This week’s editorial page includes random thoughts from Albemarle Observer co-founder Miles Layton, a column about independent voters by Scott Perry, and a religious column by Keith Throckmorton.

By Miles Layton

Random thoughts that are sure to get me in trouble…again.

Edenton or Hertford or somewhere needs a Krispy Kreme. 

With gas prices the way they are, I’m not driving to Greenville or even Suffolk on a Saturday morning to get a good doughnut. Yes, there is a Dunkin’ Donut in Plymouth — I’ve been known to buy a doughnut there from time to time, but I’m not driving to Plymouth after the Easter Sunday service.  

Edenton has a Taco Bell, so why not a Krispy Kreme and another grocery store that sells more ice cream flavors — peach would be good.

Another thing, I hate roads in downtown Hertford. Yes, Monday, April 6, patching will begin on the roads affected by the water line replacement project, but until all the roads, whether affected by this patching project or not, are paved, it is still a pain in the ass to drive on certain roads in Hertford.

And forget about traveling that secondary road leading from Harvey Point Road to Food Lion — the potholes are enormous. And remember, even if you survive traveling that pockmarked stretch of meteor craters, there are no Krispy Kreme doughnuts at the Food Lion. 

Gas is closing in on $4 a gallon – I’ll say it – if gas prices get any higher and the economy doesn’t improve by the midterm election, Democrats may be swept into Congress. That’ll mean inertia rather than governance for the next two years because there’s likely to be another round of impeachment hearings focused on Trump’s presidency while we’re in the midst of one war or another. 

Harbor Town’s Albemarle Queen — I wonder how gas prices are going to affect ticket prices for the paddlewheeler. 

Then there’s this — my favorite congressman, Republican Tim Burchett of Tennessee, a member of the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, said he’s long advocated for “full disclosure” about alien life despite the impact the truth could have on the public.

“If they were to release the things that I’ve seen, you’d be up at night, worrying about, thinking about this stuff,” he ominously warned, adding he’s sat down with “just about every alphabet agency this is.”

A couple of weeks ago, Burchett said he was briefed “on an issue” involving extraterrestrial life “that would have set the Earth on fire.”

“This country would have come unglued, I think, if they would have heard all that I heard. They would demand answers and they … need to. But, you know …unfortunately it just keeps getting covered up and covered up,” he said.

I wonder what’s behind the curtain — aliens and government conspiracies, that probably explains a lot. Maybe that’s why we don’t have a Krispy Kreme in these parts or how tiny houses are suddenly becoming more and more prominent in Edenton and other places. 

And it looks like the bullet didn’t match the rifle in the Charlie Kirk assassination case. That’s going to be a thing, too.

Maybe Eastern NC should secede while the country is distracted by aliens, possible impeachment hearings, Epstein file updates, wars and rumors of wars.

Miles Layton is the co-founder of the Albemarle Observer, the editor of the Roanoke Beacon in Plymouth, and is known to many folks in rural places between Athens, Ohio, and Tangier, Virginia.

Independent voter plays a role in keeping our society honest

By Scott Perry

I constantly hear how independents and swing voters are NOT the smart, NOT righteous ones.

Well, I couldn’t disagree more. Bouncing from Hillary to Trump to Biden and back, what do Independents actually stand for? No guiding principles, just as fickle as the wind. To vote for Trump one cycle and then turn around and support what the current Democratic Party is pushing? I cannot imagine a more scrambled brain.

Swing voters who cheer for voter ID one year and then vote for benefits for illegals the next, that is indeed a boat with no rudder, plain and simple. Here in the South, with that old Antifederalist blood, I see why most of us stay loose and don’t hitch ourselves permanently to either party.

While Republicans talk about limited government, the actions indicate the party is more akin to Democrats of 40 years ago, like Lloyd Benston. While the Democrats have just gone rogue, socialist period. Thomas Jefferson himself warned against the very consolidation of power that both major parties chase today. In his 1816 letter to Joseph C. Cabell, he wrote: “The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many.” We don’t want power fully consolidated in one big government, one party, or that slick corporatist handshake between big business and big bureaucrats. We don’t want to make our living off the taxpayer’s dime, and we sure as hell don’t like it when the government runs honest working people out of their own occupations.

Take the watermen up in the Chesapeake pulling crabs and oysters for generations, and right here on the North Carolina coast, our shrimpers, crabbers, and fishermen out on the sounds and the Outer Banks fighting the weather every day to make a real living without asking for a handout. These men are the living embodiment of Jefferson’s ideal of the yeoman farmer, the independent cultivator who stands as the backbone of a free republic. As Jefferson wrote to John Jay in 1785, “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.” Just swap the plow for the net and the field for the tide, and you have the working waterman: self-reliant, tied to the water by generations of honest toil, feeding families the old way without a handout or a lobbyist.

Jefferson saw the yeoman farmer as the chosen people of God, “whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue,” because they owned their labor ( not paying a labor tax as we do now, thanks to Republicans), answered to no master, and resisted the pull of banks, speculators, and distant bureaucrats. Our watermen are the same breed squeezed tighter each year by endless one-size-fits-all regulations, restrictions, and rules (no matter which party’s running things) that favor the big operations or check boxes in Raleigh or D.C. It’s not right.

These men aren’t hurting anybody; they’re feeding families the old way, the same way for generations. A lot of us independents are not confused. We’re just happy not to follow foolish party rules or let anybody bully us around. We want power kept spread out so that power and the powerful can’t stomp on the little guy. As Jefferson put it in his first inaugural address, the sum of good government is “a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

If the Republicans or Democrats continue to toy with the idea of closed primaries and continue to compress the primary to two months while treating independents like second-class citizens, they’ll lose them for good. You can’t slam the door in a person’s face and then wonder why they won’t swear blind loyalty. What do we stand for? Not being owned. Not letting power consolidate.

Working honestly, living free, and keeping that Southern resistance to overreach alive no matter which way “the political wind is blowing.” And independents do indeed have a philosophy, one that was once, to a degree, shared by Ronald Reagan: small government. Of course, the last real Jeffersonian President was Grover Cleveland, and I well realize the hollow consumer culture is here to stay, spit and spud along a while longer.

The independents haven’t lost their way into a consumerist nightmare that both parties want for us, or the “borrow until we die” trap. It is not true that independents lack a philosophy. Divided government at this point in our history governs best.

And there lies our philosophy. Both parties give lip service to limited government, but the Independent voter plays a small but mighty role in keeping our society honest every election.

Scott Perry is a local business leader, writer and historian.

THE SECOND DAY BETWEEN CHRIST’S CRUCIFIXION AND HIS RESURRECTION

(Silent Saturday/Holy Saturday)

By Keith Throckmorton

The most important day in Christianity is Easter Sunday. We celebrate Jesus’s resurrection from the horrible Death he suffered two days before on what we know as Good Friday.
What was going through the minds of his disciples and other believers on the second day? What would have been going through our senses, knowing that Jesus had suffered the most horrible Death for our sins? Would his ministry have been in vain, though they witnessed the miracles that he performed? We always doubt, as did “doubting” Thomas, who wanted to see Jesus’s hands before believing.

On the second day, after Jesus’s crucifixion and His resurrection, many emotions came to mind for those who believed.
Jesus tried to prepare His disciples for His impending crucifixion. Matthew 12:40: (KJV) “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”  Thus, Jesus was murdered by crucifixion on what Christians celebrate as Good Friday.
The Jewish people today and during the time of Christ recognize Saturday as their Sabbath. Today, some Christians observe Sunday as the Sabbath. 

By definition, the Sabbath is a day of religious observance and abstinence from all work, practiced by Jewish people from Friday evening to Saturday evening and by most Christians on Sunday.
Two criminals were nailed to a cross on either side of Jesus. One continuously railed at Jesus, mocking Him, “If you say you are the King of Jews, save yourself and us.”  But the other repented, saying to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come in Your kingly glory! And He answered him, Truly I tell you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:42-43 AMP.

Luke 23: 50-54 (KJV):  “And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counselor; and he was a good man, and a just: (The same had not consented to the counsel and deed of them;) he was Joseph of Arimathaea, a city of the Jews: who also himself waited for the kingdom of God. This man went unto Pilate and begged [for] the body of Jesus. And he took it down and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid.   And that day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew on.”

Luke 23 56 And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.”  These well-known and significant Scriptures regarding Christ’s crucifixion occurred on the Friday of Jesus’s Death. The Sabbath day was recognized by Jesus and other Jews from sundown on Friday to sunset on Saturday, a full day of worship and rest each week.

On the second day, in total despair, possibly doubting, and lamenting, Jesus’s disciples may have wanted to cry out, as Jesus did, “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” Yet, His disciples observed the Sabbath. They rested and worshipped God.
The day between Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection is a day of silence and stillness. It is known to have been called “Holy Saturday.” However, many have no name for the second day, skipping to Easter Sunday. For some Christians, the change to Sunday Sabbath occurred after Jesus’s Resurrection.

Luke 24:1-6 (KJV) “Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulcher. And they entered in and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen:”

1 Corinthians 15:52-58 (KJV):” In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of Death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

Keith Throckmorton, Fairfax County Police (Retired and Chaplain), Hertford, NC