Month: April 2012

Honoring Karl Marx: Is That Really What We Want to Do?

  

Since April 15th came on a Sunday this year, today is the filing deadline for federal income taxes. This has become so much a part of life that most Americans probably don’t realize it wasn’t always this way. The federal income tax didn’t exist for the first 137 years of the republic [except for a short time during the Civil War]. Then in 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution [the ratification of which is still suspect historically]… Read more »

Obama & Constitutional Law

  

A recent public opinion poll taken right after the oral arguments at the Supreme Court concerning the constitutionality of Obamacare shows a rather high favorable view of the Court. Analysts say this could be related to the pointed questioning the Obama administration’s solicitor general received by some of the justices. By most accounts, they shredded his arguments. In his defense, he was trying to defend the indefensible constitutionally. I’ve often stated my resistance to government by opinion polls, and I… Read more »

Book Review: Illusion

  

Frank Peretti is back. Nearly twenty years ago, I picked up my first Peretti book, This Present Darkness, and marveled at his storytelling prowess. After that, I grabbed every Peretti book that came out. Some were more graphic than others in their depiction of sin, death, and the misery men bring upon themselves, but they all were faithful to the message that sin kills, both physically and spiritually. But Peretti didn’t stop there—he always contrasted the consequences of sin with… Read more »

The Meaning of the Cross

  

On this Good Friday, I want to draw attention to another aspect of the atonement of Christ. Our traditional theological explanation is to say that Jesus died on the cross so we might escape the penalty for our sins. Most of the time we seem to treat it as a type of commercial transaction. Sure, we are grateful we don’t have to bear the consequences, but all too often we see what Jesus did as some kind of transfer: God… Read more »

The Pocahontas Moment

  

Most of my posts deal with current events, but as a historian, I want to highlight key moments in history. Today, for instance, is the anniversary of a special moment in American colonial history: the Powhatan princess Pocahontas married English settler John Rolfe in 1614. Why is this so important? Pocahontas’s father, Chief Powhatan, had tried to wipe out the Jamestown settlement by starvation just four years earlier. The two cultures weren’t meshing well at all. But when Rolfe and… Read more »

Being Constitutional

  

The Supreme Court has made its decision on Obamacare. What, you didn’t hear about that? Well, that’s because it’s not public yet, and won’t be until June, I understand. But behind closed doors, the result is in. The justices are now busy writing their opinions; I predict we’ll have a number of those opinions offered since the Court will be split in its reasoning. Some of that reasoning will be sharp and constitutional; the rest will be shallow and political…. Read more »