This post is not about any specific Chinese or American companies or entities, all of which I assume are filled with people of good will who genuinely wish the best for each other. Rather, it is about two completely different and possibly irreconcilable models for organizing and governing a society during a period when these models, like two huge tectonic plates, are colliding and chafing against each other across the globe. While America's leaders are mired in political name calling over...
If I’m a broken record on the War on Drugs, consider this post to be a 45, not a 33—it’s short, but not sweet. As I wrote last November in a detailed earlier post, the War on Drugs is pure insanity: Doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result. Let me stipulate once more that in a perfect world I wish there were no drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex outside marriage, smoking, pornography, or neglect of one’s family to work too many hours. And as a Believer I...
The Federal Government is way too big, it doesn’t always work well, it impacts us far too much, and yet it continues to grow and to get worse. Our Christian faith and our nation’s founding principles focus on individual freedoms and decisions—to choose Christ or not, to pursue a particular educational opportunity or not, to pursue a particular vocation or not, to succeed or to fail based on our own merits and decisions. But many federal laws, regulations, programs and taxes want to funnel us...
To start the New Year, Tucker Carlson led off his show on January 2nd with a fifteen minute monologue that sent other pundits of all political stripes scurrying to attack or to support him. If you missed the original show, you can see it here. It is well worth watching, whatever your policy leanings, for the stakes he puts in the ground on several subjects. I then read critiques of Carlson by David French, Conor Friedersdor, Ross Douthat , Jim Geraghty, Kevin Williamson, Jane Coaston and Adam...
I don’t want to write this post. I’ve tried to avoid it for weeks. I wish the issue described here would go away and stop bothering me. You probably won’t like it. The solutions, once we even agree that there is actually a real problem, will be complicated. I describe one possible solution, but you’ll probably find much to criticize about it. Hopefully you’ll have a better one. The issue is racial segregation and economic theft created by explicit federal and state laws. Not just by...
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, our nation is clearly insane. This month’s post may initially disturb some of my conservative friends. If it does, I ask you to read through to the finish. I am only seeking the truth. The War on Drugs is not just a failure. It is an outright cancer, an active force that is destroying individuals, families, institutions, and our culture. It has been doing so for almost fifty years. When are we going to...
In one of God’s “thin threads” of unexpected connections, I just finished a book about an American hero whom I did not know just a few weeks ago. And yet her life has immediate implications for my current thoughts and actions. The book is The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God, which is the story of Ruth Pakaluk, as told by her own letters and by her husband, Michael. Ruth was born in 1957 in New Jersey. She lived for 41 years and died in 1998 of metastasized breast cancer. Dr. Daniel...
How should we approach the upcoming mid-term elections? With a focus on today’s 24/7 headlines, or with a longer term perspective? Are the elections, as President Trump claims, all about him, or larger issues? As a Christian conservative with strong libertarian leanings, what are my guiding principles for voting? And, by the way, I know that there is only one true Savior, and he is not any politician, party or government. The founding document for our nation, the Declaration of Independence,...
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...
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