However, it is claimed our War for Independence was an act of violence, but that compares apples with apes. Our break with England was a collective decision after many months of negotiation by elected authorities. Brown practiced arbitrary violence against innocent people; our break with England was done after pleading and providing reasons for the break.

Collective efforts with England by delegates from the thirteen American colonies were rebuffed. After England levied excessive taxes without any agreement or representation by the colonies, the colonists were ready to declare independence reluctantly. This led to the violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened fire on a group of Boston colonists, killing five men. The fight for independence was on, and freedom was ahead.

Conversely, Brown’s violence was planned, and innocent people died with repercussions to our day. He promoted himself to initiate the Civil War that did not have to happen. Slavery was dying anyway. It had been illegal to import slaves since January 1, 1808. While slavery was still a blight, the dying institution was not worth the bloody spasms and convulsions of a war that killed over 600,000 men, injured almost 500,000, and made havoc on the South.

Brown was a sincere fool, fanatic, and follower (not of Christ) with wild, apocalyptic visions from another sphere. Shockingly, many impressive, highly placed, and highly respected American leaders such as preachers, poets, pundits, philosophers, and a physician supported and defended him.

He married twice and fathered twenty children, many of whom died with him in his forays against slavery, albeit usually against innocent people. After a life of abolitionist activities, many of them violent, Brown led twenty-one on a raid on Harper’s Ferry in Charles Town, VA (now WV) to procure warehoused guns and ammunition to arm fugitive slaves. His wacky plan was to kick off a rebellion among slaves and start the War that he hoped would free the slaves.

His plan failed, and ironically, the first man killed at Harper’s Ferry was an innocent free black man who worked for the B&O Railroad. After a quick but fair trial, Brown was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

As Brown left the county jail at 11:00 a.m. on December 2, 1859, he rode to the gallows sitting on his coffin in a furniture wagon. He passed through a large but limited crowd of civilians, the local militia, and a hundred  U.S. Marines commanded by Army Colonel Robert E. Lee, Lt. J.E.B Stuart, and Marine Lt. Israel Greene. Thomas (later Stonewall) Jackson was on temporary duty from his professorship at Virginia Military Institute, providing security at the execution.  Lincoln’s future assassin John Wilkes Booth, wanting to be an observer, illegally borrowed a militia uniform for the execution.

Within a year of Brown’s execution, the first state seceded from the Union, and one of the most tragic wars in history began.

Black-owned businesses in the North closed on the day of Brown’s execution, and church bells rang across the North. Huge memorial services took place, guns were fired, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau (both famous white leaders), and others joined many Northerners in toadying to Brown’s memory and mission, hoping to justify his madness.

Emerson remarked on Brown’s death sentence, that Brown “will make the gallows glorious like the Cross.” Emerson, like the others, had drunk the Kool-Aid before joining the John Brown Parade.

Radical, transcendental preachers and philosophers in New England made a hero out of a zero.

Brown was the North’s hero and was the most famous American from 1859 until Lincoln’s assassination in 1865! That speaks volumes about the mental acumen of the period. Thoreau spoke to a crowd in Concord, Massachusetts, saying, “No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature.”

Tell that to the relatives of those he and his sons shot and hacked to death in Kansas.

Even with his violent activities, Brown was funded by some of the most polished, proper, powerful, and prosperous men in New England! On May 9, 1859, Brown delivered a lecture in Concord, Massachusetts, that Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and David Thoreau attended. Brown could not get a more respectable audience than that.

Thoreau equated Brown’s execution to Christ’s crucifixion at the hands of Pontius Pilate, with whom he compared the American government. He declared those who believe Brown threw away his life and died as a fool are themselves fools.

As Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders, he was joined by Harriet Tubman, “General Tubman,” as he called her. She was also called “The Moses of her people.” Tubman, a darling of today’s left, was involved with, and helped Brown.

Shockingly, so many northerners considered Brown (often identified with Christ and Moses) a hero, and Union soldiers marched to a new song John Brown’s Body. The song made a hero out of a heretic and a martyr out of a madman whose “soul is marching on.” The melody was later used by abolitionist Unitarian Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Innocent people sing that song in our day with gusto, not realizing it was a bloodthirsty marching song asking God to help northern soldiers crush the South.

No doubt, General Sherman whistled and sang that song on his bloody march from Atlanta to Savannah.

Julia was married to Samuel Gridley Howe, a famous physician and abolitionist. Samuel was a member of the Secret Six, a group of influential New England leftists who funded John Brown’s work. The Secret Six also included Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns. Two of the six were Unitarian preachers. While these famous, well-connected men did not meet as a group, Brown met with them a few times to inform them of his “progress.” And to pick up a check. They gave him money without asking any questions. They, along with William Lloyd Garrison and Amos Adams Lawrence (both influential white leaders), funded Brown’s actions and must bear responsibility for his attack on Harper’s Ferry.

After the fiasco at Harper’s Ferry, the newspapers began to release information about the Secret Six. The handwriting was on the wall: the culpable financiers of terror (that some would call “good” terror) shredded their papers of all incriminating evidence of their treachery and fled the country. Smith stayed home but confined himself to a mental institution saying something like, “John who?” and “Harper’s what?”

A Senate committee looked at the Secret Six activities, but they were careful not to look too closely. They were fearful about finding incriminating evidence of the famous supporters of Brown’s terror, thinking it should remain uncovered. When the committee questioned Samuel Howe and George Stearns, the two men later admitted they were asked questions in such a manner that “permitted them to give honest answers without implicating themselves.” Civil War historian James M. McPherson stated that “A historian reading their testimony, however, will be convinced that they told several falsehoods.”

The Senate closed the hearings and wrote their report while the men responsible for funding Brown went back to their reputable lives in New England. Well, all’s well that ends well. However, the Civil War did not end well. Over 600,000 men died, with 500,000 injured and maimed for life.

Former slave Frederick Douglass secretly met with Brown at a stone quarry in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where he wisely refused to be part of the Harper’s Ferry raid. He admitted, “I met him often during this struggle, and all I saw of him gave me a more favorable impression of the man, and inspired me with a higher respect for his character.” However, his hero would soon be executed for treason, inciting a slave insurrection and murder. It was not good public relations to be identified with Brown at that time, so Douglass sailed for England a few weeks before the trapdoor on the gallows snapped open.

Twenty years after the Civil War, Douglass said, “John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.” Douglass called him “a brave and glorious old man….History has no better illustration of pure, disinterested benevolence.” Of course, Douglass was desperate to justify his support for the unsupportable.

According to her biographer Kate C. Larson, “Harriet Tubman thought Brown was the greatest white man who ever lived.” Tubman helped Brown recruit for the ill-fated raid, but illness kept her from participating. She opined that Brown did more for American blacks than Lincoln did. While she was female, a black, and a do-gooder, having helped hundreds of slaves escape on the Underground Railroad, her likeness should not be on the twenty-dollar bill instead of Jackson’s because of her involvement with Brown’s rebellion.

Had Tubman not been ill, she would have swung from the gallows along with John.

According to W. E. B. Du Bois, in his 1909 biography, “John Brown was right.” However, Du Bois was wrong. Brown was not right, but Du Bois was a brilliant black activist and the first black to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. Blacks have tended to overlook many serious problems of white men who carry water for the black cause.

John Brown and people like him are still defended and praised for their devotion, deception, and destructive actions. Why will people not make principled decisions regardless of race, money, influence, relationship, political party, or religion? Douglass, Tubman, Du Bois, and other black leaders refused to criticize Brown because he supported abolition.

Men tend to appreciate, accept, and applaud others who support their own positions—right or wrong positions. Democrats support people who are clearly self-centered, self-aggrandizing, and self-promoting, and Republicans do the same. Honest politicians should publicly disavow radicals in their midst.

Radical Blacks promote principle openly but mock it privately. It doesn’t take much intellectual candlepower to see that everyone should stop making heroes out of heretics.  

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent being Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning!  The eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don  Boys, Ph.D.; and visit his blog.  Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his  articles, and click here to support  his work with a donation.)

His ambitions were commendable, while his actions were calamitous. He was a fanatic who had one thing on his mind, and no one could change it. He was John Brown, whose photo in the dictionary should be listed under “fanatic.” He was to die hanging from a rope (bought by the Federal Government) in Charles Town, VA (now, WV) on a cold December day in 1859.

John Brown was from a good family going back to the Pilgrims, proving once again that stupidity, fanaticism, and mental problems can afflict any strata of society. Brown’s father had as an apprentice Jesse R. Grant who was the father of Ulysses S. Grant.

In 1825, the John Brown family moved to Pennsylvania, where they purchased 200 acres and built a home, then started a tannery that soon employed 15 men. From 1825 to 1835, the Browns helped 2500 fugitive slaves find freedom since their home was a major stop on the Underground Railroad. He helped establish a school and became postmaster of Randolph, Pennsylvania.

Obviously, even fanatics can accomplish some good, but it never relieves them of their nefarious activities. After all, Mussolini made Italy’s trains run on time, and Hitler is responsible for the Volkswagen automobile. Oops, it is dangerous to say anything positive (even if truthful) about tyrants. It is acceptable to praise lefties such as Stalin, Castro, Chavez, Obama, Sanders, Biden, and what’s-her-name, etc., even when they lie.

In 1836, Brown moved his family to what is now Kent, Ohio, and in 1837, he made his famous and destructive vow mentioned earlier. The vow was in response to the murder of a famous Presbyterian preacher, newspaper editor, and abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy, who was shot and killed by a proslavery mob. His murder shocked the whole country.

In 1846, Brown moved his family to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he joined the Sanford Street Free Church. There he heard famous antislavery speakers such as black leaders Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, both former slaves. Brown greatly influenced Douglass toward more aggressively pursuing their cause. After spending a few hours with Brown, Douglass wrote in 1847, “My utterances became more and more tinged by the color of this man’s strong impressions.”

Douglass should have been more careful about his friends and associates.

Brown moved again in 1849 to North Elba, New York, a black community in the Adirondack Mountains, with plans to help blacks learn to farm. That was commendable, but fanatics take advantage of situations to further their good or bad causes.

All fanatics are dangerous, as seen recently in Washington, D.C. A half a million Trump supporters met in Washington on January 6 and resulted in an out of control mob invading the Capitol Building. Few in the media mention that only a few hundred were out of control, while hundreds of thousands made their opinions known by peaceful protests.

The mainstream media seem to think it is unthinkable that fanatics like BLM and Antifa would be involved in such a gathering as provocateurs. We know there were rabid fanatics (extremists) on both the left and right who broke laws, and all should go to the pokey for a year or so. Moreover, the violent ones who injured others should go to prison for a few years. That would cool some of their political enthusiasm.

Brown is usually called an intensely religious man, but he was a nut case, and his noble motives are no excuse for his excessive and violent behavior. He thought violence was the only way to stop slavery, and, incredibly, he was proclaimed a hero. He is considered one today by the non-thinkers. Neither Brown’s religious dedication nor his hatred of slavery justifies his zealotry. Neither do the political contradictions, confusion, and chaos give Brown any credibility.

Brown focused his concern on Kansas’s future statehood, then a territory, and made plans to move his family west. He took his fanaticism with him. Brown and the anti-slave settlers were hoping to bring Kansas into the Union as a slavery-free state.

U.S. President James Buchanan (a slave-leaning northern Democrat) determined to admit Kansas as a state as soon as possible, and he didn’t care whether it was a slave or free state. He wanted another state. Abolitionists had moved from New England to Kansas to help the cause of ending slavery. In contrast, proslavery citizens from Missouri and Georgia moved to Kansas to help make Kansas a slave state.

Proslavery people in neighboring Missouri continued to stir the pot in Kansas, helping keep alive the Free State and Slave State issue. Abolitionists in Kansas  were known as jayhawkers who took advantage of the chaos to bully the proslavers along the Kansas-Missouri border. Abolitionists were genuinely concerned with the possibility of another slave state.

A train wreck was in the making that Brown only caused to accelerate as he and his family moved to Lawrence, Kansas. Antislavery settlers from Massachusetts founded Lawrence to make Kansas (soon to be called Bleeding Kansas) a Free State, mitigating the influence of proslavery citizens. When Brown moved there, he made the political situation worse, much worse.

Lawrence was invaded by about 800 proslavery men led by the Douglas County Sheriff Samuel Jones on May 21, 1856. Jones had been shot in the back earlier and chased out of town, so he had the color of law on his side if not actual authority for the Lawrence raid. Two flags were flying at the head of the posse: an American flag and a flag with a crouching tiger. Other banners proclaimed “Southern rights” and “The Superiority of the White Race.”

The town leaders decided not to resist the posse but also refused to comply with their demands. Sheriff Jones told a town spokesman that all citizens had to surrender their weapons, but the spokesman replied that he could not command a town citizen to do anything. The town official did give him the town cannon, but the sheriff was not satisfied. Tyrants must always disarm free citizens.

After failing to destroy the Free State Hotel with cannon fire, the sheriff torched the building. He and his men then destroyed the Kansas Free State and the Herald of Freedom printing presses and threw the type and other equipment into the Kansas River. The sheriff’s posse then burned a large home, looted the town, and was dismissed by the sheriff, who went home for a cold refreshment.

The next morning, Brown and his sons, disappointed that Lawrence’s citizens had not resisted, went to the homes of proslavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas on May 24, 1856. The Brown family announced they were the “Northern Army” come to provide justice. They broke into proslaver James Doyle’s cabin and marched him and two of his sons down a road where Owen and Salmon Brown hacked their victims to death with broadswords. John shot Doyle in his forehead. Later that evening, the Browns visited two more cabins and brutally murdered two other proslavery settlers. None of those executed owned any slaves or had anything to do with the raid on Lawrence.

Brown lit the match that exploded the powder keg of three months of violence following the massacre, and 29 people died.

Shockingly, Brown is considered a hero, even a dedicated Christian, by many. No, not the kind revealed in the Bible where a Christian is one who has trusted Christ and experienced a changed life. Brown and his crowd did not act like Christians, and the Capitol mob did not act like Christians or Conservatives.

Of course, some of the riot leaders in Washington were far-left provocateurs.

The sacking of abolitionist Lawrence could not be justified. The fact that the proslavery county sheriff led the raid did not make it legal. The invasion of the town only antagonized the northern states and made the division more rigid. Pro Free State Republicans introduced a bill to bring Kansas into the Union as a free state while Democrats introduced a bill to bring in the new state as a proslavery state. The lines were drawn, and everyone chose sides, sometimes brother against brother.

Attempting to settle the issue, the territorial legislature (very proslavery) called for a Constitutional Convention in Lecompton in September of 1857. Free-state (antislavery) men were fearful that proslavery influencers would rig the election. They did. So, proslavery forces “won” that election as border ruffians poured over the Missouri border to stuff the ballot boxes.

When the Territory citizens voted on the issue, many fraudulent votes were cast from nonresidents from Missouri, resulting in massive violence that reinforced the area’s name of Bleeding Kansas. Some people estimated that up to 60 percent of the votes cast in Kansas were fraudulent.

With all the chaos, Kansas, as a free state, later became the 34th state to join the Union, not because of John Brown but despite him. Both sides committed atrocities, and this struggle between pro-and anti-slave forces in Kansas was a significant factor in the eruption of the Civil War.

Brown moved back east and met with two black leaders Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman, who greatly influenced him. With Tubman’s help, whom he called “General Tubman,” Brown led an attack on pro slavers, as well as a United States military armory, at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October of 1859.

(And now Biden wants to replace Jackson’s face on the twenty-dollar bill with Tubman’s.)

Brown’s motive for the raid was to get supplies, guns, and ammunition to arm slaves he expected to rebel and attract other slaves spreading rebellion throughout the South. Alas, the slaves did not rebel as expected. During the raid, a Baltimore and Ohio train left the station headed for Washington, where passengers reported the attack.

As the train pulled away from the station, a baggage handler was shot in the back and killed when he refused to obey Brown’s men. The victim was a free Black man!

Brown attacked the armory with 21 men, including his sons, but it was all over within two days. His men were killed or captured by the locals and U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Brown was tried for the murder of five men, instigating a slave rebellion, and treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia and was found guilty on all counts.

On December 2, 1859, Brown was hanged in Charles Town and buried with the noose still around his neck. One of the witnesses to his hanging was an obscure actor named John Wilkes Booth, another fanatic.

Fanatics come from all groups of people and must not be excused, esteemed, or emulated by people of principle.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent being Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! The eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D.; and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)

It is normal for each entity—Indians, Whites, Blacks, preachers, teachers, philosophers, etc., to idolize people they look upon as their own kind. Of course, heroes are often chosen who are not heroes at all—more like zeros. I thought of this recently during the protests across America. I realized that we usually jump too quickly to identify with people who echo our own beliefs, and those people are often too flawed to hold up to children without qualifying our recommendation.

Many well-known Blacks and Whites are held up as people to be emulated even though they lived very wicked lives and destroyed themselves by making the wrong decisions as to drugs, education, religion, and associates. Frankly, there is no excuse for that since there are so many Blacks who made an impressive contribution that would be ideal heroes.

Many Blacks have set records and had major accomplishments in athletics yet were tarnished persons whose lives no one should emulate. I can understand why Muhammad Ali is considered a hero. Ali may have been the greatest boxer of all time; however, it is not much of a sport to try to knock out the brains of a man.

Ali was a draft dodger, Black Muslim, serial fornicator, and outspoken, rabid segregationist.

He told the media, “We don’t want to live with the white man; that’s all.” And concerning interracial marriage: “No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind want white boys or white girls comin’ to their homes, schools, and churches to marry their black sons and daughter to produce little, pale half-white, green-eyed, blond-headed Negroes.”

Are the hypocrites in and out of BLM demanding the cities change the streets named for Ali?

On a British television show, I heard Ali say that bluebirds fly together; red birds fly together, buzzards fly together. And “Blacks are more comfortable with other blacks.” The British interviewer was almost speechless. Indeed, Ali’s religious beliefs at the time included the notion that the white man was “the devil.”

The London Daily Mail quoted Ali’s son, who opined of his famous father, “when it came to his private life, his morals were those of an alley cat. The way he treated his first three wives and neglected some of his nine (known) children was frankly disgraceful.”

Ali had nine children by four different wives and two other relationships, and his large family has split the loot that was left—more than $80 million.

Muhammad was an incredible athlete; however, he was a very flawed individual with occasional indications of courage and commitment, but not much character. Why is he honored by Whites and Blacks, yet Strom Thurman, George Wallace, and David Duke are hated for their segregationist views?

Liberals are the biggest hypocrites in the world.

Louis Farrakhan is a black racist who has clearly stated his hatred for Jews and all Whites, yet the race-baiters pretend he is a gentleman with whom one can have dinner and a polite conversation. And hypocrites in the media refuse to hold white and black liberals to account for their close association with Screwy Louie. He’s called Screwy Louie because of his insistence that he is constantly protected by a vast flying object and scores of smaller flying saucers.

Why would any thinking black or white person consider that nut case a hero?

Abolitionist John Brown, in the mid-1800s, was a white wacko, killer, and thief, made into a hero by Unitarians in New England. After he and his five sons dragged five slavery sympathizers out of their cabins in “Bleeding Kansas,” they hacked them to death. John then moved back east to form a “provisional government” of the United States, and he was chosen commander-in-chief. He also planned to create an area in the Maryland and Virginia mountains to be a stronghold for escaped slaves. His plan was to convince well-to-do, self-hating Whites to finance a war between Whites and Blacks.

Surely, no sane white people would come near such a nut case, but they already had. Some famous New England white leaders had supported his “work” in Kansas. The group, in addition to Brown and his boys, was called the “Secret Six.” They were some of New England’s brightest! Men like physician Samuel Gridley Howe, industrialist George Stearns, journalist Franklin B. Sanborn, ministers Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Theodore Parker—all highly placed and respected men—known as “useful idiots.”

These men financed Brown’s plan to attack the Federal Armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now, West Virginia). With 16 white men and 5 Blacks, they took the armory and held 60 leading citizens hostage. The first person killed in this attempt at freeing the Negro was a free black railroad worker who was shot in the back at the railroad station.

The armory was stocked with weapons and ammunition that Brown planned to give to escaped slaves as they joined his rebellion. They didn’t rebel. Brown’s group held out all the next day and night against the local militia but surrendered the following day when Colonel Robert E. Lee and a few marines attacked. Brown was wounded, and two of his sons were killed along with eight others in the “army of liberation.”

Brown was tried for murder and treason and died on the gallows in what is now Charles Town, West Virginia. One of the town militiamen who observed the execution was John Wilkes Booth, who later had his time on the world stage.

It is shocking and scandalous that anyone, white or black, would consider Brown anything but a nut case, yet he was financed by New England’s elite. He does not qualify as a hero simply because he supported the anti-slavery movement. This speaks to how people are supporting racist, radical, revolutionary Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Nation of Islam, etc.

People who support unsavory, unlawful, and unhinged extremists are facilitators of their evil deeds. Every responsible leader should clearly denounce BLM, Antifa, and the Nation of Islam.

Nat Turner was a black slave in Virginia who claimed to be a Baptist preacher and felt destined for greatness. His parents considered him a prophet and encouraged him in his “ministry.” They were convinced of that because of unusual marks on his head and breast! Turner reported seeing spirits fighting in the sky, and he allegedly heard voices. Being a “prophet,” he communicated “revelations” to fellow slaves. I don’t need to emphasize that these are signs of a nut case, not a prophet.

Then, when Mount St. Helens erupted on August 21, 1831, nearly 3,000 miles away, the atmospheric conditions convinced Turner that God wanted him to kill his white enemies! About seven months earlier on February 12, a solar eclipse convinced him it was time to do what he was ordained to do. The eruption in August was his sign so he and other slaves attacked and killed 55 white people, including men, women, and children–some as they slept. One victim was a baby in its cradle. Some of the victims were beheaded, including children. The killers used axes, clubs, swords, and guns.

It is believed that none of the deadly weapons were registered.

Armed citizens confronted the attackers, and Turner was captured, tried, and executed by hanging after hiding for two months. He was flayed, beheaded, and quartered. It seems the slaveholders wanted to send a message to other slaves.

It is understandable that witless, guilt-ridden Whites and gullible Blacks seek to make every Black a hero, but surely, no sane people think Turner was anything but a monster.

It seems many Blacks are careless in choosing their heroes. However, black leaders, especially those who insist on telling the whole truth about Confederate heroes and founding fathers, should be cautious about holding up killers and Communists to be emulated by young Blacks! Any Black who supports BLM, Antifa, Nation of Islam, and similar hate groups should repent in sackcloth and ashes.

Why don’t some Blacks choose more principled heroes, rather than bottom feeders? But then, many Whites do the same going right to the bottom.

No, it’s not in our genes; it’s in our choices.

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives who ran a large Christian school in Indianapolis and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. Boys authored 18 books, the most recent being Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! The eBook is available here with the printed edition (and other titles) at www.cstnews.com. Follow him on Facebook at Don Boys, Ph.D.; and visit his blog. Send a request to DBoysphd@aol.com for a free subscription to his articles, and click here to support his work with a donation.)