Jesus follower. Orthodox Christian in recovery. ☦️ ICXC NIKA. Grandpa to 17.
Newark, DE
Joined November 2008
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"God, who is by nature good and dispassionate, loves all men equally as His handiwork. But He glorifies the virtuous man because in his will he is united to God. At the same time, in His goodness He is merciful to the sinner and by chastising him in this life brings him back to the path of virtue. Similarly, a man of good and dispassionate judgment also loves all mankind equally, He loves the virtuous man because of his nature and the probity of his intention; and he loves the sinner, too, because of his nature and because in his compassion he pities him for foolishly stumbling in darkness." + St. Maximos the Confessor
Facts
Tony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times during today's hearing but during Covid he was the voice that shredded the Bill of Rights.
First Amendment
Churches and synagogues faced capacity limits or outright indoor bans while secular “essential” businesses (liquor stores, big-box retail, casinos in some places) operated with fewer or no comparable limits. Pastors were arrested or charged for holding services (e.g., Rodney Howard-Browne in Tampa; Tony Spell in Louisiana). The Supreme Court intervened multiple times, finding certain New York and California rules discriminatory against religion (Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, Tandon v. Newsom). Gatherings for worship, protests, or social purposes were restricted or banned for extended periods. Dissenting scientific or policy speech (lab-leak theory, natural immunity, vaccine efficacy/safety data, off-the-shelf therapeutics, mask efficacy) faced coordinated pressure on platforms via government communications; this became the core of Missouri v. Biden / Murthy v. Missouri litigation, protesting the largest First Amendment censorship effort in modern U.S. history. Vaccine passports or proof requirements further conditioned access to public life, employment, and venues.
Second Amendment
Some jurisdictions (Los Angeles and Ventura Counties in California, parts of New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Washington, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) classified gun and ammunition dealers as non-essential and ordered them closed for days to weeks while other retailers stayed open. This blocked acquisition of firearms/ammunition. The 9th Circuit later held certain California county closures violated the right to keep and bear arms because they wholly prevented acquisition. Background checks and sales still occurred in many places via defiance or exemptions for multi-purpose stores.
Third Amendment
Was there quartering of soldiers in private homes? Yes. House parties were banned. Weddings, funerals, and parties were broken up. Drones flew the skies hunting for too many cars parked out front. Venues were fined for violating capacity limits. Hospitals could not do elective surgery and dentist offices were stopped from doing basic cleaning. The elderly dying alone in hospitals were kept there, not allowed to be home with family. Families prohibited from visiting elderly homes for which they were paid.
Fourth Amendment
Contact-tracing programs, exposure-notification apps, and location/data collection were warrantless surveillance Tracing requiring data on contacts of infected persons and were extracted and uploaded to to bulk metadata programs. Quarantine enforcement and some testing/isolation orders proceeded with limited individualized process. Privacy bills were introduced in Congress but broad mandatory apps were not uniformly imposed.
Fifth Amendment
Stay-at-home orders functioned as extended house arrest for healthy people; “non-essential” businesses were shuttered by executive decree, destroying livelihoods and supply chains without individualized hearings. Vaccine mandates for federal workers, contractors, military, healthcare, and (via OSHA) large private employers conditioned employment on an injection—compelled medical treatment without fully informed consent. Courts struck down the broad OSHA private-employer mandate and some federal ones; military religious-accommodation denials produced extensive litigation and career penalties. Bodily autonomy and the right to refuse treatment were repeatedly invoked.
Sixth and Seventh Amendments
Court closures and delays produced massive backlogs. Speedy-trial rights and civil jury trials were postponed for months to years in many jurisdictions, leaving defendants and litigants in limbo. This was treated as logistical necessity rather than deliberate suspension, but the practical effect was widespread justice delayed. Vaccine injury? Forget it: the courts won’t hear you because shot makers had a liability shield.
Eighth Amendment
In prisons, COVID-positive or exposed inmates were placed in conditions described as windowless, filthy, high-security isolation cells with severe restrictions on movement, showers, and property—conditions previously associated with disciplinary or death-row housing. Courts found some deliberate-indifference failures; broader claims about overcrowding, inadequate medical response, and isolation as de facto punishment were litigated under “cruel and unusual” standards.
Ninth Amendment
Unenumerated rights claims centered on bodily integrity, medical autonomy, freedom of travel and association, parental rights over children’s schooling/masking/vaccination, and the freedom to skateboard, surf, or just take a walk. Lockdowns, school closures (with documented learning loss and mental-health impacts), and pediatric mandates were sweeping peacetime restrictions on ordinary life.
Tenth Amendment
Federal vaccine mandates (OSHA for private employers, contractor rules) usurped traditional state police powers over public health. The Supreme Court invalidated the OSHA rule as exceeding statutory and constitutional authority. Prolonged emergency declarations by governors suspended ordinary legislative processes in multiple states. The overall package—lockdowns of the healthy, discriminatory religious limits, speech suppression, business destruction, and conditional access to work/society via vaccination—were the greatest peacetime civil-liberties intrusion in modern U.S. history, second only to slavery. Courts ultimately reined in some of the most extreme measures, especially on religion and the federal private-employer mandate, but many policies operated for months or years first. Empirical debates continue over necessity versus excess and net harm.
But by all means, Dr. Fauci, invoke YOUR rights.
The way up is the way down.
Finding the Embers: Johnny Burtka's Last ISI Lecture
ISI's mission is to nurture the next generation of students and leaders by connecting them to the great tradition of Western and American thought — from Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome to London and Philadelphia. In this speech, @johnnyburtka reflects on what it truly means to be called to greatness, and why the answer may surprise you.
(0:00) The embers of Western civilization
(2:06) ISI’s “fire keepers” on campus
(4:09) Are we really called to greatness?
(6:28) Washington & Lincoln on humility
Orthodox Boomer retweeted
Trump 101: Grandiose Narcissist
Grandiose narcissism is a subtype of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) characterized by arrogance, dominance, and a sense of superiority. Unlike vulnerable narcissism, which is marked by insecurity and hypersensitivity to criticism, grandiose narcissists are typically confident, assertive, and often appear charismatic. Believing they are entitled to special treatment and unlimited power, an overt narcissist will exhibit a superior attitude, inflated sense of self-importance, and desire for excessive admiration. Furthermore, people with this narcissistic behavior may go to great lengths to achieve the attention they desire, dismissing and belittling others in the process.
Orthodox Boomer retweeted
I found this bit today between @RealMattFradd and Peter Kreeft profoundly moving (Kreeft’s wife of 60+ years recently died).
It’s no wonder marriage is a type of Christ and His Church. If we love His Catholic Church only if Her body is beautiful, we are not truly loving Her.
Orthodox Boomer retweeted
I remember watching this live on TV. As much as I hated some of the things Graham did, esp his hawkishness, this is how I too choose to remember him. It was the disgusting Kavanaugh sham that made me change my mind on Trump too.
Nota bene
As we said goodbye to the country of my birth, I felt bitter and heartbroken. Not because I don’t want to live in Australia—a beautiful country, and my other home—but because I never planned on leaving Britain, writes @Louise_m_perry
on.wsj.com/4ayXaMz
Orthodox Boomer retweeted
Uh, #Orthobros? The key: men have been streaming into Orthodoxy since the '80s. The Internet as turned up the heat, big time. Thoughts from @FredericaMG @roddreher and moi. This gets complex. @scc_osi @OrthodoxHistory @Orthodixie @FrAndrewSDamick
tmattingly.substack.com/p/fr…
Orthodox Boomer retweeted
Let me tell you about Michael Morton. He was just a regular guy, an American husband, a father to a five-year-old son, and an office worker. He lived in the suburbs of Austin, Texas.
In August 1986, Michael came home to find police officers all over his house. His wife had been murdered, beaten with a baseball bat and covered with a pillow. The day before, they had celebrated their wedding anniversary. That morning, Michael had left for work at 5:30 a.m. and left a note saying he loved her but was disappointed that they hadn’t been intimate the night before.
The police focused on Michael as their suspect. They said he killed his wife because she refused to have sex. He had never been in trouble with the law, not even a speeding ticket. Still, he was arrested, charged with murder, and sent to prison. He lost custody of his son, who was told that his father had killed his mother.
Michael spent 25 years in prison. He was offered parole if he admitted guilt, but he refused, saying the only thing he had left was his innocence.
There was important evidence, a bloodstained bandana found in an alley near the crime scene. Michael’s defense team asked for it to be tested, even offering to pay for it, but the district attorney refused. They had to fight in court to get permission. When the test was finally done, the blood on the bandana belonged to a different man, a recently released criminal.
As they kept digging, they found even more shocking evidence. Other women in Austin had been murdered the same way after Michael was already in prison. Michael’s wife’s credit card had been used after her death, while Michael was locked up.
Then, another hidden piece of evidence came to light. Michael’s mother-in-law had spoken with her grandson (Michael’s son) about the murder. She asked him who killed his mom, and the little boy said, “A monster.” When she asked if the monster was his father, the boy replied, “He’s not my father.” This statement was kept secret from Michael and his lawyers.
Finally, DNA from another Austin murder was tested, and it matched the blood from the bandana.
After 25 years, Michael was finally released. At a court hearing, the judge apologized for the terrible injustice he had suffered. The real killer was later charged with two murders.
And what happened to the prosecutor who hid the evidence? He was promoted to a judge. Eventually, he lost his law license and was sentenced to jail, but only for ten days.
Michael wrote a book about his experience called Getting Life (2014).
Because of what happened to him, Texas changed its laws. On May 16, 2013, Governor Rick Perry signed the Michael Morton Law, which requires prosecutors to share all evidence in a case to prevent wrongful convictions like Michael’s.
What a painful experience😭😭😭
Orthodox Boomer retweeted
A Norwegian neuroscientist spent 20 years proving that the act of writing by hand changes the human brain in ways typing physically cannot, and almost nobody outside her field has read the paper.
Her name is Audrey van der Meer.
She runs a brain research lab in Trondheim, and the paper that closed the argument was published in 2024 in a journal called Frontiers in Psychology. The finding is brutal enough that it should have changed every classroom on Earth.
The experiment was simple. She recruited 36 university students and put each one in a cap with 256 sensors pressed against their scalp to record brain activity. Words flashed on a screen one at a time.
Sometimes the students wrote the word by hand on a touchscreen using a digital pen, and sometimes they typed the same word on a keyboard. Every neural response was recorded for the full five seconds the word stayed on screen.
Then her team looked at the part of the data most researchers had ignored for years, which is how different parts of the brain were communicating with each other during the task.
When the students wrote by hand, the brain lit up everywhere at once.
The regions responsible for memory, sensory integration, and the encoding of new information were all firing together in a coordinated pattern that spread across the entire cortex. The whole network was awake and connected.
When the same students typed the same word, that pattern collapsed almost completely.
Most of the brain went quiet, and the connections between regions that had been alive seconds earlier were nowhere to be found on the EEG.
Same word, same brain, same person, and two completely different neurological events.
The reason turned out to be something nobody had really paid attention to before her work. Writing by hand is not one motion but a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements coordinated with your eyes in real time, where each letter is a different shape that requires the brain to solve a slightly different spatial problem.
Your fingers, wrist, vision, and the parts of your brain that track position in space are all working together to produce one letter, then the next, then the next.
Typing throws all of that away. Every key on a keyboard requires the exact same finger motion regardless of which letter you are pressing, which means the brain has almost nothing to integrate and almost no problem to solve.
Van der Meer said it plainly in her interviews.
Pressing the same key with the same finger over and over does not stimulate the brain in any meaningful way, and she pointed out something that should scare every parent who handed their kid an iPad.
Children who learn to read and write on tablets often cannot tell letters like b and d apart, because they have never physically felt with their bodies what it takes to actually produce those letters on a page.
A decade before her, two researchers at Princeton ran the same fight using a completely different method and ended up at the same answer. Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer tested 327 students across three experiments, where half took notes on laptops with the internet disabled and half took notes by hand, before testing everyone on what they actually understood from the lectures they had watched.
The handwriting group won by a wide margin on every question that required real understanding rather than surface recall.
The reason was hiding in the transcripts of what the two groups had actually written down.
The laptop students typed almost word for word, capturing more total content but processing almost none of it as they went, while the handwriting students physically could not write fast enough to transcribe a lecture in real time, which forced them to listen carefully, decide what actually mattered, and put it in their own words on the page.
That single act of choosing what to keep was the learning itself, and the keyboard had quietly skipped the choosing and skipped the learning along with it.
Two studies. Two countries. Same answer.
Handwriting makes the brain work. Typing lets it coast.
Every note you have ever typed instead of written went into your brain through a thinner pipe. Every meeting, every book highlight, every idea you captured on your phone instead of on paper was processed at half depth.
You did not forget those things because your memory is bad. You forgot them because typing never woke the part of the brain that would have made them stick.
The fix is the thing your grandmother already knew.
Pick up a pen. Write the thing down. The slower road is the faster one.
In Him all things consist...
In quantum mechanics, two particles can be bound so tightly that if one changes, the other instantly reacts - no matter how far apart they are, separated by light-years or entire galaxies. A wonder among wonders, isn’t it?
But we Christians, brothers and sisters, did not have to wait for these modern instruments to discover that nothing in creation stands alone and broken. Long ago the holy Apostle Paul told us plainly: "For in Him all things were created […] and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16–17). Do you hear it? "They hold together"! The particles do not hold themselves; they are not bound in blind sorcery. No - it is "He" who holds them, Christ the Lord, who brought them forth from nothing and carries them moment by moment in the palm of His hand.
And again, at the very beginning of the Gospel: “All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3). Nothing! Not a speck of dust, not a single ray of light floats solitary, apart from Him.
Saint Maximus the Confessor showed us that in every created thing there dwells a "logos" divine - a thought of God. All these divine thoughts call to one another, gather, and turn toward the One alone: toward Christ, the eternal Logos. The world is not a heap of scattered pieces, but a living crown, a symphony held in unity by His love.
And Saint Gregory Palamas taught us that God, utterly incomprehensible and unapproachable in His essence, nevertheless descends with His "uncreated energies" everywhere - into stone, into flower, into star, into our very breath. He does not mix with creation, yet He fills it, sustains it, unites it from within.
So when today you hear talk of this “quantum entanglement,” do not be overly astonished. It is but a faint shadow, a dim flicker of the truth we have known from the beginning: "everything is connected to everything", because everything depends on Christ. He is the unseen bond, the One who holds the universe like a drop of dew in His boundless palm.
Brothers and sisters, let us not lose ourselves in passing wonders. Let us look beyond them to Him who placed them there as reminders: "God holds all things together" - and us with them. And if He holds us, who shall ever separate us?
Orthodox Boomer retweeted
The end game of big government is always totalitarian tryanny in pursuit of raw and absolute power.
It’s all about the oil and the dollar. Wait until the first American young person dies 👎🏻
The real reason the US is invading Venezuela goes back to a deal Henry Kissinger made with Saudi Arabia in 1974.
And I'm going to explain why this is actually about the SURVIVAL of the US dollar itself.
Not drugs. Not terrorism. Not "democracy."
This is about the petrodollar system that has kept America the dominant economic power for 50 years.
And Venezuela just threatened to end it.
Here's what really just happened:
Venezuela has 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.
The largest on Earth.
More than Saudi Arabia.
20% of the entire world's oil.
But here's the part that matters:
Venezuela was actively selling that oil in Chinese yuan. Not dollars.
In 2018, Venezuela announced it would "free itself from the dollar."
They started accepting yuan, euros, rubles, anything BUT dollars for oil.
They were petitioning to join BRICS.
They were building direct payment channels with China that bypass SWIFT entirely.
And they were sitting on enough oil to fund de-dollarization for decades.
Why does this matter?
Because the entire American financial system is built on one thing:
The petrodollar.
In 1974, Henry Kissinger made a deal with Saudi Arabia:
All oil sold globally must be priced in US dollars.
In exchange, America provides military protection.
This single agreement created artificial demand for dollars worldwide.
Every country on Earth needs dollars to buy oil.
This lets America print unlimited money while other countries work for it.
It funds the military. The welfare state. The deficit spending.
The petrodollar is more important to US hegemony than aircraft carriers.
And there's a pattern of what happens to leaders who challenge it:
2000: Saddam Hussein announces Iraq will sell oil in euros instead of dollars.
2003: Invaded. Regime change. Iraq's oil immediately switched back to dollars. Saddam lynched.
The WMDs were never found because they never existed.
2009: Gaddafi proposes a gold-backed African currency called the "gold dinar" for oil trade.
Hillary Clinton's own leaked emails confirm this was the PRIMARY reason for intervention.
Email quote: "This gold was intended to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar."
2011: NATO bombs Libya. Gaddafi sodomized and murdered. Libya now has open slave markets.
"We came, we saw, he died!" Clinton laughed on camera.
The gold dinar died with him.
And now Maduro.
With FIVE TIMES more oil than Saddam and Gaddafi combined.
Actively selling in yuan.
Building payment systems outside dollar control.
Petitioning to join BRICS.
Partnered with China, Russia, and Iran.
The three countries leading global de-dollarization.
This isn't coincidence.
Challenge the petrodollar. Get regime changed.
Every. Single. Time.
Stephen Miller (US homeland security advisor) literally said it out loud two weeks ago:
"American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property."
He's not hiding it.
They're claiming Venezuelan oil BELONGS to America because US companies developed it 100 years ago.
By this logic, every nationalized resource in history was "theft."
But here's the DEEPER problem:
The petrodollar is already dying.
Russia sells oil in rubles and yuan since Ukraine.
Saudi Arabia is openly discussing yuan settlements.
Iran has been trading in non-dollar currencies for years.
China built CIPS, their own alternative to SWIFT with 4,800 banks in 185 countries.
BRICS is actively building payment systems that bypass the dollar entirely.
The mBridge project lets central banks settle trades instantly in local currencies.
Venezuela joining BRICS with 303 billion barrels of oil would accelerate this exponentially.
That's what this invasion is really about.
Not stopping drugs. Venezuela accounts for less than 1% of US cocaine.
Not terrorism. There's zero evidence Maduro runs a "terror organization."
Not democracy. The US supports Saudi Arabia, which has zero elections.
This is about maintaining a 50-year-old agreement that lets America print money while the world works for it.
And the consequences are terrifying:
Russia, China, and Iran are already denouncing this as "armed aggression."
China is Venezuela's biggest oil customer. They're losing billions.
BRICS nations are watching a country get invaded for trading outside the dollar.
Every nation considering de-dollarization just got the message:
Challenge the dollar and we will bomb you.
But here's the problem...
That message might accelerate de-dollarization, not stop it.
Because now every country in the Global South knows what happens if you threaten dollar hegemony.
And they're realizing the only protection is to move FASTER.
The timing is insane too:
January 3rd, 2026. Venezuela invaded. Maduro captured.
January 3rd, 1990. Panama invaded. Noriega captured.
36 years apart. Almost to the day.
Same playbook. Same "drug trafficking" excuse.
Same real reason: control of strategic resources and trade routes.
History doesn't repeat. But it rhymes.
What happens next:
Trump's press conference at Mar-a-Lago sets the narrative.
US oil companies are already lined up. Politico reported they've been approached about "returning to Venezuela."
The opposition will be installed. Oil will flow in dollars again.
Venezuela becomes another Iraq. Another Libya.
But here's what nobody's asking:
What happens when you can no longer bomb your way to dollar dominance?
When China has enough economic leverage to retaliate?
When BRICS controls 40% of global GDP and says "no more dollars"?
When the world realizes the petrodollar is maintained by violence?
America just showed its hand.
The question is whether the rest of the world folds or calls the bluff.
Because this invasion is an admission that the dollar can no longer compete on its own merits.
When you have to bomb countries to keep them using your currency, the currency is already dying.
Venezuela isn't the beginning.
It's the desperate end.
What do you think?
Orthodox Boomer retweeted
Fantastic article by Ruth Graham in the NYT about the immense growth of Orthodox Christianity in America -- even the problematic parts. Very fair and thorough -- great job, Ruth! nytimes.com/2025/11/19/us/or…
Orthodox Boomer retweeted
This is what @RepJoeWilson is defending.
