A combination of the Minnesota welfare fraud, the massive Epstein revelations concerning the elite, the impotence of Congress, the recklessness of presidents with pens, the chaos among the leaders of Europe, and the inability of the UN to raise even a peep against Medero or Putin (one peep to Iran) has led to a growing movement among Gen Alpha.

What movement? To encourage all fed-up Americans to flush their toilets at some given moment.

“It’s time,” our guy said, “for the post-WW2 elites to disband and go home in one great flush.”

Is this just some young hot head with a stunt? No. Consider Lech Walesa, a man at the other end of the spectrum of age, experience, and wisdom. He is the Polish leader who, along with a President, the Pope, and a Prime Minister, brought down the Soviets in the 1980s. Walesa is still alive. He said,

“Before there were the sort of media outlets that there are today, the masses believed in politicians and believed in democracy. But now they can see what’s really going on behind the scenes, how politicians behave, and they’ve grown deeply cynical.” (WSJ. Feb 14, 2026 interview with T. Varadarajan)

Social critic of the left, Bill Maher, reflecting on the billowing Epstein news, almost apologized for dissing the cringe-inducing QAnons for their bizarre, but now credible, accusations of elite pedo rings.

The Gen-Alpha activist is Oliver Dalrymple. He has had such an immense response to his posts and videos that he is now calling for 8 PM (EDT) Tuesday, April 2, as the time for that nasty protest. He wants everyone in America to flush their toilets at once. This would be about six times larger than the slightly staggered but famous halftime flush during the Super Bowl.

The stated goal is to simulate the need to flush out the corrupt and incompetent in government and business. It is also a serious threat because if even 40% of Americans flushed a toilet at the same time, the impact would primarily be a massive sewage backup. Does that sound small? The immense volume could (mostly) be handled, but it would take a couple of hours or so to clear. That would put a lot of sewage in many low-lying basements and would likely cause other nasty consequences, including the breakage of weak pipes in many municipal sewer systems. Such a sewer break had a massive impact on the Potomac River near the Clara Barton Parkway on January 19. A second flood (600k gal) hit the Potomac in February.

Warm and comfortable as in Japan? A delicacy not to be violated after 10 pm? No. “This would be a stinking cataract, symbolic of the waste and failure,” as Dalrymple said, “of powerful leaders who have grown arrogant and hide behind immense bureaucracies that have finally reached the breaking point.”

As with many things that appear on April 1, there’s no need to Google it. Have a nice day.

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Today, I write about the “lifecycle of bureaucracies.” We take them for granted like the plumbing in our houses, but bureaucracies are surprisingly important ‘plumbing’ but with a mind of its own. I avoid the hair-on-fire outrage to give an overview of how they can evolve (or devolve) over the decades.

Locally, we’ve spent 40 years trying to improve the Warsaw (IN) Airport, home to 41 aircraft, including three jets. Last year, the interfering power lines were finally lowered ($7 million) by removing the old towers. Now the FAA (not the Indiana DOT) is changing the rules and ignoring local proposals and related requests. It’s classic bureaucracy. Maybe this year. Maybe not.

Here’s the link: FAA Continues To Frustrate Warsaw Airport With Rule Changes, Pushback On Projects - Times-Union

Thanks for reading.

Blessings, John

We all know how it works. There are endless genuine pressing social needs. A politician identifies a need, forms a coalition, secures support from some likely not-for-profits, and makes a proposal. The argument is, “Big need, high compassion, and affordable dollars.” Those who fear accelerating costs are resisted for the sake of compassion. Stage 1. Congress adopts the new program. It may pass by a small margin, or occasionally by only one party. The new area of compassion becomes an agency. We say, “Well, that’s OK. There may be some wasted dollars, but it’s a good thing.” If only.

The 30-year-old welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), was established to “end welfare as we know it.” Proposed by Newt Gingrich as part of the Contract with America, the bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton and helped approximately 2.5 million families. Today, about one-third as many families are helped, and only a quarter of the TANF budget actually goes to families in need. The rest goes in the form of block grants to states that use it as a slush fund, according to the WSJ. Congress’s refusal to require reporting and accountability has led the GAO to cite 37 states for 137 deficiencies (56 are severe). (WSJ Jan 9, 2026 p1). New SNAP and Medicaid verifications are underway. Do they help without fraud? If only.

Here’s a description of how such bureaucracies devolve. Despite the large number of people who actually care and work with non-profits, a new stage emerges. Stage-2. A gradual change of metrics. They come to measure mainly two things: a growing staff and dollars out the door. When people ask about indications of actual results, they are resisted (or even demonized) as needed. In Stage 2, the agency expands its footprint by hiring more staff and sending more dollars out the door. The program is deemed a success. Some may say, “Well, I guess that’s just government these days, but at least they’re helping some people.” If only…

At Stage 3, the agency undergoes complete bureaucratization, characterized by actual indifference to the people it is supposed to care for. One recent example was the Veterans Administration’s failure to arrange needed and timely medical procedures. The typical response is, “We don’t have enough money, and we need more staff.” Even then, nothing important improves because improvement is not a vital metric. Compassion devolves into a mere slogan. As criticism mounts, an agency may add the irrefutable argument: “People will die.” You might say, “Well, it may be incompetent, but at least it’s not corrupt.” If only… another topic entirely.

At Stage 4, the people to be helped are ignored, even trivialized, except as pitiable images on display. It is no longer a compassion-focused bureaucracy. It is operated for its own employees. This has been demonstrated by urban public schools during Covid-19 (and California teachers’ unions today): Do the students need their own union to look out for their interests? Hardly compassion. The children are (amazingly) neglected. Another example. Last week, Medicaid’s Dr. Oz demanded answers to 50 pointed questions about how New York spends $124b on one third of all New Yorkers ($12.5k each), which is deeply suspect. The concern is paying for home care in NY (and hospice billing in LA). We will see what happens. Isolated? Are we helping people (If only...) or just keeping the money flowing?

At Stage 5, an agency may work against those in need. The longstanding Bureau of Indian Affairs has a troubled history of mismanagement that warrants examination. Another example is the foreign aid or economic development industry. America’s bureaucratic approach to compassion has negatively impacted developing nations for decades. Field experts like Easterly and Collins see through the gauzy veil of misguided official compassion. Money spent, workers paid, and power increased; these are poor metrics.

Acts of compassion often evolve into bureaucratic harm, as governments justify their actions. People of the world cry out almost in vain for mercy, justice, and hope. The church can and has provided help on our level. We must be sober to these same warnings, so that our help is not deformed by our own bureaucracies.

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Today I am writing about a new topic. It’s based on the old idea that ‘the church has failed’ and that the only way to serve effectively today is through the government. That may sound strange, but it is an Enlightenment idea that is about 200 years old. It explains some difficult-to-understand aspects of political activism, ideology, state overconfidence, and even bizarre states, such as in Latin America, which have been in the news lately.

This almost utopian confidence in the state leads people to live their lives to serve it, as we see in the news. If that puzzles you, as it puzzles me, then read on. My suggestion is to read it slowly. I searched for the name I gave to the ‘other great commission,’ and it’s the first time I’ve stumped Google.

I see this Perspective as the first in a series of essays on new topics for the new year.

Thanks for reading.

Blessings,

John

As the church lost its relevance, Enlightenment thinkers noted that history, exemplified by the American and, especially, the French Revolutions, was driven by a force entirely independent of divine providence. They came to recognize that life is shaped by history and driven by the zeitgeist (spirit of the times and by men like Napoleon), a term coined by the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel in the early 1800s.

He advocated for the Enlightenment’s vision of the nation-state, emphasizing that it was time—actually, past time—to abandon control by powerful European monarchies and churches, whose divisive and harmful theology had become irrelevant. Alongside John Locke, he saw history emerging as the new and significant means of serving the people under enlightened political leadership — a remarkable shift in the West.

The new nation-state was supposed to serve individuals and protect liberty. Over time, however, the secular state’s emphasis on service and protection has largely been forsaken in favor of a power-oriented approach that embodies the common good and pursues utopian ideals. This approach is characterized by increasingly unrestricted coercion, reminiscent of the darkest days of the church. I owe a debt to AI for helping to distill Hegel’s writings in a way that clarifies our current overreliance on the state.

“The state is not simply a tool for maintaining order, but rather the embodiment of the universal will, the rational-objective force that guides history and society,” Hegel stated,

Hegel believed that true freedom and purpose could be found through participation in the state, which he viewed as the “highest expression of ethical living.” He argued that “individuals attain true freedom not through abstract rights or individual autonomy but by engaging with the collective will.”

He famously described the state as the “March of God on earth,” emphasizing its role as “the highest expression of reason and ethical life.” Hegel differentiated between the state and civil society, viewing the state “as a higher, more rational sphere, while civil society was the realm of individual interests and particular needs.” He perceived the state “as a totality in which all parts are interconnected and interdependent, allowing individual freedom to be realized through participation in the state.”

While it is easy to recognize the rights, freedoms, and the concept of the “collective will” in Hegel’s vision of the nation-state, his ideas were later expanded by political leaders who sought to shape the world in their own image. The central role of the power-state is now taken for granted; we are expected to prioritize it.

This leads to what I term a “Secular Great Commission.” This new commission stands in stark contrast to the Great Commission of Jesus. We now face a choice about which commission to follow.

In the absence of a personal God to whom we could dedicate our efforts through the Great Commission of Jesus, this new commission urges individuals to strive for significance in their lives. While old familial and friendship ties may hold some value and personal meaning, they argue that our true significance lies in enacting the “universal will” through service to the state and active engagement in government. Why waste your life?

A genuine danger. The previous grassroots Great Commission to “go into the world and make disciples” is now regarded as obsolete and even delusional. Surprisingly, it is not uncommon for Christians across the political spectrum to yield allegiance to this secular great commission, and this presents a genuine danger.

Today, we witness Hegel’s ideals in individuals who might have once considered becoming pastors, priests, or missionaries but have since turned away from the church in favor of the power-state.

These individuals have become activists, some are deeply committed to a new secular religion of government and to a new Secular Great Commission, centered on political activism and political ideology. They argue that the kingdom of God is an illusion created by a failing church. They propose or have been deluded into thinking that a utopian, secular kingdom is attainable through state power.

As we observe the confident zeal and determination of political actors today, we see individuals dedicated to a Secular Great Commission. They believe that all injustices can and must be addressed and cured by the state with what they understand as compassion. If that requires laws and regulations enforced through coercion, they view that as the price of justice.

Is the state really “the March of God on earth?” Are any of us significantly committed to a Secular Great Commission? I hope not. Does this leave you with questions? Yes, it does. That’s why I’ll write more next time.

So what if the entirely secular world were candid about life unanchored by the personal creator God? That’s what I write about today with a fictional eulogy that makes the point. It includes a comment on mosquitoes that made me laugh...and sad...when I heard it.

The essay’s title comes from the carol: ...”till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.”

Blessings at Christmas.

Thanks for reading.

John

I’m going to ask for your patience as I write from a purely secular perspective briefly/below. We all long for a safe middle ground with fewer life problems or global crises. We desire life to be comfortable, to be surrounded by kind, agreeable people, and to make a positive difference for our family and others. Unfortunately, that ideal only exists as a wish. Others often create a mess around us (or of us), and we complicate our own lives all too frequently. We yearn to escape, but that safe middle ground is merely an illusion. We are either purposeful human beings or just random, meaningless bits of bio-logical life.

Today, I write an imaginary but candid eulogy that confronts meaninglessness without dwelling on its horror. Recently, I have seen two remarkable Christian leaders pass away. They discovered true life (zoé, not mere bio) in Jesus, whose birth we will soon celebrate. I have admired these men and many other men and women in my life who have a simple confidence that God has sent his son for many and for us.

The sad comment at the end is about not destroying humans on earth because of mosquitoes’ needs. It came from a cartoon I watched with my six-year-old grandson; it made me laugh and yet feel sad.

Hang on—there’s good news coming at Christmas. Brace yourself for some sad honesty.

“We feel a sensation of regret over the death of a carbon-based biped that we called our friend. His conscious impressions brought joy to us and all who knew him. His passing marked the end of the biological functions that sustained his existence as we have come to understand it during his brief time with us.”

“It wasn’t long ago that a random shift of enzymes led to the passing of one of his offspring. This loss was accompanied by a deep feeling of grief and the calling out of the name given at birth by those recognized by our social conventions as family and friends. While both the individual and the offspring will soon be forgotten, it fits the sad truth that their lives were lived without purpose, except for the ones they constructed themselves, recognized by the society around them.”

“When I think of the community of ‘us’ who knew him, I envision the vast Canadian landscape that we fly over when traveling to Europe. I often think of that trackless, roadless land as having one square foot that I could dig up on a frost-free day. That shovel full of dirt has its own life forms. They exist in a community like ‘us’, even though they lack the consciousness to recognize it. What if we named them and delivered a speech like this one? They are no more interesting than we are, as we all share a common life that ultimately depends on plankton’s ability to convert sunlight into proteins that sustain us.”

“If we consider the stars, like our bio-life-giving sun, we gain a sense of how brief our lives are. We are barely a blip in time, yet we have allowed our consciousness and the Seven Molecules (like dopamine) to distort existence into a sense of meaning and pleasure. Our artists and thinkers remind us that such thought, while wishful and hopeful, is not even wrong; it is akin to the life of the grime in the sink.”

“In closing, we must recognize that we serve as essential hosts for various life forms, disturbingly referred to as parasites, and we are especially critical to the mosquito biosphere. Each of us can feel the dopamine of knowing that we have kept thousands of them and billions of bacteria alive.”

We must confront life without inherent meaning or purpose, where our sense of self and worth is a thin illusion. When we reach this point in life, the good news of Jesus’s incarnation resonates with us. “In him was life (zoé), and that life was the light of mankind.” We often focus on our reluctance to trust him, but each of us, at rare times, senses a profound resonance in the meaning and hope this strike in our souls.

On my first Christmas as a Christian, I stopped at Chicago’s Golf Mill Mall and just soaked in the words of the familiar Christmas carols played everywhere back then. How could I have missed such a vivid message of hope? “Long lay the world in sin and error pining/till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.”

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I’ve studied Non-resistance off (mostly) and on for decades. The military aspect was hot until the draft disappeared in the 1970s. Since then, it has appeared dormant. But now with the increased isolation of people intensified by such distinct social, coastal-flyover, super zip and social media silos it’s not only worse, but the rhetoric is mostly ‘resistant’. We can do better in the path that Jesus, in that famous sermon, described.

This is my effort to reframe the discussion rather than to give definitive answers. I write about three arenas where we might expand our thinking on Non-resistance. Never heard of it? Here’s a chance to explore with curiosity.

Thanks for reading.

The way of peace or non-resistance reflects Jesus’ teaching and example of not resisting violations of our personal rights or of our property as well as not using force to advance God’s kingdom. Yet after the Reformation the refusal of military service by Brethren and Quakers moved the focus to warfare.

While WW2 was popular and many Christians heartily volunteered, the world entered a new era with a new way of thinking about armed conflict after 9-11. World wars are still a threat, but regional wars and horrible events became prevalent. A new type of conflict prevailed after 2022 when Putin invaded Ukraine followed by Hamas’ atrocities against the nation of Israel and shelling by the Houthis and Hezbollah as Iran’s proxies. Drone operators have replaced many combatants. As Christians, we must come to grips with that reality and focus on applying our understanding the often forgotten personal and civil sides of non-resistance.

Let us think beyond the military to see non-resistance as having three levels: First, the personal, then the social, and finally the civil. It helps me to think of these in terms of concentric circles with the personal at the core, then society, and finally the civil. This approach treats combatant military service as a rare exception.

The Sermon on the Mount casts issues of resistance on the inner circle of interpersonal conflict. (The extra mile, the giving of your cloak). We must reflect on the Beatitudes about the meek and the peacemakers. We must see ourselves as citizens of heaven. We must see ourselves as actual parts of the Kingdom of God. These will help us evaluate the conflicts we face from a biblical perspective.

1—The Personal: A better perspective will lead to different and better personal behavior. Behavior that will make us peacemakers, negotiators, reconcilers, helpers, supporters, and friends. When Jesus said that he has given us the ministry of reconciliation, he meant, of course, salvation through the cross of Christ, but we would all agree that the gospel also impacts every area of daily life.

2—Society: When we think of nonresistance in the next circle, the circle of social relationships, we are struck by Jesus’ teaching here as well. We also think of exceptional people such as Mother Theresa, who behaved in a way that is different at the root from our society of productivity, efficiency, and pragmatic political and economic reasoning. She and people we knew like the Bill Burks in Brazil make us think that the barrier between the temporal/material and the eternal/spiritual spheres is a barrier that looks thinner when we are around people of peace. Social distances and grievances or resentments also get thinner when we apply non-resistance in the social arena. Humility, service, and forgiveness are important here.

This social circle of thinking includes neighbors or work situations. Anytime we gather in a community or for a project, we have opportunities for conflict just as we have opportunities to serve. And in all of these situations we must be people of peace even in our new era when outrage, especially on behalf of “other people” seems to settle all questions with highly emotional (and minimally rational) force.

3—The Civil Realm: Now we can move to larger groups, associations, churches, eventually to governments (local or any level) and finally to (4) war. Framing the question of how we are to understand non-resistance in this way makes war, as immense as it has been, shrink as a topic. Why? In addition to the change in combatancy, very few serve in the military today compared to 80-120 years ago.

Consider three simple applications of non-resistance for our new era.

First, we should be peacemakers at home and in our closest relationships. These are the relationships we take for granted, yet we get sloppy in using our interpersonal skills, and we keep much too quiet when we are offended. This is how resentment builds up and then we neglect to listen, to show kindness, to be generous, and to move toward those we are closest to. With God’s help we can do better.

Second, we should detox ourselves of the urgent and depressing…even panic-inducing…news of the day. We are being misled, lied to, and manipulated beyond our ability to recognize and defend ourselves. Rather than straighten it all out, we can move away from the agenda of gossip or news and focus on the biblical ideal of shalom or peace-harmony in all relationships. Of course, this is not practical, but that is the point. Being practical has led us down the non- and even the anti-shalom path.

Finally, we can apply this to the most difficult arena… a new arena. Social Media. It may seem absurd to try to apply the idea of non-resistance to social media, but we encounter that arena multiple times daily rather than once in a lifetime as with our response to military duty during war.

Think about these things: Jesus said to be generous with your cloak, to give more than is due, and to refuse to take advantage of a brother/sister. We do not wear cloaks, but neither do we go to war. We can find ways to honor God in ways we could put under the label of non-resistance if we focus on the inner circles of our actual lives rather than the outer circle of the unique draft-driven call to combatant military service.

Today with the government shutdown I write on the larger issues of our economic and political troubles as they relate to the government deficits. Seems timely.

It’s homecoming at Grace, and I was pleased to meet the alumni who were recognized at a banquet last night for their ministry and impact over the years. These are good days for Grace College and Seminary in many dimensions. I’m honored to serve here.

Thanks for reading,

Blessings,

John

In a world constantly on the threshold of panic and surrounded by loud, even screaming voices, we can get confused about the basics because they seem silent, invisible, trivial. Today with the government shut down, I write about our eminently fixable economic issues. As I read about the problems of the British economy, I thought I was able to see a new clarity about the U.S. by looking at someone else’s troubles. Rather than paraphrase, I’ll give selected quotes from the Economist (Sept 27, 2025. Leader: Is Britain Going Bust? p 11).

“The infrastructure and housing projects that were supposed to be the engine of British growth are turning out to be a sorry disappointment.

Britain can look to continental Europe and count its blessings except, that is, for public finances.

Britain’s net public debts have risen from 35% of GDP in 2005 to 95% today. At current bond yields and growth rates, the belt tightening needed to stabilize debts is about 2% of GDP. In one sense the problem is eminently fixable.

Fixability would normally be a good sign. However, in Britain, as in France, the inability of the political system to grapple with the solvable problem is itself a symptom of decline. The labor government has the majority and four years until the next election. If they cannot put the budget on a sound footing, then who will?

The political failure is all the greater because it is abundantly clear that the fiscal adjustment should start with pensions and the welfare budget. Britain spends about 6% of GDP supporting pensioners, up by over one third this century. Generous automatic increases to the state pension have become unaffordable. So have benefits to the 15% of Britain’s working age population who now claim jobless allowances. The scale of the increase is impossible to justify. The system has been gamed.

If Britain cannot budget responsibly by choice, then markets will force it to do so by necessity -- thereby damaging the entire economy.”

My Comments:

1. Watching the news is a bit like watching waves breaking on a beach. Nice. You don’t learn about oceans.

2. The louder the comments and accusations the farther from the real issues. Theater is not governing.

3. The political system is vital, but (as noted above) has an inability to grapple with solvable problems.

4. Good efforts have failed: Clinton-Gingrich balanced budget. The “end of welfare as we know it.” The Simpson-Bowles proposals. These efforts addressed the tides instead of each wave and were ignored.

5. We add massive new priorities such as climate change with great enthusiasm and great deficits.

6. Crises like the Great Recession 2008 and Covid and the Social Security and Medicare deficit threats have not been enough to actually grapple with the problem. And, worse, “the system has been gamed.”

Essential Issues:

One party wants Feds to spend about 20% of GDP. The other prefers larger role for government at 25%.

The difference between the two views is fading, but the gap is filled with deficit spending at 6% of GDP.

Essential #1. Economies must grow to prosper. Redistribution and spending are secondary issues.

Essential #2. Entitlements must match the number of employed people to the number of beneficiaries.

Europe has both essentials wrong: low economic growth and few workers for each dependent.

The U.S. has it only half wrong. We have economic growth, but we insist on covering more dependents.

I could comment about the Fed and our stock markets, but when we can no longer find the money to sustain all the debts then the (bond) “markets will force it to do so by necessity”

Let me add here that we Christians can learn to embrace the common grace of God: Charlie encouraged the family. Let’s find ways to help rather than mostly condemn those in dire need. Can we do it well? We do not think that money and regulations solve everything. We have relied on the waves of politics. Let’s learn to sail on the ocean.

In today's essay I start with a remarkably candid quote I found from a prof at Case Western Reserve about his being too isolated to understand what actual people think. We all run that risk and it's worth a bit of self-reflection.

This is Perspective #80, a kind of a milestone. I started writing Perspectives almost exactly five years ago. I did not want to remain silent during troubled times on the one hand and yet I did not want to add to the vast amount of noise (or spout nonsense) on the other.

Before 2020, I had been writing exclusively on economic topics, originally for students, starting during the Great Recession in 2008. I wrote about 200 essays in what I called Economic Prospect on related topics over the years. I've also written dozens of book summaries over the years.

Thanks to (very kind and patient) friends I will (soon-ish) be able to have some of my writings gradually available on Substack. You may begin to receive the same one page Perspective essays through a different link as a result. One concern I have is that you may not feel as free to respond. I really value the contacts and feedback/pushback I get.

Thanks for reading.

Blessings,

John

Who Would Use Jack Sparrow’s Compass? Perspectives #80 John Teevan July 31, 2025

Here’s a standout quote. I could write for a month and quote verses but how could I write something as clear as Prof Michael Clune of Case Western Reserve wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education? (May 23, 2025)

(Let me) “describe my own path out of denial. While my career in higher education has taken me far from my immigrant, working-class origins, I have maintained a close connection — rare for people of my profession — with working-class people.

“The Narcotics Anon meetings I attend as a recovering heroin addict are far more diverse, racially, and economically, than my university. Over the years, as my discipline of English came to conceive of itself in political terms, as speaking truth to power on behalf of the oppressed, I became aware of a curious disconnect between the academic views proclaimed on behalf of these oppressed people, and their own views.

“I would look around a meeting and see poor and working-class Black, brown, and white people, many of them ex-cons, suffering from the diseases and indignities attendant on the lower classes, and think: These are the people we’re speaking for in our conferences and classrooms.

“But on nearly every issue — including policing, drug decriminalization, immigration, America, gender, and race — my NA friends had views that were not only different from the views of my academic colleagues but could not even be expressed in (the) academy without immediate negative career consequences. (Ital. mine)

“The political views dominant in (the) academy do not match the views of most Americans. Not only that, but the intellectual isolation of the ivory tower means that if not for my NA meetings, I would never even have known that my views on policing or immigration were controversial.”

Did you see the final point? Intellectuals tend to be isolated on their campuses. They (Clune generalizes here) are out of touch with the very people they earnestly speak for. It is not just the politicization of education, but the intellectualization of parts of education that causes harm due to ignorance of on-the-ground reality.

We tend to see intellectuals as rational and wise and of course they are. The intellectual excels at applying smart power to real needs but there are exceptions. Sad examples? 1) Religion: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? 2) Lit: Satan is the true hero of Milton’s Paradise Lost. 3) History: Hitler was true to his cultural ideas so who are we to say he was wrong? Intellectuals, even occasionally in the sciences (Isaac Newton’s well-intentioned notes deciphering the ‘coded history’ in the book of Revelation), can drift away from both rationality and wisdom. They can be wrong, even spectacularly wrong, without becoming less smart.

Intellectuals are also prone to utopian ideas; enter Mike Clune. His NA connections brought him back to reality and gave him a dose of wisdom that he had lost in the group think of his peer group of intellectuals. Almost unbelievably, the street level understanding of reality by actual people can appear to be wrong, wrong-headed, off-base, and even despicable to such world-fixing intellectuals. How backwards is that?

Consider this: Our national narrative on poverty does not match surveys. Gonzalo Schwarz surveyed Americans on the street and found that “Freedom of choice in how to live” (83%) and “having a good family life” (80%) continue to be strongly associated with the American Dream. People mostly (66%) want equality before the law and a fair chance regardless of where they started. He asked people what they wanted. They want a job, not a handout. This explains how 69% of Americans sense that they are (or are on their way to) achieving their American Dream. (Archbridge 2025 Annual Report). If so, two generations have pursued a false approach to poverty.

Economists and government planners have good data and interesting ideas. But they can lack an understanding of actual people. This is nothing new. We have mis-understood humanity ever since we decided that we know better than God about what makes people tick, what we lack, or what our true, deeper needs are.

Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict) stated that reason cannot function properly as reason without revelation. Reason without revelation (God’s word) can leave any of us unwise or unreasonable. A segment of intellectuals occasionally puts the larger society at risk when their ideas, detached from reality as Mike Clune warns us, escape from the academy and become the norm among the elites.

Sadly, these people are guided (as one man pictured it) by Jack Sparrow’s Compass: no true north.

If we are going to understand the tragic human failures of our times we must begin by correcting our own Christian view of human nature. The creation, as revealed in Genesis 1-12, is not a mere prelude to the story of Abraham, Moses, and Israel. Nor is it a limited to a demonstration of our sin and rebellion preparing us for salvation in Jesus as explained by Paul in Romans 1-8. We were all created noble and magnificent. We fell.

Genesis 1-12 is the foundational and reliable story of human nature. It is universal to all people.

Today the church inadequately comprehends human nature (fallen) while the rest of the world ignores the biblical view believing that we can shape our own human nature (blank slate) or ideally that the state can shape it for us in ways that will be bring thriving and peace (utopia).

All western thought, as Braudel noted, is a long and sometimes very hostile conversation with Christianity. That explains why many western philosophers take a slice of Gen 1-12 and build an inadequate way of life on it, ignoring all else. Rousseau saw only the innocence and pleasures of Eden. Marx saw the complete focus on work after the fall. Nietzsche said that God invented sin in Eden. Locke denied the fall and said we were all born without human nature, a tabula rasa.

Monsters or utopians all.

As Tim Keller points out, all creation stories, except our own, deal with creation in terms of powerful and violent action resulting in a random and reactive world. Even modern science relies on random power and violence. The biblical view is fundamentally different. Our triune God implements his intention to create the heavens and the earth in terms of design, beauty, function, and glory. We were created in his image. We are noble and have agency.

This is true of all humanity along with the privilege to know him and to be sub creators. This is far beyond speech and self-consciousness. Creation is the arena where we are all the children of God. The pattern of life is not random; it is the bumpy road described as “creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.” Keller says that not only creativity, but love comes from God. How could there be love for us if God were perfect without love?

According to Sam Yeiter God has given us several universal privileges in addition to our capacities: 1) Marriage and family, 2) The opportunity for rest and restoration (sabbath). 3) A social expectation of respect for life. 4) The willingness to acknowledge an authority above us (sacrifice) and others we can serve. 5) Work as a gift to each of us so we can provide for our needs and for others. This is God’s common grace available to all.

When, in our brokenness, we seek to define our own lives, our ambitions lead us to false pathways. We even enjoy those pathways because, whether it is work, family relationships, the arts or sciences, we are in the image of God, even the committed atheists cannot escape that. In Genesis 11:4 at Babel Mtn people said, “Let us make a name for ourselves,” meaning let us use God’s gifts to us to recreate ourselves in our own image. The good came with the bad: creativity was marred by conquest, which led to pride and futility. Artificial intelligence.

We must know the boundaries (law). Selfishness, greed, anger, arrogance, violence, manipulation, deceit, and cheating are out. We must understand that using our life to serve others, investing our own life in the lives of others, yes even the fallen, is worthy. We must hold a very high view of the created nobility in all humans.

Many Bayaka, having found their humanity, have also found and trusted Jesus Christ.

I mention 'the lapping of waves on the beach' in this essay. I'm trying to look at tides and currents while the news I see/read is constantly focused on each wave and storm.

While this is, I hope, a timely focus on the economy, there are much larger currents that affect our world. I write my other non-economics essays on those topics.

Pray for the prisoners...and lots more.

Blessings,

John

Here is the full chart. The Biggest Drivers of Global GDP (1980-2024) - Voronoi

And another link on debt. (I pasted it and it works).

https://thvnext.bing.com/th/id/OIP.gQ400kbrEPcI9O8ojs2nIwHaEv?cb=thvnext&rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain

What Happens When We Do Not Focus on Growth? Economic Prospect May 23, 2025 John Teevan

The remarkable separation between the U.S. and the European Union economies since 2000 is evident in this graph. Let’s explore the challenges we have in sustaining our U.S. growth. We must be very careful. U.S. growth has been dramatically affected by six annual $2-3trillion-dollar deficits. Can we sustain this level of debt-financed spending? We cannot.

The graph compares the U.S. to the E.U. There are times, as recently as 2008, when the E.U. exceeded the U.S. in terms of the share of global GDP. However, since about 2011, the U.S. has grown while E.U.’s growth has fallen. The chart shows that the E.U. has shrunk to 17.3% of Global GDP while the U.S. with higher growth has climbed to 26.3% of Global GDP.

The challenges:

1. Our misguided plan: The game plan is that deficits do not matter (but they do), and that the government will know when to quit spending just in time to avoid significant inflation (but they did not). Whose idea is that? People who believe in Modern Monetary Theory that strong governments can print and spend money without danger. Our economy has passed that danger point and had inflation, with no slowdown in debt spending or renunciation of MMT.

2. Why do we have such deficits? High spending for Covid put some benefits at new elevated levels that benefited more people and still do. The Inflation Reduction Act was an open-ended commitment to environmental priorities that have sent billions to those new priorities. Entitlements are already familiar to us.

3. Governments find it difficult to measure outcomes. So, the more people we cover, and the more money we spend must mean more success. This is the opposite of a business model where you must have outcomes. Environmental or educational outcomes may be minimal (even negative) but it’s ok because ‘we spent more.’

4. Competence makes minor difference Governments talk about priorities while businesses talk about profits. If we measure competence by priority spending, then competence in outcomes makes little difference.

5. The Fed has kept interest rates low, until lately, but this is not normal, and it does not provide a return for those who loan to governments or businesses. We are supposed to be happy if we get our money back without any real (inflation adjusted) income. Debtors love this, especially Uncle Sam, but the era of near zero interest rates may finally (20 yr bond just touched 5%) be ending (I’ve been wrong on this before).

6. Congress has the unusual problem of passing very few bills and is not doing its job as we all know.

7. An imperial presidency along with a paralyzed Congress is unsustainable and even harmful. Presidents, since Obama, have expanded the ‘power of the pen’ for executive orders to get things done.

This week’s effort in Congress to continue the 2017 Tax Cuts will either spur growth or it will just cut taxes for the IRS-tax-paying half of Americans. Yet we hear news that is as useless as the sound of waves lapping on a beach. We need to consider the ‘currents’ and navigate accordingly.

Focusing on economic growth is effective. Mississippi now has greater GDP per capita than France. Why? MS, like the turtle, grew enough to catch the stalled French rabbit. Growth matters. Whatever grows the economic pie is preferable to whatever may, even legitimately, redistribute that pie. Ask Europe.

In other areas, the universities are facing declining enrollment numbers, poor prospects in each foreseeable year, and a strange commitment, among the elite schools, to tolerating or denying the evil of antisemitism. The Federal Reserve, though they have made real mistakes, are still the only adults in DC. The president’s use of tariffs, reorganization, and foreign diplomacy has been disruptive, but the net effects are far from certain. Repairing our errors and focusing on growth is the economic path forward. A good start.

I picked tax day as our minds are focused on economic issues.

I'm also writing early in the week instead of Friday, my usual day to publish these essays, because Friday is also Good Friday.

The entire world struggles to live apart from God. Whether it's noble aspirations or merely selfish or even thoughtless living, we are not finding the solid foundations, the sufficient aspirations, and the help we need for our brokenness apart from God. Who has better news? Who has a better understanding of us? Who ever did more for us than Jesus? Do we really think that prosperity, mental health, friends, and absence of war (all good) is all there is?

The pain of Good Friday and the cross gave way, through the love and power of God to the victory of the resurrection of Jesus that Sunday. It's not a victory I contributed to in any way, I'm just a grateful spectator who benefits. It's still amazing,

So Tuesday is a better day to consider tariffs.

Blessings,
John

Tariffs in Perspective Perspectives #76 John Teevan April 15, 2025

The world is agitated over the U.S. tariffs with politicians and commentators being exceptionally polar on this topic. Tariffs are taxes levied on imports. They are attractive but misguided, at best, and destructive, at worst, when used in a trade war. The ghostly Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 was a foolishly passed U.S. tariff whopper aggravating, rather than avoiding, the decade of the Great Depression.

The principle driving opposition to tariffs is that freer trade produces greater growth despite the desire for less free trade to protect certain businesses. When we see a fixed pie of wealth or products we tend to focus on redistribution when we should be growing that economic pie. The attractiveness goes by names like import substitution, protection of infant businesses, and mercantilism (requiring powerful navies). They all fail.

In over-simple talk, if the U.S. had to refuse buying avocados from a nation because they bought nothing from us, we would still want to buy those wonderful avocados because we are rich and can afford avocados giving only dollars in return. So what if we are losers? What would they do with the dollars? They would be stuck with them if they bought nothing from us. They would have to buy U.S. Treasuries to earn a little interest on a safe asset. That is almost as good as paying for avocados with a check the seller never cashes. I like that.

That is way too simple. The U.S. has a history of being concerned about a harmful imbalance of payments (trade deficit). France’s President de Gaulle kept asking for gold bars instead of U.S treasury bills. That was aggravated by currency exchange rates which could be another dimension here.

Using fire to fight fire, or tariffs to fight tariffs, is not wildly in error provided it puts out the tariff fire. Tariffs are bad but imagining that tariffs are the only bad trade practice is delusional. There are several other impediments to trade that are just as harmful and much more difficult to remove.

It is tempting to start with Europe’s Value Added Tax which is added to what we sell there, but we add sales taxes in each state. A U.S. car would face a 20% VAT in France ($11k on a $55k car) but a BMW (subject to the VAT unless sold in the U.S.) would face an 8.25% sales tax in Navada, 7.25% in CA or IL, and 7% in IN ($3,850 as IN has the 4th highest sales tax in the U.S.). Or 0% sales tax in DE, AK, MT, NH, and OR. We see sales taxes as normal, but they affect the price like a tariff. In CA you will pay tax on the ‘sale’ of your trade in. That is wild.

The opposite of a tariff is a government subsidy granted to various industries for political reasons. An colossal case of protectionism through subsidies is the European Union which, for romantic and political reasons, has protected its farmers. The Common Agricultural Policy subsidizes EU farmers. The result is that Eastern European and African farmers cannot compete, aggravating poverty in those regions. But the EU talks in terms of sustainability, stable supplies, and rural support. America has had a similar immense subsidy for cotton and Japan has one for rice. Both have a long-term high impact on the poor of the world.

Regulations similarly restrain trade when one nation imposes regulations on other countries. Even CA likes to impose rules on dishwashers and gas mileage often with national impact. These days shower heads may get relief from 30 years of federal regulation. Those may be small, but regulations related to social or climate goals are especially harmful and unrelated to actual economic factors that guide production and trade.

Janet Yellen, recent U.S. Treasury Secretary, wants a global corporation tax. She, joining many in the UN, says it is fair because it affects all countries. Fine. Are tariffs that affect all countries fair as well? If we think of a 10% tariff as an import sales tax or as a carbon tax on imports, would we be happier about tariffs?

Tariffs are visible enough for us to single them out for their deep faults. They are also changeable enough to be removed quickly in these decades of imperial presidential powers. We should focus on free trade and a smooth pathway for investment in widespread economic capacity as our guiding principles. Investment and trade promote human thriving, reduce poverty They also move us away from pretending that we can control the global affairs of people and nations through government policy decisions imagined to be wonderful.

We could also hope for relief from the soul-destroying side effects of consumerism and materialism.

The Economist on time zones. Russia has 11 and China has only one.

How politics shapes the world’s time zones | The Economist

Blessings,

John

The Daylight Savings Time Kerfuffle Perspective # 76 John Teevan April 1, 2025

I wanted to write an April Fools essay on the endless topic of Daylight Savings Time. However, I cannot bring myself to chide those who oppose DST for no better reason than the difficulty of changing the clocks.

There are two sober and serious issues with our current time zones. First, there is such a thing as a ‘natural time zone’ and our ‘official time zones’ are not always well matched. Some places are more than a half hour from 'true noon'. The other issue is that days get much longer in summer (or shorter in winter) in the North than in the South. This is a new idea so be patient.

The longest day of the summer is 13:40 hours in Key West and 16:10 hours way north in Bellingham, WA. That is a 2.5-hour difference of the longest day of summer. In the winter there is another 2.5 hours of difference making, on those extreme days a total of five hours variation in daylight between the South and the North. If there is a problem with not being in the 'natural' time zone, it is minimized in the southern states and maximized in the northern states.

Here are two maps that you have been looking at. The top one shows our current time zones with three north south lines showing where the borders of the natural time zones lie. When it is high noon in Greenwich in England at zero degrees longitude it is 'true noon' at noon. Every 15 degrees going west we find another 'true noon'. in the U.S.: 75˚(Phila), 90˚(Peoria IL), 105˚(Denver), and 120˚(Reno) west of Greenwich. Clear?

Indiana and Michigan: On the top map, the West and Mountain time zones are nearly accurate. The Central time zone has a tier of states above Texas that might be moved to Mountain time. The surprise, and the largest impact on people, is found in the current border between the Eastern and Central time zones. Georgia along with Indiana and Michigan and half of Ohio lie in the natural Central time zone.

Remember that the impact of time zones is less in the south and greater in the north. We should not be surprised to find that the greatest deviation between natural time zones and our current time zones is felt in Michigan and Indiana. The light green area of the lower map shows where the deviation is the most extreme.

Michigan and Indiana (and the other light green areas) are far enough north to have exceptionally late sunrises (6:15a EDT here in Winona Lake in the summer and 8:15a EST in the winter). We also have exceptionally late sunsets (9:15p EDT in the summer and 5:15p EST in the winter. (Based on NOAA Sunrise Sunset Calculator)

Some children in this green zone board the school bus for up to 1.5 hours before sunrise in the winter. The green zones are of no interest to urban America, but the 17m people who live in MI and IN notice, and these are the states where the occasional tragic 'O Dark Thirty' school bus accidental deaths occur. This is serious.

A poor solution would move IN and MI to the Central time zone. Some want no daylight savings time at all. If both changes were to take place summer sunsets here in WL would shift from 9:15p EDT to 8:15p CDT but would further shift to 7:15p CST if DST were ended. Ouch! Winter sunrises shift from 8:15a EST to 7:15a CST.

A simpler solution would be to change the dates when DST begins and ends. Moving spring DST to mid-April from early March (and to mid-October in the fall) would bring more daylight to early mornings when it can help the most. During that time of year, the sunrises change about two minutes daily. Waiting 30 days would provide about an hour more daylight in the mornings. Time zones are both very simple and totally confusing.

Today may be April 1, but I cannot scold us for our confusion about DST. I used to work at the Michigan City prison where time morphed from being the same as Winona Lake to being different twice yearly.

If changing clocks is difficult then maybe the U.S. should use just one time zone. April Fools! If resetting clocks is so difficult, maybe we should limit travel anywhere involving six or more hours of time change. We could insist on a two-day layover in Iceland or Hawaii before making the awkward journey to Europe or Asia. April Fools! You see why I decided against such humor.

I was surprised to learn that in addition to all we know about Saint Francis and his prayer of peace how much energy he gave to Christianity in Italy in the 1200s so that it impacted daily life, festivals, art, and even gave a dynamism that led to the better paintings of the Renaissance.

As the students and I had the opportunity to listen to our guide, Friar Dan, we were challenged spiritually at a very high level and we were instructed in some better morals of our day and also a bit challenged to think about some things where Catholicism differs significantly from Protestant Christianity. That is how we grow: thinking about things that are both fresh and curious.

I was also happy to meet Graham who joined for a bit of the time. He is a very well-educated British barrister, now judge. Just as Assisi surprised me, I was also surprised when I asked him what he thought characterized the church in Italy.

There are many simple and maybe oversimplified ways of looking at churches in various countries. In France what most people seem to want when they go to church is healing. They see the crucifix of the suffering Jesus and know that he understands. They are saying their prayers and lighting candles in the hope that their suffering, both physical and relational, will end. Oversimplified? Sure, but useful.

Not so in North America. We go to church in the high hope that God will ratify our choices. We are quick to criticize others, but we have a deep fault of wanting Jesus not just to accept us just as we are but to leave us alone and to bless us just as we are. “Not us,” we say. OK, fine, but that is a tendency, and we are vulnerable.

I asked Graham what he thought the British people wanted from God and he answered, “Nothing. It is a very post-Christian nation,” though he and his wife are well involved in an active and faithful church. I asked about what people wanted from God or church two hundred years ago in England, and his instant response was, “Respectability.” Keep the right rules, obey the right laws, be properly moral, and be in church on Sunday because we are respectable. It is a deal; I go to church, and you make me respectable.

I remember being in Guatemala in 2019 with a remarkable Wycliffe translator husband and wife team I have known from Ohio since the 1970s. They worked with the Mam people in the ‘80s-‘90s. This million strong people group not only lacked a Mam bible, but they did not even have a written language. No literacy. His work gave them both and had an impact that struck me deeply. I walked behind him on this 2019 visit long after they had finished and moved away. Grateful people who recognized him would come along side to talk. What did they want from God? Unlike Europe, the God of the Bible was new to them. These Christians were full of joy.

I had a hard time guessing what the answer about what makes the church in Italy tick. When I asked him, he instantly said, “Power. The Italian church is all about power. Home in England the Catholics say to each other, ‘Don’t go to Italy.’” It’s a different world.

It is interesting and worthwhile to know what different people seem to want from God, but it is still fundamentally the wrong question. We cannot make a deal with God by faith or serving him or giving or sacrificing or abstaining. Making a deal with God is a fundamental misunderstanding of the grace of God.

Christopher Watkin insists that no seeking to make a deal with God can possibly arise from a faith that understands the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Jesus’ life and work on our behalf have provided an astounding deliverance from who we were and from our sin and failures, He provides an astounding opportunity to serve him from a heart of deep gratitude. This of course is not easy for me or for any of us. As Easter approaches, we will do well to consider the grace of God in Jesus Christ rather than any healing answer or ratification he just might provide for us. Those may be second things, but as CS Lewis wrote we must seek the first thing first.

1—Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennet meets Darcy at a country party. She (age 20) is looking at him and he (age 27) has gazed at her long enough to have formed an opinion of her.

Darcy to his friend Bingley, in a passage famous to Austen fans. “…turning around he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, ‘She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.’” Overhearing this Elizabeth retold the story “With great spirit to her friends for she had a lively--playful disposition which delighted in anything ridiculous.”

2— F. Scott Fitzgerald. In Gatsby, immense eyes from a billboard ‘see’ Tom Buchannan and his girlfriend Daisy Wilson and later sees the fatal car accident that killed her. Is twisted justice the result of that gaze?

“The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg on the billboard overlooking the Valley of Ashes represent many things at once: to Nick they seem to symbolize the haunting waste of the past, which lingers on though it has irretrievably vanished, much like Dr. Eckleburg’s medical practice. The eyes can also be linked to Gatsby, whose own eyes, once described as ‘vacant,’ often stare out, blankly keeping ‘vigil’ over Long Island sound and the green light. To George Wilson, Dr. Eckleburg’s eyes are the eyes of God, which see everything.” The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Symbol in The Great Gatsby | LitCharts

3—Jean Paul Sartre Notes from Tim Keller: East of Eden.

Sartre looking through a keyhole secretly at someone feeling powerful and then he was astounded to realize that someone was looking at him. Now he’s traumatized and outraged as if naked. “Is God watching me? I must defy him!” Sartre is content to look through the keyhole, but “No one can watch me, not even God.” He almost admits that he is flawed and needs to resist by taking control.

“All those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were more; many more. So, this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people!” From Being and Nothingness.

4—Augustine From Christopher Watkin (2002)

When any finite thing becomes essential to us, we gaze on it and make it the only thing. We get anxious when it is threatened as these (false gods) always implode. They are good, but not as main things. When we overload those desires, we fall into anxiety. Time and life erode these things, but God never erodes. David in Ps 27 cries out that he will gaze on God’s beauty. What’s the benefit of your career becoming that only thing? It’s too frail. So is your money, talent, looks, success, or even your spouse. Want to know your idol? Just ask what make you anxious for fear of losing it. We must gaze on God’s beauty. Commune with God…not just a set of substitute obsessions.

We try to come to grips with our deep need to know while still protecting ourselves from being known. This is not healthy, but it is to be expected from people, like us, broken and lost people who have fallen in to deep imperfection. We will work to escape the ‘gaze,’ but the gaze can only be removed by turning it into a look of love. Ask Elizabeth and Darcy. Ask anyone who has come to know Jesus. Ask Nathaniel or Jean Paul.

The 2007 Super Bowl was played between the Chicago Bears and the Indy Colts in a way that typified the two Americas at least according to the media. Of two black coaches who were oppressed (etc.), one was going to stand for his race (etc.), and win. When the game turned out it was a more of a family values game as if it were, “Win it for your Momma!”

The official agenda of the Two Americas was missing and while no one is going to portray either team as Puritans, the winning Colts not only gave credit to God, as the Bears would have, but they knelt and prayed with their Christian coach Tony Dungy, as the Bears’ Christian coach Lovie Smith would have. The media folks managed to refrain from calling them hicks.

Here in Stupid America, we could only see two coaches that were good coaches. Our eyes were mostly appropriately as concerned about race as M.L. King or baseball’s Branch Ricky would have wanted. The faith of the coaches was not news as many other Christian coaches have led their teams in the past making almost anyone think of Tom Landry. What happened to the script of ‘the great black coach’?

Smart America is as blinded to the real world by their orthodoxy as were the medieval bishops. Three recent authors in their recent books are both insightful and even statistically supported. Smart America will likely neglect these authors.

They describe Two Americas that have different dividing lines not between rich and poor but between the ‘Smart America’ of the elites and the ‘Stupid America’ that I live in. None of the three aspects of that dividing line are racial, class, or even economic lines. Here are three dividing lines.

1. The Dividing Line between the Married and Unmarried parents. ‘Smart America’ has failed to see the distinction between the two sides of what Kay Hymowitz calls the Marriage Gap. In fact, they refuse to see it because for them marriage is not an arena of responsibility but an arena of personal rights. Only one America sees that it is important for parents to commit to “The Mission – the project of shaping children into adults who have the requisite skills and self-discipline to prosper in a complex society” (Wall Street Journal, 12/13/06).

“Marriage orders life in ways that we only dimly understand. It carries with it signals about how we should live, signals that are in line with both our economics and our politics in the largest sense.” Guess what? There is more marriage among the better educated people with high incomes. Why? “(t)he urban poor have lost the ‘life script’ for future-oriented child rearing.”

Smart America assumes that the problem is income, but Hymowitz believes that “the problem is more existential, a loss of a sense that marriage and children are connected.” The evidence includes studies that count the number of words that children hear from their parents: 2,150/hour for a professor’s children, 1,250 for working parents, and a mere 620 for non-working parents and those 620 words are often sentence fragments and even demeaning.

Hymowitz’s book is Marriage and Caste in America (Ivan Dee: 2006), and in it she discredits the wrong understanding of the problem. This explains why, while Smart America has generously spent about $28 trillion of tax money since LBJ to lift the poor, the results have been meager. Meanwhile, McDonald’s and Wal*mart created about three million jobs for mostly poor workers while helping everyone, including the poor to eat and shop for nearly everything more cheaply. There are many black voices that are raised in hopes of equal opportunity in America, they are the parents who understand ‘the script.’ They prefer school choice to government cash.

2. The Dividing Line between the Angry Observers and the Upbeat Workers. Stupid Americans are polite, grateful, protective, and respectful without apologizing for holding such silly values in a world of smart cynics. They are tolerant to the point of passivity even when called racists and worse. They are serious, humane, and hopeful. They are as inclined to be as helpful as New Yorkers to each other after 9/11 without requiring a 9/11. They do not need what Peggy Noonan called “the BlackBerried gargoyles

who tell them how to think and where to stand,” because they are not strategic, they are not poll driven. They commit; they are sincere. (Wall Street Journal 11/4/06, P14).

The great secret, as expressed by Bruce Brohnen is that even the American secularists are Christian secularists (Wall Street Journal 8/12/07 P9). The chief values of ‘Smart America’ are compassion and justice, which are the essential virtues of the New and Old Testaments, respectively. These two are found, as a pair, nowhere else in the world except in Christianity, and now they are the defining norms, minus Jesus, of the secular left. Does this make them the Christian left. Go figure.

The upbeat workers go to church on Sunday and then get up on Monday and go to work; they even go to Iraq. They refuse to get angry even though they are treated as the real enemies of America. They are accused of having the ideas (and crusades) that have infuriated Islam as if liberal views on abortion and pornography represent Islamic ideals. Stupid Americans may oppose the secularists; they may vote, but so far, they are too productive and devoted to their families to get distracted or agitated.

3. The Dividing Line between the Gives and the Give-nots Another dividing line lies between those who talk (like the religious guy in the parable) and those who actually help (like the good Samaritan). What those who act lack is confidence that the government is likely to solve social issues. They are as skeptical of the Great Society as they should have been about Prohibition. Arthur C. Brooks wrote Who Really Cares (Basic 2006) on this topic.

In his book Brooks tells his story about a liberal political candidate whose campaign he had managed years ago. “If I’m ever hit by a car, I sure hope the next guy to come along will be a conservative,” the candidate said. He explained, “A liberal will blame the unsafe conditions of the highways, blame budget cuts, and keep driving. A conservative will get out of his car and help.” (Wall Street Journal, 8/06). His point is that ‘Smart America’ may talk a lot and accuse Stupid America, but Smart America is not generous even though they may have created the opposite impression.

Brooks says that the line of separation “most saliently is not between the haves and have-nots, but between the gives and give-nots, between those who respond to social needs with their own money and time and those who do not.” Brooks did an empirical study that revealed conclusions he was not immediately prepared to accept. He found four characteristics of people who actually “behave charitably: religion, skepticism about the government’s role in economic life, strong families, and personal entrepreneurship.” Those who “worship regularly are 25% more likely to give and 23% more likely to volunteer. They give 400% of what their secular counterparts give.”

Smart America highly favors government enforced solutions while Stupid America hesitate.

Stupid Americans, like my friend Dan ****, are making their fifth, sixth, and seventh trips down to Gulfport to help with Katrina victims while Smart Americans are doing what they do.

I live in Stupid America.

I join super coaches Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy in thanking God.

CHICAGO (AP) —The closure of Wadsworth Elementary School in 2013 was a blow to residents of the majority-Black neighborhood it served, symbolizing a city indifferent to their interests. So, when the city reopened Wadsworth (in 2023) to shelter hundreds of migrants without seeking community input, it added insult to injury. Black residents are frustrated that long-standing needs are not being met while the city's newly arrived are cared for with a sense of urgency, and with their tax dollars.

Infuriated Black Chicagoans showed up in force at a City Council meeting on Wednesday (April 17) to protest Mayor Brandon Johnson’s request for an additional $70 million in taxpayers' funds to be spent on tackling the city’s migrant crisis…’ The progressive mayor…(has) already poured $300 million into housing, food, and healthcare for the recently arrived migrants. “Our voices are not valued nor heard,” says Genesis Young, a lifelong Chicagoan who lives near Wadsworth. (AP and Fox. April 19, 2024).

Africa: Over the decades we have make promises to Africans in the areas of health care and economic development. That money has either not been delivered, disappeared, or has been channeled through the IMF or World Bank. Then this came as I wrote on April 20. (Note in January we see updates on several fronts including a reduction in a pending Title IX expansion just yesterday).

(Bloomberg) – Chad called on the US to withdraw its troops from an army base in the central African country that’s one of the West’s few remaining outposts to fight a roiling jihadist insurgency in the region. The move comes a month after Niger — another key Western ally in the region — suspended its security agreement with the US, amid a series of coups that have seen military-ruled governments in the Sahel forge closer ties with Russia while cutting those with the West. (Bloomberg April 19, 2024).

What if we have not abandoned our posture of favoring the Black community, but we have just moved on? Race is still interesting but no longer as interesting as Palestinians or the favored issue of gender identity. For the ideologues race is passé as a new opportunity has appeared. The areas of intense interest are now all the activities of securing rights for young people who are either dysphoric or seeking transitional medications and surgeries. The new compassionate civil right of having adolescents pursue a new gender identity arises from a concern for mental health. “A live daughter or a dead son?” Indiana has 450 so far.

Did we ask the Black community how they feel about gender identity? About equating LGBTQ with the seriousness of the Black experience? The Black community is allowed to have their churches, their Christian faith, and their focus on family life and their grandmothers, but there's no need to worry about those relic institutions anymore. The church is virtually a hate crime, the family is now a clear enemy of the enlightened.

Did anyone ask the Black community if they are ok with this? MLK day is nice but it's getting long in the tooth and the fashionable effort is now to redefine MLK as a follower of Gandhi (not Jesus) and as one who would have joined the violence-prone Malcolm X (after MLK’s peaceful non-resistance phase).

People like those in Chicago last April are still desperate today, and they stare in disbelief at their leaders, neighbors, and mayors, who express an indifference to their concerns. These are Black families whose children lost two years of school to Covid not white parents who are gob-smacked that their children’s lives face a dangerously misguided sense of rights for 12-year-olds. Are Black parents ok with this?

While others share concerns for many oppressed people, few share America’s extreme views of gender issues. England, France, and Germany think we should tone it down. They do not lavish medicines or surgeries for adolescents so indiscriminately and wonder why we do. They wonder if we just went mentally numb or if someone said, “I am oppressed,” and boom; it was a self-evident national cause opposition to which is not only disinformative but an evil threat to our democracy. Or is it a threat to someone’s power?

That leaves most of the Black community out in the cold. They say it’s even chillier with the inflation of the Latin migrant population. U.S. Black people are becoming just another minority. Why? The Black story is apparently compelling, but it is old. Now the “escape from oppression” story of Latin immigrants or gender dysphoric children is fresh and new. Hey, Wadsworth, our leaders have moved on. Get over it.

Jesus invites us to a purpose and values that delivers us from this despair and leads to a genuine hope.

Instead of stirring American political waters I would rather talk about several trends in the National Health Service in Great Britain. We Americans know very little of it except that it is apparently wonderful and works. True enough but, like our post office, there are serious issues.

One problem is wait times. Just as the U.S. veteran system was severely criticized the indifference that led to one year wait times, England is much worse. Common wait times in Great Britain approached and then exceeded the one-year mark. Then the government said it will increase the budget by a £1b in order to reduce wait times to one year. How nice.

Here’s what the Economist, a British news magazine, has written.

Britons still love the idea of the National Health Service (NHS). The service, at 75 years old, is still capable of providing outstanding care. But the NHS is also in grave difficulties. Many patients died waiting for ambulances and lying in hospital corridors. Hospital waiting lists exceed 7m. One in 11 positions in the NHS is vacant and: there are many (labor) strikes. May 25, 2023.

Britain has some of the worst five-year-survival rates for killer diseases such as lung, colon, and breast cancer. Life expectancy in Britain lags behind most other rich countries. More than 70% of Britons now agree that their beloved NHS is “broken”. May 25, 2023.

The proportion of patients who wait more than 12 hours in ‘accident-and-emergency’ departments to be admitted has risen from 2% to 7% over the past year. (These) delays are leading to 300-500 additional deaths per week. June 11, 2023.

Some 13m people in England cannot see a dentist through the National Health Service (NHS). Access is so bad that some Ukrainian refugees are returning home for dental treatment. August 13, 2024.

Assisted dying (is supported by) a bill brought before Parliament (to) give terminally ill patients in England and Wales a right to request their own death. It (was) debated on November 29, 2024.

So, death will produce substantial cost savings? How did this mess happen? I'd like to suggest that when ‘the people’ make a social contract (a constitution) with elected officials, a bureaucracy slowly emerges. Then, and here's the point, it takes over as if it had a mandate of its own. Bureaucracies have a proper place, but they can also become as indifferent and devastating as a natural disaster.

A bureaucracy strikes me as being like George Washington on his horse. The horse has amazing strength and abilities, but it is directed by the president. By strong contrast, the war elephants (oliphants in Tolkien's Ring Trilogy) are fierce rampaging warriors. Are they actually controlled by their riders? Maybe for a moment but usually the riders are hanging on at great risk to their own lives not to mention the lives of those who are in their way. Serve people? Maybe incidentally. These warriors follow an agenda of their own.

From what we just learned of the NHS, is it a tame horse or a rampaging oliphant? Franz Kafka wrote compelling stories of mindless bureaucracies one hundred years ago. When the Brits elect a new Prime Minister, or we elect a new president, can they tame the oliphant? Or even hang on? We will find out. American health care has been a wonder for me and my family. We thank God. The state was supposed to be the good and wise people who did things right. Many die as the oliphant rampages through Great Britan.

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1. Fix Society: Unlike Christianity all ideologies focus on fixing society. Timothy Keller quotes Beatrice Webb, a remarkable and foundational British social activist, who, starting in the late 1800s, gave her life to establishing the British social welfare system. She said that she based her ideas about how to fix society on the foundational idea that man was good. In 1925 she lamented that mankind had ‘a bad impulse, an impulse that made every good and worthy social system (almost) useless. This is a sad, but tame example. Others who tried to fix society are the legendary and mostly socialist extremists who caused over 150 million deaths in the 20th century trying to get rid of the ‘bad people’ who stood in the way of their ideal society.

Fix the Person: Christianity and centuries of western culture have focused on fixing the person. We all rebel at a God who is right and who insists we fall far short as sinners, but the diagnosis of universal sin allows the resurrected Jesus to fix any person on earth. The opposite focus, the focus on the social rights and entitlements of mankind, cannot and has not fixed, or even really ‘unleashed the potential’ of the person.

Solutions Offered: One solution is to shame, cancel, and remove those bad people. Then, they imagine, society could finally provide the equity of outcomes that Beatrice Webb sought. Ms. Webb’s solutions were tame but removing the bad people when all the American people, society and government are systemically problematic is a ferocious path. Who will accomplish all this purging? The assumed answer is that good government institutions will do it. The message is: tear it down, defund it, disestablish the legal/justice system, remove all (the bad) bigoted and religious influence. How? Violently if it proves is impossible to establish justice by voting. Then, some imply, we can rebuild a just society. Where has that ever worked?

2. “Who’s Getting Played?” Who will be the losers? Who will be abandoned along the side of the road? I see four losers. First, African Americans. If society really is no better in the 2020s than it was in 1950s, the African Americans, who were played by LBJ and other elites in the 1960s, would be played again. If true, what makes anyone think that this time will be different? Last year we added Jews. This is sad beyond endurance.

Second, Christians along with Christian pastors and leaders. Some are so all-in on social justice that we imagine that it is actually biblical justice on offer. It is not. Or we play our religious political card, but it is one we play badly. How? We put our moralist foot forward, judge people and society and often use social media in ways that build walls. Our task should be much more oriented to serving people as people than to setting the rules for our secular society. Plus, we are realizing that we have been played by politicians. Stay calm.

Third, ordinary Americans including immigrants who are just trying to avoid stirring anything up or getting noticed by the system. Such hiding is, of course, the mindset of people burdened by a bureaucracy or in an occupied nation. Do not think; do not act or react; do not feel; just keep your head down. What is wrong with that? It is not life, liberty, or the pursuit of anything worthwhile. It is despair, substance abuse, and worse.

Finally, our young adults are being played. WR Mead just wrote, “Their alienated rage reflects awakening to the shock that their elders have fundamentally misjudged the nature of the times and that they are going to have to make their own way through a world for which they have been neither intellectually nor emotionally prepared.” What happened? Mead continues, “(O)ur elites forgot that the rules-based world order was never more than a consequence of American and allied power without…which…the world will revert to something more like the Law of the Jungle than the Sermon on the Mount.” (Walter Russell Mead. WSJ 10/8/24). (END)

MLK: “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, but we refuse to believe that the Bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. We have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency….” He then went on to say that they could not simply go back home.

There was a pause as MLK seemed to be deciding among the possible threads of his speech. That’s when Mahalia Jackson, a friend for years since they met in Alabama, spoke in a clear voice, “Tell them about the Dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream.” She had heard him speak of the dream before and was bold to suggest it at that moment on August 28, 1963.

MLK set aside his notes and turned his speech up a notch, if possible, and began to soar. “

“I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” And America rose up. Thank God for Mahalia Jackson.

Gloria: Now fast forward to 2022 and another famous singer and song writer, Gloria Gaither. She and Bill Gaither have written enough memorable songs of praise and worship that they rival or exceed by sheer volume and breadth of impact the works of hymn and song writers like John Wesly and John Newton.

When I was interim President of Grace College and Seminary in 2022, Gloria Gaither decided to invite (summon) the presidents of Indiana’s Christian colleges to her office in Alexandria, IN. About a dozen of us showed up. Two topics: She wanted to know what we are a) doing about the mental health of college students today. She knew that music was very effective but b) what else were we doing? Are we cooperating with each other? She wanted more counseling to help people. She was not just making a point about numbers. She went on to ask each of us how we listen to student needs and respond. She took notes.

I was struck by her humility…not a fancy building but by her directness…and by the urgent sincerity of her care for the very people we care for while they are enrolled in our colleges. The ‘finger on the pulse’ that she and Bill had for earlier generations of Christians was enormously well expressed in the Gaither music. Now she cared about a few thousand Christian college students too. Thank God for Gloria Gaither!

Only a month after the Chicago Democratic convention I was renting a basement apartment with seven other men in Winona Lake, IN. I was ready for good biblically focused teaching from a biblical worldview, but I was not prepared for the political and sub-cultural aspects of living in Indiana in 1968.

I had not applied for an absentee ballot, so I drove to Park Ridge, IL to cast my vote. Humphrey barely lost the popular vote, but he lost the Electoral College by a vote of 301-191. That same fall, Grace invited Tom Skinner to our annual Missions Conference, and I was asked to drive him around. Skinner later gave a remarkable keynote speech “The Liberator Has Come” at the Urbana ’70 conference which I attended.

I thank God for Tom Skinner, Gloria Gaither, Mahalia Jackson, and Martin Luther King.

Chicago was ripe for troubles. Chicago already had riots in April when MLK was assassinated. Now Ground Zero was Grant Park and the Chicago Hilton overlooked the park. The convention itself was in the immense and airconditioned International Amphitheater on 42nd Steet at the Union Stock Yards.

After two brief summer jobs at Illinois Tool Works and in an office next to the Des Plaines Theater (not far from the first McD), my Dad arranged for me to apply to be a convention usher. The Andy Frain agency had the contract for all Chicago athletic and arena events. Sound odd? Think Mayor Daley. How did I get the job? My dad knew a guy and I was Irish and over six feet tall. I was issued an old double-breasted blue uniform that also served as my ID to get in. August 26-29 was hot and there was security on the Dan Ryan expressway plus new chain link fences to keep people from throwing rocks onto traffic. The Projects were still in full use on the east side of the Dan Ryan. It stood as an indictment of the inhumane social planning of the day.

Inside there was a primitive magnetic ID system to limit movement but it failed. I worked part of the immense press section. One morning a lady walked through the hallway in my section. No ID tag. I challenged her. She said, “I’m with him.” Some little guy. “Nobody is with anybody,” I replied, but we all kept walking until she moved on and became someone else’s’ problem. A few minutes later I saw her all the way across the arena. About 40 rows up there was a little platform and a spotlight on her as she sang the national anthem. I had tried to throw Mahalia Jackson out of the convention.

One afternoon a lady kind of stumbled up to me in the hallway. As I tried to steady her, she said, “They are killing kids in Grant Park.” I didn’t know it was that bad. It wasn’t but, in the arena, we knew nothing of what was actually going on in Grant Park. Years later I spoke to a cop who had been there. He said, “They dropped us off in the morning and we had no idea of what was going on anywhere else in the city.”

Mayor Daley was loudly accused of losing control. In the late afternoon, a section of spectator seating filled with busloads of constituents. I wondered why for about an hour. When Mayor Daley came in, they erupted with applause and cheers. He was being dissed for the brutality of the Chicago police. Andrew Young made a motion to move the remainder of the convention to “a city that could keep control.” Hizzoner stood, yelling and pounding from the floor accompanied by a noisy and supportive chorus from the seats near me. The convention will not be moved, and he will not take blame for slackers. They all left as soon as he sat down.

The delegates were animated with the old-time posters and parading for their candidate. I saw Walter Cronkite on the floor. I heard the speeches, but the outcome was no mystery, and the candidate was not exciting. I hoped LBJ would come, but he declined. Why show up at a chaotic convention that chose a man he did not even like. Besides, LBJ had the mark of a loser after his great start following the death of JFK in Dallas and taking the oath of office in AF-1 with Jacqueline Kennedy in bloody pink standing next to him.

My idealism and hope of fine tuning the economy to make America a better and more just society turned sour. Politicians fell from the ideals of the founders to the sad, the tragic and the petty. Sound familiar? I turned my hope to the great good news, great commission, and great hope of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

In my first essay about 1968, I recounted how the three assassinations affected us all back then. This essay will focus on the main protests of 1967-68. I was not politically active but one suitemate ‘came clean for Gene’ (McCarthy) though he barely shaved. He went on to be the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Rutgers. He and I were not as clever as the guys who found the keys to the SDS office where we protested the protestors.

Another Princeton suitemate was very politically active. He was a student who came from Israel. During the Six Day War in June 1967, (school lasted until mid-June) he was beside himself and ready to (but did not) jump on a plane for Tel Aviv to deploy with the Israeli Army. Only now do I begin to realize how important that was to him.

Eight of us lived in the 14th Entry of Blair Hall over an arch (not the iconic one) where we had (unofficial) access to the flat roof of our Campus Gothic dorm. We used that roof for kite flying, snow balls, and (not often) actual studying (too bright). Once the twins got four old bed sheets from home in East Orange (pr: Arnge) NJ, which we painted on that flat roof with a clever (we imagined) protest slogan. Somehow the same guys got the keys to the Grad College (Goon Castle) tower which I recognized as the building near the first green at Springdale. One fall morning we scurried up the narrow tower steps and flung the immense sign over the side. It was a statement of great and insightful irony that narrowly missed influencing a generation of students.

Two buildings down from Blair was the U-Store (whose clever marketing people advertised “Pants Half Off” during the 2023 reunions). Then Lockhart Hall (where I became a Christian) and next door to that was a building of offices for the Daily Prince and various student organizations including the Students for a Democratic Society.

Ever heard of the SDS? In 1967-68 they were very active on the Columbia University campus on Manhattan Island (way north). They were an updated version of the old Intercollegiate Socialist Society founded in 1905 by Walter Lippmann, Clarance Darrow, and Jack London.

The SDS was a small, mostly obnoxious radical group that did not fit our fairly conservative campus. My friends somehow convinced me to go with them to remove the door from the SDS office and carry it down to Lake Carnegie where we tossed it. The ever-vigilant proctors somehow missed us. The proctors also missed us the night before Halloween one year when we needed to borrow a ladder from a construction site to put clown masks on some otherwise dignified statues by the arch on the old library (but not on the Jonathan Witherspoon statue). The next we knew the door was back on the SDS office with whatever we wrote on it and badly swollen with lake water.

In 1968, Paul Berman was an organizer of the SDS at Columbia University. His group seized Hamilton Hall in 1968 occupying the office of Columbia’s president, Grayson Kirk, for which he was arrested. Occupying buildings and making demands was the new tactic. This led to convulsion which spread widely…even globally. It was 1968.

Today he writes about responding to Hamas. “The instinct of a university is to think that riots or protests can be dealt with by instituting some sort of internal reform that will make the university more democratic. That happened in ’68. I thought at the time and continue to think that all of that stuff is completely irrelevant. Administrators want to re-establish civility, to foster civil discourse. But I don’t think that’s the main problem. (Goldstein, Academe Today, 5-13-2024).

“They describe the protests as a humanitarian uprising to save lives in Gaza and to advance the rights of Palestinians on the West Bank. All of that is commendable. The real meaning of the “river to the sea” is that the state of Israel should not exist…and the real meaning of “globalize the intifada” is that there should be a globalization of the events that introduced the word “intifada” to the world, namely the intifada of circa 2001, which was a mass movement to commit random acts of murderous terror.

“I blame the professors for this, not the students. I know from personal experience that students can be uninformed. But the professors have created a climate. I would advocate pardoning the students because they’re not really responsible for what’s happened. The professors are responsible. And I’d make clear that, within the universities, the very bad thing that’s happened isn’t that university life has been disrupted. The very bad thing that’s happened is we have a mass movement of young people advancing horrifying ideas.”

I would add that the fundamental misunderstanding of the human person as created in the image of God leads to an overconfidence in the ability of the state to get things right. The gospel has a bigger and better agenda.