s repeated.
We need to utter that TRUTH out into existence. We need to openly MOCK the ridiculousness that anyone can say it and even pretend to believe it’s reality, because it truly is a laughable idea.
I sure did have fun doing so in my Instagram stories throughout the day today!
I woke up this morning and asked, “How can I ‘destroy democracy’ today?”
I jumped right in and started with the Environment while converting last week’s lawn clippings into 6 ½ pounds of golden butter, the fruit of a forbidden animal, dangerous to our planet. Air-dried a wheel of parmesan that won’t pass through parted lips for nearly a year. I canned homemade smoky BBQ sauce with zero preservatives or nasty liquid smoke. Prepped tomato puree to can ketchup tomorrow. I made cereal that didn’t come from a box. I powdered my own spices, pureed tomato paste. I am not with The Majority of Americans in outsourcing my food production to Horizon, Land-O-Lakes, Kraft, Sweet Baby Rays, Heinz, Hunts, & McCormick.
That doesn’t make me an extremist. It makes me a producer, a steward, a mother.
We know that the “soul of our nation,” our constitutional republic, was born into the body of a country in 1776. Nourished by the blood of sacrifice, inhabited by sinful men on a journey of sanctification while living in a nation on a similar journey. Both redeemed man and their country have of general upward growth and improvement. Our nation’s strength, built on sweat and blood, is the legacy of those hard-working producers, stewards, and parents who wanted their country to be continually free, increasingly prosperous, ever “great”er for the sake of the children they would willingly die for.
If the desire of their hearts was extreme, then I’m honored to be counted among them, to live in their tradition, and am not in the least ashamed to confess it.
And so I ask, how were you extreme today? How will we be extreme tomorrow? In other words, what did you do to make a better world for your family, community, and land today and plan to plow forward in hope tomorrow?