Fight the devil for Francis Eaton's sake

Francis Eaton, a young carpenter, celebrated his 24th birthday with his wife and their closest friends. He may not have known all of them but they were close — 130 people stuck on a wooden boat for a month whose total area was not much larger than my three-room ranch house. They would remain on the Mayflower for another three months until they finally landed at Plymouth Rock after weathering storms and setbacks.

Their faith in God was such that they truly believed they would survive a perilous journey across a storm-tossed ocean and settle an unknown land and establish a new nation based on religious freedom. In England, Puritans were considered deplorable. And Separatists puritans who had sought refuge in Leiden, Holland, as Eaton had, were considered outlaws.

England wanted no part of them and these Pilgrims wanted no part of England. Against stiff odds, they survived and with the Lord’s help, they thrived. Four centuries later, there are 35 million descendants of the Pilgrims.

Mine is Mister Eaton. His first wife died in America. His second one, too. His third wife birthed three children for him. He then died a pauper and she remarried and had more children. Kids, kids, kids. Obviously, there was nothing good on TV back then.

The Pilgrims did not bring war to this continent. It already was here when they landed. They did not bring slavery to this continent. It already was here when they landed. What was missing was Christianity, the divine intervention that offered hope to the poor, the downtrodden and the abused.

You can see why the devil was a little upset by the Pilgrims. They were not pirates or conquistadors — men like him. No, they served the Lord. Over the centuries, the devil has tried to undo the good work the Pilgrims began and millions of those who followed them including Hans Heinrich Surber who came here a century later from Switzerland.

The devil won’t win, but he has been on a hot streak since World War II.

I mention the devil because of a story the Associated Press wrote to promote a new movie, The Pope’s Exorcist, starring Russell Crowe. It is based on a real priest, the late Rev. Gabriele Amorth. The movie finished third in its opening weekend’s box office.

Monsignor Stephen J. Rossetti, a psychologist and exorcist in the Archdiocese of Washington, told AP, “Demons do manifest in a session and the exorcist faces an incredibly evil visage that no human can mimic. Things do fly across the room. Demons engage in antics like immature 12-year-olds trying to scare you.”

Immature 12-year-olds.

For some reason, that struck me. If we think of the devil not as a cunning mastermind of evil but a seventh-grade boy, a lot of what he does makes more sense. I am not saying Satan is not a cunning mastermind of evil. I am saying he is easier for me to understand him this way.

Europe was the most civilized and advanced continent when the 20th century began. It civilized the world mainly through Christianity. Liberals now dismiss this achievement as colonization but no Christian Europeans and the world would remain stuck forever in the ’50s — the 1450s.

The devil used war to divide the nations. He used communism to turn Russia against God. After the Great War — the war to end all wars — the devil used anti-Semitism to bring Hitler to power. Nazis exterminated two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population. Many victims were dispatched from France and other nations that capitulated to Germany.

But the USA defeated the devil in Europe and the Pacific. The 1950s were America’s Golden Age because of that. We had babies. We had jobs. We had homes in the suburbs. We had good schools. We prospered. It was nothing like today because we had a good life.

Enter the demons. 12-year-old boys like pornography. The devil started his attack on the USA with Playboy magazine.

Some readers might say, Playboy? That’s not pornography. By today’s standards, it is not, but it was porn by the standards of the day. It’s called incrementalism. We went from exposed breasts in magazines to bestiality depicted online.

The deterioration was quicker in the movies. We went from Thelma Oliver baring her chest to make a point about Nazi concentration camps in The Pawnbroker in 1964 to Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat in 1972. The Pawnbroker story could have been told without the nudity. Obviously, the purpose of the movie had little to do with Nazis.

The New York Post reported, “Porn ‘completely ruined’ lives of young men experiencing erectile disfunction.”

The devil laughs.

Playboy served another purpose in ending the post office’s ability to not deliver obscene materials and abortifacients via the mail. The AP was shocked to learn the law is still on the books.

AP blubbered on April 8, “A 19th century ‘anti-vice’ law is at the center of a new court ruling that threatens access to the leading abortion drug in the U.S.

“Dormant for a half-century, the Comstock Act has been revived by anti-abortion groups and conservative states seeking to block the mailing of mifepristone, the pill used in more than half of U.S. abortions.

“On Friday, a federal judge in Texas sided with Christian conservatives in ruling that the Comstock Act prohibits sending the long-used drug through the mail.”

Dormant means the feds stopped doing their job by enforcing the law. The same federal agencies that paid Twitter and other social media to censor stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop has shirked its duty on guarding the mails.

And yes, the devil likes big government because — as Lord Acton once said — “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Drugs are another favorite of the devil. He’s quick. The Rolling Stones went from releasing their hit Mother's Little Helper, which warned about the dangers of the tranquilizer benzodiazepine, to being busted for drug possession in a matter of months. The devil used their celebrity to get them light sentences.

William Rees-Mogg, editor of the Times of London, penned a plea for leniency in a piece called, “Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?”

It is the devil’s logic, which is heavy on the emotion and light on the reasoning.

But the answer to Baron Rees-Mogg’s question if who breaks a butterfly through torture is Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the loons crying insurrection.

We have gone from de-criminalizing small amounts of pot to government agencies handing out needles and other paraphernalia to help drug addicts shoot up.

Many are the vices legalized since the 1950s. Abortion became a right. The government went from shutting down numbers runners to running a numbers game itself called Lotto. States will legalize just about anything they can tax. And states always say the money goes to schools.

Charles Baudelaire, a 19th century French poet, said, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.”

The devil topped that a century later by convincing millions of Americans that God does not exist. When the Supreme Court banned school prayer in 1962, the devil had a license to teach.

Education is dead in America as teacher unions have turned public schools into indoctrination centers. Many parochial and private schools have followed suit.

Currently, teachers are indoctrinating children into being spayed and neutered in the name of tranny rights, which is a lie. No tranny is denied the right to vote, the right to sit on a jury or the right to remain silent (a right I wish they would exercise more often). What they want are bathroom privileges and the souls of your children. Women’s swimming records also are nice but not a central goal.

God is love. The devil changed that to love is love, but Satan means sex is love. It isn’t, but that is what 12-year-olds believe.

The devil has saddled Christians with a two-party system that consists of his party and a Republican Party that is too scared to challenge him on social issues. President Trump does not have that fear.

Mainly, the devil wants to divorce us from God and divide us by our tribes. Black against white against Asians and Hispanics. Men against women. Trannies against feminists. And everyone against Jews. He succeeds thanks to helpers like Barack Hussein Obama, Joe Biden and the CEO of Disney. I cannot think of one positive thing these three men have done for our country.

I can think of something that bankrupt carpenter Francis Eaton did. He dared cross the ocean in a cramped and leaking ship, which began our journey to a freedom that the devil would destroy. Don’t let him.