I read a quote attributed to Churchill and I agree with it even though it appears that Churchill may have never said it:
Winston S. Churchill supposedly once observed that anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head.If there’s any truth to the observation, one wonders what to make of today’s college students.
I’ve written a couple of times about a disturbingly large share of young people support statist economic policies.
A good example can be seen in this polling data from the Pew Research Center (relevant data circled in red).
Christopher Ingraham wrote about this survey in the Washington Post.
According to the Pew Research Center, 39 percent of adults younger than 30 support the view that people whose personal fortunes exceed $1 billion “is a bad thing,” while 16 percent say billionaires are good for society. …These attitudes were likely sharpened by the Democratic presidential campaign, which at one point pitted a multibillionaire (Mike Bloomberg) against a socialist senator who says that billionaires shouldn’t exist (Bernie Sanders)…the Pew data…suggest that young Americans are concluding that billionaires have amassed their wealth “through their rigging of the tax code, through legal political bribery, through their tax avoidance in shelters like the Cayman Islands, and through lobbying for public policy that benefits them privately.” …“The billionaire class is ‘up there’ because they are standing on our backs pinning us down,” Giridharadas said. …Among respondents 50 and older, just 15 percent say billionaires are a bad thing.
This is depressing data, just like the views of America’s young people in the GIEM survey I wrote about recently.
Some of them don’t like capitalism and wealth even when they’re beneficiaries.
The New York Times has a report on “socialist-minded millennial heirs” who want to use the money they inherited to undermine free enterprise.
“The wealth millennials are inheriting came from a mammoth redistribution away from the working masses, creating a super-rich tiny minority at the expense of a fleeting American dream that is now out of reach to most people,” said Richard D. Wolff, a Marxist and an emeritus economics professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst…he has been professionally arguing against capitalism’s selling points since his teaching career began, in 1967, but that his millennial students “are more open to hearing that message than their parents ever were.” …an individual act of wealth redistribution does not, on its own, change a system. But these heirs see themselves as part of a bigger shift, and are dedicated to funding its momentum. …In short, this means using their money to support more equitable economic infrastructures. This includes investing in or donating to credit unions, worker-owned businesses, community land trusts, and nonprofits aiming to maximize quality of life through democratic decision making, instead of maximizing profits through competition.
Here are three examples from the story.
Sam Jacobs has been…trying to gain access to more of his $30 million trust fund. At 25, he…wants to give it all away. “I want to build a world where someone like me, a young person who controls tens of millions of dollars, is impossible,” he said. A socialist since college, Mr. Jacobs sees his family’s “extreme, plutocratic wealth” as both a moral and economic failure. He wants to put his inheritance toward ending capitalism.
Rachel Gelman, a 30-year-old in Oakland, Calif., who describes her politics as “anticapitalist, anti-imperialist and abolitionist.” …“My money is mostly stocks, which means it comes from underpaying and undervaluing working-class people, and that’s impossible to disconnect from the economic legacies of Indigenous genocide and slavery,” Ms. Gelman said.
Pierce Delahunt, a 32-year-old “socialist, anarchist, Marxist, communist or all of the above,” has a trust fund that was financed by their former stepfather’s outlet mall empire. (Mx. Delahunt takes nongendered pronouns.) “…I think about intersectional oppression,” Mx. Delahunt said. There’s the originally Indigenous land each mall was built on, plus the low wages paid to retail and food service workers, who are disproportionately people of color, and the carbon emissions of manufacturing and transporting the goods. With that on their mind, Mx. Delahunt gives away $10,000 a month, divided between 50 small organizations, most of which have an anticapitalist mission.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with giving away one’s inheritance.
Since I’ve (sadly) never inherited any money, I haven’t had any reason to ponder the issue, but one of my dreams would be to use a windfall of money to help finance school choice so poor kids could escape failing government schools.
Needless to say, I wouldn’t finance anti-capitalist groups, like the folks described above.
But I’m digressing. Let’s return to the issue of misguided young people.
In a column for Law & Liberty, Professor John McGinnis offers suggestions about how to rescue them from statism.
…young voters are America’s future, and even if a few years in the workforce brings some greater political wisdom, many people still stick with their youthful paradigms unless some political shock disrupts them. For those who would try to change the mind of this generation (and the following one), it is important to understand how our education, occupational licensing, and entitlement policies are driving them to socialist views which break sharply with America’s political traditions of liberty. …It is not surprising that this structure prompts some young people to demand that the government pony up money for them… More generally, why not vote for radicals in the hope of shaking up the system on the assumption that it can’t get worse for them than it is now? …The classical liberal alternative is clear: reduce the transfers from the young to the old and eliminate those unnecessary barriers to career entry that privilege incumbents.
Here are the reforms that Prof. McGinnis believes would make young people more favorable to liberty.
Reform of the universities thus must be a priority. But it is very difficult. …they are getting worse by the decade if not by the year. Alternative institutions are probably the only answer. …Online education will allow for new challengers to rise, ones who are not as likely to be wedded to political correctness as the incumbents.
…our entitlement structure is currently designed to take from the younger generation and give to the elderly. Social security is a pay-as-you-go system. And given that social security is not actuarially sound, most of the current elderly will get more than they pay in. It is the payment of the young that makes up the difference. Medicare too is a government program from which the elderly benefit at the expense of the young.
The costs of occupational licensing also fall disproportionately on the young. Of course, that burden occurs in part because their elders already have their licenses. But more importantly, the barriers to entering many occupations have grown more expensive over the years.
But there’s something else that’s needed, especially when you contemplate the Pew data cited at the start of today’s column.
Supporters of free enterprise need to go after cronyism. And not just because the economy will perform better, but also because it’s morally offensive for people to line their pockets thanks to government coercion.
Indeed, half of the main message to young people (and everyone else) should be that honestly earned wealth is great, because that means (as Walter Williams sagely observed) someone accumulated lots of money by serving the needs of others.
And the other half of the main message is that it’s bad to have rich people who obtain loot with subsidies, handouts, protectionism, and other forms of cronyism.
P.S. Before giving up and wondering if young people are simply too stupid to vote, watch this video showing that young people reject socialism when they understand the implications
There’s a lot of speculation that we’re in the midst of a political realignment, with Democrats becoming the party of the rich and the Republicans becoming the party of the working class.
I don’t pretend to know whether this realignment is happening or what form it will take, but there is plenty of evidence that Democrats are focusing on policies that disproportionately benefit those with high incomes.
They also favor big subsidies for higher education, which mostly benefit kids from well-to-do families (and well-paid college bureaucrats).
And now they want to provide another windfall for the college crowd.
Jonah Goldberg opines on this perverse form of redistribution in a column for the New York Post.
…a coalition of 236 progressive groups led by teachers unions called on Biden to cancel student debt on his first days in office. Biden himself has already urged Congress to cancel $10,000 as part of a pandemic relief package. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have called for even greater debt forgiveness. Sanders’ plan would cost an estimated $1.6 trillion dollars. …Most Americans, especially most poor Americans, don’t have student debt, because most didn’t go to college in the first place.Moreover, most people who did go to college have no or very little student debt. …only 6 percent of borrowers owe more than $100,000. Virtually all of them borrowed so much because they attended graduate school. …do they deserve help more than truck drivers, mechanics or short-order cooks? One reason teachers unions — a huge source of donations and political organizing for the Democratic Party — want loan forgiveness is that teachers and administrators can boost their pay by going back to school to get advanced degrees. Other municipal and federal workers — another major constituency for Democrats — have similar rules. Using the pandemic as an excuse to reward workers who are far less likely to lose their jobs and more likely to find new employment if they do, seems awfully self-serving.
Writing last year for the Washington Examiner, Brad Polumbo argues for the principle of individual responsibility.
College is way too expensive, but nonetheless, most young people who are buried in student loans or struggling to pay off their debt only have themselves to blame. The average student is now graduating with $30,000 in debt…the median monthly payment is just $222. If you can’t afford that, as a college graduate, it’s probably your own fault. …If you chose to major in gender studies, French, or anything similarly impractical, it’s your own fault that you’re stuck with a lower starting salary and might struggle to make payments. That’s unfortunate, but it’s no justification for shirking your responsibility to pay back what you owe or asking taxpayers to bear the burden of your mistakes. …people who find themselves buried in hundreds of thousands in student loan debt have their own decisions to blame. …They chose expensive dream schools… To bail them out at taxpayer expense is to punish people who made responsible decisions and encourage recklessness from future generations. …to the millions of borrowers who’ve made terrible decisions, don’t ask for a bailout — it’s your own damn fault.
Some of you may be thinking that Polumbo’s argument made sense last year, but we’re now struggling with coronavirus-caused economic turmoil and perhaps debt forgiveness would help the economy.
But that’s not the case according to the number crunchers at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. They show that loan forgiveness isn’t “stimulus” even if one uses discredited Keynesian analysis.
…loan forgiveness…is the not the equivalent of sending $1.5 trillion of cash to households. …because borrowers often pay back their loans over 10, 15, or even 30 years, debt cancellation will increase their available cash by only a fraction of the total loan forgiveness. …Not only would loan cancellation provide relatively little spendable cash to households, but the cash it does offer would be poorly targeted from a stimulus perspective. …The majority of those most affected by the current economic crisis likely have little or no student debt. Over 70 percent of current unemployed workers do not have a bachelor’s degree, including 43 percent who did not attend college at all. …Indeed, about two-fifths of all student debt is held by households with graduate degrees.
So if loan forgiveness isn’t the answer, are there any desirable policies?
Mike Riggs, writing for Reason, explains we need less government rather than more government.
…subsidies have…driven up the cost of education at a rate multiple times higher than inflation. …The most libertarian policy preference in my view is two-pronged:get the federal government out of the lending and guaranteeing game, and make student loan debt reasonably dischargeable in bankruptcy. These two policies would realign the incentives of colleges, lenders, and students to bring down prices and saddle fewer potential students with loans they are unlikely to repay.
First, the geniuses at Babylon Beeproduced this gem, which could be based on Jonah Goldberg’s column.
One local plumbing contractor, Sam Caughorn, is really looking forward to paying the tab on his neighbor’s $89,000 gender studies degree. …According to studies, there are millions of white girls working at coffee shops across the country while struggling under the crushing student debt they acquired by irresponsibly obtaining college degrees that gave them no marketable job skills.Benevolent politicians have proposed transferring all the wealth from trade workers and minority business owners to help indebted white girls with their student loans so they can still afford their daily latte and cat food expenses. Local gender studies major Amber White is looking forward to having all her debt forgiven, thanks in part to the contributions of plumbers like Sam Caughorn. …According to sources, Sam Caughorn owns a successful business he started right after high school. He also has 5 kids, a nice house, and serves as a deacon at his church. “I guess I can spare some change for poor disadvantaged girls like Amber,” he said.
Second, here’s a cartoon that could be based on the column I cited from Brad Polumbo.
P.S. The way federal intervention has screwed up higher education is very similar to the way federal intervention has also made the health sector expensive and inefficient.
Some policies will improve with Biden in the White House, most notably trade, but also government spending (not because Biden is good, but rather because Republicans will go back to pretending to be fiscally conservative).
But some policies will move in the wrong direction. Biden is awful on tax policy, for instance, though I expect Republicans in the Senate will block his class-warfare agenda.
Biden is also very bad on regulatory issues. Unfortunately, this is an area where the new President (and his appointees) will have plenty of authority to shift policy in the wrong direction.
I’m especially worried that Biden will resuscitate an Obama-era policy of strong-arming banks so they won’t do business with unpopular industries. This video, which I first shared back in 2016, explains this reprehensible policy
Norbert Michel of the Heritage Foundation, in a column for Forbes, provides some additional background on the policy.
Choke Point consisted of bureaucrats in several independent federal agencies taking it upon themselves to shut legal businesses – such as payday lenders and firearms dealers – out of the banking system. Given the nature of the U.S. regulatory framework, this operation was easy to pull off.Officials at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), for instance, simply had to inform the banks they were overseeing that the government considered certain types of their customers “high risk.” The mere implication of a threat was enough to pressure banks into closing accounts, because no U.S. bank wants anything to do with extra audits or investigations from their regulator, much less additional operating restrictions or civil and criminal charges. Banks are incredibly sensitive to any type of pressure from federal regulators, and they know that the regulators have enormous discretion.
In a column for the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, Phil Gramm and Mike Solon elaborated on the left’s campaign to politicize the banking system.
Banking was used as a weapon against legal, solvent businesses by the Obama administration during Operation Choke Point, a program to deny the disfavored access to banking services. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. labeled certain businesses “high risk,” including firearms and ammunition dealers, check-cashers, payday lenders and fireworks vendors. Unelected regulators, not Congress or courts, marked these industries as “dirty business” and made it “unacceptable for an insured depository institution” to offer them banking services. …With Democrats unable to ban guns legislatively, Rep. Carolyn Maloney admonished banks at a recent hearing to not “finance gun slaughter.” When she urged JPMorgan to deny credit for legal firearm sales as other banks had done, the CEO responded, “We can certainly consider that. Yes.” At the same hearing, Rep. Rashida Tlaib challenged bank CEOs: “Will any of your banks make a commitment to phase out your investments in fossil fuels and dirty energy?” The CEOs declined to defend fossil fuels… Letting political intimidation dictate the availability of private credit endangers freedom and stifles productivity growth and job creation. …The use of political intimidation to allocate capital is an assault on economic efficiency and freedom.
There is, however, a bit of good news.
The Trump Administration ended Operation Choke Point back in 2017.
And, although it is happening at the last minute, the Trump Administration is now trying to strengthen the rule of law so banks won’t feel pressured to discriminate against certain industries in the future.
In a column published yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, Brian Brooks and Charles Calomiris of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) explain the new rule that their agency has unveiled.
…there have been too many allegations of banks cutting off vital services, credit and capital that legal businesses rely on to create jobs, meet community needs and support the economy. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, where we serve as acting comptroller and chief economist, respectively, on Friday proposed a rule to prevent banks from discriminating against legal businesses and individuals.The rule would require bankers to do what they do best: assess risk and underwrite credit decisions. …politically driven discrimination against particular industries has threatened fairness in banking. Under the Obama administration, Operation Choke Point, in which the OCC did not take part, involved regulators discouraging banks from serving legal and constitutionally protected businesses such as payday lenders and gun and ammunition sellers. …the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 added to the OCC’s traditional mission of safety and soundness the obligation to ensure fair access to financial services… Banks may not exclude entire parts of the economy for reasons unrelated to objective, quantifiable risks specific to an individual customer.
Sadly, if Biden has the same attitude as Obama about the rule of law, a future OCC can reverse anything Trump’s people adopt.
I’ll close with a libertarian-minded observation.
Because I believe in freedom of association, I think banks should have the liberty to discriminate against specific businesses, or even entire industries.
But there’s a big difference between banks choosing to discriminate and being coerced into such behavior by government regulators.
So it was disgusting that Obama’s regulators went after industries they didn’t like, such as gun dealers.
But it would be equally reprehensible if a Republican Administration went after an industry it didn’t like, such as legal marijuana.
P.S. The broader lesson to learn from Operation Choke Point is that regulatory power for governments is a vehicle for corruptionand malfeasance.
But the main goal of that column was to explain that the internal revenue code already is heavily weighted against investors, entrepreneurs, business owners and other upper-income taxpayers.
And to underscore that point, I shared two charts from Brian Riedl’s chartbook to show that the “rich” are now paying a much larger share of the tax burden – notwithstanding the Reagan tax cuts, Bush tax cuts, and Trump tax cuts – than they were 40 years ago.
Not only that, but the United States has a tax system that is more “progressive” than all other developed nations (all of whom also impose heavy tax burdens on upper-income taxpayers, but differ from the United States in that they also pillage lower-income and middle-class residents).
In other words, Biden’s class-warfare tax plan is bad policy.
Today’s column, by contrast, will point out that his tax increases are impractical. Simply stated, they won’t collect much revenue because people change their behavior when incentives to earn and report income are altered.
This is especially true when looking at upper-income taxpayers who – compared to the rest of us – have much greater ability to change the timing, level, and composition of their income.
This helps to explain why rich people paid five times as much tax to the IRS during the 1980s when Reagan slashed the top tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent.
When writing about this topic, I normally use the Laffer Curve to help people understand why simplistic assumptions about tax policy are wrong (that you can double tax revenue by doubling tax rates, for instance). And I point out that even folks way on the left, such as Paul Krugman, agree with this common-sense view (though it’s also worth noting that some people on the right discredit the concept by making silly assertions that “all tax cuts pay for themselves”).
But instead of showing the curve again, I want to go back to Brian Riedl’s chartbook and review his data on of revenue changes during the eight years of the Obama Administration.
It shows that Obama technically cut taxes by $822 billion (as further explained in the postscript, most of that occurred when some of the Bush tax cuts were made permanent by the “fiscal cliff” deal in 2012) and raised taxes by $1.32 trillion (most of that occurred as a result of the Obamacare legislation).
If we do the math, that means Obama imposed a cumulative net tax increase of about $510 billion during his eight years in office
But, if you look at the red bar on the chart, you’ll see that the government didn’t wind up with more money because of what the number crunchers refer to as “economic and technical reestimates.”
Indeed, those reestimates resulted in more than $3.1 trillion of lost revenue during the Obama years.
I don’t want the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington to have more tax revenue, but I obviously don’t like it when tax revenues shrink simply because the economy is stagnant and people have less taxable income.
Yet that’s precisely what we got during the Obama years.
To be sure, it would be inaccurate to assert that revenues declined solely because of Obama’s tax increase. There were many other bad policies that also contributed to taxable income falling short of projections.
Heck, maybe there was simply some bad luck as well.
But even if we add lots of caveats, the inescapable conclusion is that it’s not a good idea to adopt policies – such as class-warfare tax rates – that discourage people from earning and reporting taxable income.
The bottom line is that we should hope Biden’s proposed tax increases die a quick death.
P.S. The “fiscal cliff” was the term used to describe the scheduled expiration of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts. According to the way budget data is measured in Washington, extending some of those provisions counted as a tax cut even though the practical impact was to protect people from a tax increase.
P.P.S. Even though Biden absurdly asserted that paying higher taxes is “patriotic,” it’s worth pointing out that he engaged in very aggressive tax avoidance to protect his family’s money.
The good news, as I wrote earlier this year, is that he probably isn’t serious about some of his worst ideas.
Biden is a statist, but not overly ideological. His support for bigger government is largely a strategy of catering to the various interest groups that dominate the Democratic Party. The good news is that he’s an incrementalist and won’t aggressively push for a horrifying FDR-style agenda if he gets to the White House.
But what if Joe Biden’s health deteriorates and Kamala Harris – sooner or later – winds up in charge?
And it doesn’t appear that being Biden’s choice for Vice President has led her to moderate her views. Consider this campaign ad, where she openly asserted that “equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.”
The notion that we should strive for equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity is horrifying.
For all intents and purposes,Harris has embraced a harsh version of redistributionism where everyone above average is punished and everyone below average is rewarded.
This goes way beyond a safety net and it’s definitely a recipe for economic misery since people on both sides of the equationhave less incentive to be productive.
I’m not the only one to be taken aback by Harris’ dogmatic leftism.
Robby Soave, writing for Reason, is very critical of her radical outlook.
Harris gives voice to a leftist-progressive narrative about the importance of equity—equal outcomes—rather than mere equality before the law. …Harris contrasted equal treatment—all people getting the same thing—with equitable treatment,which means “we all end up at the same place.” …This may seem like a trivial difference, but when it comes to public policy, the difference matters. A government shouldbe obligated to treat all citizens equally, giving them the same access to civil rights and liberties like voting, marriage, religious freedom, and gun ownership. …A mandate to foster equity, though, would give the government power to violate these rights in order to achieve identical social results for all people.
And, in a column for National Review, Brad Polumbo expresses similar reservations about her views.
Whether she embraces the label “socialist” or not, Harris’s stated agenda and Senate record both reveal her to be positioned a long way to the left on matters of economic policy. From health care to the environment to housing, Harris thinks the answer to almost every problem we face is simply more government and more taxpayer money — raising taxes and further indebting future generations in the process.…Harris…supports an astounding $40 trillion in new spending over the next decade. In a sign of just how far left the Democratic Party has shifted on economics, Harris backs more than 20 times as much spending as Hillary Clinton proposed in 2016. …And this is not just a matter of spending. During her failed presidential campaign, Harris supported a federal-government takeover of health care… The senator jumped on the “Green New Deal” bandwagon as well. She co-sponsored the Green New Deal resolution in the Senate that called for a “new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era.” …she supports enacting price controls on housing across the country. …The left-wing group Progressive Punch analyzed Harris’s voting record and found that she is the fourth-most liberal senator, more liberal even than Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren. Similarly, the nonpartisan organization GovTrack.us deemed Harris the furthest-left member of the Senate for the 2019 legislative year. (Spoiler alert: If your voting record is to the left of Bernie Sanders, you might be a socialist.)
To be fair, Harris is simply a politician, so we have no idea what she really believes. Her hard-left agenda might simply be her way of appealing to Democratic voters, much as Republicans who run for president suddenly decide they support big tax cuts and sweeping tax reform.
But whether she’s sincere or insincere, it’s troubling that she actually says it’s the role of government to make sure we all “end up at the same place.”
Let’s close with a video clip from Milton Friedman. At the risk of understatement, he has a different perspective than Ms. Harris.
Since we highlighted Harris’ key quote, let’s also highlight the key quote from Friedman.
Amen.
P.S. It appears Republicans will hold the Senate, which presumably (hopefully?) means that any radical proposals would be dead on arrival, regardless of whether they’re proposed by Biden or Harris.
After Barack Obama took office (and especially after he was reelected), there was a big uptick in the number of rich people who chose to emigrate from the United States.
There are many reasons wealthy people choose to move from one nation to another, but Obama’s embrace of class-warfare tax policy (including FATCA) was seen as a big factor.
Joe Biden’s tax agenda is significantly more punitive than Obama’s, so we may see something similar happen if he wins the 2020 election.
Given the economic importance of innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors, this would be not be good news for the American economy.
The New York Timesreported late last year that the United States could be shooting itself in the foot by discouraging wealthy residents.
…a different group of Americans say they are considering leaving — people of both parties who would be hit by the wealth tax… Wealthy Americans often leave high-tax states like New York and California for lower-tax ones like Florida and Texas. But renouncing citizenship is a far more permanent, costly and complicated proposition. …“America’s the most attractive destination for capital, entrepreneurs and people wanting to get a great education,” said Reaz H. Jafri, a partner and head of the immigration practice at Withers, an international law firm. “But in today’s world, when you have other economic centers of excellence — like Singapore, Switzerland and London — people don’t view the U.S. as the only place to be.” …now, the price may be right to leave. While the cost of expatriating varies depending on a person’s assets, the wealthiest are betting that if a Democrat wins…, leaving now means a lower exit tax. …The wealthy who are considering renouncing their citizenship fear a wealth tax less than the possibility that the tax on capital gains could be raised to the ordinary income tax rate, effectively doubling what a wealthy person would pay… When Eduardo Saverin, a founder of Facebook…renounced his United States citizenship shortly before the social network went public, …several estimates said that renouncing his citizenship…saved him $700 million in taxes.
Here are some excerpts from a 2017 Bloomberg story.
Australia is luring increasing numbers of global millionaires, helping make it one of the fastest growing wealthy nations in the world… Over the past decade, total wealth held in Australia has risen by 85 percent compared to 30 percent in the U.S. and 28 percent in the U.K… As a result, the average Australian is now significantly wealthier than the average American or Briton. …Given its relatively small population, Australia also makes an appearance on a list of average wealth per person. This one is, however, dominated by small tax havens.
Here’s one of the charts from the story.
As you can see, Australia is doing very well, though the small tax havens like Monaco are world leaders.
I’m mystified, however, that the Cayman Islands isn’t listed.
But I’m digressing.
Let’s get back to our main topic. It’s worth noting that even Greece is seeking to attract rich foreigners.
The new tax law is aimed at attracting fresh revenues into the country’s state coffers – mainly from foreigners as well as Greeks who are taxed abroad – by relocating their tax domicile to Greece, as it tries to woo “high-net-worth individuals” to the Greek tax register.The non-dom model provides for revenues obtained abroad to be taxed at a flat amount… Having these foreigners stay in Greece for at least 183 days a year, as the law requires, will also entail expenditure on accommodation and everyday costs that will be added to the Greek economy. …most eligible foreigners will be able to considerably lighten their tax burden if they relocate to Greece…nevertheless, the amount of 500,000 euros’ worth of investment in Greece required of foreigners and the annual flat tax of 100,000 euros demanded (plus 20,000 euros per family member) may keep many of them away.
The system is too restrictive, but it will make the beleaguered nation an attractive destination for some rich people. After all, they don’t even have to pay a flat tax, just a flat fee.
Italy has enjoyed some success with a similar regime to entice millionaires.
Last but not least, an article published last year has some fascinating details on the where rich people move and why they move.
The world’s wealthiest people are also the most mobile. High net worth individuals (HNWIs) – persons with wealth over US$1 million – may decide to pick up and move for a number of reasons. In some cases they are attracted by jurisdictions with more favorable tax laws… Unlike the middle class, wealthy citizens have the means to pick up and leave when things start to sideways in their home country. An uptick in HNWI migration from a country can often be a signal of negative economic or societal factors influencing a country. …Time-honored locations – such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands – continue to attract the world’s wealthy, but no country is experiencing HNWI inflows quite like Australia. …The country has a robust economy, and is perceived as being a safe place to raise a family. Even better, Australia has no inheritance tax
Here’s a map from the article.
The good news is that the United States is attracting more millionaires than it’s losing (perhaps because of the EB-5 program).
The bad news is that this ratio could flip after the election. Indeed, it may already be happening even though recent data on expatriation paints a rosy picture.
The bottom line is that the United States should be competing to attract millionaires, not repel them. Assuming, of course, politicians care about jobs and prosperity for the rest of the population.
P.S. American politicians, copying laws normally imposed by the world’s most loathsome regimes, have imposed an “exit tax” so they can grab extra cash from rich people who choose to become citizens elsewhere.
P.P.S. I’ve argued that Australia is a good place to emigrate even for those of us who aren’t rich.
While acknowledging that Social Security and Medicare also are in desperate need of modernization, I wrote that Medicaid reformshould be the first priority.
But I’d be happy if we made progress on any type of entitlement reform, so I don’t think there are right or wrong answers to this kind of question.
We have the same type of question this week. A reader sent an email to ask “Which federal department should be abolished first?”
I guess this is what is meant when people talk about a target-rich environment. We have an abundance of candidates:
Simply stated, there is no legitimate argument for HUD. And I think there would be the least political resistance.
As with the answer to the question about entitlements, this is a judgment call. I’d be happy to be proven wrong if it meant that politicians were aggressively going after another department. Anything that reduces the burden of government spending is a step in the right direction
I identified four heroes from the “Battle of Ideas” video I shared in late August – Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher. Here’s one of those heroes, Milton Friedman, explaining what’s needed to control big government.
Libertarians and others are often torn about school choice. They may wish to see the government schooling monopoly weakened, but they may resist supporting choice mechanisms, like vouchers and education savings accounts, because they don’t go far enough. Indeed, most current choice programs continue to rely on taxpayer funding of education and don’t address the underlying compulsory nature of elementary and secondary schooling.
Skeptics may also have legitimate fears that taxpayer-funded education choice programs will lead to over-regulation of previously independent and parochial schooling options, making all schooling mirror compulsory mass schooling, with no substantive variation.
Friedman Challenged Compulsory Schooling Laws
Milton Friedman had these same concerns. The Nobel prize-winning economist is widely considered to be the one to popularize the idea of vouchers and school choice beginning with his 1955 paper, “The Role of Government in Education.” His vision continues to be realized through the important work of EdChoice, formerly the Friedman Foundation for Education Choice, that Friedman and his economist wife, Rose, founded in 1996.
July 31 is Milton Friedman’s birthday. He died in 2006 at the age of 94, but his ideas continue to have an impact, particularly in education policy.
Friedman saw vouchers and other choice programs as half-measures. He recognized the larger problems of taxpayer funding and compulsion, but saw vouchers as an important starting point in allowing parents to regain control of their children’s education. In their popular book, Free To Choose, first published in 1980, the Friedmans wrote:
We regard the voucher plan as a partial solution because it affects neither the financing of schooling nor the compulsory attendance laws. We favor going much farther. (p.161)
They continued:
The compulsory attendance laws are the justification for government control over the standards of private schools. But it is far from clear that there is any justification for the compulsory attendance laws themselves. (p. 162)
The Friedmans admitted that their “own views on this have changed over time,” as they realized that “compulsory attendance at schools is not necessary to achieve that minimum standard of literacy and knowledge,” and that “schooling was well-nigh universal in the United States before either compulsory attendance or government financing of schooling existed. Like most laws, compulsory attendance laws have costs as well as benefits. We no longer believe the benefits justify the costs.” (pp. 162-3)
Still, they felt that vouchers would be the essential starting point toward chipping away at monopoly mass schooling by putting parents back in charge. School choice, in other words, would be a necessary but not sufficient policy approach toward addressing the underlying issue of government control of education.
Vouchers as a First Step
In their book, the Friedmans presented the potential outcomes of their proposed voucher plan, which would give parents access to some or all of the average per-pupil expenditures of a child enrolled in public school. They believed that vouchers would help create a more competitive education market, encouraging education entrepreneurship. They felt that parents would be more empowered with greater control over their children’s education and have a stronger desire to contribute some of their own money toward education. They asserted that in many places “the public school has fostered residential stratification, by tying the kind and cost of schooling to residential location” and suggested that voucher programs would lead to increased integration and heterogeneity. (pp. 166-7)
To the critics who said, and still say, that school choice programs would destroy the public schools, the Friedmans replied that these critics fail to
explain why, if the public school system is doing such a splendid job, it needs to fear competition from nongovernmental, competitive schools or, if it isn’t, why anyone should object to its “destruction.” (p. 170)
What I appreciate most about the Friedmans discussion of vouchers and the promise of school choice is their unrelenting support of parents. They believed that parents, not government bureaucrats and intellectuals, know what is best for their children’s education and well-being and are fully capable of choosing wisely for their children—when they have the opportunity to do so.
They wrote:
Parents generally have both greater interest in their children’s schooling and more intimate knowledge of their capacities and needs than anyone else. Social reformers, and educational reformers in particular, often self-righteously take for granted that parents, especially those who are poor and have little education themselves, have little interest in their children’s education and no competence to choose for them. That is a gratuitous insult. Such parents have frequently had limited opportunity to choose. However, U.S. history has demonstrated that, given the opportunity, they have often been willing to sacrifice a great deal, and have done so wisely, for their children’s welfare. (p. 160).
Today, school voucher programs exist in 15 states plus the District of Columbia. These programs have consistently shown that when parents are given the choice to opt-out of an assigned district school, many will take advantage of the opportunity. In Washington, D.C., low-income parents who win a voucher lottery send their children to private schools.
The most recent three-year federal evaluationof voucher program participants found that while student academic achievement was comparable to achievement for non-voucher students remaining in public schools, there were statistically significant improvements in other important areas. For instance, voucher participants had lower rates of chronic absenteeism than the control groups, as well as higher student satisfaction scores. There were also tremendous cost-savings.
In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program has served over 28,000 low-income students attending 129 participating private schools.
According to Corey DeAngelis, Director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation and a prolific researcher on the topic, the recent analysis of the D.C. voucher program “reveals that private schools produce the same academic outcomes for only a third of the cost of the public schools. In other words, school choice is a great investment.”
In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was created in 1990 and is the nation’s oldest voucher program. It currently serves over 28,000 low-income students attending 129 participating private schools. Like the D.C. voucher program, data on test scores of Milwaukee voucher students show similar results to public school students, but non-academic results are promising.
Increased Access and Decreased Crime
Recent research found voucher recipients had lower crime rates and lower incidences of unplanned pregnancies in young adulthood. On his birthday, let’s celebrate Milton Friedman’s vision of enabling parents, not government, to be in control of a child’s education.
According to Howard Fuller, an education professor at Marquette University, founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and one of the developers of the Milwaukee voucher program, the key is parent empowerment—particularly for low-income minority families.
In an interview with NPR, Fuller said: “What I’m saying to you is that there are thousands of black children whose lives are much better today because of the Milwaukee parental choice program,” he says. “They were able to access better schools than they would have without a voucher.”
Putting parents back in charge of their child’s education through school choice measures was Milton Friedman’s goal. It was not his ultimate goal, as it would not fully address the funding and compulsion components of government schooling; but it was, and remains, an important first step. As the Friedmans wrote in Free To Choose:
The strong American tradition of voluntary action has provided many excellent examples that demonstrate what can be done when parents have greater choice. (p. 159).
On his birthday, let’s celebrate Milton Friedman’s vision of enabling parents, not government, to be in control of a child’s education.
Michael Harrington: If you don’t have the expertise, the knowledge technology today, you’re out of the debate. And I think that we have to democratize information and government as well as the economy and society. FRIEDMAN: I am sorry to say Michael Harrington’s solution is not a solution to it. He wants minority rule, I […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)
PETERSON: Well, let me ask you how you would cope with this problem, Dr. Friedman. The people decided that they wanted cool air, and there was tremendous need, and so we built a huge industry, the air conditioning industry, hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous earnings opportunities and nearly all of us now have air […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)
Part 5 Milton Friedman: I do not believe it’s proper to put the situation in terms of industrialist versus government. On the contrary, one of the reasons why I am in favor of less government is because when you have more government industrialists take it over, and the two together form a coalition against the ordinary […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)
The fundamental principal of the free society is voluntary cooperation. The economic market, buying and selling, is one example. But it’s only one example. Voluntary cooperation is far broader than that. To take an example that at first sight seems about as far away as you can get __ the language we speak; the words […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)
_________________________ Pt3 Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)
Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)
“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]
If you would like to see the first three episodes on inflation in Milton Friedman’s film series “Free to Choose” then go to a previous post I did. Ep. 9 – How to Cure Inflation [4/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980) Uploaded by investbligurucom on Jun 16, 2010 While many people have a fairly […]
Charlie Rose interview of Milton Friedman My favorite economist: Milton Friedman : A Great Champion of Liberty by V. Sundaram Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three US Presidents – Nixon, Ford and Reagan – died last Thursday (16 November, 2006 ) in San Francisco […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)
Stearns Speaks on House Floor in Support of Balanced Budget Amendment Uploaded by RepCliffStearns on Nov 18, 2011 Speaking on House floor in support of Balanced Budget Resolution, 11/18/2011 ___________ Below are some of the main proposals of Milton Friedman. I highly respected his work. David J. Theroux said this about Milton Friedman’s view concerning […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman, President Obama | Edit | Comments (1)
What a great defense of Milton Friedman!!!! Defaming Milton Friedman by Johan Norberg This article appeared in Reason Online on September 26, 2008 PRINT PAGE CITE THIS Sans Serif Serif Share with your friends: ShareThis In the future, if you tell a student or a journalist that you favor free markets and limited government, there is […]
Music video by George Harrison performing What Is Life. (C) 2002 G.H. Estate Ltd, under exclusive licence to Calderstone Productions Limited, a division of Universal Music Group
“What Is Life” is a song by the English musician George Harrison, released on his 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass. In many countries, it was issued as the second single from the album, in February 1971, becoming a top-ten hit in the United States, Canada and elsewhere, and topping singles charts in Australia and Switzerland. In the United Kingdom, “What Is Life” appeared as the B-side to “My Sweet Lord“, which was the best-selling single there of 1971. Harrison’s backing musicians on the song include Eric Clapton and the entire Delaney & Bonnie Friends band, with whom he had toured during the final months of the Beatles. Harrison co-produced the recording with Phil Spector, whose Wall of Sound production also employed a prominent string arrangement by John Barham and multiple acoustic rhythm guitars, played by Harrison’s fellow Apple Records signings Badfinger.
An uptempo composition in the soul genre, “What Is Life” is one of several Harrison love songs that appear to be directed at both a woman and a deity. Harrison wrote the song in 1969 and originally intended it as a track for his friend and Apple protégé Billy Preston to record. Built around a descending guitar riff, it is one of Harrison’s most popular compositions and was a regular inclusion in his live performances. Rolling Stone magazine has variously described it as a “classic”[1] and an “exultant song of surrender”.[2]
Even before his temporary departure from the Beatles in January 1969 (documented in the song “Wah-Wah“),[3] their Apple Records label was an “emancipating force” for Harrison from the creative restrictions imposed on him within the band, according to his musical biographer, Simon Leng.[4] In his “definitive” article on All Things Must Pass for Mojo magazine, John Harris has written of Harrison’s “journey” as a solo artist beginning in November 1968 – when he spent time in Woodstock with Bob Dylan and the Band – and incorporating a series of other collaborations through the following eighteen months, including various Apple projects and a support role on Delaney & Bonnie and Friends’ brief European tour.[5] One of these projects, carried out intermittently from April to July 1969,[6] was his production of That’s the Way God Planned It, an album by Billy Preston, whom Harrison had met during the Beatles’ Hamburg years and had recently recruited to guest on the band’s troubled Get Back sessions.[7][8] It was while driving up to a Preston session in London from his home in Esher, Surrey, that Harrison came up with the song “What Is Life”.[9]
In his autobiography, I, Me, Mine, Harrison describes it as having been written “very quickly” and recalls that he thought it would be a perfect, “catchy pop song” for Preston to record.[10] His lyrics, while simple, were similarly uplifting and universal:[11][12]
What I feel, I can’t say
But my love is there for you any time of day
But if it’s not love that you need
Then I’ll try my best to make everything succeed.
Tell me, what is my life without your love?
And tell me, who am I without you, by my side?
These lyrics have caused some debate among biographers and music critics, as to whether “What Is Life” should be viewed as a straightforward love song – perhaps a “lovingly crafted paen” to Harrison’s wife Pattie, as Alan Clayson puts it[13] – or a devotional song like many of Harrison’s compositions.[12][14] Ian Inglis writes that the song title suggests a “philosophical debate about the meaning of life”, yet its rendering as “what is my life” in the choruses “reshapes [the meaning] completely”.[11] Theologian Dale Allison finds no religious content in “What Is Life” but notes the “failure of words to express feelings” implied in the opening line (“What I feel, I can’t say“), a recurring theme of Harrison’s spiritual songs such as “That Is All“, “Mystical One” and “Pisces Fish“.[15] Joshua Greene, another religious academic, identifies the song as part of its parent album’s “intimately detailed account of a spiritual journey”: where “Awaiting on You All” shows Harrison “convinced of his union with God”, “What Is Life” reveals him to be “uncertain that he deserved such divine favor”.[16]
The song’s second verse repeats what Inglis refers to as the “somewhat confusing promise” from Harrison (in lines 3 and 4) should his love be “rejected”:[11]
What I know, I can’t do
If I give my love out to everyone like you
But if it’s not love that you need
Then I’ll try my best to make everything succeed.
Musically, Simon Leng describes “What Is Life” as “Motown-spiced” and a comparatively rare example of its composer’s willingness to embrace the role of “entertainer” in his songwriting.[17]
In I Me Mine, Harrison recalls that he changed his mind about offering “What Is Life” to Preston once he’d arrived at Olympic Studios and found the singer busy working on more typical material – or “playing his funky stuff” as Harrison puts it.[10][9] Rather than attempt it with the Beatles during the band’s concurrent Abbey Road sessions, he stockpiled the track with his many other unused songs from the period – “All Things Must Pass“, “Let It Down“, “I’d Have You Anytime” and “Run of the Mill” among them[18] – and revisited it a year later, after completing work on Preston’s second Apple album, Encouraging Words.[19]
By May 1970, having recently collaborated with “genuine R&B heavy-weights” such as Doris Troy and Preston, as well as participating in the “blue-eyed soul“[20] Delaney & Bonnie European tour, along with Eric Clapton, the previous December, Harrison was well placed to record “What Is Life”, Leng observes.[21] With Phil Spector as co-producer and all the Friends team on hand, the song was among the first tracks taped for Harrison’s debut post-Beatles solo album;[22] recording took place at Abbey Road Studios in London, during late May or early June.[22][23] The same core of musicians – Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle, Jim Gordon, Bobby Keys and Jim Price – would similarly elevate other All Things Must Pass tracks such as “Awaiting on You All”, “Art of Dying” and “Hear Me Lord“.[24]
The recording is defined by Harrison’s descending, fuzztone guitar riff,[2] which also serves as the motif for the chorus.[12] The track opens with this riff,[25] which is then joined by Radle’s bass and “churning” rhythm guitar from Clapton, before Gordon’s drums bring the full band in.[9][26] During the verses, Gordon moves to a square, Motown-style beat – or “rock-steady Northern soulbackbeat” in Leng’s words[21] – before returning to the “galloping rhythm” of the more open, “knockout” choruses,[2] and the song is driven equally by Badfinger drummer Mike Gibbins‘ powerful tambourine work.[27]
On “What Is Life”, Spector provided what music critic David Fricke terms “echo-drenched theater”, in the form of reverb-heavy brass, soaring strings (arranged by John Barham) and “a choir of multitracked Harrisons”.[2] The vocals and Barham’s contribution, along with a brief slide-guitar commentary from Harrison over the final verse,[12] were overdubbed at Trident Studios, most likely during late August through September.[28] Dated 19 August, Spector’s written comments on Harrison’s early mix of the song had suggested a “proper background voice” was still needed;[29] like sound engineer Ken Scott,[30] Spector would be impressed with the result, saying, “He was a great harmoniser … he could do all the [vocal] parts himself” and rating Harrison “one of the most commercial musicians and songwriters and quintessential players I’ve ever known in my entire career”.[31]
“What Is Life” was released in late November 1970 as the first track on side two of All Things Must Pass, in its original, triple LP format.[32][33] Along with “My Sweet Lord” and “Isn’t It a Pity“, the song had already been identified as a potential hit single by Allan Steckler, manager of Apple’s US operation.[33] Backed by another album track, “Apple Scruffs“, “What Is Life” was issued as a single in America on 15 February 1971 (as Apple 1828), just as the “My Sweet Lord”/”Isn’t It a Pity” double A-side was finally slipping out of the top ten.[34][35]
French picture sleeve for the “What Is Life” single – a cropped and colorised version of Barry Feinstein‘s cover image for All Things Must Pass
The front of the single’s US picture sleeve consisted of a photo of Harrison playing guitar inside the central tower of his recently purchased home, Friar Park, in Henley-on-Thames.[36] The tower’s sole, octagonal-shaped room was an area that Harrison had adopted as his personal temple and meditation space.[37] This picture was taken by photographer Barry Feinstein, whose Camouflage Productions partner, Tom Wilkes, originally used it as part of an elaborate poster intended as an insert in the album package. The poster featured a painting of the Hindu deity Krishna watching a group of naked maidens beside a bathing pond.[38] Harrison apparently felt uncomfortable with the symbolism in Wilkes’s design – the Friar Park tower image filled the top half of the poster, floating among clouds above the Krishna scene – so Wilkes abandoned the concept and instead used a darkened photo of Harrison inside the house as the album poster.[39] The more common picture sleeve internationally was a close-up of Feinstein’s All Things Must Pass front-cover image, taken on the main lawn of Friar Park.[40] In Denmark, the sleeve featured four shots of Harrison, again with guitar,[41] taken on stage during the Delaney & Bonnie tour.[42]
At the end of March, “What Is Life” peaked at number 10 on the BillboardHot 100[43] and number 7 on Cash Box‘s Top 100 chart,[44] making Harrison the first ex-Beatle to have two top-ten hits in the United States.[45][46] The single was a success internationally, climbing to number 1 in Switzerland[47] and on Australia’s Go-Set National Top 60,[48] and reaching the top three elsewhere in Europe and in Canada.[49] In Britain, where Harrison had resisted issuing a single from All Things Must Pass until midway through January,[50] “What Is Life” appeared on the B-side to “My Sweet Lord”[51] – a combination that became the top-selling single of 1971 in that country.[52]
“What Is Life” is one of Harrison’s most commercial and popular songs[53] – a “spiritual guitar quest” that “became [a] classic”, according to Rolling Stone magazine.[1] On release, Billboard magazine’s reviewer wrote of “What Is Life” and “Apple Scruffs” as “intriguing rhythm follows-ups” to Harrison’s previous single, which were “sure to repeat that success” and “should prove big juke box items”.[54] In their Solo Beatles Compendium, authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter refer to it as an “intensely catchy track” and view its pairing with “My Sweet Lord” in the UK as perhaps the strongest of all of Harrison’s singles.[22] Writing in 1981, NME critic Bob Woffinden grouped “What Is LIfe” with “My Sweet Lord”, “Isn’t It a Pity” and “Awaiting on You All” as “all excellent songs”.[55]
Reviewing the 2001 reissue of All Things Must Pass, for Rolling Stone, James Hunter wrote of how the album’s music “exults in breezy rhythms”, among which “the colorful revolutions of ‘What Is Life’ … [move] like a Ferris wheel“.[56] The following year, in Rolling Stone Press’s Harrison tribute book, David Fricke included “What Is Life” among his selection of “essential Harrison performances” (just three of which date from the ex-Beatle’s solo years) and described the track as an “exultant song of surrender”, abetted by Harrison’s “pumping fuzz guitar” and the song’s “singalong magnetism”.[57]AllMusic‘s Richie Unterberger similarly praises “What Is Life” for its “anthemic” qualities, “particularly snazzy horn lines”, and a guitar riff that is “one more entry in the catalog of George Harrison’s book of arresting, low, descending guitar lines”.[12]
Writing in the book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, author Tom Moon refers to “the upbeat single ‘What Is Life'” as an example of how Harrison “grabs what he needs from his old band – that insinuating hook sense – and uses it to frame an utterly comfortable metaphysical discourse”.[58] Alan Clayson describes “What Is Life” as a seemingly “lovey-dovey pop song” that “craftily renewed the simplistic tonic-to-dominant riff cliché”,[27] while Simon Leng credits Harrison’s “innate ability to write very fine pop-rock songs” and deems the result “as innovative an exercise in rock-soul as The Temptations’ ‘Cloud Nine‘”.[21] Among Harrison biographers, only Ian Inglis is less than enthusiastic, acknowledging that Barham’s orchestration and the other musicians give the track “undoubted excitement and energy”, but lamenting that the song offers “little overall coherence between words and music”.[11]
In a 2010 poll to find the “10 Best George Harrison Songs”, AOL Radio listeners voted “What Is Life” third behind “My Sweet Lord” and “Blow Away“.[59] A similar list by Michael Galluci of Ultimate Classic Rock placed it second (behind “My Sweet Lord”), as Galluci wrote of the track having “a giant pop hook as its guide” as well as “the catchiest chorus Harrison ever penned”.[25] In 2009, Matt Melis of Consequence of Sound listed it sixth among his “Top Ten Songs by Ex-Beatles”, writing: “it’s arguable that Harrison’s All Things Must Pass is the best solo album put out by a Beatle. ‘What is Life’ … with its riff-driven bounce, soaring harmonies on the choruses, and perfectly placed sax and trumpet, [is] probably Harrison’s catchiest pop song.”[60] In the 2005 publication NME Originals: Beatles – The Solo Years 1970–1980, Adrian Thrills rated it first among Harrison’s “ten solo gems”, adding: “One of Harrison’s greatest guitar riffs – brilliant pop.”[61] The song is said to be a favourite of Foo Fighters singer Dave Grohl.[2] In a Rolling Stone readers’ poll, titled “10 Greatest Solo Beatle Songs”, the song placed fourth, with the editor commenting: “The track is deceptively simple, and more layers become apparent the more often you play it.”[62] “What Is Life” has featured in Bruce Pollock’s book The 7,500 Most Important Songs of 1944–2000, Treble website’s “The Top 200 Songs of the 1970s” (ranked at number 101) and Dave Thompson‘s 1000 Songs That Rock Your World (at number 247).[63]
Subsequent releases and appearances in films[edit]
An alternative studio version of “What Is Life” – in fact, a rough mix of the original backing track with different orchestration (in this case, piccolo trumpet and oboe)[69] – was issued as one of five bonus tracks on the 2001 remaster of All Things Must Pass.[70] In the accompanying booklet, Harrison writes that this orchestral arrangement was discarded because he “didn’t like the feel”.[71] Speaking to Billboard editor-in-chief Timothy White in December 2000, Harrison explained the reason for the lack of a guide vocal on this version: “I’m playing the fuzz guitar part that goes all through the song. So all I could do on the [initial] take was to give the band the cue line – the first line of each verse – and then go back to playing that riff. So that rough mix without the vocal – I’d forgot all about it …”[72] The track also appears on the 2014 Apple Years 1968–75 reissue of All Things Must Pass.[73]
A live version of the song, recorded with Eric Clapton and his band in December 1991, is available on Harrison’s 1992 album Live in Japan album.[74] The performance was recorded at Tokyo Dome on 17 December,[75] during the final show of the tour.[76]
Part of a concert performance of “What Is Life” from Harrison’s 1974 North American tour with Shankar is included in Scorsese’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World.[77] While challenging the commonly held view that this controversial 1974 tour was a “disaster”,[78][79] Simon Leng writes of a Fort Worth performance of “What Is Life” that was “greeted with a reception that matched anything the New York audience at the Bangla Desh concerts expressed”.[80]
In 1971, British easy listening pianist Ronnie Aldrich covered “What Is Life” (as well as “My Sweet Lord”) on his album Love Story.[91] That same year, a version by the Ventures appeared on their New Testament album.[92]Also in 1971, a Finnish-language version of the song, titled “Mikä Saa Ihmisen Elämään”, was released as a single by local singer Oliver – better known as Veikko Laiho, of the Laiho Trio.[93]
Following Harrison’s death, Japanese band the Collectors contributed a recording of “What Is Life” to the Gentle Guitar Dreams tribute album, released in May 2002.[98] Classical guitarist Joseph Breznikar recorded a version of the song for his 2003 tribute album George Harrison Remembered: A Touch of Class.[99] In November 2004, Neal Morse released his recording of “What Is Life” on the special-edition version of his album One.[94]Les Fradkin included a cover of “What Is Life” on his 2005 tribute CD Something for George.[100]
MUSIC MONDAY Rolling Stones New Album Part 8 Rolling Stones – Hoo Doo Blues Blue & Lonesome is the album any Rolling Stones fan would have wished for – review 9 Comments Evergreen: The Rolling Stones perform in Cuba earlier this year CREDIT: REX FEATURES Neil McCormick, music critic 22 NOVEMBER 2016 • 12:19PM The Rolling […]
MUSIC MONDAY Rolling Stones New Album Part 7 Rolling Stones – Everybody Knows About My Good Thing The Rolling Stones Alexis Petridis’s album of the week The Rolling Stones: Blue & Lonesome review – more alive than they’ve sounded for years 4/5stars Mick Jagger’s voice and harmonica drive an album of blues covers that returns […]
MUSIC MONDAY Rolling Stones New Album Part 6 Rolling Stones – Just Like I Treat You Music Review: ‘Blue & Lonesome’ by the Rolling Stones By Gregory Katz | AP November 29 The Rolling Stones, “Blue & Lonesome” (Interscope) It shouldn’t be a surprise, really, but still it’s a bit startling to hear just how well […]
MUSIC MONDAY Rolling Stones New Album Part 5 Rolling Stones – Everybody Knows About My Good Thing Review: The Rolling Stones make blues magic on ‘Blue & Lonesome’ Maeve McDermott , USATODAY6:07 p.m. EST November 30, 2016 (Photo: Frazer Harrison, Getty Images) Before the Rolling Stones were rock icons, before its members turned into sex […]
MUSIC MONDAY Rolling Stones New Album Part 4 Rolling Stones – Little Rain Rolling Stones, ‘Blue & Lonesome’: Album Review By Michael Gallucci November 30, 2016 1:34 PM Read More: Rolling Stones, ‘Blue & Lonesome’: Album Review | http://ultimateclassicrock.com/rolling-stones-blue-lonesome-review/?trackback=tsmclip The Rolling Stones were never really a thinking band. A shrewd one, for sure, […]
MUSIC MONDAY Rolling Stones New Album Part 3 The Rolling Stones Mick Jagger chats about new album “Blue & Lonesome” on BBC Breakfast 02 Dec 2016 Rolling Stones – I Gotta Go Rolling Stones – ‘Blue & Lonesome’ Review Barry Nicolson 12:52 pm – Dec 2, 2016 57shares The Stones sound their youngest […]
_____________ Carpenters Close To You Karen Carpenter’s tragic story Karen Carpenter’s velvet voice charmed millions in the 70s… but behind the wholesome image she was in turmoil. Desperate to look slim on stage – and above all desperate to please the domineering mother who preferred her brother – she became the first celebrity victim of […]
carpenters -We’ve Only Just Begun The Carpenters – Yesterday Once More (INCLUDES LYRICS) The Carpenters – There’s a kind of hush The Carpenters – Greatest Hits Related posts: MUSIC MONDAY Paul McCartney Mull Of Kintyre November 13, 2016 – 10:29 am Paul McCartney Mull Of Kintyre-Original Video-HQ Uploaded on Nov 25, 2011 Paul McCartney Mull Of […]
1 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton
2 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton
barton videos
4 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton
February 11, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life.
“Most of the founding fathers of this nation … built the worldview of this nation on the authority of the Word of God,” Ken Ham said. “Because of that, there have been reminders in this culture concerning God’s Word, the God of creation.”
At the time I started this series I was in Boston, MA which was the home of John Adams. I have toured his home and found it very interesting. SO MANY FOUNDING FATHERS ARE FROM MASSACHUSETTS!!!
Today we look at Elbridge Gerry who is also from Massachusetts like John Adams was.
Elbridge Gerry
SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; MEMBER OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION; FRAMER OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS, GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
He called on the State of Massachusetts to pray that . . .
with one heart and voice we may prostrate ourselves at the throne of heavenly grace and present to our Great Benefactor sincere and unfeigned thanks for His infinite goodness and mercy towards us from our birth to the present moment for having above all things illuminated us by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, presenting to our view the happy prospect of a blessed immortality.32
And for our unparalleled ingratitude to that Adorable Being Who has seated us in a land irradiated by the cheering beams of the Gospel of Jesus Christ . . . let us fall prostrate before offended Deity, confess sincerely and penitently our manifold sins and our unworthiness of the least of His Divine favors, fervently implore His pardon through the merits of our mediator.33
And deeply impressed with a scene of our unparalleled ingratitude, let us contemplate the blessings which have flowed from the unlimited grave and favor of offended Deity, that we are still permitted to enjoy the first of Heaven’s blessings: the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 34
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
Office of Barack and Michelle Obama P.O. Box 91000 Washington, DC 20066
Dear President Obama,
I wrote you over 700 letters while you were President and I mailed them to the White House and also published them on my blog http://www.thedailyhatch.org .I received several letters back from your staff and I wanted to thank you for those letters.
I have been reading your autobiography A PROMISED LAND and I have been enjoying it.
As an evangelical believer I am encouraged by your references to spiritual hymns, but your intellectual views seem to place you in the secular humanist school of thought.
Former President Barack Obama’s new book, “A Promised Land,” mentions only four pages in its index under the category “faith and.”
But the title of the book by the 44th U.S. president invokes biblical imagery — a land promised by God to his people — and Obama includes the role of religious institutions, faith leaders and personal traditions throughout the 750-page book. On the page after his dedication of the tome to his wife and daughters, Obama features the words from an African American spiritual:
“Fly and never tire
There’s a great camp-meeting in the Promised Land.”
While friends and strangers have told him they believe God engineered his road to the White House, Obama says he didn’t view his political path as a call from the Almighty.
(Pari Dukovic/Random House via AP) This photo provided by Random House shows the cover of “A Promised Land.” The first volume of former President Barack Obama’s memoir came out Nov. 17.
“I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit,” he writes, “and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt.”
He’s not superstitious but carried religious symbols among his collection of charms.
Obama writes that he never had a rabbit’s foot or lucky number as a child.
“Over the course of the campaign, though, I found myself making a few concessions to the spirit world,” he says.
He developed a habit during his campaign of carrying five or so tiny mementos people had given him, from a biker’s “lucky metal poker chip” to a nun’s silver cross.
“My assortment of charms grew steadily,” he writes, “a miniature Buddha, an Ohio buckeye, a laminated four-leaf clover, a tiny bronze likeness of Hanuman the monkey god, all manner of angels, rosary beads, crystals and rocks.”
Obama calls them a “tactile reminder” of the people he had met and of their hopes.
“If my cache of small treasures didn’t guarantee that the universe would tilt in my favor,” he writes, “I figured they didn’t hurt.’’
—
When you bring a miniature Buddha with you and think that will help you in your spiritual search then you are sadly mistaken. Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as one’s Savior and Lord.
President Obama your views are more in line with those of atheistic evolutionists than those scientists such as Isaac Newton who believed in creationism. I had the unique opportunity from 2015 to 2020 to correspond with a famous Harvard educated British scientist named Professor Horace Barlow of Cambridge. Barlow was named after his grandfather Horace Darwin. Most of the correspondence between Dr. Barlow and myself dealt with the views of Barlow’s famous great grandfather Charles Darwin.
Here is response from Dr. Barlow on the letter I received in December of 2017 concerning evil in the world and he blames religious people for their part:
On the other hand, if I am pressed to say whether I think belief in God helps people to make wise and beneficial decisions I am bound to say (and I fear this will cause you pain) No, it is often very disastrous, leading to violence, death and vile behaviour, as with the current quarrel with Muslim terrorists, and as has been shown by inter-sectal violence within the Christian Church itself.
Let me first take on Darwin’s question of evil and suffering and take on Dr. Barlow’s objection to religion next:
(C.S. Lewis pictured above)
How can a good God allow evil and suffering? Here is an explanation from the Evangelism Explosion leader’s guide: Their thinking is that either God is not powerful enough to prevent evil or else God is not good. He is often blamed for tragedy. “Where was God when I went through this, or when that happened.” God is blamed for natural disasters, Even my insurance company describes them as “acts of God.” How to handle this one- (O.N.E.)a. Origin of evil— man’s choice- God created a perfect world…b. Nature of God—He forgives, I John 1:9—He uses tragedy to bring us to Himself, C.S. Lewis, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to arouse a deaf world.”c. End of it all—Bible teaches that God will one day put an end to all evil, and pain and death. “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).As Christians we have this hope of Heaven and eternity. Share how it has made a tremendous difference in your life and that you know for sure that when you die you are going to spend eternity in Heaven. Ask the person, “May I ask you a question? Do you have this hope? Do you know for certain that when you die you are going to Heaven, or is that something you would say you’re still working on?”How could a loving God send people to Hell?(O.N.E.)a. Origin of hell—never intended for people. Created for Satan and his demons. Jesus said, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt 25:41). Man chooses to sin and ignore God. The penalty is death (eternal separation from God) and, yes, Hell. But God doesn’t send anyone to Hell, we choose it by refusing or ignoring God in attitude and action. b. Nature of God—“ God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He is so loving that He sent His own Son to die and pay the penalty for our sin so that we could avoid Hell and have the assurance of Heaven. No one in Hell will be able to blame God. He doesn’t send people there, it’s our own choice. We must choose to repent, to stop ignoring God in attitude and action, accepting His salvation and yielding to His leadership.c. End of it all—Bible teaches that God will one day put an end to all evil, pain, death, and penalty of Hell. “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).As Christians , we need not worry about Hell. The Bible says, “these things have been written . . . so that you may know you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). I have complete confidence that when I die, I’m going to Heaven. May I ask you a question?___________________________- (Horace Barlow below)
In response to Dr. Barlow’s letter was this letter below that I mailed to him on December 2, 2018:
Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard
Hitler and Mussolini
Ravi Zacharias
Francis Schaeffer
__
December2, 2018
December 2, 2018
Dr. Horace Barlow, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Physiological Laboratory, United Kingdom,
Dear Dr. Barlow,
It was a year ago today that I first responded to your letter of November 22, 2017. Every month since then I have written to you on the second of every month. Almost every letter has dealt with the legacy of Charles Darwin your great-grandfather in one way or another.
Let me share with you a correspondence I had with Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard (where you earned your medical degree during WWII) and it is because he had some of the same reservations about Christianity that you have now.
He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981 and was born in Dordrecht, the Netherlands on March 11, 1920. He spent the last two years of World War II hiding from the Nazis. I found his life story very interesting.
In his September 6, 1995 letter to me he wrote:
Less zealotry and more compassion for those who have different concepts of the world from yours would help make this world more livable.
I mention this to you because in your letter of November 22, 2017 you asserted something very similar:
If I am pressed to say whether I think belief in God helps people to make wise and beneficial decisions I am bound to say (and I fear this will cause you pain) “No, it is often very disastrous, leading to violence, death and vile behaviour…Muslim terrorists…violence within the Christian church itself”
Back in 1995 when I responded to Dr. Bloembergen I quoted something I heard Ravi Zacharias say on an audio cassette tape and it went like this:
The emotion-laden question is not nearly as troublesome to answer if the questioner first explains all the killing that has resulted from those who have lived without God, such as HITLER, STALIN, MUSSOLINI, et al. The antitheist is quick to excoriate all religious belief by generically laying the blame at the door of all who claim to be religious, without distinction. By the same measure, why is there not an equal enthusiasm to distribute blame for violence engendered by some of the irreligious?
But the rub goes even deeper than that. The attackers of religion have forgotten that these large-scale slaughters at the hands of antitheists were the logical outworking of their God-denying philosophy. Contrastingly, the violence spawned by those who killed in the name of Christ would never have been sanctioned by the Christ of the Scriptures. Those who killed in the name of God were clearly self-serving politicizers of religion, an amalgam Christ ever resisted in His life and teaching. Their means and their message were in contradiction to the gospel. Atheism, on the other hand, provides the logical basis for an autonomous, domineering will, expelling morality. CHARLES DARWIN himself predicted this slippery slope of violence if evolutionary theory were translated into a philosophy of life. Nietzsche talked of the enshrouding darkness that had fallen over mankind–he saw its ramifications. The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevski repeatedly wrote of the hell that is let loose when man comes adrift from his Creators moorings and himself becomes god–he understood the consequences.
On July 3, 2016, I got a call from 96-year-old Dr. Bloembergen who told me he hoped to make 100. You may wonder why the urgency on my part to discuss these matters with you? Dr. Bloembergen died on 9-5-17 at the age of 97.
When my son Wilson was 8 years old his great-grandfather, L.R. “Tom” Sawyer, died just three weeks shy of his 98th birthday. Wilson declared, “I will make it to 100!!” I told him that Mr. Sawyer was the oldest person who ever lived in our family and that it was HIGHLY UNLIKELY that Wilson would outlive Mr. Sawyer in terms of years. I am almost 57 years old myself and many people call that MIDDLE AGED, but who am I kidding because how many 114 year old people do you see walking around?
Let me close by sharing with you a portion of my LAST EMAIL to Dr. Bloembergen:
Dear Dr. Bloembergen,
It was such a privilege to get a telephone call from you on July 1, 2016 because I know your time is very valuable. Since you said writing letters and mailing them was difficult for you I have chosen to email you this time around….Christianity is different than every other religion for two reasons according to Francis Schaeffer:
In every other religion, we have to do something–everything from burning a joss stick to sacrificing our firstborn child to dropping a coin the collection plate–the whole spectrum. But with Christianity we do not do anything; God has done it all: He has created us and He has sent His Son; His Son died and because the Son is infinite, therefore He bears out total guilt. We do not need to bear our guilt, nor do we even have to merit the merit of Christ. He does it all. So in one way, it is the easiest religion in the world….
In the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, and especially in the extensive notes of fifth chapter [shows] the way the Bible measures up to history. Once we say that, this is very exciting. It is very exciting because other religions are not founded in history, they are “out there” somewhere, or you can think of them as inside your own head–whichever way you are looking at it. On the other hand, the Bible claims to rooted in history.
Taking a look at the holy books of Islam and Mormonism and you find many historical inaccuracies. For instance, the Book of Mormon was wrong about horses, cows, steel, the wheel, honey bees and barley existing in North America 2000 years ago. Furthermore, in 2012 during the Presidential Race Harry Kroto also asked why no one seemed to ask Mitt Romney if he actually believed that Christ visited North America 2000 years ago as the Book of Mormon claimed.
Blaise Pascal asserted, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” In other words, the spiritual answers your heart is seeking can be found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.
Let me close by talking to you about the ROMAN ROAD TO CHRIST.
Rom. 3:10, “As it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one . . . “
Rom. 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Rom. 5:12, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”
Rom. 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Rom. 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Rom. 10:9-10, “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
Rom. 10:13, “For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Thanks for your time. Again it was such an honor to get to talk to you. I hope you enjoy the CDs on Michael Polanyi. He was a very wise man and his son John is a very outstanding man too.
Nicolaas “Nico” Bloembergen (March 11, 1920 – September 5, 2017) was a Dutch-American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized for his work in developing driving principles behind nonlinear optics for laser spectroscopy.[1] During his career, he was a professor at both Harvard University and later at the University of Arizona.
I found Dr. Barlow to be a true gentleman and he was very kind to take the time to answer the questions that I submitted to him. In the upcoming months I will take time once a week to pay tribute to his life and reveal our correspondence. In the first week I noted:
Today I am posting my first letter to him in February of 2015 which discussed Charles Darwin lamenting his loss of aesthetic tastes which he blamed on Darwin’s own dedication to the study of evolution. In a later return letter, Dr. Barlow agreed that Darwin did in fact lose his aesthetic tastes at the end of his life.
In the third week, I look at the life of Brandon Burlsworth in the November 28, 2016 letter and the movie GREATER and the problem of evil which Charles Darwin definitely had a problem with once his daughter died.
On the 4th letter to Dr. Barlow looks at Darwin’s admission that he at times thinks that creation appears to look like the expression of a mind. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words in 1968 sermon at this link.
My Fifth Letter concerning Charles Darwin’s views on MORAL MOTIONS Which was mailed on March 1, 2017. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning moral motions in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
6th letter on May 1, 2017 in which Charles Darwin’s hopes are that someone would find in Pompeii an old manuscript by a distinguished Roman that would show that Christ existed! Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning the possible manuscript finds in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link
7th letter on Darwin discussing DETERMINISM dated 7-1-17 . Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning determinism in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
8th letter responds to Dr. Barlow’s letter to me concerning Francis Schaeffer discussing Darwin’s own words concerning chance in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
9th letter in response to 11-22-17 letter I received from Professor Horace Barlow was mailed on 1-2-18 and included Charles Darwin’s comments on William Paley. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning William Paley in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
10th letter in response to 11-22-17 letter I received from Professor Horace Barlow was mailed on 2-2-18 and includes Darwin’s comments asking for archaeological evidence for the Bible! Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning His desire to see archaeological evidence supporting the Bible’s accuracy in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
11th letterI mailed on 3-2-18 in response to 11-22-17 letter from Barlow that asserted: It is also sometimes asked whether chance, even together with selection, can define a “MORAL CODE,” which the religiously inclined say is defined by their God. I think the answer is “Yes, it certainly can…” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning A MORAL CODE in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
12th letter on March 26, 2018 breaks down song DUST IN THE WIND “All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
In 13th letter I respond to Barlow’s November 22, 2017 letter and assertion “He {Darwin} clearly did not lose his sense of the VALUE of TRUTH, and of the importance of FOREVER SEARCHING it out.”
In 14th letter to Dr. Barlow on 10-2-18, I assert: “Let me demonstrate how the Bible’s view of the origin of life fits better with the evidence we have from archaeology than that of gradual evolution.”In 15th letter in November 2, 2018 to Dr. Barlow I quote his relative Randal Keynes Who in the Richard Dawkins special “The Genius of Darwin” makes this point concerning Darwin, “he was, at different times, enormously confident in it,and at other times, he was utterly uncertain.”In 16th Letter on 12-2-18 to Dr. Barlow I respond to his letter that stated, If I am pressed to say whether I think belief in God helps people to make wise and beneficial decisions I am bound to say (and I fear this will cause you pain) “No, it is often very disastrous, leading to violence, death and vile behaviour…Muslim terrorists…violence within the Christian church itself”17th letter sent on January 2, 2019 shows the great advantage we have over Charles Darwin when examining the archaeological record concerning the accuracy of the BibleIn the 18th letter I respond to the comment by Charles Darwin: “My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive….The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words on his loss of aesthetic tastes in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733 everettehatcher@gmail.com
President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. There have […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers, President Obama | Edit |Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
President Obama Speaks at The Ohio State University Commencement Ceremony Published on May 5, 2013 President Obama delivers the commencement address at The Ohio State University. May 5, 2013. You can learn a lot about what President Obama thinks the founding fathers were all about from his recent speech at Ohio State. May 7, 2013, […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers, President Obama | Edit | Comments (0)
Dr. C. Everett Koop with Bill Graham. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit |Comments (1)
America’s Founding Fathers Deist or Christian? – David Barton 4/6 There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Tagged governor of connecticut, john witherspoon, jonathan trumbull | Edit | Comments (1)
3 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton There were 55 gentlemen who put together the constitution and their church affliation is of public record. Greg Koukl notes: Members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political foundations of our nation, were […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
I do not think that John Quincy Adams was a founding father in the same sense that his father was. However, I do think he was involved in the early days of our government working with many of the founding fathers. Michele Bachmann got into another history-related tussle on ABC’s “Good Morning America” today, standing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit |Comments (0)
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ____________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
“Interesting . . . Trump margin of “defeat” in 4 states occurred in 4 data dumps between 1:34-6:31 AM,” the Republican Senator tweeted. “Statistical anomaly? Fraud? Look at the evidence and decide for yourself. (That is, if Big Tech allows u to read this)”
By Sunday afternoon, the tweet was flagged with the warning: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”
The tweet included a link to an article, “Anomalies in Vote Counts and Their Effects on Election 2020,” which aimed to demonstrate how Democratic candidate Joe Biden supposedly received “vote spikes” in the early hours of Nov. 4, 2020.
These supposed “vote spikes” occurred in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia, according to the analysis. It goes on to argue, that these vote spikes in favor of Biden cut into Trump’s lead – claims that echo the president’s own unsubstantiated claims.
Biden earned 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, the same margin that Trump had when he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, which he repeatedly described as a “landslide.” (Trump ended up with 304 electoral votes because two electors defected.) Biden achieved victory by prevailing in key states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.
Trump’s allegations of massive voting fraud have been refuted by a variety of judges, state election officials and an arm of his own administration’s Homeland Security Department. Many of his campaign’s lawsuits across the country have been thrown out of court.
No case has established irregularities of a scale that would change the outcome. Lawsuits that remain do not contain evidence that would flip the result.
An elections worker takes a short break Wednesday while processing absentee ballots at the Detroit Department of Elections’ counting center at TCF Center. (Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)
As might be expected during the undecided presidential contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, pundits and typical voters alike are voicing more concerns about voter fraud and unfair election practices.
Already numerous internet rumors have been proven wrong or lack evidence. That doesn’t mean every assertion will prove to be without merit, however.
Conversely, some legitimate questions about ballot counting have enough evidence behind them to support litigation. That doesn’t mean such questions won’t ultimately have satisfactory answers.
Here’s a sampling—based on what currently is known—of seven claims in the postelection chaos.
The left is actively working to undermine the integrity of our elections. Read the plan to stop them now. Learn more now >>
1. Wisconsin Votes vs. Registered Voters?
One popular claim circulating on social media and at least one viral email goes like this: “Wisconsin magically now has more votes than registered voters.”
That essentially is a “fake” claim, said J. Christian Adams, president of the conservative-leaning election integrity watchdog group Public Interest Legal Foundation.
“Wisconsin has same-day voter registration, so you are obviously always going to have more voters than registered voters,” Adams told The Daily Signal.
Adams noted that by Thursday afternoon, he had gotten at least 20 emails calling for investigations into bogus rumors floating on the internet.
FactCheck.org determined that the number of registered voters as of Nov. 1 actually exceeded the actual voters Nov. 3 by 388,000.
2. No Sharpies in Arizona?
An example of a legitimate problem is in Maricopa County, Arizona, Adams said, where 11 voters are suing the county for not “curing” their vote, meaning not providing a new ballot when a ballot is somehow spoiled.
The lead client in the case, Laurie Aguilera, represented by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, is asking a court to vindicate her voting rights. Aguilera is joined by 10 unnamed plaintiffs, dubbed “Does I-X.”
The lawsuit asks the court to order that election officials identify and correct all ballots that were denied because poll workers had required voters to use Sharpie markers in filling out ballots.
Aguilera was issued a Sharpie to mark up her ballot on Election Day, according to the lawsuit. That’s despite established state guidance that felt-tip writing utensils not be used.
Aguilera said she became alarmed when she noticed ink bleeding to the other side of her ballot, according to the lawsuit. Election officials instructed her to feed her ballot through the counting machine.
When the machine failed to accept her ballot, the attending poll worker cancelled the ballot and Aguilera’s request for a replacement ballot was denied, according to the lawsuit.
“These voters were denied the right to vote. Arizona election officials allegedly were part of the problem, and denial of the right to vote should not occur because of failures in the process of casting a ballot,” Adams said in a public statement.
The suit asks that ballots denied because of the supplied Sharpies be identified and allowed to be cured; that voters who were given felt-tip markers be given the chance to be present to observe the handling and adjudication of their ballots; and that the court order their votes to be tabulated.
Maricopa County officials pushed back, saying that Sharpies in fact may be used, referring to an Election Day video that said ink could not bleed through ballots.
3. Wisconsin Ballot Dump?
Another claim about Wisconsin is that someone discovered more than 112,000 ballots marked for Biden between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.
The left-leaning PolitiFact identified a Facebook post as being the source of this rumor, which the social media site flagged.
PolitiFact called this claim “false,” quoting Reid Magney, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, as stating, “Absolutely no ballots were ‘found.’”
Magney added: “All of the election results that were reported in the early morning hours of Wednesday were valid ballots that were received by 8 p.m. on Election Day according to the law.”
Aside from social media and a blog post, no major Republican or conservative figures have made a case for this claim.
4. Who’s Counting in Michigan?
A lawsuit filed Wednesday in Detroit asserts that Democratic observers are reviewing thousands of spoiled ballots without an Republican observer present, as required by law.
About 100 counting groups operating in Wayne County determined that ballots rejected by voting machines had to be reviewed.
State law allows a Democrat and Republican election observer to review each ineligible ballot and make a mutual determination of the voter’s intent. However, several witnesses allege that only Democratic observers were correcting such ballots in violation of state law, the lawsuit says.
“The law in Michigan requires Republican and Democrat observers,” Phill Kline, a former Kansas attorney general who now directs the Amistad Project and represents the plaintiffs in the case, told The Daily Signal.
Kline said every ballot could be perfectly legitimate, but the public needs to have confidence in the process and so far, Wayne County has not been transparent.
“The lawsuit is only asking to open the record to the public. We need to know how the votes are being counted,” Kline said. “We know they are violating state law. That makes fraud easier.”
The suit calls for officials to quarantine the ballots until representatives of both parties have evaluated them.
Biden supporters assert that the charge of no Republican observers is “unfounded.”
5. 138,000 for Biden, 0 for Trump?
Another claim stated that Michigan at one point gained 138,339 ballots, all marked for Biden and none for Trump.
This didn’t require hostile fact-checking. The person who first made the assertion admits it is false.
The Detroit Free Press reported that this rumor began when Matt Mackowiak, chairman of Texas’ Travis County Republican Party, first tweeted that Biden received 100% of newly counted votes. An attachment showed two election maps.
But Mackowiak deleted the tweet and posted another tweet saying: “I have now learned the MI update referenced was a typo in one county.”
It’s nearly impossible for such a thing to happen anywhere, said Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation.
“There are a lot of stories and rumors that turn out not to be true,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal. “If it was true that tens of thousands of votes appeared and every single one was for one candidate, that would of course raise grave suspicions, particularly this year when even black and Hispanic voters supported Trump in surprisingly high numbers.
6. Huge Biden Flip of Trump County?
In 2016, Trump won 62% of the vote in Antrim County, Michigan, in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Yet, when the county tabulated votes this week, Biden reportedly beat Trump by 3,000 votes.
Republicans at the local and national level, including American Conservative Union President Matt Schlapp, flagged this development as unusual.
The questions got results when the Antrim County Clerk’s Office announced it would count the ballots manually. The county has about 24,000 residents.
“There is no way that we flipped from 62% Trump in 2016 to upside-down this time around,” saidstate Rep. Triston Cole, a Republican, according to Interlochen Public Radio.
7. Dead Voters?
The Public Interest Legal Foundation also filed a lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania for failing to maintain and update voter rolls after finding 21,000 apparently deceased voters still on the rolls.
That does not mean anyone was falsely voting under the names. However, critics have said unclean voter rolls present the opportunity for fraud.
The lawsuit in Pennsylvania states:
As of October 7, 2020, at least 9,212 registrants have been dead for at least five years, at least 1,990 registrants have been dead for at least ten years, and at least 197 registrants have been dead for at least twenty years. …
Pennsylvania still left the names of more than 21,000 dead individuals on the voter rolls less than a month before one of the most consequential general elections for federal officeholders in many years.
Wisconsin’s voter turnout, with 98 percent of precincts reporting, indicates that nearly 9-in-10 registered voters cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election.
While Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden leads President Trump in Wisconsin by about 20,510 votes, voter turnout across the state is at a nearly unprecedented level, according to calculations.
With almost all the votes tallied, more than 89 percent of all 3,684,726 registered voters in the state of Wisconsin apparently voted in the election. So far, 3,297,137 votes have been tallied in Wisconsin.
Such a turnout would be a more than 46 percent increase compared to turnout 32 years ago in 1988, when turnout hovered around 61 percent. Likewise, the turnout would shatter the 2004 turnout tota, when more than 73 percent of Wisconsin voters cast ballots.
Below is a breakdown of voter turnout in Wisconsin dating back to the 1988 election:
2020: 89.26 percent
2016: 67.34 percent
2012: 70.14 percent
2008: 69.20 percent
2004: 73.24 percent
2000: 67.01 percent
1996: 58 percent
1992: 68.99 percent
1988: 61 percent
Wisconsin is one of many states that allows eligible voters to register to vote on the day of the election so long as they provide proof of residency documents and a photo ID.
The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel questioned the Wisconsin turnout in a series of posts:
9)One thing that makes more sense is if MSP number of 71% if referring to voting-eligible population (rather than registered voters). But still, wow–89% turnout of registered voters….
Wisconsin has 3,684,726 active registered voters.
They counted 3,288,771 votes.
That’s, um, a bit unbelievable.
89% turnout? Ok sure. 🙄
2) The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is claiming a 71% state turnout. I’m not sure where it gets this, but that would make more sense, given even populous Milwaukee didn’t exceed 83% turnout, and Dane lower. (Do math on what rest of state wud need to bump up state avg to 89)
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
—-
FAKE NEWS is what the President calls the mainstream press and is this article below the perfect example?
If the polls are right, Joe Biden could post the most decisive victory in a presidential election in three and a half decades, surpassing Bill Clinton’s win in 1996.
That’s a big “if.”
The indelible memory of 2016’s polling misfire, when Donald J. Trump trailed in virtually every pre-election poll and yet swept the battleground states and won the Electoral College, has hovered over the 2020 campaign. Mr. Biden’s unusually persistent lead has done little to dispel questions about whether the polls could be off again.
President Trump needs a very large polling error to have a hope of winning the White House. Joe Biden would win even if polls were off by as much as they were in 2016.Polling averages as of 10 p.m. on Nov. 1, 2020
POLLING LEADER
IF POLLS ARE AS WRONG AS THEY WERE IN…
2016
2012
U.S.
+9 Biden
+7
+12
N.H.
+11 Biden
+8
+15
Wis.
+10 Biden
+4
+14
Minn.
+10 Biden
+4
+12
Mich.
+8 Biden
+4
+14
Nev.
+6 Biden
+8
+9
Pa.
+6 Biden
+1
+7
Neb. 2*
+5 Biden
+9
<1
Maine 2*
+4 Biden
+9
+9
Ariz.
+4 Biden
+2
+2
Fla.
+2 Biden
<1
+4
N.C.
+2 Biden
+3
+3
Ga.
+2 Biden
<1
+2
Ohio
<1 Trump
+6
<1
Iowa
+2 Trump
+6
+3
Texas
+2 Trump
+4
+1
Electoral votes if polling leads translate perfectly to results (they won’t):
TOTALS BASED ON 2020 POLLS
IF POLLS ARE AS WRONG AS THEY WERE IN…
E.V.
351 Biden
335
But while President Trump’s surprising victory has imbued him with an aura of political invincibility, the polls today put him in a far bigger predicament than the one he faced heading into Election Day in 2016. The polls show Mr. Biden with a far more significant lead than the one held by Hillary Clinton, and many of the likeliest explanations for the polling misfire do not appear to be in play today.
Of course, it’s possible the polls could be off by even more than they were four years ago. But to win, that’s exactly what Mr. Trump needs. He would need polls to be even worse than they were in the Northern battleground states four years ago. Crucially, he would also need polls to be off to a far greater extent at the national level as well as in the Sun Belt — and those polls have been relatively accurate in recent contests.
Another way to think of it: Pollsters would have far fewer excuses than they did for missing the mark four years ago. Mr. Trump’s upset victory was undoubtedly a surprise, but pollsters argued, with credibility, that the polling wasn’t quite as bad as it seemed. Mrs. Clinton did win the national vote, as polls suggested she would, and even the state polls weren’t so bad outside of a handful of mostly white working-class states where there were relatively few high-quality polls late in the election.
In post-election post-mortems, pollsters arrived at a series of valid explanations for what went wrong. None of those would hold up if Mr. Trump won this time.
Here are the many ways the polls are different today than they were in 2016.
The national polls show a decisive Biden win. Four years ago, the national polls showed Mrs. Clinton with a lead of around four percentage points, quite close to her eventual 2.1-point margin in the national vote. This year, the national polls show Mr. Biden up by 8.5 percentage points, according to our average. The higher-quality national surveys generally show him ahead by even more.
Unlike in 2016, the national polls do not foreshadow the gains Mr. Trump made in the Northern battleground states.
Waiting to vote in Queens on the last day of early voting in New York City.Credit…Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Four years ago, national polls showed Mr. Trump making huge gains among white voters without a college degree. It hinted that he was within striking distance of winning in the Electoral College, with possible victories in relatively white working-class states like Wisconsin, even though the state polls still showed Mrs. Clinton ahead.Election 2020 ›
This year, the national polls have consistently shown Mr. Biden making big gains among white voters and particularly among white voters without a degree. In this respect, the national polls are quite similar to state polls showing Mr. Biden running well in relatively white Northern battleground states like Wisconsin and Michigan. The national pollsters won’t be able to sidestep blame while pointing fingers at the state pollsters.
There are far fewer undecided or minor-party voters. Four years ago, polls showed a large number of voters who were either undecided or backing a minor-party candidate, and it was always an open question how these voters would break at the end.
Over all, Mrs. Clinton led Mr. Trump, 45.7 to 41.8, in the FiveThirtyEight average, and 12.5 percent of voters were either undecided or supporting a minor-party candidate like Gary Johnson or Jill Stein.
There’s significant evidence that undecided and minor-party voters shifted to Mr. Trump in 2016. The exit polls found that late deciders broke toward him, 45-42 — but by even higher margins in the states where the polling error was worst, like Wisconsin, where late deciders broke toward him, 59-30, in the last week. Post-election surveys, which sought to re-contact voters reached in pre-election polls, found voters drifting to Mr. Trump. And all of this was foreshadowed by pre-election polls, which showed the race tightening after the third debate and the Comey letter. It doesn’t explain the whole polling error four years ago, but it probably does explain part of it.
This year, just 4.6 percent are undecided or backing a minor-party candidate, according to the FiveThirtyEight average. Even if these voters broke unanimously to Mr. Trump, he would be far short of victory across the battleground states and nationwide.
Some pollsters — including the New York Times/Siena poll — do show more undecided voters, voters backing a minor-party candidate, or voters who simply refuse to state whom they’ll back for president. Yet there’s little evidence that they’re poised to break unanimously for the president.
In the final Times/Siena polls of the six battleground states likeliest to decide the election, the 8 percent of likely voters who didn’t back either Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden were slightly likelier than average to be young, nonwhite, less educated and male. They were slightly likelier than average to be registered Democrats. They disapproved of the president’s performance by the same modest margin as voters over all, and didn’t have a favorable view of either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump. They were far less likely to have voted in a recent election. One wonders whether many of these voters will ultimately turn out at all, even though they say they will.
Many more state pollsters now properly represent voters without a college degree. The failure of many state pollsters to do so four years ago is probably one of the biggest reasons the polls underestimated Mr. Trump. It’s not 100 percent solved in 2020, but it’s a lot better.
The issue is simple: Voters without a college degree are less likely to respond to telephone surveys. To compensate, pollsters need to weight by education, which means giving more weight to certain respondents to ensure that less educated voters represent the appropriate share of a survey.
This has been true for decades, but Democrats and Republicans used to fare about the same among white voters in both groups, so many political pollsters glossed over whether their samples had too many college graduates. That changed in 2016: Mr. Trump fared far better among white voters without a degree, and suddenly polls that had been accurate for years were woefully biased against Mr. Trump.
By Upshot estimates, failing to weight by education would have biased a national survey by four points against Mr. Trump in 2016. It would have had no effect at all in 2012.
Importantly, most national surveys in recent cycles weighted by education. There’s an arcane reason: They mainly sample all adults, and adjust their samples to match census demographic variables — like educational attainment. Many state polls, in contrast, called voters from lists of registered voters and adjusted their samples to match variables that voters provided when they registered to vote, like their party registration or age — but not their educational attainment.
Fortunately, most state pollsters now weight by education. There are a couple of exceptions, but they’re generally not polls that get talked about too much anyway. Virtually all of the polling you’re looking at shows white voters without a degree as a very large share of the electorate. They’re just supporting Mr. Biden in far greater numbers than four years ago.
No guaranteed improvement. There’s no reason to assume the polls will be very accurate this year. There’s not even reason to be sure that the polls will be better than they were in 2016, which wasn’t exactly the worst polling error of all time. In fact, the polls were even worse in 2014 and quite bad in 2012 — though few cared, since they erred in understating the winner’s eventual margin of victory. The polls could easily be worse than last time.
Even if the polls do fare better than they did in 2016, they might still be off in ways that matter. In the 2018 midterms, the polls were far more accurate than they were in 2016, but the geographic distribution of the polling error was still highly reminiscent of the error in the presidential election.
Today, polls show Mr. Biden faring best in many of the same states where the polls were off by the most four years ago. Take Wisconsin. It was the highest-profile miss of 2016; now, it’s a battleground state that Mr. Biden seems to have put away.
We won’t know until Election Day whether that simply reflects real strength among white voters, as shown repeatedly in national polls, or whether it’s an artifact of an underlying bias in polls of states. Four years ago, undecided voters broke to Mr. Trump at the end, leading to an error in his direction; today, perhaps they’ve swung back to Mr. Biden.
The survey research industry faces real challenges. Response rates to telephone polls are in decline. More and more polls are conducted online, and it’s still hard to collect a representative sample from the internet. Polling has always depended on whether a pollster can design a survey that yields an unbiased sample, but now it increasingly depends on whether a pollster can identify and control for a source of bias.
Nonetheless, pollsters emerged from the 2016 election mostly if not completely convinced that the underestimation of Mr. Trump was either circumstantial — like the late movement among a large number of undecided voters — or could be fixed if pollsters adhered to traditional survey research standards like weighting by education. If Mr. Trump wins this time, they will be in for a whole new round of self-examination. This time, they might not find a satisfactory answer.
President Donald Trump and his challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, clashed Thursday night in the second and final presidential debate before the Nov. 3 election.
Trump and Biden traded boasts and criticisms in a meeting that began at 9 p.m. at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, after officials said both men tested negative for COVID-19.
What follows are eight highlights from the 90-minute debate moderated by NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker.
1. Reopening Schools, Businesses
The first debate between Trump and Biden took place Sept. 29. The Commission on Presidential Debatescanceled the originally scheduled second of three debates, set for Oct. 15, after Trump objected to a format in which the candidates would appear in separate “town hall” settings.
The commission announced the change in format Oct. 8, the day after Vice President Mike Pence and Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, met in their only debate. At the time, Trump was recovering from COVID-19 after a three-day stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
In their second debate, Republican Trump and Democrat Biden differed on the issue of shutdowns during the pandemic, especially in terms of reopening schools safely as soon as possible.
Trump said that although Americans will continue to deal with COVID-19, the country can’t stay closed and must continue the process of reopening.
“We can’t close up our nation, or you’re not going to have a nation,” Trump said.
Biden said that he did not aim to keep the country shut down.
“I’m going to shut down the virus, not the country,” Biden said.
However, Biden expressed a greater willingness to keep lockdowns in place until certain needs are met.
“I’m not shutting down today, but look, you need standards,” Biden said. “If you have a [virus] reproduction rate above a certain level, everybody says slow down, do not open bars and gymnasiums, until you get this under more control.”
He wants schools to reopen, Biden said, but more needs to be done to get them into a place to do so, such as better ventilation.
“Schools, they need a lot of money to open,” Biden said. “They need to deal with smaller classrooms.”
>>> What’s the best way for America to reopen and return to business? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, assembled America’s top thinkers to figure that out. So far, it has made more than 260 recommendations. Learn more here.
Biden’s reopening plan stipulates: “Emergency funding needs have been met so that schools have the resources to reconfigure classrooms, kitchens, and other spaces, improve ventilation, and take other necessary steps to make it easier to physically distance and minimize risk of spread.”
Biden also said Trump had failed to negotiate a new coronavirus relief package with the Democrat-controlled House.
The president countered that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., doesn’t want to make a deal before the election.
“We are ready, willing, and able to do something,” Trump said.
2. COVID-19 Vaccine and China
Trump repeated his prediction that a COVID-19 vaccine will be approved by the end of this year.
Trump said several companies–including Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Feiser–are “doing very well” in developing a vaccine, adding that the U.S. also is working with European nations to produce a vaccine as quickly as possible.
Welker questioned Trump about his vaccine timeline, noting that his own health officials have said it may be well into 2021 before a vaccine is generally available.
“I think my timeline is going to be more accurate,” Trump said, adding:
I don’t know that they [health officials] are counting on the military the way I do, but we have our generals lined up. One in particular that’s the head of logistics, and this is a very easy distribution for him. He is ready to go. As soon as we have the vaccine–and we expect to have 100 million vials–as soon as we have the vaccine, he is ready to go.
Biden fired back at Trump, criticizing the president’s handling of the virus.
“We are about to go into a dark winter,” Biden said. “And he has no clear plan and there is no prospect that there is going to be a vaccine available for the majority of the American people before the middle of next year.”
Asked to respond, the president said he acted quickly in response to the spread of the virus and closed down flights from China in January, an action that he says Biden called him “xenophobic” for taking.
Biden retorted that Trump had closed the border to China only after other countries already had done so.
Trump said Biden’s handling of the H1N1 swine flu was “a total disaster.”
“Had that had this kind of numbers, 700,000 people would be dead right now, but [swine flu] was a far less lethal disease.”
Trump denied saying that the virus is going to be “over soon,” but said Americans are “learning to live with it.” He added: “We can’t lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does.”
The president said 99% of those who contract the disease caused by the new coronavirus recover.
“People are learning to die with it,” the former vice president fired back, adding that the president has not taken responsibility for the virus.
“I take full responsibility. It is not my fault that it came here. It’s China’s fault. And you know what? It’s not Joe’s fault that it came here, either. It is China’s fault,” Trump said.
Biden also said, referring to COVID-19, “Two hundred and twenty thousand Americans dead. If you hear nothing else I say tonight …anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States.”
3. Fracking, Climate Change, and the Oil Industry
When it came to climate change and the energy industry, the two candidates had notable differences.
“I will not sacrifice tens of millions of jobs, thousands and thousands of companies, because of the Paris accord,” Trump said, referring to the international climate agreement the United States joined under President Barack Obama with Biden as vice president.
Six months into his presidency, Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the climate agreement.
“We have the cleanest air, the cleanest water, and the best carbon emissions standards that we’ve seen in many, many years. And we haven’t destroyed our industries,” Trump said.
He said the climate accord was too easy on nations such as China, Russia, and India that have “filthy” air.
“Climate change, climate warming, global warming is an existential threat to humanity. We have a moral obligation to deal with it,” Biden said, adding that it was crucial to act in the next eight to 10 years.
Referring to his climate plan, which includes adding charging machines for electric cars to U.S. highways and retrofitting buildings to be more energy-efficient, Biden said: “It will create millions of new, good-paying jobs.”
Fracking was another topic of contention between the two candidates.
“I have never said I oppose fracking,” Biden said, accusing Trump of “lying.”
“I do rule out banning fracking,” he said, although he later said he had called for banning fracking on federal lands.
Welker said “people of color” are more likely to live near chemical plants and oil refineries, and that Texans living in such areas are concerned the proximity is making them sick.
“The families that we’re talking about are employed heavily and they’re making a lot of money, more money than they’ve ever made,” Trump said, noting his administration’s record jobs numbers among Hispanic, Asian, and black Americans.
He added, “I have not heard the numbers or the statistics that you’re saying, but they’re making a tremendous amount of money.”
“Those frontline communities, it doesn’t matter what you’re paying them, it matters how you keep them safe,” Biden said, talking about the need to regulate pollutants.
Trump asked BIden: “Would you close down the oil industry?”
Biden responded: “I would transition from the oil industry, yes … because the oil industry pollutes significantly. … It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time, over time. And I’d stop giving to the oil industry, I’d stop giving them federal subsidies.”
4. Improving Health Care
Trump said that the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2009-10 during the Obama administration, was “no good.” He said that’s why the law, popularly known as Obamacare, is still being challenged in court.
The president said his administration ended the individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance and is overseeing what remains of Obamacare.
“We’re running it as well as we can, but it’s no good,” he said.
Trump said Biden and the Democrats would push the country toward “socialized medicine” and government-run health care, as promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Biden said that, unlike all his competitors in the Democrats’ primary race—a list that included both Sanders and his running mate, Harris—he would not advocate a “Medicare for All” plan.
“He’s a very confused guy,” Biden said. “He thinks he’s running against somebody else. He’s running against Joe Biden. I beat all those other people because I disagreed with them.”
Instead, Biden said, he wants “Bidencare,” which includes a “public option” for health insurance. A public option is when the government offers subsidized plans that are less expensive than those offered by insurance companies.
Biden said he supports private insurance and insisted that “not one single person with private insurance would lose their insurance under my plan, nor did they under Obamacare.”
“When he says ‘public option,’ he’s talking about socialized medicine and health care,” Trump said. “When he talks about a public option, he’s talking about destroying your Medicare and destroying your Social Security. This whole country will come down.”
Biden contended that Trump would not make sure that Americans with preexisting health conditions could get insurance coverage, but the president reiterated that he would.
Trump also disputed Biden’s claim that he would not move toward socialized medicine.
“It’s not that he wants it—his vice president, I mean, [Harris] is more liberal than Bernie Sanders and wants it even more,” Trump said. “Bernie Sanders wants it. The Democrats want it. You’re going to have socialized medicine.”
5. Who’s Tougher on Russia
Trump and Biden sparred over America’s relationship with Russia and their respective ability to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On the subject of election integrity, Biden said it is clear that Russia has tried to influence the 2020 election, as it did in 2016. The former vice president warned that Russia “will pay a price if I am elected.”
Biden said that Trump’s personal attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, “is being used as a Russian pawn”:
He’s being fed information that is Russian, that is not true. And then what happens? Nothing happens. And then you find out that everything [that] is going on here about Russia is wanting to make sure that I do not get elected the next president of the United States, because they know I know them, and they know me.
The owner of a computer repair shop that believed he had an unclaimed laptop originally dropped off by Biden’s son, Hunter, eventually put it in the hands of the FBI and got a copy of the hard drive to Giuliani. He turned it over to the New York Post.
The New York Post last week reported on some of the emails on the laptop, including one suggesting that the elder Biden met Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that at the time reportedly was paying Hunter Biden $50,000 a month.
Biden said it is worth asking why Trump has not been tougher on Putin.
“Joe got three and half million dollars from Russia,” the president responded. “And it came through Putin, because he was very friendly with the former mayor of Moscow…. Someday, you are going to have to explain why you got three and a half million dollars.”
Trump’s comments appeared to be a reference to areport from Senate Republicans that states: “On Feb. 14, 2014, [Elena] Baturina wired $3.5 million to a Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC (Rosemont Seneca Thornton) bank account for a “Consultancy Agreement DD12.02.2014.” Rosemont Seneca Thornton is an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden that was incorporated on May 28, 2013 in Wilmington, Del.”
Baturina is married to Yury Luzkhkov, formerly mayor of Moscow.
But George Mesires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, told PolitiFact in an email: “Hunter Biden had no interest in and was not a co-founder of Rosemont Seneca Thornton, so the claim that he was paid $3.5 million is false.”
PolitiFact said Mesires “did not respond” to a request that he “share documents to show that Hunter Biden was not a co-founder.”
One of the most dramatic moments of the debate came when Bided stated flatly: “I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”
The president drew a link between Biden and Putin, saying that John Ratcliffe, director of national intelligence, believes the Russian president wants Trump to lose the election because “there has been nobody tougher on Russia than Donald Trump.”
Trump also criticized Biden for allowing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its seizing of the Crimea region during his time as Obama’s vice president.
Trump said of Biden: ”While he was selling pillows and sheets, I sold tank-busters to Ukraine.”
6. Illegal Immigration and Border Enforcement
Trump and Biden had a sharp disagreement about enforcing immigration law, in particular the Trump administration’s early policy of separating children from adults when they come across the southern border and placing children in detention centers with “cages.”
“The children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they’re brought here and they used to use them to get into our country,” Trump said. “We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall. You see the numbers. We let people in, but they have to come in legally,”
Biden said that the policy of separating children from adults who crossed the border “violates every notion of who we are as a nation.”
He said the policy was used as a disincentive for more illegal immigration.
But Trump said his administration actually inherited the Obama policy of putting children in cages.
“We changed the policy. They did it. We changed—they built the cages,” Trump said. “Who built the cages, Joe?”
According to The Associated Press, placing migrant children in cages began in 2014 under the Obama administration:
At the height of the controversy over Trump’s zero-tolerance policy at the border, photos that circulated online of children in the enclosures generated great anger. But those photos–by The Associated Press–were taken in 2014 and depicted some of the thousands of unaccompanied children held by President Barack Obama.
Biden admitted that the Obama administration got some things wrong on immigration enforcement, in particular on detaining children, but said his own administration would do better.
“We made a mistake. It took too long to get it right,” Biden said. “I’ll be president of the United States, not vice president of the United States.”
7. Black Lives Matter and Racism
When the issue of race came up in the debate, Trump defended his reputation, saying, “I am the least racist person in this room.”
Asked about some of his past comments, including on Black Lives Matter, Trump said: “The first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter, they were chanting, ‘Pigs in a blanket,’ talking about police …[chanting] ‘Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.’ I said, that’s a horrible thing.”
He also referred several times to record low unemployment rates for blacks and Hispanics before the pandemic.
Asked again about his rhetoric on race, Trump said, “I got criminal justice reform done, and prison reform, and opportunity zones. I took care of black colleges and universities. I don’t know what to say. They can say anything … It makes me sad.”
Trump signed the First Step Act, a major criminal justice reform bill, into law at the end of 2018. Opportunity zones are designated low-income areas where investors can get certain tax advantages in exchange for investing there.
In remarks in September, Trump noted what his administration had done for historically black colleges and universities, saying, “Last year … I was proud to highlight an increase of more than 13% in federal funding for HBCUs under my administration. In addition, I signed into law the FUTURE Act, which reauthorized more than $85 million in funding for HBCUs.”
Biden called Trump “one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history. He pours fuel on every single racist fire.”
“This guy is a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn,” Biden added.
8. Increasing the Minimum Wage
Amid a discussion of the economy and the impact of COVID-19, Biden argued that the federal minimum wage should be raised from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour.
“People are making six, seven, eight bucks an hour,” Biden said, adding:
These first responders we all clap for as they come down the street because they have allowed us to make it. What’s happening? They deserve a minimum wage of $15, and anything below that puts you below the poverty level. And there is no evidence that when you raise the minimum wage businesses go out of business. That is simply not true.
Trump said he would consider raising the federal minimum wage, but “not to a level that’s going to put all these businesses out of business.”
The president went on to argue that the minimum wage should be decided by state governments.
“Some places, $15 is not so bad. In other places, other states, $15 would be ruinous,” Trump said, referring to restaurants and other businesses.
Katrina Trinko and Ken McIntyre contributed to this report.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks during the final 2020 presidential campaign debate in Nashville, Tenn., October 22, 2020. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Joe Biden is a career liar and he lied some more in the debate, for instance when he dismissed the now well-supported New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s business dealing as “a Russian plant.” There is zero evidence for this. He offered this line:
There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. Five former heads of the CIA — both parties — say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”
There were some headlines from Biden-friendly media to this effect, but this is a gross mischaracterization of the letter from ex-CIA chief John Brennan et al, which merely asserted that the Hunter Biden story sounded like a Russian disinformation op, not that there was any evidence for this. The relevant portion reads:
We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement” [But] there are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement.
Biden’s lie about fracking — “I never said I opposed fracking” — was so egregious that even CNN’s Daniel Dale mentioned it in his after-action report. Biden has repeatedly suggested banning fracking, sometimes specifying new fracking, sometimes specifying on federal lands (where a lot of fracking takes place), and has even promised to “get rid of fossil fuels.”
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Monday said that Hunter Biden’s laptop “is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” amid claims from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff suggesting otherwise.
Ratcliffe, during an exclusive interview on FOX Business’ “Mornings with Maria,” was asked about the allegations from Schiff, D-Calif., who over the weekend said that the Hunter Biden emails suggesting Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had knowledge of, and was allegedly involved in, his son’s foreign business dealings.
“It’s funny that some of the people who complain the most about intelligence being politicized are the ones politicizing the intelligence,” Ratcliffe said. “Unfortunately, it is Adam Schiff who said the intelligence community believes the Hunter Biden laptop and emails on it are part of a Russian disinformation campaign.”
He added: “Let me be clear: the intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that. And we have shared no intelligence with Adam Schiff, or any member of Congress.”
Ratcliffe went on to say that it is “simply not true.”
WFP USA Board Chair Hunter Biden introduces his father Vice President Joe Biden during the World Food Program USA’s 2016 McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony at the Organization of American States on April 12, 2016, in Washington, D.C. (Kris Connor/WireImage)
“Hunter Biden’s laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” Ratcliffe said, adding again that “this is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign.”
Ratcliffe’s comments come after Schiff over the weekend described the emails as being part of a smear coming “from the Kremlin,” amid claims the revelations are part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
“We know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin,” Schiff said on CNN. “That’s been clear for well over a year now that they’ve been pushing this false narrative about this vice president and his son.”
A senior intelligence official backed up Ratcliffe’s assessment.
“Ratcliffe is 100% correct,” the senior intelligence official told Fox News. “There is no intelligence at this time to support Chairman Schiff’s statement that recent stories on Biden’s foreign business dealings are part of a smart campaign that ‘comes from the Kremlin.’ Numerous foreign adversaries are seeking to influence American politics, policies, and media narratives. They don’t need any help from politicians who spread false information under the guise of intelligence.”
Ratcliffe went on to say that the laptop is “in the jurisdiction of the FBI.”
“The FBI has had possession of this,” he said. “Without commenting on any investigation that they may or may not have, their investigation is not centered around Russian disinformation and the intelligence community is not playing any role with respect to that.”
He added: “The intelligence community has not been involved in Hunter Biden’s laptop.”
A senior Trump administration official, however, told Fox News that the FBI was not investigating the emails as Russian disinformation.
The FBI declined to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation, as is standard practice.
Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is investigating Hunter Biden’s emails which reveal that he introduced his father, the former vice president, to a top executive at Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings in 2015.
Ratcliffe went on to say that his role as director of National Intelligence, which he assumed earlier this year, is “to not allow people to leverage the intelligence community for a political narrative that’s not true.”
“In this case, Adam Schiff saying this is part of a disinformation campaign and that the intelligence community has assessed and believes that — that is simply not true,” he said. “Whether its Republicans or Democrats, if they try to leverage the intelligence community for political gain, I won’t allow it.”
Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is investigating Hunter Biden’s emails.
The emails in question were first obtained by the New York Post and, in part, revealed that Hunter Biden introduced the then-vice president to a top executive at Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings less than a year before he pressured government officials in Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the company.
“We regularly speak with individuals who email the committee’s whistleblower account to determine whether we can validate their claims,” Johnson told Fox News. “Although we consider those communications to be confidential, because the individual in this instance spoke with the media about his contact with the committee, we can confirm receipt of his email complaint, have been in contact with the whistleblower, and are in the process of validating the information he provided.”
The Post report revealed that Biden, at Hunter’s request, met with Vadym Pozharskyi in April 2015 in Washington, D.C.
The meeting was mentioned in an email of appreciation, according to the Post, that Pozharskyi sent to Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015 — a year after Hunter took on his lucrative position on the board of Burisma.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email read.
But Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates last week hit back against the New York Post story, saying: “Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”
“The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani—whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported—claimed to have such materials,” Bates continued. “Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”
The Biden campaign also told Fox News Sunday that the former vice president “never had a meeting” with Pozharskyi.
Biden, prior to the emails surfacing, repeatedly has claimed he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”
Hunter Biden’s business dealings, and role on the board of Burisma, emerged during the Trump impeachment inquiry in 2019.
Biden once famously boasted on camera that when he was vice president and spearheading the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin, who was the top prosecutor at the time. He had been investigating the founder of Burisma.
“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden infamously said to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018.
“Well, son of a b—,” he continued. “He got fired.”
Biden and Biden allies have maintained, though, that his intervention prompting the firing of Shokin had nothing to do with his son, but rather was tied to corruption concerns.
Meanwhile, the Post reported Wednesday the emails were part of a trove of data recovered from a laptop which was dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware in April 2019.
The Post reported that other material turned up on the laptop, including a video, which they described as showing Hunter smoking crack while engaged in a sexual act with an unidentified woman, as well as other sexually explicit images.
The FBI reportedly seized the computer and hard drive in December 2019. The shop owner, though, said he made a copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello.
The Post reported that the FBI referred questions about the hard drive and laptop to the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office, where a spokesperson told the outlet that the office “can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”
A lawyer for Hunter Biden did not comment on specifics, but instead told the Post that Giuliani “has been pushing widely discredited conspiracy theories about the Biden family, openly relying on actors tied to Russian intelligence.”
Giuliani did not respond to Fox News’ requests for comment.
Another email, dated May 13, 2017, and obtained by Fox News, includes a discussion of “renumeration packages” for six people in a business deal with a Chinese energy firm. The email appeared to identify Hunter Biden as “Chair/ Vice Chair depending on an agreement with CEFC,” in an apparent reference to now-bankrupt CEFC China Energy Co.
The email includes a note that “Hunter has some office expectations he will elaborate.” A proposed equity split references “20” for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy?” with no further details.
Fox News spoke to one of the people who was copied on the email, who confirmed its authenticity.
Sources also told Fox News that “the big guy” was a reference to the former vice president. The New York Post initially published the emails, and others, that Fox News has also obtained.
While Biden has not commented on that email, or his alleged involvement in any deals with the Chinese Energy firm, his campaign said it released the former vice president’s tax documents and returns, which do not reflect any involvement with Chinese investments.
Fox News also obtained an email last week that revealed an adviser of Burisma Holdings, Vadym Pozharskyi, wrote an email to Hunter Biden on May 12, 2014, requesting “advice” on how he could use his “influence to convey a message” to “stop” what the company considers to be “politically motivated actions.”
“We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message / signal, etc .to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” Pozharskyi wrote.
The email, part of a longer email chain obtained by Fox News, appeared to be referencing the firm’s founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, being under investigation.
Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from Tucker Carlson’s opening commentary on the Oct. 15, 2020 edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
Tom Cotton said it best below:
We knew Joe Biden’s son Hunter pocketed $50,000 a month for a job with a Ukrainian gas company. Joe Biden allowed his son to make millions in Ukraine and China while Joe was Vice President.
Now, the New York Post is reporting that Vice President Biden may have been introduced to some of the corrupt Ukrainian businessmen paying Hunter… at the same time Vice President Biden was supposed to be overseeing our policy towards Ukraine.
Not everything you hear is untrue and not every story is complex. At the heart of the growing Biden-Ukrainescandal, for example, is a very straightforward question: Did Joe Biden subvert American foreign policy in order to enrich his own family?
In 2015, Joe Biden was the sitting vice president of the United States. Included in his portfolio were U.S. relations with the nation of Ukraine. At that moment, Vice President Joe Biden had more influence over the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian economy than any other person on the globe outside of Eastern Europe.
Biden’s younger son, Hunter, knew that and hoped to get rich from his father’s influence. Emails published Wednesday by The New York Post, documents apparently taken directly from Hunter Biden’s own laptop, tell some of that story.
“Tucker Carlson Tonight” have obtained another batch of emails, some exclusively. We believe they also came from Hunter Biden’s laptop. We can’t prove that they did, we haven’t examined that computer. But every detail that we could check, including Hunter Biden’s personal email address at the time, suggests they are authentic.
If these emails are fake, this is the most complex and sophisticated hoax in history. It almost seems beyond human capacity. The Biden campaign clearly believes these emails are real. They have not said otherwise. We sent the body of them to Hunter Biden’s attorney and never heard back. So with that in mind, here’s what we have learned.
On Nov. 2, 2015, at 4:36 p.m., a Burisma executive called Vadym Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden and his business partner, Devon Archer. The purpose of the email, Pozharskyi explains, is to “be on the same page re our final goals … including, but not limited to: a concrete course of actions.”
So what did Burisma want, exactly? Well, good PR, for starters. Pozharskyi wanted “high-ranking US [sic] officials” to express their “positive opinion” of Burisma, and then he wanted the administration to act on Burisma’s behalf.
“The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US [sic] policy-makers to Ukraine in November, aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support” to Burisma.
The goal, Pozharskyi explained, was to “close down for [sic] any cases/pursuits” against the head of Burisma in Ukraine.
It couldn’t be clearer what they wanted. Burisma wanted Huter Biden’s father to get their company out of legal trouble with the Ukrainian government. And that’s exactly what happened. One month later to the day, on Dec. 2, 2015, Hunter Biden received a notice from a Washington PR firm called Blue Star Strategies, which apparently had been hired to lobby the Obama administration on Ukraine. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” have exclusively obtained that email.
“Hello all …” it began. “This morning, the White House hosted a conference call regarding the Vice President’s upcoming trip to Ukraine. Attached is a memo from the Blue Star Strategies team with the minutes of the call, which outlined the trip’s agenda and addressed several questions regarding U.S. policy toward Ukraine.”
So here you have a PR firm involved in an official White House foreign policy call. How could that happen? Good question. But it worked.
Days later, Joe Biden flew to Ukraine and did exactly what his son wanted. The vice president gave a speech slamming the very Ukrainian law enforcement official who was tormenting Burisma. If the Ukrainian government didn’t fire its top prosecutor, a man called Viktor Shokin, Biden explained, the administration would withhold a billion dollars in American aid. Now, Ukraine is a poor country, so they had no choice but to obey. Biden’s bullying worked. He bragged about it later.
The obvious question: Why was the vice president of the United States threatening a tiny country like Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor? That doesn’t seem like a vice president’s role. Well, now we know why.
Viktor Shokin has signed an affidavit affirming that he was, in fact, investigating Burisma at the moment Joe Biden had him removed. Shokin said that before he was fired, administration officials pressured him to drop the case against Burisma. He would not do that, so Joe Biden canned him
That’s how things really work in Washington. Your son’s got a lucrative consulting deal with a Ukrainian energy company, you tailor American foreign policy — our foreign policy– to help make him rich. Even at the State Department, possibly the most cynical agency in government, this seemed shockingly brazen.
During the impeachment proceedings last fall, a State Department official named George Kent said it was widely known in Washington that the Bidens were up to something sleazy in Ukraine.
“I was on a call with somebody on the vice president’s staff and … I raised my concerns that I had heard that Hunter Biden was on the board” of Burisma, Kent recalled. This, he noted, could create a perception of a conflict of interest.
So how did the vice president’s office respond to this concern? According to George Kent, “The message that I recall hearing back was that the vice president’s son, Beau, was dying of cancer and there was no further bandwidth to deal with family-related issues at the time.”
Family-related issues? This was America’s foreign policy being tailored to Joe Biden’s son. Five years later, Joe Biden still has not been forced to explain why he fired Ukraine’s top prosecutor at precisely the moment his son was being paid to get him to fire Ukraine’s top prosecutor, nor has Joe Biden addressed whether or not he personally benefited from the Burisma contract.
But there are tantalizing hints. On Wednesday, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani published what he said was yet another email from Hunter Biden’s laptop. It’s a note to one of his children. At the end of the email, there’s this quote: “But dont [sic] worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
What does that mean, exactly? Well, we don’t know. There may be more detail on the laptop, but unfortunately, we don’t have access to that. But the question remains, how has Joe Biden lived in extravagance all these years on a government salary? No one has ever answered that question. And the tech monopolies are working hard to make certain no one ever does.
Thursday morning, the New York Post published another story based on the emails. This one describes a business venture Hunter Biden was working on in China. One email describes a “provisional agreement that the equity will be distributed as follows … 10 held by H for the big guy?”
The big guy? Is the big guy Joe Biden? If so, how much did Joe Biden get and how much of that came from the Communist Chinese government? Those are real questions, this man could be elected president in three weeks. But Twitter doesn’t want you to wonder. It won’t allow you to ask those questions. Twitter restricted the New York Post story as “unsafe,” like it was a lawn dart or a defective circular saw. And that was enough for the Biden campaign.
All day Thursday, they deflected questions about Joe Biden’s subversion of our country’s foreign policy by invoking Twitter’s ban on the New York Post story. So the tech monopoly censors information to help their candidate, that candidate uses that censorship to dismiss the story. One hand washes the other.
It doesn’t matter who you plan to vote for Nov. 3, you should be terrified. Democracies cannot exist and never will be able to exist without the free flow of information. That is a prerequisite and without it, we’re done. But companies like Facebook and Google and Twitter do not care because they don’t believe in democracy. They worship power and they don’t need to be consistent. Melania Trump’s private phone conversations, the president’s stolen tax returns, they were happy to publish all of that. But if you criticize the Democratic candidate, their candidate, you are banned.
“Facebook and Twitter have policies to not spread things that are utterly unreliable, that have been debunked, and where their origin is untrustworthy,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Thursday. “They’re practicing their own internal controls, as I wish they had over the past four years … An active Russian disinformation campaign in 2016 had an influence on that election. They are trying even harder in this election. I’m glad that they are managing the content on their own websites.”
Chris Coons is a liar.
Not one word of this story has been debunked, not one word in those emails has been “debunked.” And if it is debunked, we’ll be the first to report it because we’re not liars. But did you catch the phrase he wanted you to hear: “Russian disinformation”? That’s what they’re claiming these emails are. And it’s all over the Internet, in fact-free, conspiracy-laden conjecture crazier than anything the QAnon people ever thought of.
But none of their garbage, their lunatic lies about Russia is ever censored by the tech monopolies. It’s not “unsafe” because it helps Joe Biden. Therefore, you can read it.
And where are the real journalists, now that we need them more than ever? They’re gone. They’re cowering. They’re afraid. They don’t want to upset power. Jake Sherman of Politico, who claims to be a news reporter, actually apologized on Twitter for asking the Biden campaign about Hunter Biden’s emails. These people are craven. They have no standards. They have no self-respect. Like their masters in Silicon Valley, they worship power alone.
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Twitter, Facebook Suppress New York Post Report on Hunter Biden
Andrew Kerr4 hours ago
Twitter on Wednesday afternoon began blocking tweets from being posted that contained links to the New York Post’s report on alleged emails that purportedly show Hunter Biden offered to introduce then-Vice President Joe Biden to an executive of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
“We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful,” Twitter told users who attempted to post a tweet containing a link to the Post’s story.
A Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the platform took action to limit the spread of the Post’s report because of the lack of authoritative reporting on the origins of the materials cited by the outlet.
“In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter,” the spokesperson said.
There’s no evidence at the moment the Post relied on hacked materials for its report.
According to the Post, the email was part of a “massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer” that was dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019. The owner of the repair shop said the customer never came back to pay for the service and retrieve the computer, the Post reported.
The Post uploaded an invoice signed by the customer that states that equipment left with the repair shop “after 90 days of notification of completed service will be treated as abandoned.”
The repair shop owner later alerted the FBI to the existence of the laptop and its hard drive after it went unclaimed, both of which were seized by federal authorities in December, according to a federal subpoena obtained by the Post.
Before the laptop was seized, however, the shop owner reportedly made a copy of its hard drive and turned it over to a lawyer for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who in turn provided a copy of the hard drive’s contents to the Post.
The Daily Caller News Foundation has not confirmed the authenticity of the emails reported by the Post, and the Biden campaign issued a statement on Wednesday denying that Biden met with the Burisma executive in 2015 as alleged in the Post’s report.
Link to New York Post story blocked by Twitter. (Screenshot: Andrew Kerr)
Also on Wednesday afternoon, Twitter began blocking any tweet from being posted that contained links to one of the two documents the Post uploaded to document sharing platform Scribd.
One of the documents depicts an alleged email sent by Hunter Biden in April 2014 to his former business partner Devon Archer, and the other is an alleged email that Vadym Pozharsky, an advisor to Burisma’s board of directors, sent to Hunter Biden and Archer in May 2014.
Link to New York Post Scribd document titled, “Email from Vadim Pozharskyi to Devon Archer and Hunter Biden” blocked by Twitter. (Screenshot: Andrew Kerr)
Link to New York Post Scribd document titled, “Email from Robert Biden to Devon Archer” blocked by Twitter. (Screenshot:Andrew Kerr)
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone, a former staffer for the Democratic House Majority PAC and former California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, announced earlier Wednesday it would reduce the distribution of the Post’s report despite the lack of any fact-checks against the story.
During the vice presidential debate Wednesday night, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Vice President Mike Pence sparred over a variety of policies, revealing significant differences on several issues.
The debate, which was moderated by USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page, featured the two contenders discussing issues ranging from climate change and COVID-19 to abortion and the Supreme Court.
Here are six highlights from the debate:
1) COVID-19
Harris aggressively attacked the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. After the opening question, she laid out what could be called a prosecutor’s case. How are socialists deluding a whole generation? Learn more now >>
“The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” the California senator said. “And here are the facts: 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months, over 7 million people who have contracted this disease, 1 in 5 businesses closed. We are looking at frontline workers treated like sacrificial workers. We are looking at 30 million people who in the last several months had to file for unemployment.”
That was in response to a question from Page about what the Biden administration would have done differently than Trump to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Harris then went on to summarize the Biden-Harris plan.
“Our plan is about what we need to do around a national strategy, for contact tracing, for testing, for administration of a vaccine, and make sure it’s free,” Harris said.
Pence, who headed the White House coronavirus task force, defended the administration’s record.
“I want the American people to know that from the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first,” the vice president said. “Before there were more than five cases in the United States—all people who had returned from China—President Donald Trump did what no other American had ever done. That was, he suspended all travel from China, the second-largest economy in the world.”
Pence added: “Joe Biden opposed that decision.”
“He said it was xenophobic and hysterical. I can tell you, having led the White House coronavirus task force that decision alone by President Trump gave us invaluable time to set up the greatest mobilization since World War II,” Pence said. “I believe it saved hundreds of thousands of American lives.”
As for the Biden plan, Pence said, the Trump administration was already doing much of what it recommends. He also took a shot at a Biden scandal that effectively ended his 1988 presidential bid.
“The reality is, when you look at the Biden plan, it looks an awful lot like what President Trump and I and our task force have been doing every step of the way,” he said. “ … It looks a little bit like plagiarism, something Joe Biden knows a little bit about.”
In September 1987, Biden came in for withering criticism for borrowing lines from a speech by then-British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock without attribution, knocking him out of the race when it was subsequently revealed to be part of a larger pattern of borrowing lines from other politicians without credit.
Asked about the race to develop a vaccine, Harris said she wouldn’t trust a Trump-endorsed vaccine, but would take one approved by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it. Absolutely,” Harris said. “But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, I’m not taking it.”
Pence fired back that the California senator was politicizing the vaccine.
“The fact that you continue to undermine public confidence in a vaccine, if a vaccine emerges during the Trump administration, I think, is unconscionable,” the vice president said. “Senator, I just ask you, stop playing politics with people’s lives. The reality is, we will have a vaccine by the end of this year, and it will continue to save countless American lives.”
2) Taxes and the Economy
Harris and Pence sparred over the tax cuts passed by Congress in 2017 and debated Biden’s tax plan.
Harris said that the Biden administration would repeal the 2017 tax cuts “on Day One,” and that they were passed to benefit the “rich.”
“Joe Biden believes you measure the health and strength of America’s economy based on the health and strength of the American worker and the American family,” Harris said. “On the other hand, you have Donald Trump, who measures the strength of the economy based on how rich people are doing.”
Pence defended the tax cuts and said: “Joe Biden said twice in the debate last week that he’s going to repeal the Trump tax cuts,” Pence said. “That was tax cuts that gave the average working family $2,000 with a tax break.”
In 2017, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which reduced federal income taxes and made various other changes to the U.S. tax code.
Following the tax cut, the American economy experienced record low unemployment, wage growth, and an overall increase in business investment, according to Adam Michel, a specialist on tax policy and the federal budget as a policy analyst in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Harris said that Biden’s tax plan would end tax breaks for the wealthy but wouldn’t raise taxes on American making under $400,000.
“He has been very clear about that,” Harris said, adding, “Joe Biden is the one who, during the Great Recession, was responsible for the Recovery Act that brought America back, and now the Trump and Pence administration wants to take credit for Joe Biden’s success for the economy that they had at the beginning of their term.”
According to The Washington Post, “most Americans received a tax” cut in 2017, not just the rich.
Biden’s tax proposal would raise taxes about $3 trillion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
“… The Biden tax plan would reduce [gross domestic product] by 1.47 percent over the long term,” according to the Tax Foundation’s General Equilibrium Model. “On a conventional basis, the Biden tax plan by 2030 would lead to about 6.5 percent less after-tax income for the top 1 percent of taxpayers and about a 1.7 percent decline in after-tax income for all taxpayers on average.”
According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Biden’s proposal “would increase taxes on average on all income groups, but the highest-income households would see substantially larger increases, both in dollar amounts and as a share of their incomes.”
3) Climate Change and Fracking
Harris said a Biden administration would grow the economy through green energy, but she also denied past support for banning fracking.
“Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact. I will repeat that Joe Biden has been very clear that he thinks about growing jobs,” Harris said, adding, “Part of those jobs that will be created by Joe Biden are going to be about clean energy and renewable energy, because Joe understands that the West Coast of our country is burning, including my home state of California.”
Harris also spoke about climate-related problems in the Southeast and in the Midwest.
“Joe sees what is happening in the Gulf states, which are being battered by storms. Joe has seen and talked with the farmers in Iowa, whose entire crops have been destroyed because of floods,” she said. “So, Joe believes again in science. … We have seen a pattern with this administration, which is, they don’t believe in science. Joe’s plan is about saying we are going to deal with it, but we are going to create jobs.”
Pence addressed the issue of climate change, but also attacked the Biden campaign’s promises for the environment.
“As I said, Susan, the climate is changing. We’ll follow the science,” he said.
“With regard to banning fracking, I just recommend people look at the record. You yourself said repeatedly you would ban fracking,” Pence said of Harris. “You were the first Senate co-sponsor of the Green New Deal.
“While Joe Biden denied support for the Green New Deal, Susan, thank you for pointing out the Green New Deal is on [the Biden-Harris] website. As USA Today said, it’s essentially the same plan as you co-sponsored with AOC.”
That was a reference to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the main sponsor of the Green New Deal in the House.
“You just heard the senator say she was going to resubmit America to the Paris Climate Accord. The American people have always cherished our environment, and we’ll continue to cherish it,” Pence said. “We’ve made great progress reducing [carbon dioxide] emissions through American innovation and the development of natural gas through fracking.
“We don’t need a massive $2 trillion Green New Deal that would impose all new mandates on American businesses and American families. … It makes no sense. It will cost jobs.”
4) China
Pence and Harris sparred over U.S. relations with China, including its role in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“China and the World Health Organization did not play straight with the American people,” Pence said. “They did not let our personnel into China … until the middle of February.”
The vice president defended the administration’s aggressive trade policy with Beijing. “But China has been taking advantage of the United States for decades, in the wake of Biden cheerleading for China,” he said.
Harris said that the Trump administration had “lost” the trade war with China. “What ended up happening because of a so-called “trade war” with China? America lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs,” she said.
Pence countered that a Biden administration would go soft on the communist country.
“Joe Biden has been a cheerleader for communist China over the last several decades,” he said.
The vice president criticized the record of the administration of Biden’s boss, President Barack Obama, saying that it had dismissed the idea that manufacturing jobs could ever come back to America.
“In our first three years, this administration saw 500,000 manufacturing jobs created, and that’s the type of growth we’re going to see,” Pence said.
5) Supreme Court and Abortion
With the nomination of federal appeals court Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Page asked both candidates what they would want their respective states of Indiana and California to do if the high court were to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide and sent the matter back to the states to decide for themselves.
Neither candidate directly addressed the question, but both spoke of the abortion issue in the context of the Supreme Court.
“The issues before us couldn’t be more serious,” Harris said. “There is the issue of choice, and I will always fight for a woman’s right to make a decision about her own body. It should be her decision and not that of Donald Trump and the vice president, Michael Pence.”
Pence reiterated his pro-life stance, and called out the Biden-Harris ticket.
“I couldn’t be more proud to serve as vice president to a president who stands unapologetically for the sanctity of human life. I will not apologize for it,” he said. “This is another one of those cases where there is such a dramatic contrast. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support taxpayer funding of abortion all the way up to the moment of birth, late-term abortion.”
Pence asked Harris at one point if she would support packing the courts, meaning increasing the number of Supreme Court justices to 10 or more, and then he accused her of not answering the question.
“Once again you gave a non-answer, Joe Biden gave a non-answer,” Pence said. “The American people deserve a straight answer.”
In his remarks, Pence noted the Supreme Court has had nine justices for the past 150 years.
6) Race Relations
The vice presidential candidates also had a heated exchange on race relations amid social unrest in major American cities.
Harris called out Trump for what she claimed was his reluctance to condemn white supremacists, referring to last week’s presidential debate between Trump and Biden.
“Last week, the president of the United States took a debate stage in front of 70 million Americans and refused to condemn white supremacists,” Harris said. “It wasn’t like he wasn’t given a chance. He didn’t do it, and then he doubled down. Then he said, when pressed, ‘Stand back, stand by.’ This is part of a pattern with Donald Trump.”
She also cited the deadly 2017 Charlottesville, Va., Unite the Right rally.
Pence countered by citing Trump’s comments regarding the Charlottesville violence.
“This is one of the things that makes people dislike the media so much in this country, that you selectively edit so much,” Pence said, arguing that the media had distorted what Trump had said about there being “very fine people” on both sides in Charlottesville.
“After President Trump made comments about people on either side of the debate over monuments, he condemned the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists,” the vice president said.
“He has done so repeatedly. Your concern that he doesn’t condemn neo-Nazis, President Trump has Jewish grandchildren. His daughter and son-in-law are Jewish. This is a president who respects and cherishes all of the American people.”
Pence then went on offense about Harris’ prosecution record as a district attorney in San Francisco.
“When you were D.A. in San Francisco, African Americans were 19 times more likely to be prosecuted for minor drug offenses than whites and Hispanics,” Pence said to Harris. “You increased the disproportionate incarceration. You did nothing on criminal justice reform in California. You didn’t lift a finger to pass the First Step Act on Capitol Hill.”
The First Step Act is a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill signed into law by Trump in December 2018.
Harris didn’t directly defend her record as district attorney of San Francisco, but pivoted to her record as California attorney general.
“Having served as the attorney general of California, the work I did is a model of what our nation needs to do and what we will be able to do,” she said, adding, “I was the first statewide officer to institute a requirement that my agents would wear body cameras and keep them on full time. We were the first to initiate that there would be training for law enforcement on implicit bias.”
——
I grew up and went to EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL in Memphis and ran some of our track meets at RHODES COLLEGE and I know that campus well and I even was contacted by a official at Rhodes with some recruiting material after a good performance in my sophomore year in my mile run there in 1978. Also during the late 1970’s I helped my friends Byron Tyler and David Rogers in a Christian Rock Saturday morning show on Rhodes’s radio station!!! My brother-in-law graduated from Rhodes but I graduated from University of Memphis in 1982.
President Trump is going to announce his nomination for the Supreme Court later this week, and all the talk is about Amy Coney Barrett, currently a Notre Dame professor of law and a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. As it happens, Amy was a classmate of mine at Rhodes College, a small (1,400 students at the time) liberal-arts school in Memphis. I didn’t know her well, but she was a friend of other friends, and we were acquainted a bit through being in a club together.
I can tell you a few things about her, though. For one thing, she did not have a wild reputation, so I think that if she’s nominated, the Senate hearings will have to find something else to complain about. She was an English major and served on the Honor Council, a student body that enforced our honor code against lying and cheating (a great feature of academics at Rhodes that allowed us take-home tests in many classes). We were both in Mortar Board, an honor society. She wasn’t a political activist and was never a member of the College Republicans (I was, and we had a much larger membership than the College Democrats).Amy at the homecoming game senior year
Popular, as far as I knew, and by our senior year, she shows up in the yearbook’s candid photos taken around campus.Candid photo in the social room (the ironing board refers to another picture)
I hadn’t thought about her for a long time, until three years ago when friends were pointing out she’d been nominated for the Seventh Circuit, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein grilled her over her religion, proclaiming that “the dogma lives loudly within you.” At the time, I thought that was a rough Senate hearing.
My daughter was a Notre Dame student, and two years ago, I stopped by to visit Amy at her home in South Bend and catch up. She had been listed as being on the president’s shortlist for a Supreme Court seat, and Kavanaugh was going through his own nomination process at that time.L to R: Me, Amy Barrett, and my daughter
My daughter had been treating the accusations against him as probably true by default and took an unconcerned view towards the behavior of the press. Amy knows Kavanaugh, spoke well of him, and described what it was like seeing the press contacting her and digging through rumors about him. That changed my daughter’s opinion of how these things go, she told me. I meant to ask her if she were named to the Supreme Court if she’d be willing to go through all of the hatred and attacks on her reputation that would surely be a part of it. But I can’t remember if I did. I reckon we’ll all find out soon enough, though.
As a footnote, if Amy is confirmed to the court, she would be the second Supreme Court justice to come from Rhodes. Our first was Abe Fortas (class of 1930), who was named by President Johnson in 1965. Fortas resigned in 1969 after a series of ethics scandals, but the college gives out the Abe Fortas Award for Excellence in Legal Studies each year. Quite understandable; we’re a small school, and we should still be proud one of our own was elevated to the Supreme Court. May Amy Barrett bring us more honor.Published in LawTags: SCOTUS; SUPREME COURT; Amy Coney Barrett
Barrett was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1972.[2] She is the eldest of seven children, with five sisters and a brother. Her father Michael Coney worked as an attorney for Shell Oil Company, and her mother Linda was a homemaker. Barrett grew up in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, and graduated from St. Mary’s Dominican High School in 1990.[9]
From 1999 to 2002, she practiced law at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin in Washington, D.C.[11][14]
Teaching and scholarship
Barrett served as a visiting associate professor and John M. Olin Fellow in Law at George Washington University Law School for a year before returning to her alma mater, Notre Dame Law School in 2002.[15]At Notre Dame she taught federal courts, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation. Barrett was named a Professor of Law in 2010, and from 2014 to 2017 held the Diane and M.O. Miller Research Chair of Law.[16] Her scholarship focuses on constitutional law, originalism, statutory interpretation, and stare decisis.[12] Her academic work has been published in journals such as the Columbia, Cornell, Virginia, Notre Dame, and TexasLaw Reviews.[15] Some of her most significant publications are Suspension and Delegation, 99 Cornell L. Rev. 251 (2014), Precedent and Jurisprudential Disagreement, 91 Tex. L. Rev. 1711 (2013), The Supervisory Power of the Supreme Court, 106 Colum. L. Rev. 101 (2006), and Stare Decisis and Due Process, 74 U. Colo. L. Rev. 1011 (2003).
At Notre Dame, Barrett received the “Distinguished Professor of the Year” award three times.[15] She taught Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure, Evidence, Federal Courts, Constitutional Theory Seminar, and Statutory Interpretation Seminar.[15] Barrett has continued to teach seminars as a sitting judge.[17]
A hearing on Barrett’s nomination before the Senate Judiciary Committee was held on September 6, 2017.[20] During the hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein questioned Barrett about a law review article Barrett co-wrote in 1998 with Professor John H. Garvey in which she argued that Catholic judges should in some cases recuse themselves from death penalty cases due to their moral objections to the death penalty. The article concluded that the trial judge should recuse herself instead of entering the order. Asked to “elaborate on the statements and discuss how you view the issue of faith versus fulfilling the responsibility as a judge today,” Barrett said that she had participated in many death-penalty appeals while serving as law clerk to Scalia, adding, “My personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear on the discharge of my duties as a judge”[21][22] and “It is never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they arise from faith or anywhere else, on the law.”[23] Worried that Barrett would not uphold Roe v. Wade given her Catholic beliefs, Feinstein followed Barrett’s response by saying, “the dogma lives loudly within you, and that is a concern.”[24][25][26] The hearing made Barrett popular with religious conservatives,[11] and in response, the conservative Judicial Crisis Network began to sell mugs with Barrett’s photo and Feinstein’s “dogma” remark.[27]Feinstein’s and other senators’ questioning was criticized by some Republicans and other observers, such as university presidents John I. Jenkins and Christopher Eisgruber, as improper inquiry into a nominee’s religious belief that employed an unconstitutional “religious test” for office;[23][28][29]others, such as Nan Aron, defended Feinstein’s line of questioning.[29]
Lambda Legal, an LGBT civil rights organization, co-signed a letter with 26 other gay rights organizations opposing Barrett’s nomination. The letter expressed doubts about her ability to separate faith from her rulings on LGBT matters.[30][31] During her Senate confirmation hearing, Barrett was questioned about landmark LGBTQ legal precedents such as Obergefell v. Hodges, United States v. Windsor, and Lawrence v. Texas. Barrett said these cases are “binding precedents” that she intended to “faithfully follow if confirmed” to the appeals court, as required by law.[30] The letter co-signed by Lambda Legal said “Simply repeating that she would be bound by Supreme Court precedent does not illuminate—indeed, it obfuscates—how Professor Barrett would interpret and apply precedent when faced with the sorts of dilemmas that, in her view, ‘put Catholic judges in a bind.'”[30] Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network later said that warnings from LGBT advocacy groups about shortlisted nominees to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, including Barrett, were “very much overblown” and called them “mostly scare tactics.”[30]
In 2015, Barrett signed a letter in support of the Ordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family that endorsed the Catholic Church’s teachings on human sexuality and its definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. When asked about the letter, she testified that the Church’s definition of marriage is legally irrelevant.[32][33]
Barrett’s nomination was supported by every law clerk she had worked with and all of her 49 faculty colleagues at Notre Dame Law school. 450 former students signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting Barrett’s nomination.[34][35]
On October 5, 2017, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11–9 on party lines to recommend Barrett and report her nomination to the full Senate.[36][37] On October 30, the Senate invoked cloture by a vote of 54–42.[38] It confirmed her by a vote of 55–43 on October 31, with three Democrats—Joe Donnelly, Tim Kaine, and Joe Manchin—voting for her.[10] She received her commission two days later.[2] Barrett is the first and to date only woman to occupy an Indiana seat on the Seventh Circuit.[39]
Notable cases
Title IX
In Doe v. Purdue University, 928 F.3d 652 (7th Cir. 2019), the court, in a unanimous decision written by Barrett, reinstated a suit brought by a male Purdue University student (John Doe) who had been found guilty of sexual assault by Purdue University, which resulted in a one-year suspension, loss of his Navy ROTC scholarship, and expulsion from the ROTC affecting his ability to pursue his chosen career in the Navy.[40] Doe alleged the school’s Advisory Committee on Equity discriminated against him on the basis of his sex and violated his rights to due process by not interviewing the alleged victim, not allowing him to present evidence in his defense, including an erroneous statement that he confessed to some of the alleged assault, and appearing to believe the victim instead of the accused without hearing from either party or having even read the investigation report. The court found that Doe had adequately alleged that the university deprived him of his occupational liberty without due process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and had violated his Title IX rights “by imposing a punishment infected by sex bias,” and remanded to the District Court for further proceedings.[41][42][43]
Title VII
In EEOC v. AutoZone, the Seventh Circuit considered the federal government’s appeal from a ruling in a suit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against AutoZone; the EEOC argued that the retailer’s assignment of employees to different stores based on race (e.g., “sending African American employees to stores in heavily African American neighborhoods”) violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The panel, which did not include Barrett, ruled in favor of AutoZone. An unsuccessful petition for rehearing en banc was filed. Three judges—Chief Judge Diane Wood and Judges Ilana Rovner and David Hamilton—voted to grant rehearing, and criticized the panel decision as upholding a “separate-but-equal arrangement”; Barrett and four other judges voted to deny rehearing.[11]
Immigration
In Cook County v. Wolf, 962 F.3d 208 (7th Cir. 2020), Barrett wrote a 40-page dissent from the majority’s decision to uphold a preliminary injunction on the Trump administration’s controversial “public charge rule“, which heightened the standard for obtaining a green card. In her dissent, she argued that any noncitizens who disenrolled from government benefits because of the rule did so due to confusion about the rule itself rather than from its application, writing that the vast majority of the people subject to the rule are not eligible for government benefits in the first place. On the merits, Barrett departed from her colleagues Wood and Rovner, who held that DHS’s interpretation of that provision was unreasonable under Chevron Step Two. Barrett would have held that the new rule fell within the broad scope of discretion granted to the Executive by Congress through the Immigration and Nationality Act.[44][45][46] The public charge issue is the subject of a circuit split.[44][46][47]
In Yafai v. Pompeo, 924 F.3d 969 (7th Cir. 2019), the court considered a case brought by a Yemeni citizen, Ahmad, and her husband, a U.S. citizen, who challenged a consular officer’s decision to twice deny Ahmad’s visa application under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Yafai, the U.S. citizen, argued that the denial of his wife’s visa application violated his constitutional right to live in the United States with his spouse.[48] In an 2-1 majority opinion authored by Barrett, the court held that the plaintiff’s claim was properly dismissed under the doctrine of consular nonreviewability. She declined to address whether Yafai had been denied a constitutional right (or whether a constitutional right to live in the United States with his spouse existed) because even if a constitutional right was implicated, the court lacked authority to disturb the consular officer’s decision to deny Ahmad’s visa application because that decision was facially legitimate and bona fide. Following the panel’s decision, Yafai filed a petition for rehearing en banc; the petition was denied, with eight judges voting against rehearing and three in favor, Wood, Rovner and Hamilton. Barrett and Judge Joel Flaumconcurred in the denial of rehearing.[48][49]
Second Amendment
In Kanter v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437 (7th Cir. 2019), Barrett dissented when the court upheld a law prohibiting convicted nonviolent felons from possessing firearms. The plaintiffs had been convicted of mail fraud. The majority upheld the felony dispossession statutes as “substantially related to an important government interest in preventing gun violence.” In her dissent, Barrett argued that while the government has a legitimate interest in denying gun possession to felons convicted of violent crimes, there is no evidence that denying guns to nonviolent felons promotes this interest, and that the law violates the Second Amendment.[50][51]
Fourth Amendment
In Rainsberger v. Benner, 913 F.3d 640 (7th Cir. 2019), the panel, in an opinion by Barrett, affirmed the district court’s ruling denying the defendant’s motion for summary judgment and qualified immunity in a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 case. The defendant, Benner, was a police detective who knowingly provided false and misleading information in a probable cause affidavit that was used to obtain an arrest warrant against Rainsberger. (The charges were later dropped and Rainsberger was released.) The court found the defendant’s lies and omissions violated “clearly established law” and thus Benner was not shielded by qualified immunity.[52]
The case United States v. Watson, 900 F.3d 892 (7th Cir. 2018) involved police responding to an anonymous tip that people were “playing with guns” in a parking lot. The police arrived and searched the defendant’s vehicle, taking possession of two firearms; the defendant was later charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. The district court denied the defendant’s motion to suppress. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit, in a decision by Barrett, vacated and remanded, determining that the police lacked probable cause to search the vehicle based solely upon the tip, when no crime was alleged. Barrett distinguished Navarette v. California and wrote, “the police were right to respond to the anonymous call by coming to the parking lot to determine what was happening. But determining what was happening and immediately seizing people upon arrival are two different things, and the latter was premature…Watson’s case presents a close call. But this one falls on the wrong side of the Fourth Amendment.”[53]
In a 2013 Texas Law Review article, Barrett included as one of only seven Supreme Court “superprecedents“, Mapp vs Ohio (1961); the seminal case where the court found through the doctrine of selective incorporation that the 4th Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures was binding on state and local authorities in the same way it historically applied to the federal government.
Civil procedure and standing
In Casillas v. Madison Ave. Associates, Inc., 926 F.3d 329 (7th Cir. 2019), the plaintiff brought a class-action lawsuit against Madison Avenue, alleging that the company violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) when it sent her a debt-collection letter that described the FDCPA process for verifying a debt but failed to specify that she was required to respond in writing to trigger the FDCPA protections. Casillas did not allege that she had tried to verify her debt and trigger the statutory protections under the FDCPA, or that the amount owed was in any doubt. In a decision written by Barrett, the panel, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, found that the plaintiff’s allegation of receiving incorrect or incomplete information was a “bare procedural violation” that was insufficiently concrete to satisfy the Article III‘s injury-in-fact requirement. Wood dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc. The issue created a circuit split.[54][55][56]
Judicial philosophy and political views
Barrett considers herself an originalist. She is a constitutional scholar with expertise in statutory interpretation.[10] Reuters described Barrett as a “a favorite among religious conservatives,” and said that she has supported expansive gun rights and voted in favor of one of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies.[57]
Barrett was one of Justice Antonin Scalia‘s law clerks. She has spoken and written of her admiration of his close attention to the text of statutes. She has also praised his adherence to originalism.[58]
In 2013, Barrett wrote a Texas Law Review article on the doctrine of stare decisis wherein she listed seven cases that should be considered “superprecedents”—cases that the court would never consider overturning. The list included Brown v. Board of Education but specifically excluded Roe v. Wade. In explaining why it was not included, Barrett referenced scholarship agreeing that in order to qualify as “superprecedent” a decision must enjoy widespread support from not only jurists but politicians and the public at large to the extent of becoming immune to reversal or challenge. She argued the people must trust the validity of a ruling to such an extent the matter has been taken “off of the court’s agenda,” with lower courts no longer taking challenges to them seriously. Barrett pointed to Planned Parenthood v. Casey as specific evidence Roe had not yet attained this status.[59] The article did not include any pro-Second Amendment or pro-LGBT cases as “Super-Precedent”.[30][31] When asked during her confirmation hearings why she did not include any pro-LGBT cases as “superprecedent”, Barrett explained that the list contained in the article was collected from other scholars and not a product of her own independent analysis on the subject.[32][33]
Barrett has never ruled directly on a case pertaining to abortion rights, but she did vote to rehear a successful challenge to Indiana’s parental notification law in 2019. In 2018, Barrett voted against striking down another Indiana law requiring burial or cremation of fetal remains. In both cases, Barrett voted with the minority. The Supreme Court later reinstated the fetal remains law and in July 2020 it ordered a rehearing in the parental notification case.[57] At a 2013 event reflecting on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, she described the decision—in Notre Dame Magazine‘s paraphrase—as “creating through judicial fiat a framework of abortion on demand.”[60][61] She also remarked that it was “very unlikely” the court would overturn the core of Roe v. Wade: “The fundamental element, that the woman has a right to choose abortion, will probably stand. The controversy right now is about funding. It’s a question of whether abortions will be publicly or privately funded.”[62][63] NPR said that those statements were made before the election of Donald Trump and the changing composition of the Supreme Court to the right subsequent to his election, which could make Barrett’s vote pivotal in overturning Roe v. Wade.[64]
Barrett was critical of Chief JusticeJohn Roberts’opinion in the 5–4 decision that upheld the constitutionality of the central provision in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in NFIB vs. Sebelius. Roberts’s opinion defended the constitutionality of the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act by characterizing it as a “tax.” Barrett disapproved of this approach, saying Roberts pushed the ACA “beyond it’s plausible limit to save it.”[64][65][66][67] She criticized the Obama administration for providing employees of religious institutions the option of obtaining birth controlwithout having the religious institutions pay for it.[65]
Potential Supreme Court nomination
Barrett has been on President Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees since 2017, almost immediately after her court of appeals confirmation. In July 2018, after Anthony Kennedy‘s retirement announcement, she was reportedly one of three finalists Trump considered, along with Judge Raymond Kethledge and Judge Brett Kavanaugh.[16][68] Trump chose Kavanaugh.[69]Reportedly, although Trump liked Barrett, he was concerned about her lack of experience on the bench.[70] In the Republican Party, Barrett was favored by social conservatives.[70]
After Kavanaugh’s selection, Barrett was viewed as a possible Trump nominee for a future Supreme Court vacancy.[71] Trump was reportedly “saving” Ruth Bader Ginsburg‘s seat for Barrett if Ginsburg retired or died during his presidency.[72] Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, and Barrett has been widely mentioned as the front-runner to succeed her.[73][74][75][76]
Personal life
Judge Barrett with her husband, Jesse
Since 1999, Barrett has been married to fellow Notre Dame Law graduate Jesse M. Barrett, a partner at SouthBank Legal in South Bend, Indiana. Previously, Jesse Barrett worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorneyfor the Northern District of Indiana for 13 years.[77][78][79] They live in South Bend and have seven children, ranging in age from 8-19.[80] Two of the Barrett children are adopted from Haiti. Their youngest biological child has special needs.[79][2][81]Barrett is a practicing Catholic.[82][83]
Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in November 2017. She serves on the faculty of the Notre Dame Law School, teaching on constitutional law, federal courts, and statutory interpretation, and previously served on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Rhodes College in 1994 and her J.D. from Notre Dame Law School in 1997. Following law school, Barrett clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. She also practiced law with Washington, D.C. law firm Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin.
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, President Obama, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, President Obama, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (3)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (2)
It is truly sad to me that liberals will lie in order to attack good Christian people like state senator Jason Rapert of Conway, Arkansas because he headed a group of pro-life senators that got a pro-life bill through the Arkansas State Senate the last week of January in 2013. I have gone back and […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Max Brantley, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)
1 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton
2 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton
barton videos
4 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton
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February 10, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life.
“Most of the founding fathers of this nation … built the worldview of this nation on the authority of the Word of God,” Ken Ham said. “Because of that, there have been reminders in this culture concerning God’s Word, the God of creation.”
Olddoc read Jefferson’s own words given 237 years ago:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights…”
______________
I want to go where the evidence leads. AMERICANS UNITED Rob Boston misled several leaders into believing that David Barton fabricated quotes and attributed them to the founders and when I confronted him about that he just laughed and said he was glad that Barton was experiencing problems because of the article that Boston wrote even though Boston himself admitted to me that he knew that Barton did not fabricate the quotes but just got them from secondary sources.
In the advertisement from the Freedom from Religion Foundation you have a quote from John Adams but these quotes below were omitted. By the way these quotes were so powerful that I emailed and mailed them to the White House and here is a copy of the letter at this link
SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; JUDGE; DIPLOMAT; ONE OF TWO SIGNERS OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS; SECOND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.1
The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost. . . . There is no authority, civil or religious – there can be no legitimate government but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words damnation.2
Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company: I mean hell.3
The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.4
Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. . . . What a Eutopia – what a Paradise would this region be!5
I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.6
1.Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington D. C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XIII, p. 292-294. In a letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson on June 28, 1813.(Return)
2. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856), Vol. X, p. 254, to Thomas Jefferson on April 19, 1817. (Return)
3. John Adams, Works, Vol. III, p. 421, diary entry for July 26, 1796. (Return)
4. John Adams, Works, Vol. II, pp. 6-7, diary entry for February 22, 1756. (Return)
5. John Adams, Works, Vol. X, p. 85, to Thomas Jefferson on December 25, 1813. (Return)
6. John Adams and John Quincy Adams, The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams, Adrienne Koch and William Peden, editors (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. 292, John Quincy Adams to John Adams, January 3, 1817.
________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. There have […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
President Obama Speaks at The Ohio State University Commencement Ceremony Published on May 5, 2013 President Obama delivers the commencement address at The Ohio State University. May 5, 2013. You can learn a lot about what President Obama thinks the founding fathers were all about from his recent speech at Ohio State. May 7, 2013, […]
Dr. C. Everett Koop with Bill Graham. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This […]
America’s Founding Fathers Deist or Christian? – David Barton 4/6 There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at […]
3 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton There were 55 gentlemen who put together the constitution and their church affliation is of public record. Greg Koukl notes: Members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political foundations of our nation, were […]
I do not think that John Quincy Adams was a founding father in the same sense that his father was. However, I do think he was involved in the early days of our government working with many of the founding fathers. Michele Bachmann got into another history-related tussle on ABC’s “Good Morning America” today, standing […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ____________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political […]
Office of Barack and Michelle Obama P.O. Box 91000 Washington, DC 20066
Dear President Obama,
I wrote you over 700 letters while you were President and I mailed them to the White House and also published them on my blog http://www.thedailyhatch.org .I received several letters back from your staff and I wanted to thank you for those letters.
I have been reading your autobiography A PROMISED LAND and I have been enjoying it.
As an evangelical believer I am encouraged by your references to spiritual hymns, but your intellectual views seem to place you in the secular humanist school of thought.
Former President Barack Obama’s new book, “A Promised Land,” mentions only four pages in its index under the category “faith and.”
But the title of the book by the 44th U.S. president invokes biblical imagery — a land promised by God to his people — and Obama includes the role of religious institutions, faith leaders and personal traditions throughout the 750-page book. On the page after his dedication of the tome to his wife and daughters, Obama features the words from an African American spiritual:
“Fly and never tire
There’s a great camp-meeting in the Promised Land.”
While friends and strangers have told him they believe God engineered his road to the White House, Obama says he didn’t view his political path as a call from the Almighty.
(Pari Dukovic/Random House via AP) This photo provided by Random House shows the cover of “A Promised Land.” The first volume of former President Barack Obama’s memoir came out Nov. 17.
“I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit,” he writes, “and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt.”
He tried to keep his prayer life private.
Obama mentions his “broader skepticism toward organized religion” but says he often turned to private prayer.
Not long after he was shown the Lincoln Bible on which he would be sworn in, Obama paused before entering the inaugural platform.
“For a brief moment, before trumpets sounded and I was announced, I closed my eyes,” he writes. “And summoned the prayer that had carried me here, one I would continue to repeat every night I was president. A prayer of thanks for all I’d been given. A prayer that my sins be forgiven. A prayer that my family and the American people be kept safe from harm. A prayer for guidance.”
Months before that moment, Obama had paid a visit to Jerusalem’s Western Wall — where pilgrims have long left petitions to God — as he was feeling the weight of what lay ahead if he became president.
“I’d written my own prayer on a piece of hotel stationery,” he writes. “I had assumed those words were between me and God,” he said of the personal request he placed within a crack in the wall. “But the next day they showed up in an Israeli newspaper before achieving eternal life on the internet.”
—
President Obama you speak of “broader skepticism toward organized religion” and when I look at your position on abortion I see no difference between your view and those of atheistic humanists! In fact, your views are also more in line with those of atheistic evolutionists than those scientists such as Isaac Newton who believed in creationism. I had the unique opportunity from 2015 to 2020 to correspond with a famous Harvard educated British scientist named Professor Horace Barlow of Cambridge. Barlow was named after his grandfather Horace Darwin. Most of the correspondence between Dr. Barlow and myself dealt with the views of Barlow’s famous great grandfather Charles Darwin.
TRIBUTES PAID TO PROFESSOR HORACE BARLOW
PUBLISHED DATE: July 07, 2020
Professor Horace Barlow (8 December 1921 – 5 July 2020) was a neuroscientist and Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge.
Professor Horace Barlow by Louise Riley-Smith, 2003
Horace Barlow was born into a scientific family: his mother was Nora Darwin, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, who worked in the field of genetics with William Bateson at Cambridge and his paternal grandfather was physician to Queen Victoria’s household.
He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and then completed medical training at Harvard Medical School and University College Hospital, London before returning to Cambridge to study neurophysiology under the tutelage of Lord Adrian. He was awarded an Sc.D in 1943.
His research investigated the visual system at the level of single neurons and their interactions in both humans and animals. His emphasis was on understanding the act of seeing through the underlying machinery of vision.
After holding various positions at Cambridge University he became Professor of Physiological Optics and Physiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He later returned to Cambridge, where he was Royal Society Research Professor of Physiology.
Professor Barlow was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969 and was awarded the Society’s Royal Medal in 1993. In the same year (1993) he received the Australia Prize for research into the mechanisms of visual perception. His other awards include Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience (2009) and Ken Nakayama Prize from the Vision Sciences Society (2016).
Trinity Fellow, Professor Roger Keynes, of the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, said:
Horace Barlow made seminal discoveries in brain physiology. After medical qualification he began research in the Cambridge Physiological Laboratory, recording electrical signals from single nerve cells in the frog’s eye. These showed that nerve cells are wired to detect essential features of the frog’s visual world, such as a small moving insect, and its direction. His approach paved the way for major advances in understanding how visual information in mammals is processed and stored in the brain. He also initiated psychophysical studies of human visual perception and wrote cogently on the brain in all its aspects, working in his departmental office and visiting Trinity well into his 90s.
Priyamvada Natarajan, Professor in the Departments of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University, and a Trinity alumna, said:
Deeply sad to hear the news of his passing. I fondly remember many wonderful conversations with Horace Barlow during my time at Trinity as a junior research fellow in 1997-2003. We chatted about science – in particular, about optics, and how the various wavelengths of light revealed disparate aspects of the cosmos and about the achromatic bending of light (gravitational lensing) that I worked on and its analogy to geometric optics. He patiently answered many of my naive questions about neuroscience and we were both ardent fans of Ramon Cajal’s drawings of neurons. Horace was soft-spoken, utterly curious about the natural world, and remarkably insightful – it was a privilege to know him.
Francis Schaeffer
I found Dr. Barlow to be a true gentleman and he was very kind to take the time to answer the questions that I submitted to him. In the upcoming months I will take time once a week to pay tribute to his life and reveal our correspondence. In the first week I noted:
Today I am posting my first letter to him in February of 2015 which discussed Charles Darwin lamenting his loss of aesthetic tastes which he blamed on Darwin’s own dedication to the study of evolution. In a later return letter, Dr. Barlow agreed that Darwin did in fact lose his aesthetic tastes at the end of his life.
In the third week, I look at the life of Brandon Burlsworth in the November 28, 2016 letter and the movie GREATER and the problem of evil which Charles Darwin definitely had a problem with once his daughter died.
On the 4th letter to Dr. Barlow looks at Darwin’s admission that he at times thinks that creation appears to look like the expression of a mind. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words in 1968 sermon at this link.
My Fifth Letter concerning Charles Darwin’s views on MORAL MOTIONS Which was mailed on March 1, 2017. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning moral motions in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
6th letter on May 1, 2017 in which Charles Darwin’s hopes are that someone would find in Pompeii an old manuscript by a distinguished Roman that would show that Christ existed! Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning the possible manuscript finds in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link
7th letter on Darwin discussing DETERMINISM dated 7-1-17 . Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning determinism in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
8th letter responds to Dr. Barlow’s letter to me concerning Francis Schaeffer discussing Darwin’s own words concerning chance in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
9th letter in response to 11-22-17 letter I received from Professor Horace Barlow was mailed on 1-2-18 and included Charles Darwin’s comments on William Paley. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning William Paley in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
10th letter in response to 11-22-17 letter I received from Professor Horace Barlow was mailed on 2-2-18 and includes Darwin’s comments asking for archaeological evidence for the Bible! Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning His desire to see archaeological evidence supporting the Bible’s accuracy in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
11th letterI mailed on 3-2-18 in response to 11-22-17 letter from Barlow that asserted: It is also sometimes asked whether chance, even together with selection, can define a “MORAL CODE,” which the religiously inclined say is defined by their God. I think the answer is “Yes, it certainly can…” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning A MORAL CODE in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
12th letter on March 26, 2018 breaks down song DUST IN THE WIND “All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
In 13th letter I respond to Barlow’s November 22, 2017 letter and assertion “He {Darwin} clearly did not lose his sense of the VALUE of TRUTH, and of the importance of FOREVER SEARCHING it out.”
In 14th letter to Dr. Barlow on 10-2-18, I assert: “Let me demonstrate how the Bible’s view of the origin of life fits better with the evidence we have from archaeology than that of gradual evolution.”In 15th letter in November 2, 2018 to Dr. Barlow I quote his relative Randal Keynes Who in the Richard Dawkins special “The Genius of Darwin” makes this point concerning Darwin, “he was, at different times, enormously confident in it,and at other times, he was utterly uncertain.”In 16th Letter on 12-2-18 to Dr. Barlow I respond to his letter that stated, If I am pressed to say whether I think belief in God helps people to make wise and beneficial decisions I am bound to say (and I fear this will cause you pain) “No, it is often very disastrous, leading to violence, death and vile behaviour…Muslim terrorists…violence within the Christian church itself”17th letter sent on January 2, 2019 shows the great advantage we have over Charles Darwin when examining the archaeological record concerning the accuracy of the BibleIn the 18th letter I respond to the comment by Charles Darwin: “My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive….The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words on his loss of aesthetic tastes in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
Below is a portion of my February 11, 2015 letter to Dr. Barlow followed by his response in his November 22, 2017 letter:
“What my own views may be is a question of no consequence to any one but myself. But, as you ask, I may state that my judgment often fluctuates . . . In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.”
Francis Schaeffer asserted:
What we find now is that he comes to the place in being agnostic, but as we read through this section on religion what we find is in reality his reason leads him against this position, which is interesting but his theory makes him accept the position of agnosticism. You will notice as we go on, on the basis of his intellect he can’t stand the thought of his own position, of there not being an answer. Nevertheless, he is increasingly forced to this because it wouldn’t conform to his own theory, man being shoved against his own will because of presuppositions. I think what you have in Darwin is a magnificent example, although a sad one of what I lecture on in apologetics, and that is if a man takes a set of nonchristian presuppositions he is forced eventually to be in a place of tension. The more consistent he is with his own nonchristian presuppositions the more he is away from the real world. When he is closer to the real world then he is more illogical to his own presuppositions. Darwin shows this in his own writings in his own lifetime. So the things in his human nature he is sorry to lose, but he loses them, at the same time he finds that couldn’t explain things on the basis of his reason. Yet he was driven to certain conclusions which were away from what he himself felt were the real world on the basis of his own presuppositions. He was never satisfied. Just as I very often use Sartre and Camus to point out this dilemma of nonchristian presuppositions, in actuality these sections from Darwin are a perfect example of the same thing.
“Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting, I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species, and it is since that time that it has very gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker. But then arises the doubt
Francis Schaeffer commented:
On the basis of his reason he has to say there must be an intelligent mind, someone analogous to man. You couldn’t describe the God of the Bible better. That is man is made in God’s image and therefore, you know a great deal about God when you know something about man. What he is really saying here is that everything in my experience tells me it must be so, and my mind demands it is so. Not just these feelings he talked about earlier but his MIND demands it is so, but now how does he counter this? How does he escape this? Here is how he does it!!!
Darwin’s words:
—can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?
Francis Schaeffer commented:
So he says my mind can only come to one conclusion, and that is there is a mind behind it all. However, the doubt comes because his mind has come from the lowest form of earthworm, so how can I trust my mind. But this is a joker isn’t it? Then how can you trust his mind to support such a theory as this? He proved too much. The fact that Darwin found it necessary to take such an escape shows the tremendous weight of Romans 1, that the only escape he can make is to say how can I trust my mind when I come from the lowest animal the earthworm? Obviously think of the grandeur of his concept, I don’t think it is true, but the grandeur of his concept, so what you find is that Darwin is presenting something here that is wrong I feel, but it is not nothing. It is a tremendously grand concept that he has put forward. So he is accepting the dictates of his mind to put forth a grand concept which he later can’t accept in this basic area with his reason, but he rejects what he could accept with his reason on this escape. It really doesn’t make sense. This is a tremendous demonstration of the weakness of his own position.
Darwin clings to agnosticism:
“I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.”
Francis Schaeffer commented:
What a stupid reply and I didn’t say wicked. It just seems to me that here is 2 plus 2 equals 36 at this particular place.
—
Here is Dr. Barlow’s response in his November 22, 2017 letter:
——
Saying you don’t believe in God is a very foolish thing to say as it doesn’t explain why so many people talk about it, there has got to be more to it than that; also I think one has to respect what some godly people say and some of the things they do; I wish one could make more sense of it but I don’t think the godly people have done a very good job;
This reminds me of a story that Adrian Rogers told about his interaction with an agnostic:
Here we must observe that many people don’t want to find the truth just like a thief doesn’t want to find a policeman. I now want to share a portion of the sermon WHO IS JESUS? by Adrian Rogers because this very point is made:
Years ago Adrian Rogerscounseled with a NASA scientist and his severely depressed wife. The wife pointed to her husband and said, “My problem is him.” She went on to explain that her husband was a drinker, a liar, and an adulterer.
Dr. Rogers asked the man if he were a Christian. “No!” the man laughed. “I’m an atheist.” “Really?” Dr. Rogers replied. “That means you’re someone who knows that God does not exist.” “That’s right,” said the man. “Would it be fair to say that you don’t know all there is to know in the universe?” “Of course,” the man admitted. Dr.Rogers asked,“Would it be generous to say you know half of all there is to know?” “Yes!” Then Dr. Rogers inquired,“Wouldn’t it be possible that God’s existence might be in the half you don’t know?” The man acknowledged, “Okay, but I don’t think He exists.” Dr. Rogers replied, “Well then, you’re not an atheist; you’re an agnostic.You’re a doubter.” The man asserted,“Yes, and I’m a big one.” Then Dr. Rogers popped the question, “It doesn’t matter what size you are. I want to know what kind [of doubter] you are.”
“What kinds are there?”
“There are honest doubters and dishonest doubters. An honest doubter is willing to search out the truth and live by the results; a dishonest doubter doesn’t want to know the truth. He can’t find God for the same reason a thief can’t find a policeman.”
“I want to know the truth.”
“Would you like to prove that God exists?”
“It can’t be done.”
“It can be done. You’ve just been in the wrong laboratory. Jesus said, ‘If any man’s will is to do His will, he will know whether my teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority’ (John 7:17). I suggest you read one chapter of the book of John each day, but before you do, pray something like this, ‘God, I don’t know if You’re there, I don’t know if the Bible is true, I don’t know if Jesus is Your Son. But if You show me that You are there, that the Bible is true, and that Jesus is Your Son, then I will follow You. My will is to do your will.”
The man agreed. About three weeks later he returned to Dr. Rogers’s office and invited Jesus Christ to be his Savior and Lord.
Another quote from Dr. Barlow’s November 22, 2017 letter:
After acknowledging that Charles Darwin did lose his aesthetic tastes for art, poetry, and for fine scenery which he attributed to his study of evolution, Dr. Barlow came back and asserted, “Notice, however, that he clearly did not lose his sense of the value of truth, and of the importance of forever searching it out. “
Skeptics seem to think that the Bible is full of scientific errors. However, before an individual can make that assertion, they had better make sure they know both science and Scripture. You see, I have heard unbelievers state that the Bible is not a book of science, but a book of religion, which is basically true. It is not written to teach us about science, but to teach us about God. But the God of salvation and the God of creation are the same. Science doesn’t take God by surprise. A close look at Scripture reveals that it is scientifically accurate.
Every now and then science may disagree with the Bible, but usually science just needs time to catch up. For example, in 1861 a French scientific academy printed a brochure offering 51 incontrovertible facts that proved the Bible in error. Today there is not a single reputable scientist who would support those supposed “facts,” because modern science has disproved them all!
The ancients believed the earth was held up by Atlas, or resting on pillars, or even seated on the backs of elephants. But today we know the earth is suspended in space, a fact the Word of God records in Job 26:7: “He . . . hangeth the earth upon nothing.” God revealed the facts of cosmology long before man had any idea of the truth.
For centuries man believed the earth was flat, but now we know the earth is a globe. The prophet Isaiah, writing 750 years before the birth of Christ, revealed that “God sitteth upon the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). The word translated here as “circle” was more commonly translated “sphere.” In other words, Isaiah explained that the earth was a globe centuries before science discovered it.
When Ptolemy charted the heavens, he counted 1026 stars in the sky. But with the invention of the telescope man discovered millions and millions of stars, something that Jeremiah 33:22 revealed nearly three thousand years ago: “The host of heaven cannot be numbered.” How did these men of God know the truth of science long before the rest of the world discovered it? They were moved by the Holy Spirit to write the truth. God’s Word is not filled with errors. It is filled with facts, even scientific facts.
When the black plague was killing one quarter of Europe’s population in the fourteenth century, it was the church, not science, that helped overcome the dread disease. The leaders in the church noticed the instructions given by the Lord to Moses in Leviticus 13:46: “All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.” These early believers did not know microbiology or understand what germs were, but they could understand a clear teaching to quarantine someone who was sick. So they followed the Biblical dictum, quarantined those sick with the plague, and stopped it from spreading. The Bible had its science correct even before man discovered the truth! Don’t accept the charge that the Bible is filled with scientific errors. Modern science seems determined to explain God away, and refuses to acknowledge any evidence of the supernatural. But the science of Scripture is one reason to accept the Bible as God’s Word.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733 everettehatcher@gmail.com
President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. There have […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers, President Obama | Edit |Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
President Obama Speaks at The Ohio State University Commencement Ceremony Published on May 5, 2013 President Obama delivers the commencement address at The Ohio State University. May 5, 2013. You can learn a lot about what President Obama thinks the founding fathers were all about from his recent speech at Ohio State. May 7, 2013, […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers, President Obama | Edit | Comments (0)
Dr. C. Everett Koop with Bill Graham. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit |Comments (1)
America’s Founding Fathers Deist or Christian? – David Barton 4/6 There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Tagged governor of connecticut, john witherspoon, jonathan trumbull | Edit | Comments (1)
3 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton There were 55 gentlemen who put together the constitution and their church affliation is of public record. Greg Koukl notes: Members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political foundations of our nation, were […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
I do not think that John Quincy Adams was a founding father in the same sense that his father was. However, I do think he was involved in the early days of our government working with many of the founding fathers. Michele Bachmann got into another history-related tussle on ABC’s “Good Morning America” today, standing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit |Comments (0)
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ____________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Food stamps were a popular topic of conversation last month as Congress debated the farm bill. This decades-old Great Society program is in much need of reform for at least seven reasons:
Food stamp spending has surged.Costs have been climbing since the program began in the 1960s, recession or not. Over roughly the past decade, food stamp spending jumped from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $84.6 billion in 2011.
Food stamp rolls have also been climbing for decades, regardless of the economic situation. Today, food stamp use is at an all-time high, with the most recent data showing that about one in seven people participate in the program. This is a 140 percent increase since 1990.
Government has vastly expanded food stamp eligibility. “Broad-based categorical eligibility,” put in place under the Clinton Administration and heavily pushed by the Obama Administration, loosens income and asset limits. That the number of households receiving food stamps has increased faster than households near the poverty line indicates that changes in food stamp policy helped boost the rolls.
States are spending taxpayer money to “recruit” food stamp participants who might not otherwise choose to use them. From advertisements, aggressive tactics, and enrollment quotas used by recruitment agents, it seems like Uncle Sam wants you on food stamps.
Despite what the left claims, food stamps don’t stimulate the economy. Every dollar spent on food stamps is a dollar that would otherwise be spent elsewhere. Therefore, it simply shuffles resources rather than adding economic growth.
Even in good economic times, many food stamp recipients don’t work. In 2010, among the roughly 10.5 million households receiving food stamps that contained an able-bodied, non-elderly adult, 5.5 million did not perform any work. Of those who did work, 1.5 million to 2 million worked less than 30 hours per week.
Food stamps discourage work and self-sufficiency. “The more income that a person receives when not working, the less is the reward to working,” University of Chicago Professor Casey Mulligan testified before Congress earlier this year. “In such cases, a person might have more resources available to use or save as a consequence of working less.” Because food stamp benefits are reduced by 30 cents for each dollar of net income a recipient earns, the program behaves like an income tax paid by recipients via reduced benefits. Thus, food stamps can often act as a disincentive to work. Mulligan estimates that this disincentive has actually prolonged the weak labor market recovery.
Policymakers should reform food stamps to promote self-sufficiency through work and roll back food stamp spending when employment rates improve. These changes would promote not only fiscal responsibility but, more importantly, personal responsibility and human dignity.
___________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, in
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Why can’t we cut the Food Stamp budget? Should Food Stamps Be in Farm Bill? Congressman Seeks to Split Legislation Kelsey Harris June 17, 2013 at 10:38 pm Bill Clark/Roll Call Photos/Newscom Representative Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), a fourth-generation farmer, is asking his House colleagues to separate the food stamp program from the “farm” bill. Stutzman […]
The sad fact is that Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration. A Bumper Crop of Food Stamps Amy Payne May 21, 2013 at 7:01 am Tweet this Where do food stamps come from? They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually […]
I am glad that my state of Arkansas is not the leader in food stamps!!! Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which State Has the Highest Food Stamp Usage of All? March 19, 2013 by Dan Mitchell The food stamp program seems to be a breeding ground of waste, fraud, and abuse. Some of the horror stories […]
Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ We are becoming a country filled with people that dependent on the federal government when we should be growing our economy by lowering taxes and putting […]
Uploaded by oversightandreform on Mar 6, 2012 Learn More at http://oversight.house.gov The Oversight Committee is examining reports of food stamp merchants previously disqualified who continue to defraud the program. According to a Scripps Howard News Service report, food stamp fraud costs taxpayers hundreds of millions every year. Watch the Oversight hearing live tomorrow at 930 […]
Office of Barack and Michelle Obama P.O. Box 91000 Washington, DC 20066
Dear President Obama,
I wrote you over 700 letters while you were President and I mailed them to the White House and also published them on my blog http://www.thedailyhatch.org .I received several letters back from your staff and I wanted to thank you for those letters.
I have been reading your autobiography A PROMISED LAND and I have been enjoying it.
As an evangelical believer I am encouraged by your references to spiritual hymns, but your intellectual views seem to place you in the secular humanist school of thought.
Former President Barack Obama’s new book, “A Promised Land,” mentions only four pages in its index under the category “faith and.”
But the title of the book by the 44th U.S. president invokes biblical imagery — a land promised by God to his people — and Obama includes the role of religious institutions, faith leaders and personal traditions throughout the 750-page book. On the page after his dedication of the tome to his wife and daughters, Obama features the words from an African American spiritual:
“Fly and never tire
There’s a great camp-meeting in the Promised Land.”
While friends and strangers have told him they believe God engineered his road to the White House, Obama says he didn’t view his political path as a call from the Almighty.
(Pari Dukovic/Random House via AP) This photo provided by Random House shows the cover of “A Promised Land.” The first volume of former President Barack Obama’s memoir came out Nov. 17.
“I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit,” he writes, “and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt.”
Another minister helped him regain confidence.
While Wright’s use of “audacity of hope” gave Obama a book title and a key phrase for his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, another minister influenced him by shoring up his confidence.
The Rev. Otis Moss Jr., whose son succeeded Wright at Trinity UCC, called Obama early in the controversy surrounding Wright. Moss knew some Black Americans had questioned whether Obama was ready for the White House.
Obama writes that Moss described himself and other civil rights veterans as “the Moses generation” who marched, were jailed, “got us out of Egypt,” but could only go so far.
“You, Barack, are part of the Joshua generation,” Obama says Moss told him. “Perhaps you can learn from some of our mistakes. But ultimately it will be up to you, with God’s help, to build on what we’ve done.”
Moss’ words about leading Americans “out of the wilderness” were what Obama says he needed to move on from the Wright controversy and forward in his campaign.
“It’s hard to overstate how these words fortified me, coming as they did almost a year before our Iowa victory, what it meant to have someone so intimately linked to the source of my earliest inspiration say that what I was trying to do was worth it, that IT WASN’T JUST AN EXERCISE IN VANITY or ambition but rather a part of an unbroken chain of progress.”
—
President Obama, you need to read ECCLESIASTES because you will find that if you try to build your life and your society on LIFE UNDER THE SUN without God in the picture then it will all be vanity!! Solomon in ECCLESIASTES brings God back in the picture in the last chapter but look at his 5 conclusions concerning secularism:
ECCLESIASTES 2:12-17:
12 (U)So I turned to consider (V)wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only (W)what has already been done. 13 Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. 14 (X)The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the (Y)same event happens to all of them. 15 Then I said in my heart, (Z)“What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 16 For of the wise as of the fool there is (AA)no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. (AB)How the wise dies just like the fool! 17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for (AC)all is vanity and a striving after wind.
The humanist H. J. Blackham was the founder of the British Humanist Association and he asserted: “On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“( H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967). Francis Schaeffer comments concerning Blackham’s assertion, “One does not have to be highly educated to understand this. It follows directly from the starting point of the humanists’ position, namely, that everything is just matter. That is, that which has exited forever and in ever is only some form of matter or energy, and everything in our world now is this and only this in a more or less complex form.”
The 5 Conclusions of Humanism according to King Solomon of Israel in the Book of Ecclesiastes!!!!!
The Humanistic world view tells us there is no afterlife and all we have is this life “under the sun.”
Francis Schaeffer (Christian Philosopher) notes Solomon limits himself to “under the sun” – In other words the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death. It is indeed the book of modern man. Solomon is the universal man with unlimited resources who says let us see where I go. Ravi Zacharias –
“The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus us (Matter)”
1st Conclusion: Nothing in life truly satisfies and that includes wisdom, great works and pleasure. A) Will wisdom satisfy someone under the sun? We know it is good in its proper place. T
But what did Solomon find out about wisdom “under the sun”? Ecclesiastes 1:16-18 (Living Bible): I said to myself, ‘Look, I am better educated than any of the kings before me in Jerusalem. I have greater wisdom and knowledge.’So I worked hard to be wise instead of foolish[c]—but now I realize that even this was like chasing the wind. For the more my wisdom, the more my grief; to increase knowledge only increases distress.” (That is NIHILISM!!!!)
2nd Conclusion: Power reigns in this life and the scales are not balanced!!!!!Ecclesiastes 4:1 (King James Version): So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. Ecclesiastes 7:15 (King James Version) All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.
3rd Conclusion – Death is the great equalizer. Just as the beasts will not be remembered so ultimately brilliant men will not be remembered. Ecclesiastes 3:20 “All go unto one place; All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” Here Solomon comes to the same point that Kerry Livgren came to in January of 1978 when he wrote the hit song DUST IN THE WIND. Can you refute the nihilistic claims of this song within the humanistic world view? Solomon couldn’t but maybe you can.
4th Conclusion – Chance and time plus matter (us) has determined the past and it will determine the future.By the way, what are the ingredients that make evolution work? George Wald – “Time is the Hero.”
Jacques Monod – “Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the root of the stupendous edifice of evolution.”
5th Conclusion – Life is just a series ofcontinual and unending cycles and man is stuck in the middle of the cycle. Youth, old age, Death. Does Solomon at this point embrace nihilism? Yes!!! He exclaims that the hates life (Ecclesiastes 2:17), he longs for death (4:2-3) Yet he stills has a fear of death (2:14-16).
—
I am glad Rev. Otis Moss Jr., had the opportunity to speak into your life and I am hoping that he spoke to you about the issue of abortion which the Bible clearly takes a pro-life position on! When Bill Clinton was a member of Immanuel Baptist in Little Rock, where my wife was baptized, he held a pro-life view when Governor of Arkansas. This also was consistent with all of the pastors of Immaneul Baptist from 1960 till today (Dr. W. O. Vaught Jr., Dr. Brian Harbour, Dr. Rex M. Horne Jr., Dr. Gary Hollingsworth and Dr. Steven W. Smith). In fact, my son, his wife and our grandchildren are members at Immanuel today. It was only after Bill Clinton announced that he was running for the Democratic Presidential Nomination that he changed his view on abortion, and that did grieve many of Clinton’s fellow church members.
Adrian Rogers was my pastor at Bellevue Baptist Church in the 1970’s and 1980’s when I was growing up and his impact on me was immense and I could not envision turning my back on him. Evidently you had good reason to do so. Sadly I remember watching both Bill Clinton and Al Gore grow up in evangelical churches but later turn their backs on their previous pro-life views.
President Obama your views are more in line with those of atheistic evolutionists than those scientists such as Isaac Newton who believed in creationism. I had the unique opportunity from 2015 to 2020 to correspond with a famous Harvard educated British scientist named Professor Horace Barlow of Cambridge. Barlow was named after his grandfather Horace Darwin. Most of the correspondence between Dr. Barlow and myself dealt with the views of Barlow’s famous great grandfather Charles Darwin.
Some have embraced a form of Evolutionary Optimistic Humanism. Even Charles Darwin held unto the ideal of Evolutionary Optimistic Humanism.
“With respect to immortality, nothing shows me [so clearly] how strong and almost instinctive a belief it is as the consideration of the view now held by most physicists, namely, that the sun with all the planets will in time grow too cold for life, unless indeed some great body dashes into the sun and thus gives it fresh life. Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is,”
Francis Schaeffer
Francis Schaeffer commented in 1968:
Now you have now the birth of Julian Huxley’s evolutionary optimistic humanism already stated by Darwin. Darwin now has a theory that man is going to be better. If you had lived at 1860 or 1890 and you said to Darwin, “By 1970 will man be better?” He certainly would have the hope that man would be better as Julian Huxley does today. Of course, I wonder what he would say if he lived in our day and saw what has been made of his own views in the direction of (the mass murder) Richard Speck (and deterministic thinking of today’s philosophers). I wonder what he would say. So you have the factor, already the dilemma in Darwin that I pointed out in Julian Huxley and that is evolutionary optimistic humanism rests always on tomorrow. You never have an argument from the present or the past for evolutionary optimistic humanism.You can have evolutionary nihilism on the basis of the present and the past. Every time you have someone bringing in evolutionary optimistic humanism it is always based on what is going to be produced tomorrow. When is it coming? The years pass and is it coming?
Below is a portion of my December 2, 2017 which was responding to his November 22, 2017 letter:
Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) taught at the Swiss L’Abri Community.
Let me give you some background on why I have written you. Since 1974 I have been reading the books of Francis Schaeffer. Then later in the 1970’s Schaeffer released two film series. Here is what Wikipedia had to say about Schaeffer:
Also over the last 25 years I have had the opportunity to listen to hundreds of Schaeffer’s recorded messages from the L’Abri community in Switzerland.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
—-
Adrian Rogers pictured
On the tenth anniversary of Francis Schaeffer’s passing, May 15, 1994, I sent out to several hundred prominent skeptics an evangelistic letter that told about Schaeffer’s life. This same letter included the CD entitled “Dust, Darwin, and Disbelief,” by Adrian Rogers and Bill Elliff which quoted your great grandfather, Charles Darwin. That CD started off with the song DUST IN THE WIND by the group KANSAS for the simple reason that if we accept that we are the result of chance then all we are is DUST IN THE WIND.
I thought the inclusion of the song DUST IN THE WIND was logical, but that logic was challenged by the third paragraph in your November 22, 2017 letter which said:
Horace Barlow pictured above
You may ask, “What is to take the place of Religious Belief in helping to understand the world around us? It has order and purpose, which cannot be explained by Blind chance as evolution teaches.” I agree it cannot be explained by Blind chance alone, but Darwin did not claim that this happens, and modern evolutionists agree. We say that chance variations (mutations) occur in the substances (called genes nowadays) that control development and cause son and daughter to resemble father and mother. These genes control the development of the offspring, and and influence their success in life, and in particular they influence the types of mutated genes that are passed on to the next generation. Chance, together with “Survival of the fittest,” thus causes the appearance of apparently purposeful adaptations of the population of genes in a species.
If you are correct then I was wrong to include the song DUST IN THE WIND. Let me respond by quoting Francis Schaeffer from his talk In the spring of 1968 which centered on your great uncle Francis Darwin’s book:
Darwin in his autobiography Darwin, Francis ed. 1892. Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters [abridged edition]. London: John Murray, and in his letters showed that all through his life he NEVER really came to a QUIETNESS concerning the possibility that chance really explained the situation of the biological world. You will find there is much material on this [from Darwin] extended over many many years that constantly he was wrestling with this problem. Darwin never came to a place of satisfaction. You have philosophically ONLY TWO possible beginnings. The first would be a PERSONAL beginning and the other would be an IMPERSONEL beginning plus time plus CHANCE. There is no other possible alternative except the alternative that everything comes out of nothing and that has to be a total nothing and that has to be a total nothing without mass, energy or motion existing. No one holds this last view because it is unthinkable. Darwin understood this and therefore until his death he was uncomfortable with the idea of CHANCE producing the biological variation.
Below is a portion of my 25th letter September 2, 2019 to Dr. Barlow that demonstrates that humanist philosophers have given up their optimism and become pessimistic about the future:
I want to thank you again for this opportunity to write you every month about your great grandfather Charles Darwin. Today we are going to look at where our moral motions come from and this is a subject that Darwin talked about a great deal.
On August 28, 2019 on You Tube Richard Dawkins stated in an interview about his book OUTGROWING GOD:
Jesus was obviously a nice person if he lived. Either Jesus was a nice person or whoever wrote his lines was a nice person….The SERMON ON THE MOUNT is classically regarded as a very wonderful set of rules for living and indeed it is….Taken as a whole the Bible is a terrible set of rules for living….[Instead], live our lives by moral philosophers and by the general progress we see in morality as we look from decades to decades.
Let us pause for a moment and look at what Humanist autonomous philosophers have given us.
The history of the nonchristian Philosophers up until the 18th century went like this:Here is a circle which stands for what the unified and true knowledge of the universe is. The next man would say “No,” and cross out the circle. He then would say “Here is the circle.” Then the next man would say “No,”and cross out that circle. Then he would make his circle and the next man would cross it out and make his circle. This continued through the centuries. They never found the circle, but they optimistically thought someone would beginning with man himself and on the basis of man’s reasoning alone.Then the endless rows of circles through the and the crossing out were broken and a drastic shift came because the humanist ideal had failed. Humanist man gave up his optimism for pessimism. He gave up the hope of an unified answer and this makes modern man who he is.
If Evolution by chance occurred then Ecclesiastes is correct about our lives seeking lasting lasting meaning “under the sun” is like chasing the wind and I pointed out that nihilism was the logical response of a person blocks out the possibility that God exists in my last letter to Dr. Barlow on April 18, 2020. I suggested that Dr. Barlow watch the NetFlix series AFTER LIFE which demonstrates this over and over and below is the complete letter:
April 18, 2020
Dr. Horace Barlow, Cambridge CB3 9AX, England
Dear Dr. Barlow,
As you know I have writing you since 2015 and I was so thrilled to get a detailed letter back from you in November of 2017 that answered several of the questions that I have asked you about Charles Darwin’s views. In many of the letters I have written to you have referred also to Solomon and his words in the last book he wrote which was ECCLESIASTES. Well, Ricky Gervais has written and starred in a film series on Netflix called AFTER LIFE that reminds me of a modern day Solomon looking in vain for the meaning in life UNDER THE SUN in the fictional town Tambury which is really filmed in London.
Seen below is the third episode of AFTERLIFE (season 1) when Matt takes Tony to a comedy club with front row seats to cheer him up but it turns into disaster!!!
Today I got to ask a question to Ricky and he took time to answer me and I thought you would enjoy some of my open letter to Ricky which I published today:
(Above) Tony and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are buried.
I have been a big fan of yours for 20 years now and I have taken an interest especially in your philosophical views concerning atheism and your attacks on Christianity, and since 2016 I have written you 9 letters basically concerning the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of nihilism. Then I ran across your series AFTER LIFE and Tony reminded me so much of Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes and the nihilism that Solomon embraced.
Today, Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask you on your Twitter Live broadcast “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark you answer my question with the following comments:
Not, I mean he [Tony] dabbles with it [nihilism] but a lot of this stuff is like he is being provocative and he is trying to sort of hurt people. No, It is difficult to say. I don’t. The one thing he wants he can’t have so he is angry. He has to compromise. He had the perfect marriage and he doesn’t know how to act or feel anymore. He is confused. He is in pain. He is ill. He is probably ill you know. If you are not right in your [mind] then you are ill, and you can’t just step out of it. You know. You even know you are not normal or well, but what can you do? You don’t feel good. That will do. Did we get serious then? That won’t happen again!
It seems to me that you would classify Tony as angry and confused but not a nihilist. You are the writer so you should know, but let me ask you if you can philosophically back up the view that Tony is not living the life of a nihilist (one who does think there are no rules for his life and no purpose for his life and no basis for morality).
As a member of the British Humanist Association you are familiar with the view of optimistic humanism. Let me share some views on that:
Tony and his wife Lisa who died 6 months ago of cancer
Paul Kurtz – (writer of Humanist Manifesto 2 in 1973 and Dr. Kurtz was a very kind gentleman who took time to correspond with me.)
“The universe is neutral, indifferent to man’s existential yearnings. But we instinctively discover life, experience its throb, its excitement, its attraction. Life is here to be lived, enjoyed, suffered, and endured…Again–one cannot ‘prove’ this normative principle to everyone’s satisfaction. Living beings tend instinctively to maintain themselves and to reproduce beyond ultimate justification. It is a brute fact of our contingent natures; It is an instinctive desire to live.”
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J.P. Moreland – “2 Objections to optimistic humanism: #1 There is no rational justification for choosing it over nihilism. As far as rationality is concerned, it has nothing to offer over nihilism. Therefore, optimistic humanism suffers from some of the same objections we raised against nihilism. Kurtz himself admits that the ultimate values of humanism are incapable of rational justification!!!!!! #2 Optimistic Humanism really answers the question of the meaning of life in the negative, just as nihilism does. For the optimistic humanist life has no objective value or purpose; It offers only subjective satisfaction, one should think long and hard before embracing such a horrible view. If there is a decent case that life has objective value and purpose, then such a case should be given as good a hearing as possible.
R.C. Sproul:Nihilism has two traditional enemies–Theism and Naive Humanism. The theist contradicts the nihilist because the existence of God guarantees that ultimate meaning and significance of personal life and history. Naive Humanism is considered naive by the nihilist because it rhapsodizes–with no rational foundation–the dignity and significance of human life. The humanist declares that man is a cosmic accident whose origin was fortuitous and entrenched in meaningless insignificance. Yet in between the humanist mindlessly crusades for, defends, and celebrates the chimera of human dignity…Herein is the dilemma: Nihilism declares that nothing really matters ultimately…In my judgment, no philosophical treatise has ever surpassed or equaled the penetrating analysis of the ultimate question of meaning versus vanity that is found in the Book of Ecclesiastes
The humanist H. J. Blackham was the founder of the British Humanist Association and he asserted: “On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“( H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967). Francis Schaeffer comments concerning Blackham’s assertion, “One does not have to be highly educated to understand this. It follows directly from the starting point of the humanists’ position, namely, that everything is just matter. That is, that which has exited forever and in ever is only some form of matter or energy, and everything in our world now is this and only this in a more or less complex form.”
The 5 Conclusions of Humanism according to King Solomon of Israel in the Book of Ecclesiastes!!!!!
The Humanistic world view tells us there is no afterlife and all we have is this life “under the sun.”
Francis Schaeffer (Christian Philosopher) notes Solomon limits himself to “under the sun” – In other words the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death. It is indeed the book of modern man. Solomon is the universal man with unlimited resources who says let us see where I go. Ravi Zacharias –
“The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus us (Matter)”
1st Conclusion: Nothing in life truly satisfies and that includes wisdom, great works and pleasure. A) Will wisdom satisfy someone under the sun? We know it is good in its proper place. T
But what did Solomon find out about wisdom “under the sun”? Ecclesiastes 1:16-18 (Living Bible): I said to myself, ‘Look, I am better educated than any of the kings before me in Jerusalem. I have greater wisdom and knowledge.’So I worked hard to be wise instead of foolish[c]—but now I realize that even this was like chasing the wind. For the more my wisdom, the more my grief; to increase knowledge only increases distress.” (That is NIHILISM!!!!)
—
KJV and Living Bible Ecclesiastes 2:1-3, 8, 10, 11: I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity.2 I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it? 3 I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly,And then there were my many beautiful concubines.10 Anything I wanted I took and did not restrain myself from any joy…11 But as I looked at everything I had tried, it was all so useless, a chasing of the wind, and there was nothing really worthwhile anywhere…
2nd Conclusion: Power reigns in this life and the scales are not balanced!!!!!Ecclesiastes 4:1 (King James Version): So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. Ecclesiastes 7:15 (King James Version) All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.If you are a humanist you must admit that men like Hitler will not be punished in the afterlife because you deny there is an afterlife? Right?
3rd Conclusion – Death is the great equalizer. Just as the beasts will not be remembered so ultimately brilliant men will not be remembered. Ecclesiastes 3:20 “All go unto one place; All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” Here Solomon comes to the same point that Kerry Livgren came to in January of 1978 when he wrote the hit song DUST IN THE WIND. Can you refute the nihilistic claims of this song within the humanistic world view? Solomon couldn’t but maybe you can.
4th Conclusion – Chance and time plus matter (us) has determined the past and it will determine the future.By the way, what are the ingredients that make evolution work? George Wald – “Time is the Hero.”
Jacques Monod – “Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the root of the stupendous edifice of evolution.”
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I can not think of a better illustration of this in action than the movie ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute. On May 4, 1994 I watched the movie for the first time and again I thought of the humanist who believes that history is not heading somewhere with a purpose but is guided by pure chance, absolutely free but blind. I thought of the passage Ecclesiastes 9:10-12 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.12 For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.
5th Conclusion – Life is just a series ofcontinual and unending cycles and man is stuck in the middle of the cycle. Youth, old age, Death. Does Solomon at this point embrace nihilism? Yes!!! He exclaims that the hates life (Ecclesiastes 2:17), he longs for death (4:2-3) Yet he stills has a fear of death (2:14-16).
Adrian Rogers (September 12, 1931 – November 15, 2005)
I first starting studying Ecclesiastes in 1976 when I heard Adrian Rogers give a sermon on the nihilism of King Solomon. These facts in Ecclesiastes inspired the author of the song DUST IN THE WIND. Kerry Livgren of KANSAS, who wrote the song noted, “I happened to be reading a book of American Indian poetry and somewhere in it I came across the line, ‘We’re just dust in the wind.’ I remembered in the BOOK of ECCLESIASTES where it said, ‘All is vanity,’ ” Livgren said of the passage that it reminds man he came from dust and will return to dust.
I remember a visit in 1976 that Adrian Rogers made to our Junior High Chapel service at EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL, and it was that day that I personally began a lifelong interest in King Solomon’s life, and his search for satisfaction as pictured in the Book of Ecclesiastes.
(Kerry Livgren, Dave Hope in back)
Solomon was searching for meaning and satisfaction in life in what Rogers called the 6 big L words in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He looked into Learning (1:16-18), Laughter, Ladies, Luxuries, and Liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and Labor (2:4-6, 18-20).
Ecclesiastes 2:8-10The Message (MSG)
I piled up silver and gold, loot from kings and kingdoms. I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song, and—most exquisite of all pleasures— voluptuous maidens for my bed.
9-10 Oh, how I prospered! I left all my predecessors in Jerusalem far behind, left them behind in the dust. What’s more, I kept a clear head through it all. Everything I wanted I took—I never said no to myself. I gave in to every impulse, held back nothing. I sucked the marrow of pleasure out of every task—my reward to myself for a hard day’s work!
(Edward John Poynter Painting below of Solomon)
Francis Schaeffer observed concerning Solomon, “You can not know woman by knowing 1000 women.”
King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2:11 sums up his search for meaning with these words, “…behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
After hearing the sermon by Adrian Rogers in 1976, I took a special interest in the Book of Ecclesiastes and then the next year I bought the album POINT OF KNOW RETURN by the group rock group KANSAS. On that album was the song “Dust in the Wind” and it rose to #6 on the charts in 1978. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of KANSAS become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that.
(That is the same reason I am excited about Ricky’s series AFTER LIFE!!!)
_____________________
–
Furthermore, Solomon realized death comes to everyone and there must be something more. I was hoping the members of KANSAS would keep looking for something more than just material pursuits UNDER THE SUN.
Livgren wrote:
“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
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Both Kerry Livgren and the bass player DAVE HOPE of KANSAS became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and DAVE HOPE had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. DAVE HOPE is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
By the way, the final chapter of Ecclesiastes finishes with Solomon emphasizing that serving God is the only proper response of man. Solomon looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture. 13 Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil
I found Dr. Barlow to be a true gentleman and he was very kind to take the time to answer the questions that I submitted to him. In the upcoming months I will take time once a week to pay tribute to his life and reveal our correspondence. In the first week I noted:
Today I am posting my first letter to him in February of 2015 which discussed Charles Darwin lamenting his loss of aesthetic tastes which he blamed on Darwin’s own dedication to the study of evolution. In a later return letter, Dr. Barlow agreed that Darwin did in fact lose his aesthetic tastes at the end of his life.
In the third week, I look at the life of Brandon Burlsworth in the November 28, 2016 letter and the movie GREATER and the problem of evil which Charles Darwin definitely had a problem with once his daughter died.
On the 4th letter to Dr. Barlow looks at Darwin’s admission that he at times thinks that creation appears to look like the expression of a mind. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words in 1968 sermon at this link.
My Fifth Letter concerning Charles Darwin’s views on MORAL MOTIONS Which was mailed on March 1, 2017. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning moral motions in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
6th letter on May 1, 2017 in which Charles Darwin’s hopes are that someone would find in Pompeii an old manuscript by a distinguished Roman that would show that Christ existed! Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning the possible manuscript finds in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link
7th letter on Darwin discussing DETERMINISM dated 7-1-17 . Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning determinism in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
8th letter responds to Dr. Barlow’s letter to me concerning Francis Schaeffer discussing Darwin’s own words concerning chance in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
9th letter in response to 11-22-17 letter I received from Professor Horace Barlow was mailed on 1-2-18 and included Charles Darwin’s comments on William Paley. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning William Paley in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
10th letter in response to 11-22-17 letter I received from Professor Horace Barlow was mailed on 2-2-18 and includes Darwin’s comments asking for archaeological evidence for the Bible! Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning His desire to see archaeological evidence supporting the Bible’s accuracy in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
11th letterI mailed on 3-2-18 in response to 11-22-17 letter from Barlow that asserted: It is also sometimes asked whether chance, even together with selection, can define a “MORAL CODE,” which the religiously inclined say is defined by their God. I think the answer is “Yes, it certainly can…” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning A MORAL CODE in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
12th letter on March 26, 2018 breaks down song DUST IN THE WIND “All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
In 13th letter I respond to Barlow’s November 22, 2017 letter and assertion “He {Darwin} clearly did not lose his sense of the VALUE of TRUTH, and of the importance of FOREVER SEARCHING it out.”
In 14th letter to Dr. Barlow on 10-2-18, I assert: “Let me demonstrate how the Bible’s view of the origin of life fits better with the evidence we have from archaeology than that of gradual evolution.”In 15th letter in November 2, 2018 to Dr. Barlow I quote his relative Randal Keynes Who in the Richard Dawkins special “The Genius of Darwin” makes this point concerning Darwin, “he was, at different times, enormously confident in it,and at other times, he was utterly uncertain.”In 16th Letter on 12-2-18 to Dr. Barlow I respond to his letter that stated, If I am pressed to say whether I think belief in God helps people to make wise and beneficial decisions I am bound to say (and I fear this will cause you pain) “No, it is often very disastrous, leading to violence, death and vile behaviour…Muslim terrorists…violence within the Christian church itself”17th letter sent on January 2, 2019 shows the great advantage we have over Charles Darwin when examining the archaeological record concerning the accuracy of the BibleIn the 18th letter I respond to the comment by Charles Darwin: “My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive….The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words on his loss of aesthetic tastes in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733 everettehatcher@gmail.com
President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. There have […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers, President Obama | Edit |Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
President Obama Speaks at The Ohio State University Commencement Ceremony Published on May 5, 2013 President Obama delivers the commencement address at The Ohio State University. May 5, 2013. You can learn a lot about what President Obama thinks the founding fathers were all about from his recent speech at Ohio State. May 7, 2013, […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers, President Obama | Edit | Comments (0)
Dr. C. Everett Koop with Bill Graham. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit |Comments (1)
America’s Founding Fathers Deist or Christian? – David Barton 4/6 There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Tagged governor of connecticut, john witherspoon, jonathan trumbull | Edit | Comments (1)
3 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton There were 55 gentlemen who put together the constitution and their church affliation is of public record. Greg Koukl notes: Members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political foundations of our nation, were […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
I do not think that John Quincy Adams was a founding father in the same sense that his father was. However, I do think he was involved in the early days of our government working with many of the founding fathers. Michele Bachmann got into another history-related tussle on ABC’s “Good Morning America” today, standing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit |Comments (0)
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ____________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
President Trump’s 11-26-20 Press Conference May Have Been His BEST!!!!
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Speaker 3: (18:33) Mr. President, do you have any big plans for your last Thanksgiving in the White House?
Donald Trump: (18:37) Well, we don’t know what is last, if you look at what’s going on. You have to really take a look at what’s going on. They’re finding tremendous discrepancies in the votes. Nobody believes those numbers. Those numbers are incorrect numbers. A lot of numbers have already been reported that’s incorrect.
Donald Trump: (18:55) You’re going to see things happening over the next week or two that are going to be shocking to people. If you look at the numbers in Michigan, if you look at the numbers in Pennsylvania, if you look at fraudulent voting and fraudulent votes, so I can’t say what’s first and what’s last in terms of is this the last one or is this the first one of a second term. We’ll see what happens. Nobody wants to see the kind of fraud that this election has really come to represent.
Donald Trump: (19:25) We are looking at things that are so bad in Georgia, they don’t want to show us signatures. The reason they don’t want to show us signatures is very simple, because we will find thousands and thousands… it’s a very close race. It’s hair-thin. But we’ll find thousands and thousands of discrepancies, fraud. Why they aren’t wanting to show those signatures is amazing. They’re doing recounts, and even in the recount they found thousands of votes that were off. But now we want to look at the signatures, and you will find tens of thousands of false ballots, forged ballots. You’ll see it all over. You’re going to see a lot of it.
Donald Trump: (20:04) And you go to Pennsylvania, you saw the meeting we had yesterday with Pennsylvania. You saw people come up, they went to vote, and they said, “No, you can’t vote. Somebody else already sent in a ballot, and a woman…” But this is happening tens of thousands of times. I think it was 600 and some-odd thousand, 687,000 fraudulent votes cast in Pennsylvania, and I will tell you, if you look at the state house now, the Republican state house, they’re starting to see what’s going on there. But they’ve really known it for a long time.
Donald Trump: (20:36) Then you go to Michigan and you look at what happened in Wayne County and Detroit. I went through a list. I went almost every county and you see it, almost everybody, 78%, 72%, 68% going through the list. Then you get to Wayne, and something happened, tremendous numbers. You saw the canvassers that refused to sign their document because they said, “We can’t sign a fraudulent document.” Horrible things went on. That’s in Wayne County, Detroit. But you look at the votes that were just tabulated, and they were left today. Look at all the counties. I won almost all of them except Detroit was so egregious. It was phony.Look at what’s going on in Wisconsin. Wisconsin they’re finding tremendous discrepancy. You just take a look at that, tremendous discrepancy, and elsewhere. So we’re going to see what happens. But you can’t have somebody assume office and already they want to get rid of America First. I mean they want to get rid of America First. They don’t want America First. You know why? Because China doesn’t want it. China expressed their wish, “Please get rid of America First,” and the Biden administration said, “That’s okay, we’ll get rid of American First.” No, we don’t want to get rid of America First. We want to put America first, and other countries should put themselves first too, and I tell them that all the time. But we don’t want to get rid of it.
Donald Trump: (22:00) So I don’t know what is going to happen. I know one thing, Joe Biden did not get 80 million votes, and I got 74 million. But there were many ballots thrown away, so I got much more than that. But I got 74 million. 74 million is 11 million more than I got last time. It’s millions more than Ronald Regan got when he won 49 states. I guess he won 49 states, yes, and it’s millions more than Hillary Clinton got. Joe Biden did not get… and by the way, Joe Biden did not beat Barack Obama with the Black vote, didn’t beat him. But they have him as beating him.
Donald Trump: (22:43) And if you look at the numbers, the numbers are false. The numbers are corrupt. It was a rigged election, 100%, and people know it. That’s why you have people marching all over the United States right now. They know it was a rigged election and look at what’s happening in Georgia. A lot of things are being found in Georgia and they are absolutely against showing… I mean it’s a sad thing. They don’t want to show signatures. It can be solved if you show signatures. But you’re going to find out the people that signed aren’t the people that are supposed to be signing. You’re going to find that the people that signed those envelopes, they didn’t do the ballots, envelopes… and then somebody said, “Maybe the envelopes were thrown out.” There’s tremendous fraud here.
Donald Trump: (23:27) If you look [crosstalk 00:23:28] wait, just one second. If you look at 10:00 in the evening, you saw what happened. Then you had these massive dumps. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. You have Dominion, which is very, very suspect to start off with. Nobody knows the ownership. People say the votes are counted in foreign countries and much worse than that, by the way, with Dominion. So Dominion is also partially based in Canada, but it’s based in other countries too, and nobody knows where the votes… But you know, Canada refuses to use Dominion. Canada uses paper ballots. So think of it, they’re based in Canada, and Canada refused-
Donald Trump: (24:03) Think of it. They’re based in Canada and Canada refuses to use them. They’re smart. They use paper ballots because paper ballots are, frankly, the only thing that really you’re going to get an accurate tab on because those machines are fixed, they’re rigged. You can press Trump and the vote goes to Biden. All you have to do is play with a chip, and it’s shown all the time. All you have to do is play with a chip, and they played with a chip, especially in Wayne County and Detroit. You take a look. In Philadelphia, you take a look. We’ve had excellent meetings with senators from Pennsylvania, Republican senators and others, and they’re seeing things. They knew it was dishonest, but they didn’t know it was this dishonest. You’ll see it all. You’ll see it also, so we’ll see. Speaking of Georgia, I’ll be going there.
Donald Trump: (24:55) I spoke with the two great senators. They’re great senators, Kelly and David. I’ll probably be going on Saturday. We’re looking for a site. We’re going to have a tremendous turnout, and we seem to always have a good turnout. The people are very disappointed that we were robbed. We were robbed. I won that by hundreds of thousands of votes. Everybody knows it. You go down the streets, there are Trump/Pence signs all over the place. We won that by hundreds of thousands, Georgia, so they’re disappointed. I don’t want them to be disappointed. That’ll solve itself. We’re finding the votes. Once we get to the signatures, we’ll take over 100%. Once we get to signature, 100%. We will take over Georgia and we will get Georgia, but they have to show us the signatures. Stacey Abrams pulled the wool over the secretary of state. I don’t know who he is, but the secretary of state.
Donald Trump: (25:46) It doesn’t matter. He says that, too, but I don’t know him. I never met him. I have no idea who he is. All I know is that’s the ultimate. “I donated to Trump. I respect Trump. I love Trump. I think Trump is great. By the way, we’re giving nothing.” This guy got played like I’ve never seen anybody played. Tell him, if he donated to Trump, if he likes Trump, let us see the signatures. Why is he not letting us see? There’s only one reason you can’t see the signatures. That’s because there’s fraud all over the place. Even without looking at signatures, as you know, we found thousands of wrong votes. By the way, always against me. It was not 50/50. It was always against me.
Donald Trump: (26:23) The other thing, take a look at Michigan. Take a look at what they did with respect to counties, every county, 78%, 72%, 76%, 59%. The whole thing, one after another after another, and then you get to Detroit and it’s more votes than people. Dead people voting all over the place. But anyway, going back to Georgia just for a second. I’ll be going there on Saturday night, and maybe I’ll go twice. It’s very important that we win those races. These are two great people. I know them both very well. They’re both great people. I think the two people… I beat the one gentleman. He ran against a congressional candidate who was an excellent person, frankly, and he didn’t even live in the right community, and that’s how we won. Now I have to beat him again. He lost as a congressman. He was going for Congress, as you remember, and now against Karen. And now he’s running against David. He doesn’t deserve to be there. He’s a lightweight. The other one is either a communist or a socialist. I can’t figure that one out yet. But he’s either a communist or socialist, probably a communist. This is not for Georgia. I just want to tell my people, don’t be disappointed yet because this race is far from over. But I’m going on Saturday night. I’ll be in Georgia. We’re going to have a tremendous crowd. They’re looking for the right site. Probably, we’d love to take one of the big stadiums, but you can’t because of the COVID, so we’ll have an outdoor form of probably an airport. Most likely it’s an airport. They’re looking for the biggest space. We’ll have tens of thousands of people show up. I think it’s very important. Then, I may go a second time. Depending on how they’re doing, I may go a second time. But they’re two really good people. Yeah?
Donald Trump: (28:32) As to whether or not I can get this apparatus moving this quickly, because time isn’t on our side, everything else is on our side. Facts are on our side. This was a massive fraud. This should never take place in this country. We’re like a third world country. We have machines that nobody knows what the hell they’re looking at. You take a look at all the mistakes they made. Look at even Georgia. Look at all the mistakes they made, and all that was is a simple you press a button. Look at Georgia. All the votes they found just by going… And I said they shouldn’t even do it because it doesn’t mean anything. They’re doing a recount right now in Georgia that is meaningless.
Donald Trump: (29:09) The only recount that matters in Georgia is to look at the signatures on the envelope, and you will find that those signatures do not match the people that were, many of them, hundreds of thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, and I only lost by 12,000 votes. I didn’t lose. I don’t even like to say I lose. I guess we’re 11,000 or 12,000 votes short. That’s out of millions and millions of votes. They just got it over the line. One of the things that happened, I did so well, and I was told this in two other states, that they didn’t know what to do. They panicked. Take a look at their drops at 3:00 and 3:42 in the morning on certain states. They did drops where you’re going along like this, and then you’ll have a spike that goes up to the ceiling at that. It’s disgraceful. We can’t let that happen.
Donald Trump: (29:56) I will tell you, in Philadelphia, the Republicans, State House Republicans are very, very upset, and it’s appropriate because Philadelphia’s become very activist, if you look at what’s going on. They don’t want that to happen to Pennsylvania, to the state of Pennsylvania. I don’t even like to use… It was a rigged election.
Speaker 5: (30:19) Sir, just to be clear, if the electoral college votes for Joe Biden, will you concede?
Donald Trump: (30:25) If they do, they made a mistake, because this election was a fraud.
Donald Trump: (30:29) Just saying, I said, this election was a fraud. They have Biden beating Obama, and Obama’s vote, in areas that mattered in terms of the election, in swing states, and yet he’s losing to Obama all over the place, but he’s beating Obama in swing states, which are the states that mattered for purposes of the election. No, I can’t say that at all.
Donald Trump: (31:00) You’re just a lightweight. Don’t talk to me that way. I’m the President of the United States. Don’t ever talk to the president that way.
Donald Trump: (31:07) All right, I’m going to go with another question. Go ahead.
Speaker 6: (31:10) If the electoral college does elect President-Elect Joe Biden, are you not going to leave this building?
Donald Trump: (31:16) Certainly I will. Certainly I will, and you know that. But I think that there will be a lot of things happening between now and the 20th of January, a lot of things. Massive fraud has been found. We’re like a third world country. We’re using computer equipment that can be hacked. They talk about glitches. How many glitches did they find? A glitch, oh gee, we had a glitch, 5,000 votes. In all cases, right? In all cases, the votes went from Trump to Biden. They didn’t go from Biden. The glitches were never from Biden to Trump. They had many glitches, and they said, “Oh, we had a glitch.” A glitch is like the equipment is a little broken, we’ll fix it up. No, a glitch is, in this case, we caught them cheating, we caught them stealing, we caught a fraudulent effort to get votes, and they said, “Oh yes, it’s true, there was.” And there were many of them. But here’s the problem. There were probably 10, 20, 30 times that didn’t get caught. We just got lucky and caught numerous of them.
Donald Trump: (32:20) What that is, is very simple. If you look at the glitch, the glitch means, “Oh, we got caught. We got caught with the votes and now let’s just call it a glitch.” It wasn’t the machinery. By the way, the machinery, if you look, just take a look anywhere on the internet, you will see many, many people where they’re experimenting with this stupid machinery, where if you set it a certain way, the votes go from Trump to Biden. If you look at these counties, if you look at Arizona where I was going to win very easily, I’ve had the biggest politicians in Arizona say, “There was no way you lost Arizona.” There’s no way I lost Pennsylvania, with his anti-fuel and with his anti-fracking and all of the things that they stand against. There was no way.
Donald Trump: (33:12) Now, Texas, you all said that I was going to lose Texas by a lot, four points. I won Texas by eight or nine points. Right? I won it very easily. In Wisconsin, you all said I was going to lose, or the poll said, certain polls, Washington Post, ABC, said I was going to lose by 17 points. Think of how dishonest. I thought I was going to win it, and essentially I did win it. It’s very, very close. It’s very, very close. We’re going to win because they found, by the way, in Wisconsin, they have found massive discrepancy, just so you understand, massive discrepancy. But they said I was going to lose by 17 points and I won the state, but it’s very close. It shows very close, whether you say win or lose, it shows very close.
Donald Trump: (33:55) When you look at the massive discrepancy that we’ll be revealing, that’s already been revealed, everybody knows it, they just don’t want to play it. Between big tech and the fake news media, you just put out like this little railroad trade. Now, I think it’s not right that he’s trying to pick a cabinet, but I can’t imagine whether it’s courts or legislatures. If you’re going to catch hundreds of thousands of false ballots, and I’m talking in each state. Just so you understand, many, many more votes that we’re talking about that we need, you understand, I’m not saying we caught 23 dead people, but we were short 20,000 votes. No, no. We have tens of thousands votes more than we need in all cases. Okay? In all cases. I think you’re going to see something. I think it’s going to be a very big story. Yeah, please.
Donald Trump: (35:03) Because this is far from being-
Speaker 7: (35:07) If and when Joe Biden takes over, will you announce candidacy for 2024?
Donald Trump: (35:08) Look, look, look. I and the people that work in this are very professional and all of this stuff is coming. A lot of it came out, if you look at the Philadelphia meeting, if you look at the Pennsylvania meeting yesterday, a lot of it came out. This has a long way to go. This has a long way to go. You’re going to find tremendous fraud. You’re going to find fraud of hundreds of thousands of votes per state. You’re going to find fraud of many, many times the votes that I need. Again, we’re not talking about less votes where 20 votes, but it doesn’t turn the election. No, we’re talking about thousands and thousands of votes beyond what we need to turn a state. When you see that, I think it’s very hard, even for the media to say that Biden should win the state.
Donald Trump: (35:59) There’s no way that Biden got 80 million votes. By the way, the only way he got 80 million…
Donald Trump: (36:03) … That Biden got 80 million votes. By the way, the only way he got 80 million votes is through a massive fraud. There’s no way that he got 80 million votes.
Speaker 8: (36:07) Can you give us a timeline of when you’re going to present the evidence of voter fraud to talk about?
Donald Trump: (36:10) Well, it’s happening now. I mean-
Speaker 10: (36:19) Mr. President, if you don’t think that the presidential election was legitimate and you think that it was stolen, what confidence do you expect voters in order to have when they go to the polls to vote for, say, Loeffler or for you?
Donald Trump: (36:32) Well, I told them today, I think you’re dealing in a very fraudulent system. I think I’m very worried about that. They are tremendous people. Kelly Loeffler, David Perdue are tremendous people. They should be in the United States Senate. They’re desperately needed. But I told them today, I said, “Listen, you have a fraudulent system. You have a system with the flick of a switch or the putting in of a new chip can change the course of history, and you have to be very careful.”
Donald Trump: (37:01) I read this morning where Stacey Abrams has 850,000 ballots accumulated. Now, that’s called harvesting. You’re not allowed to harvest, but I understand the Secretary of State who is really, he’s an enemy of the people. The Secretary of State, and whether he’s Republican or not, this man, what he’s done, supposedly he made a deal, and you’ll have to check this, where she’s allowed to harvest, but in other areas they’re not allowed. What kind of a deal is that? They’re not allowed to harvest during the presidential.
Donald Trump: (37:35) But how can she say she has 850,000 ballots? That would mean that she’s got 850,000 ballots for her. That’s not supposed to be happening. That’s not an election. You know, an election should be a one day deal. You walk in and you vote. And if you can’t do it, if for some reason you’re not feeling well or there’s a problem… But what they did is they used COVID in order to defraud the people of this country. And the whole world is watching, and the whole world is laughing at our electoral process. The whole world is watching, and it’s a very sad thing, a very sad thing.
Donald Trump: (38:12) And you know what? I’ve done a lot of things. You just saw Space Force, and you’ve seen the tax cuts, and the regulation cuts, and the way we’ve taken care of the vets, and what we’ve done with Anwar and Alaska and all the different things we’ve done, more than just about anybody’s done, even though it’s four years. There are those that say what I’m doing right now is the single most important thing I’ve ever done, and I think it may be true. It may be true. The vaccines, and by the way, don’t let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccines. If Joe Biden… Joe Biden failed with the swine flu, H1N1. Totally failed with the swine flu. Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines because the vaccines were me and I pushed people harder than they’ve ever been pushed before. And we got that approved and through, and nobody’s ever seen anything like it. And you got a big resistance in the FDA from years and years of people working there for years and years, different administrations. But the vaccines, there are those that says one of the greatest things. It’s a medical miracle. Don’t let anyone try and take credit for it.
Donald Trump: (39:19) But with all of the things I’ve done, this could be the most important because there’s been voter fraud going on, but never at this scale. Tens of millions of ballots have been sent out to people that didn’t even want them. Many people, and I know you’ve heard, many people have received two, three, and four ballots, and many people have taken those two, three, and four ballots and they’ve voted them.
Donald Trump: (39:43) This election was a fraud. It was a rigged election. I mean, I hate to say it, but this was rigged, at the highest level, it was a rigged election. So we have to figure it out. And yes, I think it’s very dangerous for the two people that are running against two totally unqualified people. And I think it’s very dangerous for our nation.
Donald Trump: (40:05) And I’ll go a step further. I said today, other than the fact that you have all of the eyes and ears, but the media doesn’t cover it properly because the media, if they saw something wrong, I’m convinced that media would not report it because you have many things that you know are wrong and you don’t report. But if the media was honest in this country, which, for the most part, they’re not, this would never have happened. This has taken place. This fraud has taken place. If the media were honest, this would never, ever have happened.
Donald Trump: (40:37) But you have a big election coming up. You have a woman or somebody announced 850,000 absentee ballots have already been collected. 850, and I told David Perdue today, and I told Kelly yesterday, I said, “They’re talking about having collected already 800,000 ballots against you.”
Donald Trump: (40:56) You can’t do that. You can’t do that. What kind of a race is that? You can’t allow that to happen. And I’m serious. If the media were honest and if big tech were honest, which it’s totally not, it’s a terrible thing. That whole Section 230 is a disgrace that they even have it. But big tech is totally dishonest. If the media were honest and big tech was fair, this wouldn’t even be a contest, and I would have won by a tremendous amount, a tremendous amount. And I did win by a tremendous amount, but it hasn’t been reported yet. But people understand what’s happened. They know what happened. Yes, please go.
Speaker 11: (41:32) Do you know, of course, it is tradition-
Donald Trump: (41:59) When they don’t allow a poll watcher, which is a sacred person in our country, people don’t know what a poll watcher is. A poll watcher is, it’s considered sacred in our country. When they throw them out of rooms-
Speaker 11: (42:15) But that’s not true. They didn’t do that.
Donald Trump: (42:16) And when they put them in pens-
Speaker 11: (42:18) Your attorneys admitted they were in the room then.
Donald Trump: (42:18) Excuse me. No, they didn’t. My attorneys did not admit anything and it’s all different places. But where they throw the amount of counting rooms, where they put them in what’s called pens and they’re 20, 30, 40 feet away, and in some cases 200 feet away, when things like that happen. When a woman walks in on November 3rd to vote, a proud woman, and this is by the thousands, tens of thousands, and she said, “I’m here to vote.” And they said, “You’ve already voted, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
Donald Trump: (42:47) “No, I didn’t vote. I wanted to vote on November 3rd. I want to cast my vote in person.” “I’m sorry, ma’am, you’ve already voted. You voted by ballot.” And then they leave. This is a horrible thing, and we have tens of thousands of that happening. This is a horrible thing.
Donald Trump: (43:04) They gave Biden a lot of votes that he would never have gotten. This is not a candidate that could get 80 million votes. This is just not a candidate. This is not a candidate that beat Barack Hussein Obama with the Black voter, okay? This is not a candidate that beat Obama with the Black voter. This is not a candidate that beat Hillary Clinton to a pulp. It just doesn’t work that way. But when you look at the number, when you look at the data, and when you look at the things we have, we have affidavits from hundreds and hundreds of people. This election was a rigged election. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.
—- Biden Won Despite Losing Most Bellwether Counties
Biden is set to become the first president in 60 years to lose the states of Ohio and Florida on his way to election. For a century, these states have consistently predicted the national outcome, and they have been considered roughly representative of the American melting pot as a whole. Despite national polling giving Biden a lead in both states, he lost Ohio by eight points and Florida by more than three.
For Biden to lose these key bellwethers by notable margins and still win the national election is newsworthy. Not since the Mafia allegedly aided John F. Kennedy in winning Illinois over Richard Nixon in 1960 has an American president pulled off this neat trick.
Even more unbelievably, Biden is on his way to winning the White House after having lost almost every historic bellwether county across the country. The Wall Street Journal and The Epoch Times independently analyzed the results of 19 counties around the United States that have nearly perfect presidential voting records over the last 40 years. President Trump won every single bellwether county, except Clallam County in Washington.
Whereas the former VP picked up Clallam by about three points, President Trump’s margin of victory in the other 18 counties averaged over 16 points. In a larger list of 58 bellwether counties that have correctly picked the president since 2000, Trump won 51 of them by an average of 15 points, while the other seven went to Biden by around four points. Bellwether counties overwhelmingly chose President Trump, but Biden found a path to victory anyway.
Joe Biden achieved the impossible. It’s interesting that many more journalists aren’t pointing that out.
J.B. Shurk is a proud American from Daniel Boone country
Documents show financial ties between ERLC & left-wing George Soros Open Society Foundations, Pierre Omidyar of the Democracy Fund, and Paul Singer of the American Unity Fund.
A report from Enemies within the Church, printed below, contains documents obtained by the filmmakers that link grants and funding from leftist billionaires to the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention and its head Russell Moore. The documents include grant data showing the Democracy Fund provided $50,000 to the controversial ERLC’s and The Gospel Coalition’s MLK50 Conference
Other documents in the report include Dr. Moore’s name in the Podesta emails published in 2016 by Wikileaks.
On Friday, November 6, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Commission (ERLC) posted a statement on its website:
“Currently, there has been no evidence that voter fraud has been occurring…
“There are numerous reasons why widespread election fraud is difficult, if not impossible, to pull off at the presidential level… Extensive research has shown that voter fraud is exceeding rare, that voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent, and that many instances of alleged fraud are merely mistakes by voters or election administrators.”
The article is attributed to the “ERLC Staff,” and the statement is date-stamped November 6, 2020, at which point a number of states had not fully resolved allegations of balloting improprieties: most notably Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. It is difficult not to assume that the ERLC (Ethics and Religious Leadership Council) is purposefully seeking to influence the election outcome for primarily two reasons: (1) Dr. Russell Moore, the president of the ERLC, has consistently and publicly opposed Donald Trump and actively sought to undermine his evangelical reach, and (2) the ERLC seems to have financial ties to at least three progressive billionaire activists: left-wing George Soros of Open Society Foundations, Pierre Omidyar of the Democracy Fund, and Paul Singer of the American Unity Fund.
Who are these donors? Are they influencing the ERLC?
Behind Billionaire Door #1: George Soros
Dr. Moore’s ties to George Soros have been the subject of heated debate. At various times, those sympathetic to Dr. Moore have denied that he receives funds from Soros. Denials have hinged on arguments about whether the National Immigration Forum (NIF) and the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT) – both progressive organizations – are actually the same thing. EWTC was able to obtain what appear to be authentic internal documents from a 2015 meeting in New York of the Open Society U.S. Programs Board;
These should put debate to rest.
George Soros’ Open Society Foundations have been clear that they hope to infuse left-wing ideology into every community of discourse that exists. To broaden the influence of his radical agenda, he has made a point to fund “rent-an-evangelical” schemes like the kind underscored in a cautionary article by Stream writer John Zmirak four years ago:
Joining “faith” fronts, Soros also funds thousands of … collaborators and projects that suggest his goal is to demoralize America (and Europe)… In the ironic rhetoric of compassion, Soros and friends also fund mass immigration followed by voting “rights” and redistricting schemes, while financing the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. (Soros is a major donor to the Democratic Party and co-chairman of Ready for Hillary PAC.)
Earlier this year, Baptist Standard ran an article disputing “rumors” that Russell Moore received funding from Soros’ foundations. Dr. Moore and the ERLC have found themselves in the crosshairs of Soros-related debates because of Moore’s active involvement with the EIT. A document from November 13, 2012, addressed to President Obama clearly lists the ERLC alongside nine other groups as the groups comprising the EIT: World Relief Corporation, Sojourners, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, Bread for the World, Liberty Counsel, National Association of Evangelicals, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, National Latino Evangelical Coalition, World Vision, and G92.
In 2013, spokespeople for the EIT had already admitted to Breitbart News that their group “does not exist as its own non-profit” and “sought a neutral third-party institution, the NIF, to help facilitate our work.” Despite the strenuous denials that Mr. Soros’ money was involved, it is clear that the “facilitation” of the EIT depends on a structure financed by Mr. Soros, the NIF. Any doubt of separation between the initiatives now hold no weight since Dr. Moore is prominently listed as a speaker for the 2020 convention of the NIF and has his own webpage on the NIF website.
EWTC obtained meeting notes from “OPEN SOCIETY US PROGRAMS BOARD MEETING,” hosted by Open Society Foundations in New York City on October 1-2, 2015. One section of the meeting notes states the following:
“In part, our active role reflects our observation that the refugee advocacy community while long-standing and sophisticated in the inner workings of refugee policy, does not have a strong advocacy capacity or deep grassroots ties. In the course of our work, we were able to generate engagement by a group of mayors through Emma Lazarus II Fund grantee Cities United for Immigration Action… and some conservative voices such as evangelical Christians and Southern Baptists through grantee NIF. In the face of this pressure, the Obama administration announced Sept. 20 that by 2017, it would raise to 100,000 the total number of refugees the US takes worldwide each year. “
The bolded section above makes clear that the Open Society Foundations earmarked a grant to the NIF, specifically so funds could be channeled to the Southern Baptist Convention in exchange for the SBC’s help in putting “pressure” on officials to raise the number of refugees the US could take in.
EWTC obtained the following three documents showing the undeniable purpose of a significant funding stream earmarked by Open Society Foundations for Dr. Moore’s clique at the ERLC:
ERLC:
As more refugee resettlement means more grants to faith-based organizations to resettle refugees a great potential for corruption exists. The North American Mission Boardoversees the SEND Network, which plants churches. These plants stand to gain if they can pitch their efforts as community revitalization; something that pairs neatly with refugee resettlement. One vice president of the SEND Network is Dhati Lewis, whose ties to the ERLC are evident by his appearance on their website. Dhati Lewis also takes the stage prominently with Kevin Ezell, leader of the SBC’s North American Mission Board. Kevin Ezell’s leadership of NAMB has been fraught with controversy, as one can see quite clearly by following the website of Will McRaney, a Southern Baptist who has spent years documenting the corruption at NAMB online.
Dr. Moore has tied ostensible gospel efforts to a political lobby funded by George Soros, a man who opposes Biblical doctrine on ethics, life, sexuality, etc., and who openly says he wishes to invest large amounts of money in any willing evangelical that can spin his left-wing politics into a “Christian” endeavor.
Behind Billionaire Door #2: Pierre Omidyar
Russell Moore survived the 2017 post election push-back, becoming emboldened even further the following year during a conference marking the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. The “MLK 50” Conference brought out rhetoric that was not merely liberal or Democratic, but overtly steeped in critical race theory.
What does the billionaire founder of e-Bay, have to do with a Southern Baptist conference? As Omidyar has a philanthropist streak that delights some progressives and dismays others, it’s not difficult to identify his stake in the conference. In an interview with EWTC, progressive musician Michelle Shocked (who happens to be Christian) explained that Mr. Omidyar has a hybrid philosophy of philanthropy, believing that a charity without a profit motive would be suspect. Therefore Omidyar liked to cast his social-justice pursuits as “charity on a for-profit model.” Pando writer Mark Ames explained this laid this philosophy: He says, “Perhaps no other figure embodies the disconnect between his progressive anti-state image, and his factual collaboration with the American national security state and the global neoliberal agenda, than Pierre Omidyar.”
To clarify this, Ms. Shocked provided several articles by left-wing Yasha Levine. Mr. Levine has flagged the relationship between Pierre Omidyar and Brazil-based journalist Glenn Greenwald as problematic. Mr. Omidyar funded the creation of the Intercept by Glenn Greenwald. Mr. Greenwald built the Intercept into a vibrant online news and commentary source but then ran afoul of management (and presumably, Omidyar), when Intercept principals told him he could not publish anything critical of Joe Biden. Yasha Levine explains the deceptive nature of Omidyar’s political involvement:
“Pierre’s surprising generousness — combined with the fact that he seemed to be on the Good Side, on the side of Edward Snowden and his NSA leaks — brought the man a huge amount of good will… Even now, while Silicon Valley’s leadership — from Zuck to Bezos — have been getting knocked about and criticized from every angle, Pierre has been able to skate by with no critical attention thrown his way, despite his involvement in funding far-right regime change ops, global surveillance projects, and the trail of impoverished bodies he’s left behind in the wake of his various colonial investment initiatives.”
If this unflattering assessment of Mr. Omidyar’s philanthropy is honest, we can see the obvious attraction of Omidyar’s non-profit to the ERLC. The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with roughly 46,000 churches. This is a massive client base.
As to Russell Moore’s interest in Pierre Omidyar, given the extent of Baptist tithes that flow into the ERLC, why would Dr. Moore take upon himself such an unfavorable business connection? The lavish scale of the MLK 50 event seems rather exaggerated since Dr. Moore could have put on a simple conference with speakers drawn from churches across the SBC rather than booking bigger names like Karen Swallow Prior, Matt Chandler, and John Piper. The oversized scale entangled Dr. Moore in the funds of a man described even by left-wing activists as “a rapacious tech oligarch.”
A likely draw was Mr. Omidyar’s anti-Trump fervor and his profit-driven charity model. Mr. Omidyar has funded all kinds of anti-Trump activities, including projects to bring evangelical Christians into his sphere of influence. It seems that Dr. Moore likes the money that comes with Christian causes, except that he wants to shift away from abortion and gay marriage to more consumer-friendly causes.
Pierre Omidyar funds the Trinity Forum as well. This organization recently hosted an event billed as a symposium to ask, “how do Christians discern ways of engaging culturally and politically that pursues justice, the common good, and love of neighbor?” Coming just before the heated 2020 election, this overtly socialist reading of the gospel fit in perfectly with Omidyar’s anti-Trump political goals as well as the crass “for-profit charity” model that progressives despise. The main speakers for the Trinity Forum event were Justin Giboney, the president of the AND Campaign, and the “co-chair of Obama for America’s Gen44-Atlanta initiative”; and Shirley Hoogstra, president of the “Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.” Hoogstra states in her press release that she “focused on expanding diversity and inclusion on CCCU campuses,” which refers, at least partly, to the movement to force Christian colleges to water down their stance on LGBTs.
EWTC was able to obtain what appears to be a February 3, 2012, memo from “Bill Vandenberg, Program Director, Democracy Fund” to “U.S. Programs Board.” In this memo, Vandenburg states the group’s goals: (1) investing “in faith-based advocacy and the engagement of the faith community,” (2) “public opinion research…of faith demography,” (3) “strategic communications work”, (4) “field meetings,” and (5) “fellowships to faith-based thinkers.”
That Russell Moore intertwined the Southern Baptist Convention with these cynical efforts to manufacture and disseminate liberal Christian dogma raises serious concerns.
Behind Billionaire Door #3: Paul Singer
Finally, Dr. Moore remains tied through mutual partnerships to the funding of Paul Singer, arguably the most pernicious of the three billionaires. Unlike Omidyar and Soros, Mr. Singer does not present himself as a leftist in any way, rather funding Republican and conservative organizations. He was a major backer of Marco Rubio, the candidate that Dr. Moore seemed to favor in the 2016 Republican primaries.
On this issue Tom Littleton once again offers a bank of invaluable information. In a broadside posted in late 2019, Mr. Littleton spells out how Paul Singer’s longstanding quest to normalize homosexuality in conservative circles left a trail of bread crumbs to an effort called Fairness for All (as well as the typically connected AND Campaign). The American Unity Fund, Paul Singer’s organization, funds the Alliance for Lasting Liberty, which is tied to the Fairness for All Movement. Like a merry-go-round of funding, these groups then contribute to the AND Campaign, which features leaders Justin Giboney and Michael Wear. These men all travel in the same circles, as Mr. Littleton documents at Thirty Pieces of Silver.
Conclusion
A man as intelligent as Dr. Moore must know that there is a mountain of evidence pointing to significant voter fraud in the 2020 election. Since Dr. Moore is neither foolish nor crazy, it’s difficult not to come to the somewhat obvious conclusion: those who wanted Donald Trump defeated have been financing Dr. Moore’s friends, associates, and partners for years. This has clearly influenced him and the SBC.
We are fighting the corruption of the true gospel by those who would replace it with the gospel of social justice – we need your help! Donate today to help us complete the film, Enemies within the Church!
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It pays to remember history. Today I am going to go through some of it and give an outline and quotes from the great Southern Baptist leader Adrian Rogers (1931-2005).
Somehow Newt Gingrich’s righteous indignation over CNN’s debate moderator John King’s questioning Gingrich over his ex-wife’s allegations that Newt Gingrich wanted an “open marriage” with both his then wife, Marianne Gingrich and Gingrich’s present wife Callista, appears to be a simple little temper tantrum by the seemingly cry-baby ex-Speaker.
Gingrich came off a whiner having a hissy fit over what is more than likely “the truth”..
One only need go back to the nineties when Gingrich was outraged over the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. The press and Gingrich went full throttle to paint President Clinton as the lowest form of life possible.
Gingrich had no problem with the Press and cable TV’s trial by media events that took place in what could be described as an incessant level of coverage back then.
Now all of a sudden he chooses to castigate the “elite media” and the debate moderator for reporting the story and in King’s case, for asking about the story. Newt Gingrich appears to be a victim all the time.
Would you like some cheese with that whine Mr. Gingrich?
___________________________
My former pastor Adrian Rogers summed this up best in 1998 during the Clinton scandal (“Does Character Count? A Biblical Treatment,” SBC Life, November 1998, 1):
[Rogers] suggests the comfort of the middle class has larger implications for American society. His concern in the recent presidential intern scandal was with the large number of people who were not particularly upset. “My concern is with the people whose response to a lack of character in our leaders is a roaring, “SO WHAT? LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!” As long as there are people in this country who believe that a leader’s personal character makes no difference in any way, then I tell you that we are in the throes of crisis!”
Does Character Count? A Biblical Treatment by Adrian Rogers
“Vice is a monster of such awful mien, that to be hated needs but to be seen, but seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
Our nation is in crisis and as a minister of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, I feel I must address this matter!
We cannot, we dare not, we must not, and we shall not ignore what is happening in America today. Some terrible and shocking accusations have been made against the President of our beloved republic. It is our duty as Americans and as Christians to pray that truth will be revealed and justice administered.
In this article I want to address not so much the crisis at the highest levels of our government, but the bigger and even more disturbing crisis at the level of everyday American life where most of us live. Let me explain what I mean…
(Some will believe the charges against the President and some will not).
Then there is a third response to serious moral and ethical charges against a person in high office. This is the group I want to talk about, because it is here that America’s shocking, degrading moral crisis rears its ugly head.
This third group of people are those who, instead of saying the accused is guilty or innocent, say, “SO WHAT? Who cares? Guilty, innocent – what difference does it really make so long as he is doing a good job?”
These people argue that there is no connection between a man’s personal life and his political abilities. And according to all indications, this response to scandal and serious charges is the most common response among Americans!
A recent editorial in U.S. News & World Report said: “A majority seem to believe in the President’s programs and politics even if they don’t believe in him. They care far more about the good times. As one wag put it, ‘People say they vote Dow Jones, not Paula Jones.'”
Another editorial writer argued that in the case of the President, “We elected him knowing his propensities. The economy is strong and he has a promising agenda. Tossing him out to keep up appearances would merely match the President’s destructive self-indulgence with our own.”
This man assumes the President has done wrong. But he’s saying that the economy is good and the President’s programs are so good. Why mess up a good thing?
In a newspaper article, a sociologist made this observation: “Character has been slowly bred out of many Americans, especially baby boomers and their children.” He argued that decades of pampering and organized activities and “feel-good” approaches in which participants do not have to take personal responsibility have made character almost passé.
Is character passé in America? A Newsweek magazine poll said that voters tend to believe the President is lying about his adulterous affairs, yet he is enjoying his highest approval rating ever. These sentiments sum up the attitude of this third group and indicate that we are in deep trouble as a nation!
I want you to understand that no matter what has been revealed or what action has been taken by the time this is read, the crisis I want to address will not just go away. My concern is with the people whose response to a lack of character in our leaders is a roaring, “SO WHAT? LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!”
As long as there are people in this country who believe that a leader’s personal character makes no difference in any way, then I tell you that we are in the throes of crisis!
But make no mistake. It makes every difference what a person in leadership believes and does in his personal life. Character counts with God, and it must count with us if we want to stay the judgment of God on this great nation.
The Character God Requires
What does God say about the kind of leadership a nation needs? I want to give you four principles I have ferreted out from the Word of God. Let’s think first of all about the character God requires. The Bible says in Proverbs 29:2, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.”
One argument we are hearing these days is that national leaders are like airplane pilots. “We don’t care about a pilot’s morals,” this line goes, “as long as he can fly the airplane. His character doesn’t matter as long as he can get us from point A to point B. We want a safe take-off, a safe trip, and a safe landing. What the pilot does in his personal life behind closed doors is none of our concern.”
This argument about a leader’s character might hold water if we did not need the BLESSING OF GOD on this country. If we are going to say, “God, we don’t need You to bless our leaders or our people,” then this argument may be valid.
But let me use another analogy. Suppose you were going to have open-heart surgery. Would you want the surgeon to come from the restroom and into the operating room without even washing his hands? Would you want him to hold your heart in his hands if they were not sanitary? I want the hands of those who hold the heart of this nation to be clean. Clean hands and a pure heart are necessary for godly leadership and godly leadership is a prerequisite to blessing.
The fact is that America desperately needs the blessing of God! We are ruined without it. But God says, “If you want My blessings, here are some things that are necessary.” Let me give you six biblical characteristics that God requires of leaders before His blessing can rest on a nation.
Below are the verses that should describe our leaders:
“It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness: for the throne is established by righteousness” (Prov. 16:12).
“I wisdom dwell with prudence. … By me [wisdom] kings reign and, princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth” (Prov. 8:12, 15-16).
Proverbs 17:7 tells us, “Excellent speech becometh not a fool: much less do lying lips a prince.” According to Proverbs 20:28, “Mercy and truth preserve the king.”
(Avoid bad counselors) Proverbs 29:12 says, “If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked.”
“The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him. What, my son? and what, the son of my womb? and what, the son of my vows? Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings” (Prov. 31:1-3).
A Leader Must Be a Man Who Protects the Weak
Here’s a final trait of leadership that God requires. A leader must protect the weak and the helpless.
In Proverbs 31:8-9, God says to King Lemuel, “Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”
A president, or any leader, must speak up for those who can’t speak up for themselves, those who are about to be destroyed. When a president is inaugurated, he takes a pledge to defend the nation. There are many defenseless people in America today, and they’re depending on the government to defend them. The President should be standing up for the unborn, the most defenseless of all those who cannot speak for themselves.
I once testified in Washington before a Senate committee dealing with abortion. After I left the room there at the Capitol, a female lawyer met me in the hall. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You’re a man, so you don’t understand what a trauma it is to have an unwanted pregnancy.”
I said to her, “Do I understand you to say that if somebody traumatizes you, you can eliminate them? Because you’re traumatizing me right now. What if I were to put both my thumbs on your windpipe and strangle you right now? At least you could scream or run. But a baby in its mother’s womb can’t do either.”
She just turned and walked off. I’m sure she told someone, “That Baptist preacher said he was going to strangle me!” But I only said, “What if?”
It’s the job of a ruler to speak up for the unborn! “Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction,” God commands the one in authority. Someone may say, “But Pastor Rogers, abortion is legal.” Then hear these verses: “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law? They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood” (Ps. 94:20-21).
If a throne of iniquity is one that uses the law to commit evil, then what we have in America today is a throne of iniquity! Laws are passed to shed innocent blood. But NOTHING IS POLITICALLY RIGHT THAT IS MORALLY WRONG.
Jeremiah said concerning evil King Jehoiakim, “Thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it” (22:17). The prophet Habakkuk warned, “Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity!” (2:12).
The king, the prince, the president, must be the protector of the helpless. This is the character that God requires.
Does character count? It does if there is a God in glory – a God who helped our founders establish this nation, and who has sustained this nation and brought us thus far.
But if our people are willing to say, “God, we don’t need You anymore. We don’t want Your rule anymore. We know what we are doing. Our skill and ingenuity will see us through,” then I say God help America! Because God will say, “You don’t need Me? That’s fine. But then don’t call on Me when judgment falls.”
Do you remember what happened when Peter preached his great sermon on the Day of Pentecost? The people of Israel “were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).
This is the question God’s people need to ask today.
________
Newt should have had a steadfast love for his wife!!! Take a look at this clip below:
Some Southern Baptist leaders defended Newt Gingrich’s past moral failings and attempted to explain why the former Speaker of the House could be supported as the Republican standard-bearer. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)
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I can tell you a few things about her, though. For one thing, she did not have a wild reputation, so I think that if she’s nominated, the Senate hearings will have to find something else to complain about. She was an English major and served on the Honor Council, a student body that enforced our honor code against lying and cheating (a great feature of academics at Rhodes that allowed us take-home tests in many classes). We were both in Mortar Board, an honor society. She wasn’t a political activist and was never a member of the College Republicans (I was, and we had a much larger membership than the College Democrats).
Amy at the homecoming game senior year
Candid photo in the social room (the ironing board refers to another picture)
L to R: Me, Amy Barrett, and my daughter
“Vice is a monster of such awful mien, that to be hated needs but to be seen, but seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
The Daily Hatch 
