Today’s kids are disconnecting from parents while they are connecting to the digital world through their smart phones and other digital devices. That is why it is so important for parents and other adults to read the book, Screens and Teens: Connecting with Our Kids in a Wireless World, written by Dr. Kathy Koch. She was on my radio program to talk about the insights in her book.

We began by talking about the five core needs that all of us have. First we have a need for security—Who can I trust? Second, is the question of identity—Who am I? The third deals with belonging—Who wants me? The fourth is purpose—Why am I alive? And the fifth is the issue competence—What do I do well?

She points out that today’s young people tend to be more conflicted about who they are and what they value. Technology is transforming communication while it is also changing the brains of young people. They are being raised by technology but are finding that this technology isn’t as perfect or as nurturing as a teenager might need it to be.

Kathy Koch also talks about the five lies that technology tempts us with. The first is the belief that: “I am the center of my own universe.” Kids can create their own experience. Another lie is the belief that: “I deserve to be happy all the time.” Another lie is the conviction that: “I must have choice.” Adults may be overwhelmed with choice, but young people expect it. To put it simply, variety is their spice of life.

A fourth lie is the conviction that: “I am my own authority.” Teens are making choices using the “universe” and “happiness” as criteria. And that may be one more reason why many young people resist authority including God as the ultimate authority. The final lie is the belief that: “Information is all I need, not teachers.” Why go to the trouble to learning anything when you can simply find it on Google?

We need to challenge the lies that technology is teaching kids and provide biblical principles and scriptural ways to counteract the effects of technology.

Is it time for Christians to give up on the culture? Is the culture war over? I got a fresh perspective on these questions when I heard Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association speak to the issue of Christian involvement in the political and cultural arenas.

He had a great quote from Patrick Buchanan. I went home to find the quote in the column, and was surprised to find out that Pat Buchanan wrote it 16 years ago. At the time, he was asking what the culture war was all about. Here is his answer.

“Ultimately, our culture war is about one question: Is God dead, or is God king? For centuries, this issue has been crucial. If God is dead, as Nietzsche wrote, everything is permissible, and eventually, one will logically reach the conclusion of Paris’ student radicals of 1968: The only thing that is forbidden is to forbid.”

He went on to add, “But if God is king, men have a duty to try, as best they can, to conform their lives to his will and shape society in accordance with his law. Defection and indifferentism are not options open to us. We are commanded to fight.”

Sometimes Christians don’t have much of a choice and must merely put their heads down and accept whatever comes their way. And if a government edict contradicts Scripture, they can agree with the disciples who said, “We must obey God rather than men.”

We aren’t in that situation here in America. Robert Knight reminds us that “Christians were warned by Jesus that they would be at odds with the world, situations can vary immensely. Taking leave as outsiders might have made sense in an authoritarian regime like ancient Rome, but America was created as a self-governing republic where ‘we the people’ are Caesar.”

We have the privilege of living in a country where we can still make a difference. We also have a responsibility to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It’s not time to retreat from the culture. It’s time to be difference makers in our world.

Whenever the subject of Social Security comes up in a political debate or campaign, you are likely to hear a candidate lament that the Social Security System is really the National Ponzi System. Is that an accurate description of America’s retirement system? Here are the facts. You decide.

The name Ponzi Scheme comes from the illegal actions of Charles Ponzi who duped thousands of people in the New England area. He encouraged them to invest in postage stamp speculation. Originally the first investors did well with the scheme, as did Charles Ponzi. But it was nothing more than the typical “rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul” deception. The money from the new investors was used to pay off the earlier investors. Eventually the whole scheme collapses.

Does that look like what we have in Social Security? Many people see some alarming similarities. Social Security is a “pay-as-you-go” system. Current recipients receive benefits from working Americans who are now paying into the system. From the start, there was a potential problem. But it got worse due to demographics.

In 1935, there were 40 workers for every recipient. By 1950, the ratio was 5-to-1 and has now dropped to below 3-to-1. Also, people are living longer. Fewer people lived past age 65 in the 1930s than they do today.

And there is another problem. Congress doesn’t save Social Security taxes. They spend them. Each year Congress collects about $200 billion more in Social Security taxes than it pays out to the 50 million Social Security recipients. It doesn’t put that money in the bank. It spends it on government programs. Supposedly there is a Social Security Trust Fund. Actually, all the Treasury Department does is produce “special issue government securities” which are essentially government IOUs.

You don’t need an accounting degree to see that Social Security has a problem. It would need more people paying into the system in order to make it solvent. That sounds to me like a Ponzi Scheme.

Americans still believe in the First Amendment. The 2015 annual survey found that three-fourths (75%) do not believe the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. That is a significant jump from the 57 percent last year brought about by the Boston Marathon bombing and questions about media coverage of the tragedy.

Gene Policinski is the chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute and the Institute’s First Amendment Center. He was also one of the founding editors of USA Today. He was on my radio program recently to talk about the latest results of their annual survey.

The good news is that Americans believe in the First Amendment. The bad news is that only about two thirds of them could name one of the rights in the First Amendment. And I have found that it is the rare person indeed who can name all five rights in the First Amendment. In case you are wondering they are: Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Right of Assembly, and Right to Petition the Government.

A majority (51%) of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. This has been a constant since the question was asked on the survey, though they noted that older respondents (54%) believed this more than younger respondents (37%).

The survey also asked Americans about what they thought the impact on religious liberty would be of a possible Supreme Court decision to legalize same sex marriage. While 54 percent thought it would have no impact, another 31 percent believed it would have a harmful impact.

Another question was whether public wedding businesses should be required to serve same sex couples regardless of religious based objections. A majority disagreed (42% strongly disagree, 13% mildly disagree) with the statement. And they found that younger adults are more supportive of requiring all businesses to serve same sex couples.

Americans obviously support the First Amendment, but some need a little more education about what’s in it.

Immigration is in the news these days, but not for the typical reasons. Usually, we are discussing immigration reform because a bill has been filed or a “Gang of 8” has decided to push legislation forward.

Immigration is in the news these days for three very different reasons. Ann Coulter has a new book out with the provocative title, Adios, America. And speaking of provocative, we certainly have heard lots comments about Donald Trump’s statements in his campaign kickoff speech. Add to that the murder of Kate Steinle in the sanctuary city of San Francisco, and you have lots of people talking about immigration.

Many of the facts and statistics are startling. Most Americans (93%) have a high school diploma. By contrast, about 75 percent of illegal aliens do not have a high school diploma. It is safe to say that many of the Mexicans coming to America are not achievers in the educational or economic sense.

Of greater concern is the number of illegal aliens in prison. Ann Coulter reminds us that the federal government refuses to tell us how many prisoners are immigrants. What we do know is concerning. For example, there are more foreign inmates in the New York state prisons from Mexico than from the entire continent of Europe. This is significant since half of all Mexican immigrants in the U.S. live either in Texas or California.

One estimate is that 71 percent of non-American citizens in federal prisons are from Mexico. Another government statistic shows that Mexican criminals represent 16 percent of all convicts serving time in federal penitentiaries.

President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform Act in 1986. Bill Clinton signed another immigration reform bill in 1996. Nearly twenty years later, we still have a problem, in part because the mayor or San Francisco and the Obama administration will not obey the immigration laws on the books.

We need this debate, if for no other reason than important facts are starting surface about our immigration chaos.

Mention the word appeasement, especially when talking about foreign policy, and most people rightly assume that appeasement leads to more aggression. But it can also be said that compromise with many homosexual activists becomes the same thing as appeasement.

Jonah Goldberg illustrated this first with a children’s book and then with the fallout from the Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage. He reads the book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, to his daughter. The theme is simple: give a mouse a cookie, then we wants a glass of milk, then a straw, etc.

He said the story came to mind recently with the Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage. We also discovered that even when the cookie is really big (like the complete redefinition of marriage) the mice want something more.

First, there was the call to challenge the tax-exempt status of anyone or any institution that disagreed with the five Supreme Court justices. Mark Oppenheimer wrote in Time magazine that “Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemption for Religious Institutions.” The day that came out, I sent an email to some colleagues with the subject line: “That didn’t take long.”

Next was the call for a further redefinition of marriage. Politico ran an editorial “It’s Time to Legalize Polygamy: Why Group Marriage is the Next Horizon of Social Liberalism.” Again, that didn’t take long.

Throughout the debate about same sex marriage, we were assured that all the homosexual activists wanted were the right to get married. What happened if you raised questions about religious liberty, losing tax exemption, or how this would slide into legalized polygamy? Well, those questions were smacked down as irrelevant or fear mongering at its worst. We were reminded that this was merely a battle for “marriage equality” and had nothing to do with a war on religious liberty.

I think we all now know that the activists wanted more. Their agenda was always more than just homosexual marriage. No cookie, no matter how big, will satisfy their insatiable appetite for more.

When Greece decided to default on its payment to the International Monetary Fund, there were all sorts of economic commentaries. As accurate as they were, they usually don’t tell the whole story from a demographic perspective. Let me tell that story.

Actually, I could rightly say, let me retell that story. Some of my commentaries five years ago were predicting these events when you look at the fertility rate and the welfare state. The national fertility rate in Greece is 1.3 children per woman. Demographers point out that a country needs a fertility rate of 2.1 to replace its population. That used to be the fertility rate in the U.S., which is now about 1.8.

No matter what policies you implement in Greece, you are faced with the demographic winter that has befallen the country. You can’t provide generous government benefits when you have so many parents and grandparents who need to be supported by a smaller cohort of children. You end up with too few paying into the system while too many are taking from the system.

Fertility is only part of the problem. The generous Greek welfare state is the other, which appears completely disconnected from reality. Columnist Mark Steyn reminds us that originally in the Greek welfare system, you could retire at age 58. More than that, public sector workers often get off work at 2:30 PM. He says that is like working 7-8 months out of a typical American work year. And the Greek system also pays well. Public sector workers receive 14 monthly payments.

When you begin to understand the demographics and finances behind the current Greek tragedy, it is easy to see why this country is facing so many problems. But we can’t as a country say to ourselves: “that is their problem, but it isn’t our problem.” Our fertility rate may be a little higher than theirs, and our finances are in much better shape than theirs. But it might only be a matter of time before we find our country in the same circumstances as Greece. All of this could be a preview of coming attractions.

Here’s a suggestion. Read Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and then compare it to the government we have today. The framers set forth what is the legitimate role for the federal government.

You will find that it does give the government power to collect taxes and duties. It is required to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. It can coin money, establish post offices and roads. That’s about it.

Professor Walter Williams in his new book, American Contempt for Liberty, reminds us that: “Nowhere in the Constitution do we find authority for Congress to tax and spend for up to three-quarters of what Congress taxes and spends for today. In other words, there is no constitutional authority for farm subsidies, bank bailouts, food stamps, Social Security, Medicare, and thousands of other federal spending programs.”

The point he is trying to make is the current government is a significant departure from the original principles of limited government and individual freedom. And we are paying heavily for this expanded government.

He estimates that at the turn of the last century (1902) expenditures for all levels of government were $1.7 billion. The average taxpayer paid only $60 a year in taxes. Today federal expenditures alone are nearly $4 trillion, and the average taxpayer pays more than $10,000 a year in federal, state, and local taxes.

You can look at it another way. From the beginning of the country (1787) until 1920, federal expenditures were only 3 percent of GNP. Today federal expenditures are nearly 25 percent of GDP.

As bad at this trend is, we need to remind ourselves that government is spending more than it is receiving in taxes. Each day America goes deeper into debt. We have exceeded $18 trillion in debt and show no signs of balancing a budget any time in the future.

It is worth remembering these facts when evaluating candidates for federal office. I’m not interested in a politician that wants to keep driving down this road. It’s time to stop and turn around.