As the new year began, USA Today published a piece by two respected scholars on marriage. Dr. Ryan Anderson of Heritage Foundation and Professor Robbie George of Princeton outline the erosion of marriage over the past decade. They start with Barack Obama’s affirmation that “marriage unites a man and woman.” They take their readers through activist court rulings redefining marriage on to state ballot initiatives upholding marriage as between one man and one woman.

They describe President Obama’s “evolution” on the subject and the path of two marriage cases to the Supreme Court. In 2013, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court struck down the federal definition of marriage as a male-female union. Then, in 2015, the justices ruled, again 5-4, that same-sex marriage is legal in every state.

They write of the consequences to come: to marriage itself, to marital norms, to the family.

Theologian, N.T. Wright explains that we “really should watch out” when civilizations try to change the meaning of key words, like marriage.

Such a brazen move by men — to attempt to tamper with God’s plan.

Professor Wright describes Christianity as a grand narrative, a true story that begins in Genesis 1 with God creating the heaven and the earth. He says, “the binaries in Genesis are so important — that heaven and earth, and sea and dry land and so on and so on, and you end up with male and female.” He continues, “It’s all about making complementary pairs which are meant to work together.” And then, “The last scene in the Bible is the new heaven and the new earth, and the symbol for that is the marriage of Christ and his church.”

Arrogant men think they can erase “God’s intention”; a government cannot make black into white.

Professor Wright rightly declares that the new, alternative configurations of marriage that make it “just a convenient social arrangement and sexual arrangement” do not and cannot change reality.

If you do an online search of the term “cultural Marxism,” you will see a Wikipedia entry that dismisses it as a “conspiracy theory” that is supposedly trying to take over Western culture. Actually it is the dominant form of Marxism in America and in much of the West today.

Dr. Paul Kengor was on the Point of View radio talk show with me to talk about his recent article about cultural Marxism. He explained that cultural Marxism began about a century ago in Germany because the proponents felt that orthodox Marxism was too limiting and too narrow. They wanted revolutionary changes in marriage, sexuality, and family.

They looked to the universities as a place when their ideas could be launched. They would organize the students, the artists, and the media to transform Western society. Instead of focusing on an economic war, they wanted to bring a cultural war.

One of the key figures in cultural Marxism was Antonio Gramsci who taught that they should seize the “cultural means of production.” That would be the media and the universities. He believed that the social transformation would be able to “march through the institutions.”

One place where cultural Marxism is evident today is in what is called “critical theory.” Paul Kengor reminded us that Barack Obama’s alma mater, Occidental College, has a Department of Critical Theory and Social Justice. It promises to instruct students in the principles of “Marxism, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, deconstruction, critical race studies, queer theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory.”

If you have been near a college campus lately, this should all sound very familiar. This is not a “conspiracy theory” but an accurate picture of the march of cultural Marxism through the institutions.

When I talk about how well the economy is doing and how wages are increasing, I sometimes have a caller remark that they haven’t seen any improvement in their economic situation. That makes sense. A rising tide will lift all boats, but some boats rise faster than others. But the most recent economic numbers show that economic growth has been most beneficial to low-income workers.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal put some of the economic numbers in perspective. During the first 11 quarters of the Trump presidency, wages for the bottom 10 percent of earners (over age 25) rose more than twice the percentage (5.9%) compared to the second term of the Obama presidency. Wage growth not only increased for low-income workers, it also increased faster for the middle class when compared to that same time (2012-2016).

Less educated workers saw the strongest gains. For example, wages rose at a 6.1 percent annual clip for workers without a high school degree and 3.9 percent for those with some college. Both of these were three times faster than during the second Obama term.

Young people were also getting big pay raises. Their wages increased on average 5.8 percent for teens, 4.4 percent for 20-24-year-olds, and 4.8 percent for 25-35-year-olds during the Trump presidency.

The editors wondered how Mayor Pete Buttigieg could claim wages aren’t keeping up with the cost-of-living. All he needs to do is look at his city of South Bend, Indiana where the average weekly earnings have grown 9.9 percent over the last year, while employers have also increased both hours and pay.

It looks to me that this rising tide is lifting all boats after all.

Just a few years ago, Evergreen State College was probably best known as the alma mater for rapper Macklemore and Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons. That all changed with an email biology professor Bret Weinstein sent.

In the past, the school had a tradition known as the “National Day of Absence.” Usually, minority faculty and students leave the campus for a day to make a statement. But in 2017, the college wanted to change things and wanted white students and faculty to stay away from campus.

Professor Weinstein argued in an email that there is a difference between letting people be absent and telling people “to go away.” And he added that he would show up for work. When he did, he was confronted by a mob of students. When the administration tried to appease the demonstrators, things got worse.

When this confrontation took place, we talked about it on radio. Now it is well documented in the movie No Safe Spaces. It is also explained in detail in the first chapter of the book by the same name, edited by Dennis Prager and Mark Joseph. The foreword is by Adam Carolla.

Weinstein has described himself as a political progressive and left-leaning libertarian. But his liberal commitments did not protect him from the student mob. The campus police warned him about a potential danger. The next morning, as he rode his bike into town, he saw protesters poised along his route tapping into their phones. He rode to the campus police department and was abruptly told: “You’re not safe on campus, and you’re not safe anywhere in town on your bicycle.” Weinstein and his wife eventually resigned and finally received a financial settlement from the university.

It might be tempting to write this off as a bizarre experience on one campus. Unfortunately, the book and movie document so many instances of similar insanity on college campuses that we the taxpayers need to confront.

Crime costs both victims and society a great deal. But the cost is much more than we realize. Professor Walter Williams documents the “Unappreciated Crime Costs” that especially hit black residents in low-income neighborhoods.

Thousands of black Americans are murdered each year in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis and Philadelphia. He documents that in over 90 percent of the time the perpetrator was also black.

Crime also imposes a hefty tax on people in these neighborhoods, who can least afford it. Residents must bear the time cost and other costs of having to shop outside their neighborhoods. There are few supermarkets in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods that are often referred to as “food deserts.”

Delivery companies (like FedEx and UPS) routinely leave packages on the doorstop of homes in low-crime neighborhoods. They wouldn’t dare do that in these high-crime neighborhoods. Taxi drivers, fearing robberies in these dangerous neighborhoods, often refuse to accept telephone calls for home pickups.

You might wonder why black people in these areas often fail to report crime to law enforcement. First, many of them have a deep mistrust of police. Second, there is also the real fear of reprisals by black criminals. He calls it the “stop snitching” principle. Reporting a crime or criminal can have serious repercussions. Criminals often have little fear of being brought to justice. He reports that less than 1 percent of murderers are every charged.

Walter Williams concludes that many of the problems in the black community in previous decades were due to racial discrimination. He concludes that the problems today are due to “high illegitimacy, family breakdown, and unsafe communities.” That’s why I believe the best solutions must come from churches and faith-based organizations.

Most all media reports claim that the terrible brush fires in Australia have been made worse by climate change. That may be true in the broadest sense, the reality is more complicated. Here are a few pieces of data to consider.

Climatologist Roy Spencer reminds us that Australia has had a long history of brush files going all the way back to the Aborigines. The record number of hectares burned on that continent occurred during the 1974-75 season. And it is worth mentioning that year, there was above-average precipitation and below-average temperatures.

This year, Australia hit both a high and a low. The average temperature for 2019 was much higher (in fact 2 degrees higher than just a few years before). And the average precipitation was a record low. If you want to say all of that is due to climate change, feel free to do so.

Dr. Spencer explains that neither of these two data points are what the current climate models predict. They merely look like the natural year-to-year variability of weather patterns that ended up giving Australia a year of drought and high temperatures.

If this pattern is due to climate change, then you might expect to see the same pattern worldwide. A global survey of wildfire activity found that there is actually less fire activity, not more. More areas are experiencing a decrease in wildfire activity than areas are experiencing more wildfires.

We should also acknowledge that some wildfires begin because of human-caused ignition (both accidental and purposeful through arson). And many of those fires are made worse when we don’t clear dead vegetation and follow other fire-management strategies.

The reasons we have such devastating fires in Australia this year is due to much more than the simple media claim that it’s due to climate change.

A California law went into effect January 1 that hurts the very people it was supposed to “protect.” Assembly Bill 5 severely limits independent contracting by placing heavy restrictions on the amount of work freelancers can do before being considered full-time workers.

The Daily Signal’s Jarrett Stepman explains that “The law was passed to reduce the negative impact of the ‘gig economy,’ where workers do various jobs on their own time but don’t get the benefits or long-term employment guarantees of a traditional full-time job.”

Not everyone wants or needs these benefits. The flexibility of a contract job is appealing to all kinds of folks. “According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Fewer than 1 in 10 independent contractors would prefer a traditional work arrangement.” But California is removing that choice for lots of its workers.

No surprise — companies are already replacing freelancers and independent contractors with fewer full-time workers.

Why would California lawmakers want to kill the gig economy? Doing this will only exacerbate California’s homelessness problem. The Wall Street Journal explains that AB5 will benefit labor unions and plaintiff attorneys, major financiers of leftist politicians. But it imposes enormous new labor costs on businesses that rely heavily on contractors.

Every Uber driver will have to be an employee, costing the company an estimated $21,000 per worker and necessitating 30-50-% fare increases.

Every writer or blogger who contributes a weekly column to a website now must be a full- time employee of the company running the site. Publishers will cope by simply staying away from California workers.

The Journal reports that “Several trucking companies are ending contracting relationships with California drivers and offering them relocation packages to move to other states.”

The paternalistic left acts as if everyone needs a boss. The state should adopt legislation allowing gig economy workers to pool together to get lower-cost insurance. That would preserve their autonomy and flexibility and help them thrive.

Occasionally I use the phrase, “Politics stops at the water’s edge” when talking on radio. I really didn’t know the full history of the phrase until reading an editorial by former Senator Joe Lieberman.

After World War II, Senator Arthur Vandenberg (a Michigan Republican who was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee) formed a bipartisan partnership with President Harry Truman. He did so to help secure the postwar peace and strengthen the country’s position in the Cold War. When asked why he worked so closely with a Democratic president, he replied that, “Politics stops at the water’s edge.”

Joe Lieberman provided this history lesson for some of his fellow Democrats who simply would not acknowledge the taking out Qasem Soliemani was in our best interests and made Americans safer. He felt this action by the president deserved bipartisan support rather than the negative reactions promoted by his fellow Democrats.

He reminds them that this terrorist leader “created, supported, and directed a network of terrorists organizations that spread havoc in the Middle East.” He oversaw various camps with elite Quds Force fighters and Iraqi militias. They were responsible for the deaths of more than 600 American soldiers.

He also questions the claim by some Democrats that the president has no authority to order this attack without congressional approval. He said such a criticism was “constitutionally untenable and practically senseless.” The authority to act is inherent in the powers granted to the president. He reminds them that the previous president ordered drone strikes on dangerous terrorist leaders including one who was born in the US.

I am grateful that he is encouraging his fellow Democrats to leave politics at “the water’s edge” and stand together against Iran and terrorist leaders.

One of the framed pictures in my office is a photograph I took at Glacier National Park when I was a teenager. I have always wanted to go back and photograph this beautiful place with a much better camera.

I also wanted to go back so that I could take a picture of the signs that the park service put up predicting that all of the glaciers would be gone by 2020 due to climate change. In case you don’t know, there are still glaciers at Glacier National Park. Yes, some have shrunk but they certainly have not disappeared as predicted.

Kyle Smith used this as one example of the problem with making specific predictions. Saying that sometime in this century, we will have an environmental disaster is much safer than saying it will happen in the next 10 years. He also provides some background to the story of glaciers in this park.

The US Geological Survey has been keeping track of the “Retreat of Glaciers in Glacier National Park” for some time. The scientists noted that the mean annual temperature has increased so the glaciers will be gone someday “in the next few decades.” So that had Smith starting to look at past predictions.

For example, a 1923 Associated Press report said glaciers would “almost disappear” in 25 years. They should have been gone by 1948. But there is a 1936 article that predicted that the glaciers would “vanish within 25 years.” So they should have been done by 1961. And there is a 1952 AP report that explains that “naturalists” said the glaciers would be gone in 50 years. So we should have had no glaciers by 2002.

By now, I think you get the idea. All of these past predictions were wrong, but that did not stop others from making another predictions. Some day the glaciers may all be gone, but they haven’t left yet.

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.