Several of you asked about digital versions of my earlier novels. An eBook version of Sober Justice is now available. Here's a link

We Face A Test

Refugees, immigrants, minorities, and the poor do not present a threat to us. But our response does. If we as Christians embark on a political, social, or personal path that ignores them, turns them aside, casts them back to the despair from which they have fled, then we harden our hearts to their cry and to the cry of the Holy Spirit. And when we do that, we cease to be the Church, cease to be a body of Believers, cease to be Believers at all.

For us, the issue of how to address the disadvantaged people of the world is a test. One that poses the question, do we really believe what Jesus said, and are we really committed to living in obedience to Him, or have we reduced His words and life to a collection of religious tenets to which we merely give mental assent? One offers the way to life. The other leads only to death - theirs and ours.

Capitalism and Democracy

Capitalism threatens Democracy - Democracy threatens Capitalism

Fourth of July

The Star-Spangled Banner is not a Gospel hymn.

We Need Real Leadership

We need real leadership. Not the constant-campaign we get from the GOP. That latest healthcare bill that passed the House wasn't designed to help Americans get healthy and stay healthy. It was designed to pass, so GOP members could say to the right-wing base, "We kept our promise." That's all. No intention of moving us forward. No intention of solving a problem. No purpose whatsoever except to help members remain in office.

THE BABY BOOM IN PERSPECTIVE

According to available data, birthrates in the United States have steadily declined from a rate of about twelve live births per female of childbearing age during the eighteenth century to a current rate of less than two. Plotted on a graph, the birthrate trend-line follows a slope steadily downward with only one deviation - the period associated with World War II known as the Baby Boom.

Demographers date the Baby Boom in the US at various times, but from a statistical perspective the birthrate rose above the trend-line in 1940 and increased steadily to a peak around 1955-56, then declined back to the trend-line after 1964. During that twenty-five year period, approximately 33,971,000 babies were born (US Census Bureau, Table 53, Statistical Abstract of the United States (1970), p. 47). Births during that period produced a generation of men and women who went on to lead one of the most creative periods in human history.

In 1973, abortion was legalized in the United States with the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (410 US 113 (1973)). Following that decision, the rate of reported abortions rose from 0 in the 1970s to approximately 1.5 million procedures in 1980. Thereafter, the rate declined to approximately 1 million per year, where it has remained since. From the time abortion was legalized through 2011, a total of approximately 40 million abortions were performed (See, Trends in Abortion in the United States - 2011, Guttmacher Institute (January 2014)).

Think about that for a moment.

Abortion has eliminated a generation the size of the Baby Boom generation. And with it, the creativity, ingenuity, and advancement that generation might have produced.

SAVING CHRISTIANITY FROM THE AMERICAN DREAM

The book Radical, by David Platt has been out a while and I'm sure many of you have already read it. It has been on my e-reader for quite some time, but I only started reading it a few weeks ago. Great book about rescuing Christianity from the American Dream.

In this era's highly-charged political environment Believers often view Christianity through a political lens, rather than the other way around. Politics drives the train. Likewise, devotion to the American Dream, with its underlying philosophy of self-determination, often drives our lives, our priorities, and our theology. This book addresses that dilemma.

The will of God and the American Dream are not one and the same. Jesus calls us to a life of radical faith, not radical self-achievement.

Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream

CHINA STEPS UP INVESTMENT IN AFRICA

Four hundred years ago, more or less, Isaac Newton told us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The notion of homeostasis applies a similar idea in a different way, suggesting that change in one area of a system dictates change in another. And so we find one of the great axioms of life. Whenever one thing wanes, another waxes. One lessens, the other increases.

As the United States withdraws from engagement with the world others, most notably China, have stepped in to fill the void. Trains, power plants, investment in agricultural production. Providing financing, technical support, and operational assistance. We back away, they step up. Our influence wanes, theirs waxes.

See below, Andrew Jacobs, "Joyous Africans Take to the Rails, With China's Help," The New York Times, February 7, 2017

He Who Oppresses the Poor

He who oppresses the poor 

shows contempt for their Maker, 

but whoever is kind to the needy 

honors God.

Proverbs 14:31

December Retail Sales

From 1992 through 2015 (the most recent year available), retail sales for December have increased in every year except one - 2008.

America In The Age of Socrates

Socrates made a fatal mistake. He thought the Greeks wanted to know the truth. What he learned, albeit too late to make a difference, was that truth no longer mattered. The Greeks only wanted to be persuaded - to be moved - to be stirred. Truth, it seems, had been redefined to mean only that of which one could persuade another. And now we enter that age ourselves.

Truth and Lies in the Age of Trump, The New York Times, December 10, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/10/opinion/truth-and-lies-in-the-age-of-trump.html?_r=0

Quiet Oblivion

I see people on the street who seem to live a life of quiet desperation - but in the pews and shopping malls I see more who seem to live a life of quiet oblivion.

Near The End

Near the end, people will revere the symbols of freedom more than freedom itself.

Twilight Of The Republic

During the recent presidential campaign, candidate Trump turned hyperbole into an art form, creating supposed facts to suit the sort of American mythological claims many think are true. Like the notion that vast numbers of immigrants come here illegally in order to commit crimes (the crime rate among immigrants is roughly equal that of the population in general), vote in our elections (voter fraud requires the collusion of hundreds of local poll workers at every level), and other claims for which neither he nor anyone else has an supporting evidence.

Now that he has won election to the highest office in the land, some had hoped that president-elect Trump would move to more reserved, judicious, comments based on substantiated facts and actual truth. After all, when a president speaks his words have consequences, both at home and abroad. But this weekend Trump returned to his old form, Tweeting on the topic of a three-state recount that the reason Hillary Clinton won the popular vote was due to "millions" who voted illegally for her. Claims for which no one has any supporting evidence.

Campaigning by hyperbole is one thing. Governing by it is quite another.

When one campaigns by hyperbole, their statements are often dismissed as political rhetoric or mere puffery - the kind of statements the stereotypical used car salesman might be expected to make when attempting to sell a car of dubious quality and value.

When one governs by hyperbole - making up supposed facts and using them to justify policies that obviate, obfuscate, and contravene the constitution - mere hyperbole becomes propaganda.

The kind of propaganda Trump attempts to sell - that elections are tainted by voter fraud (though only affecting those who voted for someone else), that illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs, that globalism doesn't work, that we can withdraw from the world economically while imposing our will militarily - not only lays the basis for constitutional crisis, but turn us away from an electoral republic toward a dictatorial empire and the death of everything we claim to value about America.

If We Abandon The World

If we abandon the world - globalism, international monetary system, and the like - the world will abandon us. Our economy lives on credit, much of it extended to us by other nations, and on the constant supply of goods from abroad. Foreign countries only deal with us because it is profitable for them to do so. If we, as a consequence of our own choices, make dealing with us unprofitable, they will no longer buy our bonds and notes, or trade with us in the manufacture of the products we consume.

A Face In The Crowd

And then there's this - from Paul Papanek

The Past Is Always With US

"Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising to 'lead Germany to a new era of national greatness,' though he was typically vague about his actual plans."

Kakutani, Michiko, From 'Dunderhead' to Demagogue, The New York Times, September 28, 2016

Reviewing Hitler: Ascent 1889-1930 by Volker Ullrich (Knopf)

The Past Has A Way of Repeating Itself

"Here, 'Hitler adapted the content of his speeches to suit the tastes of his lower-middle-class, nationalist-conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and anti-Semitic listeners,' Ullrich writes. He peppered his speeches with coarse phrases and put-downs of hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing on crowds' fears and resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader who could restore law and order."

Kakutani, Michiko, From 'Dunderhead to Demagogue, The New York Times, September 28, 2016

Reviewing Hitler: Ascent 1889-1930 by Volker Ullrich

Totally amazed that Reagan Republicans - who embraced the conservative view that Russia was a threat to world peace and US security - now readily accept Donald Trump's embrace of Russian president Putin as a leader to be emulated.

President Trump

Donald Trump sounds convincing - like the guy you see at the party who seems to know everyone, even you, and people who regularly have three or four drinks before dinner find him . . . interesting.

But the speeches he gives are mostly about himself with policy positions painted with the broadest strokes possible. The most oft repeated being, "We're gonna make America great again." He gives little detail about how he would accomplish that, but he makes the claim anyway, leaving plenty of space for listeners to fill in the blanks.

Giving Trump the benefit of the doubt, and reading past his sparse comments on policy, he sounds like a CEO addressing shareholders or employees at an annual gathering. And that might be expected. After all, he's spent a lifetime leading a number of companies. But as attractive as the CEO model might be, the presidency is not a CEO position and the government is not a business corporation. This is a critical point because if he wins the presidency in the general election, the differences between corporate CEO and president of the United States will become a major stumbling block as he confronts one of his most important official duties - proposing the next year's federal budget.

After years of government shutdowns and debt-limit grandstanding, almost none of which had any noticeable effect on the individual lives of private citizens, the federal budget might seem like merely a document. It is, in fact, quite the opposite.

The federal budget lies at the heart of an administration's plan for governing. The budgetary process - the process by which each year's allocation of funding is determined - becomes the battle ground upon which dreams and political rhetoric collide with the enduring enemy of all attempts at government reform - the narrow-minded but often powerful congressional constituencies in both parties who protect and defend billions of dollars in federal pork aimed at projects in their home districts.

The CEO of a private corporation could address company budget problems by simply deleting from that budget those items he thought were unnecessary - a power often referred to in government as the line-item veto. However, the president of the United States does not hold line-item veto power. The president can approve a budget and sign it into law in its entirety, or he can veto the budget in its entirety and send the document back to congress. But he can't strike from the budget those individual items he does not wish to fund. Approval or disapproval of the budget is an all or nothing matter.

In addition, most of the items the president will want to cut from the budget have their own congressional constituency - congressional members, even from within the president's own party, who are determined to retain some measure of federal largess for voters back home. As a result, a first-term Trump will watch as his administration becomes bogged down in relentless congressional arguments over each and every item he wishes to strike.

And then consider this . . .

To alleviate his frustration, a President Trump will do what he has already done when confronted by Republican Party hierarchy and the Republican Establishment - he will look beyond congress and the legislative process and rally the American people to his cause. Using the same empty and vacuous, but oh so entertaining, rhetoric that won him the office, he will make a very public argument for why he should have greater budgetary control. In speech after speech he will chide Congress for its failure to govern and exhort the American people with promises that he can easily fix most of the government's problems, if only he had the power to strike individual appropriations from the budget.

His argument will seem appealing and opinion polls will show voter sentiment strongly in favor of Trump's request. A Republican controlled Congress, facing the prospect of voter anger in their home districts, will give him the line-item power he seeks - by constitutional amendment if necessary.

Using his newly acquired power, Trump will dramatically shrink the federal budget. Deficits will become a thing of the past. Key government programs wiped out with the stroke of a pen. The American economy, almost instantly devoid of excess federal spending, will descend into a depression far more devastating than the Great Depression of 1929. Millions will be out of work. Voter anger once again will rise.

Rather than addressing the truth - that his federal budget policy withdrew trillions of economic activity from the national economy - Trump will turn again to the rhetoric that holds the key to his power and divert public attention to illegal immigrants as the source of the nation's economic trouble. Illegal immigrants, he will say, as he already has, are the ones who stole our jobs and destroyed our economy.

With that rhetoric as his tool, he will convince Americans that the economic crisis is really an immigration crisis, one that requires the deployment of federal troops in a massive roundup of some fifteen million allegedly illegal immigrants. A Republican controlled congress, eager to retain their office and its paycheck, will rubber stamp all of his proposals.

Sporadic resistance will create poorly organized disruptions, but those attempts at resistance will attract national media attention and provide the illusion of widespread unrest. In the midst of that, he will declare martial law and, as his second term approaches its end, he will declare a national emergency, temporarily suspending federal elections, leaving himself in office indefinitely.

And so . . .

If you think this is nothing more than the overactive musings of a fiction writer, you should read the history of Germany from 1920 to 1945. This is precisely how Hitler shredded through centuries of German law, tradition, and practice to become first chancellor, then Fuehrer - an absolute ruler with absolute and unrestrained power.