Has Christianity made a positive impact on Western civilization? That was a question I posed a few months ago in a commentary and provided a short list of atheists who would agree with that statement. Now, there are more atheists coming to that conclusion.

Jonathon Van Maren writes about a number of atheists who he calls “King Agrippa Christians.” After the Apostle Paul gave his testimony and the gospel, the king said he was nearly persuaded. None of the atheists Van Maren mentions have become Christians, but they do acknowledge the important contribution of Christianity to our world.

One example is the historian Tom Holland, who often writes about the ancient world. His new book, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, makes a convincing case for Christianity. Christian writers who have read the book praise it because it provides examples that various Christian historians have documented.

The ancient world was cruel. Spartans, for example, routinely killed off “imperfect” children. The bodies of slaves were treated like outlets for physical pleasure. Only a few citizens had rights.

Holland explains that Christianity changed the prevailing views about sex and marriage. It demanded that men control themselves. It placed sex within marriage and within monogamy. And Christianity elevated the status of women. To put it simply, Christianity transformed the world.

Without Christianity, the Western world as we know it would not exist. If the West had not become Christian, Holland writes, “no one would have gotten woke.”

This growing list of atheists who say positive things about Christianity is encouraging. They are willing to admit that Christianity has been a force for good in our world.

What might change if Republicans retake the House and Senate in 2022? Dr. Merrill Matthews suggests that one change might be welfare reform. Back in the 1990s, a Republican Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, a welfare reform package. But some aspects (like the work requirement) have been removed by later administrations. He believes that Senator Rick Scott’s “Let Get Back to Work Act” could pass next year.

Decades ago, one of the Republican leaders on welfare reform was former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson. Heritage Foundation expert on welfare is Robert Rector. He explained that: “Thompson initiated a series of reforms that cut welfare dependency during the late 1980s” and then added other work-related reforms in the 1990s. This ultimately cut the welfare case load in half.

Merrill Mathews talks about a program in Oregon that not only had a work requirement but also included a program that provided welfare recipients with assistance in finding a job. If the employer and the beneficiary were satisfied after a period, the employee was given a full-time job and dropped from welfare benefits.

It worth mentioning the past success of welfare reform because the younger generation will be susceptible to the same warnings and complaints critics used last time. We know how effective welfare reform can be. But passing similar legislation will still face an uphill battle in Congress.

Senator Scott points out, “A job creates income, independence, and security – it’s the foundation of the American Dream.” He adds that, “The American people want to work. People want to support themselves and their families, and be independent, not reliant on government programs.”

Welfare reform is one of several changes that might be implemented if we see a change in the control of Congress this fall.

More than a year ago, I quoted a social commentator who argued that more and more employees would be working remotely. That is exactly what we are finding. In fact, employers are finding it difficult to get workers back to the office.

Notice the difference in employment statistics. Life is returning to normal at restaurants, airlines, and sporting events. They aren’t exactly back to pre-pandemic levels but approaching them. By contrast, companies with offices (especially in major cities) are having a difficult time getting people back to the office. This is due to the three C’s.

Commuting is one of the reasons. New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and San Francisco have some of the nation’s longest commute times. They also have some of the lowest return-to-the office rates.

Crime is another reason. Office workers are concerned about crime and their personal safety. When a gunman killed a Goldman Sachs employee on a New York City subway, other Goldman office workers expressed their concern about coming back to work. Crime statistics for Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco have risen.

Covid is also a concern. Office workers wonder why they should risk infection or reinfection when gas prices are $5 a gallon and crime in in the street. Even if they make it into the office, they discover that many of the people they need for a meeting are at home on any given day.

One survey found that two thirds (68%) of office workers in North America said they would consider looking for another job if their managers insist they return to their workplace full-time. Most workers prefer a job that provides a mix of remote and in-person work.

The workplace in America will look very different the rest of this decade, due in part to the pandemic and lockdowns.

You have probably heard the phrase, “History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes.” That observation is true, especially in economics.

Investor Ray Dalio learned that lesson at a young age. In 1971, he was clerking on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. When President Nixon announced that paper currency could no longer be turned in for gold, he expected pandemonium on the floor as stocks took a dive. Instead, the stock market jumped 4 percent as the dollar plummeted. He was surprised because he hadn’t experienced a currency devaluation but would have known if he had studied history.

This isn’t the first time the US has had to deal with significant inflation. In fact, the current chairman of the Federal Reserve (Jerome Powell) vows that he won’t make the mistake of Arthur Burns, who was Fed chairman in the 1970s.

I recently read an article from a Yale economics professor who was at the Federal Reserve back in those days. He said Arthur Burns wanted to remove energy-related products from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) because of the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent oil embargo. Blaming oil prices on a war. Does that sound familiar?

Then came surging food prices. Arthur Burns argued that this was traceable to unusual weather (specifically an El Niño event) that affected such things as fertilizers and feedstock prices. He therefore wanted to remove food prices from the CPI. Again, doesn’t this sound familiar?

By the time he was done, only about 35 percent of the CPI was left. If you have been listening to my commentaries for any length of time, you know that we no longer measure CPI the way we did decades ago.

This isn’t the first time America has had to deal with significant inflation, and we can learn lessons from economic history about what we should do.

After a mass shooting, one question rarely asked is whether there is any connection to psychiatric drugs. As I have explained in previous commentaries, there are many factors and explanations for young men who decide to shoot innocent citizens. There is no “one size fits all” explanation.

It’s worth a brief mention that many of these young men were on what are called SSRI drugs. That stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Correlation is not causation, but we can’t ignore that the significant increase in mass murders and suicides does correlate with the same increase in the use of these psychotropic drugs.

Just a casual search on the shooters surfaces a common pattern. So many of them were on one or more of these SSRI drugs. We have learned about the video games and movies the Columbine shooter watched but hear much less about the two drugs he was on. We have heard about the racist ideas of the young man who shot up the church in Charleston, but we have heard much less about the drug he was on.

I recently talked about the lost boys of America. We need a national conversation about why we are seeing so many mentally disturbed young men. Loneliness and isolation are an issue. Broken homes, bullying, violent video games, and several other factors contribute. But we need to add the possibility that these drugs are also a factor.

The Journal of Political Psychology put together a list of numerous mass shootings committed by young men on prescription drugs. At the least, there seems to be a correlation that is worthy of further research.

The attorney general of the state of New York would like to wipe pregnancy centers off the map, digitally. She (along with other progressive activists) is pressuring Google to remove “pregnancy centers that are not real clinics” from digital maps.

This represents the latest in what could be called the digital cancel culture. Progressives aren’t very interested in engaging their opposition in debate when they can merely remove any opposition. Conservative or Christian speakers are prevented from speaking on campus. Anyone who questions the latest progressive policy at a company can be fired. Certain perspectives on social media can be labelled disinformation and are quickly removed. There is no need to engage in debate when you can eliminate anyone who has a different viewpoint.

This latest technique reminds me of what occasionally happened in Stalinist Russia. You have probably seen some of the photos from that era where a person who was no longer supported by Stalin and his cabinet was removed from future photographs.

These attacks on pregnancy centers are hypocritical at best. Those leading the attacks on them claim to be pro-choice. But if you really wanted to provide abortion-minded women with choice, you would support pregnancy centers that truly provide them with a choice. That would be the choice NOT to have an abortion along with options for caring for the child or even putting the child up for adoption.

Perhaps you have seen this meme on Facebook. “Head to a Planned Parenthood and ask for diapers, formula, a crib, rent assistance, food, bill assistance, assistance with education for your child, health care for your child, etc. And then come and tell me pro-lifers are the ones that don’t care for children after they’re born.”

While pro-abortion activists are attacking pregnancy centers, progressives in power are working to make them disappear from digital maps. That is why we need to support these pregnancy centers like never before.

A few decades ago, Americans were increasingly concerned about privacy. Back then, we did several radio programs on the topic but now many of our privacy concerns have faded.

Mark Zuckerberg put this in perspective. He said when he got to his dorm room at Harvard, the question many students asked was, “why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?” He then went on acknowledge that people (especially his generation) became more comfortable with sharing information online.

In his book, Why Privacy Matters, Neil Richards writes about some of the myths that surround privacy concerns. One myth is that privacy is about hiding dark secrets. We hear the argument that, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” But that doesn’t mean we should have everyone see everything. We wear clothes out of modesty. We don’t want videos of what we do in a bathroom or bedroom.

Another myth is that privacy isn’t about creepiness. He provides lots of examples of privacy invasions we would not tolerate. Yet we have the famous comment by Google’s Eric Schmidt that I have mentioned in previous commentaries. He explained that: “Google’s policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

Another myth is that privacy isn’t primarily about control. We are assured that we can make informed choices about the amount of information a technology company can use. But do you really read all the words in a privacy notice? One famous study from more than a decade ago estimated that if we were to quickly read the privacy policies of every website we encounter, it would take 75 full working days to read them all.

Privacy concerns still exist, and we need to focus on them in the future.

“This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the US government closing the gold-exchange window and putting the world on a fiat monetary system.” That is how Saifedean Ammous begins his book, The Fiat Standard.

His earlier book, The Bitcoin Standard, was a bestselling book that has been translated into more than 25 languages. He argues that by first understanding the operation of bitcoin, can someone then better understand the equivalent operations in fiat. “It is easier to explain an abacus to a computer user than it is to explain a computer to an abacus user.”

Why the complexity? The reason is simple. The fiat system (we use today) was not a carefully constructed economic system. It was not a deliberately designed operating system like bitcoin. Rather, it “evolved through a complex process of compromise between political constraints and expedience in managing government default.”

The impact of fiat currency is that it affects what economists describe as time preference. A person with high time preference focuses on present needs, while a person with low time preference is willing to delay present gratification and places more emphasis on future needs.

When the world was on the gold standard, people knew that money would hold its value in the future. This enticed people to save. But when the countries moved to fiat currency, the value of the currency declined and there is less inclination to save.

His book describes how the “fiat standard” has affected fiat life, fiat food, fiat science, fiat fuels, and fiat states. He provides detailed explanations for why the quality of the buildings we construct and the goods we buy are declining. That is due to our declining dollar. Read his books so you can understand his diagnosis and his remedy.