Two of the founding fathers that deserve more attention are Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. While the Hamilton musical provides us with some perspective and entertainment, I would recommend the book by Jay Cost, The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy. He was on the Point of View radio program to talk about his book.

These two men belonged to a political movement with three fundamental foundations. The first was the commitment to liberal government that emphasized the protection of individual rights. The Declaration of Independence argued that, “governments are instituted among men” in order to secure certain “unalienable rights.” That idea written by Thomas Jefferson was influenced by the writings of John Locke.

The second foundation was a belief in self-government, often referred to as republicanism. A republic allowed the citizens to be governed by laws that they actually had a hand in creating. A monarch did not hand down these laws. They were established by: “we the people.”

The third foundation was nationalism. The 13 separate colonies agreed to bind themselves together in a national union of 13 states. This is where there was the greatest division between the Federalists and the Antifederalists. And they ended up dividing Hamilton from Madison

Hamilton emphasized national vigor and was eager to promote the Bank of the United States and other programs that would grow the national government. Madison, on the other hand, wanted to pursue what could be called “republican balance.” He feared that Hamilton’s policies favored the wealthy.

In reading this book by Jay Cost, I was struck by the reality that many of the debates in the founding of this country continue to this day. Many of the ideas put forward by Hamilton and Madison are still debated today in the halls of Congress.

Many writers have talked about the fact that America seems to be in the midst of what is often called a civil war of values. Victor Davis Hanson provides an in-depth analysis of “The Origins of Our Second Civil War.”

Globalization, he says, “had an unfortunate effect of undermining national unity.” While some became billionaires in high tech and finance, most other Americans lost out. To make matters worse, the elites blamed the losers, clingers, and deplorables for driving industries out of the country because they were too racist or xenophobic to get with the globalist agenda.

High tech, he also argues, had a way of disguising poverty. “Suddenly the lower middle class and the poor had in their palms the telecommunications power of the Pentagon of the 1970s, the computing power of IBM in the 1980s, and the entertainment diversity of the rich of the 1990s.” At the same time, the new normal was two parents at work, renting instead of buying, and an eight-year car loan instead of a three-year car loan.

Higher education helped split the country in two. But not only were universities becoming more leftwing, but they were also becoming far more intolerant than they were in the radical 1960s.

Illegal immigration changed America in significant ways. Progressives wanted a new demographic to vote for leftist politicians, while conservatives wanted a pool of cheap, unskilled labor. These waves of immigrants changed the Electoral College map and ushered in tribalism and calls for more diversity.

Victor Davis Hanson has some suggestions about what might bring the United States together. One solution he mentions is a “religious and spiritual reawakening.” Yes, there are political and economic solutions, but perhaps the most important is the need for revival. That may the most important antidote to a country headed for a “Second Civil War.”

Are humans the enemy? Should animals have constitutional rights? Should peas be granted personhood? These questions may sound ludicrous. Nevertheless, professors and leaders in environmental rights groups are asking these questions and providing bizarre answers.

Wesley J. Smith was on Point of View radio talk show to discuss his documentary “The War on Humans.” You can watch it on YouTube and also order the companion e-book. You will quickly see or read that these questions are not satire or science fiction. There are people who believe that humans are the problem, and the only solution is to grant legal rights to animals and plants. Some go so far as to suggest that we find some way to reduce the human population by 90 percent.

Smith documents these claims in his video and e-book. Anti-human activists want to place all our valuable natural resources (from oil to land) off limits for human use. Farmers could be held liable for plowing new fields because they might lead to the death of rodents, snakes, and even weeds.

These ideas do not spring from the biblical concept of having dominion over the earth and being a good steward of God’s creation. Instead, the environmental movement of the 1960s portrays humans as a “disease” or as “parasites” or as a “cancer” hurting Mother Nature. It then evolved into the “nature rights” movement that desires to give fauna and flora “the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles.” We end up with a pantheistic idea that eliminates any distinction between humans and other life forms.

These ideas don’t just surface in academic settings or environmental rallies. They end up in our laws. That is why we need to counter these erroneous ideas and defend the biblical principle of human dignity.

In a recent commentary, I mentioned that many radio listeners object to the fact that Social Security is considered an entitlement. After all, they argue, they paid into Social Security and Medicare. Now they are receiving a partial refund of money they paid into the system. While that is true for some people, it is not true for many others. Let’s look at the numbers.

A credible analysis was done a few years ago by the Urban Institute. Their researchers figured out what people turning 65 in various years have already “paid into” the system and then calculated what they can expect to “take out” after they reach age 65. Of course, the actual numbers will vary based upon family income, marital status, and longevity.

In most cases, retiring Americans will receive much more from Social Security and Medicare than they put into the system. Whenever I mention this on radio, callers are shocked to hear that and often don’t believe it. Here are some numbers from the Urban Institute.

A two-earner couple receiving an average wage would have paid $722,000 into Social Security and Medicare. They could be expected to take out $966,00 in benefits. In other words, they would be paid about one-third more in benefits than they paid in taxes.
A one-income earner couple earning an average wage will pay about $361,000 into Social Security and Medicare and receive about $854,000 in benefits. That is almost two and half times more in benefits than were paid in taxes.

The conclusion is clear. In most cases, Americans who retire will actually receive more from Social Security and Medicare combined than they put into the system.

The House of Representative’s Committee on Reform and Oversight held a hearing recently on what members called “the administration’s religious liberty assault on LGBT rights.”

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is on this committee as are fellow “Squad” members, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.

The hearing’s stated premise was that the Trump administration is protecting and increasing the religious liberty of religious “zealots” who are discriminating, violating so-called LGBT rights, in the name of their faith.

Representative Ocasio-Cortez, raised Catholic, offering what she claimed as “the perspective of a woman of faith,” stated that religious faith is “being weaponized and mischaracterized” by religious believers who oppose things like the redefinition of marriage or doing surgery on children to try to change them from one sex to another.

First Liberty Institute’s Executive General Counsel Hiram Sasser was the only invited panelist representing religious liberty. In addition, there were representatives from the Family Equality Counsel and the Human Rights Campaign.

Another witness was Evan Minton, a transgender man who sued the Catholic Dignity Health chain for refusing to do a hysterectomy to aid his transition from female to male. (He received one elsewhere.)

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez stated, “My faith commands me to treat Mr. Minton as holy because he is sacred,” continuing, “There is nothing holy about rejecting medical care of people, no matter who they are, on the grounds of what their identity is.”

Psalm 12 in the Bible actual Christians read contains a prayer that God would guard and preserve us from the ungodliness of “this generation”.

Verses 2-4 address the arrogance of those who misrepresent God’s truth. It reads:
“Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that makes great boasts,
Those who say, ‘With our tongue we will prevail, our lips are with us, who is master over us?'”

Who indeed?

One time when I was speaking on the subject of entitlements, someone reminded me of the scene in the movie “Cinderella Man.” The scene is relevant to our current debate on entitlements.

In the movie, Russell Crowe plays boxer James Braddock in the real-life story of a man who went from dockworker to champion. Braddock is living in a dingy tenement in New Jersey sharing little food with his wife and children. But even at this low point in his life he has too much pride to ask the government for help. It is only after the utility man shuts off the heat that things get so desperate. When his wife farms the children out to a relative for fear they are slipping into pneumonia, Braddock relents.

Next we see him at the counter of New Jersey’s Emergency Relief Administration. The administrator counts out $19, looks at him with some pity and says, “I never thought I would see you here, Jimmy.” Braddock is humiliated. He collects his money and leaves. Next we see him inside a saloon in Madison Square Garden where he is begging a room full of boxing promoters and businessmen for enough money to turn on the heat. All the time he is mumbling apologies and choking back tears.

What caused him to try to make it without government assistance? Pride is one reason. Shame is another. You cannot watch the scenes I just described without sensing that James Braddock was ashamed he had to get a government handout. Soon he finds himself on the way to the miraculous title bout. Now that he has money, he goes back and returns every cent of charity he ever took.

Somehow it is hard to imagine this scene today. Our entitlement culture has removed any shame that used to exist when a person took a government handout. Some of that is good because we don’t want people to avoid getting help when they need it. But when entitlement has become a way of life without any shame, we have lost something.

In this highly politicized culture, we see that more and more people are called racist when using the label is inappropriate. Dennis Prager has been watching this and even seen the label used against him. His commentary not only tells his story but provides some insight on, Why the Left Calls Good People Racist.

After he spoke at a Turning Point event, the vice provost for diversity at Purdue University claimed that Prager said “slavery was not bad.” Dennis Prager explains that he never said anything remotely like that. After he mentioned it on his radio show, the provost wrote to Prager and suggested they meet, but offered no apology.

Prager provides another example from his radio program where he mentioned some of the offensive words used by President Truman. A listener called to ask why Prager would repeat one offensive word but not use the N-word. He merely replied that the left has rendered the N-word the only unutterable word in the English language. Days later news stories surfaced claiming that Prager said, “it’s idiotic you can’t say the N-word.”

Prager believes there are two major reasons why the left smears with the label racist. First, truth is not a left-wing value. Truth, he explains, is a liberal value, and truth is a conservative value. But truth is not a value of the left. As we have discussed in previous commentaries, he makes a clear distinction between liberalism and the left.

Second, smearing opponents is not only a left-wing value. It is standard operating procedure. The left does not win through argument. It wins through smear. Make a well-reasoned argument in the public sphere, and you will be smeared with a label: racist, sexist, bigoted, intolerant, homophobic, Islamophobic, or xenophobic.

It’s easier to call someone a racist or a fascist than to make a reasoned argument. That’s why the left does it.

Many years ago, Walter Williams wrote a column with the controversial title “Gullible Americans.” I thought about it now that Democrats seem ready to nominate a candidate who is planning to raise taxes.

In his column, he reminded us that during the legislative debate about the 16th amendment, President William Taft and congressional supporters argued that only the rich would ever have to pay federal income taxes. When the amendment was enacted in 1913, only one-half of one percent did pay taxes. Walter Williams argued that Americans ratified the amendment because they were duped into believing only the rich would pay income taxes.

It is worth noting that the founders made it impossible to have such a tax. That being said, Abraham Lincoln did impose an income tax on Americans to finance the war. It was later repealed. During the Grover Cleveland administration, Congress enacted the Income Tax Act of 1894. The next year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. That is why the 16th amendment had to be passed in order to have an income tax.

Walter Williams also cited Medicare as another example of gullible Americans. When it was enacted in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee, along with President Lyndon Johnson, estimated that Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion by 1990. They were off by almost an order of magnitude. In 1990, Medicare topped $107 billion. Today Medicare costs more than $600 billion.

We as Americans have been gullible when believing that a new tax won’t affect us. We have been gullible in thinking that a new government program will stay within the estimated budget. The question is whether we will be gullible again in this election year.

Has Christianity made a positive impact on Western civilization? Most Christians would wholeheartedly agree with that statement. In the past, atheists have usually pointed to how religion have been abused and misused and rarely acknowledge the contribution of Christianity to society.

Richard Dawkins is the one of the most prominent New Atheists. Yet even he has begrudgingly admitted that a belief in God has made a difference. He expressed his fear that the removal of religion would be a bad idea for society because it would give people “license to do really bad things.”

He likens the idea of God to surveillance, or as he puts it, the “divine spy camera in the sky.” People generally tend to do the right thing when someone is watching them. They tend to do bad things when no one is watching. He does go on the add that the “Great Spy Camera theory” isn’t a good reason for him to believe in God.

John Rhys-Davies is an actor who has been in the Lord of the Rings films, the Indiana Jones films, and many others. Recently, he noted that we “seem to forget that Christian civilization has made the world a better place.” He reminded us that, “We owe Christianity the greatest debt of thanks that a generation can ever have.”

You might expect him to say such things since he is the lead actor in the film about Saint Patrick. I might mention that “I Am Patrick” will be shown in theaters later this week.

What you may not expect, it the he actually describes himself as a “rationalist and a skeptic.” He may not be a Christian, but he can see what so many of us have seen. Christianity has been a positive influence in society. Essentially, Western civilization rests on a Christian foundation. It is encouraging that even atheists and skeptics can see that.

Credit goes to Senator Ben Sasse who has tried to get the US Senate to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act. This time, it was filibustered by 41 Democratic senators. Let me remind you that the bill would merely require doctors to provide medical care to infants who survive an attempted abortion.

You might think that would be standard medical procedure. But you would be wrong. Some who oppose the bill counter that the legislation is unnecessary or that it is redundant. Decades ago, I was speaking at a pro-life event when I met a young woman who survived an abortion attempt. Now in her 40s, she and many more abortion survivors have testified in Congress and in various state legislatures.

You might wonder why members of Congress and members of state legislatures oppose legislation to protect a child born alive. It isn’t because Americans agree with their opposition. Alexandra Desanctis documents one survey that found nearly three-quarters of Americans believe doctors should be required to care for infants who survive abortion. Another survey found that more than eight in ten oppose removing medical care from viable infants.

I believe that pro-choice politicians who oppose such a bill fear that making even an exception for what is essentially infanticide would weaken their arguments for abortion. And I have tried to document in previous commentaries that the Democratic party has become much more extreme on the subject of abortion than they were just a decade ago.

Pro-choice politicians also know they don’t have to pay any political price for their opposition to this bill because the mainstream media covers for them. Alexandra DeSanctis in a recent column provides extensive documentation for how the press (CBS, CNN, New York Times, Newsweek, Politico) inaccurately covered the legislation. That’s a sad commentary on both the Congress and the media today in America.