From the article -- “The need of the hour is not for executives, celebrities, intellectuals, life-coaches, podcasters, authors or performers,” he said. “The greatest need in our movement is for faithful, Christ-honoring pastors that will take up the task of shepherding the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
According to Dr. Rice, part of that pastoral task includes encouraging Christians to engage in the political process. “Throughout American history, pastors have had a strong voice at key moments in American political history, even in the revolutionary times—maybe especially in the founding of our country,” Rice said.
Pastor Rice isn’t shy about confronting the mistaken belief that Christian leaders should stay silent on hot-button cultural issues. “It’s quite interesting, over the last several years, among many conservatives—and by conservative, I’m not talking politically there as much as I’m talking theologically; I’m talking about historic Christian orthodoxy,” Rice stressed. “Many Bible-believing, conservative evangelicals were actually being encouraged to be more quiet, to withdraw from the political process.”
He continued: “Some of those voices came externally from pressure saying, ‘You shouldn’t mix religion and politics,’” Rice argued. “But some of those voices came internally from those who said, ‘In order to be faithful in our mission, we needed to decouple, divorce ourselves as it were, from some controversial political issues.’”
Related articles: “Rice: Southern Baptist pastors should be involved in the political process” (Scott Barkley, Baptist Press), “Southern Baptist Convention President: Midterm Election Issues Are ‘Deeply, Profoundly, Theological’” (Lee Weeks, Decision)
2) “The New Antisemitism: October 7 Was A Symptom As Well As A Tragedy” (Olivier Melnick, Harbinger’s Daily)
From the article -- It took decades for the tree of “Palestinian Narrative” to take root, but today it is a tree of deceit firmly planted in Western tolerance and multiculturalism, and it continues to be watered by social justice and wokism from the Left AND from the Right. In 2026, the switch is complete. In the eyes of our global village, the Jewish victims have fully morphed into the new perpetrators in the Middle East (and by proxy, all Diaspora Jews), seeking occupation, apartheid, and genocide.
At the same time, Palestinian Arabs have been recast as the new victims, through the crafty media productions in books, movies, online, and on the streets. It is a method known as “Pallywood,” where scenes are staged and filmed with actors and fake victims to simulate victimization and heavy casualties of Palestinians and, as a result, demonize and delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the world. If there were ever an award ceremony for the “Palestinization” of the world, the events of October 7, 2023 would win in every category.
So, it is appropriate to remember the tragedy of October 7. In a gruesome Holocaust fashion, many lost their lives after psychological torture, violence, rape, and fire. Many more were taken hostage by Hamas and a plethora of willing Palestinian co-perpetrators (70%-75%). Even during Nazi Germany, some Germans rescued and sheltered Jews. Not one Palestinian did such a thing in Gaza.
Related articles: “Oct. 7, remembered in Israel and beyond” (JNS Staff), “Hijacker Target Revealed: Ben Gurion Airport” (Also, Britain's antisemitism problem returns.) (Amit Segal and Ari Tatarka, It’s Noon in Israel), “We Stand with Israel” (Denny Hartford, Vital Signs Blog), “On The October 7 Anniversary, The United Kingdom Advocates For Israel’s Eradication ‘From The River To The Sea’” (Chris Katulka, Harbinger's Daily), October 8th’s Irony: Islamic Supremacists Fall in the Middle East, Rise in the West: Will we find the moral clarity and summon the courage to defeat them? (Benjamin Weingarten).
3) “The West Confronted with Two Islams” (Bat Ye’or, Gatestone Institute)
From the article -- The concept of dar al-harb (the “abode of war”) -- countries still to be conquered for Islam and regarded as the realm of absolute evil in which the injustice of infidel laws prevails -- remains current and effective in Islamic theology. It is this concept that today mobilizes some Muslim immigrants in the West to reject integration into societies that do not practice sharia. In other words, the clash of civilizations persists, but now within Western civilizations themselves, which have lost their homogeneity through the demographic changes and host large numbers of Muslim immigrants imposing their own laws
The present situation recalls the traditional waves of jihadist conquest of territories inhabited by Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims. Greek, Serbian, and Slavic historians bitterly chronicled, over the course of centuries, the internal traitors -- military figures, displaced aristocrats, princes of the Church -- who made pacts with Muslim conquerors and handed citadels and cities over to them.
The radical activism today of the Muslim diaspora within Western societies and its refusal to integrate... stem from directives issued by the OIC [a sort of global caliphate representing 56 Muslim countries].
In the West, jihad operates on several levels: indiscriminate terrorism, censorship of “blasphemy,” changes in customs and laws, the ballot box, the adoption of Western concepts in order to turn them against Europeans, such as cancel culture (to shut out Western evil), and calls for “resistance” (against Christian laws, by holding to jihadist principles of conquest and domination) and "liberation" (meaning the replacement of infidel law by sharia).
4) “Rubio’s Magnificent Speech Meant for Europe... and US: The Sec’y of State was masterful at the Acropolis” (Roger Simon, Substack)
From the speech itself -- For 25 centuries since, the Parthenon has stood. Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow. And the progeny of the men who built it – the sons of Athens and Rome – have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the Earth.
Two and a half centuries after the founding of the American republic halfway across the world from where I stand now – I stand here today as the Secretary of State of that republic, and a great-grandson of settlers who arrived in the new world from Spain – I stand here to testify to a debt that no lapse of time, no distance of space can ever extinguish.
The history of America, the history of my country, is covered with the fingerprints of antiquity. Greece is literally carved into the architecture of our government: in the towering columns, in the domes and the monuments across our capital city. The city where our Constitution was born – Philadelphia – is itself a Greek name.
The men who founded my country were fascinated by the heritage we inherited from yours. They were exceptionally well-read in history – they were vividly aware of their unique place in it – but no other age of the past held their attention or their imagination quite like that of antiquity. Many, many people are surprised to learn that the most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was not an Enlightenment philosopher or political theorist. No, the most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was Plutarch, the Greek biographer of Greece and Rome’s great men.
Now, much has been written and said about the influence of ancient Greece on the ideas of the American Founders – and, for that matter, on all of the Western philosophers and statesmen that preceded them. Most of us are familiar with the basic history. Athens gave us democracy. Plato and Aristotle gave us Western philosophy. Our ideas of law, of virtue, of citizenship, and republican government were shaped in the Greek city-states. Even much of our political vocabulary – words like democracy, tyranny, the word “politics” itself – found its origins here.
Now, all of that is true. But the things we owe to this place – as Americans, and as Westerners – are actually far far deeper. These institutions and ideas – these institutions and ideas were the outward expression of more fundamental qualities we see in the ancient Greeks – qualities that can’t be reduced to any particular political system or theory.
Related articles plus a link to the full text (and video!) of the Rubio speech:
“Marco Goes Hard About what really matters” (Glenn Harlan Reynolds), “Rubio Warns Europe to ‘Wake Up’ and Rediscover National Strength” (AG News Staff), “Marco Rubio Delivers First Speech of the 2028 Presidential Race -- The speech receives an A+ grade.” (Daniel J. Flynn, American Spectator), and “Secretary of State Marco Rubio Remarks” (U.S. Department of State).
5) “Trump and the Relentless Momentum of Events: Trump is the great magnetic north of our political metabolism.” (Roger Kimball, American Greatness)
From the article -- Back in 2022, I agreed with the conventional wisdom that the election would be a blowout for Republicans. I was wrong. This time, I suspect that the conventional wisdom has failed to price into its calculations the astonishing number of victories the Trump administration has racked up in its first 18 months.
It is a long list. The Dems recently learned the word “affordability” and have been practicing saying it aloud early and often. News from many quarters is undercutting their complaints. Yes, gas prices, which peaked in 2022 under Biden, are still elevated because of the war in Iran. But they are on their way down and will plummet in coming weeks as markets begin to register Iran’s defeat. Recently, the Atlanta Fed predicted that real growth in the third quarter will come in at a blistering 5.0–5.1 percent. At the same time, the Census Bureau released data showing that the poverty rate fell to 10.2 percent, the lowest in our history. Blue-collar income has jumped between 4 and 5 percent since January 2025, when Trump began his second term. Manufacturing—and manufacturing jobs—are flooding back into the United States.
On the foreign policy front, it is hard to keep up. At the beginning of the year, Trump nabbed Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their supposedly impregnable fortress in Caracas. He then made what the White House called “the biggest oil deal in world history, delivering U.S. majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela.” Last month, Trump signed a permanent security deal with Denmark and Greenland. The agreement recognized official “Danish sovereignty and Greenlandic self-determination.” It is an odd or “lite” version of sovereignty, however, since the agreement also grants to the United States the exclusive right to maintain and expand military bases in Greenland. The deal also grants the U.S. exclusive say about access to Greenland’s extensive mineral wealth and “sensitive sector investment.”
Other Important Articles
* “Are We Becoming Gondor?: J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision of a declining Gondor offers a warning for the troubled West—but also a message of hope that renewal remains possible.” (Victor Davis Hanson, Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness)
3 of Denny’s Open Letters from This Week’s Vital Signs Blog:
* “Enough Already! Let's DEFUND the United Nations.”
* “Nebraska Leaders AWOL on the Safeguarding Women from Chemical Abortion Act: An Open Letter”
* “Fulfilling Islamic Law by Burning His Daughters? An Open Letter to Nebraska Senators”
* “Margaret Thatcher Goes to Hell” (If you didn't loath the modern Disney corporation enough) (John Hinderaker, Power Line)
