PrayNorthState

10/30/2024

Recommended Votes on Judges – by James Wilson

The following are my personal recommendations for retaining judges. Idaho’s Secretary of State provides no information on the qualifications of judges. Judges in Idaho are appointed, not elected, and citizen input is not thought unnecessary. We do have the right to retain or reject judges when their terms expire. I do not speak for any organization in this, but I recommend retention of the following, based on what is known of their values, and witness reports of their behavior regarding constitutional rights:

Danica Comstock Kira Dale Cathleen MacGregor Irby
Regan Jameson Michael McLennan Abraham Wingrove

I recommend rejection of the following based on their disregard of constitutional rights:

Andrew Ellis Laurie Fortier

I have no recommendation on any other judges. May God bless us all.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, Kingdom in Pursuit, and his first novel, Generation – available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, or at [email protected]

10/26/2024

AWASH IN SEWAGE
By James Wilson

Local airwaves are awash in ads proclaiming failure to adopt Proposition 1 is an existential threat to democracy, like President Trump. (While watching a movie last week I was blasted by four identical ads in the space of about ten minutes.) We are supposed to believe two hundred seventy-five thousand Idahoans are prevented from choosing their elected officials because of our “closed” primary system, including many veterans. HOGWASH!

Any adult Idahoan – excepting convicted felons – is welcome to vote in any primary; veterans are especially encouraged to exercise the franchise for which they fought. The only imperative is that one join a party before presuming to choose who represents that party in a general election. The question is as straightforward as one can get. So why do proponents of Prop 1 lie through their teeth about it?

Why do backers spend untold millions on ads regurgitating the same sewage? Most of that money comes from outside Idaho. Why do backers imagine repeating – ad nauseam – the same drumbeat will eventually bludgeon us into submission? And why are so many wealthy outsiders committed to conning Idaho voters?

I can tell you one thing. As an eighth grader I ran for student body treasurer at my school. Unable to think of anything compelling to make my case, I just repeated, “Vote for Jim Wilson, vote for Jim Wilson, vote for Jim Wilson,” until my time was up. In the election I was massacred, and rightly so. I can only pray this proposition goes down as hard as I did. Otherwise, Idaho will be permanently awash in leftwing sewage.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, Kingdom in Pursuit, and his first novel, Generation – available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, or at [email protected]

10/24/2024

A CONSTITUTIONAL SHERIFF; NOW THERE’S A CONCEPT
By James Wilson

The office of sheriff as we know it dates back more than eight hundred years. The Magna Carta brought a serious measure of freedom to Great Britain with its signing by King John and ratification by the British nobility in 1215 AD. The legendary figure of the Sheriff of Nottingham – doing battle with Robin Hood, and usually losing his shirt – was typical of what were called Shire Reeves – sheriffs – whose primary function was to collect taxes and protect the interests of King and nobility against uppity civilians who wanted to feed and clothe their families. (Reeve means “collector.”) The redeemed “Shire Reeve” tradition was incorporated into our constitutional culture when the office of county sheriff became an elected position, and when those elected were required to take an oath – not to the mayor, the governor, or even the president, but to the Constitution, and the Sovereign People it serves.

Not every sheriff recognizes his subordination to this document and its people. In Idaho’s Ada County, Sheriff Matt Clifford has stated publicly that he had no problem carrying out the orders of Governor Brad Little to close businesses – and even First Amendment protected churches – if the governor deemed them non-essential during the COVID pandemic. He had no trouble with it if those orders – and such things as forced vaccinations that have been anything but effective, and which most Americans now consider hazardous to health – came from public health officials or even Joe Biden. He takes such a position because he believes a county sheriff has no jurisdiction over such things unless officials give it to him; he says he would bring his power to bear against citizens if new lockdowns were ordered, or anything else his bosses command. To be fair, most county sheriffs share Clifford’s perspective, but that most certainly does not make it righteous, legal, or constitutional.

The Constitutional candidate in the upcoming election, Doug Traubel, holds the polar oppositional perspective of the incumbent. For Traubel, the real question is simple: Is the sheriff a king’s enforcer or a servant of the people? Traubel made his decision to be a servant forty years ago; he has never wavered from it.

Traubel stands with sheriffs like Richard Mack – who sued the federal government and won a favorable ruling from the US Supreme Court against unconstitutional provisions of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act – and is the founder and president of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. (Mack is the former sheriff of Graham County, Arizona.) Others include Glenn County, New Mexico, Sheriff Glenn Hamilton, who deputized the congregation of New Hope Revival Church in his county so state police could not shut it down during the COVID constitutional debacle. Sheriffs (Chad Bianco) from Riverside County, California, to (Bob Songer) Klickitat County, Washington, to (Dar Leaf) Barry County, Michigan, are among others standing between their citizens and governments – at all levels – that believe an emergency justifies assaults on civil rights.

Ada County’s Matt Clifford – the one who claims he has no jurisdiction to resist or determine unconstitutionality of laws or regulations – approved of the action of his predecessor, who sent his deputies into the Boise Courthouse to prevent unmasked defendants from entering the courts to which they had been summoned. After Sheriff Bartlett prevented their appearances by arresting them, they were charged with failure to appear into the bargain.

Doug Traubel finds such conduct – on the part of the deputies and their boss – to be an appalling dereliction of their oath to the constitution to protect and serve under it. He notes that even some police chiefs – who did not swear the oath required of sheriffs – are becoming reluctant to enforce illegitimate laws and mandates. He is running to resurrect the culture of law enforcement in his county’s department, and to bring support and encouragement to other sheriffs – and chiefs of police – who are trying to do the same thing. He does this not because he is a revolutionary, but because he is an authentic conservative, dedicated to the preservation and protection of the people he loves and respects with his life’s blood.

He plans to implement a program of relationship building and training to help deputies understand and implement their personal call to servant leadership, as opposed to maintaining order by whatever tactics seem necessary in the heat of emergency. The Magna Carta established shire reeves as defenders of the people, making the law (and due process) king instead of the King being the law. Post-revolution America expanded this understanding to declare we have God-given rights, not state given privileges. The American Experiment is about proving that even the Civil Law is not king; it is the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God that reign over us. Doug Traubel is endorsed by Conservatives Of because he embodies this American Experiment.

The bottom line is again a question. Do Ada County voters want a sheriff who sees their rights as the ultimate law, or who just works for the lawmakers and executive functionaries of government? Do we want a sheriff who says – when a citizen successfully sues his department for trampling his civil rights – “It wasn’t our best day,” or a sheriff who promises, “My deputies will be trained in the Constitution and its worldview, and in the art of de-escalation,” before things spiral out of control. Do they want a sheriff who says, “I have no jurisdiction,” or one who says, “I have your back even if I must resist lawless government representatives in order to do that.” A vote for Doug Traubel on November 5 will make voters participants in the resurrection of our republic. A vote for the incumbent will declare everything is just fine as it is.

Just think of it. A constitutional sheriff; now there’s a concept.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, Kingdom in Pursuit, and his first novel, Generation – available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, or at [email protected]

10/20/2024

A RECIPE FOR TYRANNY: OPEN PRIMARIES AND RANKED CHOICE
By James Wilson

Arguably the most important – and surely the most dangerous – issue on the Idaho state ballot in 2024 is called Proposition 1. It contains two provisions that would be simultaneously enacted should it pass. The first calls for a so-called open primary that permits people from all parties to vote for candidate nominations in one party. The second calls for “ranked choice” voting, a system that requires – for a vote to count – the voter to select between multiple candidates for any office in a descending order of preference. If no candidate wins second choices are automatically counted – a voting machine does the counting and allocating – and so on until a majority is achieved. I lived under such a system for sixteen months, and I can promise the destruction of free elections wherever such an atrocity becomes law.

Defenders of the open primary claim it makes elections more fair because it prevents extreme elements in any party from garnering a party nomination. But answering such questions internally is implicitly the business of each political party. We have general elections so the whole electorate can ratify or reject a party’s choice.

Open primaries mean every voter gets to register their preference for the nominees in all political parties, not just for the single party a given voter may choose to join. In reality the open primary is no more “democratic” – as our constitutional republic understands it – than answering my door each night before preparing dinner so all my neighbors can weigh in on what they want me to serve. (If they want a voice in my family’s choice for dinner they can darn well join the family, sharing responsibility for both expense and effort.) That this is not only nonsensical but downright tyrannical should go without saying, but apparently it does not.

Reality is that political parties are private organizations. Anyone can join, and thus seek to influence the party’s direction, and certainly the choice of candidates to advance – or even re**rd – the party’s program. But surely any intelligent person can see parties are under no obligation to permit non-members to exert governing influence on them. Parties that nominate extremists as their standard bearers will either face rejection at the polls or discover radical change is what voters want and need. Reality is – and should be – that general elections are for all voters to have an equal say; primaries are meant to be – by definition – members-only affairs. Only sore losers and saboteurs have anything to gain from a Proposition 1 victory in November.

If it be possible, ranked choice voting offers an even worse outcome than the mere jungle primary. As I said, voters are compelled – if they wish their vote to count – to rank their choices one through five – or three or four – and machines will count the votes. If a candidate garners a clear majority – 50%+1 or higher – we have a winner. If no one reaches a majority, the machines eliminate the lowest scorer, distribute his/her votes to other candidates by algorithm, and recount in hopes that a candidate will now post a majority. The machined process continues until someone posts a majority.

The bottom line is that the most popular vote getter rarely emerges the winner. And to make matters worse, there is no way to hand count – supposing an audit is desired – because the machines certify their own results. Proposition 1 specifies that Dominion Voting machines will be used. Readers will remember the controversy surrounding Dominion machines in the 2020 presidential election. Dominion did its own internal investigation, and assured the American people that there was neither fraud nor malfunction in their machines. They then filed lawsuits against voters who still questioned the presidential election results. Today they are back to guarantee results – backed by nothing but their claims to credibility – in our own state of Idaho.

Some will argue that ranked choice is no different than having a runoff between the top two candidates, but truth is there is a world of difference between having a new election between two top vote getters and accepting the machines’ verdict that the runoff has already happened due to ranking candidates by algorithm for subsequent rounds. A real runoff includes a campaign, and a chance for voters to more closely scrutinize the opponents, before making their choice, rather than having a voting machine decide between them. When any necessary runoffs have been concluded the nominees are set and the general election gives the whole electorate a chance to choose the next officeholder.

Others will argue that – should the top two primary contenders be members of the same party – a jungle primary in no way compromises election integrity. Yet reality is that the very reason political parties form is so each can develop its own philosophy of governing, its vision for the common good in its sphere, and its party brand. In a jungle primary it is quite possible – as demonstrated by California over the years – that voters will never have opportunity to see the parties represented by their nominees having a go at one another in a general election. This eventuality can only weaken a democratic republic like ours with one party so dominant the other(s) become irrelevant.

Truth is, the biggest drawback to ranked choice voting and/or the jungle primary is the reality that the majority of voters do not win. I saw this when my brother-in-law ran for the territorial assembly of the Australian Capitol Territory when I lived there. Peter received a goodly plurality of first place votes, but less than a majority. The seat eventually went to the third ranked vote getter. Let us consign Proposition 1 to the rubbish bin. Should it pass, only Dominion voting machines and candidates who cannot win in an honest election will profit.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, Kingdom in Pursuit, and his first novel, Generation – available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, or at [email protected]

10/12/2024

SERVING THEIR GOD AND FEEDING THEIR ADDICTION
By James Wilson

One of Kamala Harris’ favorite stump stories is the authentic tragedy of Amber Thurman. She became pregnant in Georgia over the summer of 2022, the same summer the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. By the time Thurman knew she was pregnant she was already too late for a Georgia abortion; that state has a fetal heartbeat law that went into effect following the SCOTUS decision. She traveled to North Carolina seeking a surgical abortion but arrived late for her appointment and was offered abortion pills instead by the Planned Parenthood staffers she trusted. Within hours of taking the second pill she had become critically ill with internal bleeding and necrotic tissue in her womb.

Abandoned by Planned Parenthood, Thurman returned to Georgia and admission to a hospital. Doctors determined she was severely septic due to abortion drugs and fetal remains left in her abdomen. Doctors were afraid to proceed with a standard surgical cleansing – quite legal in Georgia under the circumstances – lest they be charged with criminal abortion. While they dithered for twenty hours Amber Thurman died. Kamala Harris cynically blames Donald Trump for Thurman’s death when reality is the negligent Planned Parenthood clinicians and the cowardly doctors – trusted allies of Harris and Walz – killed her.

Reality is Harris and Walz and their party value unlimited abortion beyond all other things – they have been saying as much for decades – and what one values the most is what one worships. (What other issue are they running on? Even their eternal refrain that Trump is “a threat to democracy” is based on his appointment of Supreme Court justices who in fact democratized abortion by returning it to the states.) Abortion is their deity, their addiction of choice, and they will lie, cheat, and cover for the slaughter of innocents – like Amber Thurman and her preborn baby – in its service, whether Moloch, or Ba’al, or simply Choice.

Of course, it is a truism that addicts lie, whether or not the lie du jour bears any visible relationship to the deity demanding blood. The acolytes of Choice are addicted to their idol, and so they behave like the addicts they are, regardless of the objective at stake from one moment to another.

Harris presses on to lie about her upbringing in a “middle class neighborhood in Oakland.” While she was indeed born in Oakland, she lived between college towns like Evanston, Illinois – a wealthy Chicago suburb – and spent her formative years in the posh Montreal suburb of Westmount; her family occupied the top floor of a Victorian mansion. She attended the French speaking Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, fine arts core elementary school in which she studied copper enameling, macrame, poetry, interior design, yoga, and tie-dying. She attended Vanier College in Montreal before graduating from Howard University and taking her law degree from UC California’s Hastings Law School. It may be that her educational background and her affluent upbringing account for her failure to identify with real Americans…like the folks who have just had their homes and livelihoods washed away by Hurricane Helene.

It takes a galactic size insensitivity to promise – and so far fail to deliver – a mere $750.00 per person for the victims of Helene, and to assure people whose access to the internet was washed away along with their homes, that they need only go online to access their benefits. But it is a lie of equal proportions to claim that the needs of all hurricane refugees are being met in the face of countless eyewitness accounts that FEMA and the feds are rarely to be seen on the ground, and that wherever they are present they are too busy compiling data to actually help anyone – except when they threaten to arrest private citizens – who are actually bringing food, water, and rescue – for interference with virtually non-existent government activity.

Perhaps the biggest lie of all emanating from the Harris-Walz camp is to deny that our nation’s disaster relief money has been squandered on housing illegals in posh hotels and granting them three and a half times the cash assistance offered to American flood victims. Reality is that receipts are available, Alejandro Mayorkas has admitted the disaster relief account is virtually empty, and our government has spent more than a billion dollars to care for people with no right to be here – monies that should be available for hardworking Americans caught in the path of the hurricane. For the party worshipping the right to kill babies and expel aged veterans from their hotels, hurricane battered Americans are the last priority.

The term “October Surprise” was coined to label a sudden and devastating revelation released by one political campaign against the other so close to election day that there is not adequate time to address it. Apparently this year’s October Surprise is supplied by Hurricane Helene against the Democrat regime, exposed in all their colossal incompetence and dishonesty. Yet for the Harris-Walz campaign, simply hoisting itself on its own petard is not enough. The State Department has just announced appropriation of $157 million to aid civilians in Lebanon, an amount some $40 million higher than what they now claim to be appropriating for the five states hardest hit by Helene.

Contrast this October surprise with Donald Trump – on the ground and organizing relief long before the government made landfall in North Carolina – doing all that a man can do for his country and begging God to rout the forces of evil from the land into the bargain, as he posted on social media on September 29. Progressives like Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich were outraged that Trump prayed for national resurrection. But the choice for Americans is thus clarified. We can elect an administration that humbly bows before God, or one that addictively worships the idol of abortion.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, Kingdom in Pursuit, and his first novel, Generation – available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, or at [email protected]

10/11/2024

10/07/2024

ARROGANCE THE GREAT ANTAGONIST OF CONSERVATIVES
By James Wilson

Brian Almon, writing about the collision of ultra-orthodox pro-life Republicans with their most effective standard bearer of all time – Donald Trump – says the tactics of the ultras “are like charging into battle outnumbered, on unfavorable terrain, with subpar weapons, counting on their own sense of moral superiority to deliver victory.” The very same scenario – in identical terms – characterized the Battle of Culloden in 1746, and caused the permanent loss of independence for Scotland.

As President, Donald Trump kept an impossible campaign promise – the overturn of Roe V Wade – through the Supreme Court he was enabled by God (in His perfect timing) to shape. Without that shaping conservatives would have no beef with the Donald, because the abortion juggernaut would continue full bore with none to effectively object. But as things stand, pro-life ultras are screaming, “Betrayer,” because their standard bearer – this same Donald – is adhering to the interpretation of law on abortion for which they worked and prayed for half a century – as the SCOTUS Donald Trump gave them laid it down.

Pro-life Americans celebrated on June 24, 2022 when that overturn happened. The foolish imagined the fight was over, but no knowledgeable person made such a preposterous claim. Trump did not; SCOTUS did not, and God certainly did not.

I cannot account for Trump or SCOTUS, but I know why God did not finish it one-and-done; He trumpets it throughout His written Word. As much as our King wants life for His most innocent creations – “I came that they might have life and that abundant,” – He wants the abundance more than the mere survival most call life. He also said that He came to set captives free from bo***ge to arrogance. He would free us from addiction to stupid excuses like, “I did what I could, Lord, but I have to live in the real world, the world of limited opportunities.” He will permit the shedding of innocent blood until He has a people so captivated with the privilege of repentance – into a culture of life, not the mere banning of abortion – that we will never again be so arrogant we expect Him to be impressed with our achievement.

SCOTUS found in favor of Alabama’s abortion law in 2022, a law that forbade termination of preborn babies after fifteen weeks of gestation. The Court went beyond the issues raised in the case when it declared abortion “rights” to be state issues subject to the sovereignty of the several states within their borders. Pro-life ultras want a federal law banning the practice from conception, i.e. the sound of a fetal heartbeat – I want such a law as much as does any ultra – but such a law would be ruled unconstitutional as surely as Roe was found to be such. Donald Trump’s apparently tepid support of the position is simply abiding by constitutional law as SCOTUS has interpreted it. This is neither compromise nor moderation. It is fighting on the terrain – and under the conditions – we have received as a gift from a God we will never fully understand. The Scots fought as they did because they could; we are called to fight as God says we should.

The Scots loved the overwhelming power of a frontal charge, thundering to the music of skirling bagpipes, the roar of the Highlanders as they charged, and the (apparently) unstoppable power of thousands of broadswords wielding death to all foes. They had all that going for them at Culloden as the rainy day made stifling muck of the uneven ground and English artillery made chopped liver of the charging warriors. Conditions never give victory; God’s grace – intelligently and patiently applied – is always sufficient.

There can be no reasonable doubt that the Lord God Himself has His hand on the upcoming election, that He has been preparing this season for some great while, and that His favor endows the Republican Party at this historic crossroads.

I don’t imagine the GOP is the unsullied party of God. But this party – of Lincoln, Fremont, and other architects of freedom – is today’s bearer of God’s Word, and His instrument of redemption for our republic in this hour. That is, if we will stop imagining ourselves sinless just because the other party is so steeped in wickedness as to make us look good. And if we will abandon our arrogant fantasy of that same moral superiority toward those we regard as less pure within our own party.

I’ve been writing and speaking about this for years. The only way – operating decently and in order, as the Apostle Paul puts it – to permanently ban elective abortion under law is to adopt a pro-life constitutional amendment. That is the long way around – the process of amending our Constitution being as cumbersome as it is – but it would take the choice out of the democratic process, and there is no law abiding alternative. In the meantime, let us put away our penchant for invective and try being wise as serpents and innocent as doves – praising God for what He has given and seeking Him for what is yet to come. We know Yahweh wants a culture of life in America more than we do; perhaps we could defer to His inscrutable methods and timetables, and appreciate the (flawed but chosen) leader whose life He sovereignly saved last July 13 – and again on September 16 – so he could lead us now.

Right now arrogance is our great antagonist. That arrogance is embodied on one hand by the establishment – the Sadducees – and on the other by the ultra-orthodox – the Pharisees. The Sadducees got their butts kicked by SCOTUS; it’s now time for the Pharisees to get on the train or get off the track. And it’s time to thank God for sending Jesus, and Jesus for sending Donald.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, Kingdom in Pursuit, and his first novel, Generation – available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, or at [email protected]

10/03/2024

I have firsthand experience of how the Matt Clifford Sheriff's office operates, and believe me, it's high time for a change. Doug Traubel is the man to change the culture around this job in this hour. God bless all who read this.

09/29/2024

A LINCOLN MOMENT FOR ADA COUNTY: CONSERVATIVES OF BACKS DOUG TRAUBEL FOR SHERIFF OF ADA COUNTY, Part 2
By James Wilson

The dysfunctional culture of the Ada County Sheriff’s Office did not begin with Matt Clifford, although it has surely sunk to new lows under his leadership. Clifford’s predecessor, Stephen Bartlett, was appointed Sheriff in 2015, following the abrupt resignation of his predecessor, Gary Raney, and was later elected in his own right. Raney had been under investigation by private citizens over unspecified allegations of corruption never yet made public. Bartlett was re-elected sheriff in 2020 but resigned his post – as abruptly as did Raney – less than a year later over allegations of abusing deputies under his command. What is known is that Bartlett retired suddenly when investigated by Idaho Peace Officers Standards and Training. Although the allegations were never proved, Bartlett voluntarily relinquished his certification rather than cooperate with the investigation.

Matt Clifford – an establishment favorite – was appointed to finish Bartlett’s term by county commissioners despite Doug Traubel being the overwhelming favorite of the Ada County GOP Central Committee when that group was privileged to vet candidates – Bartlett being a Republican – in 2021. Local media ran a smear campaign against Traubel in 2022 and Clifford was overwhelmingly elected. And the county is left with the present status quo in which citizens are in danger from the very officers bound by oath to protect and defend them. What would Traubel do about it?

He would remember that his oath is to the Constitutions of his state and nation, not to the governor, the mayor, or to any body of overseers who appointed him. The sheriff is not appointed – he points out – but rather elected by the people. He says, “I am accountable to the Constitution; my job is to both represent and defend the people; they – we – are sovereign under the Constitution. We need to rid ourselves of a culture of mutual back scratching. All of us, including our peace officers, will benefit and be happier.” Asked how one changes a dysfunctional culture, he replies, “I’ll start on day one with the Field Training Officers; we call them our FTOs.”

“New hires are assigned to an FTO during training, but always have access to that person who is the effectual squad leader – to borrow military lingo,” he explains. “The FTOs are the culture influencers, and therefore my touch points that I must convert first to my lens. It’s about building relationships with them. They will accelerate the transformation of the culture from a closed to a servant community, because they are already respected by their peers, and well known throughout the organization.” He will invest unlimited time and patience, but the direction is non-negotiable.

Traubel’s second primary objective is to make common cause – and friendship – with the chiefs of police in Ada County, assuring them he will have their backs should they need to push back against tyrannical government actions like the mask mandates and forced vaccinations of recent years. Chiefs of police take an oath to support and defend the Constitution just as he will; he believes most do not want to be instruments of arbitray government expansion, and will welcome his show of support. But he makes it just as clear that those who cave to pressure from government agencies – for whatever reasons – will get neither support nor cooperation from the CLEO – the Chief Law Enforcement Officer – of Ada County.

His vision is to transition his department – and the public – from a law enforcement image of police officers and deputies to a “peace officer” orientation. He likes what he hopes to be transitional language such as moving from “victim” and “suspect” nomenclature to “accuser” and “accused.” He says words have meanings and meanings matter. Terms like accuser and accused lend themselves to concepts like “innocent until proven guilty” while at the same time recognizing accusers and accused merit respect even when force must be applied. He muses, “Suppose your music is rattling my windows. At this point your freedom has become bullying. But it should be relationally resolvable – no arrests necessary – and that should be our first effort. We recognize the difference between acting upon and acting with, and we seek peace in our neighborhood. That’s why our first task as peace officers will be to shed the culture of ‘us versus them’ in favor of a worldview that keeps guns and batons holstered except as absolutely necessary.”

Doug Traubel knows the job is doable because for every officer who assaults a Mick Heikkola there are dozens like Tobin Bolter, who gave his life in the performance of his duty earlier this year. A strong Christian, this candidate for sheriff holds Isaiah 54:17 close to his heart. He applies, “No weapon formed against me shall prosper,” as much to the people he serves as to himself as he serves. He reflects the conviction that animated and motivated the founders, that America is both dream and reality gifted by God. Recognizing that not all his deputies, nor all of the citizens they serve, will necessarily share his perspective, he declares, “We can reject the (Christian) lens through which our nation was birthed, but we dare not pretend the lens does not exist.”

His third primary objective is prepare a select number of citizens – including but not limited to – veterans and retired peace officers – to assist the department by patrolling and calling in developing incidents without personally intervening, much less making arrests. Such a group – reporting what they see from a safe distance – could become a force multiplier without multiplying budgets or dangers to citizens.

Lincoln and Fremont knew theirs was an upstream swim. Yet by God’s grace they went from wanting what could never be had – the end of slavery – to electing Lincoln to the presidency in six years. Doug Traubel’s candidacy is a grand chance to do it again. Now.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, Kingdom in Pursuit, and his first novel, Generation – available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, or at [email protected]