Study of Tree, by Craig Gallaway, 1973, pen and ink.

In the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Merry and Pippin finally get Treebeard, the Leader of the Ents, to rise up against Saruman and Isengard, by showing him the raw destruction that Saruman and his orcs have caused. The Ents had met with Treebeard at an Entmoot (a council) for several days trying to decide if they should get involved in the war between Sauron, Saruman, and the free peoples. They had taken the long view and decided to stay out of the ruckus, that is until Merry and Pippin finagled Treebeard onto a part of the landscape where he would have to see the raw destruction, the clear-cut and burned-over damage. And then Treebeard comes alive, roaring for the other Ents, and marching against Isengard to bring it and its master down.

One wonders as we watch Joe Biden and his henchmen, Chuck Schumer (a ringer for Saruman) and Nancy Pelosi (a ringer for the character of Dolores Umbridge in a different modern fairytale)—signing executive orders for illegal immigration and a minimum wage that will destroy entry level jobs for lower income Americans, advocating another government money pit for environmental innovation (that always works!), welcoming the destruction of unborn children, seeking liaisons with enemy states, and encouraging racist animosity and sexual confusion among the young, all in the name of a so-called progressive agenda—who and where are our Ents today, and what would they have to see in order to rise up and overwhelm the evil infecting our land?

As Deb and I walked this morning and wondered aloud about these things, it struck us. Perhaps our Ents are the States, the individual States that we already see rising up, right now one at a time (like Texas, Florida, and South Dakota); but maybe soon many together, to throw off the yoke of bureaucratic coercion and ideological control pressing down on the people from this vicious administrative state. The Ents at Isengard unleashed the waters of a great river to wash away the filth of Saruman. Perhaps our States and their leaders will see the damage that Biden and democrat governors are doing, and the willful destruction of our Constitution and laws in the current sham of impeachment, and bring a flood of legitimate lawsuits that speak with one great and powerful voice, “No, you cannot take away our Constitutional rights and freedoms in the name of your elitist claims for power and control.” It takes a long time for the Ents to act, but when they do, watch out.