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Proverbs 25New Living Translation

More Proverbs of Solomon

25 These are more proverbs of Solomon, collected by the advisers of King Hezekiah of Judah.

² It is God’s privilege to conceal things
    and the king’s privilege to discover them.

³ No one can comprehend the height of heaven, the depth of the earth,
    or all that goes on in the king’s mind!

⁴ Remove the impurities from silver,
    and the sterling will be ready for the silversmith.
⁵ Remove the wicked from the king’s court,
    and his reign will be made secure by justice.

⁶ Don’t demand an audience with the king
    or push for a place among the great.
⁷ It’s better to wait for an invitation to the head table
    than to be sent away in public disgrace.

Just because you’ve seen something,
⁸     don’t be in a hurry to go to court.
For what will you do in the end
    if your neighbor deals you a shameful defeat?

⁹ When arguing with your neighbor,
    don’t betray another person’s secret.
¹⁰ Others may accuse you of gossip,
    and you will never regain your good reputation.

¹¹ Timely advice is lovely,
    like golden apples in a silver basket.

¹² To one who listens, valid criticism
    is like a gold earring or other gold jewelry.

¹³ Trustworthy messengers refresh like snow in summer.
    They revive the spirit of their employer.

¹⁴ A person who promises a gift but doesn’t give it
    is like clouds and wind that bring no rain.

¹⁵ Patience can persuade a prince,
    and soft speech can break bones.

¹⁶ Do you like honey?
    Don’t eat too much, or it will make you sick!

¹⁷ Don’t visit your neighbors too often,
    or you will wear out your welcome.

¹⁸ Telling lies about others
    is as harmful as hitting them with an ax,
wounding them with a sword,
    or shooting them with a sharp arrow.

¹⁹ Putting confidence in an unreliable person in times of trouble
    is like chewing with a broken tooth or walking on a lame foot.

²⁰ Singing cheerful songs to a person with a heavy heart
    is like taking someone’s coat in cold weather
    or pouring vinegar in a wound.^[a]

²¹ If your enemies are hungry, give them food to eat.
    If they are thirsty, give them water to drink.
²² You will heap burning coals of shame on their heads,
    and the Lord will reward you.

²³ As surely as a north wind brings rain,
    so a gossiping tongue causes anger!

²⁴ It’s better to live alone in the corner of an attic
    than with a quarrelsome wife in a lovely home.

²⁵ Good news from far away
    is like cold water to the thirsty.

²⁶ If the godly give in to the wicked,
    it’s like polluting a fountain or muddying a spring.

²⁷ It’s not good to eat too much honey,
    and it’s not good to seek honors for yourself.

²⁸ A person without self-control
    is like a city with broken-down walls.

God’s Answer to Anger

There are some people who make excuses for their anger. They say, “It just runs in my family.” They are like a loaded shotgun with a hair trigger. Anytime they are jostled, they blast away. Then they say, “Oh, well, my anger only lasts a little while.” Well, so do tornadoes, but look at what damage they can cause!

Let’s see what the Bible, particularly the book of Proverbs has to say about being quick to get angry:

* “The discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory to pass over a transgression. The king’s wrath is as the roaring of a lion; but his favour is as dew upon the grass” (Proverbs 19:11-12).

* “A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife” (Proverbs 15:18).

* “Go not forth hastily to strive, lest thou know not what to do in the end thereof, when thy neighbor hath put thee to shame” (Proverbs 25:8).

When you are quick to get angry, you can lose so much — your job, friends, children, wife, health, testimony — there is nothing more debilitating to your Christian testimony than for you to fly off the handle.

Confess Our Anger
If we repress our anger rather than confess it, our anger can do all kinds of damage. You may say that you’re not angry but your stomach will keep the score. So, the first thing you must do to control your anger is to confess it to the Lord. Tell Him, “There’s something moving in me I don’t like. And I need You to take control of me and prevent me from acting uncontrollably or unrighteously.”

Someone has well said that if you repress anger it is like lighting a wastebasket, putting it in a closet, and closing the door. It may burn itself out or it may burn the house down. If you want to get control, the very first thing you need to do is open the closet door and say. “There it is, Lord. It’s in there. Put out the fire.”

Consider Our Anger
When you take a step back from your anger and begin to seek understanding from the Lord, He will show you the answer. It is so important to analyze the source of your anger, so you don’t go off half-cocked. Psalm 4:4 says, “Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.”

God promises He will show us the way if we will seek Him. “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with Mine eye” (Psalm 32:8). And don’t look around at the world to see how they are handling it, look to God. Romans 12:2 says, “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

Control Your Anger
Now, you’re ready to work on controlling your anger. You say, “I can’t control it.” Oh, yes you can. One day you may be having one of those discussions that can be heard about two blocks away and suddenly the phone rings. One of you stomps over to the phone, jerks it off its base, and says, “Hellooooo.” Now, don’t tell me you can’t turn it on and off. You can! Proverbs 29:11 says, “A fool uttereth all his mind: but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards.” Fools spout off anything and everything, but a wise man can choose to control his tongue.

There it is, confess, consider, and control. Now, I don’t guarantee that you will no longer struggle with anger, but if you can get down these basics, you are well on your way. For further study, you may want to look at ordering one of the following sermons at the LWF bookstore (http://www.lwf.org), which target residual affects of anger, including bitterness, an unforgiving spirit, and more:

2027 The Blight of Bitterness Heb. 12:14

1272 How to Turn Bitterness into Blessings II Kings 2:19

1425 Forgiveness Matt. 18:21-35

1694 The Freedom of Forgiveness Matt. 6:9-15

If you feel you have an anger issue that needs immediate professional attention, we recommend that you contact one of the following national Christian counseling referral agencies:

Rapha Christian Counseling 1-800-383-4673 
New Life Counseling 1-800-NEW-LIFE (639-5433)
American Association Of Christian Counselors 1-800-5-COUNSEL

Related posts:

Seeing Jesus in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job

July 16, 2013 – 1:28 am

Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 10) Summing up Proverbs study

May 30, 2013 – 1:06 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 9) “Love your neighbor”

May 28, 2013 – 1:23 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 8) “Manage your money”

May 23, 2013 – 1:35 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 7) “Pursue your work”

May 21, 2013 – 1:05 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 6) “Enjoy your wife and watch your words”

May 16, 2013 – 1:23 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 5) “Control your body”

May 14, 2013 – 1:44 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 4) “Bad company corrupts…”

May 9, 2013 – 1:10 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 3) “Guard your mind and obey your parents!!”

May 7, 2013 – 1:43 am

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John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 2) What does it mean to fear the Lord?

May 2, 2013 – 1:13 am

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The Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

July 8, 2013 – 12:01 am

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Why is Solomon so depressed in Ecclesiastes? by Brent Cunningham

July 3, 2013 – 7:00 am

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Robert Leroe on Ecclesiastes (Mentions Thomas Aquinas, Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, King Solomon, King Rehoboam, Eugene Peterson, Chuck Swindoll, and John Newton.)

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Solomon was the author of Ecclesiastes

June 11, 2013 – 1:55 am

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Ecclesiastes: Solomon with Life in the Fast Lane

June 3, 2013 – 1:19 am

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Ecclesiastes a scathing and self-deprecating attack on hedonism and secular humanism by Solomon

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Solomon was right in his cynicism–unless……unless there is a God who created us and cares about us

May 22, 2013 – 1:34 am

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The Humanist takes on Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

May 20, 2013 – 1:13 pm

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Tom Brady , Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 3)

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Adrian Rogers on gambling

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Book of Ecclesiastes

July 17, 2013 – 1:40 am

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Adrian Rogers: Are fathers necessary?

July 16, 2013 – 12:43 am

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Tom Brady, Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 2)

December 22, 2011 – 11:56 am

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Proverbs 23New Living Translation

23 While dining with a ruler,
    pay attention to what is put before you.
² If you are a big eater,
    put a knife to your throat;
³ don’t desire all the delicacies,
    for he might be trying to trick you.

⁴ Don’t wear yourself out trying to get rich.
    Be wise enough to know when to quit.
⁵ In the blink of an eye wealth disappears,
    for it will sprout wings
    and fly away like an eagle.

⁶ Don’t eat with people who are stingy;
    don’t desire their delicacies.
⁷ They are always thinking about how much it costs.^[a]
    “Eat and drink,” they say, but they don’t mean it.
⁸ You will throw up what little you’ve eaten,
    and your compliments will be wasted.

⁹ Don’t waste your breath on fools,
    for they will despise the wisest advice.

¹⁰ Don’t cheat your neighbor by moving the ancient boundary markers;
    don’t take the land of defenseless orphans.
¹¹ For their Redeemer^[b] is strong;
    he himself will bring their charges against you.

¹² Commit yourself to instruction;
    listen carefully to words of knowledge.

¹³ Don’t fail to discipline your children.
    The rod of punishment won’t kill them.
¹⁴ Physical discipline
    may well save them from death.^[c]

¹⁵ My child,^[d] if your heart is wise,
    my own heart will rejoice!
¹⁶ Everything in me will celebrate
    when you speak what is right.

¹⁷ Don’t envy sinners,
    but always continue to fear the Lord.
¹⁸ You will be rewarded for this;
    your hope will not be disappointed.

¹⁹ My child, listen and be wise:
    Keep your heart on the right course.
²⁰ Do not carouse with drunkards
    or feast with gluttons,
²¹ for they are on their way to poverty,
    and too much sleep clothes them in rags.

²² Listen to your father, who gave you life,
    and don’t despise your mother when she is old.
²³ Get the truth and never sell it;
    also get wisdom, discipline, and good judgment.
²⁴ The father of godly children has cause for joy.
    What a pleasure to have children who are wise.^[e]
25 So give your father and mother joy!
    May she who gave you birth be happy.

²⁶ O my son, give me your heart.
    May your eyes take delight in following my ways.
²⁷ A prostitute is a dangerous trap;
    a promiscuous woman is as dangerous as falling into a narrow well.
²⁸ She hides and waits like a robber,
    eager to make more men unfaithful.

²⁹ Who has anguish? Who has sorrow?
    Who is always fighting? Who is always complaining?
    Who has unnecessary bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes?
³⁰ It is the one who spends long hours in the taverns,
    trying out new drinks.
³¹ Don’t gaze at the wine, seeing how red it is,
    how it sparkles in the cup, how smoothly it goes down.
³² For in the end it bites like a poisonous snake;
    it stings like a viper.
³³ You will see hallucinations,
    and you will say crazy things.
³⁴ You will stagger like a sailor tossed at sea,
    clinging to a swaying mast.
³⁵ And you will say, “They hit me, but I didn’t feel it.
    I didn’t even know it when they beat me up.
When will I wake up
    so I can look for another drink?”

Adrian Rogers on Alcohol, Drinking, Wine

Adrian Rogers (AD 1931-2005) was the well-known pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church, Cordova, Tennessee. He was three times elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention and was a leader in the SBC Conservative Resurgence. His radio, TV, book ministry has reached around the world and continues today. He is one of the best for young, and not so young preachers, to learn from today. Get his books and listen to his sermons.  

What did Adrian Rogers believe about alcohol, drinking, wine?  
Some of his quotes are below.  

“The most dangerous drug in America is beverage alcohol. Number one because of it’s acceptance. Number two, because of it’s availability. Number three, because of the effect that it has upon our hearts and our lives and the misery that it brings.”  

“The Bible uses the word wine in two difference senses. The word wine may mean that which may intoxicate you, or it may mean that which may not intoxicate you. The word wine in the Bible may refer to that which is fermented, or that which is not fermented; that which has alcoholic content or that which does not have alcoholic content.”  

“God says not to look on it, but to the contrary, we are to shun it when it is fermented (Proverbs 23:31).”  

“When a bunch of grapes are hanging on the vine, it’s called wine (Isaiah 65:8).”  

“They knew how to check the fermentation of grape juice.”  

On the Old Testament Hebrew word for wine, “Yayin may mean that which intoxicates, or that which does not intoxicate (Isaiah 16:10; Proverbs 20:1).”  
“The word yayin is a generic word.”   

“You are going to have to find out from the context, where the Bible says wine, whether it means that which is intoxicating or whether it isn’t.”  

On the New Testament Greek word for wine, oinos. “That too may mean that which is intoxicating or that which is not intoxicating.”  

“When you read the word wine in the New Testament, you can only know by the context whether or not it means that which can make you drunk. It does not always mean that which will make you drunk. It frequently means that which is not intoxicating.”  

“Did Jesus turn water into wine? Jesus turned water into oinos. Is that the kind of drink that would make a person drunk? Of course not!”  
“Do you think Jesus had anything to do with making people drunk? If you do, you don’t know the Jesus that I know.”

“Didn’t Jesus serve wine at the Lord’s Supper? No!”  

“Time magazine said alcohol is involved in one half of all murders.”  

“Have you ever stopped to think what the word intoxicated means? It means you have toxins put in.”  
“When a man is intoxicated he has poisoned himself.”  

“Liquor and immorality go together.”  
“Liquor removes the inhibitions.”  

“Moderation is not the answer to the liquor problem, in most cases it’s the cause of it.”
“It is the moderate drinker that encourages other people to drink.”  
“You may be very surprised at who you may hurt with your ability to hold your liquor.”

“The position of a man, woman, boy or girl ought to be total abstinence.”  
“If you don’t drink, don’t start!”    

“These Scriptures (Proverbs 20:1; 23:29-35) tell us, I believe plainly and clearly, that the Christian’s position, so far as beverage alcohol is concerned, is total abstinence.” -Adrian Rogers (AD 1931-2005), pastor, author, SBC president. lwf.org

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Seeing Jesus in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job

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Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 10) Summing up Proverbs study

May 30, 2013 – 1:06 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 9) “Love your neighbor”

May 28, 2013 – 1:23 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 8) “Manage your money”

May 23, 2013 – 1:35 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 7) “Pursue your work”

May 21, 2013 – 1:05 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 6) “Enjoy your wife and watch your words”

May 16, 2013 – 1:23 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Tagged Gene Bartow, John Wooden | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 5) “Control your body”

May 14, 2013 – 1:44 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 4) “Bad company corrupts…”

May 9, 2013 – 1:10 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 3) “Guard your mind and obey your parents!!”

May 7, 2013 – 1:43 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

John MacArthur on Proverbs (Part 2) What does it mean to fear the Lord?

May 2, 2013 – 1:13 am

Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Uncategorized | Edit | Comments (0)

The Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

July 8, 2013 – 12:01 am

Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Why is Solomon so depressed in Ecclesiastes? by Brent Cunningham

July 3, 2013 – 7:00 am

Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Robert Leroe on Ecclesiastes (Mentions Thomas Aquinas, Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, King Solomon, King Rehoboam, Eugene Peterson, Chuck Swindoll, and John Newton.)

June 19, 2013 – 1:30 am

Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Solomon was the author of Ecclesiastes

June 11, 2013 – 1:55 am

Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Ecclesiastes: Solomon with Life in the Fast Lane

June 3, 2013 – 1:19 am

Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Ecclesiastes a scathing and self-deprecating attack on hedonism and secular humanism by Solomon

May 31, 2013 – 1:17 am

Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Solomon was right in his cynicism–unless……unless there is a God who created us and cares about us

May 22, 2013 – 1:34 am

Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

The Humanist takes on Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes

May 20, 2013 – 1:13 pm

Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Tom Brady , Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 3)

December 23, 2011 – 11:12 am

Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. _______________________ Tom Brady ESPN Interview Tom Brady has famous wife earned over 76 million dollars last year. However, has Brady found lasting satifaction in his life? It does not […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Adrian Rogers on gambling

July 18, 2013 – 12:44 am

Adrian Rogers: How to Be a Child of a Happy Mother Published on Nov 13, 2012 Series: Fortifying Your Family (To read along turn on the annotations.) Adrian Rogers looks at the 5th commandment and the relationship of motherhood in the commandment to honor your father and mother, because the faith that doesn’t begin at home, […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Book of Ecclesiastes

July 17, 2013 – 1:40 am

Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Adrian Rogers: Are fathers necessary?

July 16, 2013 – 12:43 am

Adrian Rogers – How to Cultivate a Marriage Another great article from Adrian Rogers. Are fathers necessary? “Artificial insemination is the ideal method of producing a pregnancy, and a lesbian partner should have the same parenting rights accorded historically to biological fathers.” Quoted from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, summer of 1995. […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Tom Brady, Coldplay, Kansas, Solomon and the search for satisfaction (part 2)

December 22, 2011 – 11:56 am

Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. To Download this video copy the URL to http://www.vixy.net ________________ Obviously from the video clip above, Tom Brady has realized that even though he has won many Super Bowls […]

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A Helpful Correction for the New York Times

For years, I’ve been explaining that students have been hurt rather than helped by government programs to allegedly make higher education more affordable.

How can this be true?

For the simple reason that colleges and universities dramatically boosted tuition in response to all the government subsidies.

Did students somehow benefit?

Hardly. In addition to much higher tuition and fees, the higher-education sector became more bloated, with much more bureaucracy and much lighter workloads.

So the people working for colleges and universities were big beneficiaries.

Students, by contrast, got put on a backwards treadmill featuring more loans, higher tuition, and more debt.

Given this background, I was interested to see a column in the New York Times describing how students at Bennett College (and elsewhere) have been disadvantaged by the current system.

Here’s the headline from the piece, which was written by Tressie McMillan Cottom.

While I certainly sympathize with students who are now trapped in this system, I was left unsatisfied by both the above headline and the actual details of Ms. Cottom’s column.

Why?

Because there was a lot of discussion about the consequences of the current system but zero recognition that government is the reason colleges and universities are now so expensive and bureaucratic.

So I decided to make a modest correction to the headline.

Ms. Cottom thinks the answer is student loan forgiveness, which simply means other people pick up the tab.

That’s a perverse form of redistribution since people who went to college have higher earnings than the general population.

I don’t like redistribution in general, but redistributing form poor to rich is particularly perverse.

But even I might be willing to embrace loan forgiveness if something was being do to solve the underlying problem of the government-caused tuition spiral.

Needless to say, that’s not part of the discussion in Washington.

P.S. The underlying economic problem is “third-party payer.” It’s wreaked havoc with America’s health sector and it’s have the same pernicious effect on higher education.

Cancelling Student Loans: More Poor-to-Rich Redistribution from the Left

It is very common for politicians to cause a problem with government intervention and then use the problem as an excuse for even bigger government.

I call this the lather-rinse-repeat cycle of government failure.

And the current controversy over student loan forgiveness is a perfect example.

• Politicians decided to subsidize student loans.
• Colleges and universities predictably responded by increasing tuition so they could grab this additional money.
• Politicians are now responding to the government-created crisis by pushing loan forgiveness.

I could write a column about how this will make a bad situation worse. Heck, I already have written that column. Several times.

But I want to focus today on a different aspect of this issue.

Biden on his allies in Congress are pushing a policy that will redistribute money from lower-income people to higher-income people.

Let’s look at some of the findings of a new study by Professor Sylvain Catherine at the University of Pennsylvania and Professor Constantine Yannelis at the University of Chicago.

…on average, those who graduate with a post-secondary degree earn more than those who do not, so student debt forgiveness plans, by definition, are geared toward higher-wage earners. Further, many holders of high loan balances completed graduate and professional degrees and thus earn even higher incomes. …universal debt forgiveness policies would disproportionately benefit high earners. …universal and capped forgiveness policies are highly regressive, with the vast majority of benefits accruing to high-income individuals.

Peter Suderman of Reason is unimpressed by this backwards form of redistribution.

The single largest source of student loan debt is MBA programs, as Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Adam Looney has noted, and MBA grads average more than $73,000 in earnings their first year out of school. “The five degrees responsible for the most student debt are: MBA, JD, BA in business, BS in nursing, and MD,” Looney wrote in 2020.“That’s one reason why the top 20 percent of earners owe 35 percent of the debt, and why most debt is owed by well-educated individuals.” Technically, it’s true that well-paid professional school graduates fall into the category of “working people.” But..what Biden appears to be considering, is a massive program of government aid that would disproportionately benefit doctors, lawyers, well-paid medical specialists, and comfortably salaried individuals with advanced business degrees. …a trillion-dollar bailout for the upper-middle class.

This is disgusting and reprehensible.

I don’t think it is a proper role of the federal government to redistribute money. But it is especially grotesque and misguided when politicians use the coercive power of government to shift resources from lower-income Americans to higher-income Americans.

For what it is worth, there already are many policies and programs in Washingtonthat – on net – shift money from the poor to the rich.

• Export-Import Bank
• Agriculture subsidies
• National Endowment for the Arts
• Deduction for mortgage interest
• Tax exemption for municipal bonds

I will close by observing that there has also been a vigorous effort from our friends on the left to restore an unlimited deduction for state and local taxes.

It’s almost as if it is okay to have policies that benefit rich people, so long as they mostly live in blue states.

P.S. It is possible to design loan forgiveness to reduce the level of poor-to-rich redistribution. The aforementioned study by Professors Catherine and Yannelis includes data showing how various income deciles will (or will not) benefit depending on different types of forgiveness rules.

P.P.S. However, any type of loan forgiveness exacerbates the original problem, which is how politicians have enabled and subsidized ever-higher tuition rates.

Georgia Democrats who won Senate in 2021 should remember Dan Mitchell’s words, “Politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders would like us to believe the answer involves never-ending tax increases. But such an approach is a recipe for more debt because the economy will weaken and governments will spend more money (look at what’s been happening in Europe, for instance)”

 Sadly last night the Democrats won control of Senate!

Historical Evidence on Reducing Large Debt Burdens

The long-run fiscal outlook for most developed nations is very grim thanks to demographic change and poorly designed entitlement programs.

For all intents and purposes, we’re all destined to become Greece according to long-run projections from the International Monetary Fund, Bank for International Settlements, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Are there any solutions to this “most predictable crisis“?

Politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders would like us to believe the answer involves never-ending tax increases. But such an approach is a recipe for more debt because the economy will weaken and governments will spend more money (look at what’s been happening in Europe, for instance).

A more sensible approach is a spending cap. I’ve pointed out, for instance, how Swiss government debt has plummeted ever since voters imposed annual limits on budgetary growth.

We also can learn lessons from history according to new research from the International Monetary Fund.

The report contains some very interesting economic history and the evolution of government finance, including the Bank of England being created and given a monopoly so the government would have a vehicle for borrowing money (as I observed in my video on central banking).

But it mostly tells the story of how governments and public finance simultaneously evolved.

Although the written record points to instances of public borrowing as long as two thousand years ago, recent scholarship points to 1000-1400 A.D. as when borrowing agreements with states were concluded with regularity and debt contracts entered into by sovereigns were standardized.…The supply of loans from city-states and territorial monarchies was driven by the need to finance military campaigns and secure borders. …From the 16th century, Europe’s political geography coalesced into the nation states recognized at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. In parallel, many European states evolved from absolutist regimes to more limited government. …Fiscal states thus evolved in response to the efforts of rulers to secure borders, expand territory and survive. After 1650, larger, more centralized states increasingly possessed the fiscal machinery to raise revenue in uniform ways and had a veto player, such as a parliament, to monitor and discipline public expenditure.

There’s also lots of information in the report about how some governments, primarily outside of Europe, began to borrow money.

In many cases, this produced bad results, with defaults and economic crisis. As the authors wrote, “Debasement and restructuring also have a long history.”

But the part of the report that caught my eye was the description of how three advanced nations – the United Kingdom, the United States, and France – successfully dealt with large debt burdens before World War I.

…we describe three notable debt consolidation episodes before World War I: Great Britain after the Napoleonic Wars, the United States in the last third of the 19th century, and France in the decades leading up to 1913. While the colorful debt crises and defaults of the first era of globalization have been much discussed, less attention has been paid to these successful consolidation episodes. We focus on these three cases because they involved three of the largest economies of the period, but also because their debt burdens were among the heaviest. British public debt as a share of GDP was higher in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, for example, than Greek public debt in 2018. But in all three cases, high public debts were successfully reduced relative to GDP.

In each case, war-time spending was the cause of the debt buildup.

The Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War and U.S. Civil War were the three most expensive conflicts of the 19th century. …debt accounted for the single largest share of wartime financing.

Here’s a table showing that these nations dramatically reduced their debt burdens.

To be sure, there were differences in the three nations.

The reduction in the British debt-GDP ratio was by far the largest and longest: the debt ratio fell from 194 percent in 1822 to 28 percent nine decades later. …The French public-debt-GDP ratio fell from 96 percent in 1896 to 51 percent in 1913… This case ranks second in size but first in pace. U.S. (federal or union) government debt was not as high at the end of the Civil War, and the subsequent consolidation was more leisurely; however, the process is notable for having reduced the debt-GDP ratio to virtually zero by World War I.

When the authors investigated how these nations reduced their debt burdens, they found that limited government was a common answer.

This was true in the United Kingdom.

Britain achieved the impressive feat of maintaining an average primary surplus of 1.6 percent of GDP for nearly a century (the only deficit in Figure 2 is at the time of the Boer War). One of the political legacies of Peel and Gladstone was a fiscal theory or philosophy of “sound finance” emphasizing budget surpluses, low taxes and minimal government expenditure. …demands for spending on welfare relief from the disenfranchised masses were kept in check. In exchange, the self-taxing class of income-tax-paying electors relieved the non-electors from the burden of direct taxation… Budget surpluses then made feasible further reductions in tariffs and taxes, which reduced the cost of living for the working class

It was true in the United States.

In the U.S., primary surpluses were consistently achieved… Southern states opposed an expansive role for the federal government, while entitlements limited to Civil War pensions contained pressure for public spending.

And it was true even in France.

In France, debt reduction was entirely accounted for by primary surpluses. Those surpluses exceeded British levels, reaching 2.5 percent of GDP on average, albeit over a shorter period.

Remember, this was a period when total government spending only consumed about 10 percent of economic output.

And this was a period when there was no welfare state. Redistribution was virtually nonexistent. Not even in France.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that debt quickly fell in all three countries.

The common thread was small government.

…in all three of these large-scale debt consolidations, governments and societies went to great lengths to service and repay heavy debts. …it reflected prevailing conceptions of the limited functions of government, and limited popular pressure for public programs, entitlements and transfers.

What’s equally important is to note what didn’t happen.

No default. No inflation. No indirect confiscation.

…there was no restructuring or renegotiation of official or privately-held debts in these cases. Nor was there financial repression, i.e., measures artificially depressing interest rates. …Governments for their part did little to bottle up savings at home or to otherwise use regulation and legislation to artificially depress yields. …None of these three governments undertook involuntary restructurings despite the inheritance of heavy debt.

Now let’s shift from the past to the future

The authors point out how debt is rising today because of the welfare state rather than war.

The end of the last century also saw, for the first time, a secular increase in public-debt-to-GDP ratios in a variety of countries in conjunction not with wars and crises but in response to popular demands on governments for pensions, health care, and other often unfunded social services.

Given the demographic changes I mentioned at the beginning of the column, this does not bode well.

So what are the likely implications? As the authors note, there are two ways of dealing with high debt levels.

Countries have pursued two broad approaches to debt reduction. The orthodox approach relies on growth, primary surpluses, and the privatization of government assets. In turn this encourages long debt duration and non-resident holdings. Heterodox approaches, in contrast, include restructuring debt contracts, generating inflation, taxing wealth and repressing private finance.

At the risk of understatement, I fear Robert Higgs is right and that today’s politicians (and today’s voters!) will choose the latter approach.

Given that those policies will make a bad situation even worse, I’m not overflowing with confidence about the future.

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Joe Biden: An Incrementalist Version of Bernie Sanders

Hardly anybody noticed because the nation has been focused on protests about police misbehavior, but Joe Biden officially clinched the Democratic nomination this past week.

And he’s now comfortably ahead in the political betting marketsas well as public polling.

If Biden wins in November, what does that mean for the nation’s economic policy?

According to folks on the left, a Biden presidency means bigger government and more statism.

For instance, opining for the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie applauds Biden’s leftist agenda.

…if the goal is to move America to the left…then a Biden candidacy…represents an opportunity. …If Biden goes on to win the White House, there’s real space for the pro-Sanders left to work its will on policy. …It can fulfill some of its goals under the cover of Biden’s moderation, from raising the minimum wage nationally to pushing the American health care system closer to single-payer. …Biden…is a creature of the party. He doesn’t buck the mainstream, he accommodates it. He doesn’t reject the center, he tries to claim it. …the center of the Democratic Party as far left as it’s been since before Ronald Reagan, then Biden is likely to hew to that center, not challenge it.

His colleague at the NYT, Michelle Goldberg, is similarly enthused about the prospects for bigger government under a Biden Administration.

Biden’s proposals go far beyond his call for a $15 federal minimum wage — a demand some saw as radical when Sanders pushed it four years ago. While it’s illegal for companies to fire employees for trying to organize a union, the penalties are toothless. Biden proposes to make those penalties bite and to hold executives personally liable. …should Biden become president, progressives have the opportunity to make generational gains. …To try to unite the party around him, he’s making serious progressive commitments. …he’s moving leftward. Biden recently came out for tuition-free college for students whose families earn less than $125,000. He endorsed Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy plan…His climate plan already went beyond any of Barack Obama’s initiatives, and he’s pledged to make it even more robust.

According to (supposedly) neutral analysts, a Biden presidency means bigger government and more statism.

In an article for Newsweek, Steve Friess discusses Biden’s shift to the left.

Being stuck running for the presidency from the basement of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, had given the former vice president a lot of time to think, he told them, and he wanted bigger ideas. Go forth, he urged his financial brain trust, and bring back the boldest, most ambitious proposals they’d ever dreamed of to reshape the U.S. economy…Biden began issuing a raft of new proposals that move his positions closer to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, with a promise to unveil an even more transformative economic plan this summer. …It’s a yes to adding $200 a month to Social Security benefits and lowering the qualifying age for Medicare from 65 to 60. Yes to trillions in new spending, yes to new regulations on banks and industry, yes to devil-may-care deficits. …the leader he most often invokes—in interviews, in public addresses, on his podcast—is no longer Barack Obama but Franklin Delano Roosevelt. …Biden has already made a series of significant leftward policy shifts since effectively sewing up the nomination in March.

Perry Bacon, in a piece for fivethirtyeight, analyzes Biden’s statist agenda.

…if Biden is elected in November, the left may get a presidency it likes after all…if American politics is moving left, expect Biden to do the same. …Biden’s long record in public office suggests that he is fairly flexible on policy — shifting his positions to whatever is in the mainstream of the Democratic Party at a given moment. …Biden is likely to be a fairly liberal president, no matter how moderate he sounded in the primaries. …Biden’s 2020 primary platform…adopted fairly liberal policies…more liberal than his pre-campaign record suggested. The Democratic Party is more liberal now than it was when Bill Clinton took office, or even when Obama was inaugurated, and Biden’s platform reflects that shift. …Biden and his advisers are now…rolling out more liberal policy plans, speaking in increasingly populist terms and joining forces with the most progressive voices in the party. …“Joe Biden is running on the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in recent history. But given the pandemic, he has to look at the New Deal and Great Society traditions in the Democratic Party and go bigger,” said Waleed Shahid, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a left-wing group aligned with Ocasio-Cortez.

Writing for the Washington Post, Sean Sullivan documentsBiden’s leftward drift.

Joe Biden sought to appeal to liberal supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday with a pair of new proposals to expand access to health care and curtail student loan debt. Biden proposed lowering the eligibility age for Medicare coverage from 65 to 60. He also came out in favor of forgiving student loan debt for people who attended public colleges and universities and some private schools and make up to $125,000 a year. …In another peace offering to liberals, Biden proposed paying for his student debt plan by repealing a provision in the recent coronavirus legislation that Congress passed and President Trump enacted. “That tax cut overwhelmingly benefits the richest Americans and is unnecessary for addressing the current COVID-19 economic relief efforts,” he wrote… Biden endorsed a bankruptcy plan put forth by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another rival who ran to his left.

And, according to more market-friendly sources, a Biden presidency means bigger government and more statism.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about Biden’s leftist agenda.

Already Medicare is scheduled to be insolvent by 2026. …In 1970, life expectancy in the U.S. was 70.8. Now it’s about eight years longer. By lowering the age of eligibility instead, Mr. Biden would begin shifting Medicare’s focus from seniors to everybody else.Don’t worry about the funding, he insists, since the extra costs would be “financed out of general revenues.” …Mr. Biden’s new left turn on student loans is equally sharp. …Cancel all federal undergraduate tuition debt for many borrowers who went to public schools, including four-year universities. This forgiveness would be given to anyone who earns $125,000 a year or less. …How much would it cost? There’s no explanation.

Jeff Jacoby analyzed Biden in a column for the Boston Globe.

Biden…is running on a platform far more progressive — i.e., far less moderate — than any Democratic presidential nominee in history. …on issue after issue, Biden has veered sharply from Obama’s path. On health insurance, for example, Obama rejected a public option as part of the Affordable Care Act and repeatedly stressed the importance of maintaining private coverage. But Biden favors a public option open to everyone… Biden supports government-funded health care even for unauthoritzed immigrants, something Obama never came close to proposing. …No Democratic presidential nominee ever endorsed anything like the radical Green New Deal, with its price tag in the tens of trillions of dollars and its goal of eliminating the use of all fossil fuels. But Biden does. No Democratic nominee ever called for a national minimum wage of $15 an hour. But Biden does. …Sanders may not end up on the November ballot, but it will unmistakably reflect his influence. For he and his band of progressives have pushed their party to the left with such success that even the “moderate” in the race would be the most liberal Democrat ever nominated for president.

Here’s some of what Peter Suderman wrote for Reason.

Biden is a moderate compared to Sanders, but he is notably to the left of previous Democratic standard-bearers. …Biden has proposed a significant expansion of the Affordable Care Act that his campaign estimates would cost $750 billion over a decade… Biden has proposed a $1.7 trillion climate planthat is similar in scope to many candidates on his left and a $750 billion education plan… He favors an assault weapons ban and other gun control measures, a national $15 minimum wage, and a raft of subsidies, loans, and other government-granted nudges designed to promote rural economies. Has proposed $3.4 trillion worth of tax hikes—more than double what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed when she ran in 2016. …Biden’s leftward drift is thus the party’s leftward shift…, a big-government liberal, a candidate whose current incarnation was shaped and informed by progressive politics, if not wholly captured by them.

The Tax Foundation examined the former Vice President’s tax plan and the results are not encouraging.

Former Vice President Joe Biden would enact a number of policies that would raise taxes, including individual income taxes and payroll taxes, on high-income individuals with income above $400,000. …According to the Tax Foundation’s General Equilibrium Model, the Biden tax planwould reduce GDP by 1.51 percent over the long term. …The plan would shrink the capital stock by 3.23 percent and reduce the overall wage rate by 0.98 percent, leading to 585,000 fewer full-time equivalent jobs. …On a dynamic basis, we estimate that Biden’s tax plan would raise about 15 percent less revenue than on a conventional basis over the next decade. …That is because the relatively smaller economy would shrink the tax base for payroll, individual income, and business income taxes. …The plan would lead to lower after-tax income for all income levels.

Here’s a table summarizing the findings.

So what does all this mean?

At the risk of oversimplifying, Biden unquestionably would move tax policy to the left (he actually said higher taxes are patriotic, even though he engages in aggressive tax avoidance), and the same thing would happen on regulatory issues.

His spending agenda is terrible, though it’s worth noting that Democrat presidents usually don’t spend as much as Republicans (with the admirable exception of Reagan).

And, to be fair, there’s no way he could be as bad on trade as Trump.

Let’s close by looking at some hard data. Back in January, I sifted through the vote ratings prepared by the National Taxpayers Union and the Club for Growth and showed that Biden was not a Bill Clinton-style moderate.

I went back to those same sources an put together this comparison of Biden and some other well-known Democrats (scores on a 0-100 scale, with zero being statism and 100 being libertarian).

In both measures, he’s worse than Crazy Bernie!

Moreover, a lifetime average of zero from the Club for Growth is rather horrifying. His average from the National Taxpayers Union isn’t quite so bad, but the trend is in the wrong direction. Biden’s post-2000 average was less than 10, while his score for the preceding years averaged more than 23.

That being said, my two cents on this topic is that 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.

The bad news is that he will probably allow Nancy Pelosi and other statist ideologues to dictate that kind of agenda if he wins the presidency.

P.S. My collection of Biden-oriented humor is rather sparse (see here, here, here, and here), an oversight that I’ll have to address in the near future.

—-

A Victory for Biden, a Defeat for the Left

The day after the election, I wrote that “left-wing goals are now very unlikely” because Republicans almost certainly will retain control of the Senate.

But perhaps I should have been ever bolder and argued that the election was a rejection of the left-wing agenda.

An editorial from the Wall Street Journal points out that voters did not vote for bigger government or more statism.

…the closer we inspect the nationwide election returns, the more the result looks like a defeat…for the progressive agenda. …Democrats lost seats in the House, giving up some of the suburban gains they made in 2018 while continuing to struggle in rural areas. …A GOP Senate may compromise with Mr. Biden around centrist ideas, but the aggressive House agenda of the last two years would die again.This result is all the more remarkable given that Democrats had nearly all of the media, Silicon Valley billionaires, and all of the leading cultural figures and institutions helping them. …The lack of coattails was also evident in the states, where Democrats spent heavily to flip legislatures. …The GOP flipped both legislative bodies in New Hampshire, despite Mr. Trump’s loss in the Granite State, and Republicans protected their advantage nearly everywhere else. …There was no blue wave, and certainly no mandate for progressive change. …in their considerable wisdom, the voters may have elected Mr. Biden but they left his party and its radical ideas behind.

Some readers may think that the Wall Street Journal‘s editors are engaging in spin. In other words, because of their pro-market views, they’re trying to make it seem like a defeat wasn’t really a defeat.

But what about Helaine Olen, a reliably left-wing columnist for the Washington Post, who reached the same conclusion when opining about election results from California.

Proposition 22 — which would allow gig-economy companies such as Uber, Lyft and DoorDash to continue treating drivers as independent contractors — passed handily. On the other hand, Proposition 16, which would have restored affirmative action to California’s public college and university admissions, has gone down in defeat. …Let’s take Proposition 22. Activists have been unhappy with the tech giants of the sharing economy for years, pointing out repeatedly that they are using venture capital to subsidize an unprofitable industry and that, moreover, they offer almost nothing in either the way of labor or consumer protection. The entire business model is designed to get around government regulations. …Voters did not appear particularly concerned that allowing a major employer to override state regulationand effectively set its own working conditions is a terrible precedent — not when a few extra dollars per ride was at stake. When it came down to worker welfare vs. short-term convenience and financial gain, it wasn’t even a contest. …Proposition 16…supporters roundly outspent opponents and hoped the increased attention to issues of systemic racial inequities in the wake of the killing of George Floyd would help them garner support. …The biggest obstacle might have been the traditional antipathy toward affirmative action reasserting itself — a survey last year found that 3 out of 4 Americans opposed using race or ethnicity as a factor in college admissions.

And the New York Times isn’t exactly a bastion of right-wing thinking, yet an article by Thomas Fuller, Shawn Hubler, Tim Arango and Conor Dougherty also acknowledges that the election results were not great for the left.

…the nation’s most populous state put up mammoth numbers for the Democrats. But dig a little deeper into the results and a more complex picture of the Golden State voter emerges, of strong libertarian impulses and resistance to some quintessentially liberal ideas. In a series of referendums, voters in California rejected affirmative action, decisively shot down an expansion of rent control and eviscerated a law that gives greater labor protections for ride-share and delivery drivers, a measure that had the strong backing of labor unions. A measure that would have raised taxes on commercial landlords to raise billions for a state that sorely needs revenue also seemed on track for defeat. …said Bob Shrum, a former Democratic strategist…“California is a very liberal state that is now resistant to higher taxes.” …For all their liberal leanings on issues like the environment, California voters have long been less welcoming to new taxes… Proposition 15, would have removed the Proposition 13 tax limits on commercial properties like office buildings and industrial parks, continuing to shield homeowners while raising an estimated $6.5 billion to $11.5 billion a year for public schools and local governments. The measure was trailing on Thursday.. More than $100 million was also spent on another hot-button measure, rent control. Polls showed that the housing crisis was the No. 1 concern for state voters… And yet voters up and down the state resoundingly rejected efforts to expand tenants’ rights and rent control. …What do voters think about voting for Democrats and at the same time not supporting Democratic-led initiatives? José Legaspi, a Los Angeles resident…voted for Mr. Biden and did not think twice about opposing the measure that would raise taxes on commercial properties. “I truly believe in paying taxes,” he said. “However there is a point at which one should limit how much more in taxes one should personally pay.”

The bottom line is that Joe Biden won the White House (barring some dramatic and unexpected developments), but not because of his statist agenda.

It’s more accurate to say that voters wanted to end the sturm and drang of Trump, but without embracing bigger government.

P.S. I’m not going to pretend that voters are rabid libertarians who are clamoring for my preferred policies (such as shutting down departments, genuine entitlement reform, etc). But I also think that it’s safe to say that they don’t want the left’s agenda (class warfare, Medicare for all, green new deal, etc) of bigger government and more dependency

Daniel Mitchell quotes Milton Friedman on minimum wage and contrasts Trump a d Biden approach!

Trump vs. Biden on the Minimum Wage

In another display of selfless masochism, I watched the Trump–Biden debate last night.

The candidates behaved better, for whatever that’s worth, but I was disappointed that there so little time (and even less substance) devoted to economic issues.

One of the few exceptions was the brief tussle regarding the minimum wage. Trump waffled on the issue, so I don’t give him any points, but Biden fully embraced the Bernie Sanders policyof basically doubling the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

This is very bad news for low-skilled workers and very bad news to low-margin businesses.

The economic of this issue are very simple. If a worker generates, say, $9 of revenue per hour, and politicians say that worker can’t be employed for less than $15 per hour, that’s a recipe for unemployment.

Earlier this month, Professor Steven Landsburg on the University of Rochester opined for the Wall Street Journal on Biden’s minimum-wage policy.

It isn’t only that I think Mr. Biden is frequently wrong. It’s that he tends to be wrong in ways that suggest he never cared about being right. He makes no attempt to defend many of his policies with logic or evidence, and he deals with objections by ignoring or misrepresenting them. …Take Mr. Biden’s stance on the federal minimum wage, which he wants to increase to $15 an hour from $7.25. …So why does Mr. Biden want to raise the minimum wage…?He hasn’t said, so I have two guesses, neither of which reflects well on him. Guess No. 1: He’s dissembling about the cost. …The minimum wage…comes directly from employers but indirectly (after firms shrink and prices rise) from consumers. A minimum wage is a stealth tax on eating at McDonald’s or shopping at Walmart. …Mr. Biden should acknowledge the cost of wage hikes and argue for accepting it. Instead he’s silent about the cost, hoping he can foist it on people who won’t realize they’re footing this bill. Guess No. 2: He’s rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies. New York is going to vote for Mr. Biden. The state also has a high cost of living and high wages—so New Yorkers would be largely unaffected by the minimum-wage hike. Alabama is going to vote against Mr. Biden. Alabama has a low cost of living and relatively low wages—so under the Biden plan Alabama firms would shrink, to the benefit of competitors in New York. Alabama workers and consumers would pay a greater price than New Yorkers.

And Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute recently highlighted some of the adverse effects for unskilled workers.

It’s an economic reality that workers compete against other workers, not against employers, for jobs, and higher wages in the labor market. And it’s also true that lower-skilled, limited-experience, less-educated workers compete against higher-skilled, more experienced, more educated workers for jobs. …If the minimum wage is increased…, that will…take away from unskilled workers the one advantage they currently have to compete against skilled workers – the ability to offer to work for a significantly lower wage than what skilled workers can command. …Result of a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour? Demand for skilled workers goes up, demand for unskilled workers goes down, and employment opportunities for unskilled workers are reduced.

Since I recently shared videos with Milton Friedman’s wisdom on both taxes and spending, here’s what he said about the minimum wage.

Let’s share one last bit of evidence. Mark Perry’s article referenced some new research by Jeffrey Clemens, Lisa Kahn, and Jonathan Meer.

Here’s what those scholars found in a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

We investigate whether changes in firms’ skill requirements are channels through which labor markets respond to minimum wage increases. …Data from the American Community Survey show that recent minimum wage changes resulted in increases in the average age and education of the individuals employed in low-wage jobs. Data on job vacancy postings show that the prevalence of a high school diploma requirement increases at the same time. The shift in skill requirements begins within the first quarter of a minimum wage hike. Further, it results from both within-firm shifts in postings and across-firms shifts towards firms that sought more-skilled workers at baseline. Given the poor labor market outcomes of individuals without high school diplomas, these findings have substantial policy relevance. This possibility was recognized well over a century ago by Smith (1907), who noted that the “enactment of a minimum wage involves the possibility of creating a class prevented by the State from obtaining employment.” Further, negative effects may be exacerbated for minority groups in the presence of labor market discrimination.

So why do politicians push for higher minimum wages, when all the evidence suggests that vulnerable workers bear the heaviest cost?

Part of the answer is that they don’t understand economics and don’t care about evidence.

But there’s also a more reprehensible answer, which is that they do understand, but they want to curry favor with union bosses, and those union bosses push for higher minimum wages as a way of reducing competition from lower-skilled workers.

P.S. Here’s my CNBC debate with Joe Biden’s top economic advisor on this issue.

P.P.S. Here’s a rather frustrating discussion I had on the minimum wage with Yahoo Finance.

P.P.P.S. But if you’re pressed for time, don’t listen to me pontificate. Instead, watch this video.

—-

Milton Friedman on Taxation

October 4, 2020 by Dan Mitchell

Yesterday’s column featured some of Milton Friedman’s wisdom from 50 years ago on how a high level of societal capital (work ethic, spirit of self-reliance, etc) is needed if we want to limit government.

Today, let’s look at what he said back then about that era’s high tax rates.

His core argument is that high marginal tax rates are self-defeating because the affected taxpayers (like Trump and Biden) will change their behavior to protect themselves from being pillaged.

This was in the pre-Reagan era, when the top federal tax rate was 70 percent, and notice that Friedman made a Laffer Curve-type prediction that a flat tax of 19 percent would collect more revenue than the so-called progressive system.

We actually don’t know if that specific prediction would have been accurate, but we do know that Reagan successfully lowered the top tax rate on the rich from 70 percent in 1980 to 28 percent in 1988.

So, by looking at what happened to tax revenues from these taxpayers, we can get a pretty good idea whether Friedman’s prediction was correct.

Well, here’s the IRS data from 1980 and 1988 for taxpayers impacted by the highest tax rate. I’ve circled (in red) the relevant data showing how we got more rich people, more taxable income, and more tax revenue.

The bottom line is that Friedman was right.

Good tax policy (i.e., lower rates on productive behavior) can be a win-win situation. Taxpayers earn more and keep more, while politicians also wind up with more because the economic pie expands.

Something to keep in mind since some politicians in Washington want a return to confiscatory taxes on work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.

—-

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

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.

Friedman Challenged Compulsory Schooling Laws

Milton Friedman had these same concerns. The Nobel prize-winning economist is widely considered to be the one to popularize the idea of vouchers and school choice beginning with his 1955 paper, “The Role of Government in Education.” His vision continues to be realized through the important work of EdChoice, formerly the Friedman Foundation for Education Choice, that Friedman and his economist wife, Rose, founded in 1996.

July 31 is Milton Friedman’s birthday. He died in 2006 at the age of 94, but his ideas continue to have an impact, particularly in education policy.

Friedman saw vouchers and other choice programs as half-measures. He recognized the larger problems of taxpayer funding and compulsion, but saw vouchers as an important starting point in allowing parents to regain control of their children’s education. In their popular book, Free To Choose, first published in 1980, the Friedmans wrote:

We regard the voucher plan as a partial solution because it affects neither the financing of schooling nor the compulsory attendance laws. We favor going much farther. (p.161)

They continued:

The compulsory attendance laws are the justification for government control over the standards of private schools. But it is far from clear that there is any justification for the compulsory attendance laws themselves. (p. 162)

The Friedmans admitted that their “own views on this have changed over time,” as they realized that “compulsory attendance at schools is not necessary to achieve that minimum standard of literacy and knowledge,” and that “schooling was well-nigh universal in the United States before either compulsory attendance or government financing of schooling existed. Like most laws, compulsory attendance laws have costs as well as benefits. We no longer believe the benefits justify the costs.” (pp. 162-3)

Still, they felt that vouchers would be the essential starting point toward chipping away at monopoly mass schooling by putting parents back in charge. School choice, in other words, would be a necessary but not sufficient policy approach toward addressing the underlying issue of government control of education.

Vouchers as a First Step

In their book, the Friedmans presented the potential outcomes of their proposed voucher plan, which would give parents access to some or all of the average per-pupil expenditures of a child enrolled in public school. They believed that vouchers would help create a more competitive education market, encouraging education entrepreneurship. They felt that parents would be more empowered with greater control over their children’s education and have a stronger desire to contribute some of their own money toward education. They asserted that in many places “the public school has fostered residential stratification, by tying the kind and cost of schooling to residential location” and suggested that voucher programs would lead to increased integration and heterogeneity. (pp. 166-7)

To the critics who said, and still say, that school choice programs would destroy the public schools, the Friedmans replied that these critics fail to

explain why, if the public school system is doing such a splendid job, it needs to fear competition from nongovernmental, competitive schools or, if it isn’t, why anyone should object to its “destruction.” (p. 170)

What I appreciate most about the Friedmans discussion of vouchers and the promise of school choice is their unrelenting support of parents. They believed that parents, not government bureaucrats and intellectuals, know what is best for their children’s education and well-being and are fully capable of choosing wisely for their children—when they have the opportunity to do so.

They wrote:

Parents generally have both greater interest in their children’s schooling and more intimate knowledge of their capacities and needs than anyone else. Social reformers, and educational reformers in particular, often self-righteously take for granted that parents, especially those who are poor and have little education themselves, have little interest in their children’s education and no competence to choose for them. That is a gratuitous insult. Such parents have frequently had limited opportunity to choose. However, U.S. history has demonstrated that, given the opportunity, they have often been willing to sacrifice a great deal, and have done so wisely, for their children’s welfare. (p. 160).

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Voucher Programs Today

Today, school voucher programs exist in 15 states plus the District of Columbia. These programs have consistently shown that when parents are given the choice to opt-out of an assigned district school, many will take advantage of the opportunity. In Washington, D.C., low-income parents who win a voucher lottery send their children to private schools.

The most recent three-year federal evaluationof voucher program participants found that while student academic achievement was comparable to achievement for non-voucher students remaining in public schools, there were statistically significant improvements in other important areas. For instance, voucher participants had lower rates of chronic absenteeism than the control groups, as well as higher student satisfaction scores. There were also tremendous cost-savings.

In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program has served over 28,000 low-income students attending 129 participating private schools.

According to Corey DeAngelis, Director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation and a prolific researcher on the topic, the recent analysis of the D.C. voucher program “reveals that private schools produce the same academic outcomes for only a third of the cost of the public schools. In other words, school choice is a great investment.”

In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was created in 1990 and is the nation’s oldest voucher program. It currently serves over 28,000 low-income students attending 129 participating private schools. Like the D.C. voucher program, data on test scores of Milwaukee voucher students show similar results to public school students, but non-academic results are promising.

Increased Access and Decreased Crime

Recent research found voucher recipients had lower crime rates and lower incidences of unplanned pregnancies in young adulthood. On his birthday, let’s celebrate Milton Friedman’s vision of enabling parents, not government, to be in control of a child’s education.

According to Howard Fuller, an education professor at Marquette University, founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and one of the developers of the Milwaukee voucher program, the key is parent empowerment—particularly for low-income minority families.

In an interview with NPR, Fuller said: “What I’m saying to you is that there are thousands of black children whose lives are much better today because of the Milwaukee parental choice program,” he says. 
“They were able to access better schools than they would have without a voucher.”

Putting parents back in charge of their child’s education through school choice measures was Milton Friedman’s goal. It was not his ultimate goal, as it would not fully address the funding and compulsion components of government schooling; but it was, and remains, an important first step. As the Friedmans wrote in Free To Choose:

The strong American tradition of voluntary action has provided many excellent examples that demonstrate what can be done when parents have greater choice. (p. 159).

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

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March 16, 2012 – 12:25 am

  Michael Harrington:  If you don’t have the expertise, the knowledge technology today, you’re out of the debate. And I think that we have to democratize information and government as well as the economy and society. FRIEDMAN: I am sorry to say Michael Harrington’s solution is not a solution to it. He wants minority rule, I […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

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March 9, 2012 – 12:29 am

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March 2, 2012 – 12:26 am

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February 24, 2012 – 12:21 am

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 3 of 7)

February 17, 2012 – 12:12 am

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February 10, 2012 – 12:09 am

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February 3, 2012 – 12:07 am

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Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5

Debate on Milton Friedman’s cure for inflation

September 29, 2011 – 7:24 am

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What were the main proposals of Milton Friedman?

February 21, 2013 – 1:01 am

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December 7, 2012 – 5:55 am

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Defending Milton Friedman

July 31, 2012 – 6:45 am

What a great defense of Milton Friedman!!!!   Defaming Milton Friedman by Johan Norberg This article appeared in Reason Online on September 26, 2008  PRINT PAGE  CITE THIS      Sans Serif      Serif Share with your friends: ShareThis In the future, if you tell a student or a journalist that you favor free markets and limited government, there is […]

–

Proverbs 21New Living Translation

21 The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord;
    he guides it wherever he pleases.

² People may be right in their own eyes,
    but the Lord examines their heart.

³ The Lord is more pleased when we do what is right and just
    than when we offer him sacrifices.

⁴ Haughty eyes, a proud heart,
    and evil actions are all sin.

⁵ Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity,
    but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.

⁶ Wealth created by a lying tongue
    is a vanishing mist and a deadly trap.^[a]

⁷ The violence of the wicked sweeps them away,
    because they refuse to do what is just.

⁸ The guilty walk a crooked path;
    the innocent travel a straight road.

⁹ It’s better to live alone in the corner of an attic
    than with a quarrelsome wife in a lovely home.

¹⁰ Evil people desire evil;
    their neighbors get no mercy from them.

¹¹ If you punish a mocker, the simpleminded become wise;
    if you instruct the wise, they will be all the wiser.

¹² The Righteous One^[b] knows what is going on in the homes of the wicked;
    he will bring disaster on them.

¹³ Those who shut their ears to the cries of the poor
    will be ignored in their own time of need.

¹⁴ A secret gift calms anger;
    a bribe under the table pacifies fury.

¹⁵ Justice is a joy to the godly,
    but it terrifies evildoers.

¹⁶ The person who strays from common sense
    will end up in the company of the dead.

¹⁷ Those who love pleasure become poor;
    those who love wine and luxury will never be rich.

¹⁸ The wicked are punished in place of the godly,
    and traitors in place of the honest.

¹⁹ It’s better to live alone in the desert
    than with a quarrelsome, complaining wife.

²⁰ The wise have wealth and luxury,
    but fools spend whatever they get.

²¹ Whoever pursues righteousness and unfailing love
    will find life, righteousness, and honor.

²² The wise conquer the city of the strong
    and level the fortress in which they trust.

²³ Watch your tongue and keep your mouth shut,
    and you will stay out of trouble.

²⁴ Mockers are proud and haughty;
    they act with boundless arrogance.

²⁵ Despite their desires, the lazy will come to ruin,
    for their hands refuse to work.

²⁶ Some people are always greedy for more,
    but the godly love to give!

²⁷ The sacrifice of an evil person is detestable,
    especially when it is offered with wrong motives.

²⁸ A false witness will be cut off,
    but a credible witness will be allowed to speak.

²⁹ The wicked bluff their way through,
    but the virtuous think before they act.

³⁰ No human wisdom or understanding or plan
    can stand against the Lord.

³¹ The horse is prepared for the day of battle,
    but the victory belongs to the Lord.

How to Be the Father of a Wise Child Proverbs 1:1-5, 20-22

1932

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HOW TO BE THE FATHER OF A WISE CHILD | PROVERBS 1:1-5, 20-22 | #1932
Take your Bibles and turn if you would to Proverbs chapter 1. Sometimes children are caught up in the mistakes and the pride and the arrogance of their parents. And more than often it’s the pride and the arrogance of the father.
PAGE 2
‘Twas the schooner Hesperus that sailed the wintery sea.
The skipper had taken his little daughter to bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax, her cheeks like the dawn of day.
Her bosom white as the Hawthorne buds that op’ in the month of May.
A skipper stood upon the helm, his pipe was in his mouth.
He watched how the veering flaw did blow the wind now west, now south. Then up spake an old sailor, had sailed the Spanish Main,
“I pray thee, put into yonder port, for I fear a hurricane.
Last night the moon had a golden ring, tonight no moon we see.”
But the skipper blew a whiff from his pipe, and a scornful laugh laughed he. Colder and louder grew the wind, a gale from the northeast.
The snow fell hissing on the brine, and the billows frothed like yeast. “Come hither! Come hither, my little daughter, and do not tremble so,
for I can weather the roughest storm that ever wind did blow.”
And he wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat against the stinging blast And he cut a rope from a fallen spar and bound her to the mast.
“O father! I hear the church bells ring, O say, what may it be?”
“’Tis a fog bell on a rock-bound coast,” and he steered for the open sea.
“O Father! I hear the sound of guns, O say, what, what may it be?”
“Some ship in distress that cannot live in such an angry sea.”
“O Father! I see a gleaming light, O say, what may it be?”
But the father answered never a word, for a frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm all stiff and stark with his face turned toward the skies. The lantern shown through the gleaming snow on his fixed and glassy eyes. The maiden then bowed her head and prayed that saved she might be;
Copyright ©2021 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc. Transcripts are used by permission of the Rogers Family Trust.

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And she thought of the Christ that still the waves on the lake of Galilee.
And on through the midnight dark and drear, through the whistling sleet and snow,
The vessel swept like a sheeted ghost toward the reef of Norman’s Woe. And ever the fitful gust between, a sound came from the land.
Was the sound of the trampling surf, on the rocks and the hard sea sand. The billows were right beneath her bow, she drifted a dreary wreck,
A whooping billow swept the crew like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves looked soft as carded wool. But the cruel rocks, they gored her side like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds all sheathed in ice with a mast went by the board.
She stove and sank like a vessel of glass. “Ho! Ho!” the breakers roared.
At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach, a fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair lashed close to a drifting mast.
Salt sea frozen on her breast, salt tears in her eyes,
And he watched her hair like the brown seaweed on the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, in the midnight and the snow.
Christ save us all from a death like this on the reef of Norman’s Woe.
There are many children who are going to be shipwrecked because of the pride and the arrogance of their fathers who will not do what they ought to do to guide those children into a safe and secure haven. And they make shipwreck not only of their own lives, but the lives of their children, bound to the mast of their own ignorance.
Listen to God’s Word here, Proverbs chapter 1 verse 1 through 5, “The Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel; to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding; to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment and equity.” Now watch specially verse 4, “To give subtlety to the simple and to the young man, knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear and will increase learning and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsel.” And then begin to read with me in verse 20 through 22, “Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets. She crieth in the chief place of the concourse in the opening of the gates. In the
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city she uttereth her words saying, ‘How long ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity?’ And the scorners delight in their scorning and fools hate knowledge?”
Now if you don’t mind marking your Bible, I want you to take your Bible and I want you to underscore three words in that passage. I want you to underscore in verse 22 the word, simple. And then I want you to underscore the word, scorners, and then I want you to underscore the word, fools. I want to talk to you today about how to be the father of a wise child.
And what you have here in this one verse in Proverbs chapter 1 verse 22 is what I want to call the evolution of a fool. And God have mercy upon the man, the woman, who has a fool for a daughter, a fool for a son.
Children begin as simple. The word simple simply means open. It means naive. The Hebrew word is the word open. It has nothing to do with intellectual ability. We’re not talking about a simpleton. We’re not talking about a person who does not have gray matter. As a matter of fact, a simple child may grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, a politician, may even grow up to be a minister; simple, simple. Just simply means plastic mentality, open, naive. So just write the word naive by the word simple.
And then the next word he mentions is the scorner. Now, the scorner’s different from the simple. The simple is more or less innocent. But the scorner, today just write the word smart aleck, smart aleck, or in business write the word cynic. Or in the university you might write the word sophisticate. These are the scornful; the scornful.
But then the next step is the fool, the fool. Now write by the word fool, the word rebel, arrogant, wicked. Again the word fool does not have the idea that a person is lacking in mental ability. He may be very wise to do evil. The word has a moral base. It means without any ability to discern.
Now we are in serious trouble in America. And I’ll tell you what happened in America. In 1962, prayer in public schools was declared unconstitutional. In 1963 in America, Bible reading in the public school was declared unconstitutional. In 1973, the killing of pre-born children was declared to be a right guaranteed by the Constitution. In 1980, the Ten Commandments were deemed to be illegal to be posted on school walls. And one of the reasons why they said so, if a child read those commandments, they said, “He might be tempted to emulate them.” And so, they’re taken down. You see, the secular humanists have proven to be great strategists. They tried to find one segment of life that almost every American child will pass through, that is, education. So they targeted public education to be the Sunday schools for their humanistic philosophy. And in order to do that, they wanted to purge out any vestige of Christian influence.
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So what has happened in the last years? Well, prayer is out, policemen are in. Bibles are out, values clarification is in. The Ten Commandments are out, rape and armed robbery, gang warfare, murder and cheating are in. Instruction that tells us that we were created in the image of God is out, evolution is in. Corporal punishment is out, disrespect and rebellion is in. Traditional values are out and unwed motherhood is in. Abstinence is out and condoms and abortion are in. Learning is out and social engineering is in. History is out and revisionism is in.
And the problem primarily, believe it or not, is with fathers. Arrogant fathers who fail to accept their responsibility. I want to talk to dads today, and I want to tell you how not to be the father of a fool. How to be the father of a wise child.
Now go back to these three categories of persons that we looked at here in verse 22, and let me describe them more carefully and I think you’ll recognize some children that you know. First of all, let’s think of the ignorance of the simple. How is he described? Look if you will in Romans 1 verse 22, “How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity?” That’s his first mark. He loves his simplicity. He enjoys being a child. He enjoys the carefree life. He doesn’t like any serious thoughts. One teenager said, “I am worried. My Dad slaves away at his job so I won’t have to need for a thing and so I can have a college education. My mom spends every day washing and ironing and picking up my things and looking after me. And she takes care of me when I’m sick.” His friend said, “You’re worried? What are you worried about?” He said, “I’m afraid they might try to escape.” The children just love having everything done for them, the carefree simple life. That’s the life of the simple.

But not only that, he lacks understanding. Go to Proverbs chapter 9. And by the way, we’re going to stay in Proverbs, and so get your Bibles open and keep them in your lap. Proverbs chapter 9 verses 1 through 4, “Wisdom hath builded her house. She hath hewn out her seven pillars. She hath killed her beasts. She hath mingled her wine. She hath also furnished her table. She hath sent forth her maidens. She crieth upon the highest places of the city.” That is, wisdom has prepared a banquet of learning knowledge and truth. And notice to whom the invitation goes, “Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither. As for him that wanteth or needeth understanding.”
Now, a simple person loves his simplicity, he lacks understanding. As I say, one day he may be a lawyer, a banker, or a surgeon, but he lacks spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding. He just doesn’t know.
Now, because he’s carefree, and because he lacks understanding, he is easily led into error. Turn to Proverbs 14 and look in verse 15. Here’s a key verse about the simple, “The simple believeth every word.” Now just put that down. “The simple believeth every word.” Remember I told you that the Hebrew word for simple means open? He believes every word. That is, he’s easily led. “But the prudent man looketh well to his going.” And so a simple child is easily led.
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Now listen, let me tell you something. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe something. He will believe something! He’ll believe anything! He’s an easy target for Madison Avenue. He’s an easy target for MTV, for false religions, for sinful friends. He’s like a sponge. He believes everything. He’s easily led into error because he’s so open.
I heard about a young, simple boy who had some puppies and his mama said, “You have to get rid of all of them but one.” So he was trying to sell the last puppy and he was trying to sell it for $5 and a grown man said, “Son, the reason you can’t sell that puppy is that you didn’t put a high enough price for him and people don’t think he’s worth much.” And so he came back the next day the boy said, “Well sir, I have decided that I am going to sell this puppy for $100.” “Well,” the man said, “Son, I didn’t mean that much. But see if you can do it.” Later on, he saw the man and said, “Sir, I want you to know I sold my puppy.” He said, “Did you get a hundred dollars?” He said, “Indeed I did.” He said, “Well, not exactly.” Said, “I took two $50 cats.”
Now, that’s the simple child. He’s easily led into error. You can trick him. You can flim-flam him. But, he’s living in constant danger. Look at that verse again, chapter 14 verse 15, “The simple believeth every word, but a prudent man looketh well to his going.” Now a child doesn’t do that. He doesn’t look forward; he doesn’t plan for the future. And therefore he’s living in danger.
Look in chapter 22 in verse 3, “A prudent man forseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on and are punished.” What does that mean? That means that if a person were wise and prudent, he would see danger. But the simple child thinks he’s indestructible. They never think about the future. And therefore your child is like a pig being led to the slaughter.
Now that’s the simple for you. He’s careless, he’s carefree, he’s easily led, he thinks he’s indestructible. He has no idea about danger. He just passes on and is punished.
Now, let’s move on and think not only about the simple but think about the scorner. You see, the next step after a person is naive, he becomes, if he’s not led by his dad and his mom, he becomes a smart aleck in school, he’s the cynic in business; he’s the mocker at the university. Now what are his marks? Well, go back again to chapter 1, Proverbs chapter 1 and verse 22 and look at it, “How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity,” now watch this, “and the scorners,” now watch this, “delight in their scorning?” He delights in his scorning. He gets his jollies out of being a smart aleck. And what a terrible condition this is. It breaks my heart to say it, but most teenagers, older teenagers in America are now scorners. We’ve lost a generation. They are now scorners. They have the devil’s initials carved in their hearts. They have his slimy fingerprints on their minds.
And because he delights in scorning, he defies instruction. Turn to Proverbs chapter 13 and look if you will in verse 1, “A wise son heareth his father’s instruction,
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but a scorner heareth not rebuke.” Boy, underscore that. Dads you need to learn this. “A wise son heareth, hears his father’s instruction, but a scorner heareth not rebuke.” You can always tell a scorner, but you can’t tell him much. He won’t listen. He’ll tune you out. He has ears but he will not hear. And when you talk to him, it’s like pouring water on a rock. It’s like talking to a brick wall.
But not only does he delight in his scorning, not only does he defy instruction, but he literally despises the good and the godly. Look in chapter 15 verse 12, “A scorner loveth not the one that reproveth him; neither will he go unto the wise.” A scorner will never come to his dad and say, “Dad, I need help. Will you help me out?” He’ll never go to his teacher, his pastor, his youth pastor and say, “Will you help me?” Oh no. As a matter of fact, when you try to correct the scorner what’s going to happen is, he is going to look at you and he’s going to say with his eyes, “I hate your guts.” Rebuke a scorner and he will insult you.
Turn to Proverbs chapter 9 and verses 7 and 8. I told you that you were going to be turning a lot, so just do it. Listen to it, “He that reproveth a scorner getteth himself shame and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot. Reprove not a scorner lest he hate thee. Rebuke a wise man and he will love thee.” And so, you just rebuke a scorner and he will fire back at you. You cannot tell him anything. He will shoot off the lip at you.
Now, I pray God that you’ll not raise a scorner. This message may be too late for some people already today.
Now a scorner was once simple, but he became a scorner. And what is going to happen to him is; he’s destined for destruction. Look in Proverbs chapter 13 and verse 1, “A wise son heareth his father’s instruction, but a scorner heareth not rebuke.” We’ve already read that, but now I want you to skip on down to verse 13, “Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed.” He won’t listen. And God says he’s destined for destruction. He laughs at you, but he’ll laugh his way right into Hell, and once he’s there he can’t laugh his way out. But there is some hope for the scorner. The scorner’s very hard to reach. But the scorner can be reclaimed.
But now I want you to think about the third category. First we said there was the simple, the naive, the open, the carefree. He becomes then the smart aleck, the scorner if he’s not taught. But then the scorner becomes a fool. Now go back to the text again in Proverbs chapter 1 and look at in verse 22, “How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity?” The simple one loves his carefree life. And the scorners delight in their scorning. The smart aleck gets his jollies out of his scorning. But now notice, “And fools hate knowledge.” Now here’s the difference. The scorner is insolent, but the fool is immovable.
Now notice what he does. The fool rejects wisdom. He hates wisdom. Look in Proverbs chapter 15 and verse 14, “The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh
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knowledge, but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness.” Now, they love foolishness. They literally feed on foolishness.
He literally rejects wisdom and then he ridicules righteousness. Look in Proverbs 14 verse 9, “Fools make a mock at sin.” “Fools make a mock at sin.” That’s the reason that you have these situational comedies that laugh at drunkenness; that laugh at adultery, that mock homosexuality and perversion. They mock at sin. Do you know who does that? Fools. Fools make a mock at sin. That’s what the Bible says. He rejects wisdom, he ridicules righteousness, but he’s not finished yet.
He literally rejoices in iniquity. Proverbs 15 verses 20 and 21, look at that, “A wise son maketh a glad father, but a foolish man despiseth his mother. Folly is a joy to him that is destitute of wisdom.” He, he just actually rejoices in this, this wickedness. His moral sense has been so perverted that he thinks good is evil and evil is good.
You might want to put down on your notes Isaiah chapter 5 and verse 20, “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
Now, what’s going to happen to the fool? The fool’s going to die and go to Hell. Turn to Proverbs chapter 17 and verse 10, “A reproof entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool.” You cannot beat the foolishness out of a child. Don’t even try it. Don’t even try it. Can’t be done. He won’t hear you. He is intransigent. He is fixed. His heart is hardened. His conscience is seared. His mind is defiled. Now if he were wise he could still go wrong. But if he went wrong and God chastised him, then he would repent. Hebrews 12:6, “Whom the Father loves He chastens and scourges every son whom He receiveth.”
King David sinned terribly, but King David was a wise man in spite of his sin. And when God chastised King David, King David repented, and he cried out to God for mercy. Pharaoh was a fool. And when God judged Pharaoh, Pharaoh just hardened his heart more and more and more. And if you have a child and you have raised a fool, and then you think when he’s 18 and 185 pounds that you’re going to give him a whipping, just forget it! All you’re going to do is to make him hate you all the more. A hundred stripes on the back of a fool is not going to do any good. Putting him in prison is not. He needs to be in prison if he commits a crime, but it’s not going to change him. And by the way, the purpose of prisons is not reformation, it’s punishment. But it’s not going to change him. It’s going to make society a little safer.
But you see, God gives us little children, and they’re what we call simple. But if you’re not careful, we have a society that’s going to turn him into a smart aleck. And if he does, if he’s not rescued when he’s become a scorner and a smart aleck, he’s going to become a fool and he’s going to end up in Hell. He won’t even know the difference between right and wrong.
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Well, let’s go back in the few moments that we have left and look at the simple, the naive, the carefree child. What can you do, dads, what can you do, moms, so as not to raise a fool? I want to mention four things.
Number one, you need to expound truth. Go back to Proverbs chapter 1 and look in verses 1 through 4, “The Proverbs of Solomon the son of David, King of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice and judgment and equity, to give subtly to the simple and to the young man knowledge and discretion.” That’s why God gave you the Proverbs. I have four good and godly children, but if I could start over with my children again, I would saturate them in the Proverbs. We read the Proverbs, but I believe I would saturate them in the Proverbs. I would! I would emblazon the Ten Commandments into their consciousness. I would teach them the Beatitudes, that they might learn these simple, basic truths! Expound truth! The battle is for the mind. As the child thinks, so is he.
And who is the major teacher? The major teacher is the father. You read in Deuteronomy chapter 5 where God gave the Ten Commandments, and then in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 2, God says to fathers, “Teach these commandments to your sons and to your grandsons that your family will survive and that your home will endure.”
So you’re going to have to fill in the outline, I’m just going to give you the main points. Number one, expound truth.
Number two, expose sin, expose sin. The simple will learn by example. Turn to Proverbs chapter 19 and verse 15, please. This is a key verse. Now watch this, “Smite a scorner and the simple will beware.” Underscore that. “Smite a scorner and the simple will beware. And reprove one that hath understanding and he will understand knowledge.” Now what does that mean? It means that a child who is carefree and careless, who is simple, needs to see the scorner smitten. He needs to see sin exposed and the fruit of sin, because often he does not see it. Look in Proverbs 21 verse 11, the same thing is taught, “When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise.” “When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise.” Now what does that mean? Do you know the worst thing that could happen to your child? Would be for your child to live in such a sinful society as we have and yet for your child not to see the repercussions of sin.
For example, he watches on television and he sees people sleeping together. But he never sees anybody get pregnant. He never sees an abortion. He never sees venereal disease. He never sees the breakup of a home. He doesn’t see that. He doesn’t see the scorner being smitten. He sees the guys in the bass boat hoisting a big can of beer and smacking their lips and slapping each other and hugging each other and giving each other high fives and saying, “It never gets any better than this.” That’s right. It doesn’t even get that good as a matter of fact. It always gets worse
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than that. But, Madison Avenue never shows him a drunkard in the gutter covered with vomit and flies. He doesn’t show the alcoholic with delirium tremens. He doesn’t show a man, a beered-up dad coming home and beating up his kids. Madison Avenue doesn’t do that. You see, they don’t get to see the scorner smitten. Our children today are insulated. They don’t know. That’s the reason that you need to help them to understand. You need to expose sin. Not only expound truth, but expose sin.
If you’re a dad and you’ve got a, a 9, 10, 12, 14 year old, you need to go some Friday and Saturday nights to the emergency room in the hospital about between 11 and 1:00. And let them see these people coming in after having gone through the windshield of an automobile, after having been beered-up. Let them see these people all sliced up and mangled. Take him down to skid row. Take him to the prisons. Let him see this. “Smite the scorner and the simple will learn.” He thinks he’s indestructible. He does not know. You need to pull back the veil.
You know, we have a society today that shrinks from punishing criminals, and that’s the reason why we’re producing more. Let me give you a verse of Scripture. Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 11, listen to it, this is a key verse, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily; therefore, the heart of the sons of men,” that is, your sons, “is fully set in them to do evil.” Let me give it to you again, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily.” There’s one appeal and then another appeal, and then another appeal and then another appeal.
A boy in the ghetto can see his friends standing on the street comer selling dope. He can see the undercover agent come and arrest him. He’s carried off. He’s kind of smiling as they carry him off. He’s kind of a hero. Two or three days, he’s right back on the same comer selling dope again. Now what does that say in the hearts and minds of others? They say there’s no connection between crime and punishment. Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 11, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily; therefore, the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” What you need to do is expound truth and expose error! Pull away the veil.
Now here’s the third thing, and I’ll get some disagreement about this, but I’m going to say it anyway. Expel scorners. Expound truth. Expose error. And expel scorners. Turn if you will to Proverbs chapter 13 and look with me in verse 20, “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. But a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” Moms and dads, underscore that. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” Turn to Proverbs 22 and verse 10, “Cast out the scorner and contention shall go out. Yea, strife and reproach shall cease.” Cast out the scorner!
Now every so often we hear that this disruptive child, for his sake, needs to be able to stay there and disrupt everybody else. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. You’re not doing him any good. You’re only feeding his ego and depravity, and you are definitely corrupting those that he is around. The Bible says, “Cast him out.”
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Now listen, do not let your children hang around with scorners and fools. Just don’t do it. You help him select his friends. And that means you may have to be firm and cast out the scorner. Why? Because your child, if your child is naive, if your child is simple, they are going to be susceptible to peer pressure. And as somebody said, “It’s hard to fly with eagles when you’re surrounded with turkeys.” You just let your kids run with turkeys and the Bible says, “A companion of fools will be destroyed.”
Now peer pressure is not bad. It is good if the peers are good. So that’s all the more reason that you need to get the right kids in your home. And that’s all the more reason that you need to make your home the headquarters for happiness. You need to say, “Come in Mary, Susie, Bill, John, Martha, whomever, Michelle, come on into our house. You can have the house. You want to have a party? Have it over here. Boys, you want to raid the refrigerator, go ahead and do it. You want to break down the couch, that’s okay. You want to track the carpet, that’s okay.” Friend, those things are small compared to your children. Let you home be the happiest place on earth. And by the way, boy, when you have them there, you can monitor those friends. And when there’s a scorner, a smart aleck, or a fool, you say, “Son, there’s the sidewalk. Get on it.” That’s right. The Bible says, “Cast out the scorner and contention will cease!”
Joyce and I have always tried to have the right guests in our home and make certain when the guests are there that the children are there. If we’re having important people in our home, what I consider to be important, I don’t mean the high muckety mucks, the rich, the wealthy, and the famous. I’m talking about people who know God and love God and people of character. We want our children at the dinner table to listen to the conversation and enjoy the conversation and participate in the conversation. And friend, the Bible says that, “A companion of fools will be destroyed, but those who are around wise people will be made wise.”
Here’s the last thing, and you’re going to have to fill in the last point. But you need to expound truth. You need to expose sin. You need to expel scorners and you need to express love. You need to express love. Look in Proverbs chapter 3 and verse 12. The Bible says here, “For whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.” Love your children! Delight in them. Be positive! Don’t ever be negative. Words can hurt your children more than an open hand and a slap in the face. Learn to listen to them. Try to see life from their point of view. They’re facing things you never faced.
Be gentle. I have observed dads. I say, why is it that some children just adore and worship their dads almost, and others hate their dads? What is the difference in dads? And there’s one characteristic that I’ve almost found in all true dads whose children love and follow them; those dads are gentle, they’re gentle. And it starts when they’re children.
Can you image what a big, harsh, overbearing dad would do to a little guy? I mean, just imagine walking out of this building this morning, just imagine walking out
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there, out there on the front porch is a guy 17 feet tall. You’re looking in his knee caps. And let’s say he has a voice like thunder. And he begins to talk to you and tell you what to do. My soul! Well, if he’s that big and sounds like that, one thing you sure do hope is that he’s gentle, don’t you? That’s what the children want out of their dad; somebody who’s gentle. Oh, they want a dad they can look up to. They want a dad who’s the strongest, wisest, smartest, fastest, richest, goodest dad. I know goodest is not a word. The best dad in all the world! But they want him to be gentle! Touch them, hug them, show other non-verbal language.
Be transparent. Let them know of your fears, and your joys, and your disappointments, your failures, and your goals. They already know you’re not perfect; they just don’t want you to be a phony.
And then, be available to them. Oh, l wish l had more time for that, but just take it as a priority that you’re going to be available to your child.
You say, “Pastor Rogers, very frankly I’m not adequate for what you’ve just described.” I know you’re not. I’m not adequate. Listen to me, none of us has what it takes to be this kind of a dad or mom. That’s the reason we need Jesus isn’t it? That’s the reason we need the Lord. That’s the reason we’ve got to have Christ in our hearts! Because the Christian life is not difficult, it is impossible. So there’s only one who can do it and that’s Jesus. But He will do it in us and through us if we’ll let Him. So the best thing you can do for your children is to love God will all of your heart. Give your heart to Jesus.
Let’s bow our heads in prayer. Heads are bowed and eyes are closed. If you would like to be saved today, to be a child of God, if you’d like to know that your sin is forgiven, if you would like to know that Heaven is your home, if you would like to have the power and wisdom that Jesus alone can give, I want to help you to invite Christ into your heart and trust Him. Would you pray like this? “Dear Lord, I need You. I need to be saved. I’m a sinner. My sin deserves judgment. But l need mercy, not judgment. I want You to forgive me, God. I want You to cleanse me. I want You to save me. Lord Jesus, You said if I would trust You, You would save me. I trust You right now, right this moment. I don’t ask for a sign. I don’t look for a feeling. I just stand on Your Word, and I receive You now as my Lord and Savior. Come into my heart, forgive my sin, save me Jesus.” Pray that prayer. Pray it. Pray it from your heart. “Save me, Jesus.” Pray it. Ask Him to save you. “Save me, Jesus.” Did you ask Him? By faith, pray this way, “Thank You for saving me, Lord Jesus. I receive it by faith, like a little child. You’re now my Lord and Savior. Give me the courage to make it public. In Your name I pray, Amen.”

I have read articles for years from Dan Barker, but recently I just finished the book Barker wrote entitled LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which was prompted by Rick Warren’s book PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE which I also read several years ago.

Dan Barker is the  Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, And co-host of Freethought Radio and co-founder of The Clergy Project.

On March 19, 2022, I got an email back from Dan Barker that said:

Thanks for the insights.

Have you read my book Life Driven Purpose? To say there is no purpose OF life is not to say there is no purpose IN life. Life is immensely meaningful when you stop looking for external purpose.

Ukraine … we’ll, we can no longer blame Russian aggression on “godless communism.” The Russian church, as far as I know, has not denounced the war.

db

—

In the next few weeks I will be discussing the book LIFE DRIVEN PURPOSE which I did enjoy reading. Here is an assertion that Barker makes that I want to discuss:

What planet is Reverend [Rick] Warren living on? It seems he hasn’t met many atheists. He doesn’t know that hundreds of millions of good people do not “begin with God,” do not believe in a god, yet live full meaningful lives.

Like you Dan, I am friends with people who hold views that I don’t with. About 30 years ago I became friends with Dr. Paul D. Simmons and Paul was President, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Washington, D.C. 20003, 2004-2010 and a Trustee, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Washington, D.C. 20003 from 1999 -2010. Below is an article that gives the background on how we met and started to work together. Paul and disagreed on several issues and abortion was one of them.
(Dr. Paul D. Simmons pictured below)

It all started because I was involved in a series of correspondence with Rob Boston who is the senior policy analyst at the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU) and a board member of the American Humanist Society.

(Portions of this below appeared in an article I did for the Freedom Writer in May/June 1997 issue which is a publication friendly to Boston and not to me but they felt the record should be set straight concerning the misleading article that Boston had written in 1996 in Church & State titled “Consumer Alert.”.)

Rob Boston in 2018

Let me start from the very beginning. As an evangelical Christian and a member of the Christian Coalition, I felt obliged to expose a misquote of John Adams’ I found in an article entitled “America’s Unchristian Beginnings” (Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1995, p.B-9) by the self-avowed atheist Dr. Steven Morris. However, what happened next changed my focus to the use of misquotes, unconfirmed quotes, and misleading attributions by the religious right.

In the process of attempting to correct Morris, I was guilty of using several misquotes myself. Dr John George coauthor (with Paul Boller Jr.) of the book “They Never Said It!” (Oxford University Press, 1989) set me straight. George pointed out that George Washington never said, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” (They Never Said It! pp. 126-127). I had cited page 18 of the 1927 edition of Halley’s Bible Handbook. This quote was probably generated by a similar statement that appears in A Life of Washington (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1835) by James Paulding. Sadly, no one has been able to verify any of the quotes in Paulding’s book since no footnotes were offered.

I

PAUL F. BOLLER JR.: 1916–2014

After reading “They Never Said It!” I had a better understanding of how widespread the problem of misquotes is. Furthermore, I DISCOVERED THAT MANY OF THESE HAD BEEN USED BY THE LEADERS OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT. I decided TO CONFRONT SOME INDIVIDUALS CONCERNING THEIR MISQUOTES. WallBuilders, the publisher of David Barton’s The Myth of Separation (published in 1989), helped me further by providing me with their “Questionable Quote” list. The list contained a dozen quotes of the founders that Barton could only confirm with secondary sources.

Proverbs 19:25 states, “…rebuke a discerning man, and he will gain knowledge.” Since I was rebuking fellow Christians, I felt certain they would all gladly quit using unconfirmed or questionable quotes. THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT LEADERS I CONTACTED HAD THREE RESPONSES

The FIRST was the reaction that I expected. Several thanked me for bringing these corrections to their attention. They agreed that it is wrong to use disputed quotes as if they were authentic.

The SECOND, which was the most common response, was to claim that their critics were biased skeptics who find the truth offensive. The premise of this argument is, “We know our critics are 100% wrong all the time, so who cares what they have to say anyway. We are the only unbiased ones.”

And the THIRD response was from one who defended his method of research and his method of confirming sources. Furthermore, he said that he pursued his graduate education in order to improve his level of scholarship. Nevertheless, that respondent never provided me with his original sources.

There are some misquotes used commonly by separationists, but evidently the religious right has a much more widespread problem. One illustration demonstrates just how widespread the problem is among religious right lay historians. When David Barton wrote The Myth of Separation he used many secondary sources for the 500 quotes that appeared in his book published in 1989. After an effort to find primary sources for these quotes, Barton complied the “Questionable Quote” list with the 12 quotes that could only had confirmation through secondary sources. None of these questionable quotes originated with Barton.

AFTER CONFRONTING OVER THIRTY RELIGIOUS RIGHT AUTHORS, I turned my attention to individuals from the separationist point of view. DURING THIS TIME I PROVIDED ROB BOSTON, of Americans United, with the “questionable quote” list in the hope that he would confront some individuals on his side of the ideological fence. I even included my correspondence from several religious right leaders such as the late D. James Kennedy. Nevertheless, based upon the “Questionable Quote” list that I provided to him, Boston wrote the slanted article for Church & State titled “Consumer Alert.” (July /August 1996). In this article he implies that Barton made up the dozen quotes on the “Questionable Quote” list.

In “Consumer Alert,” these words appeared in bold print: “Mything in action: David Barton’s ‘Questionable Quotes.’” Barton was called a “double fraud.” 

Fritz Detwiler, 

Professor

Professor Fritz Detweiler of Adrian College’s religion and philosophy department responded to this controversy in his weekly column stating that Barton “made up quotes and attributed them to James Madison, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and other leading Americans…. Barton’s fabricating quotes to serve his purpose is particularly disturbing on two fronts. First, Barton was not content to let the record speak for itself because it didn’t say quite what he wanted it to say. Second, the fraudulent construction of quotes poses a particular problem for [historians] seeking to verify their accuracy.”

Barton in 2016

In response to that article, David Barton wrote in WallBuilders‘ summer 1996 newsletter that “the article, “Consumer Alert”‘ is agenda driven. Our honest efforts to clear the ‘world’s rhetorical rivers,’ as we casually stated in the earlier draft, were twisted and misconstrued to sound as if we created the quotes… We regret that the unconfirmed quotations have been circulated over the last century-and-a-half, and WallBuilders acknowledges the errors of using secondary sources for primary historical figures. (These quotes have been purged from our materials wherever possible.) David Barton went on to make clear that his current level of scholarship as of the early 1990’s was not to use founders quotes unless they are documented by a primary source.

I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO TALK TO ROB BOSTON ON THE PHONE about this on November 19, 1996. I told him that people all across this country have been writing letters to the editor of their local newspapers blasting David Barton because of Boston’s article and many more have been posting articles on the internet.) Boston said he was very glad people were on to Barton.

Then I pointed out to Boston that many of these people were accusing Barton of knowingly using bad quotes. Furthermore, one individual accused Barton of “creating quotes.” These people could be sued for libel. Boston replied, “No malice can be proved. I don’t know much about law, but I at least know that much.” SHORTLY AFTER THAT ROB BOSTON HUNG UP ON ME, BUT NOT BEFORE HE CLAIMED “POETIC LICENSE” AND SAID HE WAS GLAD THAT BARTON’S REPUTATION HAD BEEN DAMAGED. (Blair Scott, Alabama State Director, American Atheists, Inc. has since claimed, “David Barton was cornered and he admitted to fabricating the quotes, okay he actually called them “spurious,” but we all know that means he made them up.”)

Pictured is The Rev. Barry Lynn

Later I got several board members of Americans United to contact Boston on my behalf and voice their opinion of how unfair Boston had been to Barton in his article “Consumer Alert”. On March 7, 1997, I SPOKE WITH BARRY LYNN the executive director of Americans United. Lynn was very gracious on the phone and promised to consider an article from me in response to the slanted “Consumer Alert” article Boston had written earlier. AMERICANS UNITED Board member Dr. PAUL SIMMONS OF LOUISVILLE HELPED ME WRITE THE ARTICLE ( LINK HERE) BUT ULTIMATELY BARRY LYNN DECIDED NOT TO PUBLISH IT BACK THEN. 

The real scandal is that this same lie caused by Boston’s article about Barton is still today being spread throughout the world on youtube and on TV. On Feb 10, 2010 on MSNBC’s show Countdown with Keith Olberman, Rob Boston was the guest and Olberman opened the show with these words:

“What happens if you want your audience to believe that the the founding fathers did not want the separation of church and state when obviously and clearly and repeatedly they did. Well you make up quotes defending your position and dishonestly attribute them to the likes of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson… More on Mr Barton and those quotes in a moment.”

Then Olbermann and Boston go on to criticize Barton throughout the remainder of the program. However, in this interview Boston never says that Barton manufactured quotes, but he doesn’t stop Olbermann from telling the same old lie about Barton that came from this 1996 scandal. Boston knew that his article “Consumer Alert” from 1996 was responsible for Olbermann’s inaccurate words about Barton, but Boston didn’t lift a finger to set the record straight. In 2009 Boston finally admitted concerning Barton “Unconfirmed Quote List”: “He didn’t make the stuff up, he just relied on bad sources.” Boston should have admitted this in 1996 and apologized and then tried to correct the record anytime he saw it on the internet.

Furthermore this youtube video clip has received over 75,000 hits. The clip was put on youtube by a person going by the username “JesusSavesAtCitibank” whoever that is. If you click on the username you will be provided several links to articles. The first link will bring you to Boston’s 1996 article “Consumer Alert”.

David Barton has tried to raise the level of scholarship in the debate concerning the founders by committing to use only quotes that have been confirmed by primary sources. Dr. JOHN GEORGE HAS COMMENTED, “While not agreeing with Barton concerning separation of church and state, I must say he has done everyone a service by circulating the ‘Questionable Quote List.’ Especially gratifying is his encouraging those in his own Religious Right camp to cite only primary sources for the quotes they utilize. Unfortunately, a sizable minority will ignore the advice.”

Many separationists like Dr. George praised Barton for challenging others to a higher level of scholarship concerning these unconfirmed quotes. Instead, of complimenting Barton when I provided this information to Boston in 1996, he chose to imply that Barton was guilty of making up quotes.

—

Francis Schaeffer

Francis Schaeffer discusses the movement away from what the founders envisioned in his fine book CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO: 

PAGE 437

CHAPTER 3 THE DESTRUCTION OF FAITH AND FREEDOM

And now it is all gone!

In most law schools today almost no one studies William Blackstone unless he or she is taking a course in the history of law. We live in a secularized society and in secularized, sociological law. By sociological law we mean law that has no fixed base but law in which a group of people decides what is sociologically good for society at the given moment; and wha they arbitrarily decide becomes law. Oliver Wendall Holmes (1841-1935) made totally clear that this was his position. Frederick Moore Vinson (1890-1953), former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, said, “Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes.” Those who hold this position themselves call it sociological law. 

As the new sociological law has moved away from the original base of the Creator giving the “inalienable rights,” etc., it has been natural that this sociological law has then also moved away from the Constitution. William Bentley Ball, in his paper entitled “Religious Liberty: The Constitutional Frontier,” says: 

i propose that secularism militates against religious liberty, and indeed against personal freedoms generally, for two reasons: first, the familiar fact that secularism does not recognize the existence of the “higher law”; second, because, that being so, secularism tends toward decisions based on the pragmatic public policy of the moment and inevitably tends to resist the submitting of those policies to the “higher” criteria of a constitution. 

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 7 | The Age of Non-Reason

How Should We Then Live | Season 1 | Episode 8 | The Age of Fragmentation

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 1 | Abortion of the Human…

Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 4 | The Basis for Human D…

1984 SOUNDWORD LABRI CONFERENCE VIDEO – Q&A With Francis & Edith Schaefer

FEATURED ARTIST IS O’KEEFFE

GEORGIA O’KEEFE (1887-1986)

A leading figure in the 20th century American Art, O’Keefe single-handedly redefined the Western American painting.

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