As we come to the end of the first quarter of 2022 (January to March), I think we can say we learned a few economic lessons that we should apply in the future. One lesson comes from Canada, and the other lesson comes from Russia.

The controversy over the truckers in Canada revealed some economic lessons to us about Western democracies that used to be disregarded as nothing more than conspiracies theories. The response from Justin Trudeau showed that even a liberal, democratic government could seize the bank accounts and financial assets of ordinary citizens.

Canada is the ninth largest economy in the world and one of the most advanced democracies in the world. Yet, it used emergency measures to freeze accounts and seize accounts without due process. The Canadian actions are why many investors are looking for censorship-resistant assets.

The second lesson came from the economic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The EU and the US were able to seize Russian central bank assets. US treasuries are supposed to be the safest asset in existence. They are supposed to be a zero-risk asset. The assumption was the central banks would treat each other with sovereign immunity.

Simultaneously, Visa and Mastercard stopped processing foreign purchases for millions of Russian citizens. Apple and Google shut off their smartphone-enabled payments. This unplugging of the world’s eleventh largest economy is a new chapter in the history of economic conflict.

Our world relies on the financial system working efficiently but these actions are unprecedented. Sanctions have been used before against smaller countries, but this is different. We may agree with these sanctions against Russia. But this illustrates a point I have made before. If these Western governments can shut down a powerful government like Russia, imagine what they can do to you.

We live in an age of fear. Often at the top of the list is fear of climate change. Bjorn Lomborg says one picture summarizes this age of fear. It is a girl holding a sign that says, “You’ll die of old age. I’ll die of climate change.”

The message from environmental activists and much of the media is that climate change is destroying the planet. And using the language of apocalypse, the warning is that we have few years left before humanity will come to an end.

Bjorn Lomborg has been writing about climate change for decades. His 2001 book was The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. His current book is False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. He reminds us that, “Over the past 20 years, climate scientists have painstakingly increased knowledge about climate change, and we have more �” and more-reliable �” data than ever before. But at the same time, the rhetoric that comes from commentators and the media has become increasingly irrational.”

He agrees that: “Global warming is real, but it is not the end of the world. It is a manageable problem. Yet we now live in a world where almost half the population believes that climate change will extinguish humanity.” Instead, he recommends that we “dial back on the panic, look at the science, face the economics, and address the issue rationally.”

We are told that humans are in the brink of extinction. The opposite is true. “In almost every way we can measure, life on earth is better now than it was at any time in history.” Life expectancy has more than doubled. The world is more literate. And even the planet is getting healthier.

He is convinced we have the power to make a better world. But the first thing we need to do is calm down.

You might assume that since parents around the country have objected to critical race theory (CRT), that there would be no chance it would be taught in public schools. But there is a bill before Congress that could federalize CRT.

That is the conclusion of Stanley Kurtz who has been researching CRT for years and alerted members of Congress to its inclusion in the Civics Secures Democracy Act. Back in May I talked about his concern with the original bill. Now there is a revised bill that only seems to eliminate the radical political elements.

His latest commentary demonstrates how the Biden administration could nationalize the teaching of CRT. Even if the language in the latest bill were changed, it is still likely that the $6 billion that would be allocated could be funneled through grants to various pro-CRT groups and speakers.

But he also explains the language trick used in the bill. It focuses attention on the “traditionally underserved” students and well as “underrepresented minorities.” The argument being used is that the only way to teach these groups is to reject the traditional way of teaching American history and civics. Instead, that will be replaced with curricula that stresses America’s “systemic racism.”

One of the books that provides a foundation for this teaching argues that “we must abandon the traditional view of American history” of a society that has “struggled to overcome the tragedies of slavery and racism.” For many minorities, it is argued, that is merely perceived as “White people’s history” and must be abandoned.

He concludes by acknowledging that “the educational Left is hoping that Republican naïveté, combined with some clever “rhetorical tweaks,” will dupe at least a few GOP senators and representatives” into sponsoring the bill. I certainly hope some of the members of Congress have greater discernment than that.

An education bill in Florida has created lots of controversy, partially because the critics have never read the bill and believe the slogans used to condemn it. The bill has the title “Parental Rights in Education.” But you may never have heard that name for the bill because LGBTQ critics and most of the establishment media only refer to it as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

For the record, the word’s “don’t say gay” don’t appear anywhere in the bill in any form. The so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill doesn’t actually say “don’t say gay.” But activists have learned that if you say something long enough, that it becomes the public perception.

The bill prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender in early years of grade school. Proponents see it as a common-sense response to leftist indoctrination in the schools. Some argue that a first-grade lesbian teacher should not be prevented from talking about her sexual involvement with her partner.

I would argue that heterosexual, homosexual, or transgender teachers should not be sharing their intimate information with their students. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area with a homosexual uncle. But I didn’t need to know all the details of him and his partner when I was in the first grade. Young children should be protected.

Unfortunately, the CEO of the Walt Disney Company believed the mischaracterization of the bill and called Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to express his concern. The call did not go well for Disney. Governor DeSantis later said in a video that “companies that have made a fortune off being family-friendly” need to understand that “parents of young kids do not want this injected into their kid’s kindergarten classrooms.”

Here’s my recommendation for CEOs at Coca Cola, Disney, and other corporations. Before you object to bills about childhood education or voter integrity. Take the time to read the bills.

George Barna has been doing an extensive inventory of the worldviews of Americans through the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. He was on my radio program last week to talk about two of his most recent surveys dealing with truth and morality.

Past generations of Americans viewed God as the basis for truth. Not only has that changed for the general population, it is also changed significantly within the church. He found that there were certain groups that rejected the idea of absolute truth. That would be members of the LGBT community, political liberals, spiritual skeptics, Democrats, and young people under the age of 50.

By contrast, those most likely to see God as the basis of truth are the group called SAGECons. That stands for Spiritually Active Governance Engaged Conservative Christians. Nearly nine out of ten (87%) point to God as the source of truth and more than six in ten (62%) recognize the existence of absolute moral standards.

In his next report, he decided to see how we apply moral principles in real life situations. The questions ranged from telling a “white lie” to failing to pay back a loan to speeding to abortion. It was troubling to see what percentage of Americans felt that some of these behaviors were not even a moral issue. In some cases, a significant percentage might have believed it was a moral issue but that it was morally acceptable in today’s society.

Another troubling finding was what Barna calls a “seismic shift” in Christian views about morality. For example, born-again Christians in the survey were three times as likely to say they rely on the Bible for primary moral guidance. But less than half (48%) actually do so.

The latest Barna surveys are a reminder to pastors and other Christian teachers that we need to make the case for moral absolutes based on God’s Word.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is laced with religious elements. In fact, you could argue that in many ways it is a religious war. That is the perspective of David French as he quotes from several sources.

One is former National Security Agency analyst John Schindler who wrote about “Putin’s Orthodox Jihad.” He explains that the Russian Orthodox Church “depicts a West that is declining down to its death at the hands of decadence and sin, mired in confused unbelief, bored and failing to even reproduce itself.”

In another article, Giles Fraser explains, “Putin regards his spiritual destiny as the rebuilding of Christendom, based in Moscow.” But you may wonder how that vision fits into his invasion of Ukraine. According to the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, “Ukraine is not on the periphery of our church. We call Kiev ‘the mother of all Russian cities.’ For us Kiev is what Jerusalem is for many.”

Vladimir Putin has fused Russian identity with the Russian Orthodox Church and sees his country and his church as a means by which to deal with the decadence of the West. By seizing this religion’s Jerusalem, that can be the first step to reuniting his church. Two years ago, many Ukrainian parishes separated from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which used to be under the Russian Orthodox Church.

David French concludes, “Putin isn’t trying to recreate the Soviet Union. The better analogy is to the deeply religious Russian Empire that existed before the Russian Civil War.” This is Putin’s bizarre vision that merges the Russian religion with the Russian state.

Economists have debated this question for centuries: What is money? Most of us assume that money is a store of value. You put money in the bank, and you can draw that money out when you need it. Money also is a medium exchange. You give dollars to someone for the goods and services you need.

But what if your government, or another government, declares that your money is no longer worth anything or can no longer be used? As we have seen over the last few weeks, this is not a theoretical question. The US and its allies have been able to freeze Russian financial accounts and shut off the Russian central bank’s access to hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign reserves.

Our collective reaction to this has been positive because we want to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. At the same time, I also try to remind my audience that the people most hurt by these actions are the Russian people, many who disagree with Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Last year, the International Monetary Fund suspended the Taliban’s access to various funds and financial instruments. Again, we can agree with that because of the horrible actions of the Taliban in Afghanistan. And we even have used financial sanctions against Iran because we are concerned with their actions and attempts to develop a nuclear bomb.

But we need only look to Canada to see how banks accounts and other financial accounts were frozen by Justin Trudeau. It is possible that you may not have agreed with the truckers, but I hope you can see how this trend of freezing accounts could affect you one day. We may applaud some of the actions that governments are taking against our enemies, but someday you might be on the wrong side of a government and have your bank account frozen.

Kevin Williamson recently asked a good question: are we at war? At first glance the answer seems simple. The US is not at war with Russia. We haven’t declared war on Russia even if we are indirectly involved by providing military hardware.

But consider the fact that few Americans thought we were at war with radical Islam until the attack on 9/11. These radical Muslim leaders were at war with us even as our leaders and the country dismissed some of the earlier attacks on our military.

Kevin Williamson argues that that “the United States is a belligerent if Vladimir Putin says the United States is a belligerent.” That is a sobering thought. Putin can make up a pretext to attack the US or NATO and justify whatever action he feels is necessary. As I mentioned in a previous commentary, his next attack might be a cyberattack.

The Biden administration apparently backed down from sending MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland to Ukraine because they would first be sent to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. They feared this might look like the US and NATO were carrying out a military operation against Russian forces in Ukraine.

Kevin Williamson said this “MiG fiasco underlined the Biden administration’s predictable fecklessness and disorganization �” America needed a Keystone pipeline, but we got the Keystone Cops.” The administration also hopes that the fighting will stay in Ukraine. But it will only stay there is Putin believes it is in his interest to keep it there and might move his troops to other countries rather than stay tied down in a quagmire in Ukraine.

We may not think we are at war with Russia, but Vladimir Putin may not see it that way. We should be prepared.

One lesson we should learn from history is that we should believe what dictators say. I don’t mean that we should believe all the propaganda they and their government spew. But I do mean that if a dictator says he will attack a country, we should believe it.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal put it this way: “Take autocrats literally and seriously when they tell us what they intend to do.” They say we really shouldn’t be shocked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin told the world what he would likely do in the future.

In a speech at the Munich Security Conference, Putin criticized the European security order and criticized the expansion of NATO warning that further enlargement would be a “serious provocation” that would justify a Russian response.

That same year, he waged a proxy war in Georgia using Russian separatists that led to military action. Seven years later, he moved into Crimea. And for many years, he has been referring to Ukrainians and Russians as a “single people.”

You could say the same for China. For many years, Xi Jinping has talked about the “unification” of Taiwan with mainland China. He has stressed their ethnic solidarity, but also has been saber-rattling and implying a military action against Taiwan. The Chinese repression of pro-freedom demonstrations in Hong Kong shows the lengths that he and the Chinese Communist Party will go to absorb Taiwan.

The current administration is trying to put together an Iranian nuclear deal. But shouldn’t we believe the Iranian leaders when they make it clear how they plan to use a nuclear weapon in the Middle East, and perhaps against the US?

Some of our leaders always want to assure us that dictators and autocrats don’t mean what they say. Instead, we should listen to what they say and believe what they say.