Quick note on Piru Mansion: As a little boy, my great uncle Bill Eaton was a visitor to the Piru Mansion (then Cook Mansion); he remembered sitting on the steps by the tower. Mr. Cook told him he could eat all the oranges he liked from the ground but not to pick any.

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A response to Kelly Scoles’s letter:

Hi Kelly,

After reading your first paragraph I better understand that it’s really not so much your abuse of logic, or philosophical outlook that perturbs me, it’s the loosely fallacious conclusions.

For example, you regret that I set standards which “we all fail to meet.” Kelly, in this regard I’m also just a follower; I don’t set the standards. At the basic level my standards are clearly listed in those 10 Commandments. Now, I know that this provokes your personal rebellion because those standards more than imply the existence of a Supreme Being – they actually command obedience and identify the ultimate authority, God. However, without the free will God gave us you couldn’t reject His existence and we wouldn’t be able to debate the issue. Would you at least pay respect to ancient Greek efforts to know God? “…walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I'm telling you about. He is the God who made the world and everything in it.” Acts 17:23-31.

As you say, I am indeed conservative, and miss those “good old days.” But I don’t claim to own those standards, or keep them perfectly myself, and the Good Book reminds us: For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard. Romans 3:23.

I never “tell people what religion they must follow.” Of some 300 religions in the world, I choose to be Catholic. More than 6 billion people choose otherwise, and among 2 billion Christians worldwide, there are 45,000 denominations. Plenty of choice. Of course, those enslaved in communist nations have no freedom to choose – they are told “There is no God” and are frequently killed for holding to their faith (Uyghurs in Xinjiang). That’s the essential difference between democracy, Islamo-Communism, and diverse dictatorships.

Values? Trump values are Judeo-Christian values (not forgetting the Jewish people, “Our elder brothers in faith”). Those “authoritarians” you speak of live in the Democratic Party, are Woke, atheist, Jihadist (Hamas), anti-science (transgenderism) and worship at the altar of the Unnatural. They love violence, riots being their brand (2020). One word can define the entire radical-Woke-Democrat-Jihadist-communist world: the eternal “LIE”. Maybe that’s why there is one law that Liberals hate even more than our Amendment number 2 – and that is Commandment number 9: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Exodus 20:16. Everything in the enemy’s playbook is false or misleading. If Commandment number 9 were made compulsory, under oath in the Democratic Party, its leaders would be instantly muted – no more infamous political defamation. I can dream. Congress could recapture its honor, and MAGA could relax.

As to the “fair” peace treaty proposed for Ukraine by Gen. Keith Kellog, Ret.” this would be an exercise of unforgiveable betrayal. Ukraine has lost 300,000 soldiers so far, and Russia about 500,000. Most hospitals and schools have been destroyed, infrastructure demolished, an estimated 3.7 million people have been driven from their homes and are internally displaced and nearly 6.5 million people have crossed into neighboring countries, all in three years! (We tragically, lost 58,220 soldiers in 12-years of Vietnam.) A once beautiful, fertile, budding democratic nation has been methodically destroyed by Putin, the serial killer. Russia and its diabolical cohorts must be stopped to save ourselves as well as Ukraine. We must break their will.

One sunny day the world watched this war begin with Russia attacking (the capital) Kyiv, dubbed a “special military operation” with “victory” expected in a couple of days. Three years later Putin tells the world it’s now a “war.” He is not a genius strategist. He’s just a blundering opportunist who picked the wrong opportunity. His aggression caused Sweden and Finland to join NATO. He has lost a third of his Black Sea fleet, and most of the war material he started with. If the West abandons Ukraine after encouraging its defense, we deserve the same treatment!
On Trump’s relations with enemy leaders, he expressed positive impressions when he saw a chance to ameliorate national relationships. That was a mistake, repeated by all presidents since Ronald Reagan. My hope - he now recognizes the inherent evil reality of these enemies today. Of course, neither Biden nor Kamala understand the enemy or the imminence of their threat. To them it’s just a parlor power game. Both Orbán of Hungary and Erdoğan of Turkey are untrustworthy NATO members. Nukes should be removed from Turkey.

As for your references to China’s and Russia’s “financing transportation and infrastructure projects in Africa, South America, and elsewhere, creating future allies,” understand this is not a good thing. Both these criminal states are destabilizing weak nations to control and sweep them into a hostile hegemony. Here we go again with communist Cuba and the South China Sea!

Your worry about Republicans creating “a forced religion-based social and legal order,” is baseless. “Force” is absent, and America has always been a “religion-based social and legal order”, it’s called Judeo-Christianity. It has, like it or not, always been the basis of our social order; see the Declaration, about forming a more perfect union, establishing Justice, ensuring domestic Tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general Welfare, and securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. God is mentioned in the Declaration, “Laws of Nature and of Nature's God,” and religious (Judeo-Christian) morality itself was acknowledged by every Founder (even Thomas Paine – “We can know God only through his works.”) as essential to survival.

Finally, you trivialize the importance of Hunter’s laptop. With respect, Kelly, this sort of naivete energizes Liberalism’s confusion within the common good, making the country fatefully vulnerable. President Biden is a shameless crook, a traitor, the Big Guy prospering from the family’s brand of influence-peddling for 50-years. A great gig while it lasted.