Debate about climate change has moved into a new and dangerous phase. Earlier this month, seventeen state Attorneys General and Al Gore got together to plan how they will use the prosecutorial power of their state offices to investigate groups that question the claims of climate change.

This should concern all of us. The editors of National Review said that aggressively using these prosecutorial powers “should raise an entire May Day parade’s worth of red flags: Prosecutors are in the business of enforcing the law, not rewriting it, and the open, naked, promise to use prosecutorial powers as a political weapon is a prima facie abuse of office.” In a previous age, many of these state Attorneys General would now be facing impeachment hearings.

The target at the moment is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but it is clear that Exxon is also in the sights of these prosecutors. The subpoena against CEI is a fishing expedition with the hopes of finding something that can be used against other groups and can become fodder for a full public relations campaign.

It is worth mentioning, that no one is arguing that any laws have been broken. I believe we still have a First Amendment that allows people and organizations to question the scientific claims being made about climate change.

Meanwhile, there is case in Oregon brought by children (ages 8 to 19) concerning climate change. The suit claims that the government is violating their constitutional rights “by permitting, encouraging, and otherwise enabling continued exploitation, production, and combustion of fossil fuels.”

Regardless of your view on climate change, you should at least agree that the proper debate about policy should happen at the legislative level. These Attorneys General should not be using their office in this way. Moreover, the rule of law is at stake, which these Attorneys General are supposed to uphold.

Most people would expect liberals to be open-minded, and yet they find that they are often the most intolerant. Kim Holmes explores the reasons for this transformation in his new book, The Closing of the Liberal Mind. He was on Point of View to talk about the history of the radical change in mindset and attitude.

Classic American liberalism in this country was based on a belief in liberty. Citizens were to be free from government coercion and thus free to believe something different from an orthodoxy forced on it by the state. They were also free to discuss and debate. And most importantly, was a belief in true tolerance, which accepted the right and freedom of others to believe differently from you. It was a live-and-let-live philosophy. I may disagree with your views but I would defend your right to believe them.

That is not the view of the postmodern left today. They practice the politics of intolerance. They may think they are tolerant, but really live in a world where bigotry and discrimination are allowed against any view that is not politically correct. They are willing to stifle free thought, censor free speech, and use public shaming in order to suppress any idea they do not like.

In his book, he talks about the campus bullies. But we also discussed how this has moved into even the business world. Now we have corporate bullies willing to use economic power to stifle and suppress legislation they abhor.

He says we have a new ruling class that is wealthy, smart, well-connected, and formidable. Although their numbers are small (in the thousands), their influence in the media, in the academy, and in government is significant. They also believe they have the higher truth which is superior to the common wisdom of the day.

We are in a battle with a new kind of liberal mind, and that is why we need to read about The Closing of the Liberal Mind.

Yesterday I talked about corporate bullies that have been threatening boycotts in order to get states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Mississippi to veto legislation they believe is discriminatory. Anyone who would take the time to read some of the laws would see that is not the case. Rarely is any part of the bill cited. Often when it is, that section of the bill is taken out of context.

So why are these corporations taking time away from producing products or promoting their services to get involved in the political process? The answer is that many in their leadership believe it is their responsibility to promote social justice. They will continue to bully and boycott because it reflects the progressive social values they embrace.

Why do they embrace such liberal values? David French, in a recent article on the progressive corporate culture, explains it this way. “Apple, Disney, and PayPal fish from the same cultural and academic pond as the elite media and elite universities.” He says that when he was at Harvard Law School, these corporations recruited many of his progressive-minded classmates.

So how should we as Christians respond? Many of my listeners have talked about boycotts. That probably won’t be too successful when you begin to think about the various products and services involved. David French observes that “progressive corporate culture is so pervasive that the consistent conservative boycotter would have to retreat from modernity.” Sure, it might be possible to stop going to Disney movies and to Disneyland and Disney World. It would be much harder to avoid every smartphone, computer, and operating system.

That is why we must take a stand and express our opinions. Progressive bullies cannot win on the merits of the debate. That is why they call people names and call for boycotts. We can win in the war of ideas and need to do so.

I believe that corporations should stay out of the culture wars. Unfortunately, companies like Apple and PayPal just can’t help themselves. In doing so they leave themselves open to three different forms of hypocrisy and double standards.

First, they focus on states in America but turn a blind eye to what is happening overseas. PayPal canceled its plan to build a global operations center in Charlotte, North Carolina. On the other hand, PayPal built a global operations center in Malaysia. The country’s penal code punishes homosexual conduct with whippings and up to 20 years in prison.

In previous commentaries, I have talked about how Disney and Apple ignore human rights injustices in other countries (like China and Singapore) while trying to punish states in the U.S. for standing up for traditional morality. And I should mention that New York Governor Cuomo issued a travel ban for state employees to North Carolina just after his returned from a trip to Cuba.

There is a second hypocrisy. Ryan Anderson reminds us that while liberals denounce corporations trying to influence politics, they cheer the actions of Apple, PayPal, and Salesforce that threaten legislators and governors with boycotts as they pass popular laws that uphold moral and social values.

Third, liberals applaud Bruce Springsteen for taking a moral stand. He and other entertainers have the right to follow their conscience. But liberals don’t want to extend that same right to people with moral questions about same-sex marriage. Liberal politicians and bureaucrats want to punish bakers, florists, and photographers who try to follow their conscience. These individuals, as well as adoption agencies and marriage counselors, want the same liberty to follow their conscience.

Corporate bullies would be wise to stay out of politics and the culture wars. They leave themselves open to charges of double standards and a lack of common sense.

Last Monday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the immigration case against President Obama. The lower courts ruled that the president acted unilaterally in issuing his order that would allow as many as 5 million illegal aliens to remain in the United States without any fear of deportation.

The issue at stake is much larger than immigration and deportation. What is at stake was whether the president could issue executive orders that bypass the legislative process. President Obama has been issuing these types of orders for years without much criticism from the mainstream press. Something changed with this order.

The editors at USA Today said that it would be a mistake for the Supreme Court to allow the president to do this and thus argued that the court should declare his action unconstitutional. My initial reaction was: Where were these editors when this president was issuing his over 200 executive orders?

The answer to the sudden conversion at USA Today can be found in the third to the last paragraph in the editorial. The editors argue that the problem with giving this authority to President Obama is that is would set a precedent and give this president (and the next president) sweeping authority. “The same people who think Obama should have broad powers over immigration enforcement will feel differently if a Republican wins the White House in November.” Ah yes, the sauce for the Democratic goose cannot be given to the Republican gander.

To drive the point home, they even tell their readers to “imagine what orders- Ted Cruz or Donald Trump would issue if elected president.” Now to be fair, Ted Cruz has promised to return the government to a constitutional foundation. Donald Trump, however, might simply remind the media that they had no problem with how President Obama used power. He was planning to do the same. Few complained when President Obama wrote executive orders, so they really can’t complain if a President Trump does too.

Lots of people lately have been giving their opinion about tax avoidance. The president criticized corporate “inversions” and told these companies to stop “gaming the system.” Lynn Woolley says that the recent Panama Papers scandal proves that tax avoidance is the American Way. Merrill Matthews says tax avoidance is patriotic.

First, let‘s start with some definitions. The IRS says that avoidance of taxes is not a criminal offense. It is what anyone tries to do to avoid paying more taxes than he or she might owe. That is different from tax evasion, which is a deliberate attempt to evade paying taxes you owe by the use of “deceit, subterfuge, camouflage, concealment” or other means.

People spend lots of time and money each year trying to avoid paying more taxes. The scandal of the Panama Papers is that we found out that many of the leaders of other countries who demand high taxes from their citizens used other means to keep from paying those same taxes by setting up offshore accounts.

Corporations try to limit the amount of taxes they pay by going offshore. Individuals also try to avoid taxes by using various creative strategies. Daniel Henninger writing in the Wall Street Journal reports that most Europeans spend a significant amount of time on tax avoidance by using cash-only transactions, bartering, and using off-the-books accounting. Some are legal. Others are not. But the goal is to keep from paying high personal taxes in Europe.

Merrill Matthews argues that tax avoidance should be considered patriotic. The federal government is limited to those powers enumerated in the Constitution. Tax avoidance is one way to stop feeding the problem of the overgrown government. Also, tax avoidance might actually force Washington to make the 74,000-page tax code simpler. That is why you can consider tax avoidance a patriotic act.

You have probably heard comments about certain people living in a bubble. They live in affluent communities cut off from some of the realities that most Americans face. Due to the research by Charles Murray, we can now identify where these bubble communities are located.

In his book, Coming Apart, he argued that a high-IQ, highly educated upper class was formed over the last half century that is disconnected from the culture of mainstream America. Charles Murray put a quiz in his book that PBS decided to post online. More than 47,000 people posted their scores along the zip codes where they lived when they were ten years old.

Charles Murray did an analysis of the quiz data along with other data. Even though this is not a true representative sample of America, it does provide some interesting conclusions. Overall it reinforces our general assumption that many of the leaders in politics, business, and the media grew up (and often still live) in bubble communities.

For example many of the bubbliest zip codes in America are located in New York or California. In New York City they are found in the Upper West Side and the Upper and Lower East Sides in Manhattan. They are also found in Brooklyn and suburbs of New York. California has lots of bubble zip codes in the San Francisco region, in the Silicon Valley, and in Los Angeles region.

We also find lots of bubble zip codes in the Washington, D.C. area, especially in the suburban communities that house many of the politicians, bureaucrats, and other government officials that make policy decisions that affect our everyday lives.

I hope you share my concern that many of the people who have such a significant influence in our daily lives live in a world with a very thick cultural bubble that separates them from the lives of ordinary Americans. This is not a positive demographic trend.

Earlier this month President Obama met with the French president. When talking about the terrorist actions in Paris, Brussels, and San Bernardino, he referred to the violence as “Islamist terrorism.” The White House deleted the phrase but then restored it when questioned about the apparent censorship.

Down the street from the White House, something similar was taking place at the Library of Congress. The library’s administrators banned the term “illegal alien” in subject headings about immigration. There is no word on what you would call someone who is in this country who did not go through legal channels to enter this country.

Victor David Hanson writes about the reality-denying language being used in our world today. He laments that these administration heads “have airbrushed out Islamic terrorism by referring to it with such phrases as ‘man-caused disaster.’ The effort to combat terrorism was called an ‘overseas contingency operation,’ perhaps like Haitian earthquake relief.”

The U.S. Attorney General has been using the term “justice-involved youth” to describe young criminals arrested and charged with crimes. This is obviously an attempt to avoid using the word criminal, but it is so confusing as to imply that the term
“justice-involved” youth is describing a young parole officer. Once again this is an obvious attempt to deny reality by using Orwellian doublespeak.

Another example is the phrase “climate change.” We used to hear about “global warming” until it became obvious to just about everyone that the earth has not been warming for the better part of two decades. No problem, we will just change to the term to “climate change.” Nobody can deny that the weather is changing, and thus the climate is changing as well.

It’s time to put an end to reality-denying language. We are not well served when we cannot even speak clear and precise English.