No doubt you’ve heard the phrase: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Although many assume it was Voltaire who said it, actually it was the Voltaire biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall who wrote it. Her phrase comes to mind as we look back over the last few weeks in which comedy and satire have come under attack.

First we had the incident over the movie, The Interview. Sony originally pulled the release of the movie and then decided to screen it in limited release and make it available through video-on-demand. The entertainment community and the public set out to defend showing the movie in an attempt to defend the right of freedom of expression.

While that was an important action, I don’t think I was the only person who wished we were defending a better movie than The Interview. Nobody will put it up against Casablanca or Gone With the Wind. I didn’t see the movie and don’t plan to see it. But I can read the comments from critics that confirm my suspicions that this was a terrible movie. One critic said it was a “spectacularly weird film to end up at the center of a free speech brouhaha.”

Then we have had the massacre in France. No artist, writer, or cartoonist should ever fear for his or her life. Freedom of expression should go hand-in-hand with freedom from retaliation. Whatever was written or drawn at Charlie Hebdo can never be justification for killing.

That being said, as Christians we find it hard to support people who satirize God, Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, Christian leaders, Muhammad, etc. The snarky, juvenile humor of the magazine isn’t so easy for Christians to defend. We may defend their right to say what they want. But we don’t have to defend what they say.

We aren’t talking about Hamlet or Don Quixote or War and Peace. The content of this caustic satire isn’t something we can defend, though we certainly will defend their right to say it.

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, let me suggest that you take some time to read his letter from a Birmingham Jail. If you are young, I think it will give you a better idea of what the civil rights movement in the 1960s was all about. If you are older, it will remind you of some forgotten events and chapters in American history.

I realize that it will take some time to read his letter. When I printed it out, it took more than ten pages since it runs nearly 7,000 words. He wrote it in response to a published statement by eight clergymen and was written in the margins of the newspaper and later on scraps of paper and finally on a pad his attorney left for him.

He answers his critics about his tactics during the civil rights movement and then makes his case for his nonviolent campaign. To those who call his action “untimely,” he reminds them of what it is like to be a black person in America that has “seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim.”

He also deals with the controversial issue of just laws and unjust laws. “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”

Finally, he addresses the responsibility of the church. He notes that the church of the early Christians “was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.” And when they were commanded to do something contrary to the Bible they said they were “called to obey God rather than man.” This was a reference to Acts 5:29.

As you read his letter remember that he wrote it when he was 34 years old and in jail. Ask yourself how many people you know (pastors, professors, activists) who could write with such intellect and such passion. This letter by Martin Luther King, Jr. is worth reading, and I trust you will consider doing so today.

When social commentators talk about out-of-wedlock births or divorce, they talk about the social and even emotional costs. But are there also economic costs? A study at Georgia State University suggests that the economic costs are significant.

The study is titled “The Taxpayer Cost of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing.” Four pro-marriage groups commissioned the study (e.g., the Institute for American Values and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy). The study concluded that the cost was a minimum of $112 billion a year.

The increased costs come from expenditures for anti-poverty programs, criminal justice programs, educational programs and lost tax revenue. Consider this: if we are spending more than $100 billion a year, that means we are spending more than $1 trillion every decade of our tax dollars due to divorce and out-of-wedlock births. Wonder why your taxes are high? This is one reason.

Of course there are social costs as well. Children are deprived of two parents. Single parents have more complicated lives and no one to shoulder their burdens. Stress, depression, and emotional dependency are some of the costs of divorce and unwed childbirth. The price tag is exorbitant when you add up the social and economic costs.

Many states have designated millions of dollars to marriage education programs. Some states provide marriage-strengthening programs that instruct couples in marriage skills. And most importantly churches and Christian family organizations provide a biblical perspective on marriage and parenting.

This latest study shows the lie to the cliché that personal behavior is a person’s personal and private affairs and isn’t anyone’s business. It turns out that divorce and unwed childbirth costs all of us plenty. Individual choices by couples about marriage and parenting cost all of us over a $1 trillion dollars each decade. We all pay a heavy price.

For decades, Christians have been warning about the dangers of pornography. It can ruin marriages and destroy families. Many researchers have provided evidence of the harmful effects of pornography. Much of this was catalogued in the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography.

Various groups ranging of Pure Hope to Enough is Enough have also been warning about dangers of pornography. And the problem has grown worse simply because porn is easily available on the Internet.

The case has been made even stronger by research done by secular researchers at the University of Arkansas, James Madison University, and New York University. This new study in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior found that men who watch porn enjoy it less. They also found that these men usually try to act out what they see in pornography in their real life encounters.

What is most unfortunate is the fact that pornography has become what the researchers call a “primary source of sexual education.” They don’t learn about sex from their parents, teachers, or even sex education materials. They learn about sex from explicit pornographic videos. And these become embedded in their minds.

Of course these videos also remove love from sex and intimacy within marriage from the sex act. Pornography also causes men to objectify their sexual partners. And there is also the legitimate concern about the fact that many of these pornography videos involve violence or female degradation.

If some evil person tried to ruin the lives of men and destroy their marriages, I doubt they could come up with a better tool than online pornography. It is readily available. It is addictive and destructive.

Fortunately there are ministries dedicated to helping those addicted to or tempted by pornography. And there are groups calling for government to enforce existing laws dealing with obscenity and pornography. This new study provides powerful new research that can be used to fight the porno plague in our society.

The massacre in Paris last week brought out all sorts of comments and commentary. Some of the comments reminded me of this oft-repeated phrase. “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

Let me focus on the statement by former Governor Howard Dean. He said: “I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists. They’re about as Muslim as I am. I mean, they have no respect for anybody else’s life, that’s not what the Koran says. Europe has an enormous radical problem. I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it’s a cult.”

His first comment reminded me of the lead article in the Christian Research Journal that asked if the Islamic State is Islamic. When you ask the question that way, I think we all know the answer. This is like asking the question, Is the Pope Catholic? Obviously Islamic terrorists are Muslim.

Actually it is his second comment that informs the first. He is convinced that the Qur’an does NOT call for jihad or any violence against others. I would encourage him (and anyone else who believes that) to merely read the verses of Surah 9 in the Qur’an.

Surah 9:5, for example, is known as the verse of the sword and says: “fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, beleager them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem.” Surah 9:123 says: “Fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you; and know that Allah is with those who fear Him.” Other passages in the Qur’an say that fighting in jihad is good for a Muslim and fighting is a religious duty.

Jihadists believe that these and other verses apply to them today and justify their terrorist actions based on these verses. Moderate Muslims may ignore these verses or contextualize them. But it just isn’t true that the Qur’an doesn’t teach jihad. Sadly these terrorists who are Muslim use such verses to justify their horrific actions.

MIT professor Jonathan Gruber has become well-known because of his candid remarks about Obamacare. He suggested that the Affordable Care Act was drafted to be so complex that the average citizen would not understand it. In his comments he showed the arrogance of the intellectual elite and demonstrated their distain for most Americans.

We get an even better picture of his mindset if we read a paper he wrote about abortion. This paper came under scrutiny in a congressional hearing last year. George Weigel talks about the implications of Jonathan’s Gruber’s perspective in an article in First Things.

As an economist, Jonathan Gruber explained his view on the economic effects of the liberal U.S. abortion laws. He wrote: “By 1993, all cohorts under the age 18 were born under legalized abortion and we estimate steady state savings of $1.6 billion per year from positive selection.” George Weigel translates this into plain English: abortion “saved the taxpayers $1.6 billion a year because those terminated before birth were from social classes most likely to be welfare clients.”

Jonathan Gruber is getting a reputation for being blunt. He has bluntly told us what eugenics looks like in the modern world. Let’s abort as many kids in the lower classes and minority classes as possible so we can keep the costs of welfare low.

He isn’t the only person to be so blunt. A number of years ago, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg admitted in an interview that legal activists who were promoting abortion prior to 1973 did so in part because they wanted to decrease the “growth of populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Her comment reminds me of another Supreme Court Justice. Oliver Wendell Holmes in Buck v. Bell, concluded that: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

These comments should remind us that abortion has been a tool of the modern eugenics movement. Some promote legal abortion as an efficient way to eliminate the poor and keep welfare costs down.

It is time to say “Happy Birthday” to the Magna Carta. It has been 800 years since King John’s barons forced him to sign this document. It was meant to merely provide a short-term solution but became the foundation upon which English and American freedoms were built.

At the time it was merely a peace treaty that lasted a few months and only applied to a few people in the realm. But it established the key principle that everyone, including the king, was under the law.

It read: “To all free men of our kingdom, we have also granted, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out below, to have and to keep for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs.”

The Magna Carta also established the right of free men to justice and a fair trial. “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

Many of the principles of the Magna Carta can be found in the Bill of Rights of our Constitution. We can see that in the quote I just provided from the Magna Carta. Those rights are enumerated in the Sixth Amendment and the Eighth Amendment. The Magna Carta says that “no official shall place a man on trial . . . without producing credible witnesses.” This guarantee is found in our Fifth Amendment.

The Magna Carta protected free man from being deprived “of lands, castles, liberties or rights without the lawful judgments of his equals.” The Sixth Amendment guarantees us the right to a trial by an impartial jury. The Magna Carta says that “For a trivial offense, a free man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offense.” The Eighth Amendment protects the accused from being fined an excessive amount for bail.

As you can see, the Magna Carta was an important foundational document for our freedoms. That is why we should wish it a Happy 800th birthday.

In a recent column, Kevin Williamson explains that McDonald’s has become Microsoft. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, let me explain. It provides an object lesson from the free enterprise system.

First, let’s start with Microsoft. Back in 1998 Microsoft was at the height of its power. On the Charlie Rose Show, Bill Gates said he wasn’t worried about competition from IBM or Apple or Netscape. He explained, “I worry about someone in a garage inventing something I haven’t thought of.”

His concern was justified. That same year, two guys in a garage in Menlo Park incorporated a company known as Google. It turns out that Microsoft was not only surprised by Google but also lost ground to Apple (a company many thought was on its last legs).

Kevin Williamson argues that the same dynamic is having an impact on McDonald’s. You can travel just about anywhere in the world and be guaranteed to find two things: Coca Cola and McDonald’s. While it is still dominant in the fast food market, it has certainly been challenged by startup upstarts.

One that he mentions is Shake Shack. People stand in long lines at these fast food restaurants just to get a hamburger that is only a little different from one they could get down the street at McDonald’s. Back in 2000, Shake Shack was a food cart. Ten years ago it was one kiosk in a park. This year it will have an initial public offering. Their success is due in large part to their ability to provide a product at a reasonable price that many people want. They didn’t have the advertising budget or corporate muscle of McDonald’s but they succeeded because they provided something consumers wanted.

Shake Shack went from cart to corporation in record time while McDonald’s has been struggling to maintain market share. It will have some trouble turning around a company with 35,000 restaurants worldwide. Meanwhile the guys who started in a garage or a food cart are doing quite well.