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Biden’s Tax Plan Contains a Poison Pill for American Firms that Compete in Global Markets

May 24, 2021 by Dan Mitchell

As explained here, here, here, and here, I don’t like Biden’s class-warfare tax policy.

I’m especially concerned about his approach to business taxation.

1. He wants to penalize American-based companies with the highest corporate tax rate among all developed nations.
2. He wants to export that bad policy to the rest of the world with a “global minimum tax” – sort of an OPEC for politicians.
3. He wants to handicap American multinational companies with taxes that don’t apply to foreign-based firms.

Regarding the third point, I wrote a column on that topic for the Orange County Register.

Here’s how I described Biden’s proposal.

Biden has proposed several tax increases that specifically target American firms that compete in world markets. Most notably, the Administration has proposed to double the tax rate on “global intangible low-tax income” (GILTI) from 10.5 percent to 21 percent. Translated from tax jargon to English, this is largely a tax on the income American firms earn overseas from intellectual property, most notably patents and royalties. Keep in mind, by the way, that this income already is subject to tax in the nations where it is earned. Most other nations do not handicap their companies with similar policies, so this means that American firms will face a big competitive disadvantage – especially when fighting for business in low-tax jurisdictions such as Hong Kong, Ireland, Singapore, Switzerland, and most of Eastern Europe.

And here are some additional reasons why it is very bad news.

…let’s simply look at the bottom-line impact of what Biden is proposing. The Tax Foundation estimates that, “The proposal would impose a 9.4 percent average surtax on the foreign activities of U.S. multinationals above and beyond the taxes levied by foreign governments” and “put U.S. multinationals at a competitive disadvantage relative to foreign corporations.” …a stagging $1.2 trillion tax increase on these companies. …This is not just bad for the competitiveness of American-based companies, it is also bad policy. Good fiscal systems, such as the flat tax, are based on “territorial taxation,” which is the common-sense notion that countries only tax economic activity inside their borders. …Many other nations follow this approach, which is why they will reap big benefits if Biden’s plan to hamstring American companies is approved. The key thing to understand is that the folks in Washington have the power to raise taxes on American companies competing abroad, but they don’t have the ability to raise taxes on the foreign companies in those overseas markets.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page has been sounding the alarm on this issue as well.

Here are some excerpts from an editorial back in April.

…the tax on global intangible low-tax income, known as Gilti, which was created by the 2017 tax reform. …Gilti was flawed from the start…but Mr. Biden would make it worse in every respect. …The 2017 tax law set the statutory Gilti rate at…10.5%. Mr. Biden would increase that to 21%… the effective rate companies actually pay is higher. This is because Gilti embedded double taxation in the tax code. …Gilti allows a credit of only 80% of foreign taxes, with no carry-forwards or carry-backs. …Raising the statutory rate to 21% increases that effective rate to 26.25%. This new Biden effective minimum tax would be higher than the statutory tax rates in most countries even in Western Europe… The Biden plan would further increase the effective Gilti rate by expanding the tax base on which it’s paid. …A third Biden whammy would require companies to calculate tax bills on a country-by-country basis. …Requiring companies to calculate taxable profits and tax credits individually for every country in which a company operates will create a mountain of compliance costs for business and work for the Internal Revenue Service. …The Biden Administration and its progressive political masters have decided they don’t care about the global competitiveness of American companies.

Let’s close with some international comparisons.

According to the most-recent International Tax Competitiveness Index, the United States ranks #21 out of 35 nations, which is a mediocre score.

But the United States had been scoring near the bottom, year after year, before the Trump tax reform bumped America up to #21. So there was some progress.

If the Biden plan is approved, however, it is a near-certainly that the U.S. will be once again mired at the bottom. And this bad policy will lead to unfortunate results for American workers and American competitiveness.

Biden’s Infrastructure Boondoggle Will Undermine Growth

President Biden has proposed a massive $2 trillion-plus infrastructure plan. Here are the two things everyone should understand.

1. It will hurt growth because it will be financed with very harmful tax increases, most notably a big increase in the corporate tax rate that will undermine competitiveness.
2. It will hurt growth because the new spending will divert resources from the productive sector of the economy, leading to inefficient allocation of labor and capital.

Actually, there’s another thing everyone should understand. As illustrated by this summary from the Washington Post, it’s not really an infrastructure plan. It’s a spend-money-on-anything-and-everything plan, presumably to reward various interest groups.

Though I guess we have to give the Biden Administration points for consistency. The President’s COVID relief plan from earlier this year had very little to do with the pandemic, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see that the infrastructure plan has very little to do with infrastructure.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about this bait-and-switch scam.

Most Americans think of infrastructure as roads, highways, bridges and other traditional public works. That’s why it polls well… Yet this accounts for a mere $115 billion of Mr. Biden’s proposal. There’s another $25 billion for airports and $17 billion for ports and waterways that also fill a public purpose. The rest of the $620 billion earmarked for “transportation” are subsidies for green energyand payouts to unions for the jobs his climate regulation will kill. …The magnitude of spending is something to behold. There’s $85 billion for mass transit plus $80 billion for Amtrak, which is on top of the $70 billion that Congress appropriated for mass transit in three Covid spending bills. The money is essentially a bailout for unions… Then there’s $174 billion for electric vehicles, including money to build 500,000 charging stations and for consumer “incentives” on top of the current $7,500 federal tax credit to buy an EV. …Mr. Biden is also redefining infrastructure as social-justice policy and income redistribution. …His plan also includes $213 billion for affordable housing, $100 billion for retrofitting public schools, $25 billion for child-care facilities and $400 billion for increasing home-health care.

Michael Boskin, a professor at Stanford, is not optimistic that Biden’s plan will generate good results.

Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan would be many times larger than previous such bills, only about one-third of it would meet even a broad definition of “infrastructure.” …What could possibly go wrong? A lot. …federal spending would crowd out private and local government spending, with a substantial risk of boondoggles piling up along the way.…The Biden plan is rife with opportunities for earmarked pork-barrel projects (bridges to nowhere) and crony capitalist corporate welfare (next-generation Solyndras). Consider California High-Speed Rail, an infrastructure train wreck that will soon be begging for a bailout from the Biden administration. It originally used a grant from President Barack Obama’s 2009 “stimulus” package to pay, six years later, for a tiny initial rail line. Yet, because the project’s projected total San Francisco to Los Angeles cost has tripled to $100 billion.

And even if the plan was nothing but real infrastructure, that wouldn’t be a cause for optimism.

Kenneth Rogoff, a professor at Harvard, wrote late last year that governments have a terrible track record with cost overruns.

…perhaps the biggest obstacle to improving infrastructure in advanced economies is that any new project typically requires navigating difficult right-of-way issues, environmental concerns, and objections from apprehensive citizens… The “Big Dig” highway project in my hometown of Boston, Massachusetts was famously one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in US history. The scheme was originally projected to cost $2.6 billion, but the final tab swelled to more than $15 billion… The construction of New York City’s Second Avenue Subway was a similar experience, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. In Germany, the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport recently opened nine years behind schedule and at three times the initial estimated cost.

Amen. I wrote a column about the infamous Second Avenue Subway, and I’ve also repeatedly opined about how government projects always wind up costing much more than initial projections.

Let’s wrap up by looking at an economic analysis of Biden’s plan by the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model.

The overall macroeconomic effects of enacting the AJP, including both its spending and tax provisions, are shown in Table 4. …After the AJP’s new spending ends in 2029, however, its tax increases persist—as a result, federal debt ends up 6.4 percent lower by 2050, relative to the current law baseline.Despite the decline in government debt, the investment-disincentivizing effects of the AJP’s business tax provisions decrease the capital stock by 3 percent in 2031 and 2050. The decline in capital makes workers less productive despite the increase in productivity due to more infrastructure, dragging hourly wages down by 0.7 percent in 2031 and 0.8 percent in 2050. Overall, GDP is 0.9 percent lower in 2031 and 0.8 percent lower in 2050.

Here’s Table 4, which I’ve augmented by circling the two most important statistics.

The immediate lesson from all of this is that Biden’s plan is a boondoggle waiting to happen (just as would have been the case with Trump).

The longer-term lesson is that we should get the federal government out of the business of infrastructure.

The Political Consequences of Tax Migration

When I ask my left-leaning friends what they think about the flight of investors, entrepreneurs, and business owners from high-tax states, I tend to get three responses.

1. It isn’t actually happening (these are my friends who apparently don’t know how to read).
2. It’s happening, but it doesn’t matter (data from the IRS suggests it actually is significant).
3. It’s happening, but high-tax states will be better off without these selfish and greedy people.

The folks making the third point actually have a decent argument, at least in terms of short-run political outcomes. Democrats rarely have to worry about retaining control of states like California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey now that many Republican-leaning voters have moved away.

But sometimes short-run benefits are exceeded by long-run costs, and the recent data on congressional redistricting from the Census Bureau is a good example.

As you can see, there’s a continuing shift of political power – as measured by seats in Congress – from blue states to red states.

Patrick Gleason of Americans for Tax Reform explains what this means in a column for Forbes.

Over the past decade Americans have been voting with their feet in favor of states with lower overall tax burdens… As a result, high tax states…are set to lose congressional clout for the next decade, to the benefit of low tax states… the seven states that will lose congressional seats due to stagnant population growth have higher top income tax rates and greater overall tax burdens, on average, than do the six states gaining seats. In fact, the average top personal income tax rate for states losing seats in congress is 6.5%, which is 46% greater than the 4.45% average top income tax rate for states gaining seats.

Some people may want to dismiss Mr. Gleason’s column since he works for a group that supports smaller government.

But you can find the same analysis in this column in the Washington Post by Aaron Blake.

…what does the new breakdown mean from a partisan perspective? All told, five seats will migrate from blue states to red ones — owing to population shifts from the Rust Belt, the Northeast and California to the South and other portions of the West. Five of the seven seats being added also go to states under complete GOP control of redistricting, with three of seven being taken away coming from states in which Democrats have some measure of control over the maps. …That should help Republicans… The Cook Political Report estimates the shifts are worth about 3.5 seats… As for the electoral college in future presidential elections, …Michigan and Pennsylvania…are states Democrats probably need to win in the near future, meaning it’s probably a bigger loss for them. …If we reran the 2020 electoral college with the new electoral votes by state, Biden’s margin would shrink from 306-232 to 303-235. That seems negligible. But if you overlay the 2000 presidential results — three reapportionments ago — on the current electoral vote totals, George W. Bush’s narrow win with 271 electoral votes becomes a much more decisive win with 290. That gives you a sense where things have trended.

Let’s now return to the hypothesis that tax-motivated migration is playing a role.

Here’s an instructive tweet from Andrew Wilford of the National Taxpayers Union.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfX0%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1386785330020356103&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fdanieljmitchell.wordpress.com%2F2021%2F04%2F27%2Fthe-political-consequences-of-tax-migration%2F&sessionId=fbae0e0c1efd7628dbdc1ee1673d407a81777661&siteScreenName=wordpressdotcom&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ff2e7cf%3A1618526400629&width=550px

I’ll wrap up today’s column by augmenting the data in Mr. Wilford’s tweet.

Because not only are there, on average, lower tax burdens in the states gaining congressional seats, but every one of them has some very desirable feature of its tax code.

To be sure, not all of the state-to-state migration is due to tax policy. There are all sorts of other policies that determine whether a state is an attractive place for people looking to relocate.

And there are other factors (family, climate, etc) that have nothing to do with public policy.

All things considered, however, being a low-tax state means more jobs, growth, and people, at least when compared with being a high-tax state.

P.S. If you’re interested in seeing how states rank in various indices, click here, here, and here.

The Suddenly Real Threat of a Higher Corporate Income Tax Rate

After November’s election, I figured we would have gridlock. Biden would propose some statist ideas, but they would be blocked by Republicans in the Senate.

All things considered, not a bad outcome.

But Democrats won the run-off elections yesterday for both Georgia Senate seats, which means they now have total control of Washington.

And that means, as I recently warned, a much bigger threat that Biden’s proposed tax increases may get enacted.

That won’t be good news for America’s economy or American competitiveness.

Today, let’s focus on the biggest tax increase that the President Elect is proposing.

In an article for National Review, Joseph Sullivan writes about the adverse impact of Biden’s increase in the corporate tax rate.

Biden’s corporate-tax proposal is remarkable. …If the U.S. adopted Biden’s proposed federal tax rate, its overall corporate-tax rate would not be “in line” with the rest of the G7. Assuming U.S. state and local corporate taxes stayed the same, Biden’s proposal would result in nearly the highest overall corporate-tax rate in the G7, according to data from the OECD. The U.S. would be tied with France. …The average overall corporate rate among the G7 has fallen to 25 percent… With the G7 average trending in one direction, Biden would move the U.S. in the opposite direction.

In other words, while the Biden team claims that a higher corporate tax won’t be too damaging because it will be similar to the rate in other major nations, the U.S. actually will be tied with France once you include the impact of state corporate tax burdens.

Here’s the chart included with the article.

And don’t forget that there are many other economies where the corporate tax rate is well below the G7 average.

The bottom line is that the United States currently ranks only #19out of 35 nations in the Tax Foundation’s competitiveness ranking for OECD nations.

The good news is that being #19 is much better than being #31, which is where the U.S. was in 2016.

The bad news is that Biden wants to undo much of the 2017 reform, as well as impose other tax increases. And that means a much lower competitiveness score in the future.

Which ultimately means lower wages for American workers.

P.S. Although the proposed increase in the corporate rate is theoretically the biggest revenue raiser in Biden’s tax plan, I will safely predict that it won’t raise nearly as much revenue as projected by static revenue estimates. I wasn’t able to educate Obama on this issue, and I’m even less hopeful of getting through to Biden.

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Three Economics Risks for 2021 and Beyond

In an interview with Fox Business last week, I touched on three policies (easy money from the Fed, Biden’s class-warfare tax agenda, and the ever-increasing burden of federal spending) that create risks for the economy in 2021.

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I didn’t have a chance to elaborate in the interview, but it’s worth noting that Biden will inherit two of the aforementioned problems.

Trump has been profligate with our money, and he was that way even before the coronavirus became an excuse to open the budgetary spigot. Moreover, he was just like Obama in pressuring the Federal Reserve for Keynesian-style monetary policy.

Unfortunately, there’s no reason to think Biden will try to reverse those mistakes.

Indeed, he wants expand the burden of federal spending. And, regarding monetary policy, appointing Janet Yellen as Secretary of Treasury certainly suggests he is comfortable with the current approach.

And to make matters worse, he definitely wants a more punitive tax system. We will shortly learn whether Democratstake control of the Senate, which presumably would give Biden more leeway to enact his class-warfare tax agenda.

As I said in the interview, that would create economic headwinds.

P.S. I mentioned in the interview that we have “three Americas” with regards to coronavirus. I’m not sure I was completely clear, so here’s what I was trying to get across.

1. Tourism-reliant states – They are going to be in bad shape until coronavirus is in the rear-view mirror and people feel comfortable with traveling and socializing.
2. Lock-down states – They have higher unemployment rates because more businesses are shut down.
3. Laissez-faire states – These are the states that generally allow businesses to remain open and have lower unemployment rates.

For what it’s worth, I think it’s best to let businesses stay open and to allow them and their customers to assess safety risks. It will be interesting to see whether any link is discovered between state policy and coronavirus rates.

P.P.S. At the risk of over-simplification, bad fiscal policy erodes the economy’s long-run growth rate. Bad monetary policy, by contrast, is what causes economic volatility and downturns.

Another Leftist Has an Epiphany on Guns

I’m (unfortunately) not a rich person, but that doesn’t stop me from opposing punitive taxes on successful entrepreneurs, investors, and small business owners.

Likewise, I’m not a gun aficionado, but that doesn’t stop me from opposing efforts to restrict the rights of law-abiding people to own and bear arms.

In part, my views on guns are driven by cost-benefit analysis. Simply stated, the evidence is fairly clear that there is less crime when bad people have to worry that potential victims have the ability to defend themselves.

But I also very much agree with the constitutional argument for gun ownership, as well as the “societal disarray” argument.

Interestingly, it seems that more folks on the left are coming to their senses on the issue of gun control, generally for practical reasons rather than philosophical reasons.

• In 2012, I shared some important observations from Jeffrey Goldberg, a left-leaning writer for The Atlantic. In his column, he basically admitted his side was wrong about gun control.
• Then, in 2013, I wrote about a column by Justin Cronin in the New York Times. He self-identified as a liberal, but explained how real-world events have led him to become a supporter of private gun ownership.
• In 2015, I shared a column by Jamelle Bouie in Slate, who addressed the left’s fixation on trying to ban so-called assault weapons and explains that such policies are meaningless.
• More recently, in 2017, Leah Libresco wrote in the Washington Post that advocates of gun control are driven by emotion rather empirical research and evidence.
• Last but not least, Alex Kingsbury in 2019 acknowledged the futility of gun control in a column for the New York Times.

Today, we’re going to add to the collection.

Charles Blow of the New York Times recently wrote about how he has become more understanding of why fellow blacks want to own guns.

Growing up in rural northern Louisiana, everyone I knew, at least every household, seemed to have guns. …Gun ownership was the norm in those parts, including in the Black community. It was not associated with danger but with safety. …Indeed, one could argue that the right to bear arms in this country has never been so brazenly and openly abridged as it has against Black people. Many state codes prohibited Black gun ownership before the Civil War and allowed for the disarmament of Black people after. …When I moved north, first to Detroit and then to New York, I moved into a mental space of more stringent gun control. …city dwellers simply didn’t have the same need for weapons as the people in the rural community where I was raised… I, like many, were convinced that fewer guns in the Black community would make it safer. But, for many Black people, that sentiment has turned. …gun sales to Black people are surging. …I, as much as anyone, would like to live in a society in which all citizens felt safe without the need of personal firearms. America could have created such a society. However, it chose not to. …many Black people feel the need to defend themselves from their own country.

To be sure, Mr. Blow can’t be considered a full convert to the 2nd Amendment. That being said, I think it’s nonetheless remarkable that even a committed, hard-core leftist has (partially) seen the light.

Though I can’t resist quibbling with one point in his column.He wrote, “America could have created” a society where gun control would be desirable because no guns would be needed, but “it chose not to.”

I would replace “it chose not to” with “our government is not sufficiently competent.”

Heck, I would probably add “or trustworthy” as well. Given the unsavory history of gun control, Mr. Blow should be among the first to appreciate that argument.

P.S. In 2018, I shared the story of Ryan Moore, another leftist who changed his mind on gun control. But since he also evolved away from being a leftist, I don’t include him

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

Is Gun Control Dead?

In recent months, governments released prisoners and announced that some laws wouldn’t be enforced because of the coronavirus. Now, with protests against police misbehavior, we’re seeing governments fail to maintain law and order.

As suggested by this excellent Reason video, these developments bolster the case against gun control.

But does this mean politicians will be more supportive of the 2nd Amendment?

The answer (at least for anyone with an IQ above room temperature)should be yes.

From an economic perspective, one major goal is to change the cost-benefit analysis for criminals. If bad guys have to worry that good guys may be armed, that significantly increases the potential cost of illegal behavior.

A well-functioning system of law enforcement can help, of course, but that’s not a description of how things work in some communities – even in normal times, much less when there’s civil unrest.

But all this evidence and analysis doesn’t seem to matter for Joe Biden. A look at his campaign website shows support for a wide range of gun-control laws from the soon-to-be Democratic nominee.

…gun violence is a public health epidemic. …In 1994, Biden – along with Senator Dianne Feinstein – secured the passage of 10-year bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. As president, Joe Biden will defeat the NRA again. …As president, Biden will: …Ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. …Regulate possession of existing assault weapons under the National Firearms Act. …Biden supports legislation restricting the number of firearms an individual may purchase per month to one. …End the online sale of firearms and ammunitions. …Give states incentives to set up gun licensing programs.

What’s especially discouraging is that Biden apparently hasn’t learned anything about so-called assault weapons since 1994.

In a 2019 column for Reason, Jacob Sullum dissected Biden’s incoherent views on the topic.

Joe Biden…is still proud of the ban on “assault weapons”… Biden argues that it made mass shootings less common…, citing a study reported in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery last January. But that is not what the researchers, led by New York University epidemiologist Charles DiMaggio, actually found.…The study…looked not at the number of mass shootings, as Biden claims, but the number of mass-shooting deaths as a share of all firearm homicides. The difference in total fatalities during the period when the ban was in effect amounted to 15 fewer deaths over a decade, or 1.5 a year on average, including mass shootings that did not involve weapons covered by the ban. …The causal mechanism imagined by Biden is even harder to figure out. He describes “assault weapons” as “military-style firearms designed to fire rapidly.” But they do not fire any faster than any other semi-automatic. …Under the 1994 ban, removing “military-style” features such as folding stocks, flash suppressors, or bayonet mounts transformed forbidden “assault weapons” into legal firearms, even though the compliant models fired the same ammunition at the same rate with the same muzzle velocity as the ones targeted by the law.

I wonder if Biden understands the policy he’s advocating.

Does he think that “assault weapons” are actual machine guns, capable of firing multiple rounds with one pull on the trigger (a remarkably common misconception among gun-control advocates)?

Or, if he understands that a so-called assault weapon is just like any other gun (firing one round each time the trigger is pulled), then why would he think anything would be achieved by banning some guns and leaving others (that work the same way) legal?

Perhaps most relevant, does he even care what the evidence shows?

The bottom line is that people are “voting with their dollars” for gun ownership for the simple reason that they know it’s unwise to trust government (either to protect them from crime or to respect their rights).

But that doesn’t mean their constitutional freedoms will be secure if Biden wins the 2020 election.

P.S. The good news is that there will be widespread civil disobedience if politicians push for new gun bans.

P.P.S. Another silver lining is that we’ll get more and more clever humor mocking gun control.

The Case Against Biden’s Class-Warfare Tax Policy, Part II

In Part I of this series, I expressed some optimism that Joe Biden would not aggressively push his class-warfare tax plan, particularly since Republicans almost certainly will wind up controlling the Senate.

But the main goal of that column was to explain that the internal revenue code already is heavily weighted against investors, entrepreneurs, business owners and other upper-income taxpayers.

And to underscore that point, I shared two charts from Brian Riedl’s chartbook to show that the “rich” are now paying a much larger share of the tax burden – notwithstanding the Reagan tax cuts, Bush tax cuts, and Trump tax cuts – than they were 40 years ago.

Not only that, but the United States has a tax system that is more “progressive” than all other developed nations (all of whom also impose heavy tax burdens on upper-income taxpayers, but differ from the United States in that they also pillage lower-income and middle-class residents).

In other words, Biden’s class-warfare tax plan is bad policy.

Today’s column, by contrast, will point out that his tax increases are impractical. Simply stated, they won’t collect much revenue because people change their behavior when incentives to earn and report income are altered.

This is especially true when looking at upper-income taxpayers who – compared to the rest of us – have much greater ability to change the timing, level, and composition of their income.

This helps to explain why rich people paid five times as much tax to the IRS during the 1980s when Reagan slashed the top tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent.

When writing about this topic, I normally use the Laffer Curve to help people understand why simplistic assumptions about tax policy are wrong (that you can double tax revenue by doubling tax rates, for instance). And I point out that even folks way on the left, such as Paul Krugman, agree with this common-sense view (though it’s also worth noting that some people on the right discredit the concept by making silly assertions that “all tax cuts pay for themselves”).

But instead of showing the curve again, I want to go back to Brian Riedl’s chartbook and review his data on of revenue changes during the eight years of the Obama Administration.

It shows that Obama technically cut taxes by $822 billion (as further explained in the postscript, most of that occurred when some of the Bush tax cuts were made permanent by the “fiscal cliff” deal in 2012) and raised taxes by $1.32 trillion (most of that occurred as a result of the Obamacare legislation).

If we do the math, that means Obama imposed a cumulative net tax increase of about $510 billion during his eight years in office

But, if you look at the red bar on the chart, you’ll see that the government didn’t wind up with more money because of what the number crunchers refer to as “economic and technical reestimates.”

Indeed, those reestimates resulted in more than $3.1 trillion of lost revenue during the Obama years.

I don’t want the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington to have more tax revenue, but I obviously don’t like it when tax revenues shrink simply because the economy is stagnant and people have less taxable income.

Yet that’s precisely what we got during the Obama years.

To be sure, it would be inaccurate to assert that revenues declined solely because of Obama’s tax increase. There were many other bad policies that also contributed to taxable income falling short of projections.

Heck, maybe there was simply some bad luck as well.

But even if we add lots of caveats, the inescapable conclusion is that it’s not a good idea to adopt policies – such as class-warfare tax rates – that discourage people from earning and reporting taxable income.

The bottom line is that we should hope Biden’s proposed tax increases die a quick death.

P.S. The “fiscal cliff” was the term used to describe the scheduled expiration of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts. According to the way budget data is measured in Washington, extending some of those provisions counted as a tax cut even though the practical impact was to protect people from a tax increase.

P.P.S. Even though Biden absurdly asserted that paying higher taxes is “patriotic,” it’s worth pointing out that he engaged in very aggressive tax avoidance to protect his family’s money.

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

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

The good news, as I wrote earlier this year, is that he probably isn’t serious about some of his worst ideas.

Biden is a statist, but not overly ideological. His support for bigger government is largely a strategy of catering to the various interest groups that dominate the Democratic Party. The good news is that he’s an incrementalist and won’t aggressively push for a horrifying FDR-style agenda if he gets to the White House.

But what if Joe Biden’s health deteriorates and Kamala Harris – sooner or later – winds up in charge?

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

And it doesn’t appear that being Biden’s choice for Vice President has led her to moderate her views. Consider this campaign ad, where she openly asserted that “equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.”

The notion that we should strive for equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity is horrifying.

For all intents and purposes,Harris has embraced a harsh version of redistributionism where everyone above average is punished and everyone below average is rewarded.

This goes way beyond a safety net and it’s definitely a recipe for economic misery since people on both sides of the equationhave less incentive to be productive.

I’m not the only one to be taken aback by Harris’ dogmatic leftism.

Robby Soave, writing for Reason, is very critical of her radical outlook.

Harris gives voice to a leftist-progressive narrative about the importance of equity—equal outcomes—rather than mere equality before the law. …Harris contrasted equal treatment—all people getting the same thing—with equitable treatment,which means “we all end up at the same place.” …This may seem like a trivial difference, but when it comes to public policy, the difference matters. A government shouldbe obligated to treat all citizens equally, giving them the same access to civil rights and liberties like voting, marriage, religious freedom, and gun ownership. …A mandate to foster equity, though, would give the government power to violate these rights in order to achieve identical social results for all people. 

And, in a column for National Review, Brad Polumbo expresses similar reservations about her views.

Whether she embraces the label “socialist” or not, Harris’s stated agenda and Senate record both reveal her to be positioned a long way to the left on matters of economic policy. From health care to the environment to housing, Harris thinks the answer to almost every problem we face is simply more government and more taxpayer money — raising taxes and further indebting future generations in the process.…Harris…supports an astounding $40 trillion in new spending over the next decade. In a sign of just how far left the Democratic Party has shifted on economics, Harris backs more than 20 times as much spending as Hillary Clinton proposed in 2016. …And this is not just a matter of spending. During her failed presidential campaign, Harris supported a federal-government takeover of health care… The senator jumped on the “Green New Deal” bandwagon as well. She co-sponsored the Green New Deal resolution in the Senate that called for a “new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era.” …she supports enacting price controls on housing across the country. …The left-wing group Progressive Punch analyzed Harris’s voting record and found that she is the fourth-most liberal senator, more liberal even than Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren. Similarly, the nonpartisan organization GovTrack.us deemed Harris the furthest-left member of the Senate for the 2019 legislative year. (Spoiler alert: If your voting record is to the left of Bernie Sanders, you might be a socialist.)

To be fair, Harris is simply a politician, so we have no idea what she really believes. Her hard-left agenda might simply be her way of appealing to Democratic voters, much as Republicans who run for president suddenly decide they support big tax cuts and sweeping tax reform.

But whether she’s sincere or insincere, it’s troubling that she actually says it’s the role of government to make sure we all “end up at the same place.”

Let’s close with a video clip from Milton Friedman. At the risk of understatement, he has a different perspective than Ms. Harris.

Since we highlighted Harris’ key quote, let’s also highlight the key quote from Friedman.

Amen.

P.S. It appears Republicans will hold the Senate, which presumably (hopefully?) means that any radical proposals would be dead on arrival, regardless of whether they’re proposed by Biden or Harris.

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

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

After Barack Obama took office (and especially after he was reelected), there was a big uptick in the number of rich people who chose to emigrate from the United States. 

There are many reasons wealthy people choose to move from one nation to another, but Obama’s embrace of class-warfare tax policy (including FATCA) was seen as a big factor.

Joe Biden’s tax agenda is significantly more punitive than Obama’s, so we may see something similar happen if he wins the 2020 election.

Given the economic importance of innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors, this would be not be good news for the American economy.

The New York Times reported late last year that the United States could be shooting itself in the foot by discouraging wealthy residents.

…a different group of Americans say they are considering leaving — people of both parties who would be hit by the wealth tax… Wealthy Americans often leave high-tax states like New York and California for lower-tax ones like Florida and Texas. But renouncing citizenship is a far more permanent, costly and complicated proposition. …“America’s the most attractive destination for capital, entrepreneurs and people wanting to get a great education,” said Reaz H. Jafri, a partner and head of the immigration practice at Withers, an international law firm. “But in today’s world, when you have other economic centers of excellence — like Singapore, Switzerland and London — people don’t view the U.S. as the only place to be.” …now, the price may be right to leave. While the cost of expatriating varies depending on a person’s assets, the wealthiest are betting that if a Democrat wins…, leaving now means a lower exit tax. …The wealthy who are considering renouncing their citizenship fear a wealth tax less than the possibility that the tax on capital gains could be raised to the ordinary income tax rate, effectively doubling what a wealthy person would pay… When Eduardo Saverin, a founder of Facebook…renounced his United States citizenship shortly before the social network went public, …several estimates said that renouncing his citizenship…saved him $700 million in taxes.

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

Here are some excerpts from a 2017 Bloomberg story.

Australia is luring increasing numbers of global millionaires, helping make it one of the fastest growing wealthy nations in the world… Over the past decade, total wealth held in Australia has risen by 85 percent compared to 30 percent in the U.S. and 28 percent in the U.K… As a result, the average Australian is now significantly wealthier than the average American or Briton. …Given its relatively small population, Australia also makes an appearance on a list of average wealth per person. This one is, however, dominated by small tax havens.

Here’s one of the charts from the story.

As you can see, Australia is doing very well, though the small tax havens like Monaco are world leaders.

I’m mystified, however, that the Cayman Islands isn’t listed.

But I’m digressing.

Let’s get back to our main topic. It’s worth noting that even Greece is seeking to attract rich foreigners.

The new tax law is aimed at attracting fresh revenues into the country’s state coffers – mainly from foreigners as well as Greeks who are taxed abroad – by relocating their tax domicile to Greece, as it tries to woo “high-net-worth individuals” to the Greek tax register.The non-dom model provides for revenues obtained abroad to be taxed at a flat amount… Having these foreigners stay in Greece for at least 183 days a year, as the law requires, will also entail expenditure on accommodation and everyday costs that will be added to the Greek economy. …most eligible foreigners will be able to considerably lighten their tax burden if they relocate to Greece…nevertheless, the amount of 500,000 euros’ worth of investment in Greece required of foreigners and the annual flat tax of 100,000 euros demanded (plus 20,000 euros per family member) may keep many of them away.

The system is too restrictive, but it will make the beleaguered nation an attractive destination for some rich people. After all, they don’t even have to pay a flat tax, just a flat fee.

Italy has enjoyed some success with a similar regime to entice millionaires.

Last but not least, an article published last year has some fascinating details on the where rich people move and why they move.

The world’s wealthiest people are also the most mobile. High net worth individuals (HNWIs) – persons with wealth over US$1 million – may decide to pick up and move for a number of reasons. In some cases they are attracted by jurisdictions with more favorable tax laws… Unlike the middle class, wealthy citizens have the means to pick up and leave when things start to sideways in their home country. An uptick in HNWI migration from a country can often be a signal of negative economic or societal factors influencing a country. …Time-honored locations – such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands – continue to attract the world’s wealthy, but no country is experiencing HNWI inflows quite like Australia. …The country has a robust economy, and is perceived as being a safe place to raise a family. Even better, Australia has no inheritance tax

Here’s a map from the article.

The good news is that the United States is attracting more millionaires than it’s losing (perhaps because of the EB-5 program).

The bad news is that this ratio could flip after the election. Indeed, it may already be happening even though recent data on expatriation paints a rosy picture.

The bottom line is that the United States should be competing to attract millionaires, not repel them. Assuming, of course, politicians care about jobs and prosperity for the rest of the population.

P.S. American politicians, copying laws normally imposed by the world’s most loathsome regimes, have imposed an “exit tax” so they can grab extra cash from rich people who choose to become citizens elsewhere.

P.P.S. I’ve argued that Australia is a good place to emigrate even for those of us who aren’t rich.

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

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

While acknowledging that Social Security and Medicare also are in desperate need of modernization, I wrote that Medicaid reformshould be the first priority.

But I’d be happy if we made progress on any type of entitlement reform, so I don’t think there are right or wrong answers to this kind of question.

We have the same type of question this week. A reader sent an email to ask “Which federal department should be abolished first?”

I guess this is what is meant when people talk about a target-rich environment. We have an abundance of candidates:

• Department of Education
• Department of Agriculture
• Department of Energy
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• Department of Transportation

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

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

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

• HUD engages in racism and social engineering.
• Urban renewal projects destroy neighborhoods and foment corruption.
• HUD subsidies are grotesquely wasteful.
• There are epidemic levels of waste, fraud, and abuse at HUD.

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

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

Simply stated, there is no legitimate argument for HUD. And I think there would be the least political resistance.

As with the answer to the question about entitlements, this is a judgment call. I’d be happy to be proven wrong if it meant that politicians were aggressively going after another department. Anything that reduces the burden of government spending is a step in the right direction

Milton Friedman on Spending

October 3, 2020 by Dan Mitchell

I identified four heroes from the “Battle of Ideas” video I shared in late August – Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher. Here’s one of those heroes, Milton Friedman, explaining what’s needed to control big government.

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

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)

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 6 of 7)

March 9, 2012 – 12:29 am

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 5 of 7)

March 2, 2012 – 12:26 am

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 4 of 7)

February 24, 2012 – 12:21 am

The fundamental principal of the free society is voluntary cooperation. The economic market, buying and selling, is one example. But it’s only one example. Voluntary cooperation is far broader than that. To take an example that at first sight seems about as far away as you can get __ the language we speak; the words […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

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

February 17, 2012 – 12:12 am

  _________________________   Pt3  Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 2 of 7)

February 10, 2012 – 12:09 am

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

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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By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Current Events | Tagged dr friedman, expansion history, income tax brackets, political courage, www youtube | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman believed in liberty (Interview by Charlie Rose of Milton Friedman part 1)

April 19, 2013 – 1:14 am

Charlie Rose interview of Milton Friedman My favorite economist: Milton Friedman : A Great Champion of Liberty  by V. Sundaram   Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three US Presidents – Nixon, Ford and Reagan – died last Thursday (16 November, 2006 ) in San Francisco […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

What were the main proposals of Milton Friedman?

February 21, 2013 – 1:01 am

Stearns Speaks on House Floor in Support of Balanced Budget Amendment Uploaded by RepCliffStearns on Nov 18, 2011 Speaking on House floor in support of Balanced Budget Resolution, 11/18/2011 ___________ Below are some of the main proposals of Milton Friedman. I highly respected his work. David J. Theroux said this about Milton Friedman’s view concerning […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday,” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

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 […]

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on Apple Music

Here comes loneliness
Here comes the onliness
Here comes his holiness
Here comes loneliness
Here comes another day
Here comes the only way
Here comes loneliness
Here comes the onliness
Here comes loneliness
Here comes the onliness
Here comes another day
Here comes the only way
Here comes the morning sun
Here comes another one
Here comes loneliness
Here comes the onliness
Here comes loneliness
Here comes your history

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1 of 42 of 4In a Manner of speaking
I just want to say
That I could never forget the way
You told me everythingBy saying nothing
In a manner of speaking
I don’t understand
How love in silence becomes reprimandBut the way that i feel about you
Is beyond words
O give me the words
Give me the wordsThat tell me nothing
O give me the words
Give me the words
That tell me everythingIn a manner of speaking
Semantics won’t do
In this life that we live we live we only make do
And the way that we feelMight have to be sacrified
So in a manner of speaking
I just want to say
That just like you I should find a wayTo tell you everything
By saying nothing.
O give me the words
Give me the wordsThat tell me nothing
O give me the words
Give me the words
Give me the wordsSource: LyricFindSongwriters: Winston TongIn a Manner of Speaking lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

I was born today
There were strangers there
Cut me off
And left me in a chloroformed cellI yelled and I yelled
But nobody cared
First day of school
I lost my front teethBoys beat me up cause
I wasn’t one of them
I fought til I bled
And everyone was scaredYeah everyone was scared
It isn’t my fault
That I’m strange
I wasn’t good at kickballI wasn’t good at girls
I used to make a habit of peeing in my pants
Cause I was scared and I couldn’t dance
And nobody cared but I learnedToday I’m glad to say
I’m just like to rest
Anonyme is best
Anonyme is bestAnd life grows stranger every day
Has anybody dared to be more that dead
It isn’t my faul
That I’m strangeMother died today
Or maybe yesterday
I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know
Got to ask my boss to let me goAt the funeral they expected me to cry
Well I didn’t
I don’t know
I don’t knowEverybody’s staring at me now
What’s gone to their heads
It isn’t my fault
That I’m strangeI’m strange I’m strange I’m strange
I’m the strangerSource: LyricFind

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No tears for the creatures of the night
No tears
No tears for the creatures of the night
No tearsMy eyes are dry
Goodbye
My eyes are dry
GoodbyeI feel so hollow I just don’t understand
Nothing’s turned out like I– like I planned
My head’s exploding
My mouth is dry
I can’t help it if I’ve forgotten how to– cryNo tears for the creatures of the night
No tears
Uh oh, oh no, uh oh, oh no, uh oh, oh no
No tears for the creatures of the night
Uh oh, oh no, uh oh, no tears
Uh oh, oh no, uh oh, oh no, uh ohMy eyes are dry
Goodbye
My eyes are dry
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
My eyes are drySource: Musixmatch

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Ten musicians fueled by existentialism

JESSE LIVINGSTON | MAY 22, 2013 | 7:30AM

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Music is filled with surprises. For every good-looking rebel working diligently to bring sexy back, there’s a bookish nerd sitting in a dim corner furiously scribbling esoteric poetry in a lyrics journal. Referencing literature is a surefire way to show the world that you’re a sensitive soul with important thoughts. Existentialism is clearly the most badass school of thought because it pits the individual (wearing black) against the absurdity of the uncaring cosmos (also wearing black). Keep reading for a look at ten existential musicians.

5. As I Lay Dying This San Diego Christian metalcore band took their name from William Faulkner’s existential novel of Southern life gone horribly wrong. Considering that Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work, it’s somewhat distressing that As I Lay Dying’s lyrics sound like they came straight out of an online Goth poetry generator: “Emptiness running through me/Taking all that I am/Leaving me this blinding mask/Grasping for the wind/Everything I’ve done/Everything I’ve gained/It all means nothing.” On the other hand, frontman Tim Lambesis was recently arrested in an alleged murder-for-hire plot, and that’s something the characters in Faulkner’s novel could really get behind.

4. Tuxedomoon This experimental post-punk band from San Francisco prided themselves on their unique sound that Seattle Weeklydescribed as radiating “a discomfort that hints of existential hives.” The 1970s were chock-full of existential hives. Everyone knows that. The band’s song “Stranger” makes another reference to Camus’ landmark novel with the lines “Mother died today/Or maybe yesterday.” It also ends with the lines “I’m strange/I’m the stranger.” That’s the subtlety of poetic discourse that your high school English teacher used to tell you about.

3. The Yawpers Denver’s own Yawpers are deep into some existentialist reading. In a recent interview, the Yawpers told us about their album Capon Crusade and its not-infrequent references to Sartre and Camus. “They’re depressing as fuck,” said frontman Nate Cook, cutting to the heart of the philosophy. He then added, “Sartre and Camus are really poignant in pointing out just how flawed existence is in general, and sometimes that can be comforting when you’re trying to write some shitty song about getting fucked up because a girl left you.” That’s actually pretty astute. When misfortune befalls you, is it more or less reassuring to imagine that you deserve it? The great gift of the existentialist thinkers may be showing us that sometimes a lack of intrinsic meaning in the universe isn’t such a bad thing.

2. The Cure Robert Smith and company have made a career out of existential dread and despair — so much so that the early effort “Killing an Arab” now seems a little on-the-nose in its description of the pivotal scene from The Stranger. In fact, the song’s matter-of-fact lyrics have caused the band a good deal of grief over the years, as certain parties have tried to co-opt them as some kind of anti-Arab anthem. Re-releases have sported a sticker explaining that the song “decries the existence of all prejudice and consequent violence,” and Smith has taken to changing the lyrics in live performances to “killing another.” One shy English boy against a world of dull-witted savagery: what could be more existential than that?

1. The Eagles Don Henley’s vision of 1970s California as a fiendish hotel filled with earthly temptations takes its tone and setup from Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit. “Hell is other people,” says Sartre. Henley adds, “This could be Heaven, or this could be Hell,” implying that maybe they’re one and the same. “Hotel California” is one of those classic songs that deserves every bit of its fame. Listening to it, you feel a palpable desire to be somewhere warm and tropical where the livin’ is easy. You also feel a chill of recognition that you’d soon become bored, listless and depressed playing games with the wealthy and beautiful. “And still those voices are calling from far away.” Thanks, Henley. What an insightful, elegant bummer, man.

Francis Schaeffer taught young people at L Abri in Switzerland in the 1950’s till the 1980’s (pictured below)

Francis Schaeffer noted:

I have lots of young people and older ones come to us from the ends of the earth. And as they come to us, they have gone to the end of this logically and they are not living in a romantic setting. They realize what the situation is. They can’t find any meaning to life. It’s the meaning to the black poetry. It’s the meaning of the black plays. It’s the meaning of all this. It’s the meaning of the words “punk rock.”

Francis Schaeffer pictured

Francis Schaeffer pictured below in 1971 at L Abri

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Dr. Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri Conference, Urbana, 1981

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Tuxedomoon

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Tuxedomoon is an experimental, post-punk, new wave band from San Francisco, California, United States. The band formed in the late 1970s at the beginning of the punk rock movement. Pulling influence from punk and electronic music, the group, originally consisting of Steven Brown (born Steven Allan Brown on August 23, 1952, in Chicago, Illinois) and Blaine L. Reininger, used electronic violins, guitars, screaming vocals and synthesizers to develop a unique “cabaret no-wave” sound. Bassist Peter Principle (Peter Dachert, 1954–2017) joined the band and in 1979 they released the single “No Tears”, which remains a post-punk cult classic. That year they signed to Ralph Records and released their first album, Half-Mute. Eventually, Reininger left the group and Tuxedomoon relocated to Europe, signing to Crammed Discs and releasing Holy Warsin 1985. The band separated in the early 1990s, only to reunite later that decade. They all have remained together since releasing the album Cabin in the Skyin 2004.

Tuxedomoon
Tuxedomoon live in 2007
Background information
Origin	San Francisco, California, United States
Genres	Experimentalpost-punknew wavesynth-punk
Years active	1977–present
Labels	Ralph, Crammed Discs
Website	www.tuxedomoon.co
Members	Blaine L. ReiningerSteven BrownLuc Van LieshoutDavid Haneke
Past members	Peter DachertBruce GeduldigWinston TongGregory CruikshankVictoria LoweMichael BelferPaul ZahlIvan GeorgievNikolas KlauGeorge KakanakisMarcia Barcellos

HistoryEdit

In 1977, Tuxedomoon formed out of The Angels of Light, an artist collective and commune, a group in which Steven Brown was involved.^[1][2][3] He met Blaine L. Reininger in an electronic music class at San Francisco City College. Brown worked with Tommy Tadlock, of the Angels of Light, to create the final project of the class.^[2] Tadlock would go on to be Tuxedomoon’s manager. Reininger and Brown started playing music together at Tadlock’s house. Reininger played electronic violin and guitar. Tadlock assisted with the sound and audio. He also created tools for the band, including a “Treatment Mountain”, which was a pyramid made of plywood which held all of Reininger’s effects pedals.^[4]

They started playing music together in the mid-1970s, when punk rock became popular in the underground music scene. “The only rule was the tacit understanding that anything that sounded like anyone else was taboo”, stated Brown on the band aiming the create music that sounded unlike anything else before.^[2] The vocals were screaming and inspired by punk rock, and the band used any instruments they had around, including saxophonesand a polymoog synthesizer. The band had no drummer. Bassist Peter Principle, performance artistWinston Tong and Bruce Geduldig, a filmmaker, joined the band during concerts. The band created new performances for each concert, creating theatrical performances and being described as “theatrical electronic cabaret”.^[4][5] The band performed frequently with Pere Ubu, The Residents, Devo, and Cabaret Voltaire.^[1]

In 1979 they released the EP No Tears with the single “No Tears”. The title-track is described as “one of the best electro-punk hymns of all times”.^[6]That year they also signed to Ralph Records and released their debut album, Half-Mute, in 1980.^[1]

CareerEdit

1980sEdit

In 1980 the band released their first album, Half-Mute, on Ralph Records. The band toured Europe in 1980 and moved to New York City.^[1][3][7] While in New York, they performed in, and were featured on the soundtrack for the film Downtown 81.^[3] They gained popularity in the Netherlands and Belgium.^[8]They eventually relocated to Brussels.^[3]after spending some months in Rotterdam, playing in Arena, Hal 4 and returned in 1988 to Lantaren/Venster, where they contributed to the Bob Visser movie Plan Delta. Trumpet player Luc van Lieshout joined the band, followed shortly after by Ivan Georgiev.^[3] In 1987, the band performed on the soundtrack for the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire.^[9] Tuxedomoon played in Athens, Greece, for the first time on December 1987, selling out the Pallas Theatre twice in one night.^[6]

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 “They are the natural outcome of a change from a Christian World View to a Humanistic one…
The result is a relativistic value system. A lack of a final meaning to life — that’s first. Why does human life have any value at all, if that is all that reality is? Not only are you going to die individually, but the whole human race is going to die, someday. It may not take the falling of the atom bombs, but someday the world will grow too hot, too cold. That’s what we are told on this other final reality, and someday all you people not only will be individually dead, but the whole conscious life on this world will be dead, and nobody will see the birds fly. And there’s no meaning to life.

As you know, I don’t speak academically, shut off in some scholastic cubicle, as it were. I have lots of young people and older ones come to us from the ends of the earth. And as they come to us, they have gone to the end of this logically and they are not living in a romantic setting. They realize what the situation is. They can’t find any meaning to life. It’s the meaning to the black poetry. It’s the meaning of the black plays. It’s the meaning of all this. It’s the meaning of the words “punk rock.” And I must say, that on the basis of what they are being taught in school, that the final reality is only this material thing, they are not wrong. They’re right! On this other basis there is no meaning to life and not only is there no meaning to life, but there is no value system that is fixed, and we find that the law is based then only on a relativistic basis and that law becomes purely arbitrary.

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Here is a good review of the episode 016 HSWTL The Age of Non-Reason of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?, December 23, 2007:

Together with the advent of the “drug Age” was the increased interest in the West in  the religious experience of Hinduism and Buddhism. Schaeffer tells us that: “This grasping for a nonrational meaning to life and values is the central reason that these Eastern religions are so popular in the West today.”  Drugs and Eastern religions came like a flood into the Western world.  They became the way that people chose to find meaning and values in life.  By themselves or together, drugs and Eastern religion became the way that people searched inside themselves for ultimate truth.

Along with drugs and Eastern religions there has been a remarkable increase “of the occult appearing as an upper-story hope.”  As modern man searches for answers it “many moderns would rather have demons than be left with the idea that everything in the universe is only one big machine.”  For many people having the “occult in the upper story of nonreason in the hope of having meaning” is better than leaving the upper story of nonreason empty. For them horror or the macabre are more acceptable than the idea that they are just a machine.

Francis Schaeffer has correctly argued:

The universe was created by an infinite personal God and He brought it into existence by spoken word and made man in His own image. When man tries to reduce [philosophically in a materialistic point of view] himself to less than this [less than being made in the image of God] he will always fail and he will always be willing to make these impossible leaps into the area of nonreason even though they don’t give an answer simply because that isn’t what he is. He himself testifies that this infinite personal God, the God of the Old and New Testament is there. 

Instead of making a leap into the area of nonreason the better choice would be to investigate the claims that the Bible is a historically accurate book and that God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnote #94)

We now take a jump back in time to the middle of the ninth century before Christ, that is, about 850 B.C. Most people have heard of Jezebel. She was the wife of Ahab, the king of the northern kingdom of Israel. Her wickedness has become so proverbial that we talk about someone as a “Jezebel.” She urged her husband to have Naboth killed, simply because Ahab had expressed his liking for a piece of land owned by Naboth, who would not sell it. The Bible tells us also that she introduced into Israel the worship of her homeland, the Baal worship of Tyre. This led to the opposition of Elijah the Prophet and to the famous conflict on Mount Carmel between Elijah and the priests of Baal.

Here again one finds archaeological confirmations of what the Bible says. Take for example: “As for the other events of Ahab’s reign, including all he did, the palace he built and inlaid with ivory, and the cities he fortified, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?” (I Kings 22:39).

This is a very brief reference in the Bible to events which must have taken a long time: building projects which probably spanned decades. Archaeological excavations at the site of Samaria, the capital, reveal something of the former splendor of the royal citadel. Remnants of the “ivory house” were found and attracted special attention (Palestinian Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem). This appears to have been a treasure pavilion in which the walls and furnishings had been adorned with colored ivory work set with inlays giving a brilliant too, with the denunciations revealed by the prophet Amos:

“I will tear down the winter house along with the summer house; the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed and the mansions will be demolished,” declares the Lord. (Amos 3:15)

Other archaeological confirmation exists for the time of Ahab. Excavations at Hazor and Megiddo have given evidence of the the extent of fortifications carried out by Ahab. At Megiddo, in particular, Ahab’s works were very extensive including a large series of stables formerly assigned to Solomon’s time.

On the political front, Ahab had to contend with danger from the Aramacaus king of Syria who besieged Samaria, Ahab’s capital. Ben-hadad’s existence is attested by a stela (a column with writing on it) which has been discovered with his name written on it (Melquart Stela, Aleppo Museum, Syria). Again, a detail of history given in the Bible is shown to be correct.

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Featured artist is Elliott Hundley

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Roe v. Wade in Crosshairs as Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Major Abortion Case

Sarah Parshall Perry  / @SarahPPerry / May 17, 2021

Some scholars say the Mississippi abortion case is the perfect vehicle to overturn Roe v. Wade. Pictured: A pro-life activist waits to provide information to women who arrive at Jackson Women’s Health Organization on April 5, 2018, in Jackson, Mississippi. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY

Sarah Parshall Perry@SarahPPerry

Sarah Parshall Perry is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a Mississippi case challenging the constitutionality of that state’s 2018 law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks except in cases of medical emergency or when a severe fetal abnormality is detected.

The high court’s announcement that it will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Healthcame after it considered the case in conference no fewer than 12 separate times.

The ramifications of Dobbs, to be argued nearly 49 years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in Roe v. Wade, promise to reverberate for some time.   

In reporting on the high court’s order Monday, mainstream media outlets clutched their pearls and unsurprisingly characterized the decision to hear the case as portending a massive rollback of reproductive rights.

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Pro-life conservatives everywhere can only hope.

Mississippi raised three issues on appeal, including whether abortion providers have third-party standing to file lawsuits on their own behalf and on behalf of their patients challenging laws related to the right to an abortion.

The state also asked the Supreme Court to consider whether the validity of its law should be analyzed under the “undue burden” standard articulated by the court in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (a case that reaffirmed but modified the constitutional right to an abortion that the court devised in its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade) and/or under the “balancing of benefits and burdens” standard as laid out by the court in 2016 in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.  

Mississippi filed its appeal before last year’s Supreme Court decision, June Medical Services v. Russo, a case in which the high court ruled that a law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals constituted an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to get an abortion.

Whole Woman’s Health was, according to Chief Justice John Roberts’ concurring opinion in June Medical, a deviation from Casey’s “undue burden” standard. So, despite the lack of an explicit agreement to take up the issue, the Supreme Court most likely will have to restate that standard as the one it will apply in reviewing Mississippi’s law. 

Some scholars believe the Mississippi case is the perfect vehicle to overturn Roe v. Wade and its progeny, including Planned Parenthood v. Casey. It’s certainly the best opportunity so far that the court has had to do so.    

Dobbs is also the first major abortion challenge heard by the Supreme Court since the newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, joined the eight other justices.

In deciding to grant the petition in Dobbs, the court indicated it will consider only one of the questions raised by Mississippi in its appeal, one that is both simple and monumental: Are all prohibitions on elective abortions before the child is viable outside the womb unconstitutional?

The court is set to hear the Mississippi case during its next term, which will begin Oct. 4. As with all abortion cases, this one will be an opportunity for the justices to revisit Roe v. Wade. It also is the first abortion case to be considered by the court since Roe that involves a gestational age limit.

In Casey, the late Justice Antonin Scalia issued a blistering dissent, stating:

The States may, if they wish, permit abortion on demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so. The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.

American sentiment is behind continued limitations on abortion, as revealed in an NPR/“PBS NewsHour”/Marist poll in 2019. That poll found that only 29% of Americans say abortion should be allowed after the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.

Perhaps the court will take this opportunity to reconsider Roe v. Wade and to see it for what it was—an unwarranted and unwise power grab in which the court crafted a “constitutional” right to abortion out of thin air.

Overturning Roe would return abortion policy to the states where it belongs—and to the democratic process in which Americans debate the morality of abortion and their elected state representatives decide what citizens of their state can and cannot do.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

Carl Sagan asserted, “[Roe v. Wade] had chosen the middle ground.”

It is hard to maintain this view of Sagan after reading the following words from the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?:

Nothing is more embarrassing to an abortionist than to deliver a live baby. To show that this is so, the following is a quote from a publication of the International Correspondence Society of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (November 1974):

At the time of delivery it has been our policy to wrap the fetus in a towel. The fetus is then moved into another room while our attention is turned to the care of the gravida (the mother) … Once we are sure her condition is stable, the fetus is evaluated. Almost invariably, all signs of life have ceased.

(Page 300)

What a nice little piece of “how to” instruction!

It was once thought that live births after abortions would be possible only after hysterotomies. Now it is obvious that babies are born alive after saline abortions as well. Dr. William G. Waddill, Jr., an obstetrician in California, was indicted and tried in January 1977 for allegedly strangling to death a baby born alive following a saline abortion. 

An interminable trial got out of hand when the issue departed from whether or not Waddill had indeed attempted to strangle a living infant. The trial resulted in a hung jury when the judge introduced for deliberation new material concerning a California definition of death, which really had little bearing on this subject. The mother-to-be of the allegedly strangled infant filed suit for $17,000,000 on grounds that she was not adequately informed of the possible outcome of the abortion and that she had suffered long-lasting physical and emotional pain as a result of the doctor’s actions. 

The Waddill case raises a very serious difference between what the Supreme Court has called the woman’s right to have an abortion-on-demand and what actually happens in cases of live births following abortion–and that is the destruction of the living baby. There is nothing even implied in the woman’s “right” to abortion that says she also has the right to a dead child. 

Waddill was charged with strangling a baby girl at Westminster Community Hospital, March 2, 1977 before the jury trial in January 1978. Dr. Ronald Cornelsen testified that Dr. Waddill throttled the infant’s neck and complained about what would happen if the baby survived. According to Cornelsen’s testimony, Waddill said that there would be lawsuits, that the baby wojuld be brain damaged, and talked about stopping respiration by drowning or injecting potassium chloride. 

At the trial in January 1978, Mrs. Joanne Griffith, a nurse at the hospital where the abortion was performed, testified that another nurse had quoted Dr. Waddill on the telephone as ordering everyone involved not to do anything and to leave the baby alone. Dr. Cornelsen tesified at the trial that when he first examined the baby, and the heart was beating sixty to seventy times a minute what a regular rhythm, there was some discoloration on the baby’s neck (allegedly from the first attempt at strangling) and further testified that while he was examining the baby, Dr. Waddill “…stuck his hand back in [the isolette] and pressed the baby’s neck again” (from Los Angeles Times, January 26, Fegruary 8, 1978). 

Dr. Waddill was brought to trial again on the same charges in the same case in 1979. 

If live babies as a result of saline abortions and hysterotomies cause problems for the abortionist, they are minor compared to the problems that have been introduced by the prostaglandin method of abortion. The use of prostaglandin has multiplied by the number of embarrassing situations manifold. Prostaglandin is a hormone which has pratically no other use except to induce abortions. Upjohn manufactures it in the United States, and in September 1977 the Food and Drug Administration approved it for use in hospitals. It is advertised in the pharmacy reports as “Prostin E. Upjohn abortion inducer.” This warning was carried in the September 12, 1977, issue of WEEKLY PHARMACY REPORTS, pointing out the approved Prostin labeling notes that suppository form, unlike saline injection form, “does not appear to directly effect the integrity of the feto-placental unit and therefore, there exists a possibility that a live-born fetus may occur, particularly as gestational age approaches the end of the second trimester.” So likely is a live birth after a prostaglandin aboriton that a medical representative of Upjohn advises using Prostin E. “only in hospitals with certain intensive care facilities.” 

Although technically the product of a legal abortion, each fetus expelled alive because of prostaglandin lives for several hours, later has to be pronounced dead by a physician, must receive both a birth and death certificate, and is sent to a funeral director for burial or cremation. 

Francis Schaeffer

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I am taking time over the next few weeks to take time to look at the work of Francis Schaeffer who died almost exactly 35 years ago today. Francis Schaeffer lived from January 30, 1912 to May 15, 1984 and on May 15, 1994 the 10th anniversary of his passing, I wrote 250 skeptics in academia and sent them a lengthy letter filled with his quotes from various intellectuals on the meaning of life if God was not in the picture. I also included the message by Francis Schaeffer on Ecclesiastes which were conclusions of King Solomon on the same subject and I also told about the musings of three men on the world around them, Carl Sagan in his film Cosmos, Francis Schaeffer in his experience in the 1930’s while on the beach observing an eclipse, and King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Then I posed to these academics the question, “Is there a lasting meaning to our lives without God in the picture?”
Many of these scholars have taken the time to respond back to me in the last 20 years and some of the names  included are  Ernest Mayr (1904-2005), George Wald (1906-1997), Carl Sagan (1934-1996),  Robert Shapiro (1935-2011), Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920-),  Brian Charlesworth (1945-),  Francisco J. Ayala (1934-) Elliott Sober (1948-), Kevin Padian (1951-), Matt Cartmill (1943-) , Milton Fingerman (1928-), John J. Shea (1969-), , Michael A. Crawford (1938-), (Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), Sol Gordon (1923-2008), Albert Ellis (1913-2007), Barbara Marie Tabler (1915-1996), Renate Vambery (1916-2005), Archie J. Bahm (1907-1996), Aron S “Gil” Martin ( 1910-1997), Matthew I. Spetter (1921-2012), H. J. Eysenck (1916-1997), Robert L. Erdmann (1929-2006), Mary Morain (1911-1999), Lloyd Morain (1917-2010),  Warren Allen Smith (1921-), Bette Chambers (1930-),  Gordon Stein (1941-1996) , Milton Friedman (1912-2006), John Hospers (1918-2011), and Michael Martin (1932-).

(Carl Sagan (President and founder of The Planetary Society), Raúl Colomb (former director of the Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía) and Paul Horowitz (Harvard University) during The Planetary Society SETI Conference, held in Toronto in October 7-8, 1988, where the agreement for the construction of META II was established.)

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Francis Schaeffer talked quite a lot about the works of Carl Sagan and that is why I think Carl Sagan took the time to write me back.

Carl Sagan on C-Span

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 Carl Sagan and other participants of SETI conference in 1971

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(Conference on Extraterrestrial Civilizations and Problems of Contact with Them, held on September 6-11, 1971, in Byurakan, Armenia, Ed. Carl Sagan,)

Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I had the privilege to correspond with in 1994, 1995 and 1996. In 1996 I had a chance to respond to his December 5, 1995letter on January 10, 1996 and I never heard back from him again since his cancer returned and he passed away later in 1996. Below is what Carl Sagan wrote to me in his December 5, 1995 letter:

Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)

I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968. 

Francis Schaeffer when he was a young pastor in St. Louis pictured above.

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Francis Schaeffer and Adrian Rogers

(both Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer mentioned Carl Sagan in their books and that prompted me to write Sagan and expose him to their views.

Carl Sagan pictured below:

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Francis Schaeffer

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I mentioned earlier that I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan. In his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan pictured above

Astronomer Carl Sagan Speaks at a news conference where NASA made available the last pictures taken by Voyager 1, which show the solar system as viewed from the outside.

 “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”

by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.

Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.

In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?

Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.

Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?

As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?

We believe that many supporters of reproductive freedom are troubled at least occasionally by this question. But they are reluctant to raise it because it is the beginning of a slippery slope. If it is impermissible to abort a pregnancy in the ninth month, what about the eighth, seventh, sixth … ? Once we acknowledge that the state can interfere at any time in the pregnancy, doesn’t it follow that the state can interfere at all times?

Abortion and the slippery slope argument above

This conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women…

And yet, by consensus, all of us think it proper that there be prohibitions against, and penalties exacted for, murder. It would be a flimsy defense if the murderer pleads that this is just between him and his victim and none of the government’s business. If killing a fetus is truly killing a human being, is it not the duty of the state to prevent it? Indeed, one of the chief functions of government is to protect the weak from the strong.

If we do not oppose abortion at some stage of pregnancy, is there not a danger of dismissing an entire category of human beings as unworthy of our protection and respect? And isn’t that dismissal the hallmark of sexism, racism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism? Shouldn’t those dedicated to fighting such injustices be scrupulously careful not to embrace another?

(Adrian Rogers pictured above in his youth)

Adrian Rogers’ sermon on animal rights refutes Sagan here

There is no right to life in any society on Earth today, nor has there been at any former time… : We raise farm animals for slaughter; destroy forests; pollute rivers and lakes until no fish can live there; kill deer and elk for sport, leopards for the pelts, and whales for fertilizer; entrap dolphins, gasping and writhing, in great tuna nets; club seal pups to death; and render a species extinct every day. All these beasts and vegetables are as alive as we. What is (allegedly) protected is not life, but human life.

Genesis 3 defines being human

And even with that protection, casual murder is an urban commonplace, and we wage “conventional” wars with tolls so terrible that we are, most of us, afraid to consider them very deeply… That protection, that right to life, eludes the 40,000 children under five who die on our planet each day from preventable starvation, dehydration, disease, and neglect.

Those who assert a “right to life” are for (at most) not just any kind of life, but for–particularly and uniquely—human life. So they too, like pro-choicers, must decide what distinguishes a human being from other animals and when, during gestation, the uniquely human qualities–whatever they are–emerge.

The Bible talks about the differences between humans and animals

Despite many claims to the contrary, life does not begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain that stretches back nearly to the origin of the Earth, 4.6 billion years ago. Nor does human life begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain dating back to the origin of our species, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Every human sperm and egg is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, alive. They are not human beings, of course. However, it could be argued that neither is a fertilized egg.

In some animals, an egg develops into a healthy adult without benefit of a sperm cell. But not, so far as we know, among humans. A sperm and an unfertilized egg jointly comprise the full genetic blueprint for a human being. Under certain circumstances, after fertilization, they can develop into a baby. But most fertilized eggs are spontaneously miscarried. Development into a baby is by no means guaranteed. Neither a sperm and egg separately, nor a fertilized egg, is more than a potential baby or a potential adult. So if a sperm and egg are as human as the fertilized egg produced by their union, and if it is murder to destroy a fertilized egg–despite the fact that it’s only potentially a baby–why isn’t it murder to destroy a sperm or an egg?

Hundreds of millions of sperm cells (top speed with tails lashing: five inches per hour) are produced in an average human ejaculation. A healthy young man can produce in a week or two enough spermatozoa to double the human population of the Earth. So is masturbation mass murder? How about nocturnal emissions or just plain sex? When the unfertilized egg is expelled each month, has someone died? Should we mourn all those spontaneous miscarriages? Many lower animals can be grown in a laboratory from a single body cell. Human cells can be cloned… In light of such cloning technology, would we be committing mass murder by destroying any potentially clonable cells? By shedding a drop of blood?

All human sperm and eggs are genetic halves of “potential” human beings. Should heroic efforts be made to save and preserve all of them, everywhere, because of this “potential”? Is failure to do so immoral or criminal? Of course, there’s a difference between taking a life and failing to save it. And there’s a big difference between the probability of survival of a sperm cell and that of a fertilized egg. But the absurdity of a corps of high-minded semen-preservers moves us to wonder whether a fertilized egg’s mere “potential” to become a baby really does make destroying it murder.

Opponents of abortion worry that, once abortion is permissible immediately after conception, no argument will restrict it at any later time in the pregnancy. Then, they fear, one day it will be permissible to murder a fetus that is unambiguously a human being. Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers (at least some of them) are pushed toward absolutist positions by parallel fears of the slippery slope.

(Gerard Kuiper and Carl Sagan)

Another slippery slope is reached by those pro-lifers who are willing to make an exception in the agonizing case of a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. But why should the right to live depend on the circumstances of conception? If the same child were to result, can the state ordain life for the offspring of a lawful union but death for one conceived by force or coercion? How can this be just? And if exceptions are extended to such a fetus, why should they be withheld from any other fetus? This is part of the reason some pro-lifers adopt what many others consider the outrageous posture of opposing abortions under any and all circumstances–only excepting, perhaps, when the life of the mother is in danger.

By far the most common reason for abortion worldwide is birth control. So shouldn’t opponents of abortion be handing out contraceptives and teaching school children how to use them? That would be an effective way to reduce the number of abortions. Instead, the United States is far behind other nations in the development of safe and effective methods of birth control–and, in many cases, opposition to such research (and to sex education) has come from the same people who oppose abortions.continue on to Part 3

(Carl Sagan on set filming a documentary about Mars for NASA)

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The attempt to find an ethically sound and unambiguous judgment on when, if ever, abortion is permissible has deep historical roots. Often, especially in Christian tradition, such attempts were connected with the question of when the soul enters the body–a matter not readily amenable to scientific investigation and an issue of controversy even among learned theologians. Ensoulment has been asserted to occur in the sperm before conception, at conception, at the time of “quickening” (when the mother is first able to feel the fetus stirring within her), and at birth. Or even later.

Different religions have different teachings. Among hunter-gatherers, there are usually no prohibitions against abortion, and it was common in ancient Greece and Rome. In contrast, the more severe Assyrians impaled women on stakes for attempting abortion. The Jewish Talmud teaches that the fetus is not a person and has no rights. The Old and New Testaments–rich in astonishingly detailed prohibitions on dress, diet, and permissible words–contain not a word specifically prohibiting abortion. The only passage that’s remotely relevant (Exodus 21:22) decrees that if there’s a fight and a woman bystander should accidentally be injured and made to miscarry, the assailant must pay a fine.

Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas considered early-term abortion to be homicide (the latter on the grounds that the embryo doesn’t look human). This view was embraced by the Church in the Council of Vienne in 1312, and has never been repudiated. The Catholic Church’s first and long-standing collection of canon law (according to the leading historian of the Church’s teaching on abortion, John Connery, S.J.) held that abortion was homicide only after the fetus was already “formed”–roughly, the end of the first trimester.

But when sperm cells were examined in the seventeenth century by the first microscopes, they were thought to show a fully formed human being. An old idea of the homunculus was resuscitated–in which within each sperm cell was a fully formed tiny human, within whose testes were innumerable other homunculi, etc., ad infinitum. In part through this misinterpretation of scientific data, in 1869 abortion at any time for any reason became grounds for excommunication. It is surprising to most Catholics and others to discover that the date was not much earlier.

(Here is a previously unpublished photo that shows Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, and a third person (whose name is unknown to me, but is, I believe, a network reporter) at a press conference on the occasion of the Viking Mars Landing in July 1976. The original 35 mm Ektachrome image was taken by Mr. Richard A. Sweetsir, a gifted teacher and science writer in his own right.)

From colonial times to the nineteenth century, the choice in the United States was the woman’s until “quickening.” An abortion in the first or even second trimester was at worst a misdemeanor. Convictions were rarely sought and almost impossible to obtain, because they depended entirely on the woman’s own testimony of whether she had felt quickening, and because of the jury’s distaste for prosecuting a woman for exercising her right to choose. In 1800 there was not, so far as is known, a single statute in the United States concerning abortion. Advertisements for drugs to induce abortion could be found in virtually every newspaper and even in many church publications–although the language used was suitably euphemistic, if widely understood.

But by 1900, abortion had been banned at any time in pregnancy by every state in the Union, except when necessary to save the woman’s life. What happened to bring about so striking a reversal? Religion had little to do with it.Drastic economic and social conversions were turning this country from an agrarian to an urban-industrial society. America was in the process of changing from having one of the highest birthrates in the world to one of the lowest. Abortion certainly played a role and stimulated forces to suppress it.

One of the most significant of these forces was the medical profession. Up to the mid-nineteenth century, medicine was an uncertified, unsupervised business. Anyone could hang up a shingle and call himself (or herself) a doctor. With the rise of a new, university-educated medical elite, anxious to enhance the status and influence of physicians, the American Medical Association was formed. In its first decade, the AMA began lobbying against abortions performed by anyone except licensed physicians. New knowledge of embryology, the physicians said, had shown the fetus to be human even before quickening.

Their assault on abortion was motivated not by concern for the health of the woman but, they claimed, for the welfare of the fetus. You had to be a physician to know when abortion was morally justified, because the question depended on scientific and medical facts understood only by physicians. At the same time, women were effectively excluded from the medical schools, where such arcane knowledge could be acquired. So, as things worked out, women had almost nothing to say about terminating their own pregnancies. It was also up to the physician to decide if the pregnancy posed a threat to the woman, and it was entirely at his discretion to determine what was and was not a threat. For the rich woman, the threat might be a threat to her emotional tranquillity or even to her lifestyle. The poor woman was often forced to resort to the back alley or the coat hanger.

This was the law until the 1960s, when a coalition of individuals and organizations, the AMA now among them, sought to overturn it and to reinstate the more traditional values that were to be embodied in Roe v. Wade.continue on to Part 4

If you deliberately kill a human being, it’s called murder. If you deliberately kill a chimpanzee–biologically, our closest relative, sharing 99.6 percent of our active genes–whatever else it is, it’s not murder. To date, murder uniquely applies to killing human beings. Therefore, the question of when personhood (or, if we like, ensoulment) arises is key to the abortion debate. When does the fetus become human? When do distinct and characteristic human qualities emerge?

Section 8 Sperm journey to becoming Human 

We recognize that specifying a precise moment will overlook individual differences. Therefore, if we must draw a line, it ought to be drawn conservatively–that is, on the early side. There are people who object to having to set some numerical limit, and we share their disquiet; but if there is to be a law on this matter, and it is to effect some useful compromise between the two absolutist positions, it must specify, at least roughly, a time of transition to personhood.

Every one of us began from a dot. A fertilized egg is roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The momentous meeting of sperm and egg generally occurs in one of the two fallopian tubes. One cell becomes two, two become four, and so on—an exponentiation of base-2 arithmetic. By the tenth day the fertilized egg has become a kind of hollow sphere wandering off to another realm: the womb. It destroys tissue in its path. It sucks blood from capillaries. It bathes itself in maternal blood, from which it extracts oxygen and nutrients. It establishes itself as a kind of parasite on the walls of the uterus.By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. Only at this stage does it begin to be dependent on a rudimentary placenta. It looks a little like a segmented worm.By the end of the fourth week, it’s about 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It’s recognizable now as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill arches of a fish or an amphibian become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks rather like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception.By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes are apparent, and little buds appear—on their way to becoming arms and legs.By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeteres (about ½ inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals, and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be.By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian but somewhat piglike.By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles that of a primate but is still not quite human. Most of the human body parts are present in their essentials. Some lower brain anatomy is well-developed. The fetus shows some reflex response to delicate stimulation.By the tenth week, the face has an unmistakably human cast. It is beginning to be possible to distinguish males from females. Nails and major bone structures are not apparent until the third month.By the fourth month, you can tell the face of one fetus from that of another. Quickening is most commonly felt in the fifth month. The bronchioles of the lungs do not begin developing until approximately the sixth month, the alveoli still later.

So, if only a person can be murdered, when does the fetus attain personhood? When its face becomes distinctly human, near the end of the first trimester? When the fetus becomes responsive to stimuli–again, at the end of the first trimester? When it becomes active enough to be felt as quickening, typically in the middle of the second trimester? When the lungs have reached a stage of development sufficient that the fetus might, just conceivably, be able to breathe on its own in the outside air?

The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they’re arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely humancharacteristics–apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn’t stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.

Sagan’s conclusion based on arbitrary choice of the presence of thought by unborn baby

Other animals have advantages over us–in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought–characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That’s how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.

Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain–principally in the top layers of the convoluted “gray matter” called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn’t begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy–the sixth month.

By placing harmless electrodes on a subject’s head, scientists can measure the electrical activity produced by the network of neurons inside the skull. Different kinds of mental activity show different kinds of brain waves. But brain waves with regular patterns typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the 30th week of pregnancy–near the beginning of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this–however alive and active they may be–lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think.

Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we’ve rejected the extremes of “always” and “never,” and this puts us–like it or not–on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible.

It is, in fact, a very conservative definition: Regular brain waves are rarely found in fetuses. More research would help… If we wanted to make the criterion still more stringent, to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain development, we might draw the line at six months. This, it so happens, is where the Supreme Court drew it in 1973–although for completely different reasons.

Its decision in the case of Roe v. Wade changed American law on abortion. It permits abortion at the request of the woman without restriction in the first trimester and, with some restrictions intended to protect her health, in the second trimester. It allows states to forbid abortion in the third trimester, except when there’s a serious threat to the life or health of the woman. In the 1989 Webster decision, the Supreme Court declined explicitly to overturn Roe v. Wade but in effect invited the 50 state legislatures to decide for themselves.

What was the reasoning in Roe v. Wade? There was no legal weight given to what happens to the children once they are born, or to the family. Instead, a woman’s right to reproductive freedom is protected, the court ruled, by constitutional guarantees of privacy. But that right is not unqualified. The woman’s guarantee of privacy and the fetus’s right to life must be weighed–and when the court did the weighing’ priority was given to privacy in the first trimester and to life in the third. The transition was decided not from any of the considerations we have been dealing with so far…–not when “ensoulment” occurs, not when the fetus takes on sufficient human characteristics to be protected by laws against murder. Instead, the criterion adopted was whether the fetus could live outside the mother. This is called “viability” and depends in part on the ability to breathe. The lungs are simply not developed, and the fetus cannot breathe–no matter how advanced an artificial lung it might be placed in—until about the 24th week, near the start of the sixth month. This is why Roe v. Wade permits the states to prohibit abortions in the last trimester. It’s a very pragmatic criterion.

If the fetus at a certain stage of gestation would be viable outside the womb, the argument goes, then the right of the fetus to life overrides the right of the woman to privacy. But just what does “viable” mean? Even a full-term newborn is not viable without a great deal of care and love. There was a time before incubators, only a few decades ago, when babies in their seventh month were unlikely to be viable. Would aborting in the seventh month have been permissible then? After the invention of incubators, did aborting pregnancies in the seventh month suddenly become immoral? What happens if, in the future, a new technology develops so that an artificial womb can sustain a fetus even before the sixth month by delivering oxygen and nutrients through the blood–as the mother does through the placenta and into the fetal blood system? We grant that this technology is unlikely to be developed soon or become available to many. But if it were available, does it then become immoral to abort earlier than the sixth month, when previously it was moral? A morality that depends on, and changes with, technology is a fragile morality; for some, it is also an unacceptable morality.

And why, exactly, should breathing (or kidney function, or the ability to resist disease) justify legal protection? If a fetus can be shown to think and feel but not be able to breathe, would it be all right to kill it? Do we value breathing more than thinking and feeling? Viability arguments cannot, it seems to us, coherently determine when abortions are permissible. Some other criterion is needed. Again, we offer for consideration the earliest onset of human thinking as that criterion.

Since, on average, fetal thinking occurs even later than fetal lung development, we find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue. With prohibitions on abortion in the last trimester–except in cases of grave medical necessity–it strikes a fair balance between the conflicting claims of freedom and life.What do you think? What have others said about Carl Sagan’s thoughts on 

END OF SAGAN’S ARTICLE

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Come Together – John Lennon (Live In New York City)

George Harrison – Here comes the sun Subtitulada en Español

LET IT BE

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The Beatles – Yellow Submarine

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The Beatles Song They’re Afraid to Play: Too Much Religion?

Seldom-played hit “All those years ago’’ is crucial to Beatles history

Joseph SerwachAug 12, 2020 · 5 min read

A wave of Beatlemania filled the earth moments after the December 8, 1980 assassination of Beatles leader John Lennon. He was barely 40.

“There is no funeral for John,” his widow, Yoko Ono, announced the next day. “John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him.’’

Lennon was shot four times in the back at 10:50 p.m., pronounced dead at a hospital around 11:15 p.m. ABC’s Howard Cosell broke the news during “Monday Night Football’’ then NBC interrupted Johnny Carson.

Every radio station began playing Beatles music almost non-stop. Without a funeral or public memorial, demand for Beatles music exploded:

• Sales of Lennon’s final solo album, “Double Fantasy,’’ rocketed skyward.
• The 10-year-push for a “Beatles reunion’’ intensified.
• Beatlemania, a group of look-alike, sound-alike performers imitating the Beatles, began a near 40-year-run recreating their beloved songs and look.
• The three surviving Beatles then contributed to a new tribute song by George Harrison, “All Those Years Ago,’’ which debuted in May 1981.

In that brief span from December through May, three significant figures were shot: Lennon (who died), Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II (who both survived assassination attempts).

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“All Those Years Ago,’’ in 1981, was and is the closest thing the world would have to a “Beatles reunion’’ between their 1970 breakup and the mid-1990s.

In 1995, for the Beatles Anthology series, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr completed two Lennon “demo’’ songs, “Free as a Bird’’ and “Real Love.’’

While the 1981 song was mainly a Harrison creation, it was the remaining Beatles’ only song (including all three surviving Beatles collaborating) written as a post-death tribute to Lennon. They considered him their founder, and leader. It’s rated one of Harrison’s best songs.

McCartney later did his own solo version of a tribute, “Here Today,” that wasn’t released as a single.

We are regular listeners of the SiriusXM Beatles channel and happened to hear “All Those Years Ago” once in 2020 (the first time in 30-plus years) on a countdown show of 1981 hit songs.

The song went to №1 on the adult contemporary chart, №2 on the Hot 100 chart, and ranked 74th for the top hits of 1981). Why is it so seldom played?

The quiet, mystic Beatle focused most on spiritual themes

Harrison, considered “the quiet mystic,” was the youngest of the Beatles, born in February 1943. All looked up to John (the founder).

Spirituality is a common thread in many of Harrison’s top hits, including songs like “What Is Life,’’ “All Things Must Pass,’’ and “Give Me Love, Give Me Peace on Earth.’’

Harrison, probably the most religious of the four, was raised Roman Catholic, becoming fascinated with Indian and Hindu culture in the mid-1960s.

He was also the first Beatle to record a solo album and the first to go to №1 on his own with a song dedicated to God, “My Sweet Lord.’’

What is striking about hearing “All Those Years Ago’’ on the radio is how much it’s a song of faith and belief. It’s sung for and about Lennon. It also sounds like a song about Jesus or a Christ-like figure. The message is jarring.

Today, Christian songs are primarily confined to Christian platforms while “All Those Years Ago’’ is about Lennon so that you won’t hear it on a religious station.

Yet, this song calling out the importance of God and the threats of the devil make it entirely unlike anything you will hear in modern pop music. And it is perhaps as bold or bolder than any popular Christian song.

The defiant lyrics are more moving four decades later

Was Harrison speaking about Lennon, Christ, or both? He begins the song talking about a man who shouts “about love’’ while being treated “like a dog.’’

The first Christians are also called The Way. The song goes on about giving and showing “the way to the truth’’ in Lennon songs like “All you need is love.’’ The Way to Love and Truth, of course, is the core teaching of Christianity.

Differentiating between “good and bad,’’ Harrison sings of looking up to his hero and the coldness remaining after his loss.

Today, Lennon’s killer is called a mentally ill fan. But Harrison, in a phrase seldom spoken outside churches today, describes Lennon’s killer as “the devil’s best friend’’ and a man “who offended all.’’

Lennon died in darkness. So Harrison describes a dark world where “I send out a prayer to you.’’

Sounding very much like Heaven, he tells us his hero is now in a “world of light’’ where a spirit can be “free of the lies” and all the hated things of our world.

Nearly four decades after Lennon’s death, Harrison cried out a warning

“They’ve forgotten about God,’’ Harrison sings in the most unforgettable lyric of the song.

Lennon had his own debate with God, enraging believers by saying in 1966 that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus’’ then backtracking, insisting that he only meant to say the Beatles had more daily influence on young people.

In a 1969 interview, Lennon said, “I’m one of Christ’s biggest fans. And if I can turn the focus on the Beatles on to Christ’s message, then that’s what we’re here to do.’’

Like many artists and like St. Augustine, Lennon saw the attraction to surrendering to God, though “not yet.’’ Both Lennon and Harrison would take a five-year hiatus from recording music only to return to the studio before each died (Lennon in 1980 and Harrison in 2001).

Lennon would repeatedly write and communicate with religious leaders and experts, however, seeking to learn more, saying in one interview:

“Whatever they celebrate, God and Christ, I don’t think it matters as long as they’re aware of Him and His message.”

Some of the Beatles’ most essential songs, including “Let it Be’’ and “Hey Jude’’ (written mainly by Lennon partner Paul McCartney, baptized a Catholic), are similarly praised for their Christian messages.

Lennon’s 1971 hit “Imagine,’’ is considered an “anthem for atheists’’ with questions about imagining existing without Heaven or religion. Nearly a half-century later, four decades after Lennon’s death, worship services around the world would be halted due to a global pandemic.

Lennon, ironically, was struck down on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, marking the belief that God chose to allow Mary, the Mother of God, to be conceived free of original sin from the moment she was conceived.

Harrison’s warnings about forgetting about God are unsettling in the far more secular world of the 21st century. Harrison reminds us the world attacked Lennon (like Jesus), for the way he taught a seldom-listening world how to love one another.

Again, Lennon’s widow had one thing to share after his death. She asked the world to pray for him, assuring us our slain hero loved and prayed for us.

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FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 202 the BEATLES’ last song FREE AS A BIRD (Featured artist is Susan Weil )

February 15, 2018 – 1:45 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 200 George Harrison song HERE ME LORD (Featured artist is Karl Schmidt-Rottluff )

February 1, 2018 – 12:00 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 184 the BEATLES’ song REAL LOVE (Featured artist is David Hammonds )

October 5, 2017 – 1:24 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 170 George Harrison and his song MY SWEET LORD (Featured artist is Bruce Herman )

June 29, 2017 – 12:19 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 168 George Harrison’s song AWAITING ON YOU ALL Part B (Featured artist is Michelle Mackey )

June 15, 2017 – 12:39 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 167 George Harrison’s song AWAITING ON YOU Part A (Artist featured is Paul Martin)

June 8, 2017 – 12:28 am

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! Part 133 Louise Antony is UMass, Phil Dept, “Atheists if they commit themselves to justice, peace and the relief of suffering can only be doing so out of love for the good. Atheist have the opportunity to practice perfect piety”

June 6, 2017 – 1:35 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 166 George Harrison’s song ART OF DYING (Featured artist is Joel Sheesley )

June 1, 2017 – 12:13 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 165 George Harrison’s view that many roads lead to Heaven (Featured artist is Tim Lowly)

May 25, 2017 – 12:47 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 164 THE BEATLES Edgar Allan Poe (Featured artist is Christopher Wool)

May 18, 2017 – 12:43 am

PART 163 BEATLES Breaking down the song LONG AND WINDING ROAD (Featured artist is Charles Lutyens )

May 11, 2017 – 1:18 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 162 A look at the BEATLES Breaking down the song ALL WE NEED IS LOVE Part C (Featured artist is Grace Slick)

May 4, 2017 – 1:40 am

PART 161 A look at the BEATLES Breaking down the song ALL WE NEED IS LOVE Part B (Featured artist is Francis Hoyland )

April 27, 2017 – 1:52 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 160 A look at the BEATLES Breaking down the song ALL WE NEED IS LOVE Part A (Featured artist is Shirazeh Houshiary)

April 20, 2017 – 1:00 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 159 BEATLES, Soccer player Albert Stubbins made it on SGT. PEP’S because he was sport hero (Artist featured is Richard Land)

April 13, 2017 – 12:29 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 158 THE BEATLES (breaking down the song WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?) Photographer Bob Gomel featured today!

April 6, 2017 – 12:25 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 118 THE BEATLES (Why was Tony Curtis on cover of SGT PEP?) (Feature on artist Jeffrey Gibson )

June 30, 2016 – 5:35 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 117 THE BEATLES, Breaking down the song WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU Part B (Featured artist is Emma Amos )

June 23, 2016 – 1:31 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 116 THE BEATLES, Breaking down the song WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU Part A (Featured artist is Faith Ringgold)

June 16, 2016 – 1:34 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 115 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? “Take these broken wings and learn to fly” (Featured artist is Sam Gilliam )

June 9, 2016 – 7:09 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 114 BEATLES (Breaking down the psychedelic song BECAUSE, The composition of the song) (Featured artist is John Baldessari )

June 2, 2016 – 12:34 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 113 BEATLES (Breaking down the psychedelic song BECAUSE, what is the meaning of the song?) (Featured artist is Julian Stanczak )

May 26, 2016 – 12:34 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 112 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? What irrational trips did the Beatles try in order to find meaning in life? (Featured artist is David Bates )

May 19, 2016 – 8:12 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 111 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film “How should we then live?” MAKING NATURE THE MEASURE OF GOODNESS (Featured artist is Dorothea Rockburne )

May 11, 2016 – 11:06 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 110 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Part H The History of Fragmentation in Art and Music leading up to the Beatles! (Artist featured today is Robert Wagner)

May 6, 2016 – 7:55 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 109 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Part G “She (We gave her most of our lives) is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives) home (We gave her everything money could buy) She’s leaving home after living alone” (Artist featured today is Maggi Hambling )

April 28, 2016 – 12:28 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 108 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Part F The Chance worldview of A DAY IN THE LIFE and the solution it suggests (Artist featured today is Patrick Caulfield )

April 21, 2016 – 7:00 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 107 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Was popularity of OCCULTISM in UK the reason Aleister Crowley appeared on SGT PEP cover? Schaeffer notes, “People put the Occult in the area of non-reason in the hope of some kind of meaning even if it is a horrendous kind of meaning” Part E (Artist featured today is Gerald Laing )

April 14, 2016 – 1:52 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 106 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Part D “Imagine there’s no heaven” (Artist featured today is Allen Jones)

April 7, 2016 – 4:23 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 105 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Part C “Materialism, the philosophic base for Marxist-Leninism, gives no basis for the dignity or rights of man!” (Artist featured today is Peter Findley )

March 31, 2016 – 5:18 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 104 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Part B “The church with its liberal theology has left a vacuum.” The Fab Four were victims of religious liberalism and as a result were constantly searching for values!! (Artist featured today is Richard Hamilton)

March 23, 2016 – 2:14 pmFRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 103 A look at the BEATLES as featured in 7th episode of Francis Schaeffer film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Part A “Humanist man gave up his optimism for pessimism” (Artist featured today is Peter Max)March 17, 2016 – 12:06 am

“Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings…” Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). We take a look today at how the Beatles were featured in Schaeffer’s film. How Should We then Live Episode 7 small   On You Tube […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged peter max | Edit|Comments (0)

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 102 BEATLES, Sonny Liston is another sad story featured on SGT PEPPERS COVER (Artist featured Takako Saito )

March 10, 2016 – 1:17 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 101 BEATLES,(MANY CHRISTIANS ATTACKED THE BEATLES WHILE FRANCIS SCHAEFFER STUDIED THEIR MUSIC! Part B) Artist featured today is Cartoonist Gahan Wilson

March 3, 2016 – 12:21 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 100 (MANY CHRISTIANS ATTACKED THE BEATLES WHILE FRANCIS SCHAEFFER STUDIED THEIR MUSIC! Part A) Featured Artist is Klaus Voormann

February 25, 2016 – 5:29 am

 FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 99 THE BEATLES (Breaking down the song “Penny Lane”Part B) Featured artist is Clive Barker

February 18, 2016 – 5:15 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 98 THE BEATLES (Breaking down the song “Penny Lane”Part A) Featured artist is Marty Balin

February 11, 2016 – 5:02 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 97 THE BEATLES (The Beatles and Paramhansa Yogananda ) (Feature on artist Ronnie Wood)

February 4, 2016 – 5:22 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 96 THE BEATLES (Breaking down the song “Eleanor Rigby” Part B and the issue of LONELINESS) Featured artist is Robert Morris

January 28, 2016 – 5:31 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 95 THE BEATLES (Breaking down the song “Eleanor Rigby” Part A and the issue of DEATH ) Featured artist is Joe Tilson

January 21, 2016 – 5:42 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 94 THE BEATLES (The Beatles and the Gurus on SGT. PEP. ) (Feature on PHOTOGRAPHER BILL WYMAN )

January 14, 2016 – 5:16 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 93 THE BEATLES (Breaking down “REVOLUTION 9” Part B) Astrid Kirchherr is featured Photographer

January 7, 2016 – 5:06 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 92 THE BEATLES (Breaking down “REVOLUTION 9” Part A) Featured photographer is John Loengard

December 31, 2015 – 5:35 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 91 (WHY WAS H.G.WELLS ON THE COVER OF SGT. PEPPERS? Part B) Featured Artist is Claes Oldenburg

December 24, 2015 – 5:36 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 90 (WHY WAS H.G.WELLS ON THE COVER OF SGT. PEPPERS? Part A) Featured Artist is Ellsworth Kelly

December 17, 2015 – 5:11 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 89 THE BEATLES, Breaking down the song “BLACKBIRD” Part B (Featured Photographer is Jürgen Vollmer)

December 10, 2015 – 1:52 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 88 THE BEATLES, Breaking down the song “BLACKBIRD” Part A (Featured Photographer is Richard Avedon)

December 3, 2015 – 5:24 am

 FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART THE BEATLES Part 87 George Bernard Shaw Part B “Why was Shaw on the cover of SGT. PEPPER’S?” Featured Photographer is Henry Grossman

November 26, 2015 – 5:44 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE, THE BEATLES Part 86 George Bernard Shaw Part A “Why was Shaw on the cover of SGT. PEPPER’S?” Featured Photographer is Robert Whitaker

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 85 (Breaking down the song “When I’m Sixty-Four” Part B) Featured Photographer and Journalist is Bill Harry

November 12, 2015 – 5:03 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 84 (Breaking down the song “When I’m Sixty-Four”Part A) Featured Photographer is Annie Leibovitz

November 5, 2015 – 4:57 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 83 THE BEATLES (Why was Karlheinz Stockhausen on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s? ) (Feature on artist Nam June Paik )

October 29, 2015 – 5:27 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 82 THE BEATLES, Breaking down the song DEAR PRUDENCE (Photographer featured is Bill Eppridge)

October 22, 2015 – 5:34 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 81 THE BEATLES Why was Dylan Thomas put on the cover of SGT PEPPERS? (Featured artist is sculptor David Wynne)

October 15, 2015 – 5:48 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 80 THE BEATLES (breaking down the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” ) (Featured artist is Saul Steinberg)

October 8, 2015 – 5:54 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 79 THE BEATLES (Why was William Burroughs on Sgt. Pepper’s cover? ) (Feature on artist Brion Gysin)

October 1, 2015 – 5:48 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 78 THE BEATLES (Breaking down the song TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS) Featured musical artist is Stuart Gerber

September 24, 2015 – 5:42 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 77 THE BEATLES (Who got the Beatles talking about Vietnam War? ) (Feature on artist Nicholas Monro )

September 17, 2015 – 5:33 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 76 THE BEATLES (breaking down the song STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER) (Artist featured is Jamie Wyeth)

September 10, 2015 – 5:38 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 75 THE BEATLES (Part Z WHY DID LENNON CHOOSE HITLER FOR THE COVER OF STG. PEPPER’S? ) (Feature on artist Peter Kien )

September 3, 2015 – 5:23 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 74 THE BEATLES (Part Y, The link between the Beatles’ song HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN and PEANUTS creator Charles Schulz) (Featured artist is Andrew Wyeth)

August 27, 2015 – 5:23 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 73 THE BEATLES (Part X, Why did Albert Einstein get chosen to be on the cover of SGT. PEPPER’S? ) (Feature on artist John Lennon)

August 20, 2015 – 4:38 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 72 THE BEATLES (Part V Breaking down the song ” The Walrus” ) (Featured artist is Brenda Bury)

August 13, 2015 – 5:43 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 71 THE BEATLES (Part U, WHY SO MANY ALCOHOLICS ON COVER OF SGT. PEPPER’S?) (Feature on Photographer Linda McCartney )

August 6, 2015 – 5:40 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 70 THE BEATLES (Part T, Lennon’s friend and drug guru Timothy Leary spent time at Swiss retreat L’Abri in 1971 with Francis Schaeffer) (Feature on artist Paul McCartney)

July 30, 2015 – 5:23 am

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 69 THE BEATLES (Part S, WHY WAS SIMON RODILLA CHOSEN TO BE ON COVER OF SGT. PEPPER’S? ) (Feature on artist John Outterbridge )

July 23, 2015 at 4:24 am

9474 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 68 THE BEATLES (PART R WHY WAS JOHNNY WEISSMULLER CHOSEN TO BE ON COVER OF SGT. PEPPER’S?) Artist featured today is Eduardo Paolozzi

July 16, 2015 – 4:55 am9193 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 67 THE BEATLES (Part Q, RICHES AND LUXURIES NEVER SATISFIED THE BEATLES! ) (Feature on artist Derek Boshier )

July 9, 2015 – 4:23 am6048 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 66 THE BEATLES (Part P, The Beatles’ best song ever is A DAY IN THE LIFE which in on Sgt Pepper’s!) (Feature on artist and clothes designer Manuel Cuevas )

July 2, 2015 – 1:07 am8693 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 65 THE BEATLES (Part O, The 1960’s SEXUAL REVOLUTION was on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s!) (Featured artist is Pauline Boty)

June 25, 2015 – 7:04 am11897 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 64 THE BEATLES (Part P The Meaning of Stg. Pepper’s song SHE’S LEAVING HOME according to Schaeffer!!!!) (Featured artist Stuart Sutcliffe)

June 18, 2015 – 4:53 am8326 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 63 THE BEATLES (Part O , BECAUSE THE BEATLES LOVED HUMOR IT IS FITTING THAT 6 COMEDIANS MADE IT ON THE COVER OF “SGT. PEPPER’S”!) (Feature on artist H.C. Westermann )

June 10, 2015 – 2:33 pm9810 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 62 THE BEATLES (Part N The last 4 people alive from cover of Stg. Pepper’s and the reason Bob Dylan was put on the cover!) (Feature on artist Larry Bell)

June 4, 2015 – 5:31 am 9929 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 61 THE BEATLES (Part M, Why was Karl Marx on the cover of Stg. Pepper’s?) (Feature on artist George Petty)

May 28, 2015 – 4:56 am9778 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 60 THE BEATLES (Part L, Why was Aleister Crowley on the cover of Stg. Pepper’s?) (Feature on artist Jann Haworth )

May 21, 2015 – 3:33 am9087 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 59 THE BEATLES (Part K, Advocating drugs was reason Aldous Huxley was on cover of Stg. Pepper’s) (Feature on artist Aubrey Beardsley)

May 13, 2015 – 12:49 pm 11068 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 58 THE BEATLES (Part J, Why was Carl Gustav Jung on the cover of Stg. Pepper’s?) (Feature on artist Richard Merkin)

May 7, 2015 – 4:45 am 9640 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 57 THE BEATLES (Part I, Schaeffer loved the Beatles’ music and most of all SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND ) (Feature on artist Heinz Edelmann )

April 30, 2015 – 4:17 am 11509 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 56 THE BEATLES (Part H, Stg. Pepper’s and Relativism) (Feature on artist Alberto Vargas )

April 23, 2015 – 9:23 am5251 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 55 THE BEATLES (Part G, The Beatles and Rebellion) (Feature on artist Wallace Berman )

April 16, 2015 – 12:30 am8725 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 54 THE BEATLES (Part F, Sgt Pepper’s & the LEAP into NONREASON and Eastern Religion) (Feature on artist Richard Lindner )

April 9, 2015 – 12:28 am10,110 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 53 THE BEATLES (Part E, Stg. Pepper’s and John Lennon’s search in 1967 for truth was through drugs, money, laughter, etc & similar to King Solomon’s, LOTS OF PICTURES OF JOHN AND CYNTHIA) (Feature on artist Yoko Ono)

April 2, 2015 – 7:05 am8315 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 52 THE BEATLES (Part D, There is evidence that the Beatles may have been exposed to Francis Schaeffer!!!) (Feature on artist Anna Margaret Rose Freeman )

March 22, 2015 – 12:30 am 11587 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 51 THE BEATLES (Part C, List of those on cover of Stg.Pepper’s ) (Feature on artist Raqib Shaw )

March 19, 2015 – 12:21 am8732 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 50 THE BEATLES (Part B, The Psychedelic Music of the Beatles) (Feature on artist Peter Blake )

March 12, 2015 – 12:16 am9993 words

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 49 THE BEATLES (Part A, The Meaning of Stg. Pepper’s Cover) (Feature on artist Mika Tajima)

March 5, 2015 – 4:47 am6821 words

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December 23, 2015 – 4:15 am

Woody Allen believes that we live in a cold, violent and meaningless universe and it seems that his main character (Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson) in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS shares that view. Pender’s meeting with the Surrealists is by far the best scene in the movie because they are ones who can […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 6 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part E, A FURTHER LOOK AT T.S. Eliot’s DESPAIR AND THEN HIS SOLUTION)

December 16, 2015 – 4:56 am

In the last post I pointed out how King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN  and that Bertrand Russell, and T.S. Eliot and  other modern writers had agreed with Solomon’s view. However, T.S. Eliot had found a solution to this problem and put his faith in […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 5 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part D, A LOOK AT T.S. Eliot’s DESPAIR AND THEN HIS SOLUTION)

December 9, 2015 – 4:41 am

In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Gil Pender ponders the advice he gets from his literary heroes from the 1920’s. King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN  and many modern artists, poets, and philosophers have agreed. In the 1920’s T.S.Eliot and his  house guest Bertrand Russell were two of […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 4 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part C, IS THE ANSWER TO FINDING SATISFACTION FOUND IN WINE, WOMEN AND SONG?)

December 2, 2015 – 4:50 am

Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald left the prohibitionist America for wet Paris in the 1920’s and they both drank a lot. WINE, WOMEN AND SONG  was their motto and I am afraid ultimately wine got the best of Fitzgerald and shortened his career. Woody Allen pictures this culture in the first few clips in the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 3 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part B, THE SURREALISTS Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Luis Bunuel try to break out of cycle!!!)

November 25, 2015 – 4:32 am

In the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Woody Allen the best scene of the movie is when Gil Pender encounters the SURREALISTS!!!  This series deals with the Book of Ecclesiastes and Woody Allen films.  The first post  dealt with MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT and it dealt with the fact that in the Book of Ecclesiastes Solomon does contend […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 2 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part A, When was the greatest time to live in Paris? 1920’s or La Belle Époque [1873-1914] )

November 18, 2015 – 5:36 am

In the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Woody Allen is really looking at one main question through the pursuits of his main character GIL PENDER. That question is WAS THERE EVER A GOLDEN AGE AND DID THE MOST TALENTED UNIVERSAL MEN OF THAT TIME FIND TRUE SATISFACTION DURING IT? This is the second post I have […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 1 MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT)

November 11, 2015 – 12:02 am

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The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 20, King Louis XVI of France)

June 28, 2011 – 5:44 amBy Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (1)

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 19,Marie Antoinette)

June 27, 2011 – 12:16 amBy Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 18, Claude Monet)

June 26, 2011 – 5:41 amBy Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Edit|

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Related posts

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Richard Dawkins and Ricky Gervais

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September 27, 2019

Richard Dawkins c/o Richard Dawkins Foundation, 
Washington, DC 20005

Dear Mr. Dawkins,

i have enjoyed reading about a dozen of your books and some of the most intriguing were The God Delusion, An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, and Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science.

I am looking forward to reading Outgrowing God which is your latest book, and I have been reading several reviews of it. The best interviewer is Krishnan Guru-Murthy in my opinion. He did a great job of asking you some very insightful questions, and I thought your answers gave the audience a good feel for what is in the book.

On September 10, 2019 you tweeted:

It’s ten days until OUTGROWING GOD is out in the UK. Preorder a signed copy from Waterstones: bit.ly/OutgrowingGod

I responded with this tweet: 

Adrian Rogers “Our search for answers begins in Psalm 139, which tells us about God. And only when we learn more about God, will we learn more about ourselves”thedailyhatch.org/2019/09/10/

Why Do I Exist?

“Why do I exist?”…”What is the purpose of my life?”…”Why am I here?”…Do you ever ask yourself these questions? It is so important that we know the purpose for our lives.

If we don’t accomplish what we were designed to do, we are failures because failing often is just succeeding at the wrong thing. We are successful only when we do that for which God created us. If we know our purpose in life, we can move forward with confidence.

Our search for answers begins in Psalm 139, which tells us about God. And only when we learn more about God, will we learn more about ourselves.

God Knows All About You
God knows:

Your character

Your conduct

Your contemplations

Your conversation

God Is Always with You
You may be far from God, but He is always with you. We read in verse 5: “Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon me.” This is restated in Jeremiah 23:24: “Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.”

Death cannot hide you from God. God reigns in Earth, heaven, and hell. He is over it all. And when you die, God is still there. Psalm 139:7-8 states, “Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there.”

Distance doesn’t hide you from God. Has it ever occurred to you that God never goes anywhere? He is already there! Wherever you run, God will meet you when you get there. Verses 9-10 say, “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.”

Darkness doesn’t hide you from God. You can’t hide from God in the dark. Light is not there to enable God to see. Verse 11-12 states, “If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”

God Has a Wonderful Purpose for You
You are not an accident. You didn’t come out of pond scum. God made you for a purpose. He formed you in your mother’s womb, and He has a wonderful plan for you. Read Psalm 139:13-15:

“For Thou hast possessed my reins: Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”

God Has You Constantly in His Heart
God knows you; He loves you; and He wants to bless you. The psalmist says in verses 17-18a, “How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand.” It’s hard to imagine, but His thoughts toward you are greater in number than all of the grains of sand that cover the Earth.

So how do we respond to a loving God? Our response to Him is our purpose. God made us to know Him and to love Him. He wants to love us and to be loved by us. Our response-our purpose-lives should move us toward that purpose. If it doesn’t, then we have failed.

Francis Schaeffer rightly noted where the materialistic time plus chance point of view has brought us to:

The German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) was an early exponent of a philosophy of materialism, as was German physician Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899), whose book Force and Matter (1855) went into twenty-one editions and was translated into all the major languages. It is of more than passing interest that Richard Wagner (1813–1883), the German composer of opera, was reading Feuerbach as early as 1848. Wagner at this period of his life was deeply influenced by Feuerbach, and it was Wagner who encouraged Ludwig II of Bavaria to read Feuerbach. Thus the work of Feuerbach had its influence not only in abstract thought but also on the arts and on the state. Ernst Haeckel (1834– 1919), a biologist at the University of Jena, wrote The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the 19th Century (1899), and it became a best-seller, too. In this work Haeckel posited that matter and energy are eternal and also assumed that the human mind or soul is to be explained on the basis of materialism. He saw where this would lead and accepted that people have no freedom of will.

When people began to think in this way, there was no place for God or for man as man. When psychology and social science were made a part of a closed cause-and-effect system, along with physics, astronomy and chemistry, it was not only God who died. Man died. And within this framework love died. There is no place for love in a totally closed cause-and-effect system. There is no place for morals in a totally closed cause-and-effect system. There is no place for the freedom of people in a totally closed cause-and-effect system. Man becomes a zero. People and all they do become only a part of the machinery.

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

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

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221, United States

Francis Schaeffer below:

Richard Dawkins vs John Lennox | The God Delusion Debate

Ben Stein vs. Richard Dawkins Interview

XXXX Peter Singer – The Genius of Darwin: The Uncut Interviews – Richard Dawkins

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Science Confirms the Bible with Ken Ham

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Schaeffer with his wife Edith in Switzerland.

Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

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Francis and Edith Schaeffer seen below:

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Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris 

Canary Islands 2014: Harold Kroto and Richard Dawkins

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Francis Schaeffer pictured below:

The Basis of Human Dignity by Francis Schaeffer

Richard Dawkins, founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Credit: Don Arnold Getty Images

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Francis Schaeffer in 1984

Christian Manifesto by Francis Schaeffer

Francis Schaeffer in 1982

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Whatever Happened to the Human Race? Episode 1

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Garik Israelian, Stephen Hawking, Alexey Leonov, Brian May, Richard Dawkins and Harry Kroto

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Dark History of Evolution-Henry Morris, Ph.D.

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Featured artist is Raphael

Raphael – VM – Keith White

Raphael: Vision of EzekielDivine Gloryby Keith WhiteIn the thirtieth year, in the fourth month of the fifth day, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.   As a Renaissance artist Raphael (1483-1520) sought to combine Greek and Roman traditions with those of the Bible. His understanding of Yahweh was therefore influenced by the representation of the Roman god Jupiter. This highlights the problem any artist has in trying to portray God – every attempt is bound to be biased and partial, reflecting the conventions and assumptions of a particular time and place. We may feel that these sometimes come between us and God rather than enhancing our understanding. What Raphael does here is to use every resource at his command to reinforce the sense of glory of the divine majesty.   Ezekiel was one of the Jewish people taken captive and living as exiles in Babylon. There he had a series of visions in which the heavens were opened, and which form the basis of much subsequent understanding of the divine nature (including the book of Revelation). In this first vision an immense cloud in a windstorm was surrounded with brilliant light. The centre was like a fire. There were four living creatures – an ox, a lion, an eagle and a man. A voice spoke to Ezekiel, calling him to a mission to his people. The power of the vision was such that Ezekiel never deviated from this calling.   Raphael has been careful both to study the biblical narrative in his picture and to adapt it in such a way that enhances the coherence and unity of his work. God moves above the firmament supported by playful cherubim and the four creatures (the ‘tetramorph’, later identified as the four evangelists). The six creatures together with the central figure (who represents God) form an almost perfect whole, solid yet moving and with spaces in their togetherness. The colours representing the glory of God are accentuated by the sombre surrounding clouds and silhouetted wings, while the spaces between the interwoven figures provide the opportunity for that glory to shine through. The realism of the figures and their skin colours means that the whole is dominated by the yellow and gold of divinity.  

  The eyes of the divine representation in this vision focus on the diminutive figure of Ezekiel at the bottom left-hand corner of the picture. The contrasts of scale could hardly be greater without Ezekiel disappearing completely! The shaft of light in which he is caught is part of a landscape which is separate from the vision. It is as if there are two realities, a heavenly and earthly, linked only by that beam of light. In this way Raphael underlines his awareness that it is a vision, not an historical event: real and overwhelming to us and to Ezekiel, but one to which many of Ezekiel’s hearers are blind.   It is possible that Raphael’s depiction of this vision has done as much as the written word for many to convey the essence of the divine glory.   *******   Raphael: Vision of Ezekiel, c.1518, oil on panel, 40 x 30 cm. Uffizi, Florence.   Biblical Background: Ezekiel 1:1-14; Ezekiel 10:14 and Revelation 4:6-8.   Raphael or Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483-1520) was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition. Like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci he was one of the great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop, and despite his death at 37 a large body of his work remains. Many of his works are found in the Apostolic Palace of The Vatican. His best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. He was extremely influential in his lifetime and after.   Keith J. White is the leader of Mill Grove, a Christian residential community that has been caring for children and young people in the East End of London UK since 1899. His first degree was in English at Oxford University, and he has retained a love for literature, music and art “to the greater glory of God.” He has written or edited a long list of books, among them The Changing Face of Child Care; The Art of Faith; and Now and Next. He led the team that produced a new international Bible (The Bible Narrative and Illustrated, 2008) designed for those outside the church and Christian faith. This incorporates 500 illustrations into the overall design. Keith teaches the theological foundations module of Holistic Child Development at Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary in Penang, Malaysia. He also contributes to conferences, symposia and publications around the world. He is an Associate Lecturer at Spurgeons College, and a member of the faculty of the Asian Graduate School of Theology.   ArtWay Visual Meditation July 1, 2012

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