September 12, 2025

Richard Skinner

There are some people out there. A few, I know a very little about. None of them know anything about me.

Yet, there is one thing that I know about all of them. They want to kill me. Kill me, for the crime of not bowing in obeisance to their ideologies, bowing in obeisance to their “superior” selves.

If this is not the very foundational definition of “war” – well, I challenge you to come up with a better one. Not the one that has been “refined” by diplomats and statesmen over the centuries, but the core essence of what “war” is.

We, the people whose ideology is “liberty and justice for all,” as we say in our pledge to a “mere scrap of fabric,” but is actually enshrined in our hearts and minds, are at war with those whose ideology is “tyranny and justice only for the ‘enlightened’.”

It is time that we recognize this fact. The fact that we have always been at war with those people, from before the dawn of recorded history. From the first tribesman that picked up his spear to ensure that his mate and his children would not starve while the lazy cronies of the chieftain grew fat, to those today who fight with words sent out through modern electronic channels. The time for war has always been now, whether we have ignored it in the past, or may ignore it in the future. It is inescapable.

Admittedly, the vast majority of us are far behind the front lines of this war. But we are still soldiers in this war – support companies, as it were, for those who have placed themselves between us and our implacable enemies. This does not make us less important; we fight with words, with money sent to those on the front lines for media efforts, for lawyers, for revealing the enemy for all to see. We are needed by those in front of us, so that they may, once again, push the enemy back into their miserable hovels. Remember, though, that the enemy is always striving to penetrate that front line and get to our “soft core.” There may come a time, God forbid, when we must needs take up arms to defend those who are behind even us. That time is not yet – it may not come in our lifetimes – but be watchful, be prepared, if that day should come.

Enough to my fellows that fight for liberty every day, in whatever way they are able. I shall add a caution for the enemy, though. There was once a Great King in Persia, a “King of Kings,” that decreed the murder of a man that came to talk to him, whose words he did not wish to hear. The people of the region where that ancient kingdom once existed still talk, centuries later, in hushed whispers of what resulted from that act of murder – the burning cities, and the mountains of skulls that were erected outside their broken gates. Think on this, my enemies. Think long. Think hard. Lest you suffer the same fate.

(NOTE: You, the reader of this, can tell that it has been a very long time since I posted anything here. I was not planning to post this, actually. This has been nagging at me, though, ever since Wednesday when the diplomat we sent to you was murdered for his words. The anniversary of the mass murder committed by the thugs of a totalitarian, demonstrably evil religion only added to the pressure. My mind could not, just could not, rest easy while these words were not uttered.

Life, for me, has been “interesting” the last few years. Not all in the apocryphal “Chinese curse” manner; there has been joy also in those interesting times. It has been impossible, though, to concentrate on producing large numbers of words, whether a screed like this one, or the fiction that I desperately want to write. I am working on doing better, but don’t depend on it. These bursts of activity have tailed off before.)