Chris Johnson

The First Amendment declares:

This is our protection from the state for religion, speech, distributing speech, gathering, and demanding changes from the state when the state harms us.

This is what the First Amendment to our Constitution says. We interpreted it first by looking at the plain text of the amendment, as it was understood in 1791. While the 14th Amendment incorporated the entire Constitution as amended for all states, the meaning of the First Amendment is fixed to 1791.

The language of the 14th Amendment was fixed in the 1860s, when it was ratified.

Once we determine if the plain text of the Constitution is implicated, the state bears the burden of proving that the current regulation, law, or action is supported by this Nation’s historical traditions of regulations.

While an exact match is not required, the regulation must match the what, how, and why of our Nation’s traditional regulations.

The first thing we note is that it is a restriction on Congress, the government, not the people. The 14th Amendment means that it is also a restriction on all local and state governments. It does not apply to people or companies.

This means that your employer can create a rule that says you cannot post anything about the company. They might have a rule that says you are always a representative of the company and that you must show good moral character.

The First Amendment has nothing to do with any rules your employer makes. There might be other laws or regulations that apply, but not your First Amendment protected rights.

While the common vernacular is “Freedom of Speech”, this phrase does not appear in the Constitution. Instead, it commands the government to not create a state religion nor to stop people from practicing their religion.

One of the things that the left yells is, “No right is absolute!” This is true. We have other protected rights; we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. — U.S. Declaration of Independence

When there is a conflict between “life” and “religion,” the courts have found that the right to life supersedes the right to practice your religion as you wish. This is why we have freedom of religion, but human sacrifice is illegal. There are other crimes that are not protected by freedom of religion as well.

In general, the process is called “levels of scrutiny.” This is the process where the court first determines how much a regulation interferes with your protected right; based on that level, the court applies Strict, Intermediate, or Rational scrutiny.

Each level of scrutiny has a corresponding burden that the government must meet to justify that interference.

It is the same when we look at the freedom of speech, …abridging the freedom of speech…. We look at the meaning of “abridged” in 1791 to understand. We look to regulations on people’s speech in 1791 to find what are and are not allowed abridgements of speech.

While the left uses, “You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater.” This is not true. It is a lie.

It was stated as part of dicta by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Schenck v. United States, 1919. He then spent much of his later career trying to reverse this horrible opinion.

We know it is a lie because you most certainly are allowed to shout “fire” if the theater is on fire. Or if there is a legal need to move people to an exit.

After Charlie was murdered, many people went on social media to express themselves. Some were grieving, and their pain came through. Others celebrated his death. Still others expressed their desire for others to be murdered, as Charlie was.

All of these statements are covered by the plain text of the First Amendment. As were the statements that a man cannot become a woman and that abortion is evil.

These are all examples of speech. They all fall within the plain text of the First Amendment.

We add one more example: people sharing these posts with others, including employers.

First, there are laws regulating speech. In particular, credible threats of violence are illegal. See 18 U.S.C. § 875 for example. §875 covers threats sent through interstate communications, such as X or Facebook.

But, people are being fired for what they said. Their speech is protected; that can’t be legal?

It is legal. You were allowed to speak freely when you said those vile, evil, disgusting things. You still have the freedom to speak as you whine about being fired. Your freedom of speech has not been abridged.

Here is the thing: we have the right to assemble peacefully. There is an ancillary right that has been put into case law, and that is the right to not assemble. In the same way that the state is forbidden from stopping you from associating with others, they can’t force you to associate with people.

Your employer has the right to not associate with you.

In addition, it is highly likely that your employment contract includes phrases that say you can’t harm the company’s reputation.

You might argue that this means that a company can fire somebody for being a “Nazi.”

You would be wrong. In general, you can’t be fired for your political beliefs. The left fought this battle and won.

While you can’t be fired for being a communist, you can be fired for disrupting the workplace. You can’t be fired for organizing; you can be fired for not showing up for work.

You can’t be fired for having conservative beliefs, and you can’t be fired because someone accuses you of being a Nazi or racist or a white supremacist.

So to all those whining leftists out there, upset that they were fired, you don’t have legal grounds to get your job back. Learn to code.

I know what I want to do, I am just not able to do it justice currently.

What is Charlie’s Voice?

This is taking up Charlie’s bloody microphone, not in hate, but in love and compassion.

It is being willing to listen to people ask questions and addressing them honestly with the truth and compassion. It is being willing to stand up for what is right but without acting out.

As one person put it, WWCD, What Would Charlie Do?

Since I believe that Charlie lived by WWJD, this is not meant to be a slight to any Christian; it is expanding on those ideals.

His voice is strong and positive.

But how did he convince people?

From what I have seen and read, his strongest point was to give people a smaller concept to grasp and think on. To personalize it. Instead of talking about weaponized lawfare, he talks in terms of a single person. Do you purchase things with credit? How do you pay for those things? How do you record those payments?

It is about getting the person to have something personal to work with.

So many of the big lies are so big that people can’t wrap their heads around them.

One I’ve heard recently is “Trump is a pedophile.”  Now the logic is a bit twisted, but I think it goes something like this: Trump’s DOJ took Epstein to court and got him convicted.  But because the court didn’t release the names of the people involved with Epstein’s crimes, Trump must be one of those people. Now the Biden administration couldn’t release the Epstein files because Trump had the records sealed. Now that Trump is attempting to get the files released, but it hasn’t happened yet, he must be on the list as a pedophile. Q.E.D. Trump is a pedophile.

On the other hand, Biden isn’t a disgusting pedophile, even if his daughter Ashley wrote about her father taking showers with her at inappropriate ages, because Biden is a kind man, while we know that Trump is a criminal.

Trump having material protected and guarded by the Secret Service, which he had the legal right to have, is proof of criminality.  Biden having classified material stored in open boxes in his garage is not proof of criminality. Even though Biden never had the authority to remove those classified documents from their proper locations.

It is hard to follow the logic. But it is there, you just have to tease it out.

Lyrics

The Irish fought for independence for far too many years. There were multiple uprisings. It was very much an asymmetric war.

This song spoke to me earlier this week when thinking of how the left thinks and acts. I wish I had the skills to set new lyrics to this tune to describe how the murder of Charlie is the start of major change.

Starting this Wednesday, there will be a new weekly feature tentatively named “Charlie’s Voice.’

The goal is to produce a persuasive article to carry Charlie Kirk’s voice forward.

The guidelines are something like this:

• Take a left-leaning stance, position, or statement at face value.
• Listen to the statement/argument as if a single person were presenting it to you, face-to-face.
• Extract from the statement/argument the actual points of the person presenting.
• Using persuasive language, present your counterargument in such a way that it brings that person closer to our ideals and goals.
• Maintain neutral language, no gotcha phrases, no barbed zingers.

I do not expect this to be easy, which is why I’m asking for help from you.

Submissions go to info@troglodite.com. We’d prefer a Google Doc, LibreOffice document, or a Word document. Submissions will be edited for grammar and may be sent back with red pen if more than grammar changes are required.

Please include the byline you wish to have your article published under.

Examples

If you want to write on these topics, feel free; I’m putting them out here now because I will be working on something for Wednesday.

President Trump is a felon.

Example response:

You are correct; Donald Trump was convicted in a New York state court of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

If there are 34 counts, does this mean that Trump was convicted of 34 different crimes? The court says yes; maybe you won’t agree with the court.

Over the course of nine months, Trump signed 9 checks to Michael Cohen. The checks were normal checks with a memo line. The prosecution claimed that the text on the memo line was fraudulent, resulting in 9 different counts. Because that memo line was repeated in a ledger, each entry in the ledger became another count.

The prosecution decided that there were 4 counts for each check that Trump wrote, leading to the 34 count number. All of which were for the payment of one bill.

This would be similar to you buying a new set of golf clubs on credit, then writing a check once a month to pay off the bill, but instead of writing “New golf clubs,” you wrote “Entertainment.”

The prosecutor’s argument was that anything apart from “hush payment” was fraudulent.

There will be more, of course; this is just the start.

I look forward to your submissions.

My office chair has been failing for about a year now. The gas tube gave up the fight. The left armrest had cracked. And the entire thing had become one uncomfortable mess.

As somebody who sits in front of his computer for many hours per week, this was unacceptable. Worse, it was painful to sit for more than about an hour. After an hour, the discomfort was making it difficult to program or get other work done.

I bought a new chair. I’ve spent the last couple of hours sitting in it. There are different issues, but mostly it is me getting used to the new chair. It is nice to have my eyes at the correct level for my screens.

Auburn Duck Race

This is an event that Ally has been attending for a few years. She dresses in period garb, does a cooking demo, and sells her cookbooks. Normally I drive her out to the event, drop her and her gear off, head home, and then go and pick her up after the event.

We were both uncomfortable with her being in a crowd after what happened to Charlie, so I went along and stayed. SIG P365, two spare magazines, truck gun briefcase.

Nothing happened; we had fun, plenty of people, some book sales. I got to see one of my clients in person and met his family.

Shit Talk from Leftist

I had mentioned to Ally that the amount of Trump and right bashing on the Reddits had gone down. I spoke too soon. It is still full of hate and evil.

She’s right! Donnie started this!

J6 was the most violent thing in living memory. That’s the problem; MAGA lives in a completely different reality from what is actually going on. They don’t have the mental capacity to apply critical thinking skills, they just ride on hatred and lies.

I think I’m going to have a “speak out” day once a week.

The Most Terrifying Force of Death

Please don’t wake the man who wants to be left alone.

Charlie

As of Thursday night, they still do not have the shooter in custody. They have confirmed they have good video of the shooter. They believe they have his firearm. A Mauser in 30-06. They have released an image of a person of interest.

There are statements being presented as fact that the cartridges had things written in them indicating a trans or antifa motivation. This has not been confirmed by official sources. The different media reporting this might very well be circle sourcing.

Iryna

It has been 20 days since she was murdered. The look of stark fear in her face after she was stabbed is burned in my mind. I am waiting for the trial to end to find him sentenced to death.

Networking

It’s working. Shhh, don’t spook it.

Race Conditions

In computer science, a race condition is when two threads act on the same value at the same time, with the results of one thread being overwritten by the other.

Consider a database with a value in it; call it the number of visitors to the site. Simplistic code would read the data from the database, increment it by one, then write it back to the database.

This works if there is only a single thread. But if there are two threads, between the time one thread reads the value and writes it back to the database, another thread reads the same value. The value will be incremented in the database by one, when it was supposed to be incremented by two.

In this simple case, we can use a monoatomic action to do the operation: UPDATE options SET value=value+1 WHERE key='site-counter'

This SQL statement reads, increments, and writes the results back in a single operation.

The other method is by using a transaction. db_start(); $row = db_query("SELECT * FROM options WHERE key='site-counter'"); $value = $row['value']; $value += 1; db_query("UPDATE options SET value=$value WHERE key='site-counter'"); db_commit();

The framework I am using uses a crass and simplistic ORM (object relationship model). You don’t normally access the database directly. There is no method to start a transaction using the ORM. This would not be an issue except the framework actually has a critical section where a race condition can exist and is being hit on a semiregular basis.

And my last explanation to the client, this being the fifth time she’s asked what this thing is happening, was met with “I don’t speak your language. When will it be fixed?”

Question of the Week

What is the most touching thing you’ve seen since Charlie was assassinated?

Ally is in tears. I’m angry. I haven’t been this angry since somebody tried to take my kids from me 15+ years ago.

We are seeing a breakdown of our societal norms. We are no longer a high-trust society. As the Magic Eight Ball used to say, “All signs point to yes.”

My father used to say that he was made colorblind by an act of Congress. By this he meant that as an officer in the US Navy, he was legally bound to ignore race when interacting with those that reported to him.

In my entire life I believe I’ve only seen one reaction from him or my mother that was race-based.

In 4th grade I asked my parents if my friend from school could come over. They agreed. The parents were in contact with each other, and Mom and I went to pick up my friend.

He climbed into the car, and we had a great playdate. Afterward my parents said something about, “We weren’t expecting a black kid.”

In all my descriptions of my friend, I never mentioned his race.

I feel like I remained colorblind until middle school. In high school I was exposed to N* for the first time. They enjoyed picking on the white kids. They were crass, rude, mean. I hated the bus ride, I hated school, and I hated everything to do with the N*s. But here’s the thing: I use that word today; I didn’t at the time. Those monsters destroyed my opinion of black people. It took years before I recovered.

I did recover. I was able to look beyond race and judge people by their actions. I didn’t see racism until I was at University and was introduced to the term “Oreo” by a friend. He was describing how N*s described him.

Even when I was living with Section 8 people, the people were people. The N*s dealing drugs across the street from me and my family? Not so much.

The other day, an evil monster with black skin was riding the light rail when he decided to murder a young white woman. He took a lockblade from his pocket. He opened it. He then prepared to leave the car at the next stop.

As the train stopped, he stood, took a step to his right, leaned forward, and stabbed Iryna 3 times, murdering her before walking off the train saying, “I got that white girl.”

I have been seeing videos claiming that Iryna deserved it, because she was white. There are images out there of this evil black monster with a crown on his head and red glowing eyes praising his actions.

And I’ve seen videos made by blacks calling the white people that refuse to sit in front of them “racist.”

I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being told that I’m evil and uncaring and attempting to silence people who are saying everything they think out loud and in public.

I’m not willing to make a fuss or call them on their hate-filled screeds. It isn’t worth it.

Charlie was willing. Charlie was very good at it.

He would debate anybody who came to talk with him. Ben Shapiro is good at winning debates. He isn’t nearly as good as Charlie was at bringing people to the right.

Ally watched more of Charlie than I ever did. I didn’t watch because I can’t stay that calm in the face of such idiocy.

Today we lost Charlie.

And I’m scared. There are people from the middle that are running from the far left loons as fast as they can. They aren’t conservatives, they are not right leaning, but they sure as hell aren’t with them.

I don’t know who shot Charlie. I’ll wait to find out. I am passing judgment on the reaction of the “left.” I’m passing judgment on the rhetoric of the left, of how they constantly use the language of violence against the right.

I don’t hate them; they are not worth my energy. They say they hate me.

What am I scared of? I’m scared the light switch has been flipped in far too many people.

The left treats violence as a dimmer switch; they turn it up until it starts to look like it might be too much, then they turn it down. They use it to keep things at a low boil without things boiling over.

Unfortunately, the response isn’t on a dimmer switch. It is on a toggle switch to 20,000 volts.

It is the people who are comfortable taking 300 yard shots with Grandpa’s old hunting rifle.  It is the people who walk into a place and understand egress planning as well as sight/shot lines. It is people that respond without thinking to threats as if they had been in dance class together.

These are the people who go silent while they make target lists. These are the people who will spend the time and effort to plan every part of their operation to the final degree.

And that target list is huge. It would include people who wouldn’t dream they would be on someone’s target list.  They are just a talking head on MSNBC or CNN or any of the other outlets that spew hate and lies. It includes all the low-level politicians who aren’t relevant enough to be on a target list.

There is a powerful scene in Unintended Consequences where two hunters are out deer hunting. They look across the river into the backyard of a politician. They decide that they want to become part of the resistance.  So they line up to take the shot, just as if it was a deer. It was an easy 250-yard shot.

They then just walked out of the woods, another pair of hunters.

How many opportunities will present themselves over the coming months to people who have had the switch flipped?

I pray for all of you to do the right thing. Stay strapped; keep your head on a swivel. Stay away from stupid people. Stay away from stupid places. And don’t be there at stupid times.

Charlie Kirk has died. I’m more than PISSED.

I am so angry right now.

Keep your head on a swivel. Stay strapped.