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Portland's Democrat Mayor Ted Wheeler, recently re-elected in a run-off election, promised to restore order and pledged, "There will be no autonomous zone in Portland."
Two days later, an "autonomous zone" was established with layers of barricades forbidding police to even enter the zone.
The Seattle Times is asking how Mayor Jenny Durkan will be remembered, now that she has announced she will not run for a second term.
Seattle's autonomous zone, a.k.a. CHAZ, comes to mind. An event Durkan characterized as "A summer of love."
There is one fundamental reason why the American Revolution succeeded, while the French Revolution failed.
Secular progressive humanism.
Be informed, not misled.
I will also be talking on the radio this morning about the latest on the Electoral College vote and the Trump team's efforts to expose the election corruption.
Within days of far-left progressive Mayor Wheeler's promise of "no autonomous zone" like Seattle, Portland had an "autonomous zone" just like Seattle's.
And like Seattle's zone, Portland's also got national news coverage by conservative news sources.
The Portland police chief reported the zone covered at least three square blocks and those within the zone had "a stockpile of weapons." They were organized. Leadership was flown in to oversee the "spontaneously" created zone.
Threats from both the mayor and the police were ignored. Finally, this past weekend, some kind of "deal" was struck between the Portland police and the "citizens" of "autonomous zone" and the layers of walls and barbed wire are being removed---with the promise that if the city doesn't conform to a list of action items, "autonomous zone" will be resurrected.
This weekend, the Seattle Times wrote an extensive article seeking to sort out what departing Mayor Jenny Durkan's one term legacy will look like.
Even with generous applications of make-up by the Times, Durkan will probably not be remembered as a shining example of leadership.
Three years ago, Durkan came into office following the failed tenure of homosexual activist, progressive Mayor Ed Murray following his early exit due to numerous allegations of young men claiming they were sexually assaulted by him.
Durkan promised "change." She said, "Do I think it will happen overnight? Absolutely not. But I know one thing for a certainty, that if you keep doing the same thing, you can't expect different results."
By 2019, Durkan's promise to fix the "homelessness problem" was badly broken. Seattle had never felt so abandoned by leadership.
In fact the state of the city was so bad KOMO TV's Eric Johnson wrote and produced an hour long documentary titled "Seattle Is Dying."
Now, as we approach the end of 2020, well over 100 police officers have left the force, saying I've had it---"I'm out of here."
Why does secular progressiveism always fail?
The Heritage Foundation has published an excellent article on this subject.
Historian Edmund Burke warned the people in his "Reflections on the Revolution in France" of the dangers of revolutions that despise everything that came before them: "People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors."
The rest, as they say, is history.
Within a decade after executing their hated monarch---and after years of political instability, social chaos, and the aggressive use of the guillotine, the freedom loving French revolutionaries installed an emperor. Napoleon Bonaparte, dictator for life---who would plunge continental Europe into war.
Near the heart of our cultural crises today is a failure to grasp the difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution.
The difference between 1776 and 1789.
The difference between 1776 and 1789 is that the revolutionaries in Paris took a wrecking ball to the institutions and the traditions that had shaped France for centuries.
Everything was destroyed, including their religion.
Maximillien Ropbespierre said, "We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic."
The men who signed the Declaration in 1776, by contrast, did not share this rage against inherited authorities generally. The king? Yes. A biblical model of authority and leadership? No.
Although the Americans, in the words of James Madison, did not suffer from a "blind veneration for antiquity," neither did they reject the political and cultural inheritance of Great Britain and the Western tradition.
Our Founding Fathers understood one thing the French failed to understand---much like so-called progressive, Democrat leadership fail to understand today.
Our Founders understood that political liberty demanded the restraints of civic virtue and biblical Christianity.
As Ben Franklin stepped from the hall where our Founders were writing our Constitution, he was asked by a citizen, "What kind of government have you given us?" His answer: "A Republic, if you can keep it."
He, and the rest of our Founders understood the absolute necessity of personal and moral restraint to maintain freedom and liberty in the culture.
In his farewell address, George Washington made a veiled reference to France when he said:
"What ever may be conceded to the influence of refined education...reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence, reinforced the fact that a successful and free culture can only exist in the context of religious virtue when he said "that he is the best friend to American liberty who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion."
We often hear French historian Alexis de Tocqueville quoted as saying he discovered America's greatness in their goodness---their deeply held biblical religious convictions. It's true, he did say that.
He also affirmed Edmund Burke's worst fears about France, when he said:
"Because the Revolution seemed to be striving for the regeneration of the human race even more than the reform of France, it lit a passion which the most violent political revolutions had never been able to produce."
Then he added this:
"This zeal, took on the appearance of a 'new kind of religion...without God, without ritual, and without life after death'."
Herein is the reason progressivism always fails---and is miserably failing in every American city and state where secular progressive Democrats are running the government.
And it's the reason Joe Biden and his "administration" will miserably fail should he become the next President of the United States.
It isn't political. It's spiritual.
Biden and Harris can claim to deeply hold the Christian faith---and they do make that claim, but it is a hollow testimony of faith when it is not lived out in their lives and policies.
And it is certainly not lived out in their policies.
Biden is collecting the most anti-biblical group of people around himself of any American president in history. Should he actually become president, he and his people will push America toward the folly of France and the realization of the truth of Patrick Henry's words:
"When people forget God, tyrants forge their chains."
Herein lies the source of our present chaos in Seattle, Portland and other cities across the nation. And it looms over our nation itself.
Without God, there is ultimately no freedom or liberty
Which path will we ultimately take? The welfare of the city of man and humanism, or the belief in the City of God?
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Courageous. Be Vigilant. Be Prayerful.