PRAGMATIC ISSUES

The McCrackens have always been a stubborn people.

We come from a line that has spent centuries standing up to power, first to kings, then to empires, and now, to politicians who would gladly trade the soul of a nation for their own ambition.

My story begins long before I was born.

Long before America was even a concept.

It begins in Scotland, where the first McCrackens were farmers and dissenters, people who valued conscience more than comfort. In the seventeenth century, they became part of a wave of Scots sent to Ulster, Northern Ireland, under English colonization schemes. There, they endured famine, persecution, and war, yet refused to surrender their faith or their independence.

Those were the Ulster Scots, or the Scotch-Irish, as history later called them, tough, principled, and famously unwilling to kneel.

They believed in hard work, honesty, and the radical idea that ordinary people deserved dignity. But by the 1700s, the Old World had nothing left to offer them except rent hikes, religious persecution, and the arrogance of kings.

So they left.

Pay attention children, does this not sound like Mercia today…

Across the Atlantic

My ancestors boarded ships out of Belfast and Londonderry, their names recorded, if recorded at all, on brittle ledgers and fading manifests. They crossed the Atlantic into uncertainty, not chasing wealth but escaping tyranny.

They came to the colonies that would become America, hoping to build a life free of the class and crown systems that had crushed them for generations.

This is the very essence of the American Dream, where on  earth did you all think that came from?

They settled first in the wild edges of Pennsylvania, then followed the Great Wagon Road south through the Shenandoah Valley into Virginia and the red clay hills of North Carolina. In those early decades, the McCrackens carved farms from the wilderness, built meetinghouses, and taught their children to read, debate, and pray in their own way. They did not always have much, but they had liberty, and that was enough.

A Sergeant’s Stand

By the late 1700s, one of them, William Aquila McCracken, my great-great-great-grandfather was born in Surry County, North Carolina, then still part of British colonial America. He grew up at a time when this young republic was finding its identity, when loyalty was tested not by lineage but by conscience.

As a man, he served as a Sergeant in the Georgia Militia, a citizen-soldier defending the frontier in the chaotic decades after independence. The title “Sergeant” might seem small compared to generals and politicians, but in families like mine, it carried weight. It meant leadership. It meant grit. It meant he was trusted to stand at the front when others wavered.

He wasn’t fighting for empire or crown, he was protecting the fragile promise of self-government, the right of ordinary citizens to shape their own destiny. His was the kind of service that never makes the history books but holds a nation together just the same.

Today’s militia has forgotten William and what he stood for. Now they choose a side that would no sooner toss them out than help them.

The Inheritance of Fire

From William Aquila came generations who believed that truth mattered and that justice was worth the fight. My ancestors helped settle the early frontiers, survived wars and economic collapse, and endured every hardship this country could throw their way. Through it all, they carried one unshakable conviction, that power must always answer to the people.

That’s the inheritance I carry.

It’s why I do what I do.

It’s why I write, report, and refuse to stay quiet.

The Threat We Face Again

When I look at today’s political landscape, I see the shadows of everything my family escaped, strongmen who believe the law applies only to others, demagogues who divide a nation by fear, and leaders who crave control more than they cherish democracy.

Donald Trump and this presidency have become a living echo of the tyranny my ancestors fled.

His contempt for truth, his admiration for autocrats, his willingness to pit neighbor against neighbor, all of it mirrors the systems my forebears risked everything to escape.

When Trump rants about vengeance, when his allies flirt with authoritarianism and promise to purge the government of “disloyal” citizens, I hear the voices of history whispering warnings. This is what they ran from. This is what they fought to resist.

The Ulster Scots didn’t leave their homes so their descendants could watch a democracy fall to cults of personality. They came here to build something better, to prove that decency, self-rule, and conscience could survive in a world of greed and kings.

Why I Report

People sometimes ask why I keep reporting, why I won’t “just let politics be politics.”

Because for me, it’s not politics, it’s heritage.

Silence would be betrayal.

To stay quiet while truth is trampled, to shrug while power goes unchecked, would dishonor every mile my ancestors sailed and every sacrifice they made. They left everything they knew so that I could have a voice.

I refuse to waste it.

The McCrackens didn’t kneel to kings in Scotland, didn’t yield to oppression in Ireland, and didn’t flinch from the musket fire of the frontier.

I won’t bow to a modern-day tyrant in a tailored suit.

My great-great-great-grandfather fought for the soul of a nation.

I’m fighting for the same one, just with a pen instead of a musket.

The McCracken bloodline runs stubborn.

Born of faith.

Forged in fire.

And loyal only to freedom.