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Proverbs 14New Living Translation

14 A wise woman builds her home,
    but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands.

² Those who follow the right path fear the Lord;
    those who take the wrong path despise him.

³ A fool’s proud talk becomes a rod that beats him,
    but the words of the wise keep them safe.

⁴ Without oxen a stable stays clean,
    but you need a strong ox for a large harvest.

⁵ An honest witness does not lie;
    a false witness breathes lies.

⁶ A mocker seeks wisdom and never finds it,
    but knowledge comes easily to those with understanding.

⁷ Stay away from fools,
    for you won’t find knowledge on their lips.

⁸ The prudent understand where they are going,
    but fools deceive themselves.

⁹ Fools make fun of guilt,
    but the godly acknowledge it and seek reconciliation.

¹⁰ Each heart knows its own bitterness,
    and no one else can fully share its joy.

¹¹ The house of the wicked will be destroyed,
    but the tent of the godly will flourish.

¹² There is a path before each person that seems right,
    but it ends in death.

¹³ Laughter can conceal a heavy heart,
    but when the laughter ends, the grief remains.

¹⁴ Backsliders get what they deserve;
    good people receive their reward.

¹⁵ Only simpletons believe everything they’re told!
    The prudent carefully consider their steps.

¹⁶ The wise are cautious^[a] and avoid danger;
    fools plunge ahead with reckless confidence.

¹⁷ Short-tempered people do foolish things,
    and schemers are hated.

¹⁸ Simpletons are clothed with foolishness,^[b]
    but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.

¹⁹ Evil people will bow before good people;
    the wicked will bow at the gates of the godly.

²⁰ The poor are despised even by their neighbors,
    while the rich have many “friends.”

²¹ It is a sin to belittle one’s neighbor;
    blessed are those who help the poor.

²² If you plan to do evil, you will be lost;
    if you plan to do good, you will receive unfailing love and faithfulness.

²³ Work brings profit,
    but mere talk leads to poverty!

²⁴ Wealth is a crown for the wise;
    the effort of fools yields only foolishness.

²⁵ A truthful witness saves lives,
    but a false witness is a traitor.

²⁶ Those who fear the Lord are secure;
    he will be a refuge for their children.

²⁷ Fear of the Lord is a life-giving fountain;
    it offers escape from the snares of death.

²⁸ A growing population is a king’s glory;
    a prince without subjects has nothing.

²⁹ People with understanding control their anger;
    a hot temper shows great foolishness.

³⁰ A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body;
    jealousy is like cancer in the bones.

³¹ Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker,
    but helping the poor honors him.

³² The wicked are crushed by disaster,
    but the godly have a refuge when they die.

³³ Wisdom is enshrined in an understanding heart;
    wisdom is not^[c] found among fools.

³⁴ Godliness makes a nation great,
    but sin is a disgrace to any people.

³⁵ A king rejoices in wise servants
    but is angry with those who disgrace him.

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

1932

We are grateful for the opportunity to provide this transcript produced from a live sermon preached by Adrian Rogers while serving as pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
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Note: Though it has been transcribed from a version used for broadcast, it may contain stutters, stammers, and other authentic remarks
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Copyright ©2021 Love Worth Finding Ministries, Inc. Transcripts are used by permission of the Rogers Family Trust.

HOW TO BE THE FATHER OF A WISE CHILD | PROVERBS 1:1-5, 20-22 | #1932
Take your Bibles and turn if you would to Proverbs chapter 1. Sometimes children are caught up in the mistakes and the pride and the arrogance of their parents. And more than often it’s the pride and the arrogance of the father.
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‘Twas the schooner Hesperus that sailed the wintery sea.
The skipper had taken his little daughter to bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax, her cheeks like the dawn of day.
Her bosom white as the Hawthorne buds that op’ in the month of May.
A skipper stood upon the helm, his pipe was in his mouth.
He watched how the veering flaw did blow the wind now west, now south. Then up spake an old sailor, had sailed the Spanish Main,
“I pray thee, put into yonder port, for I fear a hurricane.
Last night the moon had a golden ring, tonight no moon we see.”
But the skipper blew a whiff from his pipe, and a scornful laugh laughed he. Colder and louder grew the wind, a gale from the northeast.
The snow fell hissing on the brine, and the billows frothed like yeast. “Come hither! Come hither, my little daughter, and do not tremble so,
for I can weather the roughest storm that ever wind did blow.”
And he wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat against the stinging blast And he cut a rope from a fallen spar and bound her to the mast.
“O father! I hear the church bells ring, O say, what may it be?”
“’Tis a fog bell on a rock-bound coast,” and he steered for the open sea.
“O Father! I hear the sound of guns, O say, what, what may it be?”
“Some ship in distress that cannot live in such an angry sea.”
“O Father! I see a gleaming light, O say, what may it be?”
But the father answered never a word, for a frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm all stiff and stark with his face turned toward the skies. The lantern shown through the gleaming snow on his fixed and glassy eyes. The maiden then bowed her head and prayed that saved she might be;
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And she thought of the Christ that still the waves on the lake of Galilee.
And on through the midnight dark and drear, through the whistling sleet and snow,
The vessel swept like a sheeted ghost toward the reef of Norman’s Woe. And ever the fitful gust between, a sound came from the land.
Was the sound of the trampling surf, on the rocks and the hard sea sand. The billows were right beneath her bow, she drifted a dreary wreck,
A whooping billow swept the crew like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves looked soft as carded wool. But the cruel rocks, they gored her side like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds all sheathed in ice with a mast went by the board.
She stove and sank like a vessel of glass. “Ho! Ho!” the breakers roared.
At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach, a fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair lashed close to a drifting mast.
Salt sea frozen on her breast, salt tears in her eyes,
And he watched her hair like the brown seaweed on the billows fall and rise. Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, in the midnight and the snow.
Christ save us all from a death like this on the reef of Norman’s Woe.
There are many children who are going to be shipwrecked because of the pride and the arrogance of their fathers who will not do what they ought to do to guide those children into a safe and secure haven. And they make shipwreck not only of their own lives, but the lives of their children, bound to the mast of their own ignorance.
Listen to God’s Word here, Proverbs chapter 1 verse 1 through 5, “The Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel; to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding; to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment and equity.” Now watch specially verse 4, “To give subtlety to the simple and to the young man, knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear and will increase learning and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsel.” And then begin to read with me in verse 20 through 22, “Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets. She crieth in the chief place of the concourse in the opening of the gates. In the
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HOW TO BE THE FATHER OF A WISE CHILD | PROVERBS 1:1-5, 20-22 | #1932
city she uttereth her words saying, ‘How long ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity?’ And the scorners delight in their scorning and fools hate knowledge?”
Now if you don’t mind marking your Bible, I want you to take your Bible and I want you to underscore three words in that passage. I want you to underscore in verse 22 the word, simple. And then I want you to underscore the word, scorners, and then I want you to underscore the word, fools. I want to talk to you today about how to be the father of a wise child.
And what you have here in this one verse in Proverbs chapter 1 verse 22 is what I want to call the evolution of a fool. And God have mercy upon the man, the woman, who has a fool for a daughter, a fool for a son.
Children begin as simple. The word simple simply means open. It means naive. The Hebrew word is the word open. It has nothing to do with intellectual ability. We’re not talking about a simpleton. We’re not talking about a person who does not have gray matter. As a matter of fact, a simple child may grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, a politician, may even grow up to be a minister; simple, simple. Just simply means plastic mentality, open, naive. So just write the word naive by the word simple.
And then the next word he mentions is the scorner. Now, the scorner’s different from the simple. The simple is more or less innocent. But the scorner, today just write the word smart aleck, smart aleck, or in business write the word cynic. Or in the university you might write the word sophisticate. These are the scornful; the scornful.
But then the next step is the fool, the fool. Now write by the word fool, the word rebel, arrogant, wicked. Again the word fool does not have the idea that a person is lacking in mental ability. He may be very wise to do evil. The word has a moral base. It means without any ability to discern.
Now we are in serious trouble in America. And I’ll tell you what happened in America. In 1962, prayer in public schools was declared unconstitutional. In 1963 in America, Bible reading in the public school was declared unconstitutional. In 1973, the killing of pre-born children was declared to be a right guaranteed by the Constitution. In 1980, the Ten Commandments were deemed to be illegal to be posted on school walls. And one of the reasons why they said so, if a child read those commandments, they said, “He might be tempted to emulate them.” And so, they’re taken down. You see, the secular humanists have proven to be great strategists. They tried to find one segment of life that almost every American child will pass through, that is, education. So they targeted public education to be the Sunday schools for their humanistic philosophy. And in order to do that, they wanted to purge out any vestige of Christian influence.
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So what has happened in the last years? Well, prayer is out, policemen are in. Bibles are out, values clarification is in. The Ten Commandments are out, rape and armed robbery, gang warfare, murder and cheating are in. Instruction that tells us that we were created in the image of God is out, evolution is in. Corporal punishment is out, disrespect and rebellion is in. Traditional values are out and unwed motherhood is in. Abstinence is out and condoms and abortion are in. Learning is out and social engineering is in. History is out and revisionism is in.
And the problem primarily, believe it or not, is with fathers. Arrogant fathers who fail to accept their responsibility. I want to talk to dads today, and I want to tell you how not to be the father of a fool. How to be the father of a wise child.
Now go back to these three categories of persons that we looked at here in verse 22, and let me describe them more carefully and I think you’ll recognize some children that you know. First of all, let’s think of the ignorance of the simple. How is he described? Look if you will in Romans 1 verse 22, “How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity?” That’s his first mark. He loves his simplicity. He enjoys being a child. He enjoys the carefree life. He doesn’t like any serious thoughts. One teenager said, “I am worried. My Dad slaves away at his job so I won’t have to need for a thing and so I can have a college education. My mom spends every day washing and ironing and picking up my things and looking after me. And she takes care of me when I’m sick.” His friend said, “You’re worried? What are you worried about?” He said, “I’m afraid they might try to escape.” The children just love having everything done for them, the carefree simple life. That’s the life of the simple.

But not only that, he lacks understanding. Go to Proverbs chapter 9. And by the way, we’re going to stay in Proverbs, and so get your Bibles open and keep them in your lap. Proverbs chapter 9 verses 1 through 4, “Wisdom hath builded her house. She hath hewn out her seven pillars. She hath killed her beasts. She hath mingled her wine. She hath also furnished her table. She hath sent forth her maidens. She crieth upon the highest places of the city.” That is, wisdom has prepared a banquet of learning knowledge and truth. And notice to whom the invitation goes, “Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither. As for him that wanteth or needeth understanding.”
Now, a simple person loves his simplicity, he lacks understanding. As I say, one day he may be a lawyer, a banker, or a surgeon, but he lacks spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding. He just doesn’t know.
Now, because he’s carefree, and because he lacks understanding, he is easily led into error. Turn to Proverbs 14 and look in verse 15. Here’s a key verse about the simple, “The simple believeth every word.” Now just put that down. “The simple believeth every word.” Remember I told you that the Hebrew word for simple means open? He believes every word. That is, he’s easily led. “But the prudent man looketh well to his going.” And so a simple child is easily led.
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Now listen, let me tell you something. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe something. He will believe something! He’ll believe anything! He’s an easy target for Madison Avenue. He’s an easy target for MTV, for false religions, for sinful friends. He’s like a sponge. He believes everything. He’s easily led into error because he’s so open.
I heard about a young, simple boy who had some puppies and his mama said, “You have to get rid of all of them but one.” So he was trying to sell the last puppy and he was trying to sell it for $5 and a grown man said, “Son, the reason you can’t sell that puppy is that you didn’t put a high enough price for him and people don’t think he’s worth much.” And so he came back the next day the boy said, “Well sir, I have decided that I am going to sell this puppy for $100.” “Well,” the man said, “Son, I didn’t mean that much. But see if you can do it.” Later on, he saw the man and said, “Sir, I want you to know I sold my puppy.” He said, “Did you get a hundred dollars?” He said, “Indeed I did.” He said, “Well, not exactly.” Said, “I took two $50 cats.”
Now, that’s the simple child. He’s easily led into error. You can trick him. You can flim-flam him. But, he’s living in constant danger. Look at that verse again, chapter 14 verse 15, “The simple believeth every word, but a prudent man looketh well to his going.” Now a child doesn’t do that. He doesn’t look forward; he doesn’t plan for the future. And therefore he’s living in danger.
Look in chapter 22 in verse 3, “A prudent man forseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on and are punished.” What does that mean? That means that if a person were wise and prudent, he would see danger. But the simple child thinks he’s indestructible. They never think about the future. And therefore your child is like a pig being led to the slaughter.
Now that’s the simple for you. He’s careless, he’s carefree, he’s easily led, he thinks he’s indestructible. He has no idea about danger. He just passes on and is punished.
Now, let’s move on and think not only about the simple but think about the scorner. You see, the next step after a person is naive, he becomes, if he’s not led by his dad and his mom, he becomes a smart aleck in school, he’s the cynic in business; he’s the mocker at the university. Now what are his marks? Well, go back again to chapter 1, Proverbs chapter 1 and verse 22 and look at it, “How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity,” now watch this, “and the scorners,” now watch this, “delight in their scorning?” He delights in his scorning. He gets his jollies out of being a smart aleck. And what a terrible condition this is. It breaks my heart to say it, but most teenagers, older teenagers in America are now scorners. We’ve lost a generation. They are now scorners. They have the devil’s initials carved in their hearts. They have his slimy fingerprints on their minds.
And because he delights in scorning, he defies instruction. Turn to Proverbs chapter 13 and look if you will in verse 1, “A wise son heareth his father’s instruction,
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but a scorner heareth not rebuke.” Boy, underscore that. Dads you need to learn this. “A wise son heareth, hears his father’s instruction, but a scorner heareth not rebuke.” You can always tell a scorner, but you can’t tell him much. He won’t listen. He’ll tune you out. He has ears but he will not hear. And when you talk to him, it’s like pouring water on a rock. It’s like talking to a brick wall.
But not only does he delight in his scorning, not only does he defy instruction, but he literally despises the good and the godly. Look in chapter 15 verse 12, “A scorner loveth not the one that reproveth him; neither will he go unto the wise.” A scorner will never come to his dad and say, “Dad, I need help. Will you help me out?” He’ll never go to his teacher, his pastor, his youth pastor and say, “Will you help me?” Oh no. As a matter of fact, when you try to correct the scorner what’s going to happen is, he is going to look at you and he’s going to say with his eyes, “I hate your guts.” Rebuke a scorner and he will insult you.
Turn to Proverbs chapter 9 and verses 7 and 8. I told you that you were going to be turning a lot, so just do it. Listen to it, “He that reproveth a scorner getteth himself shame and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot. Reprove not a scorner lest he hate thee. Rebuke a wise man and he will love thee.” And so, you just rebuke a scorner and he will fire back at you. You cannot tell him anything. He will shoot off the lip at you.
Now, I pray God that you’ll not raise a scorner. This message may be too late for some people already today.
Now a scorner was once simple, but he became a scorner. And what is going to happen to him is; he’s destined for destruction. Look in Proverbs chapter 13 and verse 1, “A wise son heareth his father’s instruction, but a scorner heareth not rebuke.” We’ve already read that, but now I want you to skip on down to verse 13, “Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed.” He won’t listen. And God says he’s destined for destruction. He laughs at you, but he’ll laugh his way right into Hell, and once he’s there he can’t laugh his way out. But there is some hope for the scorner. The scorner’s very hard to reach. But the scorner can be reclaimed.
But now I want you to think about the third category. First we said there was the simple, the naive, the open, the carefree. He becomes then the smart aleck, the scorner if he’s not taught. But then the scorner becomes a fool. Now go back to the text again in Proverbs chapter 1 and look at in verse 22, “How long ye simple ones will ye love simplicity?” The simple one loves his carefree life. And the scorners delight in their scorning. The smart aleck gets his jollies out of his scorning. But now notice, “And fools hate knowledge.” Now here’s the difference. The scorner is insolent, but the fool is immovable.
Now notice what he does. The fool rejects wisdom. He hates wisdom. Look in Proverbs chapter 15 and verse 14, “The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh
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HOW TO BE THE FATHER OF A WISE CHILD | PROVERBS 1:1-5, 20-22 | #1932
knowledge, but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness.” Now, they love foolishness. They literally feed on foolishness.
He literally rejects wisdom and then he ridicules righteousness. Look in Proverbs 14 verse 9, “Fools make a mock at sin.” “Fools make a mock at sin.” That’s the reason that you have these situational comedies that laugh at drunkenness; that laugh at adultery, that mock homosexuality and perversion. They mock at sin. Do you know who does that? Fools. Fools make a mock at sin. That’s what the Bible says. He rejects wisdom, he ridicules righteousness, but he’s not finished yet.
He literally rejoices in iniquity. Proverbs 15 verses 20 and 21, look at that, “A wise son maketh a glad father, but a foolish man despiseth his mother. Folly is a joy to him that is destitute of wisdom.” He, he just actually rejoices in this, this wickedness. His moral sense has been so perverted that he thinks good is evil and evil is good.
You might want to put down on your notes Isaiah chapter 5 and verse 20, “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
Now, what’s going to happen to the fool? The fool’s going to die and go to Hell. Turn to Proverbs chapter 17 and verse 10, “A reproof entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool.” You cannot beat the foolishness out of a child. Don’t even try it. Don’t even try it. Can’t be done. He won’t hear you. He is intransigent. He is fixed. His heart is hardened. His conscience is seared. His mind is defiled. Now if he were wise he could still go wrong. But if he went wrong and God chastised him, then he would repent. Hebrews 12:6, “Whom the Father loves He chastens and scourges every son whom He receiveth.”
King David sinned terribly, but King David was a wise man in spite of his sin. And when God chastised King David, King David repented, and he cried out to God for mercy. Pharaoh was a fool. And when God judged Pharaoh, Pharaoh just hardened his heart more and more and more. And if you have a child and you have raised a fool, and then you think when he’s 18 and 185 pounds that you’re going to give him a whipping, just forget it! All you’re going to do is to make him hate you all the more. A hundred stripes on the back of a fool is not going to do any good. Putting him in prison is not. He needs to be in prison if he commits a crime, but it’s not going to change him. And by the way, the purpose of prisons is not reformation, it’s punishment. But it’s not going to change him. It’s going to make society a little safer.
But you see, God gives us little children, and they’re what we call simple. But if you’re not careful, we have a society that’s going to turn him into a smart aleck. And if he does, if he’s not rescued when he’s become a scorner and a smart aleck, he’s going to become a fool and he’s going to end up in Hell. He won’t even know the difference between right and wrong.
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Well, let’s go back in the few moments that we have left and look at the simple, the naive, the carefree child. What can you do, dads, what can you do, moms, so as not to raise a fool? I want to mention four things.
Number one, you need to expound truth. Go back to Proverbs chapter 1 and look in verses 1 through 4, “The Proverbs of Solomon the son of David, King of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice and judgment and equity, to give subtly to the simple and to the young man knowledge and discretion.” That’s why God gave you the Proverbs. I have four good and godly children, but if I could start over with my children again, I would saturate them in the Proverbs. We read the Proverbs, but I believe I would saturate them in the Proverbs. I would! I would emblazon the Ten Commandments into their consciousness. I would teach them the Beatitudes, that they might learn these simple, basic truths! Expound truth! The battle is for the mind. As the child thinks, so is he.
And who is the major teacher? The major teacher is the father. You read in Deuteronomy chapter 5 where God gave the Ten Commandments, and then in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 2, God says to fathers, “Teach these commandments to your sons and to your grandsons that your family will survive and that your home will endure.”
So you’re going to have to fill in the outline, I’m just going to give you the main points. Number one, expound truth.
Number two, expose sin, expose sin. The simple will learn by example. Turn to Proverbs chapter 19 and verse 15, please. This is a key verse. Now watch this, “Smite a scorner and the simple will beware.” Underscore that. “Smite a scorner and the simple will beware. And reprove one that hath understanding and he will understand knowledge.” Now what does that mean? It means that a child who is carefree and careless, who is simple, needs to see the scorner smitten. He needs to see sin exposed and the fruit of sin, because often he does not see it. Look in Proverbs 21 verse 11, the same thing is taught, “When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise.” “When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise.” Now what does that mean? Do you know the worst thing that could happen to your child? Would be for your child to live in such a sinful society as we have and yet for your child not to see the repercussions of sin.
For example, he watches on television and he sees people sleeping together. But he never sees anybody get pregnant. He never sees an abortion. He never sees venereal disease. He never sees the breakup of a home. He doesn’t see that. He doesn’t see the scorner being smitten. He sees the guys in the bass boat hoisting a big can of beer and smacking their lips and slapping each other and hugging each other and giving each other high fives and saying, “It never gets any better than this.” That’s right. It doesn’t even get that good as a matter of fact. It always gets worse
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than that. But, Madison Avenue never shows him a drunkard in the gutter covered with vomit and flies. He doesn’t show the alcoholic with delirium tremens. He doesn’t show a man, a beered-up dad coming home and beating up his kids. Madison Avenue doesn’t do that. You see, they don’t get to see the scorner smitten. Our children today are insulated. They don’t know. That’s the reason that you need to help them to understand. You need to expose sin. Not only expound truth, but expose sin.
If you’re a dad and you’ve got a, a 9, 10, 12, 14 year old, you need to go some Friday and Saturday nights to the emergency room in the hospital about between 11 and 1:00. And let them see these people coming in after having gone through the windshield of an automobile, after having been beered-up. Let them see these people all sliced up and mangled. Take him down to skid row. Take him to the prisons. Let him see this. “Smite the scorner and the simple will learn.” He thinks he’s indestructible. He does not know. You need to pull back the veil.
You know, we have a society today that shrinks from punishing criminals, and that’s the reason why we’re producing more. Let me give you a verse of Scripture. Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 11, listen to it, this is a key verse, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily; therefore, the heart of the sons of men,” that is, your sons, “is fully set in them to do evil.” Let me give it to you again, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily.” There’s one appeal and then another appeal, and then another appeal and then another appeal.
A boy in the ghetto can see his friends standing on the street comer selling dope. He can see the undercover agent come and arrest him. He’s carried off. He’s kind of smiling as they carry him off. He’s kind of a hero. Two or three days, he’s right back on the same comer selling dope again. Now what does that say in the hearts and minds of others? They say there’s no connection between crime and punishment. Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 11, “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily; therefore, the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.” What you need to do is expound truth and expose error! Pull away the veil.
Now here’s the third thing, and I’ll get some disagreement about this, but I’m going to say it anyway. Expel scorners. Expound truth. Expose error. And expel scorners. Turn if you will to Proverbs chapter 13 and look with me in verse 20, “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. But a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” Moms and dads, underscore that. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” Turn to Proverbs 22 and verse 10, “Cast out the scorner and contention shall go out. Yea, strife and reproach shall cease.” Cast out the scorner!
Now every so often we hear that this disruptive child, for his sake, needs to be able to stay there and disrupt everybody else. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. You’re not doing him any good. You’re only feeding his ego and depravity, and you are definitely corrupting those that he is around. The Bible says, “Cast him out.”
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HOW TO BE THE FATHER OF A WISE CHILD | PROVERBS 1:1-5, 20-22 | #1932
Now listen, do not let your children hang around with scorners and fools. Just don’t do it. You help him select his friends. And that means you may have to be firm and cast out the scorner. Why? Because your child, if your child is naive, if your child is simple, they are going to be susceptible to peer pressure. And as somebody said, “It’s hard to fly with eagles when you’re surrounded with turkeys.” You just let your kids run with turkeys and the Bible says, “A companion of fools will be destroyed.”
Now peer pressure is not bad. It is good if the peers are good. So that’s all the more reason that you need to get the right kids in your home. And that’s all the more reason that you need to make your home the headquarters for happiness. You need to say, “Come in Mary, Susie, Bill, John, Martha, whomever, Michelle, come on into our house. You can have the house. You want to have a party? Have it over here. Boys, you want to raid the refrigerator, go ahead and do it. You want to break down the couch, that’s okay. You want to track the carpet, that’s okay.” Friend, those things are small compared to your children. Let you home be the happiest place on earth. And by the way, boy, when you have them there, you can monitor those friends. And when there’s a scorner, a smart aleck, or a fool, you say, “Son, there’s the sidewalk. Get on it.” That’s right. The Bible says, “Cast out the scorner and contention will cease!”
Joyce and I have always tried to have the right guests in our home and make certain when the guests are there that the children are there. If we’re having important people in our home, what I consider to be important, I don’t mean the high muckety mucks, the rich, the wealthy, and the famous. I’m talking about people who know God and love God and people of character. We want our children at the dinner table to listen to the conversation and enjoy the conversation and participate in the conversation. And friend, the Bible says that, “A companion of fools will be destroyed, but those who are around wise people will be made wise.”
Here’s the last thing, and you’re going to have to fill in the last point. But you need to expound truth. You need to expose sin. You need to expel scorners and you need to express love. You need to express love. Look in Proverbs chapter 3 and verse 12. The Bible says here, “For whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.” Love your children! Delight in them. Be positive! Don’t ever be negative. Words can hurt your children more than an open hand and a slap in the face. Learn to listen to them. Try to see life from their point of view. They’re facing things you never faced.
Be gentle. I have observed dads. I say, why is it that some children just adore and worship their dads almost, and others hate their dads? What is the difference in dads? And there’s one characteristic that I’ve almost found in all true dads whose children love and follow them; those dads are gentle, they’re gentle. And it starts when they’re children.
Can you image what a big, harsh, overbearing dad would do to a little guy? I mean, just imagine walking out of this building this morning, just imagine walking out
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HOW TO BE THE FATHER OF A WISE CHILD | PROVERBS 1:1-5, 20-22 | #1932
there, out there on the front porch is a guy 17 feet tall. You’re looking in his knee caps. And let’s say he has a voice like thunder. And he begins to talk to you and tell you what to do. My soul! Well, if he’s that big and sounds like that, one thing you sure do hope is that he’s gentle, don’t you? That’s what the children want out of their dad; somebody who’s gentle. Oh, they want a dad they can look up to. They want a dad who’s the strongest, wisest, smartest, fastest, richest, goodest dad. I know goodest is not a word. The best dad in all the world! But they want him to be gentle! Touch them, hug them, show other non-verbal language.
Be transparent. Let them know of your fears, and your joys, and your disappointments, your failures, and your goals. They already know you’re not perfect; they just don’t want you to be a phony.
And then, be available to them. Oh, l wish l had more time for that, but just take it as a priority that you’re going to be available to your child.
You say, “Pastor Rogers, very frankly I’m not adequate for what you’ve just described.” I know you’re not. I’m not adequate. Listen to me, none of us has what it takes to be this kind of a dad or mom. That’s the reason we need Jesus isn’t it? That’s the reason we need the Lord. That’s the reason we’ve got to have Christ in our hearts! Because the Christian life is not difficult, it is impossible. So there’s only one who can do it and that’s Jesus. But He will do it in us and through us if we’ll let Him. So the best thing you can do for your children is to love God will all of your heart. Give your heart to Jesus.
Let’s bow our heads in prayer. Heads are bowed and eyes are closed. If you would like to be saved today, to be a child of God, if you’d like to know that your sin is forgiven, if you would like to know that Heaven is your home, if you would like to have the power and wisdom that Jesus alone can give, I want to help you to invite Christ into your heart and trust Him. Would you pray like this? “Dear Lord, I need You. I need to be saved. I’m a sinner. My sin deserves judgment. But l need mercy, not judgment. I want You to forgive me, God. I want You to cleanse me. I want You to save me. Lord Jesus, You said if I would trust You, You would save me. I trust You right now, right this moment. I don’t ask for a sign. I don’t look for a feeling. I just stand on Your Word, and I receive You now as my Lord and Savior. Come into my heart, forgive my sin, save me Jesus.” Pray that prayer. Pray it. Pray it from your heart. “Save me, Jesus.” Pray it. Ask Him to save you. “Save me, Jesus.” Did you ask Him? By faith, pray this way, “Thank You for saving me, Lord Jesus. I receive it by faith, like a little child. You’re now my Lord and Savior. Give me the courage to make it public. In Your name I pray, Amen.”

 

 

 

–

Mitchell’s Law and Insulin Prices

 

Milton Friedman’s FREE TO CHOOSE “The Tyranny of Control” Transcript and Video (60 Minutes)

In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount.  I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?”  and “Created Equal”  and  From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market. Milton Friedman shows how government planning and detailed control of economic activity lessens productive innovation and consumer choice.

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In this first episode Milton Friedman asserts, “Adam Smith’s flash of genius was to see how prices that emerged in the market, the prices of goods, the wages of labor, the cost of transport, could coordinate the activities of millions of independent people, strangers to one another, without anybody telling them what to do. His key idea was that self-interest could produce an orderly society benefiting everybody. It was as though there were an invisible hand at work. The invisible hand is a phrase that was introduced by Adam Smith in his great book, The Wealth of Nations, in which he talked about the way in which individuals, who intended only to pursue their own interests, were led by an invisible hand to promote the public welfare which was no part of their intention. He was talking about the economic market. About the market in which people buy and sell. He was pointing out that in order for a butcher or a baker or a candlestick maker to make an income, he had to produce something that somebody wanted to buy. Therefore, in the process of promoting his own interests and looking to his own profit, he ended up serving the interests of his customers.”

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.2 (1/7) – The Tyranny of Control

Last week in this film series the distinguished economist Milton Friedman took us to Hong Kong to see a free market system in which he had a great deal of confidence and faith. This week he takes us traveling again to India, Japan and to Europe to see what happens in his view when governments think they can plan and control the economic activities of their peoples.

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FREE TO CHOOSE 2: “Tyranny of Control” (Milton Friedman)Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman
Posted on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 3:02:09 PM by Choose Ye This Day

FREE TO CHOOSE: Tyranny of Control

Friedman: It is harvest time and Japanese farmers gather their crops for the rice market in Kyoto. Of course, they will try to get as much for it as possible and the buyer’s will try to buy it as cheaply as possible. That is how markets are supposed to work. That is what Adam Smith, the Scotsman who turned economics into a modern science, observed 200 years ago. He observed something else too.

Adam Smith: In every country it is always and must be in the interest of the great body of people to buy whatever they want of those who set it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it. Nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers, confounded common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of people.

Friedman: Adam Smith’s flash of genius was to see how prices that emerged in the market, the prices of goods, the wages of labor, the cost of transport, could coordinate the activities of millions of independent people, strangers to one another, without anybody telling them what to do.

His key idea was that self-interest could produce an orderly society benefiting everybody. It was as though there were an invisible hand at work.

The invisible hand is a phrase that was introduced by Adam Smith in his great book, The Wealth of Nations, in which he talked about the way in which individuals, who intended only to pursue their own interests, were led by an invisible hand to promote the public welfare which was no part of their intention. He was talking about the economic market. About the market in which people buy and sell. He was pointing out that in order for a butcher or a baker or a candlestick maker to make an income, he had to produce something that somebody wanted to buy. Therefore, in the process of promoting his own interests and looking to his own profit, he ended up serving the interests of his customers.

When Adam Smith published The Wealth Of Nations, Britain was still a largely rural and placid place. But the Industrial Revolution was already getting started and standards of life were beginning to rise. One obstacle was that trade with other nations was still tightly controlled. Merchants in the home market had persuaded the government of the day to impose heavy duties and taxes on all foreign imports in order to insure themselves a protected market.

One of the results was to turn Britain into a nation of lawbreakers. Smuggling was a national past time: brandy, wines, tobacco, anything with a heavy customs duty on it. For years, the revenue men fought a losing battle along the shores and inlets of the British Isles.

In 1846, after years of argument and partial success, the followers of Adam Smith finally persuaded the British Parliament to remove all duties on goods imported from abroad. Britain embarked on complete free trade, giving a further push to the rising standard of life.

What happened in Britain as a consequence of releasing the tremendous force of self-interest, had the unintended effect of benefiting millions of people all over the world, and by 1851 the evidence was proudly on show at the great Crystal Palace Exhibition.

Free trade enabled Britain to become the work place of the world. But was it all an accident? I don’t think it was. Consider what happened in 1868 on the other side of the world in Japan. For the preceding 300 years, the Japanese had lived in almost complete isolation. They had discouraged visitors from other nations, especially from the West. The result was that by the standards of the West, Japan was backward. It was a feudal society with lords and serfs and woe betide anyone who tried to change the order of things. Women were third class citizens.

In 1868, a new generation of rulers decided that the time had come for Japan to make contact with the outside world. And with the arrival of the first foreign traders from the West, things began to change. The Japanese followed the British trading pattern because Britain was a leading nation of the world. So free trade came to Japan. Japan became a magnet for other people’s ideas and developments.

One of the first traditional industries to feel the effects was weaving. From Europe, the Japanese imported the jacquard method __ a way of programming a loom to control the accuracy of the weave, and so the standardized output. Workers did well in the new atmosphere and so did their employers. The adoption of mass production techniques meant that workers were able to move out of the traditional industries and into the new industries, which all added to the trade boom. None of us can help being effected by the intellectual atmosphere that we breathe. In the middle of the 19th century, when Japan ended her self-imposed isolation and entered the modern age, it never occurred to her leaders to follow any other course than that of free enterprise and free markets. That was the intellectual atmosphere of the time, created by Britain’s success in applying the principles of Adam Smith.

In 1948, when India achieved independence, her leaders had all been trained in Great Britain. They had sat at the feet of Harold Laski and his associates at the London School of Economics, or of their counterparts at Oxford and Cambridge. It never occurred to them to follow any other course than that of central planning and government control. That was the intellectual atmosphere of the time. The intellectual seed took root. As it grew, it needed to be honored, even worshiped.

Every year on the anniversary of Gandhi’s birth, people all over India do just that __ in homage to the great Mahatma, they sit and spin using methods handed down through the centuries.

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In this episode Milton Friedman asserted, “Central planning, in practice, has condemned India’s masses to poverty and misery. We know what has happened in Japan. Free trade set off a process that revolutionized Japan and the lives of its people. Improvements in material well-being went hand in hand with the elimination of the rigid social structure of a century ago. It’s no accident. As always, economic freedom promotes human freedom.”

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.2 (2/7) – The Tyranny of Control

But it is more than just a symbol of honoring the past. It typifies the policy that they are actually following.

The new government in 1948 decided that India’s traditional weaving industry and its workers should be protected from 20th century industrialization. What were the consequences of that policy? This is India today, 30 years after winning independence. These are scenes of a very typical Indian community __ one of thousands. It is called “Anicaputar” and it is about 1,000 miles south of the capital, New Delhi. This is not the kind of life the government intended to perpetuate. But it is one result of their policy. By subsidizing the cotton that the villagers spin and the cloth that they weave, they made it difficult for modern industry to develop.

This is sizing. It’s an essential technique in cloth production where the yarn is smoothed clean. A modern machine could do the same thing in a hundredth of the time. The result of government planning to modernize industry is that the number of hand looms roughly doubled in the first thirty years after India’s independence. Today, in thousands of villages throughout India, the sound of hand looms can be heard from early in the morning until late at night. In this village alone, there are more than 3,000 hand looms in operation.

Since 1948, three generations of villagers have sat at these looms making cloth with patterns that never vary, using methods that never change. There is nothing wrong with this activity, provided it survives the test of the market, provided it is the way in which these people can use their abilities and their energies most effectively. After all, in Japan, where the government has not specially encouraged the hand loom industry, there remains a very small, but very productive hand loom segment. The trouble here is that this industry exists only because the government has subsidized and supported it because it has in effect imposed taxes, direct and indirect, on the rest of the people of India, people who are no better off than these people are in order to enable this activity to continue.

Other industries, both textile industries and industries of a variety of kinds, have been restricted, explicitly kept back, prevented from providing more productive employment in order to make room for this industry. The effect has been to inhibit the development, to prevent the growth, to prevent the dynamic activity that could otherwise develop out of the energies and the abilities to the people of India. This looks like a factory, but it is also home for the people who work here. When they are not sitting at their looms, they eat and sleep in a corner of this hut.

Throughout the world, governments always profess to be forward-looking. In practice, they are always backward-looking. Either protecting the industries that exist, or making sure that whatever ventures they have decided to undertake, are encouraged and developed. This occurs at the expense of the kind of healthy development of new, dynamic, adapted industries that would surely occur if the market were allowed to operate freely. If it were allowed to separate out the unsuccessful ventures from the successful ones. Discouraging the unsuccessful and encouraging the successful.

India has tremendous economic and human potential, every bit as much as Japan had a century ago. The human tragedy is that in India, that potential has been stifled by the straightjacket imposed by an all-wise and paternalistic government.

Central planning, in practice, has condemned India’s masses to poverty and misery. We know what has happened in Japan. Free trade set off a process that revolutionized Japan and the lives of its people. Improvements in material wellbeing went hand in hand with the elimination of the rigid social structure of a century ago. It’s no accident. As always, economic freedom promotes human freedom.

And in the meantime, what has happened to the Japanese weaving industry? This is how textiles start life in a Japanese weaving shed today. A design for cloth is placed on a drum. As it revolves, it is scanned by an electric eye. Each color, each variation in the pattern and texture is transmitted faithfully to a computer. It’s all that the modern loom of Japan requires. This loom is fitted with electronics that make it one of the most sophisticated of its sort in the world. The fabric that it produces is the best silk of its kind.

Thanks to the speed and efficiency of these machines, the price of the silk is competitive. The workers are highly skilled and well paid. With the new technology, there is very little __ a loom like this cannot produce. This piece will become the sash of a traditional bridal gown. These are machine-made products. But by any standards, they are beautiful. They can stand comparison with the very finest work of the hand loom. And it’s not merely the end product itself that is remarkable. The sophisticated technology which was developed to make all of this possible, has been adapted to other processes. Part of the self-generating development under free enterprise, and it all stems from an ancient, traditional industry __ weaving __ that imported a new method for controlling its looms when Japan turned to free trade more than a century ago.

Yet, believe it or not, many still maintain today that markets cannot be left to operate freely. That they must be controlled by government. This dockside is in Scotland, a British government, a socialist government decided that its role was to protect the workers here from competition. So down there in governed shipyards, they are building these vessels for the Polish government. To get the order, the British government is using the money of British taxpayers to subsidize the work. In other words, British people are making these ships in order to sell them at a loss to the Poles. Not only the Poles, but we also in America benefit from this kind of philanthropy.

The steel industry in the United States makes a fine profit. Other countries do too. And their steel is often cheaper, sometimes because their taxpayers subsidize it. So, why shouldn’t the American consumer buy steel wherever he can get it cheapest __ at home or abroad. The American steel industry works very hard trying to persuade us that it’s not in our self-interest to buy in the cheapest market. They urge the government to restrict what they call unfair competition, though, of course, they recognize that there are dangers in this.

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In this episode Milton Friedman asserts, “When anyone complains about unfair competition, consumers beware. That is really a cry for special privilege always at the expense of the consumer. What we needed in this country is free competition. As consumers, buying in an international market, the more unfair the competition the better. That means lower prices and better quality for us. If foreign governments want to use their taxpayers money to sell people in the United States goods below cost, why should we complain? Their own taxpayers will complain soon enough and it will not last for very long.”

_______________________________________

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.2 (3/7) – The Tyranny of Control

Richard P. Simmons, Industry Specializing Steel Committee: The dilemma of asking our government for assistance in this problem of unfair competition bothers many of us because the sword does cut both ways. But we believe that what we have attempted to do is far different than the kinds of direct government involvement that occur in many of the foreign nations around the world where the governments provide direct financial assistance in the form of either ownership or loans or subsidies in some fashion or another.

What we have attempted to do is simply to get our government to enforce the United States laws against unfair competition that have been on the United States’ books. We draw clear distinction between that and, for example, the several hundred million dollars that the French government has granted to the French steel companies, or that the British Steel Corporation has received $1.3 billion for capital investment this year. So that while we are uneasy in any way interfacing with our government in what we traditionally believe are the free enterprise prerogatives, yet what we are only asking for is that the government enforce the laws that our Congress has passed. I’m not sure that’s really any different than asking someone to arrest someone that commits a crime. I don’t think we would be accused of being reactionary if we reported somebody who was stealing, to the police if it were in violation of a U.S. law. We think that we’re doing exactly the same thing when we bring cases against foreign producers who we believe are violating U.S. laws.

Friedman: The fallacy with that argument is that it begs the real question. Why should there be laws that in effect prevent you and me from buying in the cheapest market?

When anyone complains about unfair competition, consumers beware. That is really a cry for special privilege always at the expense of the consumer. What we needed in this country is free competition. As consumers, buying in an international market, the more unfair the competition the better. That means lower prices and better quality for us. If foreign governments want to use their taxpayers money to sell people in the United States goods below cost, why should we complain? Their own taxpayers will complain soon enough and it will not last for very long.

History provides lots of evidence on what happens when government protected industries compete with industries who have the operate in an open and free market. It’s almost always the government protected industries that come out second best.

Ask Sir Freddy Laker, the Englishman who introduced low cost air traffic across the Atlantic. Who were his chief competitors? They were all government protected, government financed, government regulated airlines. He came out very well, made a mint of money. And you and I have gotten cheaper travel across the Atlantic.

Nothing would promote the long run health of the steel industry, make it into a more efficient, profitable and productive industry than for the U.S. government to keep its hands off, neither providing special privileges, nor imposing special restraints. And what is true for the steel industry is true for every other industry in the country.

These women work in an industry that so far hasn’t asked for special protection __ the silicon chip industry. Every one of these small squares on this disk is a highly complicated and integrated micro circuit. An American technician examines them for defects. It is highly skilled work and she’s had a lot of training. When she has done her job, the rejects will be separated from the rest and the good circuits will be packed up and sent half way around the world to Malaysia. The product of American technological skills returns looking like this. Each micro circuit has been enclosed in ceramic by a Malaysian worker who is highly productive at this sort of work. But, the Malaysians are not able to test their product so back they come here to America to be fed into these machines.

American engineers are good at producing sophisticated machines. In an operation that lasts a fraction of a second, these machines can test every circuit, can grade it for quality, and then can sort it into one of six different categories of reliability. The invisible hand in this free market has done wonders for both the American girls and their Malaysian counterparts. And that’s not the end yet because American silicon chips are exported to many countries where foreign workers assemble them. The final product is then returned to our stores so that you and I, the consumers, can benefit from $10.00 calculators, as well as from a lot of other electronic devices that not long ago simply did not exist. When this Hi-Fi equipment first came on the market, only the rich could afford it.

But even when the international market and labor seem to work to everyone’s advantage, people still put up arguments against it. The usual argument against complete free trade is that cheap labor from abroad will take jobs away from workers at home. Well, what is cheap? A Japanese worker is paid in yen and American workers paid in dollars. How do we compare the yen with the dollars? We need some way of transforming the one into the other. That is where the exchange rate enters in __ the price of yen in terms of the dollar.

Suppose that some exchange rate, Japanese goods are in general cheaper than American goods, and we will be buying much from Japan and selling little to them. But what will the Japanese do with the extra dollars they earn? They don’t want to buy American goods. By assumption, those are all dear. They want to buy Japanese goods. But to buy Japanese goods, they need yen. Calls will come in from all over the world to places like this, offering to buy yen for dollars. But there will be more offers to buy yen than to sell yen. In order to get customers, those offering to buy will have to raise the price. The price of yen in terms of dollars will go up.

As you remember, that is what happened in 1977 and 1978. By late 1978, it took 50% more dollars to buy a given amount of yen than it had taken a year earlier. But what happens when the price of yen in terms of dollars goes up? Japanese labor is no longer so cheap. Japanese goods are no longer so attractive to American consumers. On the other hand, American labor is no longer so dear to Japanese. American goods are more attractive to the Japanese. We will export more to them. We will import less from them. New jobs will be created in export industries to replace any jobs that might have been lost in industries competing with imports. That is how a free market and foreign exchange balances trade around the world when it is permitted to operate. The problem is that more often than not free market is not permitted to operate. For reasons that seem to make sense if you don’t examine them carefully, government insists on interfering, but when they do it’s not possible to hide the harmful effects for very long.

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In this episode Milton Friedman asserts, ” What we need are constitutional restraints on the power of government to interfere with free markets in foreign exchange, in foreign trade, and in many other aspects of our lives.”

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.2 (4/7) – The Tyranny of Control

The main reason why the Japanese yen went up so sharply in price in 1977 and 1978 was because the Japanese government had been trying to prevent the yen from going up in price. In the process what might have been small disturbances were allowed to accumulate into a major gap in trade. As a result when market forces were finally permitted to operate, as sooner or later they must be, it took a major change in the yen exchange rate to bring things back into life. Why don’t governments learn, because governments never learn, only people learn, and the people who learn today may not be the people in charge of economic policy tomorrow.

As you contemplate this, you may come to agree with me, that what we need are constitutional restraints on the power of government to interfere with free markets in foreign exchange, in foreign trade, and in many other aspects of our lives.

DISCUSSION

Participants: Robert McKenzie, Moderator; Milton Friedman; Richard Deason, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; Donald Rumsfeld, President, G.D. Searle & Company; Helen Hughes, Director of Economic Studies, World Bank; Jagdish Bhagwati, Professor of Economics, MIT

McKENZIE: Now, here in Chicago, the special guests who have been watching that film have their say.

DEASON: This film has set me on edge. There is political, social, ethical considerations which do not reflect in the economic philosophy put out. There is a pervading feeling in this that the individual worker is to be totally sacrificed for the overall good of society. I see __ I don’t see how possibly you can sacrifice individuals’ for overall good of society because society is nothing but those millions and millions of individuals, put together. And nowhere is there any consideration given to the social and the ethical aspects of the free trade formula that you advocate.

McKENZIE: Let’s get other views now, around the group. What’s your reaction, Don Rumsfeld, as a businessman, to the idea that Milton Friedman’s advanced, that America ought to buy in the cheapest markets, the cheapest goods, without protecting against them?

RUMSFELD: I swore I would never even try to defend Milton Friedman. And I won’t. But let me comment, first, on Dick’s comment. It bothers me to hear social and moral arguments invoked in an issue like this, because it seems to me the measure is what actually happens to human beings. Each individual ought to be concerned about humanity. For a single individual who is unemployed, that’s a hundred percent unemployment.

DEASON: Absolutely.

RUMSFELD: And we recognize that. I recognize that. But the real world is, if you, as the film did, go to India, if you want to see things that one can describe as inhumane, and poverty, and problems of human beings, they exist. And the test ought to be, what works? What, in fact, will provide a circumstance that will be more than dynamic, and more productive in the world?

HUGHES: It is true that in the long run we would all be better off with free trade. I agree with Milton. But it’s the short run that matters, and in the short run there are serious adjustment problems. Now there’s no question that the developing countries need access to markets such as American markets. And America needs them to export so that they can export more to developing countries. American exports to developing countries have moved from something like twenty percent of total exports to thirty percent over the last ten years. But the adjustment is important, because what is happening at present is that it’s not just a random group of workers that is affected by this trade, it’s the most disadvantaged and underprivileged workers in America which are being affected; and they are, by and large, women, and members of minorities; in garments, in electronics. And I think that the adjustment consists of action on both the developing and the developed country sides. From the __ let’s take the American side. On the American side, the unions and industry, I think, have to get off discussion about moral issues and get their act in order.

BHAGWATI: I couldn’t agree more with Helen. I think there is a very valid income distributional problem involved here. Certainly society gets better off, consumers get better off as a result of cheaper imports, and I’m all for that, and there I agree completely with Milton. But if the incidence of the adjustment falls on disadvantaged groups, then you would want to do something about it, if this really becomes an ethical issue. But the other thing which I think Milton does bring up, which I disagree sharply with is: Suppose the foreign governments do subsidize and actively promote exports to you. Should you just sit back and just say, “Well, we’re going to be better off as a result of this”? I don’t think that takes into account the fact of the whole international system can break down as a result of what people perceive in pluralist economics as unfair competition emerging. And I think this is really what you’re beginning to see. So we do need some sanctions. I mean, I may receive stolen property, and I’m better off. Of course I’m better off. But if, as a result of this, I encourage theft, I think few people would agree that was something one did want to worry about.

McKENZIE: Before I call in Milton Friedman on this, a reaction to the comments?

DEASON: Yes. Really to Don and to Helen. Don, you choose to set aside, or you appear to choose to set aside the social and the ethical considerations. And __

RUMSFELD: Not at all, what I said was: You have to put the fact on a scale, that there are social and ethical considerations with a free market or without one. And the tendency is for people to invoke morality only on their side, and not to recognize that there are problems of human beings in this world that are going to occur in each case. And the measure, or the test ought to be, what actually happens out there and address that question.

DEASON: But you must, you must also very much consider the social aspect of this situation. Helen’s comment, the short-term displacement. I have a question for Milton at this point: How long do you put as a timetable on the displacement of these people, of these workers? Five years, ten years, a generation? How long will it be before overall society, you know, balances itself out and the individual is no longer hurt?

FRIEDMAN: Let me take your first __ your last question first and then go to your basic question. I have always been in favor of phasing out tariffs over a five year period, a twenty percent reduction a year for five years to give people time to adjust. Now to your fundamental issue. I thought I had heard every objection to my views imaginable, but you are the first one who has ever accused me of putting the interests of society as a whole ahead of the interests of individuals. If there is one element in my social philosophy, in my ethical philosophy that’s predominant, it is that the ultimate unit is the human being, the individual, and that society is a means whereby we jointly achieve our objectives. I would argue that the social and moral issues are all on the side of free trade, that it is you, and people like you, who introduce protection, who are the ones who are violating fundamental social and moral issues. Tell me, what trade union represents the workers who are displaced because high tariffs reduce exports from this country? Because high tariffs make steel, for example, or other goods, more expensive, as a result, those industries which use steel have fewer __ have to charge higher prices, they have fewer employees, the export industries that would grow up to balance the imports __ tell me, what union represents them? What moral and ethical view do you have about their interests?

McKENZIE: Richard Deason.

DEASON: You still haven’t answered my basic question: How long of a time period, how long of a frame __ five years, ten years, a generation? You still haven’t answered it.

FRIEDMAN: I said __ I said five years.

DEASON: Five years __

McKENZIE: Could we be clear, Milton, on this point. You’re saying, though, that tariffs should be phased out over five years regardless of the action of other countries. It’s not a sort of negotiation or anything else?

FRIEDMAN: Regardless. Regardless of the actions of other countries. So far, obviously, I would prefer to have other countries reduce their tariffs __

McKENZIE: But if they don’t move, America should move?

FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.

McKENZIE: Do you go along with that, Don Rumsfeld?

RUMSFELD: In others words, you’re against reciprocal __

FRIEDMAN: I’m not against __

RUMSFELD: __ you favor getting to truly reciprocal trade, but you’re willing to get there unilaterally?

FRIEDMAN: Yeah.

RUMSFELD: Yeah. It seems to me that it’s probably worth moving in that direction. I don’t know where I would stop. I am not __

McKENZIE: Well, it’s a five year program. Will you buy that?

RUMSFELD: Well, it seems to me that you get action, reaction. To the extent you’re doing something that makes sense for human beings, presumably, that would be persuasive with others. Presumably there would be a logical sequence where other countries would begin to sense that had a certain degree of validity in the world.

McKENZIE: Will that happen, Helen Hughes?

HUGHES: Providing you do something for the displaced workers in the country in which they’re displaced. Because if you don’t do something, if you don’t take some action, and it’s generally got to be government action, you will get such a backlash that you’ll be back in the thirties with the sort of thing that happened with high unemployment.”

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In this episode Milton Friedman asserts, “The best way to limit the control of a few is free trade on a worldwide basis. There is no measure whatsoever that would do more to prevent private monopoly development than complete free trade. It would do __ be far more effective than all the antitrust suite in the world.

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.2 (5/7) – The Tyranny of Control

McKENZIE: Could we go __ Milton. There’s a direct challenge. What would you do about displaced workers, or let the slack be taken up by other __

FRIEDMAN: I believe that you have to separate, and should separate sharply the issue of what you do about people in distress, from how you handle the industrial system. I do not believe you ought to have a special program for displaced workers. What you ought to have, and what all societies do have, is some mechanism, voluntary or governmental, which will assist people in distress. We have another program in this series which deals with exactly that issue, in which I come out, as you know, in favor of a negative income tax as a way to do it. But I think it’s a great mistake to try to link it directly with tariffs. And the reason is that many people who are displaced are not in trouble. Many of those have good alternatives. Some of them will benefit from it. There are some who will be in distress, of course, but there are always people who are in distress for all sorts of reasons. In a dynamic society, demands are going up here, demands are going up there, there is no more reason in my opinion to have a special program for those who are displaced because of the changes in demand and supply in the international scene, than because of the changes on the domestic scene.

McKENZIE: A quick reaction to that __

DEASON: Why would you want to return to a concept that this country exists, you know, had in 1900? Why would you want to return to where a few control the economic destiny of every working man and woman?

FRIEDMAN: It’s exactly the other way, Mr. Deason. The best way to limit the control of a few is free trade on a worldwide basis. There is no measure whatsoever that would do more to prevent private monopoly development than complete free trade. It would do __ be far more effective than all the antitrust suite in the world.

DEASON: I totally disagree. You would wind up with a situation like in the movie Rollerball, where corporations carved out their spheres of economic influence throughout the world, and controlled everything. It would be controlled by corporations __

FRIEDMAN: You saw the __

DEASON: __ in its entirety.

FRIEDMAN: Excuse me. You saw the picture of Hong Kong, didn’t you?

DEASON: Yes.

FRIEDMAN: Where are those corporations there?

McKENZIE: We might get down that alley and have difficulty in finding our way out of it. Could we move to another big theme in the film: that is, that the third world countries have, broadly speaking, made a very serious error in moving into planned economies, from beginning to end, and you use a phrase in the case of India, “Central planning has condemned the Indian masses to poverty and misery.” Now, what’s your reaction to that, sir?

BHAGWATI: I partly agree with Milton as well as I largely disagree with him. I think it is true that the invisible hand ought to be seen more in the poor countries, (Laughter) than it is, and I would like to see the iron fist disappear. Unfortunately, it’s the other way around. On the other hand, I think it cannot be maintained that laissez faire is the answer, either that it’s a necessary or a sufficient condition for development. Let me go to Milton’s examples and, you know, refer to Japan. Japan is a prime example, actually, of where the visible hand is invisible to everybody who is outside of Japan. But it’s writ large on the wall for the Japanese. The Japanese government, right from the major restoration, has taken a very active interest in the development of the country. It has regulated technology and imports. Even to this date the government and business have a strong symbiotic relationship. I think it’s just __

McKENZIE: Highly paternalistic.

BHAGWATI: __ and business is highly paternalistic. I don’t think it’s a valid example at all of what I believe was the implication of Milton’s program.

McKENZIE: Let’s bring in Helen Hughes. On this theme, has the third world made a disastrous mistake in almost unanimously moving into planned economies rather than the free market?

HUGHES: Well, first of all, it hasn’t almost unanimously moved into planned economies.

McKENZIE: Overwhelmingly so.

HUGHES: Not even overwhelmingly. I mean, India is a large country, but the majority of developing countries are not centrally planned. They have some sort of planning, and secondly, some of the countries which have been most successful have had the highest government intervention. The best examples are Taiwan, Korea, Brazil, Singapore. And even in Hong Kong, which is often held up as an example of no government intervention, I mean this is just not true. The Hong Kong government has provided the infrastructure. It has provided the roads and the ports and schools. And it’s been very important. But when you move to a country like Malawi or Papua New Guinea, you can’t do without government intervention. There is nothing there. There are no entrepreneurs in place, and the American entrepreneurs are not interested in small places like that.

FRIEDMAN: I’m not in favor of no government intervention. I never have been. I point out in the film that what the government did in Hong Kong was very important. The question is: What kind of intervention? And in the states you’ve described, in the places you have described where you’ve had success, governmental intervention has been of a rather special kind. It has provided infrastructure. It has not tried to determine the outline of industrial production, the areas in which industry should go, exactly what the allocation of __ it has not gone in for central planning.

HUGHES: Well that’s just not true in Korea. I mean, you are factually wrong because in Korea the government has actually __

FRIEDMAN: Oh, it is true in Taiwan.

HUGHES: It’s fairly true in Taiwan, but not in Korea, which has grown faster than any other country. Where Korean exports have been determined to a very large extent, by direct government intervention. I think your point is, what sort of government intervention, what for, and what are the tradeoffs between government intervention and the free market. These are the relevant issues.

McKENZIE: What is the role of government in relation to the market economy? How do you see it performing, Don Rumsfeld, do you want to see government, as it were, enforcing competition by chasing down monopoly, restrictive practices, and all the rest of it in the society?

RUMSFELD: The record’s clear that they don’t do it well. They can’t manage the __

McKENZIE: But does that mean they shouldn’t do it at all, or do it better?

RUMSFELD: Take the wage price controls in the United States of America, I happen to have been involved, and I don’t say it with any great pride. The real world is __ I don’t care about good intentions, I don’t care about brains, I don’t care about integrity, the fact of the matter is they’re not smart enough to manage the wages and prices of every American, 215 million strong. They can’t do it well. They do it poorly. And the weight of that is harmful. It’s graphically shown in every document issued by the Council of Economic Advisors in the United States.

McKENZIE: But what about the additional question, though, does the government properly, in this or elsewhere, insure competition by other devices. I’m not talking now about price control, wage control, but insuring competition rather than permitting price fixing or agreements and monopoly. What do you feel about it?

DEASON: I feel the government properly acts in that area. It must __ the government must be there to insure competition.

RUMSFELD: The government’s not smart enough __ look at the Antitrust Law. You talk about a patch __ the implementation of antitrust regulations in the United States, between the Department of Justice and the FTC. It’s a __ it’s a patchwork mess. There isn’t any logic to it. People don’t know what to do. They don’t __ they can’t get answers. They’re inhibited from mergers and consolidations that would make a lot of sense from the standpoint of the consumer.

DEASON: And would make even more sense from the point of multinational corporations.

HUGHES: I think that one of the points you’re making is that it’s very hard for the government to intervene in a very large country, like India or the United States. But compare government intervention in some of the small, homogenous countries of Europe or Singapore, and I think that’s very important. Switzerland has a great deal of government intervention. Sweden, Denmark, Norway __ I’ve just quoted you the four highest income countries in the world. They do have intervention to try and protect the functioning of the market system, and to make it more efficient.

BHAGWATI: Milton is absolutely right, that if you’re talking about central planning that has been disastrous. Absolutely, in terms of having targeted industrial allocations and so on; I mean there’s absolutely no doubt in anybody’s mind who has studied the problem over the last twenty years.

McKENZIE: Disasters in India, too.

BHAGWATI: In India as well, very definitely.

McKENZIE: You advised on that, didn’t you?

BHAGWATI: No, not on centralized planning, no. (Laughing)

RUMSFELD: That wasn’t a clear question anyway. (Laughter)

FRIEDMAN: That’s all right. I was over there as an advisor, too.

BHAGWATI: I’m on the side of the angels on that. For a number of years __ I’m supposed to be a friend of Milton’s there, which is disastrous. (Laughing)

DEASON: To give advice is one thing. To have it taken is a different one.

FRIEDMAN: I agree very much with what Helen Hughes has said, that the more homogenous the country, the less harm the government will do by intervening. I don’t believe it does positive good. I just simply believe it does less harm. But, as to antitrust __

McKENZIE: Yeah.

FRIEDMAN: I am in favor of the laws which make agreements and restraint of trade illegal.

McKENZIE: Yes.

FRIEDMAN: Most of the rest of the antitrust apparatus has promoted monopoly instead of hindered monopoly. If you look at where there are monopolistic elements in the world, and in the United States, including the multinationals you want to refer to, in almost every case that monopoly derived from a special grant by government. And therefore, the problem is not how does government enforce competition, how do you keep government from setting up monopolies? That’s the real problem, if you look at the real world, and not at the preamble, the language, of antitrust measures and similar laws.

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In this episode Milton Friedman asserts:

I think the United States would prosper in a way that is hardly imaginable today. It would be an example and a beacon to the rest of the world. What kind of sense does it make, here we are supposedly the leaders of the world. We are the ones who promote freedom, and free enterprise, and individual initiative. And what do we do? We force puny little Hong Kong to impose limits, restrictions on its exports at tariffs, in order to protect our textile workers. We go to Japan, and we say to Japan, “For God sakes, you got to limit the number of television sets you come out.” Instead of doing that, we ought to be setting an example to the world, and if we set the kind of an example to the world that Great Britain set to the world in the 19th century, it would be a tremendous __ it would have a tremendous impact, it would strengthen our moral position in the world, it would strengthen our ethical position in the world.

________________________________

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.2 (6/7) – The Tyranny of Control

McKENZIE: How close are you to what Deason was saying a moment ago in this area? He would seem to be arguing with you that there was a responsibility to make competition work.

FRIEDMAN: The responsibility is to set up a framework of laws and of arrangements, under which competition will flourish. And the most __

McKENZIE: Inevitably flourish? I mean, or __

FRIEDMAN: Well, so far as I know, I don’t know of any case in history in which monopolies have been able to maintain themselves for very long without having government assistance directly come in on their side. The trade union monopolies that Mr. Deason represents would never have the kind of power they do now if it weren’t for the special privileges which government has granted to them. I can perfectly well understand his being in favor of such action, of antitrust action by the government, because it really is pro-monopoly action, in the main.

DEASON: Why were those exemptions to monopoly laws given to unions?

FRIEDMAN: Because of the political power of unions, of course. I’m not questioning that.

DEASON: and because __ and because of the tremendous imbalance of power of companies at the time that unions were getting their start.

McKENZIE: There’s one concluding idea toward the end of your script that I’d like to look at, because it seemed to me to be most provocative. You talked about the need for constitutional restraints on governments to prevent them interfering in foreign exchange free markets, and in foreign trade. Now what have you in mind, Milton, when you say “constitutional restraints”?

FRIEDMAN: I __ no doubt what I have in mind if I, if I could persuade the public, I would like it to adopt a constitutional amendment strictly parallel to the constitutional prohibition in the text of the constitution, against the central government __ I’m sorry, against state governments imposing tariffs on imports. I would like to have a constitutional amendment which would read, “The Congress shall not impose any taxes, any taxes on imports, or give any subsidies to exports, except such as may be necessary,” I think the wording of the constitution is that the states are permitted to do it if it’s necessary for inspection. That’s the excuse under which California inspects you every time you drive past to see whether you’re carrying any plants or fruits or vegetables.

DEASON: Milton, let me ask you a question: How long do you think that the United States would survive if the United States enacted what you would like to have?

FRIEDMAN: I think the United States would prosper in a way that is hardly imaginable today. It would be an example and a beacon to the rest of the world. What kind of sense does it make, here we are supposedly the leaders of the world. We are the ones who promote freedom, and free enterprise, and individual initiative. And what do we do? We force puny little Hong Kong to impose limits, restrictions on its exports at tariffs, in order to protect our textile workers. We go to Japan, and we say to Japan, “For God sakes, you got to limit the number of television sets you come out.” Instead of doing that, we ought to be setting an example to the world, and if we set the kind of an example to the world that Great Britain set to the world in the 19th century, it would be a tremendous __ it would have a tremendous impact, it would strengthen our moral position in the world, it would strengthen our ethical position in the world. Instead of giving money to underdeveloped countries to produce products which we then refuse to buy and don’t let them export to us, we would be saying to the rest of the world, “If you produce anything, if you can produce anything and have a market here, come, we’re delighted to buy it, and we’ll produce things for you to buy.” That’s the kind of a pattern I would like to see the United States establish.

McKENZIE: Would your members buy that?

DEASON: Never. That’s a __

FRIEDMAN: Never is a long word, sir.

DEASON: Yes, you’re right.

FRIEDMAN: __ and you must distinguish between __

DEASON: And one should never say never.

FRIEDMAN: Your union officials would not buy it. But I am not sure your members wouldn’t.

DEASON: My members would not. No. My members would never buy it either. I cannot conceive of the United States setting itself up to become a target for the rest of the world.

FRIEDMAN: It’s not a target.

DEASON: There would be absolutely nothing that would require or compel any other country to enact any reciprocal agreements relative to tariffs__

FRIEDMAN: That’s right.

DEASON: __ and until such time as they have succeeded in dumping in the United States __ and I used dumping in the broadest sense of the word __ any and every product, either government subsidized by a foreign government, either put there because of multinational corporations manufacturing facilities in a foreign country, until they have succeeded in absolutely draining us dry __

FRIEDMAN: Draining us dry of what?

DEASON: Of every __ of every asset.

FRIEDMAN: How?

DEASON: Of every __

FRIEDMAN: What would they do with the dollars they got?

DEASON: They’d probably buy up, as they are now, as they __

FRIEDMAN: If they bought up __

RUMSFELD: The choice farmland.

FRIEDMAN: Yes. Yes.

McKENZIE: Let’s broaden this. On this very argument, now and a constitutional amendment argument. We’ve learned from our union friend he would __ can’t sell it and won’t sell it. Would business buy it?

RUMSFELD: Oh, no! They __ speaking __ (Several people talking at once.)

RUMSFELD: I’m not saying whether I’d buy it. No, no, but if business would help, which is the question. No, when I __ I speak not as a businessman, but as an ex-government employee, whenever proposals like that came up, one of the first things people see happen is government __ business and labor come in in lockstep, saying, “Horrors, horrors, the sky is falling.” There’s a commonality of interests there and people get used to what is, they get terribly conservative, and they know how to work the system the way it exists, and particularly the big unions and the big business, and they get very satisfied with it, they can manage it pretty well, and any time you try to unravel any kind of regulation or restriction or government intrusion, they’re philosophically for it, but in the practical world, they don’t want you to change the drill, they just figured out how to work this. Why should you then change it and make it all the more complicated. No, I think you’d get a good deal of reaction, just like you did out of the steel company in your television show.

McKENZIE: And what would the international reaction, do you think, as an international economist. Supposing Milton got his amendment, constitutional amendment, which had that effect, how would other countries react to it?

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In this episode Milton Friedman asserts, “I’m not pro business. I’m pro free enterprise, which is a very different thing, and the reason I’m pro free enterprise.”

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.2 (7/7) – The Tyranny of Control

HUGHES: Well, I think Milton’s fundamental example of why not be like Britain in the 19th century is wrong. Britain in the 19th century was THE industrialized country; it was well ahead of everybody else __

McKENZIE: Many decades ahead.

HUGHES: __ many decades ahead of everybody else, and it was making larger profits, larger economic rents on its production, and it was doing it at very great cost to the workers in Britain. The workers in Britain were greatly exploited under those circumstances, and we don’t want to go back to that. The international situation is much more complex, and countries __ there are countries at different levels of development, countries with different social systems, and countries with different social objectives, so I think that the solution, you know, is wrongly founded, and it’s millenarian, it’s utopian. I think that we have to think of a much more realistic process of discussions, negotiation, such as has taken place through that, to get to where we’re going, without hurting the people who pay for the adjustment, and that is basically the workers, not the economists.

RUMSFELD: Could I just comment briefly?

McKENZIE: Yeah.

RUMSFELD: I worry about the argument that because of the complexities of international relations, that therefore they must be planned and managed. By definition, we’re not capable of managing the world economy. Each instance when we try to do it, it doesn’t work out quite the way we intended.

FRIEDMAN: I don’t apologize for a moment for setting __ for being millenarian; because I think unless we know where we want to go, the timid steps that we take in that direction will go in the wrong direction. And if we’re gonna go in the right direction, we ought to have a view. But I want to be sure to get down on the record a very strong objection to the statement of fact by Helen Hughes about 19th century Britain. I believe it is simply wrong. The workers were not exploited. The studies that have been done recently have shown over and over again that the 19th century was a period in which the ordinary English worker experienced a very rapid and very substantial rise in his standard of life. England did not stand alone. Japan had complete free trade for thirty years after the major restoration. Japan in more recent years has not. Japan in more recent years is not an example I would cite. But in its early years it had complete free trade. So I don’t believe England stands alone. Now on the more __

McKENZIE: Politics of it.

FRIEDMAN: On the politics of it, of course it’s not politically feasible, why? Because it’s only in the general interest and in nobody’s special interest. Each of us is fundamentally __ has more concern with our role as a producer of one product than we have as a consumer of a thousand and one products. The benefits of a tariff are visible. Mr. Deason can see that his workers are quote “protected.” The harm which a tariff does is invisible. It’s spread widely. There are people who don’t have jobs because of the tariff, but they don’t know they don’t have jobs. There’s nobody who can organize them. Consumers all over are paying a little more for this, that and the other thing. They don’t recognize that the reason they’re paying for it is because of the tariff. The businessmen? I have never been in __ I’m not pro business. I’m pro free enterprise, which is a very different thing, and the reason I’m pro free enterprise __

RUMSFELD: Don’t point at me when you say that. (Laughter)

FRIEDMAN: No, no. I don’t mean to point to you, Don. I point to the business community, because you are an exception. Because that __

McKENZIE: But he conceded there was a tacit alliance because that way __

FRIEDMAN: Oh there’s __

McKENZIE: __to prevent you from achieving your purpose.

FRIEDMAN: Oh, there’s no doubt that there’s such an alliance. In my opinion, the strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. It forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.

McKENZIE: Well, there we must leave the argument for this week, and I hope you’ll join us again for the next episode of Free to Choose.

Related posts:

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Proverbs 12New Living Translation

12 To learn, you must love discipline;
    it is stupid to hate correction.

² The Lord approves of those who are good,
    but he condemns those who plan wickedness.

³ Wickedness never brings stability,
    but the godly have deep roots.

⁴ A worthy wife is a crown for her husband,
    but a disgraceful woman is like cancer in his bones.

⁵ The plans of the godly are just;
    the advice of the wicked is treacherous.

⁶ The words of the wicked are like a murderous ambush,
    but the words of the godly save lives.

⁷ The wicked die and disappear,
    but the family of the godly stands firm.

⁸ A sensible person wins admiration,
    but a warped mind is despised.

⁹ Better to be an ordinary person with a servant
    than to be self-important but have no food.

¹⁰ The godly care for their animals,
    but the wicked are always cruel.

¹¹ A hard worker has plenty of food,
    but a person who chases fantasies has no sense.

¹² Thieves are jealous of each other’s loot,
    but the godly are well rooted and bear their own fruit.

¹³ The wicked are trapped by their own words,
    but the godly escape such trouble.

¹⁴ Wise words bring many benefits,
    and hard work brings rewards.

¹⁵ Fools think their own way is right,
    but the wise listen to others.

¹⁶ A fool is quick-tempered,
    but a wise person stays calm when insulted.

¹⁷ An honest witness tells the truth;
    a false witness tells lies.

¹⁸ Some people make cutting remarks,
    but the words of the wise bring healing.

¹⁹ Truthful words stand the test of time,
    but lies are soon exposed.

²⁰ Deceit fills hearts that are plotting evil;
    joy fills hearts that are planning peace!

²¹ No harm comes to the godly,
    but the wicked have their fill of trouble.

²² The Lord detests lying lips,
    but he delights in those who tell the truth.

²³ The wise don’t make a show of their knowledge,
    but fools broadcast their foolishness.

²⁴ Work hard and become a leader;
    be lazy and become a slave.

²⁵ Worry weighs a person down;
    an encouraging word cheers a person up.

²⁶ The godly give good advice to their friends;^[a]
    the wicked lead them astray.

²⁷ Lazy people don’t even cook the game they catch,
    but the diligent make use of everything they find.

²⁸ The way of the godly leads to life;
    that path does not lead to death.

God’s Miracle Medicine

Sermon Overview

Scripture Passage: Proverbs 12:25

A heavy heart is the beginning of misery, and we were never meant to carry the load.

A burdened soul breaks the spirit. A broken spirit thins the immunity of the body. The body then begins to wither, and we get ill. In fact, studies have shown that emotions largely contribute to one’s overall state of health. Doctors call it Emotionally Induced Illness (E.I.I.), and it is the idea that physical sickness can be a result of emotional illness.

The entire body is affected by a heavy heart. But God has given us a remedy for the soul, the spirit, and the body. And it is good medicine…Joy!

Not mere laughter, not mere joking, not mere fun and games, but deep, abiding joy is our strongest medicine and greatest weapon. Joy doesn’t depend upon material things or circumstances. It doesn’t depend upon thrills. It comes straight from the heart.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus spoke of the joy in His own heart, and He promised to give us a dose of it; not just some cheap imitation… He wants to give us the real thing. “My joy have I given unto you.” Jesus said, “I want that joy to remain in you.” 

We don’t root our happiness in circumstances, because those can change in an instant and leave us emotionally stranded. We root our joy in Christ alone, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) 

“Without joy, life is meaningless!” Acclaimed pastor and teacher, Adrian Rogers says, “That joy is found only in Jesus. And we ought to share the secret, the source of our joy —the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Apply it to your life

Joy is something freely given, but it must be received, day by day. Today, seek it out through prayer and in Scripture. Let it be seen in your countenance as you go about your day, and share it with someone else.

This message is a part of this audio series.

• God’s Way to Health, Wealth and Wisdom – October 2019

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

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

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

Thanks for the insights.

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

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

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Take a look at this piece of evidence from the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop at this link!

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

Think about sexuality. The bible says that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). It is assumed that Adam and Eve were heterosexual, because they were commanded to “replenish the earth.” Jesus made the same assumption: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said ‘for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (This is also sexist, from the male point of view.) In the bible, anything outside of binary heterosexuality is condemned as an abomination.

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I am very familiar with the METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY CHURCH and their view the the Bible affirms homosexuality. Evidently you dont buy that and neither do I. I am glad you and can find agreement on this!

I heard Greg Koukl talk on this subject and he did a great job. Especially notice the section entitled, “Natural Desire or Natural Function?”

The first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans contains what most readers consider the Bible’s clearest condemnation of same-sex relations.  Recent scholarship reads the same text and finds just the opposite.  Who is right?

Paul, Romans and Homosexuality

 by Greg Koukl

      To most readers, the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans contains the Bible’s clearest condemnation of same-sex relations–both male and female.  Recent scholarship, though, reads the same text and finds just the opposite–that homosexuality is innate and therefore normal, moral, and biblical.

Reconstructing Romans

In Romans, Paul seems to use homosexuality as indicative of man’s deep seated rebellion against God and God’s proper condemnation of man.  New interpretations cast a different light on the passage.

Paul, the religious Jew, is looking across the Mediterranean at life in the capital of Graeco-Roman culture.  Homosexuality in itself is not the focus of condemnation.  Rather, Paul’s opprobrium falls upon paganism’s refusal to acknowledge the true God.

It’s also possible Paul did not understand the physiological basis of genuine homosexuality.  John Boswell, professor of history at Yale, is among those who differ with the classical interpretation.  In Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexualityhe writes:

The persons Paul condemns are manifestly not homosexual:  what he derogates are homosexual acts committed by apparently heterosexual persons….It is not clear that Paul distinguished in his thoughts or writings between gay persons (in the sense of permanent sexual preference) and heterosexuals who simply engaged in periodic homosexual behavior.  It is in fact unlikely that many Jews of his day recognized such a distinction, but it is quite apparent that–whether or not he was aware of their existence–Paul did not discuss gay persons but only homosexual acts committed by heterosexual persons.[1]  [emphasis in the original]

Paul is speaking to those who violate their natural sexual orientation, Boswell contends, those who go against their own natural desire:  “‘Nature’ in Romans 1:26, then, should be understood as the personal nature of the pagans in question.”[2]  [emphasis in the original]

Since a homosexual’s natural desire is for the same sex, this verse doesn’t apply to him.  He has not chosen to set aside heterosexuality for homosexuality; the orientation he was born with is homosexual.  Demanding that he forsake his “sin” and become heterosexual is actually the kind of violation of one’s nature Paul condemns here.

Romans 1:18-27

Both views can’t be correct.  Only a close look at the text itself will give us the answer.  The details of this passage show why these new interpretations are impossible:[3]

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.  For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them.  For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Let me start by making two observations.  First, this is about God being mad:  “For the wrath of God [orge] is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men….”

Second, there is a specific progression that leads to this “orgy” of anger.  Men “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (v. 18).  They exchanged “the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (v. 25).  Next, “God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity…” (v. 24).  They “exchanged the natural [sexual] function for that which is unnatural (v. 26).  Therefore, the wrath of God rightly falls on them (v. 18); they are without excuse (v. 20).

This text is a crystal clear condemnation of homosexuality by the Apostle Paul in the middle of his most brilliant discourse on general revelation.  Paul is not speaking to a localized aberration of pedophilia or temple prostitution that’s part of life in the capital of Graeco-Roman culture.  He is talking about a universal condition of man.

Regarding the same-sex behavior itself, here are the specific words Paul uses:  a lust of the heart, an impurity and dishonoring to the body (v. 24); a degrading passion that’s unnatural (v. 29); an indecent act and an error (v. 27); not proper and the product of a depraved mind (v. 28).

There’s only one way the clear sense of this passage can be missed:  if someone is in total revolt against God.  According to Paul, homosexual behavior is evidence of active, persistent rebellion against one’s Creator.  Verse 32 shows it’s rooted in direct, willful, aggressive sedition against God–true of all so-called Christians who are defending their own homosexuality.  God’s response is explicit:  “They are without excuse” (v. 20).

Born Gay?

What if one’s “natural” desire is for the same sex, though.  What if his homosexuality is part of his physical constitution?  There are four different reasons this is a bad argument.  The first three are compelling; the fourth is unassailable.

First, this rejoinder assumes there is such a thing as innate homosexuality.  The scientific data is far from conclusive, though.  Contrary to the hasty claims of the press, there is no definitive evidence that homosexuality is determined by physiological factors (see “Just Doing What Comes Naturally,” Clear Thinking, Spring, 1997).

There’s a second problem.  If all who have a desire for the same sex do so “naturally,” then to whom does this verse apply?  If everybody is only following their natural sexual desires, then which particular individuals fall under this ban, those who are not aroused by their own gender, but have sex anyway?  Generally, for men at least, if there is no arousal, there is no sex.  And if there is arousal, according to Boswell et al, then the passion must be natural.

Third, this interpretation introduces a whole new concept–constitutional homosexuality–that is entirely foreign to the text.  Boswell himself admits that it was “in fact unlikely that many Jews of [Paul’s] day recognized such a distinction,” and that possibly even Paul himself was in the dark.

If Paul did not understand genuine homosexuality, though, then how can one say he excepted constitutional homosexuals when he wrote that they “exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural”?  This argument self-destructs.

Further, if Paul spoke only to those violating their personal sexual orientation, then wouldn’t he also warn that some men burned unnaturally towards women, and some women towards men?  Wouldn’t Paul warn against both types of violation–heterosexuals committing indecent acts with members of the same sex, and homosexuals committing indecent acts with members of the opposite sex?

What in the text allows us to distinguish between constitutional homosexuals and others?  Only one word:  “natural.”  A close look at this word and what it modifies, though, leads to the most devastating critique of all.

Natural Desire or Natural Function?

Paul was not unclear about what he meant by “natural.”  Homosexuals do not abandon natural desires; they abandon natural functions:  “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another…” (1:26-27)

The Greek word kreesis, translated “function” in this text, is used only these two times in the New Testament, but is found frequently in other literature of the time.  According to the standard Greek language reference A Greek/English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other  Early Christian Literature,[4] the word means “use, relations, function, especially of sexual intercourse.”

Paul is not talking about natural desires here, but natural functions.  He is not talking about what one wants sexually, but how one is built to operatesexually.  The body is built to function in a specific way.  Men were not built to function sexually with men, but with women.

This conclusion becomes unmistakable when one notes what men abandon in verse 27, according to Paul.  The modern argument depends on the text teaching that men abandoned their own natural desire for woman and burned toward one another.  Men whose natural desire was for other men would then be exempted from Paul’s condemnation.  Paul says nothing of the kind, though.

Paul says men forsake not their own natural desire (their constitutional make-up), but rather the “natural function of the woman..”  They abandoned the female, who was built by God to be man’s sexual compliment.

The error has nothing to do with anything in the male’s own constitution that he’s denying.  It is in the rejection of the proper sexual companion God has made for him–a woman:  “The men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts….” (v. 27)

Natural desires go with natural functions.  The passion that exchanges the natural function of sex between a man and a woman for the unnatural function of sex between a   man and a man is what Paul calls a degrading passion.

Jesus clarified the natural, normal relationship:  “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh [sexual intercourse].’?”  (Matthew 19:4-5)

Homosexual desire is unnatural because it causes a man to abandon the natural sexual compliment God has ordained for him:  a woman.  That was Paul’s view.  If it was Paul’s view recorded in the inspired text, then it is God’s view.  And if it is God’s view, it should be ours if we call ourselves Christian.

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[1]John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality(Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 109.

[2]Ibid., p. 111.

[3]Citations are from the New American Standard Bible, copyright 1977, The Lockman Foundation.

[4]Bauer, Arndt and Gingrich (University of Chicago Press).

The Rise & Fall of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun – Europe’s First Modern Woman…

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FEATURED ARTIST IS VIGEÉ LE BRUN

ÉLISABETH-LOUISE VIGÉE LE BRUN (1755-1842)

Placed between the late Rococo and the early Neoclassical, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was one of the most sought-after portraitists of her era.

Francis Schaeffer

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

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

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

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

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

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GOP Rep. Scott Perry Says FBI Agents Seized His Cellphone

Laurel Duggan  / @laureldugg / August 09, 2022

“These kinds of banana republic tactics should concern every citizen,” says Rep. Scott Perry, pictured outside the Capitol Building on Aug. 23, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., had his cellphone seized by FBI agents Tuesday, the day after the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, he told Fox News.

Agents confronted Perry while he was traveling with his family and seized his phone without making an attempt to contact his attorney, who would have turned the phone over to the authorities, he told Fox News. 

Perry suggested the actions from the FBI in both the confiscation of his cellphone and the raiding of Mar-a-Lago belonged in a corrupt, Third World country.

“As with President Trump last night, DOJ [Justice Department] chose this unnecessary and aggressive action instead of simply contacting my attorneys,” Perry told Fox. “These kinds of banana republic tactics should concern every citizen—especially considering the decision before Congress this week to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to further persecute law-abiding citizens.”

Perry’s statement comes just days after FBI agents executed a search warrant at Trump’s home in Florida, through which they reportedly seized at least 10 boxes of documents, according to The Wall Street Journal. The raid was reportedly due to documents Trump had allegedly failed to return to the National Archives, according to multiple sources.

“I’m outraged—though not surprised—that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ would seize the phone of a sitting member of Congress,” Perry said in his statement. “My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends. None of this is the government’s business.”

Perry and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

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The January 6 Insurrection Hoax

September 2021 • Volume 50, Number 9 • Roger Kimball

Roger Kimball
Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion

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Roger Kimball is editor and publisher of The New Criterionand publisher of Encounter Books. He earned his B.A. from Bennington College and his M.A. and M.Phil. in philosophy from Yale University. He has written for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Book Review, and is a columnist for The Spectator World, American Greatness, and The Epoch Times. He is editor or author of several books, including The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America, The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education, and Vox Populi: The Perils and Promises of Populism.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on September 20, 2021, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on “Critical American Elections.”

Notwithstanding all the hysterical rhetoric surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, two critical things stand out. The first is that what happened was much more hoax than insurrection. In fact, in my judgment, it wasn’t an insurrection at all.

An “insurrection,” as the dictionary will tell you, is a violent uprising against a government or other established authority. Unlike the violent riots that swept the country in the summer of 2020—riots that caused some $2 billion in property damage and claimed more than 20 lives—the January 6 protest at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. lasted a few hours, caused minimal damage, and the only person directly killed was an unarmed female Trump supporter who was shot by a Capitol Police officer. It was, as Tucker Carlson said shortly after the event, a political protest that “got out of hand.”

At the rally preceding the events in question, Donald Trump had suggested that people march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically”—these were his exact words—in order to make their voices heard. He did not incite a riot; he stirred up a crowd. Was that, given the circumstances, imprudent? Probably. Was it an effort to overthrow the government? Hardly.

I know this is not the narrative that we have all been instructed to parrot. Indeed, to listen to the establishment media and our political masters, the January 6 protest was a dire threat to the very fabric of our nation: the worst assault on “our democracy” since 9/11, since Pearl Harbor, and even—according to Joe Biden last April—since the Civil War! 

Note that phrase “our democracy”: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and various talking heads have repeated it ad nauseam. But you do not need an advanced degree in hermeneutics to understand that what they mean by “our democracy” is their oligarchy. Similarly, when Pelosi talks about “the people’s house,” she doesn’t mean a house that welcomes riff-raff like you and me.

I just alluded to Ashli Babbitt, the unarmed supporter of Donald Trump who was shot and killed on January 6. Her fate brings me to the second critical thing to understand about the January 6 insurrection hoax. Namely, that it was not a stand-alone event. 

On the contrary, what happened that afternoon, and what happened afterwards, is only intelligible when seen as a chapter in the long-running effort to discredit and, ultimately, to dispose of Donald Trump—as well as what Hillary Clinton might call the “deplorable” populist sentiment that brought Trump to power. 

In other words, to understand the January 6 insurrection hoax, you also have to understand that other long-running hoax, the Russia collusion hoax. The story of that hoax begins back in 2015, when the resources of the federal government were first mobilized to spy on the Trump campaign, to frame various people close to Trump, and eventually to launch a full-throated criminal investigation of the Trump administration. 

From before Trump took office, the Russia collusion hoax was used as a pretext to create a parallel administration shadowing the elected administration. Remember the Steele dossier, the fantastical document confected by the “well-regarded” former British spy Christopher Steele? We know now that it was the only relevant predicate for ordering FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page and other American citizens. 

But in truth, the Steele dossier was just opposition dirt covertly paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. From beginning to end, it was a tissue of lies and fabrications. Everyone involved knew all along it was garbage—rumors and fantasies fed to a gullible Steele by shady Russian sources. But it was nonetheless used to deploy, illegally, the awesome coercive power of the state against a presidential candidate of whom the ruling bureaucracy and its favored candidate disapproved. 

The public learned that the Democratic National Committee paid for the manufactured evidence only because of a court order. James Comey, the disgraced former director of the FBI, publicly denied knowing who paid for it, but emails from a year earlier prove that he knew all along. And what was the penalty for lying in Comey’s case? He got a huge book deal and toured the country denouncing Trump to the gleeful satisfaction of his anti-Trump audiences. 

What was true of Comey was also true of the entire intelligence apparat, from former CIA Director John Brennan to Congressman Adam Schiff and other Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee to senior members of the FBI. All these people said publicly that they had seen clear evidence of collusion with Russia. But they admitted under oath behind closed doors that they hadn’t.

General Michael Flynn, Trump’s original National Security Advisor, had his career ruined and was bankrupted as part of this political vendetta. Meanwhile James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, John Brennan, Peter Strzok, and all the rest of the crew at the FBI, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies suffered nothing. When it came to light that an FBI lawyer altered an email in order to help get a FISA warrant—in other words, that he doctored evidence to spy on a political opponent, which is a felony—he got probation.

The recent news that Special Counsel John Durham is indicting Michael Sussman, a lawyer who covertly worked for the Clinton campaign and lied to the FBI, is welcome news. But it seems like small beer given the rampant higher-level corruption that saturated the Russia collusion hoax.

At least 74 million citizens voted for Donald Trump in 2020, which is at least 11 million more than voted for him in 2016. Many of those voters are profoundly disillusioned and increasingly angry about this entire story—the years-long Robert Mueller “investigation,” the two impeachments of President Trump, the cloud of unknowing that surrounds the 2020 election, and the many questions that have emerged not only from the January 6 protest at the Capitol, but even more from the government’s response to that protest.

Which brings me back to Ashli Babbitt, the long-serving Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by a nervous Capitol Police officer. Babbitt was a useful prop when the media was in overdrive describing the January 6 events as an “armed insurrection” in which wild Trump supporters, supposedly at Trump’s instigation, attacked the Capitol with the intention of overturning the 2020 election.

According to that narrative, five people, including Babbitt, died in the skirmish. Moreover, it was said, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by a raging Trump supporter wielding a fire extinguisher. That gem of a story about the fire extinguisher, reported in our former paper of record, The New York Times, was instantly picked up by other media outlets and spread like a Chinese virus. 

Of course, it is absolutely critical to the Democratic Party narrative that the January 6 incident be made to seem as violent and crazed as possible. Hence the comparisons to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. Only thus can pro-Trump Americans be excluded from “our democracy” by being branded as “domestic extremists” if not, indeed, “domestic terrorists.”

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution accords American citizens the right to a speedy trial. But most of the political prisoners of January 6—many of whom have been kept in solitary confinement—are still waiting to be brought to trial. And although the media was full of predictions that they would be found guilty of criminal sedition, none has. 

Indeed, the prosecution’s cases seem to be falling apart. Most of the hundreds who have been arrested are being charged with trespassing. Another charge being leveled against them is “disrupting an official proceeding.” This is a felony charge designed not for ceremonial procedures like the January 6 certification of the vote, but rather for disrupting Congressional inquiries—for example, by shredding documents relevant to a Congressional investigation. It originated during the George W. Bush administration to deal with the Enron case.

The indisputable fact about January 6 is that although five people died at or near the Capitol on that day or soon thereafter, none of these deaths was brought about by the protesters. The shot fired by Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd that hit Ashli Babbitt in the neck and killed her was the only shot fired at the Capitol that day. No guns were recovered from the Capitol on January 6. Zero.

The liberal commentator Glenn Greenwald further diminished the “armed insurrection” narrative in an important column last February titled “The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot.” The title says it all. Kevin Greeson, Greenwald notes, was killed not by the protesters but died of a heart attack outside the Capitol. Benjamin Philips, the founder of a pro-Trump website called Trumparoo, died of a stroke that day. Rosanne Boyland, another Trump supporter, was reported by The New York Times to have been inadvertently “killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt to fight through a police line.” But later video shows that, far from that, the police pushed protesters on top of Boyland and would not allow other protesters to pull her out.

Four of the five who died, then, were pro-Trump protesters. And the fifth? Well, that was Officer Sicknick—also a Trump supporter, as it turned out—who, contrary to the false report gone viral of The New York Times, went home, told his family he felt fine, but died a day later from, as The Washington Post eventually and grudgingly reported, “natural causes.” No fire extinguishers were involved in his demise.

***

The January 6 insurrection hoax prompts lots of questions.

Why, for example, did the government mobilize 26,000 federal troops from all across the country to surround “the people’s house” following January 6? Why were those troops subjected to FBI vetting, with some of them sent packing? 

Why is there some 14,000 hours of video footage of the event on January 6 that the government refuses to release? What are they afraid of letting the public see? More scenes of security guards actually opening doors and politely ushering in protesters? More pictures of FBI informants covertly salted among the crowd?

My own view is that turning Washington into an armed camp was mostly theater. There was no threat that the Washington police could not have handled. But it was also a show of force and an act of intimidation. The message was: “We’re in charge now, rubes, and don’t you forget it.”

In truth, there is little threat of domestic terror in this country. But there is plenty of domestic conservatism. And that conservatism is the real focus of the establishment’s ire.

It is important to note that while the government provides the muscle for this war on dissent, the elite culture at large is a willing accomplice. Consider, for example, the open letter, signed by more than 500 “publishing professionals” (authors, editors, designers, and so on), calling on the industry to reject books written by anyone who had anything to do with the Trump administration. 

These paragons pledged to do whatever they could to stop “enriching the monsters among us.” But here’s their problem: over 74 million people voted for Trump. That’s a lot of monsters. 

Many people have been quoting Benjamin Franklin’s famous response when asked what sort of government they had come up with at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. “A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.” Right now, it looks like we can’t. It looks as if the American constitutional republic has given way, as least temporarily, to an American oligarchy. 

As the years go by, historians, if the censors allow them access to the documents and give them leave to publish their findings, may well count the 2016 presidential election as the last fair and open democratic election in U.S. history. I know we are not supposed to say that. I know that the heads of Twitter and Facebook and other woke guardians of the status quo call this view “The Big Lie” and do all they can to suppress it. But every honest person knows that the 2020 election was tainted.

The forces responsible for the taint had tried before. Hitherto, their efforts had met with only limited success. But a perfect storm of forces conspired to make 2020 the first oligarchic installation of a president. It would not have happened, I think, absent the panic over the Chinese virus. But that panic, folded in a lover’s embrace by the Democratic establishment, was not only a splendid pretext to clamp down on civil liberties; it also provided an inarguable excuse to alter the rules for elections in several key states.

“Inarguable” is not quite the right word. There could have been plenty of arguments, and many lawsuits, against the way the executive branches in these states usurped the constitutionally guaranteed prerogative of state legislatures to set the election rules when they intervened to allow massive mail-in voting. But the Trump administration, though foreseeing and complaining about the executive interventions, did too little too late to make a difference. 

Among the many sobering realities that the 2020 election brought home is that in our current and particular form of oligarchy, the people do have a voice, but it is a voice that is everywhere pressured, cajoled, shaped, and bullied. The people also have a choice, but only among a roster of candidates approved by the elite consensus. 

The central fact to appreciate about Donald Trump is that he was elected president without the permission, and over the incredulous objections, of the bipartisan oligarchy that governs us. That was his unforgivable offense. Trump was the greatest threat in history to the credentialed class and the globalist administrative state upon which they feed. Representatives of that oligarchy tried for four years to destroy Trump. Remember that the first mention of impeachment came 19 minutes after his inauguration, an event that was met not only by a widespread Democratic boycott and hysterical claims by Nancy Pelosi and others that the election had been hijacked, but also by riots in Washington, D.C. that saw at least six policemen injured, numerous cars torched, and other property destroyed. 

You will search in vain for media or other ruling class denunciations of that violence, or for bulletins from corporate America advising their customers of their solidarity with the newly-installed Trump administration. As the commentator Howie Carr noted, some riots are more equal than others. Some get you the approval of people like Nancy Pelosi and at least the grudging acceptance of oligarchs of the other party. Others get the FBI sweeping the country for “domestic terrorists” and the lords of Big Tech canceling people who defend the protesters’ cause.

Someday—maybe someday soon—this witches’ sabbath, this festival of scapegoating, and what George Orwell called the “hideous ecstasy” of hate will be at an end. Perhaps someday people will be aghast, and some will be ashamed, of what they did to the President of the United States and people who supported him: the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, for instance, proposing to put Senator Ted Cruz on a “no fly” list, and Simon & Schuster canceling Senator Josh Hawley’s book contract. 

Donald Trump is the Emmanuel Goldstein (the designated principal enemy of the totalitarian state Oceania in Orwell’s 1984) of the movement. But minor public enemies are legion. Anyone harboring “Trumpist” inclinations is suspect, hence the widespread calls for “deprogramming” Trump’s supporters, who are routinely said to be “marching toward sedition.”

Michael Barone, one of our most perceptive political commentators, got it right when he wrote of the rapid movement “from impeaching incitement to canceling conservatism.” That is the path our oligarchs are inviting us to travel now, criminalizing political dissent and transforming policy differences into a species of heresy. You don’t debate heretics, after all. You seek to destroy them.

Donald Trump’s accomplishments as president were nothing less than stunning. Trump was, and is, a rude force of nature. He accomplished an immense amount. But he lacked one thing. Some say it was self-discipline or finesse. I agree with a friend of mine who suggested that Trump’s critical flaw was a deficit in guile. That sounds odd, no doubt, since Trump is supposed to be the tough guy who mastered “the art of the deal.” But I think my friend is probably right. Trump seems never to have discerned what a viper’s nest our politics has become for anyone who is not a paid-up member of The Club. 

Maybe Trump understands this now. I have no insight into that question. I am pretty confident, though, that the 74 plus million people who voted for him understand it deeply. It’s another reason that The Club should be wary of celebrating its victory too expansively. 

Friedrich Hayek took one of the two epigraphs for his book, The Road to Serfdom, from the philosopher David Hume. “It is seldom,” Hume wrote, “that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Much as I admire Hume, I wonder whether he got this quite right. Sometimes, I would argue, liberty is erased almost instantaneously.

I’d be willing to wager that Joseph Hackett, confronted with Hume’s observation, would express similar doubts. I would be happy to ask Mr. Hackett myself, but he is inaccessible. If the ironically titled “Department of Justice” has its way, he will be inaccessible for a long, long time—perhaps as long as 20 years. 

Joseph Hackett, you see, is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building. 

As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.

Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have been branded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.

Hayek’s overriding concern in The Road to Serfdomwas to combat the forces that were pushing people further along that road to servitude. His chief concern was unchecked state power. In a new preface to the book’s 1956 edition, Hayek noted that one of its “main points” was to document how “extensive government control produces a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.”

 “This means,” Hayek wrote, “that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.”

 This dismal situation, Hayek continues, can be averted, but only if the spirit of liberty “reasserts itself in time and the people not only throw out the party which has been leading them further and further in the dangerous direction but also recognize the nature of the danger and resolutely change their course.”

Note the power of that little word “if.” It was not so long ago that an American could contemplate totalitarian regimes and say, “Thank God we’ve escaped that.” It’s not at all clear that we can entertain that happy conviction any longer. 

That’s one melancholy lesson of the January 6 insurrection hoax: that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.

Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”

Bingo.

Dershowitz Warns Against ‘New McCarthyism’ of Left

Attorney Alan Dershowitz, in 2020 when he was a member of President Donald Trump’s legal team. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)By Newsmax Wires 
Sunday, 14 Feb 2021 1:56 PM

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Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz on Sunday blasted the “new McCarthyism” of the Democrats’ “hard left.”

In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Dershowitz, a constitutional law expert, said some liberals have become radical censors of free speech.

“Common Cause, which purports to be a liberal, not a radical organization, has now demanded that Facebook keep Donald Trump off its platform,” he said. “We are getting liberals… [calling for] Fox News [to be] taken off the networks. I hated communism but I defended the rights of lawyers to defend accused communists.”

“If any lawyer is the subject of this kind of McCarthyism, I will represent you pro bono, in front of universities and bar associations,” he added. “I will dedicate myself that the new McCarthyism of the hard left doesn’t become American culture.”

Dershowitz called the Senate trial acquittal of former President Donald Trump a “great day” for the Constitution and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., — but “not such a good day” for Trump himself.

“McConnell “taught us a civic’s lesson: You don’t have to support President Trump or Donald Trump, you don’t have to agree with the speech, but support the First Amendment and the Constitution’s limitations on the power of the Senate to put a former president on trial,” he said.

“McConnell accepted the constitutional argument I’ve been making from the very beginning — that Congress has no power to put on trial Citizen Trump.”

On the flip side, Dershowitz said, Saturday was “not such a good day for Donald Trump because McConnell and others criticized him.”

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Tucker Carlson Tonight 2/10/21 | Tucker Carlson Tonight February 10, 2021

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Alan Dershowitz to Newsmax TV: Dems Making Trump’s Case

By Eric Mack 
Wednesday, 10 Feb 2021 5:35 PM

In laying out a long-running objection to election fraud by former President Donald Trump, House impeachment managers are effectively making the case for the defense because the speech under the microscope is protected, even if they disagree with it, according to constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz on Newsmax TV.

“Very good theater, terrible constitutional law,” Dershowitz told “The Chris Salcedo Show” of the House Democrats’ opening statements Wednesday.

“The videos make good theater; they’re very riveting,” the noted legal scholar said. “”But they prove President Trump’s constitutional defense.”

House Democrats are emphasizing that Trump had long argued the election was stolen, but then they show how the president challenged it “by all lawful means and all political means,” Dershowitz told host Chris Salcedo.

“The Constitution protects a person that says the Earth is flat as much as a person who says it’s round,” Dershowitz said. “The Constitution protects a Holocaust denier as much as it does a historian who can prove that 6 million Jews were killed.

“And the Constitution, the First Amendment, protects a president who’s wrong about the election as much as a president who’s right.”

Instead of tying the lone article of impeachment — incitement of insurrection — solely on Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally speech, which was delivered at a rally just before the Capitol siege, House Democrat impeachment managers are making a case that he’d long objected to a stolen election as a predicate to inciting the storming of the U.S. Capitol Building.

“Matters of opinion cannot be disputed or taken outside of constitutional protections,” Dershowitz said. “So I think the House managers were actually helping the Trump defense by trying to prove that what he said was false.”

Dershowitz did suggest that Democrats’ gaffe might be part of a plan to “lay a trap” for Trump defense lawyers — getting them to argue the validity of a stolen-election claim, which could derail the president’s case.

“That would be a serious mistake, because it would lose a number of senators who are now on their side,” Dershowitz concluded.

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Related Stories:

• Alan Dershowitz: Impeachment Divisive, ‘Tactical Mistake’
• Alan Dershowitz to Newsmax TV: Trump Defense Not ‘Frivolous’

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I have read several books by Alan Dershowitz and he is a liberal but he does look at the constitution honestly and here he has made some very insightful observations that I am sure will upset Democrats but nonetheless will not slow them down from impeaching the President a second time because of their hate of all things Trump!

Dershowitz: Senate Rules Would Prevent Impeachment Trial Of Trump

An image from video of Alan Dershowitz, an attorney for President Donald Trump, walking from the podium after speaking on behalf of the president during the impeachment trial in the Senate on Jan. 27, 2020. (Senate Television via AP)By Newsmax Wires 
Sunday, 10 Jan 2021 2:42 PM

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Harvard law professor and constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz on Sunday warned an impeachment of President Donald Trump won’t go to trial — but could “lie around like a loaded weapon” for both parties in the future.

In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Dershowitz said a Senate trial of citizen Trump would be unconstitutional.

“It will not go to trial,” he said. “All Democrats can do is impeach the president in House of Representatives, for that you only need a majority vote. 

“The case cannot come to trial in the Senate” because of rules that do no allow it until, “according to the Majority Leader [Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.), until 1 p.m. on Jan. 20” — an hour after Trump leaves office.

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“Congress has no power to impeach or try a private citizen, whether it’d be a private citizen in Donald Trump or …. Barack Obama or anyone else,” he said. “The jurisdiction is limited to a sitting president and so there won’t be a trial.”

But Dershowitz said he worried more about  is“the impact of impeachment on the First Amendment.”

“For 100 years the Supreme Court and other courts have struggled to develop a juris prudence which distinguishes between advocacy and incitement.”

“To impeach a president for having exercised his First Amendment rights would be so dangerous to the Constitution, it would lie around like a loaded weapon ready to be used by either party against the other party and that’s not what impeachment nor the 25th amendment were intended to be,” Dershowitz said.

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Mark Levin Podcast * Mark’s radio show | 08 January 2021

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Levin: Media ‘exploiting’ Capitol riot to ‘silence conservatives’ as Democrats work to ‘choke the system’

‘The media have played a huge, huge role in what’s going on in this country,’ says ‘Life, Liberty & Levin’ host

By Charles Creitz | Fox News

The mainstream media is “exploiting” Wednesday’s riot at the U.S. Capitol building in an effort to “silence” conservatives and Republicans, Mark Levin says on this week’s episode of “Life, Liberty & Levin.”

The host emphasizes that “we should be furious about what happened on Capitol Hill,” but adds that “the media have played a huge, huge role in what’s going on in this country.”

“We need to reject all this violence, but what about the media?” asks Levin before displaying front pages of various newspapers from around the country. 

“The New York Times: ‘Trump Incites Mob’. This is projection,” Levin contends. “This is projection. He never did that. Or The Washington Post: ‘Trump mob storms Capitol’. There were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people there … That’s an awfully broad brush. Or the [New York] Daily News: ‘President Incites Insurrection’ … or USA Today: ‘Pro-Trump Mobs Storm US [sic] Capitol’. How about ‘Thugs Storm U.S. Capitol’? How about ‘Lawbreakers Storm U.S. Capitol’?”

Levin then calls out politicians like Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who he says are also “exploiting the situation.”

“They’re talking about impeaching the president of the United States or [invoking] the 25th Amendment nine days before he leaves office,” the host says. “Do they even know what’s involved in the 25th Amendment?

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“So they double down, they triple down, they quadruple down. They’re not going to change at all. On one side of their mouth, they talk about unity. Out of the other side of their mouth, they spit on people,” he goes on. “Seventy-four million [Trump-voting] people and more, they’re not going away. Their concerns still exist.”

Meanwhile, Levin says, House Democrats are working toward their goal to “choke the system even further” by passing a rules package for the 117th Congressthat makes it “virtually impossible for Republicans to even propose legislation or amend legislation, even though [they] only has a 10- or 11-person majority in the House.”

“Nancy Pelosi … eliminated 100 years of tradition …”, the host argues, “and the media are trying to intimidate conservatives and constitutionalists by projecting onto them the violence that occurred by reprobates and others who need to be tracked down and punished.

“So it seems that the lessons have not been learned,” Levin concludes. “They certainly haven’t been learned by the left, they certainly haven’t been learned by the media, and they certainly haven’t been learned by the Never Trumpers.”

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December 13, 2020

Office of Barack and Michelle Obama
P.O. Box 91000
Washington, DC 20066

Dear President Obama,

I wrote you over 700 letters while you were President and I mailed them to the White House and also published them on my blog http://www.thedailyhatch.org .I received several letters back from your staff and I wanted to thank you for those letters. 

I have been reading your autobiography A PROMISED LAND and I have been enjoying it. 

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

The story of how this postwar consensus broke down—starting with LBJ’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his prediction that it would lead to the South’s wholesale abandonment of the Democratic Party—has been told many times before. The realignment Johnson foresaw ended up taking longer than he had expected. But steadily, year by year—through Vietnam, RIOTS…and Nixon’s southern strategy; through busing, Roe v. Wade, urban crime, and white flight; through affirmative action, the Moral Majority, union busting, and Robert Bork; through assault weapons bans and the rise of Newt Gingrich…and the Clinton impeachment—America’s voters and their representatives became more and more polarized.

During 2020 I have noticed lots of riots and looting across the USA and I wanted to ask you why it is always the liberals doing that? AND WHY DIDN’T ANYONE CONDEMN THESE ACTIONS AT THE 2020 CONVENTION AND DIDN’T YOU SPEAK AT THE CONVENTION TOO?

Philadelphia Riots Another Case of Street Violence Used to Advance Radical Political Agendas

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/10/28/philadelphia-riots-are-another-case-of-street-violence-used-to-advance-radical-political-agendas/embed/#?secret=TeMODTeKco

Philadelphia Riots Are Another Case of Street Violence Used to Advance Radical Political Agendas

James Carafano / @JJCarafano / October 28, 2020 / 4 Comments

In Kenosha, Portland, Seattle, and Chicago, city officials have tolerated criminal activity performed by mobs for politically motivated reasons. Philadelphia appears to be the next hotspot for mob violence to go unchecked. Pictured: A barricade is set on fire during a night of looting and violence in Philadelphia on Oct. 27. (Photo: Gabriella Audi/AFP/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY

James Carafano@JJCarafano

James Jay Carafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is The Heritage Foundation’s vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, E. W. Richardson fellow, and director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies. Read his research.

Like the replay of a bad movie, a law enforcement incident in Philadelphia triggered an excuse for violence and looting. It remains to be seen whether the City of Brotherly Love will become the next “Kenosha,” where city officials moved quickly to restore order and seek state and federal support—though sadly after 48 hours of opportunistic looting, violence, and destruction devastated the city.

Or perhaps Philadelphia will be the next Portland, Seattle, or Chicago, where systemic attacks seem to be a daily occurrence.

Police in Philadelphia are fully capable of restoring peace. The open question is whether the mayor and Larry Krasner, the former defense attorney-turned elected rogue prosecutor, will do their job and hold people accountable for their crimes.

When local, state, and federal governments work together, act quickly, and demonstrate no tolerance for organized violence to advance radical agendas, communities are kept safe and equal protection under the law is afforded for all citizens.

The left is actively working to undermine the integrity of our elections. Read the plan to stop them now. Learn more now >>

On the other hand, when local officials, the media, and politicians ignore, excuse, normalize, and enable violence, everyday Americans pay the price.

There is a plague sweeping this country that many don’t want to talk about: The deliberate use of street violence to advance radical political agendas, often under a smoke screen of campaigning for civil liberties. The evidence of organized criminal activity at the root of the outbreaks in American cities is mounting.

The list of people enabling this violence sadly includes some public officials, who are principally responsible for ensuring public safety. For example, a growing threat to peaceful communities is “rogue prosecutors,” former criminal defense attorneys recruited and funded by liberal billionaire backers, who—once elected—abuse their office by refusing to prosecute entire categories of crimes.

These rogue prosecutors are usurping the power of the legislature in the process, and ignoring victim’s rights—all to advance their politics.

Baltimore is a perfect  example. Since being sworn into office, under the watch of Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby.

Rogue prosecutors fuel street violence by refusing to prosecute rioters and looters. When confronted with the rising crimes rates, Mosby called the statistics “rhetoric.”

The only way to break the cycle of violence is for local and state officials to work with each other, and if necessary, the federal government. They need to stop enabling the destruction of property and lives on their streets, and start investigating and prosecuting the individuals (and organizations) behind the riots.

It’s time to start shaming and calling out the media, politicians, and advocates who excuse and normalize the violence.

There is a proven action plan for making our streets safe. It is past time for officials to start following this blueprint.

There is no time—zero time to waste. There are already fears of more violence in our streets, regardless of the outcome of the national elections.

In my hometown of Washington, D.C., downtown buildings are already boarding up in anticipation of violence on our streets after the election. If Trump wins, violence. If Biden wins, violence. This makes no sense, and it’s time for it to stop.

It is time for every official and public figure, every political party, in every part of the country to publically reject violence on American streets as a legitimate form of protected speech. Violence is not protected speech, period.

The notion of deliberately destroying the lives and property of our neighbors to advance a radical political agenda is abhorrent. American leaders—of all stripes—should stand up now as one and reject these violent acts. It has gone on for too long, well before the death of George Floyd.

Leaders in Philadelphia and across America must take a principled stand to demand the end to this violence, and they need to do it before the election. In one voice, they should demand: “Leave our streets alone.”

Sincerely,

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

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Open letter to President Obama (Part 293) (Founding Fathers’ view on Christianity, Elbridge Gerry of MA)

April 10, 2013 – 7:02 am

President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. There have […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers, President Obama | Edit |Comments (0)

The Founding Fathers views concerning Jesus, Christianity and the Bible (Part 5, John Hancock)

May 8, 2012 – 1:48 am

There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)

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

May 7, 2012 – 1:46 am

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The Founding Fathers views concerning Jesus, Christianity and the Bible (Part 3, Samuel Adams)

May 4, 2012 – 1:45 am

There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)

The Founding Fathers views concerning Jesus, Christianity and the Bible (Part 2, John Quincy Adams)

May 3, 2012 – 1:42 am

There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)

The Founding Fathers views concerning Jesus, Christianity and the Bible (Part 1, John Adams)

May 2, 2012 – 1:13 am

There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)

President Obama and the Founding Fathers

May 8, 2013 – 9:20 am

President Obama Speaks at The Ohio State University Commencement Ceremony Published on May 5, 2013 President Obama delivers the commencement address at The Ohio State University. May 5, 2013. You can learn a lot about what President Obama thinks the founding fathers were all about from his recent speech at Ohio State. May 7, 2013, […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers, President Obama | Edit | Comments (0)

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

December 5, 2012 – 12:38 am

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

May 30, 2012 – 1:35 am

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Were the founding fathers christian?

May 23, 2012 – 7:04 am

3 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton There were 55 gentlemen who put together the constitution and their church affliation is of public record. Greg Koukl notes: Members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political foundations of our nation, were […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)

John Quincy Adams a founding father?

June 29, 2011 – 3:58 pm

I do  not think that John Quincy Adams was a founding father in the same sense that his  father was. However, I do think he was involved in the  early days of our government working with many of the founding fathers. Michele Bachmann got into another history-related tussle on ABC’s “Good  Morning America” today, standing […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in David Barton, Founding Fathers | Edit | Comments (0)

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

July 6, 2013 – 1:26 am

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Article from Adrian Rogers, “Bring back the glory”

June 11, 2013 – 12:34 am

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

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

June 9, 2013 – 1:21 am

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ____________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book  really helped develop my political […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

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