This week in August marks the Fiftieth Anniversary of two events in the tumultuous year of 1968 which had a lasting impact on my life: The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21st, and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 26th. I had just graduated from UNC and turned 21. What follows is a personal post, using mostly my own photos. The Warsaw Pact countries invaded Prague that week because the Czech leadership had dared to give their citizens a few freedoms...
This post is part of my series on Black Swans and the crucial need to keep real Margin built into our lives. Upcoming is the Tenth Anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the largest such filing in U.S. history and the trigger for the devastating Great Recession. In time for it is the publication of Laurence Ball’s new book, The Fed and Lehman Brothers. There have been many books and articles written on the Financial Crisis of 2007-2011, but Ball’s book focuses on the...
This post is for all of us who have struggled with the “faith vs. science” conundrum. I do not profess to be a Steven Pinker, a scientist, theologian, philosopher, or great thinker. I am just a guy. But for over twenty years I’ve read and studied experts on the three big questions that, if answered, largely define our earthly existence: creation, the emergence of life, and macroevolution. What I ask of great thinkers like Steven Pinker is honesty, consistency, and truth. As I stated in last...
Bill Gates calls Steven Pinker’s new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, “My new favorite book of all time.” Pinker’s work is a 453 page, incredibly well researched tour de force on every aspect of life across the globe since The Enlightenment. And almost every page explores the incomparable progress we humans have made during the last 250 years to beat back death, extend life, multiply productivity, equalize rights, increase leisure, and add to...
We are blessed to have five grown children who, with their spouses, shine brightly--first as people, and then in the areas where they have focused their gifts and talents. Our oldest son, Parker, is a doctor in Austin, and he has written a moving opinion piece in The Houston Chronicle about love, understanding and healing. I recommend Parker's piece to you. And I challenge you, as I have challenged myself, to apply these Christ-like principles to the people and the relationships in our lives...
A nation that fractures along identity politics boundaries is almost certainly doomed. When Lenin and Trotsky started their rebellion against the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky in St. Petersburg, Russia in November, 1917, they expected to be arrested and sent into exile, as had always happened before. Instead, a few days later, much to their surprise, they were in control of the capital and, soon, the nation. What happened? The Bolsheviks were prepared to use violence to get...
Veteran readers in this space will know that one of my favorite books is Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. See my post from 2013 entitled What We Don’t See is Killing Us for a reminder. And I will again quote several sentences from Chapter 15 which capture Hazlitt’s special insight, and which all policy makers should memorize: “In studying the effects of any given economic proposal we must trace not merely the immediate results but the results in the long run, not merely the primary...
This month is the 25th Anniversary of two big personal milestones: the completion of the draft of my first novel, On The Edge, sending it to Thomas Nelson for editing, where it was published later in 1993, and writing the first pages of The President, which was published by Multnomah in 1995. So this post is going to be an unusual (for me) look back at those 25 years, with some brief reflections on what I’ve experienced and learned along that journey. A powerful story based on God’s truth can...
When you reach a certain age there’s a lot of planning to do, and because the choices narrow down, the focus on consequences becomes more important. At thirty-five you can make a few mistakes, as I certainly did, and recover. At seventy, while you still may have many years to live, you just don’t know, and the stakes are very high for a bad gamble. And of course even more so if you are married with children and grandchildren. Income. Social Security. Life insurance. Investments. Medicare...
Today we celebrate the most important event in history—the incarnation of the Creator of the universe as a human being; as one of us, experiencing what we experience. 1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not...
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