Category: World Events

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Explainer: Government Shutdowns and House Turmoil

The news cycle is so short these days that this post already feels like old news. It’s been in the headlines a lot lately, but what exactly is a government shutdown? You may already know a lot of this, so if you’re pretty up to speed on the subject, feel free to skip ahead a bit.

It’s not totally realistic to compare a federal budget to a household budget, but we’ll start there. Whatever sources of income you have…that’s the money you have available to spend. If you spend more than you take in, you’re running at a deficit and you end up going into debt if you keep it up. For the average Jane or Joe, you can’t just continually spend at a deficit and go further into debt without running into some serious problems. If you die with debt, the debt still exists somewhere and gets passed along somehow. The federal government, so the argument goes, never actually has to pay off its debt because unlike a normal citizen, the government doesn’t actually die. The thinking here is that you can keep running at a deficit indefinitely.

That might be true if the debt was kept at reasonable levels or if you have years every now and then where you pay some off. Unfortunately, our government loves to SPEND money. We spend money on things that are necessary (interstate highways, a military, disaster relief, etc.), and we spend money on things whose value is more difficult to identify. We spend a lot of money on special projects that don’t benefit anyone other than constituents of specific political districts.

Our politicians, like others around the world, do what they have to do in order to remain in power. In our case, the House of Representatives is in charge of putting forth the budget every year. Representatives in Congress run for reelection every two years (meaning they’re constantly either in a campaign or are preparing for one), so they look for opportunities to throw extra money at organizations in their Congressional district in an attempt to gain favor, and to have something positive to point at in their next campaign season. We’ve got 435 Representatives, so you can imagine how, with each of them trying to throw a little extra green at their home district, this quickly adds up to numbers that extend way beyond the basic budget.

Now, here’s a curveball. Most of the drama leading up to a shutdown is intentional. Everybody (especially those in Congress) knows that there’s wasteful spending in the federal budget. You could argue that the fairest thing to do is to cut all the extra pork out of the budget, but that will also affect representatives differently. Because it’s a complicated issue, most Reps opt not to change what’s already been decided. Our Representatives in the House know that if they avoid taking meaningful action until very late in the process, it builds pressure on the entire body to approve temporary extensions (called “continuing resolutions”) that continue funding the government at the rate it’s been using. It does nothing to modify spending levels or remove any wasteful spending, it just keeps doing what it’s been doing for a little longer.

Here’s where the brouhaha from last week comes in. In the last election cycle, Republicans won back control of the House, so they obtained the right to decide how to lay out the budget (though the Democrat-controlled Senate and White House both have to sign off on any budget proposals). Republicans ran on the idea of reigning in DC’s out-of-control spending. The way they planned to do it was by passing individual bills for the obviously necessary parts of the budget (the Farm bill, funding for the Department of State, the Department of Defense, etc.), meaning that funding for a large amount of the current wasteful spending would simply disappear. If this had happened, this would have saved us a huge chunk of money as a nation.

The problem is that they couldn’t get it done in time. There was some brinksmanship, some games, some intentional pressure-building, and in the end they said “hey look, we want to continue with this ‘fund the essentials’ approach, but we ran out of time. Let’s pass a 45-day continuing resolution to give us the time we need to pass about a dozen of these bills that will fund the stuff we really need.”

Toward that end, the Republicans passed an extension of a Democrat-designed budget (including very high spending levels for the priorities laid out by Democrats) in order to try to enact an approach that requires the agreement of a bunch of people that don’t truly want it to succeed. A few of the Republican reps in the House said “we have to draw the line somewhere,” opposed the proposed bill, and then lashed out against now former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy when he framed the budget to gain support from some Democrats. This week McCarthy was voted out of his Speakership role and has announced he does not want the job again.

Now all real work in Congress (including work on those multiple bills that will fund the crucial parts of the government) stops until the House can vote in a new Speaker. Last time they had to pick a speaker, it took four days and 15 rounds of voting before McCarthy got enough votes. The clock is still ticking on those 45 days, and many of the House’s representatives are just fine with bumping up against that new November 17 deadline without a permanent budget in place, because it increases the chances they’ll pass another continuing resolution to keep funding the pet projects that are meant to make people in their home districts happy.

The sad truth is that our government consistently spends more money than it takes in, and the national debt has reached mind-boggling levels with few politicians willing to do anything about it. While all the focus has been on the debt ceiling, the national debt has ballooned to unsustainable debt-to-GDP ratios. We have so much debt at this point that, due to debt and high interest rates, we now have to use almost a fifth of our budget to service our debt. A fifth! If you had to use 20% of your income to pay off credit card bills, imagine the financial freedom and new possibilities that would open up to you if you didn’t have that expense. The government is using our tax dollars very inefficiently, and as our credit rating keeps dropping, it will affect all of us at the personal level by having a higher floor for interest rates. All the folks in DC get to shrug their shoulders and point at someone else.

So that’s what we’re dealing with. Hopefully the House will be successful in passing some clean bills this month or next so we can start paying back some of that debt.

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What’s Going on Behind the Scenes?

Let’s pretend for a little bit that you and I are democratic strategists. Our chief goal is to retain control of the White House in November 2024.

Despite unprecedented legal problems for a presidential candidate, Donald Trump looks like he’s shaping up to once again be the Republican nominee. He’s so dominant in the polls, in fact, that he’s skipping debates and doesn’t appear to be suffering for it.

How confident are you that our horse can beat Trump in a rematch? This early in the election cycle, with polls tied in a statistical dead heat, we’re not confident at all. The incumbent normally has an advantage, and if the two are tied in the polls with more than a year to go before election day, it’s not looking good for Biden.

So what should we do? If you’re a democratic strategist working for Biden, your main focus is to try to fend off a primary challenge. Biden certainly has the advantage in being the nominee this coming cycle, but he has to demonstrate he’s still got enough spring in his step to handle the job. His gaffes have become more prominent in the news lately, and as ambitious potential candidates smell blood in the water, it’s going to get tougher to get the whole party to fall in line. The contenders most likely to pose a legitimate threat to his nomination need to be brought into the campaign or otherwise buy them off to prevent them from causing a problem.

What if, however, you’re not a democratic strategist working for Biden, but rather are focused on keeping the White House under democratic control with or without Biden? The media is starting to turn on Biden, his disapproval rating is at a record high, he’s dealing with a possible impeachment, and his son is nothing but a headache. It’s becoming impossible to conceal his cognitive decline. If we want to win, we’re going to have to get rid of Joe.

So what’s the play? Who do we have on the bench? Kamala’s a non-starter; she’s unelectable. Nancy Pelosi? No, if we want to attack Trump’s age, we can’t have someone older than him. Try Hillary again? I don’t think so. Governor Gavin Newsome of California? Maybe. There are a lot of unknowns there; that’s why we’re doing this Newsome/DeSantis debate soon, as a test run to see what kind of reaction he gets on the national stage. He’s from the far left wing and might be too radical to be a good presidential candidate, but we could be surprised. Biden’s so old and frail that anyone would look energetic by comparison. Let’s use this coming debate as a test to see what kind of traction he can get.

If all else fails, we could pull Michelle Obama off the bench. She had a very high popularity rating, played well on high-profile stages, and doesn’t have a whole lot of negatives. It’d be a dream come true for progressives. The big question is: can she be convinced to run? You have to be both very ambitious and a glutton for punishment if you’ve already spent eight years in the White House and want to go back for more. The White House has a way of making you claustrophobic. She’s never held an elected position before, so she’d have to be paired with a running mate that knows the system and probably one that’s viewed as a bit more centrist. Maybe we can find a democratic governor or senator that fits the bill. If that’s the play to be made, we can’t keep a lid on it for much longer; the deadline to file for the earliest primaries is early in 2024, and we can’t parachute her in until after Joe announces he’s decided not to run, and he still needs some convincing.

To win we’ve got to win over the independents. We won them last time by having a COVID death counter on the news all the time, but that only worked because we were able to make COVID the issue everyone cared about. This time it’s the economy, and that’s a tougher sell. Joe’s been out pushing Bidenomics, but he’s not getting real far with it. People just don’t believe that they’re better off in this economy than they were three or four years ago, and that’s a problem. The southern border is a similar issue; we overplayed the sympathy angle and now even democratic mayors of big cities are tapping out. We can use both of these topics to our advantage to oust Joe; we can hang the economy around his neck, “evolve our thinking” about the immigration issue, and admit that we need a different approach, and that opens the door to bring in someone new.

We also need some new lever issues. We’ve been pushing the insurrection angle pretty hard, but it’s running out of steam. People are starting to realize that even though the insurrection happened in January 2021, we waited two years to pursue any charges, and the timing looks suspicious. The Defund the Police and Black Lives Matter movements have largely stalled, and we need something fresh. Though there’s corruption in both parties, one potential angle is make a big show of rooting out corruption, giving us the moral high ground. We’ll start with Senator Bob Menendez. He’ll put up a fight, but we have enough dirt that we can lean on him hard enough to make him go. By the time he’s gone, more information about Biden’s involvement in his son’s influence-peddling scheme will be public, and we can express regret as we show Joe the door, gravely announcing that there’s no room for corruption in the Oval Office and hoping to turn some independents from Trump in the process using this show of “walking the walk.”

See? It can be kind of fun to take an alternative perspective. I don’t know how much of this is true, but it’s useful to look at things through someone else’s eyes every now and then. If Biden and Trump end up being the two nominees again, I’ve got to think Biden will lose, even with Trump’s legal problems. Joe’s fading in the polls already. That’s why there will likely be efforts in the coming weeks and months to prevent both Trump and Biden from becoming the nominee.

Whoever you vote for in your state’s primary, don’t let someone else tell you how to vote. If you’re all in for Biden or Trump, vote for him. If you desperately want someone…anyone…other than one of those two guys, cast your vote for that person. It’s your vote, not someone else’s. Let your voice be heard.

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Talking About it Normalizes it

If you look at how the Bible says the world ends, one of the key components is a one-world government that’s run by a very charismatic and charming fellow that ends up running an authoritarian regime.

While I believe this prophecy is inevitable, it’s impossible to know a lot of the things that will happen between now and then. Just by looking around at how our country’s going, it seems like people are all too eager to grant more power to the state at the expense of individual freedom, which only makes it easier to be subsumed into a one-world government later.

Ever notice that undefended viewpoints tend to be ignored? If Christians don’t speak up about their beliefs, those beliefs will more quickly be overrun by some kind of legislation, executive order, or social branding. In many cases they’re already on their way. It’s not the job of thought leaders, pastors, missionaries, or some kind of religious professional…it’s yours. You should spend time with people that are not believers. (How else will you influence the world for Christ?) You may be the only Christian in your social circles. If that’s true, you may be the only live link to Jesus those people ever see.

I once heard someone discussing an unrelated topic. Whatever she was discussing wasn’t a mainstream viewpoint, but she wanted to get the perspective out in the public sphere. She said she wanted to talk about it because “talking about it normalizes it.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put that way before, but it makes a lot of sense. So then, in all the commentary and opinion that passes for news today, you probably don’t hear a whole lot that agrees with your worldview. The focus should primarily be Christian, but there are a few others thrown in. Maybe it’s up to you to talk about, and thus “normalize” your viewpoint. Here are a few examples:

  • “I am a Christian and I try to model my life off Christ’s teachings in the Bible. That is my choice, and it is a right guaranteed to me as an American in the United States Constitution.”
  • “People can identify with whatever gender they wish and pretend their chromosome combination doesn’t affect biological reality, but they can’t force me to play along with it. My right to freedom of religion (which includes embracing truth over lies), guaranteed in the Bill of Rights in America, trumps their desire to strong-arm others into seeing the world as they do.”
  • “Schools should ensure their students get really good at reading, writing, and arithmetic before they look to broaden their scope into other areas.”
  • “If you look closely at them, ‘Greenism,’ ‘Wokeism,’ and ‘Stateism’ are all structured in a remarkably similar fashion to the way religions are. They should be subject to the rules of separation of church and state as much as any other religion is.”
  • “Science and Christianity complement one another. There are many areas of science to explore, but if you consider the system of bytes of data (which relies on ones and zeros to denote characters), it’s tough to imagine a system like that just evolving itself into existence. It had to be designed. How much more unlikely, then, would it be for DNA to arise spontaneously? Consider the complexity of DNA, the fact that it reads four characters instead of two, how every three base pairs specifies which one of 20 amino acids to link to the last one, and that these chains of amino acids can link together to form proteins that serve different functions in life. There are actually people who believe this system, more complex than, say, 90% of our most complex technology, started from nothing (even before bacteria came along), but they refuse to even entertain the notion that maybe, just maybe, someone actually designed the system.
  • This is the most important one on the list. “It’s easy to divide people. What do you say we take a look at who’s trying to unite them? Christ came for the criminals, the law-abiders, the young and the old, uneducated and scholars, men, women, people that looked like Him, people that came from far-off lands, the rich, and the poor. We therefore cannot be selective about with whom we share the Gospel.”

If you’re a Christ-follower, the world is going to align itself against the way you think. That doesn’t mean you need to roll over and get steamrolled. Standing your ground in the face of opposition may be exactly what causes an unbelieving onlooker to reconsider their position. If this is an idea you find difficult to agree with, you’re making it that much easier for opposing viewpoints to engineer the terms of your suppression. Don’t be afraid to push back.

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. –Eph 6:13

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Just Explain it to me in Plain English

When you’re a blogger, you’re always at least a little curious about which posts really resonate with readers. Unless someone says something to you, you never really know for sure. You can get insights into things like the number of people viewing the different pages on your blog. That’s about as good a proxy as you’re going to get, because you can use that metric to see what kind of posts are more popular than others. I can’t see things like the names of people that have viewed different pages, but I can see which posts get the most traffic.

It turns out that the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the odd politics of our nation (it’s easier for a minor to get a sex change than it is for them to get a tattoo, for example) generated significantly more hits than normal. While I fully intend for this blog’s main purpose to remain focused on pushing Christ-followers to use their lives as a living sacrifice and step into the role God’s designed for them, sometimes I also need to take my own advice and do what I’m good at, even if it’s not directly God-honoring.

Today I’d like to have another look at American politics, starting out with some of the basics and hopefully help translate a little of that into where we are today.

I try to stay away from party names like “Democrat” or “Republican,” and instead use the terms “liberal” and “conservative.” The reason is partly because people don’t often fit cleanly into one camp or the other and people don’t react objectively to labels, but mainly it’s because each party’s views can be so wide-ranging that you could squeeze multiple ideologies into each party. You’ll hear me refer to the political left (liberals/Democrats generally, but Socialists and Communists if you go further and further left) and political right (conservatives/Republicans here, but dictators if you go further right). Both sides seek prosperity or financial security, but they take very different approaches to get there.

Please understand that these are broad generalizations. Of course you can find exceptions to the things I say here, but by and large, these principles hold true. Let’s start with an abridged look at the two groups.

Left: Their view is that the people work for the government, which provides stability, services, financial safety nets, etc. for its citizens (and non-citizens, in our case). Social issues are generally the most important things our country has to figure out. Quality of life is a good thing, but the government doesn’t like when there are large disparities between the “haves” and the “have nots,” so the “haves” should pay higher and higher tax percentages the more money they make. The government will take care of you from cradle to grave in return for your loyalty in paying high taxes. Life is hard, people have extenuating circumstances; they can’t always make the most of their opportunities and they should look to the government as the solution to their problems.

Right: In this group’s view, the government works for the people, providing basic national services (federal highways, FAA and FCC rules, a strong military), but not taking more taxes than necessary and allowing local-level politics to sort out the details. The law of supply and demand plays a big part in our economy. If people are willing to pay for something, someone will come up with a better or cheaper way to provide it. Individual innovators and service providers in the private sector drive the economy and wealth creation, and the government provides only basic guidelines to make sure those efforts don’t go off the rails (as an example, think about the reasonable rules/precautions the government should pass regarding artificial intelligence right now). Ideally there should be plentiful job opportunities for everyone, and those that work hard are encouraged to go as far as their potential and drive enable them to go.

If you’re a conservative, you kind of have the political deck stacked against you. People in the two camps have very different outlooks, as you might expect. The “best minds” of left-leaning thinkers end up in government. The “best minds” of right-leaning thinkers end up in the private sector. Who, then, on the right, ends up in government? There are some good ones, sure, but often the ones that are really good decide that they can make a more lucrative living doing something other than government service, and they end up leaving public office. I wouldn’t go so far as to say our government’s Democrats are the Varsity team and Republicans are the Junior Varsity team, but it’s tough to come up with a better analogy. As a result, the country has steadily marched left, even though we’re a mostly center-right nation. Even beyond Senators and Congressional Representatives, the bench is much deeper for liberals. When liberals can’t get their legislative agenda passed, faceless regulators and unelected officials use different avenues to advance the goals of hard-left politicians. Businesses that are just trying to make a profit are impacted when their bottom line is affected by regulations that get too complicated to understand. They have to pay for the services of lawyers and compliance officers to make sure they’re doing everything legally, rather than spending that money on enhancing the quality of their product or otherwise investing in their business. (Trump cleared a lot of regulations and the economy leapt forward. Biden reinstituted a lot of them and that’s part of the reason our economic recovery is so slow. Some regulations were good ideas, others were not, but the more regulations you have, the harder it is to run a business.)

Conservatives often have the viewpoint that they shouldn’t interfere in other peoples’ lives because that’s not what they’d want to happen to them. Legislatively, liberals tend to benefit from that outlook because they don’t have the same qualms and conservatives don’t normally fight back until it’s too late. Conservatives figure that as long as politicians in Washington don’t do anything too crazy, it’ll all be fine in the end. Well, then those politicians go and do things conservatives aren’t comfortable with. That gets the conservatives to vote in the next election or two, but eventually they go back to their complacency and the cycle starts again. The result is that the country’s politics have steadily shifted leftward over the last hundred years (examples: Social Security and the New Deal, Medicare and Medicaid, the mandatory health insurance of the Affordable Care Act, today’s practice of using well-qualified mortgage applicants to pay extra fees to help support riskier borrowers, and the functional removal of America’s southern border). The political left “takes new ground” while the best that conservatives hope for is “stopping the liberal agenda.” Conservatives don’t usually take new ground. (Or if they do, it causes face-melting rage fests and riots among the left.)

Our country’s government was set up to have multiple political parties, so I wouldn’t want to see just one be completely dominant, even if it’s the one I tend to side with. It’s a little unfair to refer to the current Democratic Party as the actual Democratic Party. Over the last 20 years or so, the party has shifted far left very quickly, often to the extreme left. The Democratic platform has changed and now embraces extremism in almost every case. (Everyday middle-class Democrats who agree on almost all the Party’s main issues but disagree on one thing, like the issue of abortion, are shouted down and all but kicked out of the Party if they push their views, it seems.) People that have voted Democrat for decades out of principle maybe went along with this leftward migration, but are finding that their party traveled further left than they really agree with. Their options are to not vote, to vote Republican (which some of them will never do just on principle), or to vote for a third party. I’d argue that they didn’t leave the Democratic Party, but that the Democratic Party instead left them. They should get involved earlier, in the primaries, to try to reclaim their party and move it back toward the center, where the two sides can actually get some things done by working together.

There’s so much more to cover, but this is already getting longer than normal. No matter what side you’re on politically, please pray for our nation, that it would turn from evil and toward the Lord. Pray for revival in this land and for God to be glorified.

There’s a whole lot more, but I don’t know if you’d be interested to hear it. Want additional political posts? Want me to stay away from future political posts? Let me know. Leave a comment or use the “contact us” option to share your thoughts.

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This Would Make Spock’s Head Explode

I can’t speak much for other parts of the world, but in the United States of America, turning 18 is kind of a big deal.

This is the age when you transition from being a minor to being an adult. Before turning 18, you’re still considered too young to have a firm understanding (or insufficient life experience) to be grounded enough to make good decisions.

I mean, think about it. There are some exceptions, but for the most part you can’t do these things before turning 18:

  • Get a tattoo or body piercing
  • Vote
  • Rent an apartment or buy a house
  • Join the military
  • Get married

The intent behind making it mandatory for a minor to turn 18 before being able to make the decision to embark on any of these things is because they all carry a certain weight or have long-lasting consequences. Many of these, after all, are life-altering decisions.

So you’ll understand if I express my disapproval that in many parts of the U.S., it’s easier for an 11-year-old to obtain gender reassignment surgery than it is to get a tattoo. (No, I’m not advocating that we lower the minimum tattoo age.) It is disturbingly easy to empower children to set off on a journey of permanent change without them having a firm grasp of the ramifications they’re agreeing to live with. Even if you’re a pro-trans activist, I think you’d have to agree with me on some level up to this point of the posting.

Let’s call a spade a spade here: we’re talking about mutilating children’s natural body parts and acting like it’s somehow archaic if we do not give them the opportunity to alter the course of their natural lives. I’m sorry, but if you can’t even get tattoos at that age, the government shouldn’t be allowing people under 18 to pursue such permanent reassignment surgeries.

Switching gears slightly, I have to ponder…given the prevalence of this issue in the national spotlight today, one would think there’s a tremendous amount of pent-up demand among minors. I’m not ready to hit the “I Believe” button on that issue, but for the sake of argument, let’s suppose it’s true for a moment. As responsible adults, it’s up to people on both sides of the aisle to say “hey look, I recognize there’s a lot of demand for this, but pursuing this course of action is a major decision, so we’re going to make you put it on hold until you’re legally an adult.” Why isn’t that an easy piece of legislation to get passed?

I don’t really believe there IS a lot of demand for this type of thing among kids. That begs another question. If that’s true and there’s no major demand, why such a big push for it? I mean, if politicians are making something out of nothing, what’s the political goal of such a thing?

I guess I’d have to pull in a few other things to round out the picture. “Protecting Women’s rights” does not include fairness for female athletes, and it seems that rather than create a separate category or class of athlete, the party line is that it’s in competition’s best interest to allow biological males (or those born biological males) to compete in Women’s sports. That’s just one additional item. Let’s open the aperture a little more.

It’s pretty scary how much traction the “Defund the Police” movement got within the past few years. I wouldn’t say the tide has completely receded, but I think it’s reached its high-water mark by now. The hypocrisy of the people with the loudest voices calling for such a defunding (hiring personal security details or building walls around their homes) helps illustrate that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Kicking it up a notch though, is the District Attorney from Manhattan who announced recently he would no longer prosecute theft with the intent of establishing racial equity. (Ironically, this viewpoint justifies the use of racism to level the playing field.) What good can the police do if they catch someone robbing a home if that person is released from custody within hours?

Hang with me a little longer. Did you hear about this new mortgage situation? People with high credit scores, the ones that have made good decisions (you know, like “live within your means” or “pay your bills on time”) are now going to be required to pay extra fees to offset the risk associated with granting large loans to people with low credit scores. While I agree that homeownership creates a pathway to wealth, this is not the way to do it. This is essentially Communism by another name. “Everyone else deserves what you’ve worked hard for.”

Finally, the move from equality to equity. It doesn’t sound much different, does it? It’s only a change of two letters. It’s a gargantuan difference, though. I’m all for equality. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had it right. The person best suited for the job should get the job, whatever their background. Equity, however, means that the same outcome is desired across the board, so each person should be given whatever is necessary to empower them to achieve that result. I’m an out-of-shape white dude that’s over 40 years old. If I want to play in the NBA, equity says I should be given whatever it takes to ensure my success in that league. In games, there should be trampolines only I can use. Performance-enhancing drugs, officiating that goes in my favor, special rules…all should be on the table if we want equity.

To bring this to a close, it seems to me that all these viewpoints, with as little logical sense as they make, actually make quite a bit of political sense in one respect. If your goal is to tear down the existing system, these things will help you get there.

Now everybody knows that a nation of more than 330 million people can’t just burn down its government and let chaos reign. If you’re trying to topple the government that’s already there, you surely intend to replace it with something. And that, my friends, is the problem. In societies overrun with discontent and anger at those perceived to be hoarding resources, Communism has a very real chance at taking hold. Communism is second-to-none when it comes to political systems that cause large amounts of human suffering.

Whatever its faults, Capitalism rewards those that work hard. If there’s an inequality in the system (which, I will concede, there often is), the solution is to create more opportunities (as opposed to handouts) for those getting the short end of the stick, not punishing those flourishing.

If you’re roughly 45 years old or more, you remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of Soviet Communism. You remember the harsh realities behind the Iron Curtain. Very little freedom. Very little food. God is abolished and replaced with the State and state-run religion. This is where we’re headed if the present culture of participation trophies and “I’m too stressed to work five days a week” prevails. Do not accept the notion of making the illogical acceptable. Get involved in local politics. Attend school board meetings. There are more of you than you might think, but most of them are thinking someone else will show up at the meetings.

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” – Edmund Burke

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American Leadership During the Years 2025 to 2029

This is a little bit of a continuation from last week’s post, where we took a look at some presidential candidates for the next election cycle. This time I’m not talking about presidential candidates, but instead will be taking a look at the things the president will need to spend his or her attention and political capital on.

We’re looking at the presidential term of January 2025 to January 2029. As the field of presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle takes shape, consider how these candidates will deal with the following issues. You never know what the most pressing issues will be, but here are some likely scenarios.

On the domestic front:

During that time period our economy will probably still be looking to really hit its stride and get inflation down to pre-pandemic levels. I can’t blame the Fed for raising interest rates, but as we’ve been seeing with a few high-profile bank stories recently, stuff is starting to break. More banks will likely follow. Prior to the bank failures, the Fed recognized that it needed to push rates higher than anticipated to get inflation under control. Now their job gets more complicated because they need to figure out a way to push rates higher without causing large amounts of collateral damage to the economy. That means they move slower, inflation sticks around longer, and it’s generally more painful for the average Jane and Joe.

Politically, we are still a highly polarized nation. There’s supposed to be a healthy amount of political debate, but when you have people getting harmed because of their political views, something has gone horribly wrong. We need someone that can create a degree of unity and foster the idea that it’s okay to agree to disagree and that political opposition is not something that needs to be silenced.

It will get harder and harder to ignore the growing Social Security shortfall. When you’re driving 70 mph on the highway and you see all lanes of traffic stopped up ahead, you can either start slowing down right away and have a gentle adjustment, or you can wait a little longer and then slam on the brakes to avoid catastrophe. The Social Security issue is similar. Something needs to be done. We can either start suggesting uncomfortable things now (shallow benefit cuts, small tax increases, or some combination thereof) or ignore them a bit longer for the sake of winning an election and then be compelled to take drastic action when the situation can no longer be ignored.

The education front has become a hot-button issue recently. Formerly, education meant that students gained proficiency in academic subjects. Many educational institutions seem to have decided that teaching kids is too hard, and instead they’ve taken it upon themselves to prioritize non-education topics above academics, seemingly to minimize the influence of parents. What is the appropriate level of influence parents should have in deciding the curriculum their children are taught? What level of involvement should the school have in steering children toward gender reassignment (and to what degree should the school intentionally keep a student’s parent(s) in the dark about the steps it’s taking to alter the student’s natural body? The education issue was a prominent one in Virginia’s election of Governor Youngkin in 2021.

While domestic politics are what usually help voters decide which candidate gets their vote, the next election will have very important ramifications as we look beyond our country. On the international front:

Hopefully by 2025 Russia will be out of Ukraine. That may be wishful thinking. By that point we may be further entangled. Russia’s downing of an American drone, followed by U.S. politicians calling for retaliation against Russian fighter aircraft illustrate how quickly this whole thing can spiral and suck us into something major. It’s very difficult to foresee how this will end. The Russian psyche is big on not surrendering, so there’s no easy way to convince Russian leaders to simply turn things around and head back home. As things get further bogged down for Russia and Putin runs low on weapons and troops, waving the white flag is not an option for him, and he’ll turn to whatever he has left in his arsenal to try to get his way. Putin will probably try to spin the capture of some small amount of Ukrainian territory into a major victory, but only if he can’t make any substantial headway in achieving his original goals. He’s avoided the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction thus far, but one has to wonder how many conventional weapons he’s got left. Naturally we tend to think things will get better if Putin were somehow thrown out of power. If that were to happen though, who would step into that power void, and would they be even more ruthless than him? They don’t have to be pure as the driven snow, but can/would the powerful people in Moscow agree to put someone more moderate in charge of the government? That’s difficult to believe.

While Russia is prominent today, China looms large during the ’25 to ‘29 timeframe, and will almost definitely be our largest international challenge. China’s backed itself into a corner. Decades of the disastrous one-child policy have led to where China is today: a population with an age demographic that’s about to see sharp increases in average age. China’s rise has been meteoric, but now it’s in a dangerous sprint. Beijing views it as important to assert (and grab) as much power and prestige as possible before it starts losing strength.

It’s very important for China’s ruling party to capture Taiwan and integrate it into the mainland’s system of government. Taiwan currently enjoys a very democratic system of government where it decides its own destiny. When China’s Communists rose up and overthrew the existing government, the deposed government’s leadership fled to an island off the coast of China, to what we know today as Taiwan. Up until the late 1960s/early 70s, China was a reclusive nation and didn’t engage much in the global arena. Richard Nixon helped coax them out of isolation, but one of the conditions was that we recognize only one Chinese Government (it’s called the “One China” policy). We’ve held to that ever since, but China’s moving closer and closer to simply devouring this island, which no Chinese nation, regardless of the style of government, has ever ruled in the past.

As China advances more and more militarily against the backdrop of an aging demographic, I expect it’s developing into a situation where as soon as its leaders feel that victory is possible, there will be no hesitating, but will move immediately and with full commitment to take over the island of Taiwan. The CIA director has stated openly that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has instructed the Chinese military to be ready by 2027 to conduct a successful invasion of Taiwan. Let’s not mince words: whoever is president during that time will be in charge of trying to deter this action, and when that fails, will likely give orders that cost American lives. This conflict could balloon into strikes on American soil, and could easily escalate very far very fast. When it comes to using nuclear weapons to deter enemies, the American President doesn’t necessarily have to be willing to employ them, he or she just needs to make the other guy believe they are. If they’re not convincing in this role, deterrence fails. We’re all probably going to hear a lot more about nuclear weapons in the coming years.

There are a whole bunch of other things that are going to happen. A new cold war and the alliances that come with it as the world chooses sides, a new space race and trips to the moon, the issue of climate change and how new policies related to it affect our lives. While we’re focused on China and Russia, opportunists in other parts of the world are taking advantage of the world’s diverted attention; what will they do?

That’s just the predictable stuff. We’ll also have earthquakes, solar storms, major power outages, hurricanes, airline accidents, mass casualty events, and on and on and on. There is no politician that will be prepared for it or get it all right. As the field of candidates expands and then begins narrowing, focus not on superficial things, but on how those still in the race will handle the issues laid out in this post. It will probably have a profound effect on different aspects of your life.

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A Preview of the 2024 Presidential Election

Well the midterms are four months behind us, and the players in the next presidential election are starting to emerge. It’s time for a little political update.

Let’s rip off the band aid. It’s possible (though I would say there’s a good chance it won’t happen) that we have a rematch of Biden vs. Trump.

On the Republican side, former President Trump looms large in the field of 2024 candidates. He’s held the office before, his vision for America contrasts sharply with the current administration, and he connects with an amazing number of people that don’t normally vote in elections. On the other hand, he brings along a lot of baggage. It probably would have been better for him to win two terms in a row than to serve one term, sit out one term, then return for a second one. One major thing he has going for him is that an awful lot of people think the country’s headed in the wrong direction, and he’s not afraid to say things and address issues that career politicians shy away from.

Right now the only other major Republican candidate that’s declared candidacy is Nikki Haley. She’s served as Governor of South Carolina and as the American ambassador to the UN under Donald Trump. She’s certainly qualified for the job, and is maybe more of a centrist than Mr. Trump, but so far she hasn’t been able to generate a significant amount of enthusiasm.

Former VP Mike Pence has yet to declare his candidacy. Due to differences in opinion since leaving office, it’s not likely that he and Trump would reunite to be on the same ticket. By most accounts Mike Pence is a good man, but something very large and unforeseen would need to happen in order for him to be elected president. A ticket consisting of Haley and Pence would likely be good at effectively governing once in office, but I could see how the pair would also be considered so boring as to be unelectable.

The biggest Republican challenge for Trump right now (and Trump knows it) is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He has not declared his candidacy, but momentum is building for him to do so, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he declared any day now. He’s using his position as governor to notch speaking points for a national run, but he shouldn’t wait much longer to declare. DeSantis has many of the same policy positions as Trump. He tends to be less abrasive, though is still more than willing to push back against those trying to shape the narrative for him. I think the ideal outcome would be to have DeSantis win the nomination, be advised by Trump, and have Haley or Pence run on the ticket with him. (I’ll let you be the judge of how realistic that might be.) This teaming would have a tremendous impact as far as putting the interests of American citizens first.

On the other side of the aisle, the Democrats have a problem. Not only has the widely held notion of Joe Biden being a centrist president been shattered, he’s also proven to not actually be in charge. Centrists that claim blue collar roots don’t try to ban gas stoves. President Biden goes “off script” quite often, much to the chagrin of those working close to him. On multiple occasions, he’s spoken his mind when he was supposed to just stick to the script. Many of those instances have either given insight into what he’s actually thinking or led to damage control sessions that include the phrase “What the President meant to say was…” This leads to the question “if the president’s speaking his mind and you’re walking back his comments, who’s actually making the decisions on his policy positions?”

I’m guessing it won’t be long before we see a minor civil war among the Democrats. While long-serving Dems value loyalty and will close ranks to protect their candidate, there are plenty of others that are looking at reality and seeing it for what it is. Many people know that President Biden will be a weak candidate, but there are two major problems. Number one, how do you prevent a sitting first-term president from running again? Number two, who do you run in his place?

For the first question, believe it or not, honesty just may be the best policy. “You know what? The Presidency is a demanding job. I was hoping that by this age (80+), I’d be able to enjoy retirement and the fruits of my labor. My health is becoming more and more of a concern for my family. I’m going to pass the torch.” This statement assumes the President chooses not to run. If he really and truly wants to be elected for another four years but the Democratic Party wants to clear the way for someone else, it could get ugly. My guess is that it would somehow involve investigations, legal action, or the threat of such things related either to son Hunter or President Biden’s past business dealings. They could all go away if he steps back from the limelight…

As to the second question, one of the obvious choices is VP Kamala Harris. There are major concerns about her track record, though. There has been little progress in anything she’s been placed in charge of (how’s that border crisis coming along?).

It seems like the Administration has also tried to promote the image of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as an up-and-comer, but it’s the job of every administration to insulate the president whenever a crisis pops up, and lately that insulation has come at Secretary Buttigieg’s expense. Recent train derailments in Ohio prompted calls for Biden to visit, but after what seemed an excessive amount of time, Buttigieg made the trip and had to face some of the wrath of affected residents in Trump country.

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s name has also been thrown around, though he’s a left-wing extremist and not likely to be competitive on the national stage. If you need someone to buck the tradition of loyalty to the president, this is one guy that would probably be willing to break norms.

Biden looks to perhaps be the best bad option at this point. Aside from them one could consider candidates with an outside shot: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, billionaire Mark Cuban, former presidential candidates Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. Pair one of them with a gimmick act and you could make something out of nothing. What would happen if the election came down to Chuck Schumer and Tom Hanks on the blue side, with Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley on the red side? Tom Hanks would probably bring in a lot of votes that otherwise wouldn’t be there. Unconventional, yes, but it may be worth looking at if you’re a democratic strategist.

We’re still early enough in the election cycle that anything can happen, but I’m guessing that whoever gets sworn in sometime in January of 2025 will be one of the people mentioned in this post. Let’s check back in a couple of years to see how well this post ages.

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Lions Don’t Lose Sleep Over the Opinions of Sheep

Let’s go back in time 30 years. Imagine you’re an opponent of Christianity. You want to dethrone Judeo-Christian values in a country that was founded on them. How do you go about doing that?

The simple answer is that you have to introduce enough chaos into the system that it causes confusion on a wide scale. It’s a slow, subtle thing, but it’s one that doesn’t stop. Want to see a few examples of what I mean? If you went into the same church both 30 years ago and on a Sunday morning in 2023, and asked the following questions, which era do you think would have a more resounding response?

“Does God say homosexuality is wrong?”

“How many genders are there?”

“What’s more important, equality (having the same opportunities for all) or equity (being given credit for the same results as others, regardless of level of performance you put in)?”

My friends, I hate to break it to you, but those opponents are well on their way to dethroning Judeo-Christian values, merely by adding little qualifiers so that what used to be “truth” is now “my truth” or “your truth.” There aren’t any versions of truth, there’s only the truth!

Let’s put this another way. If you’re an opponent of Christianity, you want to silence any voice that advocates for Christian beliefs. The goal is to make Christian voices irrelevant and easy to stifle. Why? Because those voices preach something the world doesn’t want to hear. They become so enraged at the concept of a power that is higher than them, who has the authority and intent to judge them, that they can’t tolerate anything that represents those beliefs. “Tolerance” is only valid if it doesn’t oppose certain viewpoints.  

Given enough time, Christian/religious beliefs will be outlawed. You may think I’m exaggerating…that the likelihood of legislating against religious beliefs in a nation founded on religious freedom is laughable. Well, did you ever think schools and sporting organizations would support the decision to allow someone with a male body to compete in female sports and act like it’s legitimate?  

The progress of this erosive trend is comprehensive enough that in today’s society, people seem to think they have a right to treat unsupported statements as fact, and compel others to follow suit. Take for example a biological male that insists his gender be recognized as a female (or anything other than a male, for that matter). He, without proof, simply tells others he believes he’s not a man. He legally changes his name to a female name. Fine; that is the person’s new legal name, and he has the right to be referred to as such. But if he insists on being referred to as a she/her, that is an overreach because it now infringes on my viewpoint, and my viewpoint also carries weight and has value. This person can choose to live however he wants. He can pretend to be a woman, but he can’t compel anyone else to pretend he’s a woman. You have two diametrically opposed viewpoints that cannot coexist; why is the logically/biologically/medically unsupported viewpoint given priority over the fact-based one? Guess what? It’s only given priority if you yield your viewpoint and give credence to the false one. Push back against the erosion of truth.

(Sidebar: it’s important to note that above all, the most important thing you or I can do is share the love of Christ with them. Therefore I feel it’s prudent to also specify that pushing back for the sake of picking a fight isn’t what I’m advocating. You still want to maintain enough of a relationship with nonbelievers that you can share the Gospel with them. As a “meet in the middle” approach, refer to your colleague/acquaintance by their legal name because that’s what it legally is, but do not feel compelled to use pronouns you know to be untrue. This is sure to make for some contorted sentences, but you also have the right to live out your viewpoint. You may need to get used to saying things like “Michelle said that Michelle wants to join us for lunch.” I’m not in favor of turning “they” into a gender-avoiding pronoun, because “they” was already being used for something else and this evolution of language isn’t something I’d support. I’m open to the addition of a few new pronouns for exactly this purpose.)

Think I’m being a little over the top? This evolution of language and viewpoints tends to be a one-way flow, and by that I mean it tends to move away from the way God would want it to, and rarely back toward it. Can you imagine if somehow Christians built enough momentum to stop referring to the December 25th holiday as “Christmas” and instead called it “Baby Jesus Day?” People would lose their minds! There’d be all kinds of arguments about the separation of church and state, about how people have the right to “freedom from religion,” and about how unfair it is that religious viewpoints are being forced down the throats of Americans.

Yet, that’s how I view the growth of the power of the State. Devotion to the State is, in my viewpoint, its own religion. I think “State-ism” will be an important prerequisite to the outlawing of Christianity or otherwise hindering of churches (stripping them of their tax-exempt status, for example). That’s one of the main reasons I’m usually against candidates that embrace the growth of the role of government in our lives.

I can’t be alone in this perspective. I know others of you are out there. An AP-NORC survey from June of 2022 said 85% of Americans think the country’s headed in the wrong direction. Eighty five percent! If you’re reading this, you live in an era where you can affect change. You’re not alone. Stand up and say something.

Not confrontational? Well, in the future you may find yourself wishing you had spoken up a bit more. But if that’s something that’s really hard for you, try using this one: “I’m a pretty religious person, and that viewpoint goes against what God says He wants. I might not be the most humble guy/gal, but I’m not arrogant enough to think that I know better than God does.”

Stand up for truth. Proclaim it, because your proclamations and the simple fact that you take a stand will slow this erosion of truth.

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So Help Me, if I Get one More Election Flyer…

Well, it’s election time again. In America, for better or for worse, a major election is never more than two years away. Where I live, I’ve been getting an obscene amount of political flyers in the mail. It seems like political campaigns are singlehandedly keeping the post office afloat.

If we’re totally honest here, there are problems that politicians cause and there are problems that they don’t cause but still get blamed for. For instance, the President usually gets credit for, or blamed for, the economy, regardless of whether or not their policies are behind its current health. Right now the economy is sputtering pretty hard, and an increasing number of economists are predicting some kind of recession in 2023. Unless you work at the Fed, there’s not a whole lot anyone (including politicians) can do about that. That’s just kind of the reality right now, but if you’re running for office, it’s your job to try to get more votes than your opponent. One way candidates are doing that right now is by saying “if my opponent gets elected, they’re going to crash the economy!” I’ve got news for you. The economy’s going to crash regardless of who’s in office. Don’t make your decision based on that argument. Pay more attention to who’s likely to get us back out of a recession without taking on a whole lot of additional debt.

Global economics are evolving. China’s role in the global economy is looking like it’s going to morph into something different. Xi Jinping has just been elected to a third five-year term in China, and that’s a pretty huge deal. They had to change the laws in China to allow this to happen. He’s a staunch Communist, and the changes he’s made in China have been pretty brutal for Chinese citizens. For the past decade or two, China’s been exploding in economic growth, and that’s been good for the country, but Xi has now accumulated enough power to be able to start exerting more control over businesses. His own speeches suggest he wants to close the wealth gap, which sounds great, but what that really means is that he wants to put everybody on the same economic level: poor. Communism can’t thrive if you’ve got a lot of innovators, free-thinkers, and billionaires, so he’s got to lock all of that down and bring it under state control.

On top of that, Xi has pledged to reunify Taiwan with the mainland. This is a little misleading, because “reunification” implies a reuniting, but the Chinese Government has never controlled Taiwan. For all intents and purposes, Taiwan is a separate country from China, but the U.S. position is to recognize the “one China” policy. I think maybe it’s time to change our policy, even though that would draw a tremendous amount of anger from China. Here’s the kicker…because of the strange demographics of China (especially decades of the “one child” policy), the average age of China’s population is about to increase very quickly, and the number of military-aged citizens are going to start dropping fast. That’s the long way of saying that China fully intends to control Taiwan, and if it’s going to do it through force, it has to be very soon.

This election may very well decide who is in office at the time this attempt takes place. I’m not sure how close he is to being ready to pull the trigger, but Xi’s best move would probably be to give the green light during the lame duck period…between the election and when the newly elected officials get sworn in.

Then there’s this Russia/Ukraine thing. The whole thing has been a disaster for Putin. The guy is an evil dude, but despite appearances, he’s not crazy. He’s a rational guy, but his rationale operates very differently than yours or mine might. He’s painted himself into a corner and there’s no way for him to achieve his objectives without doing some pretty unconventional things or taking a major hit to his credibility at home. His army is in shambles, his partial mobilization of everyday Russian citizens isn’t going well, and Russia probably faces a decades-long path to rebuilding itself militarily and economically (if that’s even possible). Running out of options, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Putin employs nuclear weapons in Ukraine if his forces keep taking shots on the chin. I don’t mean the big, multi-megaton “crowdpleasers,” I’m talking much smaller battlefield/tactical nukes. That’s still a big deal, don’t get me wrong, but perhaps not as big a deal as the average citizen may perceive it as. Any way you slice it, a mushroom cloud is something we don’t want to see, but we may be getting closer to seeing one on the news.

Those are some of the things that are happening abroad. In addition to our economy, we’re still trying to untangle snarled logistics chains. The Mississippi River is so low that barge traffic has been drastically reduced. Many of you may have heard about the diesel shortage that’s about to start hitting, probably later this month. Diesel powers most 18-wheelers, locomotives, farm equipment, and other major engines (construction vehicles, large delivery vehicles that supply gasoline to gas stations, etc.) that are crucial to the flow of products across the logistics network. The shortage doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to run out of diesel fuel, it means we’ve got a smaller margin for error when keeping the fuel flowing. As fuel becomes less plentiful, the shortage doesn’t hit all at once; the shortage starts manifesting itself in pockets of scarcity. Farmers, for example, will have to start making choices about what type of equipment to use if they don’t have enough fuel to run everything. Truckers will have to compete for a smaller supply (so do your Christmas shopping early before prices spike even higher or logistics routes take a further hit). If any other headwinds hit the diesel industry, we’ve got major problems.

Again, the people you’re voting for this election cycle could very well be the ones facing the tough choices to be made in such cases. God knows who will be sworn in, and those people won’t take office without His say so. It’s very easy to criticize our elected leaders, and we forget that they’re people with the same limitations that you or I have, but they also have some brutal decisions to make. In addition to praying for the elections coming up on Tuesday, please pray for wisdom and moral clarity for all of our leaders currently in office. Things aren’t getting any better, and we need people with God-honoring values in power if we want God’s blessing on our nation once again.

Lord, thank you that You’re in control and I’m not. Please bless the pending election and put the right people in office, whatever party they’re from. Our land is very divided right now and the world seems like it’s on fire. Please bring peace and revival to this place. In Your name, Amen.

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Reduced by $10,000, or Paid in Full?

It’s not the best example, and I’m not fond of the idea, but since it’s a current event, I’m using it.

Think about the number 10,000. If you had to count from 1 to 10,000 you could do it, but it would take long enough to be super annoying, so it’s definitely a substantial number.

Yesterday President Biden announced an initiative to forgive holders of federal student loans up to $10,000 worth of their debt if they met certain criteria. These days education can be ridiculously expensive, so it’s very easy to incur that much debt (many times over, in fact).

Still, though, imagine waking up one day to the reality of having that much of your agreed-to obligation wiped out. Then, when you inquire about it, you hear “Don’t worry about it, it’s gone from your ledger.” All you can do is express thanks.

While 10,000 dollars’ worth of debt is certainly nice to not worry about, it’s still a quantity that we can mentally grasp, and most students can eventually repay. What if the total amount of all your different types of debt numbered in the millions, or even in the billions? Having $10,000 forgiven would still be nice, but it would hardly make a dent in the bottom line figure of what you owe.

Now imagine a debt so large that you can’t even comprehend it because it’s so abstract. What if you personally owed debts totaling one hundred trillion dollars? That’s a one followed by 14 zeroes. Nobody on the planet right now could pay back a debt that large. Not even the U.S. Government could do that. You’d have no hope of putting that debt completely to bed in your lifetime. The constant phone calls and mail from debt collectors would be all-consuming; the debt would be the only thing on your mind. You wouldn’t be able to enjoy food, sleeping well is no longer a thing, and you wouldn’t even be able to take pleasure in the little things in life.

But if you had your debt totally wiped out and the balance restored to zero, how thankful do you think you’d be?

It would be the largest weight ever…lifted right off your shoulders. That’s what Christ offers to you, me, and everyone else. There are two ways to get to Heaven: 1. live a perfect and sinless life, and 2. ride the coattails of someone that’s done exactly that. If you slip up even once, route number one is no longer an option. No amount of money can buy back a single mistake. Since nobody reading this can claim eligibility for the first route, you’re left with the second route, and only Jesus Christ has lived a life without sin. God hates sin, and He will not tolerate it in Heaven. When Christ sacrificed Himself on the cross, He essentially gave Himself as an offering that satisfied God’s wrath. That was Him saying “my coattails are right here, waiting for you to grab them.” By claiming Christ as Lord of your life, you gain the status of being covered by what He’s given. It’s Christ saying “don’t worry about it, it’s gone from your ledger.” You’re standing at the pearly gates, trying to get in, and Christ says “yeah, open the gates, they’re with me.”

Placing your trust in Jesus Christ as your savior is the only way for you to go to Heaven. When you trust in Him, your spiritual debt has been wiped clean. It’s gone. Even if you had been living under its crushing weight, it no longer exists the instant you welcome Jesus into your heart.

You want to talk about having a major debt forgiven? There’s no greater example than that one.