Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, has written another book reminding conservatives that they need to reconsider how they deliver their message. Back in the early 1950s, Russell Kirk wrote about The Conservative Mind. Arthur Brooks writes about The Conservative Heart.

Much of the book talks about how to address the issue of poverty. Capitalism has been a major tool in bringing people out of poverty. Yet here in this country, conservatives who champion the free enterprise system are viewed as callous and uninterested in the poor. He spends some time in the book, and spent some time in our radio interview, talking about the importance of faith, family, community, and work.

One of the most helpful chapters deals with the seven habits of highly effective conservatives. He says a conservative needs to be a moralist. Start with why you talk about the issue, and lead with your heart. Second, fight for people not things. Conservatives should stop selling data, facts, and figures. Instead, they should talk about opportunities and tell powerful stories that grab the heart.

Third, conservatives need to get happy. They need more happy warriors. Fourth, steal all the best arguments. They should talk about social justice with a proper definition of it so that Americans don’t have to choose between morality and compassion or between empathy and leadership.

Fifth, go where you’re not welcome. Often we merely talk to true believers and ignore the persuadable and the hostiles. All of us need to get out of our comfort zone and talk to people who don’t see things the same way we do.

Sixth, say it in 30 seconds. Treat the first few lines of a speech or conversation like they are scarce and valuable. The first priority is to make a good first impression. Finally, break your bad habits. The old way isn’t working. It’s time to change the message and the tone.

There are lots of great lessons in this book. You just heard seven of them he often shares with politicians and pundits. Take them and you will be a more effective communicator.

Pundits often warn that if we don’t change our ways, America will end up like Greece. Radio talk show host Tammy Bruce makes the case that the Greek mindset has already arrived in America. She says you can find it in the state of Oregon, and gives a number of examples.

First, there is the way Oregon dealt with Obamacare. Oregon officials spent $300 million in taxpayer dollars to develop their website and marketplace. It never worked and so the Oregon bureaucrats finally had to admit failure. They pulled the plug on the marketplace and defaulted to the federal exchange.

Second, she points to the way the government went after Aaron and Melissa Klein and their Sweet Cakes bakery. It is worth mentioning that Tammy Bruce describes herself “as a gay woman who supports gay marriage.” Nevertheless, she laments the way “the fascist gay left” used “the new weapon” of gay marriage against Christians. Not only were they fined $135,000, but there was a gag order placed on the Kleins.

Third, she criticizes what she calls the “Tax You into Oblivion by the Mile” scheme. If you haven’t heard about this, it is a way to capture taxes from people who use so-called green cars. Electric cars don’t buy gasoline so they don’t pay gas taxes. Hybrids buy less gas than other cars, so they pay less in gas taxes.

The bureaucrats in Oregon had a solution. They developed a system that tracks and stores every mile of a vehicle. Essentially they are putting a government controlled GPS in everyone’s car and tracking the route and mileage. Talks about the loss of privacy!

Finally, she points to Oregon allowing 15-year-old children to get state-subsidized sex-change operations without parent consent. They can’t get a tattoo without parental consent. They can’t drive or drink at the age of 15. But they can get a sex-change operation.

Perhaps we should stop warning people that America may someday look like Greece and instead warn them that America may soon look like Oregon.

Is there an anti-Christian bias in certain segments of society? Professor George Yancey has documented this. You can read the more popular version of his research in the book, Hostile Environment: Understanding and Responding to Anti-Christian Bias. He was on my radio program recently to talk about his research and his new book.

He uses a term to describe what is happening: Christianophobia. He didn’t make up this word. It is in the dictionary. It is “an irrational animosity toward or hatred of Christians.” In many ways, it is similar to words like homophobia or Islamophobia.

He has encountered people who think that the term is merely a cover for a bunch of Christians whining about not getting their way. He says that fear and hatred of Christians is a real phenomenon with real consequences.

He uses this thought experiment. Imagine research showed that almost half of all academics are less willing to give a person a job simply because that person is Jewish. We would think that demonstrated some sort of anti-Semitism. What if we also found that those people who hate Jews are more likely to be wealthy and well educated?

George Yancey says we know these things about how Christians are treated. People with Christianophobia are more likely to be white, male, educated, and wealthy than other Americans. They believe they know what is best for our society. And they often believe that Christians will lead us back to the Dark Ages.

He has also found that those who have a bias against Christians do support measures that would remove Christians from the public square. But they want to implement these measures in a way that can be justified with non-bigoted reasons. They don’t want to look intolerant or bigoted, but they do want to marginalize and even punish Christians.

Sadly, few professors are studying this phenomenon. That is because of an anti-Christian academic bias that discourages such research. Anti-Christian bias exists, even if many in the academic world don’t want to acknowledge it.

For many years we have seen how liberals and progressives on college campuses have been successful in shutting down dissent. We are now seeing more examples of this in all of society, especially after the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision.

A few newspapers say they will no longer allow letters to the editor that oppose gay marriage because it is a fundamental right. Most news organizations have apparently adopted an editorial position that same-sex marriage is the only viable political position. And while we are talking about newspapers, some papers now refuse to print letters to the editor that question climate change.

In the past we have seen what happens to anyone who will not participate in a same-sex ceremony. Photographers, florists, bakers, and jewelers are on notice. There were those who refused in the past before the Supreme Court decision. Now gay activists are looking for anyone or any business that might now refuse. They will make an example of those people in order to shut down dissent.

Consider what happened to Brendan Eich, the CEO of Mozilla who donated $1,000 to Proposition 8 (the California ballot measure defining traditional marriage). When it became public that he had given that donation, he was forced to resign. He has been used as a public example so that gay activists can shut down dissent.

Catholic Charities was forced out of the adoption business first in Massachusetts and now in other states. Although they could not in good conscience place a child in a home with same-sex couples, they were always willing to refer couples to an adoption agency that would do so. That was not enough. Gay activists and government officials could not allow even that limited amount of dissent.

And don’t forget Chick-fil-A. Mayors in cities like Boston and Chicago made it clear that this restaurant chain had no place in their cities merely because the family that owns the chain supports traditional marriage.

These attempts at shutting down dissent must be met with boldness, conviction, and discernment.

If you think about it, many of the stories in the news today have a common denominator: the rule of law. Victor Davis Hanson in a recent column reminds us the barbarians at the gate are usually not the reason for the downfall of a civilization. Corruption within a country is what collapses a country.

Take Greece for example. He argues that: “All the German euros in the world will not save Greece if Greeks continue to dodge taxes, featherbed government, and see corruption as a business model.” He even goes on to argue that obeying minor laws is important. “It is no coincidence that a country where drivers routinely flout traffic laws and throw trash out the window is also a country that cooks its books and lies to it creditors. Everything from littering to speeding seems negotiable in Athens in a way not true of Munich, Zurich or London.”

Of course we can apply this same principle to other countries in the world. If you have ever travelled to countries in Africa, the Middle East, or South America, you recognize the same disregard for the rule of law. If you want to get something done in these countries, you need to figure out which government official needs to be bribed. If you are involved in a business, a government inspector is usually looking for a kickback.

In many countries your advancement in business or government is determined not by your resume and not by any merit. Your economic class or your family connections or tribe determine your success. If you need a public service, your success is determined by who you know or your position on a family tree.

At this point you may be thinking how grateful you are to be living in America. We are blessed to have less corruption than many other countries, but we also appear to be heading down the same path.

We have a president that has been unwilling to enforce certain laws. Sanctuary cities ignore immigration laws. Politicians at the federal and state level have been charged with corruption. We desperately need to reinforce the belief in the rule of law before America looks like these other countries.

A new book on, The State of the American Mind, reminds us of the ignorance and anti-intellectualism on college campuses and in our popular culture. One of the editors of this work is Emory Professor Mark Bauerlein, who I have talked about before because he was the author of the book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. He was on my radio program recently to summarize what 16 different authors talked about in the book.

Mark Bauerlein and E.D. Hirsch in their chapters remind us that even in a time of unprecedented wealth and rising college enrollment, most students are functionally illiterate as well as culturally illiterate. It appears that the American mind has grown smaller and more selfish in its pursuits.

Daniel Dreisbach wrote about the lack of biblical literacy in our society. He tells the story of the media reaction to President George W. Bush’s address at his first presidential inauguration. Pledging a national commitment to serve the poor, Bush mentioned the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. Media pundits wondered about this strange story. One CBS political commentator confessed, “There were a few phrases in the speech I just didn’t get.” One of those, he said, was this allusion to a wounded traveler on the road to Jericho. We might expect this level of biblical illiteracy when conducting a “man on the street” interview, but we should expect better from well-educated political commentators.

Dennis Prager recounts his experience when asking high school students if they would save their dog or a stranger if both were drowning. He sadly explains that, aside from some religious schools (Jewish and Christian), he received the same answer. One-third would save the dog; one-third would save the stranger, and one-third find the question too difficult to answer. When he asks why they would save the dog, the near universal answer is, “I love my dog; I don’t love the stranger.” There is no moral examination, no contrast between humans and animals.

These and many other stories and statistics remind us that we not only have cultural illiteracy but also have biblical illiteracy and moral illiteracy as well.

The latest undercover videos concerning abortion released last week join the other abortion expose videos done by Lila Rose and Live Action. In the past, she and her group have caught Planned Parenthood officials taking money so they could abort more black babies and covering up the crimes of sexual predators who preyed on young girls.

The latest videos of a Planned Parenthood executive illegally harvesting fetal organs should have been no surprise, but some people were actually shocked. One picture on Facebook had a caption: “Murder 300,000 babies and nobody bats an eye. Sell the body parts and everyone loses their mind.”

Let’s get back to basics. The abortion business is a business. It receives $528 million in government funds annually. Its financial footprint is the same size as that of the NCAA. It kills more than a third of a million babies every year.

The videos show Dr. Deborah Nucatola (senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood) explaining how to perform a partial-birth abortion so that the maximum number of organs can be harvested and sold. “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver . . . so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.” Some of the video sounds like dialogue for Hannibal Lecter.

The legal issue is simple. Trafficking in fetal body parts is a federal crime. Let’s have a full investigation to find out if what is discussed on the video is taking place and who is responsible.

Michelle Malkin had a good question in her column. “What kind of country do we live in where law-abiding businesses are fined, threatened and demonized for refusing to bake gay wedding cakes, but barbaric baby butchers are hailed by feminists, Hollywood and a president who asked God to bless them?” You have to wonder what kind of country we have become.

The HUD Secretary of the Obama Administration announced a government rule that will affect your family and community in ways you might not have imagined. Stanley Kurtz says that this is one of the most radical initiatives from this administration and has transformative potential. It gives the federal government power to impose “preferred racial and ethnic composition, densifying housing, transportation, and business development” in the suburbs and cities.

Stanley Kurtz wrote about this issue many years ago in his book, Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. He was on my radio program back then to talk about it, but now it has become a reality. Imagine if the government demanded your neighborhood to be a certain percentage of racial or economic mix. It could make that happen with these new HUD rules. Imagine the government wanted a higher density of people living in your community because a bureaucrat thought you had too many single-family dwellings.

These HUD rules take away the power of a local community. A city official or a county official would no longer have the power they currently enjoy. Stanley Kurtz says that these rules would replace them with a “regional alternative that turns suburbs into helpless satellites of large cities.”

You might respond that your local government would never allow this to happen. Stanley Kurtz argues: “Once HUD gets it hooks into a municipality, no policy area is safe. Zoning, transportation, education, all of it risks slipping in the control of the federal government and the new, unelected regional bodies the feds will empower.” How do they get their hooks in you? Take one dollar of HUD money, and the local government now comes under the control of these bureaucrats.

You might be asking: Why haven’t I heard about this? There have been some stories, but I think the administration wants to keep most of it quiet. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 83 percent of respondents disagreed with the idea that it was the government’s job to “diversity neighborhoods by income level.” This is not a popular policy, that that’s probably why you are just now hearing about it.