Did Voters Trash Conservative Principles by Voting for Donald Trump?

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I have read countless commentaries, many of them by NeverTrump conservatives, on why it is “dangerous” for the Republican party and the American right to embrace Donald Trump’s populist agenda. And on some counts, I agree. Trump’s more ham-handed attempts to “protect” American workers from foreign competition could end up costing more American jobs in the long run. His decision to kick entitlement reform further down the road means that we won’t make Social Security solvent anytime soon. His distrust of U.S. intervention in foreign countries could encourage bad actors on the world scene to fill the power vacuum. There are substantive, prudent arguments to be made about such issues, on a case-by-case basis.

What bothers me isn’t the willingness to stand independent of the GOP’s standard-bearer when the facts seem to point against him. That’s the job of any patriotic citizen who isn’t directly employed by the White House or a political party. Instead, what we ought to question is a largely unspoken assumption that some Trump critics seem to take for granted, namely:

That conservatism is primarily a set of universal ideas, which could apply equally anywhere on earth. We must stand by them even if they seem to directly harm important institutions to which we owe concrete loyalty. That is the cost of being principled.

That was the central argument, I think, of writers like Ross Douthat (and some at National Review) who asserted that a Hillary Clinton victory would be healthier in the long run, because while it gravely harmed churches, the natural family, individual liberty, and national security, at least it would maintain unsullied the purity of conservatism’s principles.

Conservatism was Born, Not Cloned

Let’s remember the origin of the left-right spectrum. It emerged not in a climate-controlled faculty lounge, but in the sweaty halls of the French National Assembly during the tense build-up to the Revolution. Deputies who wanted to tear down the monarchy, dismantle the churc, and put the radically centralized power of the French state in the hands of middle class radicals, grouped themselves together on the left side of the room. On the right were those who supported the monarchy in some form, and those who wished to protect the church.

Yes, you could find abstract political principles which, carefully teased out, might explain the views of each faction. But in fact, they were dividing based not on such abstract arguments, but over a series of concrete, practical questions: Shall we topple the king and guillotine him? Should the state seize my local church’s lands? Or should we retain the monarchy and perhaps reform it? Should we leave the church alone, and perhaps give it more independence from royal power?

Likewise, in 2016 conservative voters — in sharp contrast to the most prominent conservative writers — decided to back a candidate who pledged to protect particular good things that they considered important, rather than abstract principles that line up neatly in a 700-word column.

Most broadly, they wanted to preserve and restore a middle-class America led by tolerant Anglo-Protestant values, which was domestically safe and internationally respected. They asked for the government to concentrate on furthering those goals, and doing whatever was pragmatically necessary to achieve them. If that lines up with the small-government preference of classical liberals, fine. If it encourages other countries to choose tolerant, democratic capitalism, all the better.

But those rather abstract goals ran a distant second or third in the minds of such voters to the concrete, particular promises which Mr. Trump made so effectively. Proof of that fact lies in the otherwise puzzling preference of evangelical voters for Donald Trump over Ted Cruz. (Full disclosure: as a pointy-head myself, I backed Ted Cruz till the end.)

And voters would not be dissuaded by pundits’ arguments that protecting the things they considered vital to a good life for them and their children somehow violated what seemed to them abstract taboos. For instance, when virtually all domestic terrorism — and most terrorism around the world — emerges from orthodox Sunni mosques, voters overwhelmingly (according to polls) backed Donald Trump’s proposed “pause” on Muslim immigration. They were not at all moved by complaints by Speaker Paul Ryan, for instance, that such a policy was un-American, because it somehow impinged on religious freedom. Nor are voters much impressed by libertarians’ arguments that every human being has an absolute right to pick up and move wherever he wants, regardless of national borders.

The same divide between protecting a concrete good and obeying an abstract principle applied to foreign policy. GOP interventionists such as senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham called for the U.S. to obey some categorical imperative to promote democracy everywhere, all the time, right now, no matter what, by confronting Russia and risking an open conflict in order to protect “moderate rebels” in Syria. Voters rejected candidates such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio who touted this principle, in favor of Donald Trump — who narrowed his eyes and judged that we don’t have a dog in that fight.

Street Corner Conservatism Returns

In the Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti recently touted the 1975 book Street Corner Conservative by former Nixon speechwriter, Bill Gavin. A man ahead of his time (whose book is sadly out of print), Gavin called on conservatives to temper their efforts to work out a perfectly self-consistent ideological program, and focus on defending the concrete goods and particular institutions that mattered to GOP voters. It seems that with this election, Gavin has been vindicated — along with the only major politician who took his advice, his one-time White House colleague Pat Buchanan.

We can’t throw principles out the window. Mindless partisanship and economic populism are in the long run the way you end up with a country like Argentina. Instead, we should re-examine our principles and see if perhaps they are too abstract, if we have slimmed them down too much by cutting off their real-world connections. Perhaps the principles dominant inside the conservative movement became unmoored and needed revision — and voters let us know that in the only way they can. It’s our job to listen to them, and respond with an agenda that defends the Golden Egg of freedom without choking or starving the Goose. (For more from the author of “Did Voters Trash Conservative Principles by Voting for Donald Trump?” please click HERE)

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Why a Little Girl Should Not Be Allowed to Join the Cub Scouts

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The Cub Scouts are now under increasing pressure for refusing to allow an 8-year-old girl, who identifies as a boy, to join their ranks. As reported on a New Jersey website (the child is from Secaucus, NJ), “From the moment he joined, 8-year-old Joe Maldonado eagerly looked forward to camping trips and science projects as a member of the Cub Scouts. But his expectations were dashed after his mother said she received a phone call from a Scouting official who told her that Joe would no longer be allowed to participate because he was born a girl” (my emphasis).

To be more accurate, Jodi (the child’s original name) is no longer allowed to participate because she was not just born a girl. She is a girl, and Cub Scouts are for boys. That’s why CBS News reported that, “Joe’s family says parents of other children had complained.”

Surprise, surprise. They had ample reason to complain, since Cub Scouts are for boys — little boys — and Jodi is a girl — a little girl.

But for Jodi’s mom, this came as a total shock, since, she says, the Cub Scouts were aware of Jodi’s biology and had no problem with initially accepting him. Plus, her mom reports, Jodi was now accepted at school as a boy.

CBS News reporter Errol Barnettasked Jodi’s mother, “As a parent, how do you know that you don’t just have a girl who is a tomboy, and that it’s a transgender issue?”

She replied, “I took a couple years; I didn’t realize it.”

With all respect to Jodi’s mom, there are experts who say that the worst thing a parent can do is accommodate a younger child’s gender confusion, while others would remind us that most kids experiencing gender confusion no longer do so after puberty.

But no, Jodi is Joe, and she/he is sure of it, even at 8. Not only so, but the rest of the world must accept it.When Barnett asked Jodi, “Why did you want to join the Boy Scouts?”, she replied, “Because all of my favorite friends were there.”

And that’s why the Cub Scouts should change their policy and allow girls to join their groups: because a little girl has more boy-friends than girl-friends and because she identifies as a boy.

According to CBS News, “The [Boy Scouts of America] told CBS News it offered the family alternative, co-ed programs for Joe, but Maldonado told us she’s not interested and instead wants an apology for her son.”

No surprise here either. It’s not a matter of working out a practical solution. It’s about the rest of the world changing its policies to accommodate a confused little child.

Of course, the Boy Scouts of America have only themselves to blame, since their accommodation to gay activism has made them as an easy target for trans activism, making their official statement sound quite lame and short-sighted: “No youth may be removed from any of our programs on the basis of his or her sexual orientation. Gender identity isn’t related to sexual orientation.”

Do the Boy Scouts of America really think that they will be able to say yes to gay activism but no to trans activism, that they will be able to dodge the accusation of being homophobes without being nailed with the accusation of being transphobes? Have they not noticed that the acronym LGBT — notice that T at the end! — has been around since the early 1990’s? If you say yes to the LG part, the B part is automatically included and the T part is right behind.

Let’s see how long the Boy Scouts hold out on this one. After all, if the Obama administration was pushing for this kind of acceptance in the schools — with penalties for non-compliance — and if Bruce Jenner being named woman of the year is old hat, why should the Scouts resist? Plus, the already-more-liberal Girl Scouts of America announced a few years back that a boy who identifies as a girl would be welcome in their midst. Social madness indeed.

But the worst thing about this whole story with 8-year-old Jodi is that the media is talking to her as if she was an expert, asking her how she felt about why she was excluded, to which this precious little child can only say, “I don’t know,” sounding sadly baffled. (To watch the actual video clip, along with my commentary, go here.)

To quote little Jodi, “It made me mad. I had a sad face, but I wasn’t crying. I’m way more angry than sad. My identity is a boy. If I was them, I would let every person in the world go in. It’s right to do.”

It’s a great sentiment, but it’s also the lens of an impressionable, still-developing, 8-year-old. When else do we go to little kids for life counsel and direction? And don’t the parents have a responsibility to shield their kids from this kind of attention? Don’t they actually set their children up for further pain and rejection by presenting them to the world as the opposite of who their biology and chromosomes say they are?

Interestingly, when National Geographic recently featured a 9-year-old boy who identifies as a girl on the cover of its “Gender Revolution” issue, I wrote that the magazine was complicit in a form of child abuse. Unknown to me, the American Family Network was sending out the message that, “National Geographic exploits children to further an agenda.”

Also unknown to me, in 2015, Camille Paglia, the controversial academic and social critic, and herself a lesbian, told a Brazilian TV station that, “Nothing … better defines the decadence of the West to the jihadists than our toleration of open homosexuality and this transgender mania now.”

She also said this, “Parents are now encouraged to subject the child to procedures that I think are a form of child abuse. The hormones to slow puberty, actual surgical manipulations, etcetera. I think that this is wrong, that people should wait until they are of an informed age of consent.

She added, “Parents should not be doing this to their children and I think that even in the teenage years is too soon to be making this leap. People change, people grow, and people adapt.”

Further confirmation for this position comes from Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, who also feels that medical facilities that support a child’s transgenderism are engaging in child abuse.

She said that National Geographic is “promoting a political agenda over science and the wellbeing of innocent children” by displaying the young child as the face for their first ever transgender cover.

“Affirming so called transgender children means sterilizing them as young as 11-years-old,” Dr. Cretella told Lifesite News. “Puberty blockers plus cross-sex hormones causes permanent sterility. And biological girls who ‘transition’ to male by taking testosterone may have a double mastectomy at age 16. The life time use of cross-sex hormones also puts these children at risk for stroke, heart disease, diabetes, cancers and more.”

Is this what lies ahead for little Jodi?

I seriously doubt that the Boy Scouts of America will be able to hold their ground against trans activism, but I have no doubt about this: They will one day regret the decisions they made, first caving in to gay activism and then to trans activism.

As for Jodi’s parents, I imagine that they deeply love their child and would do anything to make her happy. Sometimes, though, it’s the job of the parents to do things that make a child unhappy for the moment, knowing that, in the end, it will be for that child’s lifelong happiness.

I look forward to the day when the very real confusion of a little child, which I do not minimize, is not the measure of reality or the arbiter of societal norms. In fact, that day cannot come too soon. (For more from the author of “Why a Little Girl Should Not Be Allowed to Join the Cub Scouts” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Is God Capturing the Heart of Donald Trump?

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When I walked in Mr. Trump’s office in April 2016 at his invitation, I knew I had been sent by God. I went with confidence in the Lord, trusting that He would speak through me. I was impressed to ask Mr. Trump’s second son, Eric, to join us for the first few minutes. I felt he would want to say some things about his father, and I would say some things about the need for a fatherless nation to have a father. The interaction was gratifying — more than I could have hoped.

Eric said, “I have a great father.” I said, “Let’s join in prayer and hope that he will learn what it is to be a wise father figure to a fatherless nation.” Eric agreed, and I don’t think we’ve ever stopped agreeing in our hearts and in prayer that President-elect Trump can actually become that kind of example.

Not many thought what is happening with Mr. Trump would have been likely, perhaps even possible, and certainly not probable. As I look in from the outside, and also from the inside as a result of the journey I’ve had in interaction and prayer with Mr. Trump, I sense that he is being captured by the heart of our Father.

I think many of his decisions may even surprise him — not that he lacks a brilliant mind, tremendous insight and ability to make a deal. This is beyond that. In my opinion, Mr. Trump is receiving wisdom only God can provide. The Lord freely offers it to anyone willing to hear, seek and heed. I think Mr. Trump is hearing, and I believe he is diligently seeking to heed what every American must know: America cannot be great without God.

The Great Shepherd in Stormy Times

I believe God is seeking to impart to President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Pence and every prospective cabinet member the very heart of the ultimate Father and the Great Shepherd. Our Lord made it clear that when we allow Him to become our Shepherd, we need not want. He is our source. However needy we may be, He is the solution and He will often use compassion-filled people to meet our needs. But we will never, never become dependent on a source other than God our Father and Shepherd.

When we understand the freedom the Shepherd offers, we refuse to become pawns to any power-broker, power source or political party; for the Shepherd, who loves us with the love of the Father, will lead us in green pastures, not barren deserts. He will meet our needs. He will give us opportunity and productivity. He will lead us beside water made calm by His Spirit.

The raging storms of terrorist activity and continual threats to freedom can be miraculously calmed. The enemy will not cease to scheme, plot and attack, but when we move into the presence of overwhelming peace that only God can offer, there will be supernatural calmness and security. We will find our souls being restored, just as Betty’s and mine are being restored now.

Four years ago, just three days after Christmas and three days before the new year, we lost our baby girl, Robin — our miracle baby. That beautiful baby we did not expect and was so difficult to carry to term came into this world to sow seeds of life for the next 40 years that will reap eternal dividends. When we think of our precious daughter, our Lord restores our soul. He binds up our broken heart. Yes, it is still broken, and He is still binding it with His love and peace. We will depend on that from now until we see our beautiful daughter in His presence when we enter forever the house of the Lord. And we will say with her, “I was glad when they said, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’”

I can promise you that God our Father and Shepherd wants to restore the soul of every person reading these words and every broken heart in this nation. He will lead us not in paths of religious pretense and the “traditions of men taught as the commands of God” but rather in His righteousness, and He will do it for His name’s sake, for His glory — and He will be exalted.

“Surround Me”

I want to be honest with you. I think the leadership we have chosen in our nation wants that deep in their hearts. They may not say it the way we as Christians would want to hear it, but I believe it is the longing of their hearts. Yes, I believe it is the longing of President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Pence. I believe Mr. Trump wants for you something so far beyond what he can give you that he knows it must come from above. The morning after the election, I talked to him by phone. “We’re going to keep surrounding you with prayer, love and all the help we can give you,” I said. He responded, “Surround me. Don’t let me ever forget! Surround me!”

I’m saying to every person who knows how to pray, who knows God as Father, and who has experienced the watch-care of the Great Shepherd, please pray for our nation’s leadership and all they appoint, for they will be under fierce assault.

You can rest assured there will be a non-stop, all-out attack on every decision Mr. Trump makes. Some will be as fierce and potentially damaging as the father of lies, the enemy of truth and wisdom, can bring to pass. You will see venomous hatred spewing from expected and unexpected sources.

The poisoned darts will also be aimed at those he appoints. I’ll be sharing in another column their willingness to wear the bull’s-eye on their backs and sacrifice for their country, knowing the cost for taking this journey with President-elect Trump.

Our experience with our daughter confirms that even when we “walk through the valley of the shadow death,” we “fear no evil” because He is with us. As the passage says, “His rod and His staff comfort us.” That means we receive His correction and direction through the rod and the staff of the loving Shepherd. He will, in fact, “prepare a table before us in the presence of all our enemies and anoint our heads” with the oil of His love, compassion and mercy. We will be able to say we are witnesses of the fact that “goodness and mercy” indeed follows us all the days of our lives and throughout eternity. And we know that we “will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” beginning now, as we choose to live in His shelter.

This is the heart of the Father and the heart of our Shepherd. I believe it’s what the people who voted for correction, hope and change in our nation desire — whether they’ve confessed the Lord or not. How I pray that all will come to know Him and experience Him with all the evidence of His grace and glory. I believe the desire of our Father and Shepherd is the desire of the leadership we have chosen in our nation. We must pray for that because if that is not their desire, it must become their desire. Our desire must be His desire.

We Can Make a Kingdom Imprint

Let me sum it up. Although I was not initially a Donald Trump fan or supporter, God sent me to him. The love God has given me for him is totally supernatural. Although he might not put it in these terms, I believe Mr. Trump wants what our Father in heaven wants for all people: God’s best for you and every American. I think he knows that if we receive God’s best, we are in fact going to be a blessing and an inspiration to the nations of the world, and we will be a beacon of hope and freedom until Christ comes. We can make a kingdom imprint in today’s very sick world. (For more from the author of “Is God Capturing the Heart of Donald Trump?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

What Would Jesus Do to Nazi War Criminals?

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Are you looking for a book that will change your life?

No, neither am I. I’m tempted like everyone else to find instead erudite and witty titles that confirm what I already think. But since (as I’ve learned) it turns out that such a reading plan was the exact one that Hitler followed, I’ve had to reconsider it.

Now, I’m not suggesting you start the New Year by running out and buying some radical feminist manifesto — except the really crackpot ones that are good for a laugh, and are fun to read aloud to friends over pints and pretzels. See nun-turned-witch Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, and Valeria Solanas’ Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM) Manifesto. Those are a lot of fun.

Read Something that Makes You Uncomfortable

No, instead I’d like to suggest you find a book that takes a sane and wholesome, even spiritual view of a deeply uncomfortable subject. So you will look with the eyes of reason and faith, but at something you’d rather not think about. Consider the topics that make you just want to turn away and switch on the television, or spend an hour “evangelizing” on Twitter.

It might be global poverty, aggressive Islam, abortion, the collapse into doctrinal mish-mash of a church you’ve always loved, or some other ugly subject. Consider whether your aversion might be a sign that you really do need to give this topic (whatever it is) some hours of your attention. Perhaps there is something you really are called to do, in your own small way, to make things better. Maybe it’s just important that you be better informed on it as a voter, parent, or general purpose Christian.

Recently I hunkered down to tackle a deeply disquieting subject: The nexus point of cheap grace, repentance and genocide. They all come together in Tim Townsend’s fascinating, carefully researched book Mission at Nuremburg. It tells the story of Henry Gerecke, a good-hearted Lutheran pastor who became an army chaplain during the Second World War, and got assigned to pastor some of the worst human beings on earth: the Nazi defendants at the Nuremburg war crimes trials. It wasn’t Reinhold Niebuhr or Karl Barth whom the American military authorities chose to interview and counsel these architects of aggressive war, eugenics programs and large scale genocide. It was an ordinary, middlingly-educated Lutheran minister from St. Louis. Most of his previous experience was with small-town Midwestern German-American farmers, and urban missions to the homeless — with some time spent in U.S. prisons ministering to run-of-the-mill criminals.

Alongside equally ordinary Catholic chaplain Rev. Sixtus O’Connor — a humble Franciscan philosophy teacher from upstate New York — Gerecke was the man whom Providence placed in the cells that held Albert Speer, Heinrich Himmler, Julius Streicher, and the top Nazi generals who survived the collapse of the Reich. Their task? From the perspective of the U.S. military which dispatched them, it was to comply with the terms of the Geneva Convention by providing prisoners with access to religious counseling and services. But Gerecke knew that much more was asked of him than that. It was his job to confront men who had risen to the top of the world — gained wealth and fame and the power of life and death over millions — by discarding the Christian vision of human dignity, in favor of a pagan fetish of a single race and nation.

Treading the Tightrope Between Judgmentalism and Cheap Grace

He had to hold them accountable for their crimes, the fruits of which he’d witnessed on visits to the bloodstained cells of Dachau, where countless clergy and political prisoners had been brutalized, starved and shot. He had to be on guard against a cheap, last minute “repentance” on the part of these conquered Nazis, embraced for the sake of leniency in sentencing — or even worse, as a cynical means of evading their guilt before the fearsome judgment seat of Christ (which is, when you think about it, also a ploy for leniency in sentencing).

But Gerecke also knew that he had to minister to these men with all sincerity, to offer them if possible the chance to reclaim the Christian faith of their youth, and accept the Grace of forgiveness that Christ offers to all — even the worst of men, if they will accept it.

Townsend depicts with power and spiritual sensitivity Gerecke’s attempts to discern how sincere each war criminal is in his belated approach to the Gospel, pursed under the shadow of the gallows that would claim all but a few of them. The story also highlights how spiritually beneficial capital punishment can be — in that it forces such criminals to confront the inevitability of judgment, and starkly underlines the sanctity of innocent life, by imposing the ultimate earthly penalty for profaning it. How much less likely such habitually arrogant, ideologically self-poisoned men would be to repent if instead of facing the hangman they were sitting comfortably in prison, reading fan letters from neo-Nazis around the world.

Holy Communion for Hermann Goering?

The most powerful scene in the book is Gerecke’s last interview with Hermann Goering — the most comprehensibly human among the leading Nazi criminals. Here was a man motivated not by an almost psychotic hatred of Jews — as Streicher, for instance, was.

Instead, he had lived in the grips of deadly sins such as gluttony, vainglory, and greed, stuffing his belly with the finest foods till the end of the war and hoarding stolen works of art. He didn’t detest Christianity as a Jewish plot to undermine Aryan vigor, as Baldur von Schirach had. Instead, Goering treated the Gospel with a modern, world-weary shrug, as a fable designed to console women and children.

It’s with that blasé, self-serving attitude that Hermann Goering asks Gerecke to administer him Communion. As a registered member of the Lutheran church, he claims that he is entitled to it. And he thinks it couldn’t do him any harm. It might even do him some good in case — you know, all that redemption business turns out to be true after all.

Gerecke agonizes over this, but finally sees that he must deny him. Communion given to the unrepentant is not an opportunity of grace, he remembers, but a sin of sacrilege. Rather than heap yet another sin on Goering’s impressive record, he gently shakes his head but firmly refuses. He is appalled, but not quite surprised, when Goering’s pride drives him to suicide to avoid the shame of the gallows.

At a time when my own Catholic church is agonizing over the question of Communion for those living in sexually active, non-sacramental relationships, I wish that a clear ray of Lutheran light from Nuremburg could shine on certain quarters in Rome. (For more from the author of “What Would Jesus Do to Nazi War Criminals?” please click HERE)

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Incentivizing Sex: Where Social and Fiscal Conservatives Must Learn to Agree

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As I was eating at a restaurant on Saturday, a young woman wearing a Rosary caught my eye. Raised Catholic, she told me that she doesn’t believe in abstinence until marriage, she doesn’t need to marry the father of her child and that women’s bodies must be liberated from the control of the Church’s male hierarchy.

She also argued that more welfare would be needed if people had more kids, and that drug overdoses were the greatest population control methods in America.

Drug Overdoses Versus Abortion

Are drug overdoses the greatest population control method in the nation? The answer is definitely “no.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 52,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2015. The pro-abortion research organization Guttmacher Institute calculated that about 1.1 million unborn children were aborted in 2011, the latest figures they have. (This doesn’t include all the unborn children aborted using abortion-inducing drugs and devices.)

Using Guttmacher’s numbers, about 21 times as many pregnancies were ended by abortion than the number of people who died due to drug overdoses. Whether one believes an unborn child is human, stopping over one million pregnancies from coming to completion is the definition of population control. Additionally, tens of millions of women use contraception to stop themselves from getting pregnant.

The woman agreed with both of these points, once they were spelled out. But a simple mathematical “smell test” would have sniffed out this falsehood.

Welfare and Kids

She was partly right about welfare. America would spend more than its current hundreds of billions of dollars on welfare if people had more kids irresponsibly. What she didn’t realize is that welfare as it’s now administered makes irresponsible parenting more common.

And that what raises the costs. Consider an analogy.

As former Obama administration economic adviser and former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers says, government programs like welfare provide people with “an incentive, and the means, not to work.”

Summers explained that “each unemployed person has a ‘reservation wage’ — the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase that reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer.”

According to a 2013 Cato Institute report, 13 states provided welfare that equaled a wage of more than $15 per hour. The federal minimum wage is $7.25. The highest minimum wage in the country is $15, in cities like Seattle. Why would anyone get off welfare to work, unless they could make more than what they’re getting from the government dole?

The same logic applies to family size and welfare. With so much “free” money for single mothers, men and women alike are encouraged to engage in irresponsible sexual practices that often leave women pregnant, ready to rely on the government. In other words, families are incentivized to replace a father in the home with a government check.

It’s simple math and incentives. For another example, the federal government provided $60 million for the Title X program in 2014. The program provides “family planning services.” The government is telling tens of millions of women that they can have sex without getting pregnant. It’s telling all their partners that they can have sex without worrying about becoming a father.

Your tax dollars are encouraging promiscuity.

But what’s the reality? Greater access to contraception reduces neither unintended pregnancies nor abortions. Contraceptives sometimes fail, for one thing. They also make people over-confident, which leads to riskier sexual behavior with more partners — and therefore, many more unintended pregnancies. And, therefore, more demand for welfare.

Think About Incentives

It’s long past time for all Americans to think about incentives when considering public policy. Liberals understand this when it’s convenient — they raise soda taxes to reduce obesity. The idea is that the more something costs, the less of it that people buy. But by that same economic theory, doesn’t a welfare payment that’s higher than the wages people will get paid reduce their reason to work?

A Heritage Foundation analysis found that over $400 billion in “means-tested welfare” went to “low-income families with children” in 2014.

Conservatives have no excuse not to understand the basic truths about incentives. Fiscal conservatives regularly complain about high welfare costs, and social conservatives frequently point to Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer-funded promotion and provision of contraceptives and abortion.

Yet both groups often fight different battles that are intertwined because of incentives, and thus their effectiveness is limited. One worries about the family, and the other worries about the budget … but as shown above, they are intertwined.

Social conservatives should work with fiscal conservatives to reduce budgets that incentivize poor sexual behavior that breaks down families and leads to more abortions. Fiscal conservatives should work with social conservatives to encourage strong families, because strong families use fewer government resources and are more economically powerful.

That’s one way to make America great again. (For more from the author of “Incentivizing Sex: Where Social and Fiscal Conservatives Must Learn to Agree” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Conversion and Martyrdom: Two of Most Unreported Stories of 2016

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Two seismic events occurred in 2016 that the secular media largely missed.

The press’s failure to report them is caused by many things. Spiritual blindness. Disinterest. Ignorance of religious matters. Obstinate disregard for the reality that faith, not just economics or political power, animates human behavior, good and bad.

Here are the two stories that should arrest the attention of all Christians who are concerned with God’s work in the world:

Around the world, people are coming to know Jesus Christ through the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit.

Around the world, people who know Jesus Christ are being put to death for their love for him. Others are being tortured, imprisoned, driven from their homes, denied jobs, and otherwise treated cruelly.

The Spread of Faith

As to the first, in every region of the globe, the number of Christians is swelling. For example, in the Middle East, thousands of Muslims are coming to Christ. As reported by the respected anti-persecution ministry Open Doors,

The Islamic State has been filling the headlines for a long time and filling the hearts of many people in the Middle East with fear. But in the midst of all this, the church in the Middle East is showing the love of Christ to those who fled their homes. Muslims in the Middle East are turning to Jesus in unprecedented numbers.

In Iran,

Thousands of Christians are secretly worshiping in Iran as part of a house church movement in the country. The Iranian government considers Christianity a threat to Islam. However, Open Doors USA estimates that as many as 450,000 Christians are in Iran. Others estimate there are more than 1 million practicing Christians in the country.

In 2011, Pew Research published “Global Christianity — A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population.” A careful evaluation of the data led Pew to conclude that there are roughly 70 million Christians in China (around 60 million Protestants and the remainder Catholics). Some observers believe this number is significantly low.

However, according to Purdue University sociologist Fenggang Yang, “the number of Protestant Christians in China could reach 171 million by 2021 and 255 million by 2025 … it is possible that China could become the largest Protestant country by 2021 and the largest Christian country by 2025.”

The growth of the Christian faith is seen in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region broadly. Another of the Pew report’s findings speaks to this:

Christianity has grown enormously in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, where there were relatively few Christians at the beginning of the 20th century. The share of the population that is Christian in sub-Saharan Africa climbed from 9% in 1910 to 63% in 2010, while in the Asia-Pacific region it rose from 3% to 7%. Christianity today — unlike a century ago — is truly a global faith.

The Persecution of the Faithful

Yet with this ongoing and profoundly significant change in religious allegiance throughout the world, there is also a great deal of pain for followers of Jesus. Here are a few headlines that speak to this grim reality:

“Violent Persecution Set to Rise in 2017” — December 29, 2016

“Anti-Christian persecution: 90,000 killed in 2016” — December 26, 2016

“Chinese Communist Party readies crackdown on Christianity” — October 7, 2016

“ISIS Orders Its Franchises to Kill Christians” — August 14, 2016

“New Boko Haram leader vows to kill all Christians” — August 4, 2016

The list could go on and on.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has called President Obama’s record on protecting the persecuted “abysmal.” It is hard not to agree. After leaving the State Department’s key religious liberty post vacant for nearly two years, Mr. Obama appointed a motivational speaker with virtually no knowledge of international persecution issues to the role.

Although her successor, Rabbi David Saperstein, is widely hailed as an effective advocate for the persecuted, the fact remains that President Obama has shown a distinct disinterest in including religious liberty and anti-persecution efforts among his foreign policy priorities.

As his administration draws to a close, the President did recently sign “an update of the 1998 bill that established a religious freedom office in the State Department and an independent watchdog panel, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).” Named the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act in honor of its original author and leading champion for religious liberty around the world, former Congressman Frank Wolf, Christianity Today reports that the measure is designed to improve the federal government’s effectiveness in promoting religious liberty by:

“Requiring the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom to report directly to the secretary of State;

“Establishing an ‘entities of particular concern’ category — a companion to the ‘countries of particular concern’ classification used for nearly 20 years by the State Department — for non-government actors, such as the Islamic State (IS) and the Nigerian terrorist organization Boko Haram.

“Instituting a ‘designated persons list’ for individuals who violate religious freedom and authorizing the president to issue sanctions against those who participate in persecution.”

The bill also “creates a list of overseas religious prisoners; mandates religious liberty training for all foreign service officers; (and) establishes a minimum number of full-time staff members in the State Department’s international religious freedom office.”

This is welcome news not only for the persecuted worldwide but also for our own foreign policy interests: By standing with the persecuted, America not only remains true to her own founding principles of religious liberty and human dignity but also lets the suffering know that they have a friend in the United States. This seed, once planted, will bear good fruit for American diplomacy in the future.

What the enemies of the Gospel don’t understand is that in another of God’s marvelous ironies, persecution only leads to an increase in people coming to Christ. As church father Tertullian said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” May many of those enemies, in 2017, themselves become like Paul — once persecutors, now believers in the Risen Son. May we pray to that end, and never forget to pray and advocate for some of the very least of our — and Jesus’s — brethren. (For more from the author of “Conversion and Martyrdom: Two of Most Unreported Stories of 2016” please click HERE)

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7 Things You Can Do to Make 2017 Better for Yourself and Everyone Else

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The reason we make major New Year’s resolutions is because we’re fed up with the way we’re living and we want to make radical changes in our lives. That’s also why we tend to fail so miserably with those resolutions: It’s hard to make lasting, dramatic changes.

While there certainly is a place to encourage such changes — I plan to do that very thing in my next column — there’s also a place to encourage us to make some smaller, more manageable changes.

Here are 7 things you can do to improve your life and the lives of those you touch.

1) Be nice. Now that all of us can express ourselves all the time about everything via social media and texting — and that means without speaking to people face to face — we’ve become a much nastier society.

How about trying to watch your words and think before you write or speak? How about making an effort to be little nicer? Would it hurt to try? You’ll often see that people respond to niceness with niceness, making it be easier for you to be nicer still. It can lead to a nice-fest.

2) Don’t act like a spoiled, entitled, baby. Nobody likes a crybaby, especially a fully-grown, adult crybaby, but these days we have a crybaby culture. Nothing is our fault. Everyone else is to blame. I’m not responsible for my failures, you are. And on and on it goes, virtually guaranteeing a negative, never-ending, vicious cycle. Perhaps you have the “It’s not my fault” mentality more than you realize?

I encourage you to take full responsibility for yourself and not play the blame game, even if you have been wronged. It’s liberating and life-changing.

3) Be grateful. Surely there’s something for which you can be thankful and someone to whom you can express gratitude. Surely it won’t kill you to give a positive report, to find the good in those you work with and live with. Surely there are plenty of people in far worse circumstances than you, yet they are thankful for what they have.

You’d be amazed to see how a grateful attitude can change a gloomy day into a sunny day.

4) Get out of your rut. If you keep doing things the same way, you’ll get the same results. Count on it. So, if you’re stuck in a rut — professionally or personally or spiritually or relationally — consider doing something different. Otherwise the rut will only get deeper.

Understand that not every routine is healthy and not every discipline is positive, so look at your life, ask yourself what needs to change, and take a step in that direction. If even the thought of it terrifies you, you might be more stuck than you realize.

5) Concentrate on what matters most. Relationships are more important than possessions. Character is more important than appearance. A loving family is more important than riches and fame. That’s why Proverbs says that, “A bowl of vegetables with someone you love is better than steak with someone you hate” (this is a paraphrase of Prov. 15:17 in the New Living Translation). It also says, “Better a dry crust eaten in peace than a house filled with feasting — and conflict” (Prov. 17:1, NLT).

You can work day and night to get more and be more but lose your family (and even your soul) in the process. Is it worth it?

6) Don’t get distracted from your larger goals. It’s hard not to be distracted in our increasingly wired world. Constant news. Constant emails. Constant texts. Constant updates. Constant entertainment options. Constant distractions.

We find ourselves responding and reacting with very little time to step back and reflect and plan and focus, but if we’re going to accomplish our larger goals, that’s exactly what we need to do. So, to the extent that you can disconnect responsibly, take some time daily (or at least weekly) to disconnect and refocus. And ask yourself this question: Will you fulfill your life goals if you continue to live the way you’re living?

7) Be spiritual and be practical. Why must it be either-or? Jesus taught us to seek God’s kingdom first and foremost, but He also taught us to be responsible stewards — faithful in little things, faithful with our finances, faithful with that which others entrust to us (see Matthew 6:33-34; Luke 16:10-12).

People will not be impressed with your spirituality if you’re flaky when it comes to everyday, practical matters, so why not try to marry the spiritual with the practical in 2017?

If this list overwhelms you, pick one out of the 7 and go to work on that. One step in the right direction goes a long way, and one good day can make for a much better year.

Forward, one step at a time! (For more from the author of “7 Things You Can Do to Make 2017 Better for Yourself and Everyone Else” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

2017: What a Year It Was

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Well, 2017 is in the books and to the surprise — perhaps even disappointment — of some, President Trump did not blow up the world.

He did, however, blow out of the gate with the fury of a thoroughbred. The final strands from the marching bands had hardly finished echoing down Pennsylvania Avenue before President Trump had begun dismantling Obama’s legacy and reversing his executive fiats.

Looking on as Trump rescinded executive order after executive order was the Winston Churchill bust gifted to us by England, but unceremoniously removed by Obama. Trump had the bust back in the Oval Office quicker than you can say “Brexit.” His first two calls as President were to Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said his third call was to Putin just to send the mainstream media into a tizzy. Actually, his third call was to the family of a serviceman killed over the holidays.

Protesters had tried to make a mess of Inauguration Day. They failed. President Trump tried live tweeting from the Inaugural podium. He succeeded.

The Inaugural Balls were a sight to see. President Trump had dramatically cut back on the number of official balls. For all the talk of his considerable ego, Donald Trump didn’t feel the need to squander extra millions and run all over town to be repeatedly celebrated. And, well, let’s face it. Melania stole the show anyway. She was stunning. It dawned on Americans for the first time what it would mean to have as first lady a supermodel who speaks more languages than C3PO.

The First 100 Days

The first 100 days were a blur. Trump kept to his word on tax reform and repealing-and-replacing Obamacare. A systematic rollback of job-killing regulations was launched. The Johnson Amendment was repealed, freeing the nation’s clergy to speak their hearts on politics without fear of losing their non-profit status. And Trump did nominate a “conservative justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia.” Democrats declare war on her.

A bipartisan infrastructure effort passed over the objections of fiscal conservatives. Heads exploded across the land at the sight of Trump and Nancy Pelosi hugging on the White House lawn. Fear not. She would call him a “racist” days later when he unveiled the blueprints for his Border Wall. The artistic renderings wisely emphasized the wide and welcoming “Freedom Plazas” as much as the imposing barrier.

Among the several “Making America Great Again” initiatives launched:

In partnership with Sen. Rand Paul and the Government Accountability Office, Donald Trump announced of 1000 forensic accountants to audit the books of not only the Fed, but of the entire federal government. “I want the GAO to be as frightening to people who abuse tax dollars as the IRS is to Americans who pay those tax dollars.”

“The Entrepreneur Explosion” — Declaring he wants to see as many small businesses as possible become the “next big business,” Trump launches an effort to mentor entrepreneurs spearheaded by his “good friend” Mitt Romney.

Private industry mentorship is also behind Trump’s new “Apprentice” program, which seeks out the best and brightest disadvantaged youth and teams them with business leaders to solve real and specific problems in their neighborhoods. “I made the ‘Apprentice’ name famous,” Trump boasts. “Might as well use it.” (NBC thinks about suing, but instead agrees to partner as a way of promoting the new Arnold Schwartzenneger-led Apprentice.)

Building on the work already done in inner cities by the likes of NFL legend Jim Brown, Dr. Ben Carson begins operating on America’s urban areas. Speaking endlessly on the importance of personal responsibility and the benefits of working hard, Carson starts convincing those in the inner cities that having a successful life “is not brain surgery.” Carson shrugs off complaints from the Left about stressing the importance of the church’s involvement in the rebirth of our inner city communities.

Flint, Michigan, gets an extra boost in its revitalization effort after a tweet from Donald Trump to Michael Moore: “Help Us … or Shut the H*** Up! #Flint”. A viral photo of Trump and Moore with arms around each other was named “The Most Scandalous Picture of 2017.”

Speaking of the Left

Aided by the mainstream media and entertainment industry, progressives work tirelessly, aggressively, and often get dirty and defamatory, to block every single action of the Trump administration and Trump personally. Even some establishment Republicans join in.

Daily lawsuits are filed with friendly judges, hourly the media parades “victims” of Trump policies and disparages any good news. Every second, hostile tweets insult, twist and contradict anything said or done by anyone not with the progressive program. America shrugs and goes about its business, muttering, “They still don’t get it.” (For more from the author of “2017: What a Year It Was” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

6 Political New Year’s Resolutions You Should Make

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As the calendar year ends, minds quickly turn to losing weight, eating healthy, saving money, and spending more time with family. But just as 2016 caused us to rethink politics, it’s time to rethink this year’s New Year’s resolutions.

The voice of the American voters has never been louder, and with unified Republican control of the House, Senate, and White House for the first time in 15 years, there promises to be a lot happening in 2017. It’s time to step up and get involved.

Here are some political resolutions to consider adopting in 2017:

1. Connect with your member of Congress: Members of Congress are responsible and accountable to their constituents. It’s important for the voter to stay up-to-date on congressional votes and issues. Sign up to get the most recent news and information from your member. Follow them on Facebook and Twitter. (Remember, many members have a personal and an official account). Subscribe to your member’s email newsletters and set up a Google alert to stay up-to-date on all the news from your senators and representative.

2. Get active on Twitter: Twitter is one of the most effective ways to get direct contact with your lawmaker. Sign up for a Twitter account and set a goal of tweeting at least three times a week about articles, opinions, or votes you want your network and your member to see. If you need help getting started, you can sign up for Heritage Action’s weekly Twitter newsletter.

3. Write a letter to the editor: Get your name in print by writing a letter to the editor in response to an editorial or giving your unique perspective on an issue. Remember to keep it brief: It should be no longer than 250 words and focused on one particular issue. The best letters to the editor have a personal connection to the topic you are talking about. Keep the tone formal and polite. Make sure your statements can be backed up with solid evidence.

4. Get involved locally: No one knows the needs of your community better than you. Use the new year to find out what’s happening in your political community. Attend a town hall, go to a neighborhood meeting, or join a local political group.

5. Read a political book: Keeping up with the news is important. To understand the current news, keep things in perspective. Take time out of the 24-hour news cycle and read a historical book like “A Republic of Spin” by David Greenberg or a cultural commentary like “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance. Check out some of The Heritage Foundation’s staff recommendations on The Daily Signal.

6. Join an activist program: Politics can be isolating, but it’s much better with a community of people. Join a local or national organization to amplify your voice and coordinate your efforts with other grassroots activists across the country. Heritage Action, the sister organization of The Heritage Foundation, has a community of over 17,500 activists that participate in weekly strategy calls. Get one-on-one training from activism coaches and the latest news from Washington, D.C. Consider joining the Heritage Action Sentinel Program today.

Voters delivered a mandate for change—real change this time—in November. This is the year for grassroots America to continue the momentum by leaning in, speaking up, and getting involved. Will you step up in 2017? (For more from the author of “6 Political New Year’s Resolutions You Should Make” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

4 of the Worst Culture Battles That Raged in 2016

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Of course 2016 was a pivotal election year, and much of it was jam-packed with pundits yacking, debates ensuing, pollsters polling — all building up to the election itself. But culturally, there were several stories that signaled a disturbing decline in what have previously been our nation’s core principles.

These issues always linger, always infiltrate, and always directly or indirectly affect political debate — even while stemming from it.

1. Abortion remained controversial

Despite the fact that the rate of abortions has steadily declined — they were at their lowest in 2016 since 1973 — abortion still remained at the forefront of the cultural, political, and legislative debates nationwide, appearing in the news almost weekly.

There were some frustrating, if not conflicting, abortion stories this year. The Irish couple who live-tweeted their abortion and used their decision to abort as a political prop to encourage Ireland to lift its strict ban.

A new study also found that while abortions are decreasing, the use of medication to cause an abortion is on the rise due to convenience and the existence of fewer Planned Parenthoods.

One of the most disturbing issues that came to light this year was the nation’s response to the House Oversight Committee’s declaration that Planned Parenthood no longer needed federal funding, and that it could function independently. Instead of slowly siphoning funding over time or severing it altogether, Republicans were unable to do either. While they did sneak such language into a bill that would defund Planned Parenthood, Democrats knew this and filibustered it repeatedly until Republicans just gave in and cut that portion out. This was devastating for pro-life advocates and unborn babies nationwide.

As I reported in October,

Republicans not only undid the revealing, undercover work of the Center for Medical Progress, but blatantly ignored the conclusions the House Oversight Committee reached about PP. They traded a few days of bad press — it’s not like the government ever remains shutdown forever — for more taxpayer dollars toward an organization the Oversight Committee deemed was “self-sustaining.”

One positive trend, however, was even though Republicans were unable to defund Planned Parenthood at the federal level, nearly half of the states attempted to do so, and at least 12 states were successful. This and the news that some Planned Parenthood facilities were not operating according strict health and safety codes (like hospitals must) forced many to shut down.

2. Transgender bathroom debate escalated

While abortion has been a controversial political issue for decades and really never waned in that regard, the transgender bathroom issue is newer, but just as controversial. It developed hot, fast, and replete with emotion.

Despite the fact that transgenders make up a tiny portion of the American population — less than 0.1 percent — they have argued for the last few years that using a bathroom that doesn’t coincide with their gender identity is humiliating, and they should be able to use whichever one they want.

Conservatives on the other hand, view this as confusing — especially for young children — and a violation of privacy for the 99.9 percent of the population who is not transgender.

Boosted from Bruce Jenner’s rise to fame after transitioning in 2015, as I wrote last January, men were allowed to compete as women in the Olympics. In May, Obama made a federal decree telling every public school district in the country to allow transgenders to use whichever bathroom they choose.

Transgenders and bathroom issues aside, why is the government telling schools where to use the restroom? If this is happening now, where does it end? Schools, while taxpayer-subsidized, need not be under the watchful schoolmaster’s hand of the federal government. That government is best which governs least — and locally.

Finally, one of the most pivotal transgender issues of the year is the case of Gavin Grimm, the high school girl who transitioned to boy and sued his school board because they didn’t let him use the boy’s restroom. It has worked its way up the legal system, and the Supreme Court will soon hear it, possibly changing the landscape of restrooms in public high schools for some time, thus promulgating the goal of the transgender movement:

As groups bend the rules for the sake of political correctness or file lawsuits to fight for their perceived “rights,” they will continue to push past the point of equality until they have upended others’ freedoms to secure their own. At this point, the movement has, as millennials say, “jumped the shark,” pushing well past their original plea and plowing onward toward a form of unrecognizable and inexcusable social tyranny.

3. Feminists got more absurd

Whereas the first wave of feminism heralded the mantra, “Women deserve to vote too,” the second wave shouted, “Women deserve a chance to do things men do — like work — too!” Both of those sound reasonable, if not courageous. However, feminism’s current trend, predictably called “third wave,” whimpers and whines, “Men are awful and disgusting, and women are better at everything.” This showed itself in various ways this year, from yet another push for women to be in combat to the ever-regurgitated claim that there’s still a wage gap between the sexes.

Some feminists loudly proclaimed they didn’t want kids or had them and wished they didn’t (the epitome of navel-gazing), while others tried to make the case women work so hard they need maternity leave, even if they don’t have any children.

Still others claimed “corporate feminism” was a problem — the existence of not enough women in the upper echelons of corporations (never mind women tend to take a break to have children or often don’t desire or are unqualified for those types of positions). Facts don’t matter for modern day feminists. All that matters is how men, the news, and conservative women make them feel.

Now, in the 2000s, and especially in 2016, instead of fighting for equal rights or fair treatment, feminists want to be treated differently altogether, just because they are women — the near antithesis of feminism when it began.

The movement now touts safe spaces and politically correct ideas — especially on college campuses — which makes it seem regressive rather than progressive. True feminists of yesteryear fought for noble causes like the ability to vote like men could; they didn’t seek safe spaces while hearing about ideas that hurt their feelings — like the term “rape culture” — or made them feel left out, then shout proudly, “Look how feminist I am!”

4. Millennials got lazier

I’ve got mixed feelings about millennials, in part because I am one and also because it’s sad to see not just all the awful opinions about them (many are untrue and not fact-based), but also the studies that show a segment of my generation is misguided and lazy. This is not entirely their fault: Millennials are the first generation to grow up with helicopter parents, participation awards, and cell phones. Some of this helped produce a generation of kids who just can’t stop being kids.

In September, Forbes reported the unemployment rate — 12 percent — was twice that of the nation’s average. Also, as I wrote then,

The Pew Research Center reported in May that more 18- to 34-year-olds are living at home (with mom, dad, or both parents) than are “married or cohabiting and living in their own household.” According to Pew, the biggest reason for this was their inability to find jobs to support their independence. That is one sad, pathetic, and ultimately scary statistic, especially when you consider millennials have surpassed baby boomers as the nation’s largest living generation.

Add these two statistics together, and it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends, so intertwined are the concepts of living on one’s own and working. Like I said, it’s tough to blame millennials completely for their plight when Mom and Dad still pay their bills.

This coddling and lack of education has produced a generation which, according to a YouGov poll released in October, thinks communism isn’t such a bad idea. More millennials preferred Karl Marx than previously thought and actually (falsely) believed more people were killed under George W. Bush’s presidency than Joseph Stalin.

As this generation is the one currently traversing their 20s and even, as in my case, already raising the next generation, it’s vital millennials drop their “special snowflake” syndrome, figure out what the facts of life are, and get to work. (For more from the author of “4 of the Worst Culture Battles That Raged in 2016” please click HERE)

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