About Last Week’s Convention

There are different types of Trump supporters. First, there are the angry people who just want Trump to get back at those who they perceive have created all the problems in the country. Trump will build a wall, they say, and make America great again. We believe him. They are so confident that he is the new political savior that their faith is unshakeable, no matter what he does. As Trump himself famously stated, he could stand in the middle… Read more »

On Political Courage

Here’s a thought. What if, at the Republican convention next week, the powers-that-be allowed a secret ballot to choose the nominee? What if the delegates truly had the freedom to vote according to what they believed best for the party and the country instead of being pressured by their political leaders to fall in line with Donald Trump? Would that secret ballot vote be different than the public one? If so, what would that say about those delegates? What would… Read more »

The Most Dispiriting Presidential Election in My Lifetime

Let me dream, please. In my dream, I see Hillary Clinton so tarnished that the Democrats decide they can’t really offer her up as their nominee. I see a party that finally comes to the realization that a woman who can’t be trusted with official documents should never be president. Also in my dream, I envision a Republican party that actually looks at the platform it just created and shakes off the spell put on it by the Trump circus,… Read more »

Why Do I Do This?

This is one of those mornings. I’ve written this blog for the last eight years. Why? What did I hope to accomplish? What have I accomplished? There are times I simply want to walk away from it and never touch it again. Why bother with being called a racist because I accurately pointed to Michael Brown’s actions before he was shot in Ferguson? Why take the arrows of being considered bigoted because I warn against the homosexual agenda? And lately,… Read more »

The C. S. Lewis Conference: A Report

I had a wonderful weekend at the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s summer conference held at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Why was it held there? I’ll get to that. As I did last fall, I presented a paper at the Academic Roundtable, a time for deeper thinking as a group of academics listened and discussed what each had to offer. The most interesting part of such a roundtable is getting perspectives from different disciplines. I was the only historian… Read more »

Lewis & the Public Square (Part 4)

Here’s the final excerpt from my paper (which I presented yesterday) at the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s summer conference. Lewis argues for standing on absolute truth in our interactions with the society around us. He also notes that we are to be faithful regardless of whether we are ultimately successful in our efforts to keep a society from self-destruction. Lewis’s prescription for direct political involvement was the practical side of his approach, but it wasn’t pure pragmatism. All attempts to… Read more »

The Astounding Non-Indictment

I watched the entirety of the statement FBI Director James Comey made yesterday about whether to indict Hillary Clinton for mishandling government documents while she was secretary of state. My reaction as I watched was the same as countless others have shared afterwards. Comey spent approximately 14 of his 15 minutes laying out a very strong case for a Clinton indictment. As I watched, I actually began to believe that was where he was going to end up. His litany… Read more »