Moon Griffon has hung a memorable name on the corrupt members of the political leadership class in Louisiana – the Good Ol’ Boy Network.  Unfortunately, there is abundant evidence that this Network exists in many other States besides Louisiana.  Andy Roth, who is leading a counter-network, the State Freedom Caucus Network, gives some illustrations

It has been less than a month since we helped launch our latest Freedom Caucus in the great state of Missouri and they’ve already upset the Swamp in Jefferson City so much that their RINO leaders retaliated against them.

Last week, the Missouri Freedom Caucus (MOFC) attempted to pressure the legislature to finally pass Initiative Petition (IP) reform, in order to stop left-wing dark money from being able to influence ballot measures in Missouri. This is an issue that the entire Republican apparatus in the state – including the RINOs – have professed is incredibly important.

The RINO leadership in the MO Senate was holding IP reform up, so the MOFC responded by blocking Gov. Mike Parson’s administration appointments until it was brought up for a vote.

In response, not only did the RINOs that run the Missouri legislature refuse to bring up IP reform, a key campaign promise from the state’s Republicans, but the RINO Senate Pro Tempore Caleb Rowden removed State Senators and MOFC members Rick Brattin, Bill Eigel, Andrew Koenig, and Denny Hoskins from their roles as Chairs and Vice Chairs of various committees.

All they asked was for the senate to pass IP reform. That’s all it took for them to get booted from their committees.

We’ve seen this happen so many times. Our members were removed from committees in Idaho for calling out the special interests that have control over the state government. Our entire South Carolina Freedom Caucus was booted from the GOP Cloakroom for refusing to sign a “loyalty pledge” to never criticize their fellow Republicans (most of whom are liberal). And our Georgia Vice Chair Sen. Colton Moore was booted from the Republican Caucus for calling for an investigation of corrupt Fulton County DA Fani Willis.

It only took less than a month for the delicate sensibilities of Missouri RINOs to rear their ugly heads.

And Pedro Gonzalez, over at Chronicles, shows further how Red State governments like those in Montana and Wyoming have made themselves a part of this shameful Network by undermining families:

Medical transitioning for minors is prohibited in Montana. But that is a small obstacle with myriad workarounds. The Kolstads did not realize that the fate of their family was sealed the moment they admitted Jennifer into the care of the state. But what choice did they have? It seems the Kolstads thought that if they went along, like hostages, everything would work out for them in the end. They were wrong.

Against the Kolstads’ wishes, CFS moved Jennifer into residential care for treatment and counseling in the neighboring state of Wyoming. Unlike Montana, Wyoming has not outlawed transgender treatments for kids.

Social workers simply arrived at their home with police and notified them that Jennifer was to be surrendered because the Kolstads were supposedly “unable or refusing to provide medical care.” From then on, communication with Jennifer was dramatically limited and restricted by the state.

When Jennifer returned to Montana, a judge told the Kolstads that they may never get her back. Not as a girl, anyway.

“We were told that letting Jennifer transition and live as a boy was in her ‘therapeutic best interest’ and because we aren’t willing to follow that recommendation, the court gave CFS custody of Jennifer for six months,” Krista told Reduxx. “CFS is now going to place Jennifer in the care of her birth mother in Canada, who has never really been a part of her life. The judge said to us ‘you need to expect that reunification with your family may not be what you are expecting.’”

According to the Kolstads, Jennifer’s biological mother abandoned her shortly after she was born.

This story caused such a stir—because it is indeed horrific—that Montana  Governor Greg Gianforte felt compelled to comment on it. You would be forgiven for expecting the Republican governor of a reliably red state to send in the cavalry.

Gianforte said his office reviewed the case and that Lieutenant Governor Kristen Juras, “a constitutional conservative,” concluded all had occurred in accordance with “state policy.” The hospital and social workers and courts had done nothing wrong.

“To give them their best shot at reaching their full potential, children deserve to grow up in happy, healthy homes with loving families,” Gianforte wrote on social media. “Sadly, this ideal is not always realized.”

With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats? The latter abuse you while the former enable the abuse by saying it’s consistent with the laws of the land. They’re just doing their jobs—as did the guards in Stalin’s camps.

Wherever one looks these days, he meets with the same self-serving, thin-skinned, vindictive, cry-babies in political office.  No one should be terribly shocked; the weakening of Christianity and recrudescence of paganism that the West is undergoing produces not only weightless buffoons like Jimmy Fallon and raunchy entertainers like Taylor Swift but also the self-centered, self-gratifying politicians that we know so well in Louisiana, as well as the Rowdens in Missouri, etc.

Our faith has grown weak because we have forgotten what the Church is.  It is not a geopolitical tool of the Roman Catholic Popes to extend their dominions; it is not a gathering of people in a Protestant megachurch seeking emotionally stimulating songs and sermons.  It is a kingdom, a body, rooted ontologically in heaven yet manifesting here on earth, united eternally with Jesus Christ the God-man, with which we too are to be united for the healing of our souls and bodies, and for eternal and ever-deepening communion with God the All-Holy Trinity, the saints, the angels, and the rest of the creation.  The blessed Orthodox Archbishop of Dallas and all the South, Dmitri Royster, whose relics were uncovered in 2016, five years after his repose, and found to be undecayed (a sign of his close friendship and union with God; an explanation of this mystery may be read here) reminds us of this reality in a sermon for Candlemas, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (2 Feb.):

To this day, all of the Church’s celebrations, no matter what the event commemorated may be, whether in the life of Christ, of the Theotokos, or of the saints, all are celebrations of Christ and the establishment on earth of the Kingdom of His presence. He initiated this Kingdom and promised its ultimate realization. And now, just as the Old Israel had awaited the beginning of God’s Kingdom, the New Israel (the Church) awaits the Second and Glorious Coming of Christ and the fullness of His Kingdom, revealed.

Although all of our celebrations are intimately rooted in the knowledge that we have been called for complete communion with Christ and to live in function of His Kingdom to which we already belong, we still live in a world that has for the most part rejected what Christ gave it, that is, authentic life “in abundance,” life with real purpose and meaning. We Christians, in spite of having accepted what God’s intervention in human affairs gave us, slip repeatedly and fall into the great temptation to convert the things of this world into gods. We are constantly attracted by ways of seeking happiness and fulfillment that exclude God. This, of course, always proves to be vain and futile.

So our lives vacillate, back and forth, between the assurance of salvation and indifference, between moments of real joy because we know that God is with us, and moments of boredom because we cannot give ourselves totally over to Him.

Every Christian celebration reaches its climax in the Divine Liturgy for the feast. In this sacred work, when God’s people assemble in His name, we actually become participants in the Heavenly Kingdom to come. We are as literally present with Christ in His future Kingdom as the Apostles were with Him at the Last Supper. So the Kingdom is initiated among us and we enjoy it before our time, by anticipation. This is what every Eucharist is; this is what our feasts and celebrations are all about, and that is why the Eucharist is the very center of all of them.

This kingdom of which Christians are a part is meant to embrace all of mankind and all of his activities, including politics (hence some of the Lord’s parables about the Kingdom of God, like the mustard seed and the leaven (see St Matthew’s Gospel 13:31-33)).  There are a great number of examples from Church history that show what happens when those who wield political power truly become servants of Christ.  Here is one of them:

Upon the death of his father (in 1248) and his older brother Andrew (in 1261), Saint Roman, at the age of twenty-six, took upon himself the governance of Uglich and became a father to his subjects.

He established a poor-house and took in the destitute, who came to him from everywhere. In the principality he built fifteen more churches. Saint Roman was present every day at the divine services, and he often conversed with pious monks.

After the death of his wife in 1280, he devoted himself entirely to ascetic exploits of fasting, prayer and works of righteousness. He built the city Romanov (now Tutaev) on the high bank of the Volga. The holy prince died peacefully on February 3, 1285 and was buried in the Church of the Transfiguration in Uglich.

In 1486, the relics of Saint Roman were found to be incorrupt and were transferred into the new cathedral Church of the Transfiguration.

How different would Louisiana politics look if the greater number of our government officials went to church services every day, prayed and fasted often, personally looked after the poor, and built churches for the glory of God and the salvation of their fellow citizens?

But we do not have to journey all the way to the lands of the Slavs for such inspirational lives.  We may also look with benefit at a royal family more kin to us, from England:

 . . . St. Wereburge, at her uncle King Ethelred’s persuasion, left Ely to charge herself, at his request, with the superintendency of all the houses of religious women in his kingdom, that she might establish in them the observance of the most exact monastic discipline. By his liberality she founded those of Trentham in Staffordshire; of Hanbury, near Tutbury, in the county of Stafford, (not in the county of Huntingdon, as some mistake,) and of Wedon, one of the royal palaces in Northamptonshire. This king also founded the collegiate church of St. John Baptist, in the suburbs of West-Chester, and gave to St. Egwin the ground for the great abbey of Evesham; and after having reigned twenty-nine years, embraced the monastic state in his beloved monastery of Bardney, upon the river Witham, not far from Lincoln, of which he was afterwards chosen abbot. He resigned his crown to Kenred his nephew, brother to our saint, having been chosen king only on account of the nonage of that prince. Kenred governed his realm with great prudence and piety, making it his study, by all the means in his power, to prevent and root out all manner of vice, and promote the knowledge and love of God. After a reign of five years, he recommended his subjects to God, took leave of them, to their inexpressible grief, left his crown to Coelred, his uncle’s son, and making a pilgrimage to Rome, there put on the monastic habit in 708, and persevered in great fervour till his happy death.

Again the question arises:  How different would modern politics be if political leaders were busily establishing monasteries, which are often seedbeds of saints as well as centers of culture, education, and help for the poor and sick; if they were, along with that, promoting virtue and ‘the knowledge and love of God’?  It is heavily ironic, heavy like a fat cow set upon the scrawny shoulders of a skinny child, that these ‘backward’ medieval hereditary Christian kings, princesses, etc. eagerly set aside their royal powers to become lowly monks and nuns, while our ‘enlightened’ secular elected/appointed rulers often cling to their offices until they literally go senile or keel over dead in them (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sen John McCain, Sen Diane Feinstein, Sen Strom Thurmond, Pres Joe Biden, etc., etc., etc.), so addicted are they to power and all that it brings to them.

Abp Dmitri brings us once more to the crux of the matter, i.e., to the disorder in our souls, providing also a timely reminder about the upcoming season of Lent:

I will emphasize again, however, that although what we have said is true, we continually orient our lives towards everyday pursuits, often living as though we had never experienced this divine reality. That is why repentance and penitential seasons are in order. That is why in approximately one month we will enter the Great Fast or Lent during which time we are exhorted to repent of our sins.

What is important for us Christians is that we have really “seen the True Light, received the Heavenly Spirit, found the true faith” in this experience of the Kingdom of God. The question we must all ask ourselves sincerely, however, is “what are we like when we return into this world after this Heavenly experience?”

The Good Ol’ Boys will reign in Louisiana and the other States they have conquered for as long as we keep Christ from reigning over our individual and collective/corporate lives.