Author Archives: Everette Hatcher III

My name is Everette Hatcher III. I am a businessman in Little Rock and have been living in Bryant since 1993. My wife Jill and I have four kids (Rett 24, Hunter 22, Murphey 16, and Wilson 14).

OPEN LETTER TO BARACK OBAMA ON HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY “A PROMISED LAND” Part 17 Where possible, I wanted to offer readers a sense of what it’s like to be the president of the United States; I wanted to pull the curtain back a bit and remind people that, for all its power and pomp, the presidency is still just a job and our federal government is a human enterprise like any other, and the men and women who work in the White House experience the same daily mix of SATISFACTION, disappointment, office friction, screw-ups, and small triumphs as the rest of their fellow citizens

December 8, 2020

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. 

Let me make a few comments on it, and here is the first quote of yours I want to comment on:

Where possible, I wanted to offer readers a sense of what it’s like to be the president of the United States; I wanted to pull the curtain back a bit and remind people that, for all its power and pomp, the presidency is still just a job and our federal government is a human enterprise like any other, and the men and women who work in the White House experience the same daily mix of SATISFACTION, disappointment, office friction, screw-ups, and small triumphs as the rest of their fellow citizens.

President Obama you remind me in many ways of King Solomon in his analysis of his life in Jerusalem as King of Israel. He came to the office with such great plans and he raised taxes and had so many great building projects but in the end he thought it all was vanity!

ECCLESIASTES CHAPTER 2 I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. . . . I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers, and a harem as well— the delights of a man’s heart. . . . I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.” (Ecclesiastes 2: 4,8,10)
Nevertheless, he says, “I hated life. . . . My heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 2: 17,20) Haidt summarizes, “The author of Ecclesiastes wasn’t just battling the fear of meaninglessness; he was battling the disappointment of success. . . . Nothing brought satisfaction.”

Here is a portion of a letter I wrote to the comedian Rocky Gervais dealing with Solomon and his search for satisfaction UNDER THE SUN:

July 21, 2020 
Ricky Gervais 


Dear Ricky,  

This is the 95th day in a row that I have written another open letter to you to comment on some of your episodes of AFTER LIFE. Over and over again Tony is searching for satisfaction in his life and for the meaning of it all! However, when you wrote the AFTER LIFE script Ricky you excluded spiritual answers!! Check out the answers provided by Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of KANSAS at the end of this letter!!!

Ricky Gervais plays bereaved husband Tony Johnson in AFTER LIFE

Matt takes it upon himself to help his bereaved brother-in-law Tony out by trying to help find satisfaction in his life by looking in 5 areas of life. I don’t know if Matt took time to read about Solomon’s efforts in Ecclesiastes but he did look in the same 5 areas for satisfaction [learning(1:16-18),laughter, ladies,   and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20)]. He first suggests that Tony throw himself into his work, and Tony blows off that suggestion. Next Matt sets him up on a blind date and that turns out to not work at all. Matt next turns to inviting Tony to a comedy club and the comedian tells a joke about suicide and Tony ruins the whole evening for everybody.

In season two Matt invites Tony to a meditation class which includes some philosophy that he knows appeals to Tony and he tells Tony he may learn something. Unfortunately Tony has a horrible time. Finally Matt invites Tony to the pub for a drink and to visit some women with the goal of “banging some beaver”and that is a disaster too. 

psychiatrist played by Paul Kaye seen below.

The sandy beach walk

Chapter four of the book by Tim Keller MAKING SENSE OF GOD:  (Tim Keller below)

Making Sense of God, by Timothy Keller
Chapter Four: “A Satisfaction That Is Not Based on Circumstances”

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book The Happiness Hypothesis provides a historical survey of thinking about happiness. 1 

(Jonathan Haidt pictured below)

He begins his chapter with a book of the Bible we have just looked at, Ecclesiastes. The author writes: “A person can do nothing better than to . . . find satisfaction in their own toil” (Ecclesiastes 2: 24), but that is exactly what eludes him. He describes a life of accomplishment that very few achieve.
I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. . . . I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers, and a harem as well— the delights of a man’s heart. . . . I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.” 
(Ecclesiastes 2: 4,8,10)
Nevertheless, he says, “I hated life. . . . My heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 2: 17,20) Haidt summarizes, “The author of Ecclesiastes wasn’t just battling the fear of meaninglessness; he was battling the disappointment of success. . . . Nothing brought satisfaction.” 2 This is an abiding human problem, and there is plenty of modern empirical research that backs it up. Studies find a very weak correlation between wealth and contentment, and the more prosperous a society grows,
the more common is depression. 3 The things that human beings think will bring fulfillment and contentment don’t. What should we do, then, to be happy?
Haidt says that the answer— of the Buddha and Chinese sages like Lao Tzu in the East and the Greek Stoic philosophers in the West— constituted the “early happiness hypothesis” of ancient times. The principle was this: We are unhappy even in success because we seek happiness from success. Wealth, power, achievement, family, material comfort, and security— the external goods of the world— can lead only to a momentary satisfaction, which fades away, leaving you more empty than if you had never tasted the joy. To achieve satisfaction you should not seek to change the world but rather to change your attitude toward the world. Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher, wrote, “Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.” 4 If we do that, the Buddha taught, “when pleasure or pain comes to them, the wise feel above pleasure and pain.” 5 In short, don’t try to fulfill your desires; rather, control and manage them. To avoid having our inner contentment overthrown by the inevitable loss of things, do not become too emotionally attached to anything.6


However, many people have found this approach to satisfaction not very satisfying. Haidt, for example, believes that Buddha and the Greeks “took things too far.” 7
He argues that modern research shows some external circumstances do correlate with increased satisfaction. In particular, love relationships are important, and therefore the advice of emotional detachment may actually undermine happiness. 8 Philosopher Alain de Botton agrees that loving relationships are fundamental to happiness. Indeed, he thinks our quest for the external goods of status and money
4 is really just another quest for love. 9 Another obvious problem with the ancient happiness hypothesis was that it undermined any motivation for seeking major social change. Rather than change the world as it is, we were to resign ourselves to it.

(Philosopher Alain de Botton pictured below)


Haidt takes a very modern attitude toward our ancestors. He says we can agree with any wisdom from the past that is backed by empirical research. The ancients warn us about the disappointment of overacquisitiveness, and the social science confirms that, he says. But what Haidt describes as modern culture’s operational “happiness hypothesis” is only a slightly chastened version of what the author of Ecclesiastes was trying to do. While warning against overdoing it, modern culture encourages its members to find satisfaction through active efforts to change our lives, not to just accept life as it is. 10


Back Where We Started page 79


If we stand back to ask what we have learned about happiness over the centuries, it is striking to see our lack of progress. Think of how we have surpassed our ancestors in our ability to travel and communicate, in our accomplishments in medicine and science. Think of how much less brutal and unjust to minorities many societies are today compared with even one hundred years ago. In so many ways human life has been transformed, and yet though we are unimaginably wealthier and more comfortable than our ancestors, no one is arguing that we are significantly happier than they were. We are struggling and seeking happiness in essentially the same ways our
forebears did and doing a worse job of it, if we use the rise of depression and suicide as an indicator.
The author of Ecclesiastes deserves the final word here. “Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before.” (Ecclesiastes 3: 15) Despite all our modern efforts, with regard to happiness we are essentially back where we started.
(Julian Baggini pictured below)


One response is to ask, “So what?” and insist that there is little real problem here. Julian Baggini thinks that there is no genuine problem, that no one is perfectly happy or needs to be. Most people get by fine without it, so we shouldn’t worry about how happy we are but instead should simply do things that matter. 11 Thomas Nagel observes that, according to empirical studies, most people are pretty happy most of the time. 12

(Thomas Nagel pictured below)

(Terry Eagleton pictured below)

Terry Eagleton, however, responds that the problem is masked rather than revealed by the term “happiness.” The very word is a “feeble, holiday-camp sort of word, evocative of manic grins and cavorting about.” 13 For most people— including those who answer researchers’ survey questions— the term does not have much depth to it. It refers to a range of conditions from simply “being okay” to “having fun.” To be okay is not too hard to achieve. When asked by either friends or social psychologists, “How are you today?” we instinctively say, “Fine, thanks.” But conflicts and anger flare up so quickly, and the statistics on depression and suicide always startle, and all this indicates things are not as good as we say they are.
To get at our condition more accurately, we should ask about joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction in life. Are we achieving those things? The thesis of this chapter is that we have much thinner life satisfaction than we want to admit to researchers or even to ourselves. On the whole, we are in
5 denial about the depth and magnitude of our discontent. 
The artists and thinkers who talk about it most poignantly are seen as morbid outliers, but actually they are prophetic voices. It usually takes years to break through and dispel the denial in order to see the magnitude and dimension of our dissatisfaction in life.


In 1969 the singer Peggy Lee recorded the song “Is That All There Is?” written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and based on an 1896 Thomas Mann novella called Disillusionment. 16 The woman speaking in the song tells about being taken as a twelve-year-old to the circus that was called “The Greatest Show on Earth,” but as she watched she
“had the feeling that something was missing
. I don’t know what, but when it was over I said to myself, ‘Is that all there is to a circus?’” Later she says that she fell “so very much in love” with the “most wonderful boy in the world.” And then one day he left her, and she thought she’d die. “But I didn’t. And when I didn’t, I said to myself, ‘Is that all there is to love?’” At every turn everything that should have delighted and satisfied her did not— nothing was big enough to fill her expectations or desires. There was always something missing, though she never knew what it was. Everything
left her asking, “Is that it?”
So every stanza of her life, like a song, went back to
the same refrain:
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends,
Then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
, if that’s all—
there is.

The lack of any deep or lasting satisfaction drives her to joyless partying. As we gradually discover that everything we thought would be fulfilling is not, we become less able to look forward to life, more numb, jaded, and cynical, or worse. The woman speaking in the song realizes that her listeners might wonder why she doesn’t commit suicide. But she predicts that the experience of dying will be every bit as disappointing as life has been, so there is no reason to hurry it.
6

I know what you must be saying to yourselves.
“If that’s the way she feels about it why doesn’t she just end it all?”
Oh, no, not me.
I’m in no hurry for that final disappointment.
’Cause I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you,

That when that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath
I’ll be saying to myself—
Is that all there is?
(The late Cynthia Heimel pictured below)


The Leiber-Stoller song echoes the experience of Village Voice columnist Cynthia Heimel, who saw friends go from anonymity to Hollywood stardom only to find, to their horror, they were no more fulfilled and happy than before, and the experience actually deepened their emptiness, turning them “howling and insufferable.” She surmises that “if God really wants to play a rotten practical joke on us, he grants our deepest wish and then giggles merrily as we begin to realize we want to kill ourselves.” 17

(Henrik Ibsen pictured below)

, Henrik Ibsen the Norwegian playwright, helps us understand what happened to Heimel’s friends. “If you take away the life- illusion from an average man, you take away his happiness as well.” 18 Within Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck, a life illusion is the belief that some object or condition will finally bring you the satisfaction for which you long. But this is an illusion. At some point reality will destroy it, and nothing destroys it like actually achieving your dreams.
If you are younger, it is natural to say to yourself, “I have heard about these disillusioned celebrities and wealthy people who say their life isn’t happy. But if I get anything like what I’m hoping for, I’ll be different.” No you won’t.
Though there is a spectrum of experience, nobody in the end has ever been different. That’s what the wisdom of the ancients and all the anecdotal evidence in the world will tell you. C. S. Lewis put it in perhaps the classic way in his wartime BBC radio talk on hope.


Most people, if they really learn how to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning can really satisfy. I am not speaking of what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages or trips and so on; I am speaking of the best possible ones. There is always something we grasped at, in that first moment of longing, that just fades away in the reality. The spouse may be a good spouse, the scenery has been excellent, it has turned out to be a good job, but “It” has evaded us. 19


The Dimensions of Our Discontent
 page 80 (2:50:00)

(Wallace Stevens pictured below)


Roman poet Horace asked, “How comes it to pass . . . that no one lives content with his condition . . . ?” He concludes that “all . . . think their own condition the hardest.” 14 Why is no one content with his or her life?
One reason can be seen in a line from the poem “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens. “But in contentment I still feel the need for an imperishable bliss.” 15 As we have seen, travel, material goods, sensual gratification, success, and status give quick spikes of pleasure and then fade. Stevens’s line helps us understand why. Even as we taste a moment of contentment, we sense how fleeting it is, that it will soon be wrenched from our grasp. It begins to fade away even as we try to embrace it or even to savor it. The ephemeral nature of all satisfaction makes us long for something we can keep, but we look in vain. However, this is not the whole problem. We do not only want a satisfaction that lasts longer but also one that goes much deeper.

(Rock band KANSAS below)

In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas 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. Furthermore, like Solomon and Coldplay, they realized death comes to everyone and “there must be something more.”

(Kerry Livgren below)

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.”

Both Kerry Livgren and 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 shocked and 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. Hope is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.

The movie maker Woody Allen has embraced the nihilistic message of the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas. David Segal in his article, “Things are Looking Up for the Director Woody Allen. No?” (Washington Post, July 26, 2006), wrote, “Allen is evangelically passionate about a few subjects. None more so than the chilling emptiness of life…The 70-year-old writer and director has been musing about life, sex, work, death and his generally futile search for hope…the world according to Woody is so bereft of meaning, so godless and absurd, that the only proper response is to curl up on a sofa and howl for your mommy.”

The song “Dust in the Wind” recommends, “Don’t hang on.” Allen himself says, “It’s just an awful thing and in that context you’ve got to find an answer to the question: ‘Why go on?’ ”  It is ironic that Chris Martin the leader of Coldplay regards Woody Allen as his favorite director.

Lets sum up the final conclusions of these gentlemen:  Coldplay is still searching for that “something more.” Woody Allen has concluded the search is futile. Livgren and Hope of Kansas have become Christians and are involved in fulltime ministry. Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “under the sun.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.comhttp://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002

PS: What is the meaning of life? Find it in the end of the open letter I wrote to you on April 23, 2020. 
END OF LETTER TO RICKY GERVAIS

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733 everettehatcher@gmail.com

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Answer to Raphael Warnock on Matthew 25: Do We Go to Hell for Not Feeding the Hungry?

Heard the Georgia Senate debate yesterday where Rev Warnock made the following statement:

Raphael Warnock: (35:05)
If you want to know who informs me and my sense of how we engage as people in the economic system you need look no further than Matthew 25, I’m a Matthew 25 Christian, that’s what I am. I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was sick and you visited me. Love your neighbor, and for me that means you don’t get rid of your neighbors healthcare particularly in the middle of a pandemic.

Matthew 25: Do We Go to Hell for Not Feeding the Hungry?

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If you are in favor of building a wall on America’s southern border, will you go to hell? It seems some within the evangelical community believe that.

There appears to be a growing movement among evangelicals to embrace a leftist interpretation of the Bible when it comes to “progressive” issues like immigration reform. This is clearly the case with a new video, titled “I was a stranger.” It features various Christian women reading Matthew 25:31-46, where Jesus speaks of the separation of the sheep and the goats.

The video was produced by World Relief, in partnership with the National Immigration Forum, an organization funded by globalist George Soros. According to the Capital Research Center, World Relief is a “refugee contractor” that is paid taxpayer dollars to re-settle refugees and asylum-seekers inside the U.S. The CRC documents how foundations and other nonprofits often raise money for charitable causes but then use it to “get involved in politics and advocacy, often in ways that donors never intended and would find abhorrent.”

According to the CRC, these groups, including World Relief, discuss issues like immigration and the plight of refugees “in terms of pure altruism, generosity, and welcoming the stranger.” But World Relief and others fail to mention in their fundraising efforts that, “by generously welcoming strangers to our land, [World Relief] can receive bountiful subsidies of tax dollars that underwrite hefty salaries for persons who claim to act only from the most selfless motives.”

As I have already dealt with a biblical approach to the immigration issue here, let me get to the actual issue that led to this blog:

The World Relief video promotes an unbiblical view of salvation as works-based, rather than as based on faith in Jesus Christ.

The clear message of Matthew 25:31-46, according to the video and leftist evangelicals, is that people who do not feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit those who are sick or in prison, and especially welcome immigrants and refugees to America are going to hell. Why? They argue that, because Jesus lives in the suffering people of the world, if you do not care for these people, you’re not caring for Jesus. The result is an eternity in flame-filled torment.

Burn in hell, conservative Christian

If you think I am exaggerating, I’ll let the leftists speak for themselves. Shane Claiborne, a Christian social activist who is co-director of Red Letter Christians, said about this passage: “the goats who did not care for the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned are sent off to endure an agony akin to that experienced by the ones that they neglected on this earth…We build up walls to keep immigrants from entering our country…And the more walls and gates and fences we have, the closer we are to hell.”

In a screed against President Donald Trump and those who supported him in the 2016 election, Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, wrote about Matthew 25 and said this: “In this text, Jesus is literally saying to us: How you treat the most vulnerable is how you treat me. He is saying I will know how much you love me by how you respond — or don’t respond to them.”

How should Christians respond to the “vulnerable”? Wallis says we should (1) act to “block and obstruct” the deportation of illegal immigrants; (2) hold accountable all efforts to promote “racial policing” by law enforcement; and (3) resist efforts to restrict immigration from Muslim countries – even from nations that have no way of sifting out jihadists.

Micah Bales, a Bible teacher who was formerly an organizer with the radical Occupy movement, blogged about Matthew 25 on the Red Letter Christian site: “When Jesus judges the world, according to this passage, he won’t care what you think about him.” Instead, all that will matter is how we answer questions like, “Did you care for the stranger?” Turning to the issue of Syrian refugees after Trump was elected, Bales stunningly insisted: “If we turn our backs on the Syrian refugees, we reject as irrelevant the claims of Jesus. We deny the truthfulness of the Bible. We renounce the Christian faith altogether…Let me be clear: You cannot ignore these refugees and be a follower of Jesus in any real sense.”

Charity = heaven?

I’ve seen leftist evangelical tripe before, so I’m not shocked the video exists (or that Claiborne, Wallis, and their ilk blog about it). Instead, I am stunned that some of the women in the “I was a stranger” video are well-known, otherwise conservative evangelicals who should know better. I’m talking about Bible teacher Beth Moore, author Joni Eareckson Tada, and Kay Warren, wife of Saddleback Church pastor and author Rick Warren.

These evangelicals are twisting Matthew 25 and doing nothing less than endangering the very gospel they claim to uphold. Does Beth Moore actually believe that Christians are going to hell if they don’t feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or if they try to limit illegal immigration into America? Does Kay Warren?

Hear me, please: true Christians absolutely will care for suffering people in this world. I believe that is what the Bible teaches. Where we find those in need, loving our neighbor means helping the person in the ditch (Luke 10:30-37). I will even go so far as to insist that our actions toward needy and suffering Christians can indicate whether or not we ourselves are actually in the faith (James 2:14-17; 1 John 3:17).

But Matthew 25 does not link a generalized ethic of charity work to the eternal destiny of those who claim to be Christian.

The Day of Destiny

So what does Matthew 25:31-46 actually teach? Let’s start with the judgment and work backward. We see two groups of people, designated by the symbols of sheep and goats, which hear the declaration of their eternal destinies. The sheep are “the righteous” (vv. 37, 46) and “blessed of My Father” (vs. 34); the goats are called “accursed ones” (vs. 41). Where does each group end up? The sheep “inherit the kingdom” (vs. 34) and are granted “eternal life” (vs. 46); the goats are sent “into the eternal fire” (vs. 41) and “eternal punishment” (vs. 46).

This is obviously serious stuff, so the follow-up question is clearly of eternal importance: What are the criteria for the separation? Upon what bases are some people designated righteous and others accursed?

How did they treat Jesus?

First, the basis for determining the eternal destiny of the sheep and goats is how people treated Jesus Christ. The line of separation is Jesus Himself, and the teaching in Matthew 25 clearly focuses on Him.

Jesus mentions the following categories of general and basic need, although it’s probably not exhaustive:

“I was hungry” (vv. 35, 42) – Did they feed Him?

“I was thirsty” (vv. 35, 42) – Did they give Him a drink?

“I was a stranger” (vv. 35, 43) – Did they invite Him in?

“I was naked” (vv. 36, 43) – Did they clothe Him?

“I was sick” and “in prison” (vv. 36, 43) – Did they visit Him?

Both groups (sheep and goats) are surprised at this standard, although there is no indication that these 2 groups were surprised concerning their eternal destinies. The standard is how they treated Jesus, but both groups question the King in identical fashion: “When did we see You” in need?

When did we see Jesus?

Let’s remember that the answer to this question is of eternal importance – people enter the kingdom of heaven or the torment of hell based on it.

To the righteous – the sheep – Jesus says this: “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me” (vs. 40). People have the opportunity to help Jesus when they help “these brothers of Mine.” If they help, Jesus welcomes them into the kingdom.

To the wicked – the goats – He makes a similar pronouncement, except it is the negative side of the coin. Jesus says, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me” (vs. 45). People refuse to help Jesus when they do not help “one of the least of these.” Because they are unhelpful, they are banished to hell.

Who are these people that need help? Jesus clearly identifies them as “these brothers of Mine, even the least of them.” Leftist evangelicals claim that these people are all needy individuals.

How did you treat Christians?

They are wrong. There is nothing imprecise about Jesus’s words in this passage. These are His disciples – Christians – especially those engaged in doing kingdom work. Earlier in this very same gospel, Jesus was speaking to a large group of people, and he was told His mother and brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak with Him (Matthew 12:46-50). Matthew recounts His response:

“But Jesus answered the one who was telling Him and said, ‘Who is My mother and who are My brothers?’ And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, ‘Behold My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is my brother and my sister and mother’” (vv. 48-50).

There it is – “His disciples.” His brothers are those who do “the will of My Father who is in heaven.” His brothers are Christians. The brothers of Jesus are notevery person on the face of the planet – although they are nevertheless precious to God. Every person on earth is made in His image, but not every person is a son or daughter. Those who have repented of their sins and put their trust in Jesus are children of God. The unrepentant are “illegitimate children” (Hebrews 12:8). If they are not children of God by faith, then they are not the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 2:10-12).

Does this make sense in the context of Matthew 25? Absolutely. There is a consistent message in the New Testament that the way people treat His disciples, as they go about preaching the gospel, reflects how they are actually treating Jesus:

“The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me” (Luke 10:16; cf. Matthew 10:25, 40; John 13:20).

This explains the surprise of both the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. That people will go to heaven for receiving Jesus Christ would not surprise the sheep; that people would go to hell for rejecting Jesus Christ would not surprise the goats. However, the fact that eternal destiny is determined, in part, by how Christians are treated – that would be surprising.

Remember, there are other parables in which this theme is played out. In Matthew 22:1-14, a king (representing God the Father) invited people to a wedding feast. But the messengers were mistreated and even killed. This was interpreted as an act of intolerable disdain for the one who sent the messengers – the king himself. (See also Matthew 21:33-41.)

In Matthew 25, what does the phrase, “even the least of these,” mean? Simply this: Not everyone who loves and serves Jesus is an apostle. God even cares about the obscure saints. For those who hurt or disregard them when they are in need, those unbelievers are in for a rude awakening on the day of judgment.

The bitter fruit of fear

It is not an exaggeration to say that the leftist misinterpretation of Matthew 25 undermines the gospel message of salvation by faith alone. According to them, if people go to hell for not feeding the poor, then the opposite must also be true – people go to heaven if they do. Even people who are not Christians would be welcomed into heaven based on their good works. On the basis of Matthew 25, I’m not sure how you could avoid this conclusion.

Ask yourself this: How many hungry people must I feed in order to be considered among the sheep? How many must I clothe? How many must I visit in the hospital? In addressing World Relief’s self-serving video – and teachers like Beth Moore who promoted it – how many illegal immigrants must I be in favor of letting into America in order to fulfill charity to “the stranger”?

Does this leftist interpretation of Matthew 25 create fear in your heart or promote a desire to do good to all because of gratefulness for one’s salvation? I think it is clear: Fear is the bitter fruit of a doctrine of salvation by works because there is never any assurance or peace.

I don’t expect a whole lot from evangelicals named Claiborne or Wallis. They are twisting this passage in order to push political agendas, like amnesty for illegal aliens. But well-known Bible teachers like Beth Moore should know better – and they should be ashamed.

—-


Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.4 (1/7) – From Cradle to Grave

File:President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan in The East Room Congratulating Milton Friedman Receiving The Presidential Medal of Freedom.jpg

January 21, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

With the national debt increasing faster than ever we must make the hard decisions to balance the budget now. If we wait another decade to balance the budget then we will surely risk our economic collapse.

The first step is to remove all welfare programs and replace them with the negative income tax program that Milton Friedman first suggested.

Milton Friedman points out that though many government welfare programs are well intentioned, they tend to have pernicious side effects. In Dr. Friedman’s view, perhaps the most serious shortcoming of governmental welfare activities is their tendency to strip away individual independence and dignity. This is because bureaucrats in welfare agencies are placed in positions of tremendous power over welfare recipients, exercising great influence over their lives. In addition, welfare programs tend to be self-perpetuating because they destroy work incentives. Dr. Friedman suggests a negative income tax as a way of helping the poor. The government would pay money to people falling below a certain income level. As they obtained jobs and earned money, they would continue to receive some payments from the government until their outside income reached a certain ceiling. This system would make people better off who sought work and earned income.

Here is a transcript of a portion of the “Free to Choose” program called “From Cradle to Grave” (program #4 in the 10 part series):

Transcript:
Friedman: After the 2nd World War, New York City authorities retained rent control supposedly to help their poorer citizens. The intentions were good. This in the Bronx was one result.
By the 50′s the same authorities were taxing their citizens. Including those who lived in the Bronx and other devastated areas beyond the East River to subsidize public housing. Another idea with good intentions yet poor people are paying for this, subsidized apartments for the well-to-do. When government at city or federal level spends our money to help us, strange things happen.
The idea that government had to protect us came to be accepted during the terrible years of the Depression. Capitalism was said to have failed. And politicians were looking for a new approach.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a candidate for the presidency. He was governor of New York State. At the governor’s mansion in Albany, he met repeatedly with friends and colleagues to try to find some way out of the Depression. The problems of the day were to be solved by government action and government spending. The measures that FDR and his associates discussed here derived from a long line of past experience. Some of the roots of these measures go back to Bismark’s Germany at the end of the 19th Century. The first modern state to institute old age pensions and other similar measures on the part of government. In the early 20th Century Great Britain followed suit under Lloyd George and Churchill. It too instituted old age pensions and similar plans.
These precursors of the modern welfare state had little effect on practice in the United States. But they did have a very great effect on the intellectuals on the campus like those who gathered here with FDR. The people who met here had little personal experience of the horrors of the Depression but they were confident that they had the solution. In their long discussions as they sat around this fireplace trying to design programs to meet the problems raised by the worst Depression in the history of the United States, they quite naturally drew upon the ideas that were prevalent at the time. The intellectual climate had become one in which it was taken for granted that government had to play a major role in solving the problems in providing what came later to be called Security from Cradle to Grave.
Roosevelt’s first priority after his election was to deal with massive unemployment. A Public Works program was started. The government financed projects to build highways, bridges and dams. The National Recovery Administration was set up to revitalize industry. Roosevelt wanted to see America move into a new era. The Social Security Act was passed and other measures followed. Unemployment benefits, welfare payments, distribution of surplus food. With these measures, of course, came rules, regulations and red tape as familiar today as they were novel then. The government bureaucracy began to grow and it’s been growing ever since.
This is just a small part of the Social Security empire today. Their headquarters in Baltimore has 16 rooms this size. All these people are dispensing our money with the best possible intentions. But at what cost?
In the 50 years since the Albany meetings, we have given government more and more control over our lives and our income. In New York State alone, these government buildings house 11,000 bureaucrats. Administering government programs that cost New York taxpayers 22 billion dollars. At the federal level, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare alone has a budget larger than any government in the world except only Russia and the United States.
Yet these government measures often do not help the people they are supposed to. Richard Brown’s daughter, Helema, needs constant medical attention. She has a throat defect and has to be connected to a breathing machine so that she’ll survive the nights. It’s expensive treatment and you might expect the family to qualify for a Medicaid grant.
Richard Brown: No, I don’t get it, cause I’m not eligible for it. I make a few dollars too much and the salary that I make I can’t afford to really live and to save anything is out of the question. And I mean, I live, we live from payday to payday. I mean literally from payday to payday.
Friedman: His struggle isn’t made any easier by the fact that Mr. Brown knows that if he gave up his job as an orderly at the Harlem Hospital, he would qualify for a government handout. And he’d be better off financially.
Hospital Worker: Mr. Brown, do me a favor please? There is a section patient.
Friedman: It’s a terrible pressure on him. But he is proud of the work that he does here and he’s strong enough to resist the pressure.
Richard Brown: I’m Mr. Brown. Your fully dilated and I’m here to take you to the delivery. Try not to push, please. We want to have a nice sterile delivery.
Friedman: Mr. Brown has found out the hard way that welfare programs destroy an individual’s independence.
Richard Brown: We’ve considered welfare. We went to see, to apply for welfare but, we were told that we were only eligible for $5.00 a month. And, to receive this $5.00 we would have to cash in our son’s savings bonds. And that’s not even worth it. I don’t believe in something for nothing anyway.
Mrs. Brown: I think a lot of people are capable of working and are willing to work, but it’s just the way it is set up. It, the mother and the children are better off if the husband isn’t working or if the husband isn’t there. And this breaks up so many poor families.
Friedman: One of the saddest things is that many of the children whose parents are on welfare will in their turn end up in the welfare trap when they grow up. In this public housing project in the Bronx, New York, 3/4′s of the families are now receiving welfare payments.
Well Mr. Brown wanted to keep away from this kind of thing for a very good reason. The people who get on welfare lose their human independence and feeling of dignity. They become subject to the dictates and whims of their welfare supervisor who can tell them whether they can live here or there, whether they may put in a telephone, what they may do with their lives. They are treated like children, not like responsible adults and they are trapped in the system. Maybe a job comes up which looks better than welfare but they are afraid to take it because if they lose it after a few months it maybe six months or nine months before they can get back onto welfare. And as a result, this becomes a self-perpetuating cycle rather than simply a temporary state of affairs.
Things have gone even further elsewhere. This is a huge mistake. A public housing project in Manchester, England.
Well we’re 3,000 miles away from the Bronx here but you’d never know it just by looking around. It looks as if we are at the same place. It’s the same kind of flats, the same kind of massive housing units, decrepit even though they were only built 7 or 8 years ago. Vandalism, graffiti, the same feeling about the place. Of people who don’t have a great deal of drive and energy because somebody else is taking care of their day to day needs because the state has deprived them of an incentive to find jobs to become responsible people to be the real support for themselves and their families.
_______________

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

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MUSIC MONDAY Paul McCartney – Wonderful Christmas Time

__

https://youtu.be/94Ye-3C1FC8

https://youtu.be/hMhMekfIyos


Paul McCartney – Wonderful Christmas Time

Wonderful Christmastime

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Wonderful Christmastime”
62331wct.jpg
Single by Paul McCartney
B-side “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae”
Released 16 November 1979
Format 7-inch 45 rpm
Recorded 30 August 1979, Lower Gate Farm, Sussex
Genre
Length 3:45
Label
Writer(s) Paul McCartney
Producer(s) Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney singles chronology
Eat at Home
(1971)
Wonderful Christmastime
(1979)
Coming Up
(1980)

Wonderful Christmastime” is a 1979 Christmas song by Paul McCartney. It enjoys significant Christmas time popularity around the world.[1] The song was later added as a bonus track on the 1993 CD reissue of WingsBack to the Egg album.[2]

The track was subsequently added as a bonus track to the 2011 reissue of the McCartney II album, with both full and edited versions included. The track was also mixed in 5.1 surround sound for inclusion on the 2007 DVD release The McCartney Years.

Contents

Background and recording

McCartney recorded the song entirely on his own during the sessions for his solo project McCartney II. Although the members of Wings are not on the recording, they do appear in the promotional music video,[3] which was filmed at the Fountain Inn in Ashurst, West Sussex.[4]

“Wonderful Christmastime” can be heard in the 1998 animated film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie during Santa’s takeoff on Christmas Eve. Wings performed the song during their 1979 tour of the UK.[5]

Reception and legacy

Following its release as a stand-alone single in the United Kingdom, “Wonderful Christmastime” peaked at No. 6 on the UK Singles Chart the week ending 5 January 1980.[6] In the United States the single peaked at No. 83 on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles chart and No. 94 on the Record World Singles Chart, but did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100.[7]

In December 1984, the single appeared at No. 10 for two weeks on Billboard‘s Christmas singles chart.[8] It also reached No. 29 on Billboard‘s weekly Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart in early January 1996.[8]

The song continues to receive substantial airplay every year, although some music critics consider it to be one of McCartney’s poorest compositions.[9][10][11] Beatles author Robert Rodriguez has written of “Wonderful Christmastime”: “Love it or hate it, few songs within the McCartney oeuvre have provoked such strong reactions.”[10]

Including royalties from cover versions, it is estimated that McCartney makes $400,000 a year from this song, which puts its cumulative earnings at near $15 million.[12]


Personnel

Cover versions

References

  1. Steve Oliver (2016-09-03). “Steve Oliver: Part Website, Part Blog”. Thesteveoliverblog.blogspot.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-10-15.

External links

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My rough draft letter to President Elect Biden that will be mailed on February 18, 2021! (Part 30) Milton Friedman and the DC Voucher Program

—-

February 18, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

The federal government debt is growing so much that it is endangering us because if things keep going like they are now we will not have any money left for the national defense because we are so far in debt as a nation. We have been spending so much on our welfare state through food stamps and other programs that I am worrying that many of our citizens are becoming more dependent on government and in many cases they are losing their incentive to work hard because of the welfare trap the government has put in place. Other nations in Europe have gone down this road and we see what mess this has gotten them in. People really are losing their faith in big government and they want more liberty back. It seems to me we have to get back to the founding  principles that made our country great.  We also need to realize that a big government will encourage waste and corruptionThe recent scandals in our government have proved my point. In fact, the jokes you made at Ohio State about possibly auditing them are not so funny now that reality shows how the IRS was acting more like a monster out of control. Also raising taxes on the job creators is a very bad idea too. The Laffer Curve clearly demonstrates that when the tax rates are raised many individuals will move their investments to places where they will not get taxed as much.

I have written about 66 heroes of mine in the House of Representatives that voted “no” on the Obama/Biden debt ceiling increase request in 2011. I believe we must have representatives that will vote to restore our freedom and that means voting to cut spending and lower taxes like the Patriots of long ago wanted. Today the Tea Party represented my views the most closely.  Lord knows I have written a lot about that in the past. . I have praised over and over and over the 66 House Republicans that voted no on that before. If they did not raise the debt ceiling then we would have a balanced budget instantly.  I agree that the Tea Party has made a difference and I have personally posted 49 posts on my blog on different Tea Party heroes of mine.

I have written and emailed Senator Pryor over, and over again with spending cut suggestions but he has ignored all of these good ideas in favor of keeping the printing presses going as we plunge our future generations further in debt. I am convinced if he does not change his liberal voting record that he will no longer be our senator in 2014.

I have written hundreds of letters and emails to President Obama in the past, and I must say that I have been impressed that he has  had the White House staff answer so many of my letters. The White House answered concerning Social Security (two times), Green Technologieswelfaresmall businessesObamacare (twice),  federal overspendingexpanding unemployment benefits to 99 weeks,  gun controlnational debtabortionjumpstarting the economy, and various other  issues.   However, the Obama/Biden policies have not changed, and by the way the White House after answering over 50 of my letters before November of 2012 has not answered one since.    The Obama/Biden administration was  committed to cutting nothing from the budget that I can tell. I am hoping your administration,  President  Biden, will be more open minded and look at the facts.

 I have praised over and over and over the 66 House Republicans that voted no on that before. If they did not raise the debt ceiling then we would have a balanced budget instantly.  I agree that the Tea Party has made a difference and I have personally posted 49 posts on my blog on different Tea Party heroes of mine.

THIS BRINGS ME TO ONE OF MY BIGGEST ECONOMIC HEROES AND IT IS THE LATE MILTON FRIEDMAN. Friedman had such revolutionary policies such as eliminating welfare and instituting the negative income tax and putting in school vouchers.

The problem in Washington is not lack of revenue but our lack of spending restraint. This video below makes that point.

Milton Friedman on School Vouchers

Brittany Corona

March 12, 2013 at 11:15 am

Joseph Kelley said his son Rashawn

Very few government programs can claim a positive return on taxpayer investment. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP) is one of them.

Launched in 2004, the DCOSP provides scholarships of approximately $8,500 for K–8 students or $12,000 for high school students from low-income families to attend private schools of their choice.

According to a congressionally mandated evaluation of the DCOSP, 82 percent of students who received a voucher and used it to attend private school graduated from high school. That’s a 21 percentage point difference between voucher users and the control group that did not use the vouchers to attend private school. Just 70 percent of those students graduated. Roughly 60 percent of students in D.C. Public Schools graduate high school.

University of Arkansas researchers Patrick Wolf and Michael Q. McShane cite the study in National Review Online:

Multiplying the number of additional graduates by the value of a high-school diploma yields a total benefit of over $183 million.… [T]he DCOSP cost taxpayers $70 million, so dividing the benefits by the cost yields an overall benefit-to-cost ratio of 2.62, or $2.62 for every dollar that was spent.

In other words, there is a 162 percent return on each taxpayer dollar invested in the program.

Wolf and McShane also note that the increase of high school graduates yields a decrease in crime, which means lower costs for the criminal justice system. These savings, combined with the increased tax revenue made on the increased income, adds $87,000 to government coffers per high school graduate over the nine years of the DCOSP’s existence.

In their study, Wolf and McShane found that “combining the increased income and financial benefits of longevity and quality of life, a high-school diploma is worth almost $350,000 to an individual.” DCOSP is not only fiscally beneficial, but it also yields more responsible, productive, and happier citizens.

Heritage Foundation policy analyst Jason Richwine found similar results from DCOSP graduates. In a 2010 Heritage report, “D.C. Voucher Students: Higher Graduation Rates and Other Positive Outcomes,” Richwine reports that the DCOSP yields an increase in parental satisfaction, school safety, and graduation rates.

The American dream of opportunity is alive in the DCOSP, showing that freedom through school choice opens the door to a more successful future for the nation’s students.

Brittany Corona is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please click here.

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,

Williams with Sowell – Minimum Wage

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell – Reducing Black Unemployment

By WALTER WILLIAMS

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Ronald Reagan with Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in spending out of control | Edit | Comments (0)

______________________

OPEN LETTER TO BARACK OBAMA ON HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY “A PROMISED LAND” Part 16 “This is what separates even the most liberal writers from their conservative counterparts—the willingness to flay politicians on THEIR OWN SIDE” REFUTED BY FRANCIS SCHAEFFER!!!

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December 7, 2020

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. 

Let me make a few comments on it, and here is the first quote of yours I want to comment on:

 I can provide the exact quote here, because in the audience that night was a freelance writer who was recording me. To her mind, my answer risked reinforcing negative stereotypes some Californians already had about working-class white voters and was therefore worth blogging about on Huffington Post. (It’s a decision I respect, by the way, though I wish she had talked to me about it before writing the story. This is what separates even the most liberal writers from their conservative counterparts—the willingness to flay politicians on their own side.)

Francis Schaeffer in 1982 on the 700 Club noted:

The liberal newspapers dominated by this humanist view carried reams of material trying to get poor ole Dr. C.Everett Koop, who had been my friend for 30 years, tried to get him not accepted as the Surgeon General of the United States. When he was accepted the Washington Post ran one inch on the 3rd page. That is all.

Dr. Koop is one of the foremost pediatric surgeons in the United States, and among other honors, he was given the highest honor of the French government for his pioneering work in pediatric surgery. He also has experience in the direction of the care of public health. He was shut off not because he didn’t have the qualifications but because he stood for the value of human life and behind it the Christian view.

The newspapers are supposed to make the distinction between news and the editorial page. If they want to be against us on the editorial page that is their privilege and it is our privilege not to buy their newspaper. But when they begin to have a hidden censorship on the news page that is tyranny!!

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733 everettehatcher@gmail.com

Francis Schaeffer

File:Francis Schaeffer.jpg

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The Founding Fathers views concerning Jesus, Christianity and the Bible (Part 4, Elbridge Gerry)

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May 3, 2012 – 1:42 am

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May 2, 2012 – 1:13 am

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President Obama and the Founding Fathers

May 8, 2013 – 9:20 am

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Francis Schaeffer’s own words concerning the founding fathers and their belief in inalienable rights

December 5, 2012 – 12:38 am

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David Barton: In their words, did the Founding Fathers put their faith in Christ? (Part 4)

May 30, 2012 – 1:35 am

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Were the founding fathers christian?

May 23, 2012 – 7:04 am

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)

John Quincy Adams a founding father?

June 29, 2011 – 3:58 pm

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 BartonFounding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)

“Sanctity of Life Saturday” Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part E “Moral absolutes and abortion” Francis Schaeffer Quotes part 5(includes the film SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS) (editorial cartoon)

July 6, 2013 – 1:26 am

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Article from Adrian Rogers, “Bring back the glory”

June 11, 2013 – 12:34 am

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 RogersFrancis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

“Schaeffer Sundays” Francis Schaeffer’s own words concerning the possibility that minorities may be mistreated under 51% rule

June 9, 2013 – 1:21 am

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)

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My rough draft letter to President Elect Biden that will be mailed on February 17, 2021! (Part 29) Dr. C. Everett Koop and Reagan pictured together

Below Dr. C. Everett Koop is pictured with Ronald Reagan. Dr. Koop was delayed in his confirmation by Ted Kennedy because of his film Whatever Happened to the Human Race? which was co-authored by my spiritual hero Francis Schaeffer.

Dr. Koop with President Ronald Reagan on his appointment as Surgeon General.

February 17, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

If you want to understand why the evangelical pro-life movement then you need to read the material from Francis Schaeffer. That is what I did.

Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop’s Invaluable Impact on Pro-Life Evangelicalism

By Dr. Richard Land

It is difficult to overestimate the incredible impact that Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop made on evangelical Christians in the latter third of the 20th century. First Schaeffer, and then Dr. Koop, helped inform and energize a whole generation of evangelical Christians to engagement with a culture that had veered dangerously off course from its Judeo-Christian foundations. The pro-life movement owes them an enormous debt.

This culture’s collective loss of its moral compass was nowhere more dramatically revealed than in the rapid implosion of its historic pro-life consensus in the late 1960s culminating in the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in January 1973, and the pro-death culture of moral relativism it both symbolized and facilitated.

Francis Schaeffer exploded on the evangelical world in the 1960s. Having interacted from an evangelical theological foundation with the European world of modern philosophy through his and his wife’s ministry at their L’Abri home and retreat center in Switzerland, Schaeffer was well-prepared to lead evangelicals to a new and deeper understanding of the titanic clash of differing world views swirling around them.

Returning to the United States in the mid-1960s, Schaeffer electrified evangelical students with his lectures and books (largely based on the lectures) such as The God Who Is There (1968), Escape From Reason (1968), He is There and He is Not Silent (1972) and Back to Freedom and Dignity (1973), which was a stirring refutation of behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity.

As an evangelical Princeton University undergraduate in the late 1960s, I, like so many in my generation, was electrified and galvanized by Schaeffer’s challenge to rejoin the contemporary cultural and philosophical debate armed with what he called “true truth” that was true not only in our personal and church lives, but in every area of our existence 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Armed with Schaeffer’s guide and atlas of the intellectual terrain, tens of thousands of evangelical students felt called to a life of ministry in the intellectual world of scholarship and cultural discourse. Schaeffer gave us a cultural grid for both understanding and interacting with a culture increasingly hostile to Christian presuppositions of truth and moral absolutes.

Francis Schaeffer has often been criticized in recent years for “oversimplifying” and for “simplistic generalizations.” These criticisms miss the point of Schaeffer’s significance.

Schaeffer was a “thinker” more than a “scholar.” Where the “scholar” is haunted by the exception, the “thinker” is comfortable with the general rule and is more concerned with the big picture rather than the particulars of every case. The scholar sees the world largely through the microscope of his particular field of study, while the thinker views the world through a telescope that enables one to see general trends and seismic shifts in cultures and civilizations. Francis Schaeffer was the premier evangelical Christian “thinker” of the last half-century.

Nowhere did Francis Schaeffer see the big picture more clearly than on the issue of abortion and the brutalizing and dehumanizing impact of the pro-abortion movement and the philosophical presupposition upon which it was based.

Schaeffer had always opposed abortion, but the issue took on a new urgency for him in the wake of the Supreme Court’s declaration of abortion as a constitutional right in Roe v. Wade. With the help and encouragement of his son, Franky, Schaeffer produced a 10-part documentary film series and an accompanying book entitled How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (1976).

Intended in part as a response to Kenneth Clark’s very popular Civilization series, How Should We Then Live? was an extended look at how Western Civilization’s rejection of Judeo-Christian moral values had led to the neo-pagan devaluing of human life as symbolized in the pro-abortion movement. The book, film series and accompanying 18-city seminar tour were a huge success and electrified the general evangelical public in much the same way his earlier work had stirred the evangelical university and seminary world.

Schaeffer increasingly devoted himself to the pro-life issue and almost immediately began work on a five-part film series and accompanying book and lecture tour with old family friend and world-renowned pediatric surgeon Dr. C. Everett Koop. The resulting Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (1979) combined Schaeffer’s trenchant and powerful explanation of secular humanism’s inexorable devaluation of human life with Dr. Koop’s medically expert testimony to the horror that was abortion and its inevitable path to infanticide and euthanasia.

Once again, Schaeffer and Koop galvanized the evangelical general public and challenged them to become actively involved at every level of the pro-life movement. The combination of Schaeffer’s theological and philosophical critique with Dr. Koop’s medical expertise and international reputation as a surgeon and scientist had a powerful impact on evangelicalism from coast to coast.

They asked the questions that moved hundreds of thousands of evangelicals from the sidelines into the arena of the pro-life struggle: “If not you, then whom?” “If not this outrage, then what?” “If not now, then when?”

Dr. Koop went on to become President Reagan’s Surgeon-General, elevating both that office and the pro-life issue in an unprecedented way in the eight years of his service. It is impossible to imagine an overwhelmingly pro-life American evangelicalism, and its unprecedented involvement in public policy on that issue, without the impact and leadership of these two towering figures.

Everyone devoted to the pro-life cause owes an incalculable debt of gratitude to Francis Schaeffer and to Dr. C. Everett Koop.

___________

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

Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro)

Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of Truth & History (part 2)

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E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]

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OPEN LETTER TO BARACK OBAMA ON HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY “A PROMISED LAND” Part 15 I recalled a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called “The Drum Major Instinct.” In it, he talks about how, deep down, we all want to be first, celebrated for our greatness; we all want “to lead the parade.” He goes on to point out that such selfish impulses can be reconciled by aligning that quest for greatness with more selfless aims. You can strive to be first in service, first in love.

Billy Graham with MLK

What Is Billy Graham’s Friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. Worth?

December 6, 2020

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. 

Let me make a few comments on it, and here is the first quote of yours I want to comment on:

I recalled a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called “The Drum Major Instinct.” In it, he talks about how, deep down, we all want to be first, celebrated for our greatness; we all want “to lead the parade.” He goes on to point out that such selfish impulses can be reconciled by aligning that quest for greatness with more selfless aims. You can strive to be first in service, first in love.

MLK was one of the finest speakers of all time and I have found his sermons based on the truths in the Bible. The problems in the world can easily be traced to the fact that people are sinners and need a savior and MLK preached the good news that Jesus had come to forgive sinners!

I went and listened to this famous sermon and I too found it very inspirational!! Here is the final few moments of that sermon:

Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All of the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together (Yes) have not affected the life of man on this earth (Amen) as much as that one solitary life. His name may be a familiar one. (Jesus) But today I can hear them talking about him. Every now and then somebody says, “He’s King of Kings.” (Yes) And again I can hear somebody saying, “He’s Lord of Lords.” Somewhere else I can hear somebody saying, “In Christ there is no East nor West.” (Yes) And then they go on and talk about, “In Him there’s no North and South, but one great Fellowship of Love throughout the whole wide world.” He didn’t have anything. (Amen) He just went around serving and doing good.

This morning, you can be on his right hand and his left hand if you serve. (Amen) It’s the only way in.

Every now and then I guess we all think realistically (Yes, sir) about that day when we will be victimized with what is life’s final common denominator—that something that we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don’t think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, “What is it that I would want said?” And I leave the word to you this morning.

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. (Yes)

I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. (Yes)

I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen)

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes)

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that’s all I want to say.

If I can help somebody as I pass along,
If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,
If I can show somebody he’s traveling wrong,
Then my living will not be in vain.
If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,
If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,
If I can spread the message as the master taught,
Then my living will not be in vain.

Let me make a few comments about these 3 lines from MLK’s sermon: 

If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,
If I can spread the message as the master taught,
Then my living will not be in vain.

The Book of Ecclesiastes is my favorite book in the Bible because it shows that humanist man can not find any lasting meaning for his life UNDER THE SUN and finally Solomon in the last chapter let’s God back into the picture and he gives the solution to the whole problem and it is the solution of repentance and salvation that MLK also taught in his sermon and without that it is all vanity!!!

In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas 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. Furthermore, Solomon realized death comes to everyone and there must be something more.

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.”

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733 everettehatcher@gmail.com

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May 2, 2012 – 1:13 am

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John Quincy Adams a founding father?

June 29, 2011 – 3:58 pm

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Article from Adrian Rogers, “Bring back the glory”

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Heritage Action Releases a New Legislative Scorecard for the 113th Congress

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Heritage Action Releases a New Legislative Scorecard for the 113th Congress

 Sondra Clark 1 comment

Heritage Action Scorecard

Heritage Action for America, the sister organization of The Heritage Foundation, has launched new and improved Legislative Scorecard that grades lawmakers on their votes in the current session of Congress.

The Scorecard is a key resource that allows Heritage Action’s hundreds of thousands of activists across the nation to keep Congress accountable.

Using the revised Scorecard, Heritage Action activists can:

  • Know their representatives’ voting record. The Scorecard tracks how lawmakers vote on key measures, including the procedural votes where their true preferences are often revealed.
  • Compare members of Congress. The brand new side-by-side comparison feature allows activists to see how two lawmakers compare vote by vote and issue by issue.
  • Get summaries of key legislation. The Scorecard cuts through the complexity and legal jargon and offers Heritage Action supporters a clear and accurate summary of legislation–and why Heritage Action analysts recommend a yes or no vote.
  • Keep track of conservatives and liberals alike. The Scorecard is updated after each major vote, so activists can see how their Representatives and Senators stack up over time. They can also create a “watch list” to keep track of a group of lawmakers.
  • Get access on the go. The updated Scorecard can be viewed on smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. That means activists can show their neighbors how their lawmakers stack up, bring the Scorecard to a town hall meeting, or check current votes while waiting in line at the grocery store.

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“Clowns of a Feather Stick Together: French Presidential Candidate Echoes Biden, Says Higher Tax Rates Are Patriotic” article by Dan Mitchell of CENTER FOR FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY

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Clowns of a Feather Stick Together: French Presidential Candidate Echoes Biden, Says Higher Tax Rates Are Patriotic

I rarely comment on Vice President Biden because he is not a serious person in the world of policy. The only attention he gets on this blog is jabs from the late-night talk show hosts, and I also posted the Joe Biden caption contest and this Joe Biden joke.

Perhaps I would have given Biden some attention if I had started this blog in 2008 instead of 2009, because the then-Delaware Senator made a very silly statement during that year’s campaign.

Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans. …Biden said: “It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”

I’m not sure how America’s Founding Fathers would have reacted to that statement, but I suspect that Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Mason, and Paine would have had a different perspective.

But I’m not surprised that the Socialist candidate for President in France has the same mentality (and I’m referring to the official candidate of the Socialist Party, not the socialist currently running the country). Here’s a blurb from the BBC.

The Socialist favourite in France’s presidential election, Francois Hollande, has said top earners should pay 75% of their income in tax. …Mr Hollande himself renewed his call on Tuesday, saying the 75% rate on people earning more than one million euros a year was “a patriotic act”. …”It is patriotic to agree to pay a supplementary tax to get the country back on its feet.”

Isn’t this wonderful that politicians of different nationalities and from different continents can be united in the idea that it is “patriotic” to give the world’s least competent people more money?

Maybe Biden and Hollande can also take a trip to Greece together so they can learn how to use the additional money to subsidize pedophiles and collect stool samples as a condition of getting a business license to set up an online company.

Reusable: biden obama gun control speech

President Barack Obama announces the creation of an interagency task force for guns as as Vice President Joseph Biden listens on.Getty Images

Joe Biden: Worse than Barack Obama, Worse than Hillary Clinton

Given their overt statism, I’ve mostly focused on the misguided policies being advocated by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

But that doesn’t mean Joe Biden’s platform is reasonable or moderate.

Ezra Klein of Vox unabashedly states that the former Vice President’s policies are “far to Obama’s left.”

This is an issue where folks on both ends of the spectrum agree.

In a column for the right-leaning American Spectator, George Neumayr also says Biden is not a moderate.

Biden likes to feed the mythology that he is still a moderate. …This is, after all, a pol who giddily whispered in Barack Obama’s ear that a massive government takeover of health care “was a big f—ing deal,”…and now pronouncing Obamacare only a baby step toward a more progressive future. It can’t be repeated enough that “Climate Change” Joe doesn’t give a damn about the ruinous consequences of extreme environmentalism for Rust Belt industries. His Climate Change plans read like something Al Gore might have scribbled to him in a note. …On issue after issue, Biden is taking hardline liberal stances. …“I have the most progressive record of anybody running.” …He is far more comfortable on the Ellen show than on the streets of Scranton. He has given up Amtrak for private jets, and, like his lobbyist brother and grifter son, has cashed in on his last name.

If you want policy details, the Wall Street Journal opined on his fiscal plan.

Mr. Biden has previously promised to spend $1.7 trillion over 10 years on a Green New Deal, $750 billion on health care, and $750 billion on higher education. To pay for it all, he’s set out $3.4 trillion in tax increases. This is more aggressive, for the record, than Hillary Clinton’s proposed tax increases in 2016, which totaled $1.4 trillion, per an analysis at the time from the left-of-center Tax Policy Center. In 2008 Barack Obama pledged to raise taxes on the rich while cutting them on net by $2.9 trillion. Twice as many tax increases as the last presidential nominee: That’s now the “moderate” Democratic position. …raising the top rate for residents of all states. …a huge increase on today’s top capital-gains rate of 23.8%… This would put rates on long-term capital gains at their highest since the 1970s. …Raise the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%. This would…vault the U.S. corporate rate back to near the top in the developed world. …the bottom line is big tax increases on people, capital and businesses. There’s nothing pro-growth in the mix.

And the ever-rigorous Peter Suderman of Reason wrote about Biden’s statist agenda.

Biden released a proposal to raise a slew of new taxes, mostly on corporations and high earners. He would increase tax rates on capital gains, increase the tax rate for households earning more than $510,000 annually, double the minimum tax rate for multinational corporations,impose a minimum tax on large companies whose tax filings don’t show them paying a certain percentage of their earnings, and undo many of the tax cuts included in the 2017 tax law. …as The New York Times reports, Biden’s proposed tax hikes are more than double what Hillary Clinton called for during the 2016 campaign. …Hillary Clinton…pushed the party gently to the left. Four years later, before the campaign is even over, the party’s supposed moderates are proposing double or even quadruple the new taxes she proposed.

The former Veep isn’t just a fan of higher taxes and more spending.

He also likes nanny-state policies.

Joe Biden says he is 100% in favor of banning plastic bags in the U.S. …let’s take a quick walk through the facts about single-use plastic bags at the retail level. …the plastic bags typically handed out by retailers make up only 0.6% of visible litter. Or put another way, for every 1,000 pieces of litter, only six are plastic bags. …They make up less than 1% of landfills by weight… 90% of the plastic bags found at sea streamed in from eight rivers in Asia and two in Africa. Only about 1% of all plastic in the ocean is from America. …Thicker plastic bags have to be used at least 11 times before they yield any environmental benefits. This is much longer than their typical lifespans. …Though it might seem almost innocuous, Biden’s support for a bag ban is symptom of a greater sickness in the Democratic Party. It craves unfettered political power.

Let’s not forget, by the way, that Biden (like most politicians in Washington) is corrupt.

Here are some excerpts from a Peter Schweizer column in the New York Post.

Political figures have long used their families to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment. …one particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain. …Joe Biden’s younger brother, James, has been an integral part of the family political machine…HillStone announced that James Biden would be joining the firm as an executive vice president. James appeared to have little or no background in housing construction, but…the firm was starting negotiations to win a massive contract in war-torn Iraq. Six months later, the firm announced a contract to build 100,000 homes. …A group of minority partners, including James Biden, stood to split about $735 million. …With the election of his father as vice president, Hunter Biden launched businesses fused to his father’s power that led him to lucrative deals with a rogue’s gallery of governments and oligarchs around the world. …Hunter’s involvement with an entity called Burnham Financial Group…Burnham became the center of a federal investigation involving a $60 million fraud scheme against one of the poorest Indian tribes in America, the Oglala Sioux. …the firm relied on his father’s name and political status as a means of both recruiting pension money into the scheme.

I only excerpted sections about Biden’s brother and son. You should read the entire article.

And even the left-leaning U.K.-based Guardian has the same perspective on Biden’s oleaginous behavior.

Biden has a big corruption problem and it makes him a weak candidate. …I can already hear the howls: But look at Trump! Trump is 1,000 times worse! You don’t need to convince me. …But here’s the thing: nominating a candidate like Biden will make it far more difficult to defeat Trump. It will allow Trump to muddy the water, to once again pretend he is the one “draining the swamp”, running against Washington culture. …With Biden, we are basically handing Trump a whataboutism playbook. …his record represents the transactional, grossly corrupt culture in Washington that long precedes Trump.

I’ll close by simply sharing some objective data about Biden’s voting behavior when he was a Senator.

According to the National Taxpayers Union, he finished his time on Capitol Hill with eleven-consecutive “F” scores (hey, at least he was consistent!).

And he also was the only Senator who got a lifetime rating of zero from the Club for Growth.

Though if you want to be generous, his lifetime rating was actually 0.025 percent.

Regardless, that was still worse than Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.

So if Biden become President, it’s safe to assume that America will accelerate on the already-baked-in-the-cake road to Greece.

P.S. Of course, we’ll be on that path even if Biden doesn’t become President, so perhaps the moral of the story is to buy land in Australia.

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Interpreting the Election Results

For what it’s worth, my presidential prediction for 2020 will probably turn out to be more accurate than my presidential prediction for 2016.

But I doubt anyone cares about that. Let’s instead look at what happened last night (and, in some cases, what is still happening).

President

It appears that Biden will prevail in the battle for the White House when the dust settles, but you can see from this Washington Post map that the race was much closer than most people expected (Pennsylvania is expected to shift to Biden as mail-in votes are counted, and perhaps Georgia as well).

If that’s the final result, here are two obvious takeaways based on where a president has a lot of unilateral power.

Other policy areas generally require agreement between the executive branch and the legislative branch, so we can’t know the impact of a Biden presidency without perusing congressional results.

Senate

In my humble opinion, the big news of the night is that Republicans appear to have retained control of the Senate.

If true, that means some left-wing goals are now very unlikely.

There won’t be any court packing. There won’t be any serious effort to increase the number of Democratic senators by granting statehood to Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.

But let’s focus on the economic issues. Here are some quick takeaways.

House of Representatives

It appears that Republicans will gain seats, which is contrary to all expectations.

That being said, there’s zero possibility of a GOP takeover, so Nancy Pelosi will remain in charge.

Ballot Initiatives

I wrote two weeks ago about this election’s six most important ballot initiatives.

The great news is that taxpayers scored a big victory by defeating the effort to get rid of the flat tax in Illinois an replace it with a so-called progressive tax. Winning that battle probably won’t rescue the Prairie State, but at least it will slow down its march to bankruptcy.

The other five battles mostly were decided correctly – at least based on the latest vote margins.

  • California voters rejected an initiative that would allow the state to engage in racial discrimination.
  • The California initiative to weaken limits on property taxes is trailing.
  • The Colorado initiative to lower the state’s flat tax appears prevailed.
  • The Colorado initiative to strengthen TABOR (the state’s spending cap) is leading.
  • The one clear piece of bad news is that an Arizona initiative to impose a big increase in the top income tax rate appears likely to prevail.

What’s the future for Trump and Trumpism?

Regular readers know I want the GOP to be the Party of Reaganrather than the Party of Trump.

So I will be very interested to see whether Trump’s apparent defeat means Republicans go back to (at least pretending to favor) conventional small-government conservatism.

That will have the be the topic of a future column.

A Silver Lining for Republicans

The party controlling the White House usually loses mid-term elections. For recent examples, Democrats won the House in 2018 and there were big victories for the GOP in 2010 and 2014during the Obama years.

In all likelihood, Republicans will now do much better in the 2022 midterm election with Biden in the White House instead of Trump.

A Silver Lining for Taxpayers

It’s not something that can be quantified, but congressional Republicans will now become much better on spending issues. They’ll no longer face pressure to go along with Trump’s profligacy and they’ll have a partisan incentive to oppose Biden’s profligate agenda.

P.S. Whether you’re happy or sad about the election results, remember that it’s always appropriate to laugh at the clowns and crooks in Washington.

President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Tom Selleck, Dudley Moore, Lucille Ball at a Tribute to Bob Hope’s 80th birthday at the Kennedy Center. 5/20/83.

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Dan Mitchell is very good at giving speeches and making it very simple to understand economic policy and how it affects a nation. Mitchell also talks about slowing the growth of government and he gives credit to Clinton and Reagan.

Probably my favorite subject that Dan has covered is the Laffer Curve. I got a chance to hear Arthur Laffer speak at Memphis St University in 1981 and Laffer actually predicted what would happen in the next 7 years because of the Reagan Tax Cuts and all of his predictions came true. What did we learn from the Laffer Curve in the 1980′s? Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!! The funny thing is that the world saw what we did and followed along. The drop of the industrialized countries during this same time was 26% (from 68% to 42% on average). It reminded me of Milton Friedman 1980 book “Free to Choose” and his answer to the 11% inflation that President Carter was dealing with in 1980. Reagan put Friedman’s solution into action and 5 years later inflation was under control.

Below is a fine article and video from Dan Mitchell.

(R Row, from front to rear) Milton Friedman, George Shultz, Pres. Ronald Reagan, Arthur Burns, William Simon and Walter Wriston & unknown at a meeting of White House economic advisers.
(R Row, from front to rear) Milton Friedman, George Shultz, Pres. Ronald Reagan, Arthur Burns, William Simon and Walter Wriston & unknown at a meeting of White House economic

I’ve narrated a video that cites Economic Freedom of the World data to explain the five major factors that determine economic performance.

But that video is only six minutes long, so I only skim the surface. For those of you who feel that you’re missing out, you can listen to me pontificate on public policy and growth for more than sixty minutes in this video of a class I taught at the Citadel in South Carolina (and if you’re a glutton for punishment, there’s also nearly an hour of Q&A).

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Daniel J. Mitchell

Published on Apr 2, 2012

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Daniel J. Mitchell speaks to cadets economics and conservatism. This is the 10th lecture in the seminar series titled “The Conservative Intellectual Tradition in America.”

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There are two points that are worth some additional attention.

1. In my discussion of regulation, I mention that health and safety rules can actually cause needless deaths by undermining economic performance. I elaborated on this topic when I waded into the election-season debateabout whether Obama supporters were right to accuse Romney of causing a worker’s premature death.

2. In my discussion of deficits and debt, I criticize the Congressional Budget Office for assuming that government fiscal balance is the key determinant of economic growth. And since CBO assumes you maximize growth by somehow having large surpluses, the bureaucrats actually argue that higher taxes are good for growth and their analysis implies that the growth-maximizing tax rate is 100 percent.

P.S. If you prefer much shorter doses of Dan Mitchell, you can watch my one-minute videos on tax reform that were produced by the Heartland Institute.

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Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!!

What did we learn from the Laffer Curve in the 1980′s? Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!! A Lesson on the Laffer Curve for Barack Obama November 6, 2011 by Dan Mitchell One of my frustrating missions […]

Two Lessons from Coolidge: Small government is the best way to achieve competent and effective government and Higher tax rates don’t automatically lead to more tax revenue

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Open letter to President Obama (Part 296) (Laffer curve strikes again!!)

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Laffer curve hits tax hikers pretty hard (includes cartoon)

I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism,  Greece,  welfare state or on gun control. Today’s cartoon deals with the Laffer curve. Revenge of the Laffer Curve…Again and Again and Again March 27, 2013 […]

Portugal and the Laffer Curve

Class Warfare just don’t pay it seems. Why can’t we learn from other countries’ mistakes? Class Warfare Tax Policy Causes Portugal to Crash on the Laffer Curve, but Will Obama Learn from this Mistake? December 31, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Back in mid-2010, I wrote that Portugal was going to exacerbate its fiscal problems by raising […]

President Obama ignores warnings about Laffer Curve

The Laffer Curve – Explained Uploaded by Eddie Stannard on Nov 14, 2011 This video explains the relationship between tax rates, taxable income, and tax revenue. The key lesson is that the Laffer Curve is not an all-or-nothing proposition, where we have to choose between the exaggerated claim that “all tax cuts pay for themselves” […]

Harding,Kennedy and Reagan proved that the Laffer Curve works

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The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc in the United Kingdom

I got to hear Arthur Laffer speak back in 1981 and he predicted what would happen in the next few years with the Reagan tax cuts and he was right with every prediction. The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc in the United Kingdom July 1, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Back in 2010, I excoriated the new […]

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Daniel Mitchell OF CENTER FOR FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY article “Five Important Facts for Vice President Biden’s Anti-Gun Task Force“

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Five Important Facts for Vice President Biden’s Anti-Gun Task Force

asked yesterday for readers to weigh in on why they support (or don’t support) the Second Amendment. The poll is getting lots of responses, though some folks have complained that I should have included more answers, such as “To protect the rights of hunters.”

Gun Control cartoon club knife

And I even had a few left-wing friends tell me I should have included more options for them, such as “The Second Amendment doesn’t mean military-style weapons” or “The Second Amendment doesn’t guarantee individual gun ownership.”

Speaking of our friends on the left, Vice President Joe Biden is overseeing an Administration effort to concoct new gun laws. In the interests of being helpful, I suggest the Veep’s team look at these four videos.

We also have a brand new video from the folks at Reason TV. It provides five facts for Biden and his task force.

For some reason, I won’t be surprised if the Vice President doesn’t see this new video. Or any of the others.

Yes, you can call me a pessimist, but I think Biden’s task force has no interest in doing real research.

Their goal is to figure out (from the left’s perspective) politically feasible ways of undermining the Constitution.

So let’s gird our loins, which sounds like it might be fun, but it simply means prepare for a fight.

But, unlike the statists, we’re not humorless drones. So let’s enjoy some humorous gun control videos to put ourselves in the right frame of mind.

P.S. Don’t forget you can still cast a vote to explain why you support the Second Amendment.

Reusable: biden obama gun control speech

President Barack Obama announces the creation of an interagency task force for guns as as Vice President Joseph Biden listens on.Getty Images

President Joe Biden Will Be Bad, but a President Kamala Harris Would Be Worse

Joe Biden has a very misguided economic agenda. I’m especially disturbed by his class-warfare tax agenda, which will be bad news for American workers and American competitiveness.

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?

That’s rather troubling since her agenda was far to the left of Biden’s when they were competing for the Democratic nomination.

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.

P.P.S. Harris may win the prize for the most economically illiterate proposal of the 2020 campaign.

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Will Biden’s Class-Warfare Tax Plan Lead to an Exodus of Job Creators?

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 innovatorsentrepreneurs, and inventors, this would be not be good news for the American economy.

The New York Times reported 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.

The migratory habits of rich people make a difference in the global economy.

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.

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Question of the Week: Which Department of the Federal Government Should Be the First to Be Abolished?

I was asked last week which entitlement program is most deserving of reform.

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:

But if I have to choose, I think the Department of Housing and Urban Development should be first on the chopping block.

Raze the building and put a layer of salt over the earth to make sure it can never spring back to life

I’ve already argued that there should be no federal government involvement in the housing sector and made the same argument on TV. And I’ve also shared some horror stories about HUD waste and incompetence.

Heck, I even made HUD the background image for my video on the bloated and overpaid bureaucracy in Washington.

It’s also worth noting that there’s nothing about housing in Article I, Section VIII, of the Constitution. For those of us who have old-fashioned values about playing by the rules, that means much of what takes place in Washington – including housing handouts – is unconstitutional.

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


Milton Friedman on Spending

October 3, 2020 by Dan Mitchell

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.

Why Milton Friedman Saw School Choice as a First Step, Not a Final One

On his birthday, let’s celebrate Milton Friedman’s vision of enabling parents, not government, to be in control of a child’s education.

Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Kerry McDonald
Kerry McDonald

EducationMilton FriedmanSchool ChoiceSchooling

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.

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.

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).

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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.

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.

Kerry McDonald

Milton Friedman

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