Reverend Charles Nall, who frequently provides the invocation for the Amherst County Republican Committee meetings, read a prayer written by Thomas Jefferson at a recent committee meeting. Since this is the weekend of July 4^th, I thought it would be appropriate to pass it along to my readers.

As most of my readers, but few of our school children, know, the Fourth of July or Independence Day is the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence by the members of the Continental Congress when it declared independence from the despotic rule of Great Britain and mad King George III.

Thomas Jefferson was the principal writer of the Declaration of Independence (as well as the third President of the United States).

Reverend Nall mentioned this prayer to a National Park Service guide at Monticello, and the guide declared that to be impossible “since Jefferson was an atheist.” Unfortunately for the guide and anyone who listens to the guide expecting the truth, Jefferson was not an atheist. The first two sentences of the Declaration show the fallacy of believing Jefferson was an atheist. The first sentence talks about “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The second sentence reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” I’ve heard several different opinions about exactly what Jefferson did believe, but the most famous document he ever wrote clearly indicates that he was anything but an atheist.

[The socialists/communists who seek to destroy our country do so by first destroying the moral fiber of our country. They do so by denigrating the Church, by removing Christianity from the national fabric, and by denying the Christian heritage provided by our Founding Fathers, but I digress.]

This copy of Jefferson’s prayer comes from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. In 1928, America was still a Christian America, and that stood us in good stead thirteen years later when we became involved in World War II.

We are involved in another war now, not for the freedom of foreign nations but rather for the soul of America. We need to be praying for our country. If you don’t know what to pray, you could always use Jefferson’s. It is entitled “For Our Country.”

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; we humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will.

Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners.

Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way.

Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues.

Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth.

In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Pray for America. Pray for America on Independence Day. Pray for America every day. Considering the people within the country, within the government who are trying to destroy America, once a day might not be enough.

And Mr. Jefferson’s prayer is a good prayer for all of us. There isn’t a line in there is isn’t an immediate need today.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

I have spent the past week driving through “fly-over” country. We took the scenic route out to The American Harp Society’s annual convention in South Dakota. We drove through West Virginia and Kentucky to visit family in Indiana. Then we drove through Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa to visit family in Minnesota. Then it was a short five-hour trip to Sioux Falls for the conference. The trip back involves different roads but the same states.

It’s a shame that the stuck-on-themselves urbanites consider the heart of America to be “fly-over” country. They only know it as they fly from their liberal enclaves on one coast to their liberal enclaves on the other. Boston to Los Angeles; New York to San Francisco; Washington, D.C. to Seattle. They know nothing but urban liberalism.

Too bad they don’t take the time to make America “drive through” country. It might change their minds about what America really is and who Americans really are. But I doubt it.

They don’t want to admit that the people of Kentucky and Iowa and Wyoming and Texas and a host of other states know more than they do about what the word “America” really means. It goes against the propaganda they keep telling each other. They might lose their social status if they began to doubt the liberal line.

I was born and raised in Oklahoma, the heart of fly-over country. Oklahoma City is home to the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center. One thing about cowboys, they practiced self-reliance, or they died. When your next neighbor was a mile or two or ten away. you had to do for yourself if you wanted anything done at all. You didn’t call the government to do it. You were your own government.

In the West, if you had a problem, you fixed it. If you fell off your horse and broke your leg, you set the bone yourself, crawled back up on your horse, and rode to town to find a doctor. If you lay out on the range waiting for the doctor to find you, the coyotes would have you for dinner.

I’m not being sensational. America was founded by people who understood the risks they faced but faced them anyway as the price of living the life they wanted.

If someone tried to steal your horse and you didn’t shoot him, you were the one who died because there was so much space between ranches that you would die before you could walk there. If someone broke into your house to rob you and harm your family, you shot them yourself because you were too far away from the law to wait for help. And if you weren’t home when someone broke in, then your wife would shoot them, because she was just as able and willing to fight for her freedom and her family as her husband was.

These urban liberals don’t know how to build a life for themselves. Because they fly over the heart of America, they don’t see the beauty of the wheat, sorghum, and corn fields stretching out for miles on a clear day with barns bigger than the farmers’ houses. The barns are bigger because it takes a huge investment in equipment to keep farms operating at a profit. The farmer and his family also spend far more time in their farm buildings and on their equipment than they do in their houses, so why shouldn’t the barns be bigger.

And the silos and grain bins are huge. America can be the breadbasket of the world if the government would leave farmers alone and let them do the job they know how to do. Instead, the government tries to tax and regulate them out of business. It’s a hard life but a wonderful life. And people still must handle their own problems because it is still a long way to town or even to another ranch. Self-reliance and the desire for the government to leave them alone so they can live their lives as God gave them freedom to live is really all they want out in fly-over country.

It’s a shame these urban liberals who live so tightly packed together in over-priced high rises can’t take the time to drive through the real America and learn what they are missing. Fifty years ago a young Connecticut college student named Peter Jenkins decided America was bad, but a professor convinced him to see the real America before he wrote it off. Jenkins accepted the challenge, and his walking tour of America is chronicled in his two books “A Walk Across America” and “The Way West.” It’s a shame that urban liberals don’t have the personal honesty of a Peter Jenkins. They should quit flying above the real America and actually take the time to get to know it and us.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Several members of the Fifth Congressional District Republican Committee feared that our meeting on June 11 was going to be too long. In addition to the normal items that must be handled at Republican committee meetings, newly elected Fifth District Republican Chair Rick Buchanan planned the “kick-off of a two-year campaign to train, engage, and implement strategy with the unit committees for the common goal of winning elections in our 5^th District.”

Now don’t blow by that sentence too quickly. Chairman Buchanan not only has a goal, but he has planned a campaign to reach that goal. His goal is to train people, engage people – both new and veteran – and work with those people to implement strategies that will help us win elections. That’s an impressive undertaking.

The concerning thing prior to the meeting was that he had five different presentations that were scheduled to be 20 minutes EACH, plus several group activities and a couple of other shorter presentation. At least Congressman Bob Good was providing lunch for the Committee. (Tacos and sides)

Our first guest speaker was Virginia’s Republican National Committeewoman Patti Lyman. Because we have worked together on the State Central Committee, I was asked to introduce her. She has an impressive list of credentials and academic degrees – including a Juris Doctorate – but the line from my introduction that seemed to resonate with everyone there is this: “She knows her mind when it comes to conservative principles and issues, and she forcefully speaks her mind when people who should know better stray from our conservative Virginia roots.” She spoke about our role as Virginians in the overall national scheme of things. She was engaging to the point that her 20 minutes was up before we were through listening to her.

She has offered to come speak to every Republican unit in Virginia at one of their regular meetings. Having her as a guest speaker would be a great opportunity to invite guests and energize conservatives in each region.

Following Patti, RPV Executive Director Ken Nunnenkamp spent 20 short minutes talking about RPV data. The wealth of data available to units is astounding. We can reach any demographic and location with precision and effectiveness. The HUGE change is that in the past the RPV did not make that data available to the units. Units would collect data, send it to the RPV, and never see it again. We would collect the same data over and over every year. Governor Youngkin has put a stop to that. He wants to reform the Party so that success builds from the ground up, since he knows that you can’t dictate success from on high. In order to build success, people need data with which to work. It’s there, and we now have access to it.

Former RPV Executive Director and former Fluvanna Supervisor Shaun Kenny spoke about political engagement and building a farm team of candidates at the local level so that we will have proven candidates to run at higher and higher levels. This perfectly dovetailed with Nunnenkamp’s message of building the Party from the ground up.

Former Loudoun County Supervisor Suzanne Volpe used her 20 minutes to explain how precinct organization was supposed to work and why it was so crucial. She gave practical steps to build our precincts, and she repeatedly expressed how much she wished she lived in a district – like the Fifth – where American flags could line the streets without being torn down and defaced. We don’t know how good we have it in the western part of Virginia.

The fifth 20-minute presentation came from Jaqueline Timmer and Tim Griffin of the Virginia Voter Alliance. (Tim is also Bedford County Chair.) They spoke about the importance of the Republicans we appoint to our local electoral boards and the incredible amount of power given to the boards by the Code of Virginia. Electoral Boards often take the easy way and allow Registrars to do the Board’s job. That is a recipe for problems.

Former Fifth District Chairman Melvin Adams, who is now with the Noah Webster Educational Foundation, spoke for a shorter period about the desperate need to take back control of our schools, and Travis Witt spoke about outreach to the pastors who fail to grasp that one political party (not ours) is totally and ideologically opposed to every principle held by Bible-believing Christians.

At the end of the day, we elected an executive committee and immediately adjourned. It was a long meeting but a fruitful one. Rick Buchanan scored a win for his first Committee meeting as Chairman.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

This past Saturday at Miller Park in downtown Lynchburg, several Christian organizations hosted a Rally for Righteousness. There was a nice-sized crowd of enthusiastic people of all races in attendance. One of the speakers was the newly elected Chairwoman of the Lynchburg Republican City Committee, Veronica Bratton. I decided to share (with permission) portions of her impressive speech with you. She said in part:

Like many, in the last two years my eyes have been opened. As I watched the media and politicians divide our country further than I can ever recall over issues of masking, quarantine, vaccines, race, and gender I was outraged by the narrative being pushed by one side [while] the other [side was] forced to be silent or be accused of being a racist, murderer, hater.

I know if you want to change something you have to do more than complain about it, you have to DO SOMETHING.  BE a PART of the SOLUTION. I also know in order to affect change on a national level, we have to start at home in our communities, our cities, our state. I decided to get involved….

Righteousness is defined by Merriam-Webster as acting in accord with divine or moral law; free from guilt or sin. In a letter to Patrick Henry after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October 1781 George Mason wrote “I congratulate you most sincerely on the accomplishment…. the establishment of American Independence and the liberty of our country. We now rank among the nations of the world, but whether our independence shall prove to be a blessing or a curse must depend upon our own wisdom or folly, virtue or wickedness.  Judging of the future from the past, the prospect is not promising. Justice and virtue are the vital principles of a Republican Government, but among us a depravity of manners and morals prevails to the destruction of all confidence between man and man.”

Our founders knew the challenge generations to come would have to maintain the Independence and Liberty they had secured for us because of the depravity of man. They knew righteousness is what would be needed.  They tried to set in place for us a framework that would protect us from destruction due to man’s lack of righteousness. They provided a framework in the Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect certain freedoms from an overreaching government.  Our Declaration of Independence states that all men and women are created equal. All have the opportunity to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. The opportunity is one of the gifts of liberty, it says I believe in you and your ability to achieve something…. We do not need people to tell us we are free. God tells us we are free.

…We need to bring righteousness back to our government. We need to work together to elect righteous men and women who will uphold the constitution and legislate through a lens of the Judeo-Christian values our nation was founded on.  Who we elect is important.  It is important that once they are elected, they like Bob Good, remember their constituents are their boss, not the special interest groups. We need to elect people who are there because they want to make a difference and not because they want power. We need people who won’t be enticed by the swamp but will rise above it.

For too long, Christians have sat it out.  We have allowed ourselves to be silenced in fear of being disliked or being perceived wrongly if we stood up for what we know is right…. I believe [Jesus] called out evil when he saw evil….  He didn’t look away because he didn’t want to upset anyone.  To love your neighbor is to not let them believe the lies of the enemy, the lies of the narrative, the lies that we hate women because we don’t believe babies should be murdered.  No, actually, we love women. We know the pain of remorse, the years of therapy many will go through from the guilt and regret of an abortion.  We love the future women and men who are being aborted.  We want to save their lives.

…Why are so many willing to stand in the gap for an “offensive gospel” but stay silent on politics when the very Judeo-Christian values our nation was founded on are under attack?

…We have been asleep at the wheel, allowed ourselves to be silenced. Many of our Pastors have refused to take a stand, refused to speak out.  Now, we no longer face a political problem, we are facing a spiritual problem.

If we don’t respond with spiritual answers to the spiritual problems Veronica describes, none of our political solutions will have any lasting effect. And that’s the truth.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

My unit, Lynchburg, held a mass meeting on May 14 to nominate three Republican candidates for the three at-large city council seats that will be filled in the November election. We have our first real chance in a generation to put a majority of conservatives in control of our city government.

I was Chair of the Planning Committee because, well…, “You did such a great job with the March mass meeting, we’ll let you do it again.” I wasn’t really appointed to plan the March meeting (to select a new chair, new local committee, and convention delegates), but every time someone asked our outgoing chair a question about it, he would say, “Ask Doc.” Funny how those things happen.

I had talked with the Events people at Liberty University and asked them to “pencil us in” for their off-campus conference center on May 14 the date we were proposing for our city council nomination meeting. After the committee approved the date at a unit meeting, I called to let Events know we definitely wanted that date. The contract would go to the chair, so I thought no more about it.

We had a lot going on in the ensuing few weeks, so we were distracted. On the afternoon before the mass meeting, I picked up some supplies, and since I was basically in the same parking lot as the conference center, I decided to stop by and see whether there was a separate room that we could use for counting ballots.

Imagine my surprise when I walked in and discovered that we were not on their calendar, and they had a wedding reception booked in the room we had planned to use. Apparently, they had no record of me firming up the date, and instead of calling me before scheduling something else in the space, they just went ahead and did it.

My first call was to the Events coordinator (a fine person whom I have known and worked with for years) and told her that we HAD to have a room the next morning. She moved us into a classroom on the main university campus that seated almost twice as many people as the off-campus conference center. This resolved my concern that with seven candidates running for the three spots, we might have too many attendees for the original room.

I had been keeping our Chair informed about the situation, and as soon as we had a new location, she sent an email to every person on any of our mailing lists and informed the candidates so they could contact their supporters with the change.

One of the people who received an email was one of the university’s lawyers. He quickly informed us that no political meetings were allowed on Liberty’s main campus so we could NOT use the classroom.

Our Chair called several very high up people at the university whom she knows to work on a solution from that end, and I worked with Events to try to find another place to meet. Finally, about 8:30 the night before the mass meeting, we were offered a vacant store space at one of the University’s off campus properties. But I spent about two hours Friday night not knowing where I would put 300 people the next morning. My prayer life improved that night.

One of our members, who owns a rental company, met me at the site at 10:30 Friday night with 300 chairs and some tables. People were there at 7:00 a.m. to make sure the place was clean and to start setting up. And we were ready to open registration on time.

We had to send out new information about the new change of venue, which understandably upset some of the candidates, but it was better than meeting in the parking lot on a rainy and windy day. We went so far as to put people at the other two locations to direct anyone who didn’t get the message to the eventual location.

The storefront was actually a better set-up than we would have had at the conference center (which would have been packed out). It was rather stressful getting to that point, but we ended up having a very smooth mass meeting.

I have a great deal of appreciation for the several people who helped us pull off the last-minute changes and for the well over 200 people who came out despite the confusion.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.