"If You Take Away Religion, You Can't Hire Enough Police"

Clayton Christensen from the Harvard Business School talks about the foundational values to culture that religion provides.

The Top 5 (September 28)

* "Pastor Roundtable: What Is a Pastor’s Role in Politics?: Helping your church apply faith to the public square" (Lindsay Nicolet, Editorial Director of the ERLC of the Southern Baptists and Pastors Jon Nelson, Eric Costanzo, and Daniel Darling)

From the article --  It is not incidental that God has called American Christians to live in this time and country. Pastors can help people steward their citizenship in a way that is redemptive. This looks different depending on our callings. Some are called to run for office, work in policy organizations, or write and speak in public ways. Others are called to do more quiet and local actions.

All of us, however, are given the stewardship of living in this country and helping shape the policies and people who rule over us. So, a pastor must engage at the level of preaching, teaching, and equipping his people to live faithfully. 

We first must recognize that the gospel itself is inherently political. When the first-century Church gathered weekly to declare that Christ, not Caesar, is Lord, they were making a political statement. By the way we are called to live, there is no way to avoid politics in this sense. 

Pastors should prioritize preaching the Bible in a systematic, faithful way every week. It’s also helpful at times to have special series, whether from the pulpit or in classes, that address specific cultural issues. However, people should be able to tell the difference between “thus saith the Lord” and “thus saith the pastor.” 

* "Life on the Ballot" (Nebraska Family Alliance)

From the article -- Among the things that will logically follow if Measure 439 were to become Nebraska law?
1) Allow late-term abortion on babies who can feel pain in the
second and third trimesters.
2) Abortion throughout pregnancy: “Health” is determined solely by
the abortionist and can include non-medical factors such as
mental, spiritual, financial, or familial health.
3) Enable abusers and traffickers by eliminating parental notification
requirements.
4) “Without interference from the state” eliminates all laws
regulating the abortion industry, including women’s health and
safety requirements.
5) “Viability” is determined solely by the abortionist and would not
include any baby who may need “extraordinary medical measures,”
such as a stay in the NICU

* "America’s Military Can’t Endure Another Four Years Of Democrat Rule" (Shawn Fleetwood, Federalist)

From the article -- But what happens to America and the global security environment when the former’s greatest security system gets hijacked by Constitution-hating leftists? Unfortunately, it’s a question Americans are getting answers to in real time.

While largely ignored by corporate media, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing late last week about a U.S. Army base designating several pro-life organizations as “terrorist groups.” Yes, you read that correctly. The Army instructed roughly 9,100 soldiers over a seven-year period that Operation Rescue and National Right to Life are entities affiliated with terrorism.

Lt. Gen. Patrick Matlock, the branch’s deputy chief of staff, told lawmakers the briefing materials were pulled after they were exposed, but declined to say whether the individual responsible for their creation has faced any disciplinary actions, according to the Military Times.

* "The Coming Strangulation of Free Speech" (Joel Kotkin, American Mind)

From the article -- Under Harris, the censorship regime would likely get even stronger. She has spoken openly about wanting to “censor misinformation and hate.” Already under Biden, there has been strong support for suppressing online dissent, even proposing to create a “disinformation” board. This likely would be used not only to cover COVID-related issues but also climate change, with the Biden Administration’s top climate adviser Gina McCarthy casting censorship as a “health issue.”

To be sure, the U.S. will have to get much worse to beat our erstwhile democratic allies’ abandonment of free speech; unlike the U.S., the U.K. has no First Amendment. Even as authoritarian regimes are expanding all around the world, notes Freedom House, other Western nations seem to be tilting toward greater restraints on free expression, with “hate speech” laws already surfacing in Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and Canada...

At the same time, similarly-minded progressives increasingly control what happens in our museums, while woke censors proliferate at large publishing firms on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps more remarkable, the journalistic profession itself, particularly at the elite level, largely follows a single orthodoxy that often defines its output. Although even in the past most reporters were not conservatives, the tilt today is extreme. By 2018, barely 7% of U.S. reporters identified as Republicans, and some 97% of all political donations from journalists went to Democrats.

* "The Democrats’ Joy Of Hating America" (I & I Editorial Board)

From the article -- The Democratic Party, Kamala Harris now its titular chief, unleashed illegal immigration after Donald Trump nearly closed the spigot. The lawlessness returned on Jan. 20, 2021, when the new president, Joe Biden, used executive orders to begin rolling back Trump’s border security policies. They were too successful for the left’s refined tastes, so Biden had to kill them.

Two months later, Biden named Harris “border czar,” which only encouraged illegal border crossings. During Biden’s first three years, an estimated 7.4 million illegal immigrants invaded the country, more than three times the number that crossed during Trump’s four years. There were also nearly 2 million “gotaways” who jumped the border in Biden’s first three years but weren’t caught.

The border crisis was not the product of incompetence. It was a matter of deliberate choice. Thomas Klingenstein, principal in the investment firm of Cohen, Klingenstein and the chairman of the Claremont Institute’s board of directors, laid this out four years ago when he said “the multicultural movement, which has taken over the Democratic party, is a revolutionary movement.” He was not talking about a “metaphorical revolution,”  but a real “revolution, an attempt to overthrow the American founding.”

And a bonus pick this weekend...

* "Rape is Resistance and Beepers are Genocide" (Daniel Greenfield, Gatestone Institute)

From the article -- Those same organizations [that condemned Israel's exploding pagers] and activists had nothing to say about the Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli towns and villages that turned tens of thousands of Jews into refugees in their own country...The Democrat political establishment can't seem to get around to condemning the Islamic groups attacking synagogues and marching through the streets praising the rape and murder of Jews.

Every Israeli tactic is illegitimate because the cause, a Jewish State, is illegitimate, but no Islamic tactic is ever truly illegitimate because its cause, replacing Israel with an Islamic state, is legitimate. The liberal anti-Israel establishment in D.C., human rights groups and the media have played a cynical game of focusing on Israel tactics as if they actually cared how Israel takes out terrorists, and as if there were any means of taking out terrorists that would win their approval.

So, You're Pregnant

 This very short clip is superb so check it out and pass it along. For passed along the line, who knows whose life it might significantly influence?

(By the way, my mega-thanks to the Canadian pro-life organization Choice42 for this terrific video.)

 

The Top 5 (September 21)

* "Yes, Democrats And Their Propaganda Media Support Late-Term Abortion And Infanticide" (Stella Morabito, Federalist)

From the article -- When Trump said he is against late-term abortion, Davis proceeded to “fact-check” him by claiming “there’s no state in this country where it’s legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” Ever since, media outlets from The Guardian to MSNBC have continued to issue “fact checks” and outraged opinion articles backing up Davis’ claim and denying Trump’s, calling it the “post-birth abortion lie” and claiming “there is no state in the US where it is ‘OK’ to kill a baby after it is born.”

First off, that’s disingenuous and false. Seven U.S. states allow abortion until birth, with no restrictions, and 14 allow it for the sake of the mother’s “health,” which can include mental health. In Minnesota, eight babies are recorded as being left to die outside the womb after failed abortions in just 2021 alone, until Gov. Tim Walz removed that reporting requirement. Minnesota is not the only state that fails to record or protect children left to die after birth in such circumstances.

Second, radical Democrats used to see a difference between abortion and infanticide. Third, and maybe even most importantly, this sheltering of Harris obscures the fact that Harris’ policy positions are clearly in line with Planned Parenthood’s hard push towards legalizing all forms of infanticide. It’s happening because of the support of the propaganda media.

* "Experts Predict Up to 2.7M Votes Will Be Cast by Illegal Immigrants" (Ben Johnson, Daily Signal)

From the article -- Do you plan to vote this November? You’re not alone. Experts say somewhere between 1.5 million and 2.7 million illegal immigrants are likely to cast a ballot in the 2024 elections, affecting races from dogcatcher to president of the United States.

The historic flood of illegal immigrants during the Biden-Harris administration has also padded voter rolls, thanks to controversial federal legislation from the Clinton administration. If illegal immigrants and other noncitizens vote in the same proportion as in previous U.S. elections, the number will range anywhere from 1.5 million to nearly 3 million votes.

* "Abortion Is the #1 Crisis Facing Black America Today" (Walter Hoye, Washington Stand)

From the article -- As a young man in the 1960s, I marched with my family, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Detroit and in Chicago. In the 1960’s, Black Americans distrusted government and any attempt to limit our population. We feared the motivation behind taxpayer-funded birth control clinics was nothing more than a malevolent effort to “limit” Black political power.

In 1965, at a meeting of the Council of Philadelphia Anti-Poverty Action Committee, Cecil Moore, president of the local NAACP chapter, condemned a Planned Parenthood program in northern Philadelphia because 70% of the population was Black. Moore labeled the plan as “replete with everything to help the Negroes commit race suicide.” In the 1960s, Black Americans knew what Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA) was all about...

Nevertheless, today, the Democratic Party and Black American leadership in the highest places, including Jesse Jackson, boldly endorse abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy and then some. It is more than abundantly clear that Black Americans are diabolically being targeted by the abortion industry.

* "The Media’s Criminal Misreporting on Crime" (Editors, Issues & Insights)

From the article -- "President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.” That was ABC News’ David Muir “fact checking” Donald Trump during his debate with Kamala Harris. Two days later, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released the results of its national crime victimization survey, which showed that the number of victims of violent crime was 41% higher in 2023 than in 2020. There were almost 170,000 more rapes, 300,000 more robberies, 1.4 million more assaults, 300,000 more claims of domestic violence, and almost 400,000 more crimes with a violent weapon.

Why is the press so insistent on claiming that crime is no big deal? The reason is simple: Republicans have been tapping the public’s legitimate concerns about crime, blaming soft-on-crime leftists such as Kamala Harris, and promising to turn things around. So, the hopelessly partisan mainstream media feel that it’s incumbent on them to “prove” Republicans are lying.

* "Immigration: The Issue That Could Decide the Election" (John Hinderaker, Power Line)

From the article -- There are several great issues on which the presidential election (and Congressional elections, too) should turn. One is our out of control national debt, which promises to first hamstring our government, then bankrupt us. But no one is talking about it. Another is America’s deteriorating military readiness. The Europeans are scrambling to defend themselves against possible Russian attack; that in itself is a good thing. But they are doing it in large part because they believe that we no longer have the level of readiness needed to come to their aid. Trump hints at this issue occasionally, but that is about it.

A third major issue is cybersecurity. Our enemies (China, Russia, Iran, likely North Korea, maybe one or more non-state actors) have the ability to bring down our electric grid, crash the stock market, disrupt our communications, poison our water supply, and much more. Why don’t they do it? Only because we can do the same to them. It is a state of Mutual Assured Destruction, much as we have seen with nuclear weapons for many years. One thing about a cyber attack, though, is that we may not even know who carried it out. No one is talking about this threat.

Finally we come to immigration...

God's In the Math

Absolutely stunning!

Pass it along.   

Jumping Into the Pit

One often hears about how far America has fallen --- cultural devolution; the unraveling of morality; the precipitous decline in standards of education, law enforcement, and patriotism; the coarseness of public discourse and decorum; the irrelevance and apathy of the modern Church; and so on.

Indeed, it is grievously obvious that America is in a dark, degrading, dangerous pit. But I suggest that the nation hasn’t as much fallen into that pit as we have been intentionally pushed. And, far greater a tragedy, our fate has less often involved stumbling or being shoved into that pit than it has a knowing, volitional leap into it.  

The Top 5 (September 14)

* "Candidate, Moderate Thyself: Conservatives are right to complain about the blatant bias of ABC’s debate moderators, but the bigger problem was Donald Trump’s undisciplined performance." (Heather Mac Donald, City Journal)

From the article -- Yes, the moderators of ABC’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were egregiously biased in favor of Harris. Yes, Harris recycled patent lies about Trump without the slightest pushback from the referees—that Trump has embraced the supposedly infamous Project 2025, that he supports a national abortion ban, that he called the anti-Semitic and racist demonstrators in Charlottesville in 2019 “fine people,” that he refused leases to black would-be renters. (The New York Times lauded the ABC team as a “model for real-time fact-checking.”)

But a low-information voter who, incredibly, still has not made up her mind about the election could easily decide for Harris on the basis of Tuesday’s debate. Trump put all his worst traits on display—his narcissism, his gratuitous nastiness, and above all, his penchant for using hyperbole as a substitute for argument.

* "Kamala Harris: ‘My Values’ Say Pro-Life Laws Are ‘Immoral’" (Ben Johnson, Washington Stand)

From the article -- Harris, who boasted she “brings values” to the White House, then repeated one of the many shopworn phrases she said during the debate: “One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.” Christians have held that abortion violates their faith, and should be illegal, for 2,000 years. Orthodox Jews also say they hold a pro-life faith. The Satanic Temple regards abortion as a sacrament.

As she has throughout the campaign, Harris promised to impose abortion on all 50 states by force. “I pledge to you when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law,” she said. “But, understand, if Donald Trump were to be re-elected, he will sign a national abortion ban. Understand, in his Project 2025, there would be a national abortion ban.”

The Biden-Harris administration has endorsed a bill that goes beyond Roe, allowing abortion until birth nationwide. The Democratic Party platform also supports taxpayer-funded abortions in the United States and around the world.

* "The Truth About World War II" (Victor Davis Hanson, The Free Press)

From the article -- In a recent and now widely seen Tucker Carlson interview, a guest historian named Darryl Cooper casually presented a surprising number of flawed theories about World War II. He focused his misstatements on the respective roles of Winston Churchill’s Britain and Adolf Hitler’s Germany—especially in matters of the treatment and fate of Russian prisoners, the Holocaust, the systematic slaughtering of Jews, strategic bombing, and the nature of Winston Churchill. 

Because of the size of the audience Carlson introduced him to, and because of the gravity of Cooper’s falsehoods, his assertions deserve a response. 

* "The Uniparty Turns Literal" (Mark Steyn)

From the article -- I thought Cheney was an homme sérieux. But, in the end, he wasn't. The Bush years have to be accounted a terrible failure, in which the leadership of the then dominant superpower was unable to grasp the simplest of truths - not least about the need for strategic clarity. Under Cheney, America launched wars with no war aims, in which it deluded itself that "smart bombs" counted for more than will. Meanwhile, on the home front, the rate of Muslim immigration to America doubled ...because it was more important to show the world how nice we are than to consider the cultural consequences of demographic transformation. So the west spent twenty years fighting over the most barren and worthless sod on the planet, while surrendering Malmö and Marseille, Rotterdam and Nottingham, and Lewiston-Auburn, Maine. This is what happens when you have a political class almost entirely disconnected from the rhythms of real life in real countries.

So Trump has performed a great service in driving the likes of Cheney to vote Kamala. The feeble charade of TweedleDem vs TweedleRep is designed to obscure the central fact of end-stage western "democracy" - that, on anything that really matters, nothing can be permitted to change. Thus, having Dick Cheney and Ilhan Omar formally on the same team is very helpful. Trump has driven the "respectable" political class to make the Uniparty literal, and its consolidation has freed up space for an actual second party.

* "Migrants flooding NYC’s justice system -- making up ‘75% of arrests in Midtown’ -- as ‘pathetic’ sanctuary city laws handcuff cops." (New York Post)

From the article -- The problem is made much worse by sanctuary city laws that mean New York cops aren’t allowed to work with ICE on cases in which they believe suspects are in the country illegally. Additionally, the NYPD says it is barred from tracking the immigration status of offenders. This makes it almost impossible for authorities to get their arms around the problem, experts and sources on the ground say.

“New York City eliminated a tool to get rid of violent criminals. What a mess,” Jim Quinn, a veteran former prosecutor at the Queens District Attorney’s Office, told The Post. “The sanctuary city law is pathetic. It’s disgusting. It’s crazy.” Making matters worse, police sources say, word has gotten out in the shelters about the city’s lax bail guidelines — meaning migrants know they’re going to get kicked back onto the street quickly after they’re nabbed.

Bonus picks for this week? Yes, here's a couple:

* "Why America’s Soaring Debt Is Biggest Threat to US Dollar" (Daniel Lacalle, Daily Signal)

* "The Return of Anti-History: Podcasts are not reviving history, as is often claimed these days. They are mostly drowning it in a tidal wave of blather, at best sloppy, at worst mendacious." (Niall Ferguson, The Free Press)

The September LifeSharer Is Up

 You'll find the pdf of this month's "very newsy" newsletter right here.

Dr. Greg Gardner Visits Vital Signs Ministries

We believe there will be a rich harvest from the seeds of encouragement, enlightenment, challenge, and friendship which were liberally sown throughout Dr. Greg Gardner’s visit to Nebraska. Our physician friend and longtime pro-life colleague from Birmingham, England was kept busy in his 4 and 1/2 day stay with us and a lot of ground was covered in the many stimulating conversations we enjoyed together. 

But it was not only Claire and I who were blessed to talk over many things with Greg; indeed, we count about 72 people he met in that brief time. 

Among Dr. Gardner’s activities while he was here were an in-depth tour and ministry review of Assure Women’s Center and radio interviews with Jackie Mahr at Walnut Radio and Karen Bowling at Nebraska Family Alliance down in Lincoln. Also, Greg spoke to 24 veteran pro-life advocates after a large potluck dinner at the home of Dr. Ralph and Carol Kramper.

But folded into all of these events were other breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and coffees where he was able to engage with Vital Signs Board members, many of our colleagues, even several of our neighbors. And those discussions explored many, many areas including the comparative states of the culture, church, politics, and pro-life movement in both the U.S. and the U.K.

It was a terrific ministry and Claire and I can certainly testify that know that Vital Signs Ministries will be profoundly affected for the good as we evaluate and enact things the we discussed with our dear friend. Thank you, Grace for lending your husband to us for this brief but momentous time! 

The Top 5 (September 7)

* "This is not fake news: U.S. Surgeon General warns that parenting is a health hazard" (Kimberly Ells, Mercator)

From the article -- This Surgeon General’s Advisory is the first time I recall seeing an official government entity framing children as a clear and present danger to their parents. It reminds me of radical feminist Sophie Lewis’ assertion that babies in utero commit “fetal violence” toward their mothers by introducing health threats to and demanding nourishment from their unfortunate maternal hosts. Likewise, Suzanne Sadedin says an unborn baby employs “manipulation, blackmail, and violence” against its mother while floating in the womb and usurping whatever sustenance it can suck from her body.

What does the Surgeon General say should be done about this assault on parents’ health? The “We Can Take Action” section of the advisory starts with this preface: “While parents and caregivers may have the primary responsibility for raising children… [it] is a collective responsibility.” It then gives a laundry list of collectivist solutions including the following...

* "The Oslo effect" Israelis won’t forgive or forget the left’s weaponization of the hostages to do Hamas’s dirty work for it." (Melanie Phillips, Jewish News Service)

From the article -- Israelis are being increasingly maddened by grief and horror over the unconscionable fate of the hostages trapped in the hell holes of Gaza. Last week’s cold-blooded murder of six of these captives by Hamas savages has tipped many Israelis over the edge.

The demonstrators’ demand for an immediate ceasefire deal to release the hostages is not only ludicrous to the point of near derangement but also poses a direct threat to Israel’s security and indeed existence—precisely the outcome that Hamas intends through its diabolical manipulation of the hostages’ plight.

* "Why Corporations Are Ditching Wokeness" (Dan Morenoff, City Journal)

From the article -- The growing number of corporations pledging to abandon “antiracist” policies and to restore the primacy of profit-seeking is encouraging. Only time will tell if their statements are sincere. While we wait to find out, it’s worth considering another detail of this reversal: Why now? The efforts of activists and journalists like Robby Starbuck and my colleague Christopher Rufo have played an important role in these developments. Their work has exposed discriminatory corporate policies and raised public awareness to a critical mass.

A more cynical interpretation, however, may help explain these decisions, too. Corporate decision makers may be pulling back from “woke” initiatives because they care more about legal exposure than they do about ideology. Courts are ever-more willing to hold executives responsible for racial discrimination. In a little-noted consensus, at least eight of the 13 U.S. Courts of Appeals—all those taking a position on the issue so far—have agreed that the individuals who participate in racial contracting discrimination are liable for the harms caused, even if a lawyer signed off on the practice. Since the 1970s, that liability has extended to directors who vote for discriminatory policies. 

* "Why aren’t governments tackling the epidemic of sexual abuse in America’s public schools?" (Michael Cook, Mercator)

From the article -- "The Justice Department and many law enforcement agencies and school systems have failed to take basic steps to prevent sexual misconduct and root out abusive cops,” the Post claims. The tragic thing is that these allegations come as no surprise. It is just the latest in a steady trickle of stories in the media about sexual abuse in American public schools. No doubt the problem is similar in other countries. The difference is that collecting meaningful information about abuse in schools is far more difficult in the US because of its sheer size and the number of jurisdictions – 50 states plus the District of Columbia and other territories, divided into more than 13,000 school districts. 

Three articles by journalist James Varney for RealClearInvestigations highlight a massive problem which emerges from time to time but has never been comprehensively studied. He writes: “For a variety of reasons, ranging from embarrassment to eagerness to avoid liability, elected or appointed officials, along with unions or lobbying groups representing school employees, have fought to keep the truth hidden from the public.”

* "The Adventure of the Black Paw" (Denny Hartford, Vital Signs Ministries)

In this 8 and 1/2 minute video clip, Denny recounts perhaps the most exciting day of his life...with a couple of moral applications of universal relevance. Check it out. You'll enjoy it.

The Adventure of the Black Paw

In this 8 and 1/2 minute video clip, Denny recounts perhaps the most exciting day of his life...with a couple of moral applications of universal relevance. Check it out. You'll enjoy it.

https://vitalsignsministries.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/The-Black-Paw-2.mp4