Over the next few weeks we will see many pundits and politicians blaming the president and his administration for the virus crisis. But before we start assigning any blame in the US, we need to go back to the country of origin. China and the World Health Organization should be held accountable for this pandemic.

When the first Chinese citizens became sick, doctors tried to connect the dots of these cases and found they went back to the Hua’nan market. One of the first doctors to alert Chinese authorities was criticized for “spreading rumors.” Another had to write a self-criticism letter. Other medical personnel simply vanished.

Even after the Chinese president ordered officials to control the outbreak, authorities kept denying it could be spread between humans. That is why they went ahead with the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations that spread the virus even further. By the time China implemented the largest quarantine in history, the damage has been done. The cities of Wuhan and others in the province were overwhelmed.

The director of the World Health Organization is probably someone you have never heard about. His name is Tedros Adhanaom Ghebreyesus (TED-ros AD-he-nom GA-bre-ay-sus). Two authors in an article in The Hill accuse him of turning a blind eye to what was happening in China and helping play down its severity. Even worse, while he was praising China for its “transparency,” medical personnel who tried to tell the truth were being detained or simply disappeared.

And if you assumed that the director of the World Health Organization would have to be a doctor, you would be wrong. He not only is not trained as a medical doctor but has no global health management experience.

The leaders of China and the leader of the World Health Organization deserve blame for this pandemic and should be held accountable.

No doubt you have heard the quote: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The oft-repeated quote is from Rahm Emanuel, who was President Obama’s Chief of Staff at the time.

Back then, he was talking about the 2008 financial crisis. This time, a number of progressive groups want to use the virus crisis to attack the president and a few Democratic politicians want to use it to promote their progressive agenda.

A Democrat-aligned Super PAC announced it will spend $5 million on negative ads about President Trump’s response to the coronavirus. News reports say that the group is funded by “liberal dark money group” that will spread misinformation on the president’s crisis response. If the Twitter ad that came out the other day is any indication of what future ads will be like, we can conclude that the word “misinformation” is too soft a term for what we will be seeing and reading.

Meanwhile, politicians have been using the virus crisis to propose various progressive initiatives. Mayor Bill de Blasio has been trying to make the case for a nationalization of crucial industries in this country. Socialists like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argue that the current health crisis illustrates why we need a single payer, universal health care program controlled by the federal government.

A mayor in Illinois declared that a coronavirus emergency allowed her to ban the sale of guns. A few of members of Congress and some mayors now argue for the commutation of sentences to release prisoners because of the virus crisis. And a few district attorneys have already announced a reduction in arrests for what are termed “low-level, non-violent crimes.”

During the next few months, we will need more discernment than ever given the fact that these groups and politicians aren’t about to let a crisis go to waste.

As we all adapt to social distancing, the new normal for daily living, we’ve also got to get serious about economic distancing from China. We have become too dependent on China in key sectors of our economy — like pharmaceutical and medical supply production.

China’s state news agency has issued several warnings that if the United States isn’t careful, China could ban exports of pharmaceuticals and medical protective gear and throw our nation into “a mighty sea of coronavirus.”

And they could do it! We depend on China for 80 percent of the core components we use to make our generic drugs. Generic drugs comprise 90 percent of the medicines Americans take. China also supplies more than 90 percent of the antibiotics we take plus many other drugs and biologics that we depend upon.

According to Rosemary Gibson, author of China RX: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine, “China has pursued a deliberate strategy to disrupt, dominate, and displace advanced industries in the U.S. and other Western countries.” One tool China uses for this purpose, she writes, are cartels which work to undercut the prices other countries charge for things. China can do this because of its lower labor costs, weaker environmental regulations and worker protections.

An example of how this works is penicillin. The U.S. once produced 70 percent of the world’s supply. Rosemary Gibson writes that, in 2004, “the Chinese cartel dumped the chemical material to make penicillin on the global market at below market prices, kept them low for four years, and drove out U.S. production.” In fact we are in the dangerous situation where production of practically all antibiotics and many other vital medicines has disappeared from the U.S.

U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (AK) says, “It’s time to pull America’s supply chains for life-saving medicine out of China.” He and Representative Mike Gallagher (WI) have introduced legislation to do so. This needs to be executed rapidly.

A number of columnists and political thinkers have tried to explain why there is so much hate in the public arena. Shelby Steele is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has some profound insights on “Why the Left is Consumed With Hate.”

He takes us back to the 1960’s when this country “finally accepted that slavery and segregation were profound moral failings.” So the left put itself in charge of righting this wrong, thus giving it enormous political and cultural power. It also led to the “greatest array of government sponsored social programs in history” that have cost more than $22 trillion.

He believes that this amounted to a formula for power that goes something like this. “The greater the menace to the nation’s moral legitimacy, the more power redounded to the left.” Soon they had compiled a laundry list of menaces. Racism was at the top of the list, but any other bigotry ending in “ism” and “phobia” also made the list.

This has created a problem for the left. America has made significant progress in racial issues along with progress with many of these issues. And that threatens the left “whose existence is threatened by the diminishment of racial oppression.” It must find racism anywhere it can to make itself relevant.

The white-on-black shooting in Ferguson, Missouri got lots of media attention, and even a comment from the president of the United States. During that same period, “thousands of black-on-black shootings took place in Chicago, hometown the then-president, yet they inspired very little media coverage and no serious presidential commentary.”

Today the left is troubled by its possible obsolescence. There is not enough social menace to service its need for power. Also nagging them is the failure of so many government programs the left proposed. It is easy to see why the left is consumed with hate.

America is a divided country. Os Guinness in his book, Last Call for Liberty, argues that the American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War. He believes that the root of this disagreement is two different definitions of freedom.

One view of freedom is embodied in “1776 and the American Revolution.” The other view arose in “1789 and the French Revolution.” The first can be found in the Declaration of Independence that owes its formulation to the Protestant Reformation and even earlier in the ideas found the book of Exodus in the Bible. The second can be found in Frances “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” that ended in the Reign of Terror. To that we can add Marx’s “triumph of the proletariat” and in the policies of Stalin and Mao Zedong.

His book asks ten questions that makeup the chapters in the book. When he was in studio with me talking about the book, I mentioned that few American could answer the questions in the affirmative. He asks, “Do you know where your freedom comes from?” Even fewer could offer good answers to questions like, “How do you plan to sustain freedom?”

He also addresses the question, “How will you make the world safe for diversity?” Here we have two starkly different visions of public life. On the one side are proponents of what Richard John Neuhaus called a naked public square that would exclude religion and religious expressions from public life. Proponents of a sacred public square would give preference to one religion. He advocates for a civil public square where citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage public life on their basis of their faith.

This book provides wise counsel on how Christians can be at the forefront of bringing America back to a proper understanding of freedom.

By now you have probably received an envelope in the mail that says, United States Census 2020. You are supposed to go online and fill it out before April 1. There are many reasons why you should do so. The most important reason is the fact the census count will determine how many representatives you will have in the future.

The state you are living in has changed significantly in the last ten years when the last census was taken. Those changing numbers will be used by your state legislature in 2021 to redraw the lines for congress, the state legislature, the state board of education, and various courts.

The Census Bureau is required to get the data to state legislatures by this time next year, but the hope is that it will arrive earlier. Then the process of drawing these lines will begin. How that is done varies from state to state. Legislators draw lines in most states, while commissions draw lines in others.

As you might imagine, Democratic legislators would like the lines drawn so there are potentially more Democratic districts. Republicans would like boundaries drawn so more Republicans could be elected.

There are other issues to consider. For example, most state laws require districts to follow county lines whenever that is possible. Sometimes numerous counties must be bunched together in areas with low population density. Citizens would like to keep cities, towns, and school districts together. Getting all of that in a single district is sometime difficult.

Add to that the requirement from the Voting Rights Act that requires boundaries assure that anyone has the right to vote based on race, ethnicity, and language group. And this law has also provided a context for bringing numerous lawsuits against states once the maps are drawn.

In order to start this process, you need to fill out the census. Then you need to express your views about the drawing of districts for this next decade.

Often when I talk about the “deaths of despair” affecting so many young people, I am asked why are so many unhappy? There are a number of reasons, but first let’s discuss how serious this problem has become.

In the US, the suicide rate quadrupled for young men (ages 15-24) and doubled for young women from 1946 to 2006. Another study found that “suicidal thinking, severe depression, and rate of self-injury among US college students more than doubled over less than a decade.”

Dennis Prager suggests that the reasons for such despair can be put into two categories: loss of values and loss of meaning. The loss of values is easy to document in this country. Judeo-Christian values were important in the founding of this country and important in the maintenance of the republic. Also “middle class values” were important. This would include getting married, making a family, getting a good job, demonstrating self-discipline, and patriotism.

Values were also lost when various communal associations declined. The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville explained that the strength of America derived from these professional, social, civil, political, artistic, philanthropic, and religious institutions.

A second reason for despair is lack of meaning. Viktor Frankl in his classic work, Man’s Search for Meaning, reminds us how meaning (or the lack of it) can explain so much about human nature. Poor people can be happy if they have meaning, while rich people who have money, but no meaning, are usually unhappy.

Religious faith can give life meaning. But more and more young people have no connection to religion. The fastest growing demographic among young people are the “nones” (those who define themselves as atheist, agnostic, or no preference).

So many young people today are unhappy because of the loss of values and the loss of meaning.

Let me begin with a question. What do you think of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic? Your response probably ranges from a belief that some of the government’s actions could have been better to a belief that it was a botched operation from the beginning.

Many pundits and politicians say the administration’s response has been a disaster. That harsh assessment may be overdone and unfair, but let’s assume it is accurate. That leads to a second question. If the federal government botched this health care response, why would you want the same government to take total control of your personal health care?

After all, the government had weeks of advance warning, had lots of international attention, and had access to some of the best disease experts in the government. If you have a personal health care crisis and need surgery or other treatment, your plight won’t be given media attention and you won’t have access to the best experts in the field.

Pundits and politicians critical of the administration might argue that President Trump is solely responsible for all the problems they list. In order to argue that you would have to ignore the positive comments by experts about the value of the travel bans and even the establishment of the public-private response to the pandemic.

Those who argue that another president would have done better ignore some of the mistakes made by previous presidents concerning disasters and pandemics. And do we really think a democratic socialist who has never run a government agency or a former vice-president apparently dealing with mental and memory issues would do better? And if we do get a vaccine in the near future, it will probably come from pharmaceutical companies those two candidates often vilify.

These critics might want to pause and consider that their criticisms are making a good case against government-run health care.

After the Coronavirus pandemic dissipates, perhaps we’ll ask why some countries got a better handle on patient recovery than others? There are early hints that outcomes have a lot to do with how dependent countries’ systems are on direct government financing of health care.

In Italy, doctors know how to treat severe cases. But they need ventilators in intensive care units. They simply don’t have enough beds or equipment to do the job. Or enough doctors.

We hear of patients languishing in hospital corridors and doctors having to make increasingly tough calls. The New York Times reports that, “For now, the marching orders are: Save scarce resources for those patients who have the greatest chance of survival.”

The Wall Street Journal’s political economics writer Joseph Sternberg says this is less a result of the severity of Covid-19 and more due to Italy’s “long term failure to invest” in its healthcare system.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development measured large European countries’ provision of acute-care hospital beds in 2016. Italy provided 2.62 per 1000 residents. Germany provided 6.06 per 1000. France and the Netherlands provided 3.15 and 3 respectively. Mr. Sternberg points out that the United Kingdom’s “creaking health care system is even worse.” The UK doesn’t distinguish between acute care and regular hospital beds, but, in 2017, it only provided 2.5 total beds per 1000 residents.

Mr. Sternberg suggests that the success in treating severe Covid-19 cases has been baked in over many years as countries decided how much to rely on central planning for health care.

In 2017, UK direct government spending comprised 78 percent of total dollars spent on health care. In Italy the proportion was 74 percent. In Germany and France, where citizens are required to have insurance, direct government spending is 6 and 5 percent respectively.

The results of all this will be “food for thought” for American voters.

Perhaps you have been involved in a political discussion with people and wondered how they could be so naïve about foreign policy or criminal justice because they just wanted to believe every person is basically good. Perhaps you have been sharing your faith with someone who rejected the idea of a savior because he or she rejected the idea of human sinfulness.

So many people in America are naïve about human nature, evil, and sin because they live in one of the greatest countries in the world that is insulated from the harmful realities of life. In many countries, greed and corruption are a way of life. I know that people in America complain about political corruption, but it isn’t anything compared to what is a daily experience in many other countries.

We are also shielded from strife and civil war. We have had an occasional terrorist attack that is unsettling. But we live in a world far removed from the daily threats people in other countries face.

Dennis Prager writes about his experience at the University of California in Berkeley. He had a debate/dialogue with two left-wing students. His final question to them was, “Do you believe people are basically good?” Without hesitation, they said yes.

He reminded them that they could think that way because they live in such a decent country insulated from poverty, corruption, and war. But he was troubled that just two generations after Auschwitz they could naïvely believe this. Since no Western religion (based on the Bible) teaches that people are basically good, this naiveté is obviously the result of secularism.

This naïve view of human nature keeps many from seeing the need for deterrence and protection from evildoers. And it keeps them from seeing their need for the gospel. It is one of the greatest mental obstacles we face whenever we engage in discussion about human nature.