Category: Politics & Government

Opinions on contemporary political happenings and the workings of civil government.

Principle & Compromise: Not Always at Odds

  

I’ve called this blog Pondering Principles because I’m dedicated to laying a principled foundation for whatever subject I scrutinize. I also want to see principles–Biblical principles–become the basis for all public policy. Those of us oriented toward principles have a natural aversion to compromise; we have a tendency to see all compromise as a step backward. I would like to argue that is not the case. Let’s start historically and work our way to present-day issues. At the Constitutional Convention,… Read more »

Helping the Poor the Biblical Way

  

Even in an age that denigrates Christian faith when it comes to basic morality, we have politicians (and others) who fall back on it for whatever expansion of government they want to see. The whole Religious Left is like this. They point to Scriptures that tell us to help the poor and disadvantaged, but with a twist—we are to use the power of government to carry out Jesus’ commands. The problem becomes more complex when it shows up in those… Read more »

The Smiley Face of Totalitarian Experts: A Hideous Strength

  

My C. S. Lewis course is now concentrating on Lewis’s deep concern over the direction he saw society going during WWII and what he feared would happen in the future: a totalitarian government ruled by scientists, psychologists, sociologists, educationalists, and other “experts” who would tell everyone what to do. This concern revealed itself in his essay, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” was more fully explicated in The Abolition of Man, and then put in story form through That Hideous Strength…. Read more »

The Atrocity Known as Planned Parenthood

  

The House Judiciary Committee is holding another Planned Parenthood hearing today. This one will focus on the details of abortion procedures, with much of the attention on late-term abortions, as well as a medical analysis of the ramifications of altering abortion techniques to acquire intact, usable organs. At its last hearing, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards was grilled on the ghastly practices of her organization and the way in which taxpayer money has been spent on those practices, along with… Read more »

Christians & Politics: Cynicism or Faithfulness?

  

For years I have been trying to encourage political participation—or at least political awareness—among Christians. While there are many who have seen the light on this, some still remain on the sidelines, allowing what once was a drift in the wrong direction to turn into a tsunami. Sometimes, I hear the refrain that it makes no difference, all politicians are the same, so there’s no point in trying. I must admit, when one surveys the political field, it can be… Read more »

Russia & the Decline of American Influence

  

Syria? Who cares about Syria? Iraq? Old story. Never should have gone there in the first place. Leave it alone. Let everyone in that whole region just fight it out amongst themselves since there’s no one to support anyway. That last paragraph summarizes what a lot of people think. That’s pretty much what Donald Trump said as well. Some of the sentiment I can understand. Trying to build nations is a complicated mess when there is no practice of self-government… Read more »

The Christian Witness to the World

  

The arrival of Pope Francis in America takes me back in my thoughts to an earlier era when a pope who grew up under communism and understood the horrors of socialist practices worked with an American president who was a Protestant (with a Catholic father) and a British prime minister who was tutored all her early years by her Methodist shopkeeper father (and who later said that C. S. Lewis was one of her spiritual mentors) to overthrow the Soviet… Read more »