By Steve Woodward

After a standing ovation swept him toward the podium, Rep. Richard Hudson greeted constituents assembled in a church’s meeting hall on the occasion of North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District Republican convention.

Hudson might have been expected to rally core volunteers who reside in the six counties that comprise the Ninth in this critical election cycle — possibly the last chance Republicans will have to impede the downfall of our nation, and sustain the world’s indispensable beacon of freedom.

He is not known as a rousing orator but Hudson was particularly subdued on this April afternoon inside Asheboro’s Sunset Avenue Church of God. We all get it. The halls of Congress are toxic. It is the Garden of Good and Evil. Being one of the good guys is hard work.

But that’s what we elect Hudson and fellow Republicans to do in Washington. To defy the Left, stand in the breech, take the arrows. With our culture eroding and our economic foundation crumbling, this is not the time to come home looking for sympathy.

Hudson’s objective for being on hand, other than obligation, apparently was to deliver a civics lesson. Those who actually paid attention noted a tone and tenor of frustration toward Republicans who are not universally pleased by recent House passage of a $1.2 trillion bill to avert a “government shutdown” until the next one looms in September.

Said Hudson, “72 percent of the bill funds the military.” Technically, that’s fairly accurate but nothing extraordinary. These government funding bills always are weighted toward defense spending. Conversely, the Democrat-fueled narrative that a government shutdown imperils military defense of national interests is false. When shutdowns occur — sometimes, they are necessary, which we will explain shortly — soldiers are paid (on a deferred basis), social entitlement checks are delivered, and layers of bureaucrats do us the favor of staying home.

We know there are members of Congress who understand what fellow Republicans demand at this tenuous moment in history because we see them come to the fore when the status quo defenders begin closing their ranks. We see unrelenting North Carolinian Dan Bishop, Florida’s Matt Gaetz, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert and tough-as-nails Texan Chip Roy, illuminating the rampant hypocrisy. We saw 112 Republicans vote “no”, in fact.

This is not the time for lectures about “making choices in a divided government”. That was Hudson’s defense of this spending bill that only a Democrat could love — as evidenced by its immediate passage by the Dem-controlled Senate.

If House Speaker Mike Johnson possessed the leadership instincts to meet the moment, not one penny would have been allocated to any program until the U.S. southern border was shut down. Completely. Every port of entry. Every Non-Governmental Organization-supported processing center. Every charter flight into the homeland.

Instead, the border remains wide open. And, even if you turn a blind eye to the ongoing security crisis it poses, to the murders of innocent Americans where they live, work and go to school, and to the deadly toll of unfettered fentanyl that crosses with the young savages, even if all for this does not infuriate you, then where do you turn for solace? In what happens to those who are spared?

What is their reward in the Faustian bargain? They live to see the implosion of the U.S. economy when the federal debt bomb finally detonates.

“This bill affirms and funds (Joe) Biden’s open border invasion,” a statement issued by Rep. Bishop warned after its passage on March 22, 2024. “At this very moment, Biden is allowing illegal immigrants to pour across our border and is using your tax dollars to sow disorder and chaos in our communities.

“The bill is also chock-full of earmarks that fund the radical Left’s cultural indoctrination crusade against our children and families. They are selling our children and grandchildren deeper down the swirling debt spiral.”

That’s what we did not hear last Saturday in Asheboro. From Rep. Hudson we heard complaints that social media distorts his record. We heard that the spending bill funds more border patrol agents (it actually funds the recruitment of agents without a timeline specified); funds more beds (7,500) for detainees, who are detained until they are turned over to Catholic Charities, and similar organizations, which send them into the night by the busloads.

The 101 Republicans who voted for an open border to keep an open (dysfunctional) government cheered a $27 billion funding increase for the Department of Defense. But just guess what concessions Johnson and his loyal lieutenants did not demand in return:

• An end to funding inter-state travel by military personnel seeking abortions when they can’t abort a birth where they are based;
• An end to transgender “care” (mutilation surgery) for DOD personnel and related agencies;
• Defunding of the DOD’s offices dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion
  
  Also hidden away in the 1,012-page theft manual (bill) were obscene earmarks running the gamut from the funding of programs to advance “climate resilience” and “equity in manufacturing” (how’s that working for Boeing?).
  
  Rep. Hudson did not address the earmarks but he did remind the room that he is third in line to become House Speaker. Rather than continuing to audition we’d have been much more impressed had he simply voted “no” on the bill and focused less on Civics 101 and more on critical analysis.
  
  “All I think about is how we can win,” Rep. Hudson said.
  
  Worthy as that is if it’s at the expense of Democrats, it’s also not very reassuring for dialed-in Americans who see federal debt surging toward $35 trillion, who read in The Wall Street Journal that “the federal budget deficit for the first six months of fiscal 2024, ending in March, was $1.064 trillion” fueled by $3.25 trillion in total outlays, and that interest payments on debt across those same six months are $440 billion, which “exceeded the $412 billion in outlays for defense.”
  
  In the face of this grim reality that sentences future generations to debt enslaved serfdom, for which we assign blame in equal measure to members of both parties, why stand up when our elected servants walk into a room? Why do we even clap? We should be using the backs of our hands.
  
  
  

By Steve Woodward

Donald J. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, is a dominant news story this week. One of the truths Trump articulated a few years ago is as true now as then.

“Everything woke,” he said, “turns to (crap).”

The Left is intent on ruining everything. Miserable tyrants, they are determined to destroy every sacred tradition, every norm. The Left is committed to vilifying anyone who does not comply with or embrace its new rules for living. Living has little to do with the Leftist agenda.

In fact, there is likely more dying to be expected. Woke / Diversity, Equity and Inclusion compromise U.S. armed forces and law enforcement, deprioritizing homeland security. The presumption of law and order is racist. 

A must read is the March 24, 2024, op-ed by Andy Kessler published by The Wall Street Journal, “The Lost Era of Reliability”. 

“Our electricity used to be so steady that plugged-in wall clocks rarely needed adjusting,” Kessler writes. “That’s funny now because power outages are so commonplace. Heck, we now schedule rolling blackouts in California — forced failure.

“Back then, the electric grid and phone system were designed for “five 9s” or 99.999% reliability—five minutes of unscheduled downtime a year. Last month, AT&T’s cellular network went down for around 11 hours. No TikTok? The horror. AT&T provided $5 credits to customers. Thanks for nothing. Today’s reality is that we’re preconditioned to accept failure.”

If it’s not failure it’s folly. We learned recently that organizers of the Paris Olympic Games deliberately constructed an athletes’ village in which housing units are not air conditioned. Vive la planet!

The agenda driven media and woke professional leagues have been at work for many years to erode the enjoyment once derived from participating in and consuming sports. ESPN does not defend on-air personalities who are lambasted for rejecting the insane notion of men legitimately competing in women’s sports. Sports Illustrated essentially put itself out of business by sacrificing journalism at the woke altar. USA Today pays a sports department staffer, Mike Freeman (photo nearby), whose title is “race and inequality editor”. Yes, but can he read a box score? Does he know golf’s Rule 9.1? Does he know the role of a nickel defensive back? He’s fine with the latter, as long as the back is black.

Now along comes the April 2024 edition of Architectural Digest (AD). AD always has been a favorite guilty pleasure. I’ve enjoyed the indulgence of it, the brilliant photography, stunning designs, intricate patterns, and luxurious fabrics. The architects and their clients made for captivating reading, too. What must life be like when it’s lived in a parallel universe? When priorities are finding the perfect end table, a precisely curated hue from a pallet of color, wooden beams from a wrecked ship, or creating the most obnoxious man cave money can buy? 

That said, AD began to annoy me years ago, long before the April issue dedicated to Earth Month. At some point in time, the editorial decision was handed down that homes featured in the magazine must be owned, predominantly, by gay couples. “His husband insisted on marble over granite in the mid-19^th century kitchen.”

The latest introductory letter by the AD editor-in-chief confirms my fear that I am actually subscribing to Archenemy Digest. To wit:

“In the face of climate change and the myriad obstacles to living an individually and collectively earth-friendly lifestyle, it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed and even defeated, but I found this month’s (issue) … full of hope and encouragement.”

Conversely, I found this month’s issue to be an unbearable combination of virtue signaling and self-righteousness.

A profile of climate change activist and eco-chic homeowner Amber Valletta fails to note that during a long career as a supermodel she burned millions of miles of jet fuel traversing the globe aboard private jets. AD focuses instead of her stellar record of arrests when protesting alongside Jane Fonda in Washington, D.C.

Valletta’s hilltop Los Angeles home is “a model of sustainability” with its thermal-insulated, double-glazed windows (required by California law), clay plastered, naturally pigmented interior walls (because paint emits volatile, cancer-causing compounds), natural fiber carpets and a desert garden that requires little water.

The owner says her home feels like “a sanctuary”. But do not expect breaking news that Valletta is planning to take in any of the 75,000-plus homeless in Los Angeles County. Remember, it’s the planet that must be saved. Actual human beings? Not so much.

The Valletta eco-vault sounds more like an asylum, or a minimum security prison. Thankfully, were are spared details as to what is stored in the refrigerator, if there is one. Nothing from the garden, obviously. 

By Steve Woodward

If you have not yet encountered one of the most articulate voices of American conservatism in our time, I implore you to get to know Charlie Kirk. He’s syndicated weekdays nationwide across the Salem radio network; others consume Kirk’s analysis by podcast on the Real America’s Voice streaming platform. The radio show and podcast are delivered simultaneously.

Against headwinds of corrupt corporate media, Marxist-infested college campuses and the destructive shadow government behind the Biden regime, Kirk is unfaltering. I predict his influence on the American political landscape will rival Rush Limbaugh’s.

Kirk’s programming is guided by current events, which come at us with blinding speed. But few are as intellectually nimble as Kirk. He is consistently capable of stepping back from the vortex to distill complexity into clarity. 

A recent, captivating example was Kirk’s unearthing of a 1960s theory put forth by two academic elitists, Richard Cloward and Frances Piven, a married couple on the staff of Columbia University. The Cloward-Piven Strategy has been dissected repeatedly since its perpetrators hatched it in 1966.

And they were perpetrators, to be sure. Cloward and Piven did not merely publish a white paper to stir debate; they saw to it that their strategy was embraced and ultimately adopted in New York City across the decade ahead. It is well documented that the adoption of the “strategy” by activist New York politicians caused a surge of newly enrolled welfare recipients that sent the city barreling toward bankruptcy by 1975.

This was not a mere consequence. This was the desired outcome. They broke the very system they claimed was unjust toward minorities. Poverty was systemic. Does that sound familiar?

Today, we’re seeing the “strategy” engaged not merely to collapse a system but a way of life, our way of life, and to fray the fabric of a nation and trample its values. 

In a matter of a few years we’ve seen our national economy flooded by unsustainable levels of new money, freshly printed. And we’ve seen our homeland flooded by illegal immigrants by the millions, perhaps as many as 10 million since 2021. 

To what end? Toward the mass destabilization of the United States of America. In step with this destabilization came the demoralization of the masses by all means available. One was decidedly organic — pandemic restrictions that were temporary until they became permanent and pervasive. Others are concocted and advanced via social media – cancel culture, transgenderism, equity, lawlessness, and, most recently, antisemitism.

Kirk sees it as a cultural and political “autoimmune response”. When a human being’s autoimmunity is compromised normal cells are attacked, having become undistinguishable from foreign cells. In a similar manner, the Left is effectively triggering countrymen to use our core values against themselves, Kirk says. If we believe that “diversity is our strength” how can we deny entry to undocumented swarms of humanity at the border? And how can we possibly deport them in the future? If all men are created equal, why should we need borders?

What used to be common sense, lawful and decent is turned on its head. A secure border is racist. Law enforcement enforcing law is racist. Jews are not God’s people. They are racist occupiers, Palestinian colonizers. Donald Trump’s business empire is a con job, a Ponzi scheme, a racist enterprise that must implode. 

Unless every norm is subverted, every system overburdened, and every U.S. dollar is owed to foreign creditors, the strategy fails. But in this moment, it does not appear that it will. Fail.  

Fortunately, the American people only can be pushed so far, and we have stood on the brink, undeterred, on many occasions throughout our relatively brief history. We fought a brutal civil war to end Democrat Party endorsed slavery. Some fifty years later, our military might ended a world war, and, in no time the U.S. economy was roaring into the 1920s. 

It is arguable that a Cloward-Piven ideology (embraced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt) extended the Great Depression across a decade from 1929 to the onset of World War II. FDR’s New Deal destabilized the economy, making it harder to restore job creation in the private sector and jump start a recovery. Welfare was rampant but the U.S. economy remained unwell.

Remarkably, what undid the Cloward-Piven wrecking ball unleashed in 1966 was 30 years in the making and seems to prove once again what Winston Churchill once said about Americans. He said that we always do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities.

As recently as 1996, an American President, Bill Clinton, and a divided Congress, united to declare that the nation’s welfare system was a trainwreck by enacting The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Clinton’s signature ended welfare as a permanent entitlement and required recipients to be employed within two years of receiving benefits. 

We might, understandably, find it unimaginable that a 1996 moment in time is remotely conceivable nearly 30 more years later. But we have hope that Cloward-Piven’s toxic strategy will again be derailed. We have Churchill’s confidence in American resolve, that we always gravitate to the right choice.

And we have Trump voters. 

By Steve Woodward

I am not an advocate of so-called early voting, and certainly not marathon early voting. Moore County citizens are afforded 15 days to vote “early” in this primary season, February 15 through March 2.

The premise of voting ahead of Election Day (March 5) is that we live in a world of citizens who are drowning in “popular culture” delivered by a relentless social media fire hose. So consumed are they by Taylor Swift, mRNA booster guidance, climate change initiatives and TikToking, only repeated prompting by an early voting countdown clock can compel them to exercise their rights as American citizens to vote in free elections. 

Among retirees of a certain age the conventional wisdom is that voting early ahead of the Election Day rush is prudent in the same way that it’s sensible to avoid buying green bananas.

But by far the worst aspect of early voting is that it encourages a long running high school student body election scenario. During the interminable slog toward the final hour in which the last votes are counted (or so we assume, often naively, they’re counted) our candidates are afforded plenty of time to record radio ads, design unreadable yard and roadside signs, publish word-salad print advertisements and appeal to voters as they parade by the electioneering penalty box outside of two antiquated voting sites — one in Carthage, another in Southern Pines (where bathrooms were out of order all day on February 27 in the Southern Pines Land Trust’s rundown “community center” gymnasium). 

Like high schoolers vying to lead the student government association, our local candidates for board of education accuse their opponents’ surrogates of relocating, even stealing, campaign signs. Stationed alongside various tents at the voting sites the candidates spew empty rhetoric about everything except the issues actually plaguing public education. 

What is clear to anyone paying attention amid this marathon voting season is how deeply local Democrats despise the current school board. After achieving a 6-1 ideological majority in November 2022, and with a newly hired superintendent anxious to get to work, the new board set forth fiscally conservative priorities and classroom reforms aimed at improved learning by focusing on fundamentals — reading, math and discipline, to name the top three.

Democrats, including parents of Moore County Schools students, could not conceal their rage when a policy was voted into place that requires our students to read books and submit written reports detailing their comprehension. Their heads exploded when the board adopted a parents’ bill of rights intended to end the specter of administrators and teachers enabling children intent on keeping secrets from mom and dad. The policy recognizes the essential role of parents in raising and educating their children.

It’s unfortunate that a policy was required to enforce what should be common sense. But our poisoned culture finds increasing numbers of educators who believe they are obligated to help children embrace gender dysphoria and seemingly inevitable gender transitioning.  

Our tormented, angry local Democrats and the candidates they are supporting cried foul, of course. They lecture sternly that everything that happens behind the closed doors of a public school must be orchestrated by the “professionals” — administrators and teachers. They lament that teachers will quit their jobs if some overzealous mom dares to tell them what to do, or what not to do. They claim their is a “teacher shortage” because of a school board that addresses obvious red flags — vulgar books in school libraries, for one, or kids who arrive at school appearing to have just rolled out of bed or, in extreme cases, a ditch.

Democrats advise that the way to “fix” the schools is to elect a board controlled by ex-teachers and administrators, even though these are the people who, during the past decade, presided over plunging reading and math proficiencies, lax disciplinary measures and profligate spending of taxpayers’ dollars.

Consider these nuggets appearing in Democrat letters published in February 28 editions of The Pilot, the same Pilot that recent eviscerated school board member Ken Benway, a military veteran who believes the inmates should not run the asylums that many public schools nationally have become.

“Looking at the slate of candidates available this time around, there are far more qualified individuals to consider, who are not ideologically driven and have real-world (emphasis added) experience in our local education system.”

“Pointing the finger at students, teachers, legislators and, finally, each other has done nothing, except drive quality teachers to retire or relocate and compromise education. Please don’t fall for scare tactics or re-elect pretenders.”

“What has been delivered by the current board is wasted time and money to control pronouns, ban books and try to force children to wear uniforms.”

“As a former educator myself, it is also disturbing to watch the board overruling professional curricular decisions through mandated book reports and book banning.”

“Moore County Schools should provide the highest quality education for all students.”

That statement is particularly rich. Before voting — hurry, only five days remain — here’s the question every school board candidate must answer: When the next, inevitable, health crisis arrives, will you tolerate indefinite school closures, masking and mandatory mRNA shots in arms? Or will you defy tyrannical mandates?

“Educators” who cowered in fear amid pandemic hysteria across 2020, 2021 and 2022, imposed devastating learning loss and mental health declines from which many children have not recovered to this day. In fact, some never will. 

By Steve Woodward

After a male student, 11, was physically assaulted by a fellow male student of the same age on April 24, 2023, on the grounds of The O’Neal School, a private grade school in Southern Pines, school administrators responded rapidly and aggressively.

But their actions targeted the victim of the assault and his parents, and were marked by a pattern of denials intended to keep the incident out of the public eye and preserve the reputation of O’Neal.

Head schoolmaster John Elmore’s campaign to cover up the incident last April has divided a tight knit O’Neal community, alienated parents of students sympathetic to the plight of the assault victim, and resulted in the victim and two younger siblings being withdrawn as O’Neal students.

The male student who attacked his classmate eventually was criminally charged with “simple assault”. The case is being processed within the juvenile justice division of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. Meanwhile, the student remains enrolled at O’Neal and is attending classes during the current academic year.

The parents of the assault victim recently launched a web site chronicling the events of April 24, 2023, and detailing what has transpired in the aftermath. A companion Facebook page also is live. To date, the Facebook page has 160 followers.

The web site, The O’Neal School Watchdog, summarizes the family’s experience thusly:

“In a distressing incident at The O’Neal School, an 11-year-old child was brutally assaulted by another student near the gazebo on Konni’s Courtyard leading to severe injuries. The aftermath saw the Head of School threaten the victim’s family, warning them to maintain silence after a police investigation. The school’s response included disciplinary targeting of the victim and the eventual expulsion of the family for not agreeing to a gag order. The attacker continues to be a student attending classes at O’Neal.”

Your fearless RESOLVE author exclusively interviewed the father of the assault victim on February 6, 2024. Ironically, Rick Stefanik is a former member of the O’Neal School board of trustees. His spouse, Cassie, is a Class of 1996 O’Neal School graduate. (O’Neal is a pre-K through high school academy).

While it is not surprising that a prestigious private school would desire to minimize damage to its reputation after a physical assault incident, the willful contempt directed by O’Neal administrators toward the injured student and his parents in the ensuing months is exposing a culture of hubris worthy of a Netflix miniseries.

During our interview, Stefanik described a nightmare scenario that is ongoing.

“This has been an unbelievable situation for our whole family,” Stefanik said.

Watching his son’s long recovery from traumatic injuries was difficult enough. Confronting the school’s absolute indifference toward the incident, its toll on the student’s mental health, and emphasis on damage control by O’Neal’s top administrator has been surreal.

During a meeting with Elmore, O’Neal’s head of school, Stefanik found himself face to face not with an advocate but with an adversary. The well being of Stefanik’s son was not Elmore’s priority.

“This is what keeps me up at night,” Elmore told Stefanik. “This is the kind of thing that can destroy a school.”

Stefanik’s web site provides explicit detail as to the injuries inflicted on his son.

“The day after the assault, our child’s pain sent us to the (First Health) emergency room where doctors found blood in his urine and diagnosed him with injuries from physical assault. His condition included severely painful spasms occurring every couple of minutes eventually confining him to a recliner chair for over six weeks.

“Despite treatment, he developed a large baseball sized hematoma and had a deep muscle fascia tear.  This required specialized care from UNC and Duke including pain management injections in his abdomen and physical therapy.” 

After a six-week recovery, Stefanik’s son returned to the O’Neal campus and hoped to rejoin the swimming team.

“My soon spent six weeks refined to a recliner chair,” Stefanik said.

What happened next is described in detail on the web site. It is infuriating and Orwellian.

“When our son returned to The O’Neal School for swim team tryouts, John Elmore and (head of middle school) Miryah Walters’ presence was notably unusual.

“Their attention seemed more focused on him, without offering any reassurance of safety. In the days following, he felt uncomfortably monitored as adults followed him and limited his ability to interact with teachers and other students. On August 22 (2023), our son approached his science teacher in private about a concern that he would be placed into a group project with his assaulter.

“The teacher seemed unaware of the attack and escalated the issue to Miryah Walters. The next morning, he was taken to a room with Miryah and the Dean of Students, Kristen Blaire, where they harshly imposed a gag order on him. He was told that he was not allowed to discuss the details of his assault with anyone on campus including his teachers.  When he questioned the reasoning for this, the only answer provided was that he must follow the rules.”

By September, the headmaster determined that a victim of assault on his campus and the student’s parents posed too great a threat to the institution’s reputation. Why? Because they insisted on telling the truth about April 2023 and everything that transpired thereafter.

In correspondence from Elmore September 18, 2023, Stefanik is advised that his son “IS NOT ALLOWED ON THE O’NEAL CAMPUS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON. ADDITIONALLY, HE IS NO LONGER ELIGIBLE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE O’NEAL AQUATICS PROGRAM.”

Stefanik tells me O’Neal parents have contacted him to express their revulsion toward Elmore and the administration. But he’s not counting on a coordinated campaign to punish the O’Neal overlords.

“People are very hesitant to speak up,” he said.