Suzanne Hedrick

Follower of Christ, Reformed, married to my high school sweetheart, mother and grandmother, beach and mountain lover, motorcycle rider, Realtor, #nolegirl

[Lee Kuan Yimby @LeeKuanYimby]

This speech from Zohran Mamdani on America’s 250th changed my politics.

I’ve never seen a more pompous individual whose life has been void of any sacrifice or hard work confidently lecture as if people like him hold the key to human prosperity.

Here’s a guy who had never held a job until he found the angle to satisfy his thirst for attention through politics at age 30, sit behind George Washington’s desk and give us a lecture on what is supposed to be a day of celebration.

Instead of celebrating what this country built, prosperity and human rights that spread across the globe from basically nothing, he turns the moment into a lecture about how America is this flawed project desperately in need of topdown change from useless academics and politicians who’ve never built anything of value for anybody.

As I get older, I have started wrestling with my own ridiculous and undeserved comforts, and the massive sacrifices of generations that made them possible. We should be expressing sheer gratitude for the families who crossed this country in covered wagons chasing a future, for the young men who died in muddy fields and frozen trenches defending it. At some point we let the children forget about this, and it's going to be a tragedy.

Our ancestors didn’t sacrifice so we could sit around demanding more redistribution while building nothing of value ourselves and living in opulence kings couldn't have dreamed of. They built something exceptional through risk, and relentless work.

Watching someone like Mamdani use the 250th as an opportunity to lecture us about what’s wrong with America, it just flips a switch for me. I’m done with the ingratitude.

We need to defend America from those that leech off it's greatness and attempt to redefine it.

[Sassafrass84 @Sassafrass_84]

Unpopular opinion but I am going to say it.

Women shouldn’t be in positions of power.

Liberal women are the reason why our society has decayed so much.

I said what I said.

[Suzanne Hedrick @suzhedrick]

@D_B_Harrison Read from this book early this morning. Grateful for the truths in it.

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

I am weary of seeing Christ presented as though He is standing outside the sinner’s life, helplessly hoping someone will give Him permission to matter.

That is not the Jesus of Scripture. The Lord Jesus is not a desperate salesman trying to make the gospel attractive enough for rebels to accept. He is the eternal Son of God, the crucified Lamb, the risen King, the appointed Judge, and the only Saviour of sinners.

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18).

The gospel is good news, but it is not a casual suggestion. It comes with divine authority. God does not politely ask sinners to consider repentance as one life option among many. He commands all people everywhere to repent because the day of judgment is fixed and Christ is the Judge.

“God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent” (Acts 17:30).

This does not remove the tenderness of Christ. He truly invites the weary to come. He truly receives every sinner who comes to Him in repentance and faith. But His invitation is not weakness. It is royal mercy from the One who has the right to condemn and the power to save.

“The one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).

We must stop preaching a Christ who needs man’s approval. We must preach the Christ before whom every knee will bow. The question is not whether sinners will kindly allow Jesus into their lives. The question is whether they will bow now in mercy or later in judgment.

“At the name of Jesus every knee will bow” (Philippians 2:10).

Christ is not weak. His gospel is not fragile. His throne is not vacant. His blood actually saves. His resurrection actually conquered death. His command actually binds every conscience under heaven.

The church must recover the sound of apostolic preaching. Repent. Believe. Flee from the wrath to come. Bow to the risen Christ. There is salvation in no one else.

[Sean Hannity 🇺🇸 @seanhannity]

Victor Davis Hanson says today’s socialist movement is being led by privileged elites, arguing they push policies for everyone else that they never have to live under themselves:

“It’s predicated on envy. That’s one of the most powerful human emotions. The appeal is the idea that everyone should be equally poor rather than have everyone be better off, even if some people are more successful than others. They’re not thinking about average Americans. This is not a bottom-up phenomenon, Sean. It’s top-down. These are people who are very upper middle class. Bernie Sanders is a millionaire. Mamdani’s family came from the one percent in Uganda that controlled 60 percent of the country’s GDP. He’s a child of privilege. AOC grew up upper middle class. And Ilhan Omar’s financial disclosure claimed a net worth of $30 million. So all of these people are predicated on the idea that the rest of the country are lab rats, and they are exempt from the consequences of their own ideology. And we know that because they like privilege, and they’re accustomed to privilege. So for them, it’s a game.”

[Valerie Anne Smith @ValerieAnne1970]

URGENT WARNING — From Dr. Peter McCullough:

Pfizer mRNA COVID vaccine is STILL producing spike protein in a real patient’s blood 3.6 YEARS after the shot. Documented bloodwork. Causing blood clots and heart damage right now.

This isn’t temporary. The mRNA has no “off switch” — it keeps turning cells into spike factories.

The exact same untested mRNA platform is now being rolled out in Moderna RSV and flu shots.

ALL mRNA shots must be halted immediately.
No more COVID. No RSV. No flu. Nothing.

This is experimental tech with catastrophic long-term risks. Politicians, regulators, and pharma must be held accountable NOW.

[Pastor Rich Lusk @Vicar1973]

Overview on the immigration issue, identity politics, and the "Christian nationalist" way forward:

1. Combining open borders with a welfare state is a disaster -- all the more so when welfare fraud allowed, and even encouraged by one political party (which is incentivized to keep the borders open because it adds to their voting block). Biden and other Democrats who opened the border are traitors. They won't be punished for what they did, but the reality is that they could never be punished severely enough. They rejected the rule of law, and intentionally tried to destroy their own country. The immigration laws we had in place were not great - but they were written by elected legislators and signed into law by elected executives. The complete refusal to abide by those laws was the real "war on democracy." It is rampant lawlessness.

2. The Great Replacement is real - but it's important to understand that it is not merely people with white skin who are being replaced. The real target is the remaining vestiges of Christendom. While it is true that whites are being replaced by people with other skin colors in their own nations, the more fundamental "replacement" is Christian civilization being replaced with globo-homo secularism. The culture war might seem like a race war on the surface, but its actually a religious war.

3. Leftists hate the Bible and have no intention of ever submitting to it, but they will appeal to it when they think it will score them political points, which they can accomplish by taking texts out of context, putting forth half truths as if they were the whole, etc. Nowhere is this more evident than on the immigration issue. Leftists will cite passages from the Torah about kindness to immigrants, loving the alien, etc. But they leave out other factors, such as, (a) the same Torah required immigrants to assimilate to Israel's law and way of life; (b) the Torah forbade proselytizing for false gods; (c) some people groups with a history of hostility to Israel were not allowed to become citizens for multiple generations because they could not be trusted to assimilate quickly. In short: There is absolutely nothing in biblical law that endorses open borders or would forbid a nation from deporting those who entered its territory illegally. The leftists do not have the moral high ground on the immigration issue - just the opposite. Leftists are not driven by compassion but by a desire to increase their power through expanding their voting base. Voters ensnared by suicidal empathy may think the leftwing position on immigration is kind and loving, but those voters are moral idiots. They've been duped into suiciding their own civilization.

4. Nations, as sovereign entities, can decide for themselves how to handle the immigration issue. America has generally been hospitable to immigrants, but the immigrants were expected to assimilate and generally came from similar enough nations that assimilation could happen within a reasonable timeframe. In the second half of the 20th century that changed, --and then the change really accelerated in the 21st century. Some of this is a function of growing liberalism, some of it is due to the rise of an anti-Christian spirit of self-loathing, some of it is due to missteps in American foreign policy. But none of it has been good for America. It is reasonable to expect a civil magistrate to act in the best interests of his own people, just as a father seeks the good of his own family. But we can no longer count on our magistrates to do what is best for their citizens -- and that gets at the heart of our problem. Progressive American politicians, in particular, clearly hate the nation and people over whom they rule. Conservatives may have good talking points but have generally been too "nice" or fearful to stop the progressive freight train barreling down the tracks. Progressives have done a much better job using power to impose their ideology on the nation than conservatives have. That has to change.

5. I do not think white identity politics is the answer. In fact, I do not think anyone should be doing racial identity politics. Race is never a healthy fixation. It is true, in the abstract, that if a particular group is attacked as a group, that group can fight back as a group. But in the case of white Americans, this simply won't work because (a) a lot of the anti-whiteness/anti-white discrimination in our culture actually comes from whites; (b) whites are ideologically divided between conservatism and progressivism, and ideology always trumps identity; (c) white identity politics is not a "winning strategy" because conservative whites already vote as a block and adding race to a conservative platform will not expand the coalition we already have (and might actually shrink it); (d) identity politics has a terrible track record of actually improving conditions for the identity group in question in the long run, e.g., the gender identity politics of feminism has not made women happier or better off; black identity politics has backfired by destroying the black family, murdering black babies in the womb, etc. There is no reason to think a white identity politics will actually lead to the greater flourishing of whites. A fixation on identity almost always seems to make the identity group lazy, entitled, etc.

6. Racial identity politics is always a distraction from the core issues. Worldview, or ideology, always trumps identity. Just look at how blacks in general treat black conservatives like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas. Blacks in general don’t celebrate their achievements despite shared skin color because of their politics. It’s not enough to be black to be considered black. It’s the same with feminism, which is a form of gender-based identity politics. For feminists, it’s not enough to simply be a woman. She must be a woman who makes the right choices (e.g., prioritizing career over motherhood; pro-abortion; etc.) to be included in “the club.” Feminists say they are pro-woman, but will viciously attack other women who do not share their ideology. They will criticize women who make different lifestyle choices, even as they claim to be pro-woman. It’s not *really* about the identity, it’s about the ideology. Only the right kind of woman can be considered part of “Team Woman.” Some say, "Everyone else is doing identity politics -- why can't whites?" But I think this misdiagnoses what's actually going on.

7. The best treatment of anti-whiteness is Jeremy Carl's book The Unprotected Class, but when Carl proposes solutions, he does not go the white identity politics route. The reality is that DEI, open borders, etc. are not just bad for white Americans, they hurt all Americans, including blacks and Hispanics. There are more electorally effective strategies than white identity politics to deal with the problems we face. Trump got elected two (or three) times without going the white identity politics route, so I cannot see that adding racial identity politics to a conservative political platform is going to increase power or influence for those on the right. The problem conservatives have is not getting elected; its having the guts and determination to use power for good once they have it.

8. Mass immigration is always destabilizing, especially when those immigrants come from a wildly different culture than their new host culture. The problem is exacerbated when there is no incentive (much less requirement) to assimilate. It's not surprising, then, that groups of immigrants from the same place begin to function in a tribal way in their new nation, creating social balkanization, unrest, division, conflict, etc. The left can use the mantra "Diversity is our strength," "The Somalis are just as American as you," etc., but these are just lies -- politically calculated lies. Sadly, in America and much of Europe, irreparable harm has already been done. But we must use all the political power we can muster to reverse and forever end mass immigration. American culture is worth preserving. The American way of life is worth fighting for.

9. Finally, there is one way of looking at identity that can provide a thick enough sense of who we are and enough political/ethical content to fix what ails us: a Christian identity politics. This is what Christian nationalism, as I understand it, is really about. The Christian faith not only provides a theology of nations and national identity that can underwrite strong borders (Acts 17:26), it provides the kind of policy content we need to solve our other problems as well, e.g., the disintegration of the family, drug and porn addiction, abortion, gay "marriage," transgenderism, etc. It is impossible to make America great without making America Christian -- so we should do the kind of thing Charlie Kirk was famous for doing, namely, move seamlessly between evangelism/apologetics for the faith, and application of the faith to the public square.

[The Biblical Man @Biblicalman]

A John MacArthur clip is going around right now where he says nothing political or social "has anything to do with the advancement of the kingdom of God."

Thousands of Christians are bookmarking it. Reposting it. Treating it like settled doctrine because a famous man said it in a confident voice at a Q&A.

Let me show you what your Bible actually says.

Joseph of Arimathea used his political standing to retrieve the body of Christ. Without his seat on the Sanhedrin, that body stays on the cross and the burial never happens. That was political standing used for the kingdom.

Daniel served in the government of Babylon. He governed as a believer inside a pagan empire, and God used that position to preserve an entire people.

Esther used her political position in a foreign court to stop a genocide. She walked into the throne room and risked her life because the kingdom of God was operating through that system.

Nehemiah had a political office under a pagan king. He used that office to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Actual stone and mortar. A political act that directly advanced the purposes of God.

Moses walked straight into Pharaoh's court. Ten plagues targeted the political and religious systems of Egypt simultaneously.

Jesus Himself was executed by a political system. The crucifixion was a Roman political act. And the resurrection was God's answer to it.

The idea that the kingdom of God operates in some separate lane from politics and culture is not in your Bible. The entire Old Testament is the story of God working through nations, governments, judges, and kings.

And the theology is only half of why that clip matters.

The other half is how fast Christians adopted it as their own position without ever opening the text to check.

A famous man says something with authority and a clip goes viral. Thousands of believers treat it as settled.

I used to stitch my faith together from pieces of other men. A little of this pastor, a little of that podcast, whatever sounded smart that week. Then my kid asked me a question about the Bible and I realized I was quoting everyone except the Book.

That's the disease. We have been trained to follow personalities instead of Scripture. Trained to let a man's reputation do the work our own study was supposed to do.

You can respect a man and still hold his words up against the text. You should. That's what the Bereans did in Acts 17:11. They heard Paul preach and then searched the scriptures daily to see whether those things were so. The apostle Paul himself, and they still checked him.

If the Bereans checked Paul, you can check anyone.

Read your Bible.

[Gabriel Hughes @Pastor_Gabe]

I see the argument "You shouldn't tell unbelievers 'God loves you'" is making the rounds again...

The argument is best understood this way: Share the gospel like Jesus and the apostles did in the Bible.

https://t.co/whcmlXo4PB

[Doxology & Theology @DoxAndTheo]

"Get a hymnbook and go park your car where no one can hear you and sing your way out of this."

At D&T DFW @AlistairBegg reminded us that great hymns weren't written to describe how we feel. They were written to remind us of what is true - to preach the gospel back to our soul.

[Men of the Covenant @MOTC_PCA]

"Your goal as you lead your children is to prepare them to follow the chief shepherd for the rest of their lives."
-Timothy Witmer, The Shepherd Leader at Home

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

When asked about two powerful quotes Charlie Kirk lived by he said this:

1. This to shall pass. Because if times are bad it lifts you up but if times are good it grounds you in reality, not ego.

2. Romans 8:28, for those in our Thursday Bible spaces, you know how I feel about Romans 8:28. It might be the single most comforting verse when things don’t make sense to us. Which I would argue happens a lot. Because some things are not for us to understand His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. But even if we don’t understand right now, one day we will.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. - Romans 8:28

[Darrell B Harrison @D_B_Harrison]

As I've said before, Mamdani is a Muslim who is mayor, not a mayor who is Muslim. He did not run for mayor of New York City to represent the people of New York City. Above everything else, Mandami's loyalties are to Islam and to his fellow Muslim brethren around the world. Like London mayor Sadiq Khan, Mamdani's goal is to make New York City Islamic - period.

[Denise 🇺🇸 @NoDMsPerfavore]

People don't realize what actually happens when the illegal population is gone.

Suddenly Americans start getting real raises again.
Hospitals stop drowning in overcrowded ERs.

Schools breathe — class sizes finally return to something sane.

Insurance bills drop instead of climbing every year.

Young families can actually buy homes.

Grocery prices level out because the welfare load isn't crushing the system anymore.

DMV lines move.

Traffic lightens.

Neighborhoods calm down.

Crime stats shift in the right direction for the first time in decades.

Organ transplant lists move faster.

Teenagers get the jobs they used to get before cheap illegal labor replaced them.

Trade programs fill with American kids who can actually earn a living again.

And people start having families because the cost of living isn't strangling them.

You remove the illegal burden, and the country snaps back into shape almost overnight.

Get them the f out!

[Canon Press @canonpress]

DOUG WILSON: Charlie Kirk was an evangelist.

And he was an evangelist with a christian worldview that extended into politics.

He was on college campuses, preaching the gospel to young people, who were hungry for it. And they would turn out by the thousands.

And he was important enough to assassinate.

There have been eras of American christianity where the Devil wouldn't ever dream of assassinating any preacher man.

We live in a time when things are so corrupt and so diseased, that the pulpit ought to take courage to occupy.

And in most evangelical churches, it doesn't take any courage to occupy.

[Darrell B Harrison @D_B_Harrison]

“The first time [Christ] came to slay sin in men. The second time He will come to slay men in sin.” - A.W. Pink

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

SOCCER.

LET'S GOOO 🇺🇸

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Sources: President Trump, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, and White House task force head Andrew Giuliani put together a team of elite lawyers — from outside the government — to challenge the Flo Balogun red card. Specifically they challenged the use of slow motion instant replay to give the red card, which they argued violated FIFA rules. The president also conveyed to Gianni Infantino, FIFA’s president, that the appeal had been filed and he believed the red card penalty was excessive. FIFA’s independent committee reviewed the decision and agreed the penalty was incorrectly given, rescinding it under their rule 27 authority.

[Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley]

Bill Clinton's ragefest on the Fourth was something to behold as the ultimate example of clinical transference. The former president condemned the current administration for, among other things, working to "prosecute enemies, stamp out free speech" and using government as "a new profit center for themselves and their allies"...

[Reformed1563 @Heidel_bro1563]

“The most damnable and pernicious heresy that has ever plagued the mind of man is that somehow he can make himself good enough to deserve to live forever with an all Holy God."

-Martin Luther