Reflections on God … Man … Life
Opinions on contemporary political happenings and the workings of civil government.
Mitt Romney won some admiration from me on Saturday when he chose Paul Ryan as his running mate. Romney’s history had prepared me to be disappointed with a “safe” pick—safe from the GOP establishment’s point of view. Word is that a number of Romney’s advisers were cautioning against choosing Ryan because he would be considered too controversial. To Romney’s credit, he dismissed those fears and gave Ryan the nod. Paul Ryan is the real thing. He hasn’t been perfect in… Read more »
Last Friday, I wrote a post about the controversy over Thomas Nelson ceasing publication of David Barton’s latest book, The Jefferson Lies. My aim was to offer a balanced perspective: I appreciate Barton’s ultimate goal of restoring the knowledge of our nation’s Biblical heritage, yet I take issue with him over trying to force someone like Jefferson into the Christian mold. From my own study of the Founding era and of Jefferson himself, I cannot subscribe to the view that… Read more »
Young America’s Foundation is an organization devoted to conservative principles in culture and government. While it doesn’t claim to be openly Christian—other conservatives are welcome—the concepts it promotes are consistent with Biblical principles. In the last few years, it has established the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, where it holds a number of significant seminars and conferences. The organization also bought the Reagan Ranch in the mountains outside Santa Barbara, and is keeping it as Ronald Reagan had it… Read more »
The latest report on the upcoming Democrat convention is that the committee working to draft the policy platform for the party has included a plank putting the Democrats squarely on the side of same-sex marriage. Apparently, there was no real disagreement from anyone on the committee; it was the unanimous opinion that same-sex marriage should be enshrined as the law of the land. This was inevitable for a progressivism that has left Biblical morality on what it considers the ash… Read more »
Presidential campaigns are rarely things of beauty. In my course that covers the second half of American history, I show some videos of campaign ads. Some of the worst come from the LBJ campaign against Barry Goldwater in 1964. When I say “worst,” I mean in the sense of misleading. The message communicated by the Johnson team that year was that if we elected Goldwater, he would blow up the world. Literally. The most famous/infamous ad was of a little… Read more »
We’re now in the fourth year of the Obama recovery. At least that’s what we’re told. Yet recovery seems to be a little hard to locate. Obama famously said in 2009 that if the economy hasn’t rebounded by the end of his term, he would be a one-term president. For some reason, he’s backpedaling on that comment. What stands out above all else is his penchant for blaming everyone and everything—besides himself, of course—for the moribund state of things. A… Read more »
The Fourth of July used to be one of the premier American holidays. People celebrated it because they understood the principles behind the resistance to taxation without representation and the potential for government overreach. Those were lessons we used to know. Things have changed. But if you were to take a survey of our current knowledge of America’s founding and the principles upon which it was based, you might get a variety of responses, few of them heartening: If some… Read more »