Yesterday I talked about the book, The Coddling of the American Mind written by Jonathan Haidt. He and his co-author set forth three foundational untruths. One of those is the “Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always Trust Your Feelings.”

You can get yourself in some difficult circumstances quickly if you always trust your emotions. It is easy in this world to get frustrated, discouraged, and even depressed. Psychologists have found that certain patients got themselves caught in a feedback loop in which irrational negative beliefs cause powerful negative feelings. We are seeing that on college campuses today.

In a college classroom, students are apt to make some sweeping generalization and engage in simplistic labeling of the lecture or reading material. In that case, we would hope that a professor would move the discussion by asking questions or even challenging the assertion.

Instead, many professors and colleges go along with the student comments. In fact, many even argue that any perceived slight adds up to what today are called “microagressions.” In many cases, slights may be unintentional and actually wholly formed from the listener’s interpretation.

It is an easy step from not allowing certain topics to be discussed to not allowing speakers on campus who might present a perspective that aggrieved students believe should not be discussed. In the book is a chart illustrating how many speakers have been disinvited from universities. Five years ago, the line jumps significantly.

In previous commentaries, I have documented what has been happening on campuses like Middlebury College, Evergreen College, and the University of California at Berkeley. When emotions and emotional reasoning become the only way to judge ideas and speakers, you end up with the closed campuses of today.

One book that is often quoted and deserves to be read is, The Coddling of the American Mind. We invited the co-author, Jonathan Haidt, on the Point of View radio talk show to discuss his book.

It began with he sat down with his co-author (Greg Lukianoff) a number of years ago to make sense of what was happening on college campuses. They decided to write an article about it for The Atlantic with the title, “Arguing Towards Misery: How Campuses Teach Cognitive Distortions.” The editor suggested the more provocative title, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” The piece was one of the most viewed-articles of all time and was then expanded to this book.

Three untruths are the foundation of the book. The first is the “Untruth of Fragility: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Weaker.” Nietzsche’s original aphorism was, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” The younger generation has turned this idea on its head.

It is true that some things are fragile (like china teacups), while other things are resilient (and can withstand shocks). But we also note that some things are antifragile. In other words they actually require stressors and challenges to grow. Our immune system is like that. And university education is supposed to be like that. Students are supposed to be challenged by new ideas not locked away in “safe spaces.”

Unfortunately, most young people have been protected by a culture that promotes “safetyism.” It has become a cult of safety that is obsessed with eliminating threats (whether real or imagined) to the point where fragility becomes expected and routine. And while this is true for the millennial generation (also called Generation Y), it is even truer for the iGen generation (also called Generation Z) who are even more obsessed with safety.

We are indeed seeing the Coddling of the American Mind.

Should U.S. senators be allowed to apply a religious test to anyone nominated to serve in the government?

Earlier this month, two Democrats in the Senate, Mazie Hirono (HI) and Kamala Harris from (CA), objected to the nominee to a U.S. district court because of his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization. One senator wanted to know if he was aware of their stand on abortion. Of course he was. The senator also wanted to know if he would recuse himself from various court decisions.

Senator Ben Sasse (NE) introduced a “sense of the Senate” resolution saying that consideration of the membership of the Knights of Columbus was a violation of the prohibition against religious tests. It passed unanimously suggesting that Senator Hirono essentially voted against her own conduct in the hearings.

Other senators have also been asking religious questions in other hearings. Last year Senator Diane Feinstein (CA) wanted to know if a nominee to the circuit court worked with his parish to establish a crisis-pregnancy center. The senator also received lots of media attention for her statement to circuit court judge Amy Coney Barrett that, “The dogma lives loudly within you.” That comment, in particular, was seen by many as a violation of the Article VI of the Constitution that prohibits a religious test for office.

By the way, Catholics aren’t the only religious groups being singled out. Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) clashed with a nominee to the Office of Management and Budget because of something he wrote about Islam in a blog post tied to Wheaton College. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) challenged a nominee because his Anglican pastor opposed same-sex marriage.

All of these examples illustrate how many Democratic senators are feeling more and more confortable in applying religious tests to nominees even if that is prohibited by the Constitution.

The wife of the Vice President, Karen Pence, used to teach art at Immanuel Christian School in Virginia when her husband served as a member of Congress. Her office announced that she would once again be teaching art in the school on a part-time basis.

That announcement was met with lots of criticism for one major reason. This Christian school (like so many others) requires students and parents to abide by a Christian code of conduct concerning sexual activity and traditional marriage.

A CNN writer describing the school’s conduct code said, “This language is disgusting.” Another was outraged she would be working at the school that “discriminated against LGBT adults and children.” One commentary suggested that the school is “like a real-life setting for ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.'”

Of course, Karen Pence is merely the collateral target. The real target is the Christian school and other schools, universities, and seminaries that believe the Bible and want students to obey biblical commands. Just a decade or so ago, the Left and LGBT activists said they only wanted to co-exist. They wanted us to accommodate same-sex marriage and the homosexual lifestyle. Now institutional support for LGBT demands has now moved toward institutional hostility toward Christian values and Christian institutions.

Immanuel Christian School is a ministry of the church. None of the critics of it are forced to attend the school or the church. Their tax dollars aren’t going to fund the tuition paid by the students. The school is a voluntary association. Karen Pence is willing to volunteer her time to teach art.

A few years ago, none of this was controversial. It only became controversial when the Left stopped pretending they wanted accommodation and started enforcing compliance to their demands.

Planned Parenthood’s former president Cecile Richards downplayed abortion as her organization’s core activity. She famously maintained that abortion only makes up 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services and that the organization is focused primarily on women’s health.

We expected Planned Parenthood’s new president Leana Wen, a medical doctor, to continue in this mode. But she recently blasted media outlets Planned Parenthood has long depended on to underplay its abortion activity. She says they are misconstruing her “vision for Planned Parenthood.”

“Our core mission,” she tweeted, “is providing, protecting, and expanding access to abortion and reproductive healthcare. We will never back down from that fight…” Why such honesty?

Perhaps Dr. Wen now feels she’s free from the need to insist, as her predecessor did, that women in certain areas of the country won’t get necessary female health services unless Congress keeps taxpayer dollars flowing to Planned Parenthood. Those monies are probably safe for now, since Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she’ll wield a “pro-choice gavel.” So Dr. Wen can drop the ruse.

This theme of transparency is also taking hold in pro-abortion activism. A group called Shout Your Abortion seeks to portray abortion as a social good. Shout Your Abortion recently released a video with the title: “Kids Meet Someone Who Has Had an Abortion.” It’s an episode of Kids Meet, a show put out for children by Cut.com. In it, Shout Your Abortion’s Co-Founder Amanda Bonow attempts to convince several children that they should celebrate abortion with her. She tells them: “abortions are part of God’s plan.” Uncomfortable, sort of like a yucky dental appointment. But afterward she felt “grateful that I wasn’t pregnant anymore.” She asks one child, “Do we want people to have all those babies?” When he suggests adoption as a solution, she tells him, adoption would make her feel like “I am forced to create life.”

Such an evil effort to make abortion palatable to children.

Earlier this month, I turned on the Tucker Carlson television program and heard him deliver a monologue that lasted nearly 15 minutes. It became the monologue heard around the conservative world. And nearly every commentator has had negative things to say about his comments. But I want to do just the opposite.

Sure, there were things he said that were incorrect or overstated. But I want to affirm many of the things he said that were right on target and lost in some of the critical comments about his commentary.

A few minutes after criticizing Utah Senator Mitt Romney, he wonders why we have so many deaths of despair in a country where the economy is booming and many people are doing well financially. He says bluntly, “Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be summed up in GDP is an idiot.”

The real goal for America, he believes, should not be more prosperity. The goal should be happiness. The key ingredients might be such things as: dignity, self-control, independence, and deep relationships with other people. Many of his critics say Carlson gets off track by blaming the elites and promoting a type of victimhood populism. While that might be true, don’t miss his accurate diagnosis.

If more material goods would make us happy, then Americans should be some of the happiest people on the planet. They should be the happiest people in the history of the world. The median family income for Americans is the highest ever, even when adjusted for inflation. Yet we are lonely and depressed. Drug overdose deaths are at an all-time high. And these pathologies are not only in urban America but also in rural America.

Politics and government policies aren’t going to change this dysfunction. These are cultural and spiritual problems. Tucker Carlson’s diagnosis is generally accurate. And we Christians know there is only one answer: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I believe the latest government shutdown has been a fiscal preview of financial problems that will hit the government and us in the next few years. I’m not the only person saying this. Kevin Williamson in a recent column says the shutdown could be a “dress rehearsal for a fiscal Armageddon.”

Each day we see news reports of government bureaucrats who had to scale back their spending because they aren’t receiving a paycheck. There was even one story about a couple that took back their Christmas presents. But we all know that when a shutdown is over, government employees will receive back pay.

These news stories are focusing on what happens when thousands of federal workers don’t get their paychecks. Imagine what our society would look like when millions of citizens stop getting checks because the government has run out of money.

We aren’t there yet, but we are headed there quickly. Total spending on the major entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) will eventually exceed all the federal tax revenue collected each year. At the same time, the national debt continues to grow. And as interest rates increase, the cost of servicing the debt will go up even if that national debt did not increase.

In the best of all worlds, we would hope that our newly elected members of Congress would be willing to address this growing fiscal crisis. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen the slightest interest from congressional leaders to reform our long-term financial issues. It’s easier to ignore the potential problem or postpone any meaningful reform.

The next time you see stories about federal workers not getting paychecks, look at the frustration on their faces and multiply it ten-fold in order to see what will happen when grandma doesn’t get her Social Security check or an impoverished mother doesn’t get her welfare payment. That will be a social and economic crisis we have never seen in our lifetimes.

Earlier this month we saw two contrasting views of how to create jobs and raise wages. After Nancy Pelosi was reelected Speaker of the House, she gave a speech that outlined what she and her fellow Democrats wanted to do to help American workers.

She said they would “be champions of the middle class, and all those who aspire to it.” How did she plan to do this? She said they would “increase paychecks by rebuilding America with green and modern infrastructure.” As I have discussed in previous commentaries, the plan for a Green New Deal was tried before without much success. Moreover, it is difficult to see how that will raise wages.

The day after she spoke, the Labor Department released the December jobs report. Employers created 312,000 new jobs in the month. There was also an upward revision of 58,000 jobs for October and November. This was incredibly good news for American workers. The unemployment rate rose from 3.7% to 3.9%. But even that was good news. About 419,000 workers joined the labor force and were rushing back to work.

Also of note was the fact that manufacturers added 32,000 jobs in December. During the Obama administration, manufacturing employment fell by 210,000. In the first two years of the Trump administration, it has risen by 473,000 jobs.

I will leave it to economists to debate what policies should get credit for an outstanding jobs report. It seems pretty obvious to me that cutting taxes last year and cutting regulations the last two years explains what is happening in the economy. More jobs and rising wages did not come from more government investment in green infrastructure.

The first week of the New Year provided two different visions of how to create jobs, raise wages, and grow the economy. The latest jobs report helps us see what is working.

Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. When the Supreme Court removed most state restrictions on abortion back in 1973, who could have predicted the world we live in today?

When the ruling came down, few understood the long-term implications. I remember speaking on the issue in college classrooms a few years later and wondering when the Supreme Court would reverse its decision. By the 1980s, it seemed like only a matter of time that abortion would once again be restricted in America. That did not happen.

A whole generation of young people has grown up never having known a time when abortions were illegal. They may have seen some protests and may have heard some debate about the subject. But that is perhaps the sum total of their experience.

Abortion has left a scar on the soul of this nation just like the scar slavery left on America’s soul in previous centuries. Unfortunately, many Americans cannot see the scar that abortion has left on this country.

I see the evidence of these scars when I take phone calls from women who were exploited by abortion. I see evidence of these scars when I hear the cavalier comments of young people about human life. I see those scars when I hear people debate related issues like stem cell research and physician assisted suicide.

But I also see the healing when I see the good work of pregnancy resource centers. I understand from people working in this area that there are three times as many pregnancy resource centers in this country as there are abortion clinics. In many ways, the pro-life movement is winning the war of ideas.

And I am encouraged that so many young people (our future leaders) are pro-life and understand the importance of being pro-life. So there are some encouraging signs even as we see the scars left by abortion.

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.

Dr. King wrote the letter in response to a published statement by eight clergymen. He wrote it 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.