What Should Christians Do After a Year Like 2016? The Bible Has Some Suggestions

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In 2016, the presidential election dominated everything. It consumed nearly every social media post I scrolled past, every conversation I heard and every news report I watched. If it wasn’t one candidate saying, doing or being accused of something scandalous, it was the other.

Christians on both sides made equally impassioned cases for their version of the right thing to do, complete with doomsday prophecies, if-then predictions, and even suggestions that anyone voting for the other candidate must not really be saved.

Overwhelmed with the bombardment of “advice” and disheartened at the ugliness I often saw between candidates and voters, I would sometimes think, under the shadow of a double-handed face palm, What is happening to our world and what the heck am I supposed to do?

But then one day, God showed up with a much-needed reminder. I don’t remember exactly when this happened or how. All I know is that I was in the middle of one of my frustrated-at-everyone fests (scrolling through Twitter was likely involved) when the reminder dawned on me, kind of like a light bulb that flicks on quietly in the corner, lending a soft glow to the darkness.

Moral Depravity Surrounds Us

First, God reminded me that I shouldn’t be surprised at the moral state of our society.

If there is one thing the past election cycle did well, it exposed how significantly religion’s influence in America has waned. We have witnessed the rejection of God’s perfect design for men and women, the acceptance of brutality against unborn innocents, promotion of assisted suicide, and threats to religious liberty — just to name a few hot issues.

But this shouldn’t catch us off guard. “Understand this,” Paul tells us,

that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

This is human nature, and it’s nothing new. In the time between Christ’s ascension and his return, we are told that we will encounter the exact kind of behavior we are seeing today. This is the way politicians, celebrities, and even our neighbors will behave.

Acknowledging the inevitable depravity of humanity, even in our own country, will help us to deal with it accordingly. When it feels like the entire culture is calling goodness evil (Isaiah 5:20), that’s when it’s most difficult to obey. Paul tells us to “Abhor what is evil; host fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9).

But thankfully, we are well equipped to do so: “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm” (Ephesians 6:13).

Our Ultimate Calling

Then, God reminded me that no matter how bad the world is and no matter what I political preferences are, my calling as a Christian remains the same:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:19-20).

If I am getting so caught up in the election of temporary, earthly rulers that it clouds my faith and distracts me from this ultimate call, then I need a serious gut check.

Everything In Love

Finally, God reminded me that carrying out this calling must be done in love.

It’s easy to be upset, angry and bitter about what is happening in our nation politically and culturally. Often, it seems like it’s even easier to be angry toward fellow believers with whom we disagree on politics than with nonbelievers with whom we don’t expect to agree.

But that is not how Jesus calls us to shine his light. In John 13:35 he tells us, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

And that love isn’t just for our brothers and sisters in Christ:

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked (Luke 6:35).

In a post-election America where many people just as divided and angry at each other as they were before November 8, this reminder couldn’t be timely enough.

Three Resolutions

I’ll need a many more light bulb reminders before I really get it. But for now, instead of perpetually shaking my head in exasperation, I’ll start 2017 with these three resolutions:

Don’t be surprised at the state of our world. Put on God’s armor and hold fast to truth. Keep sharing that truth, and do so with love for all. (For more from the author of “What Should Christians Do After a Year Like 2016? The Bible Has Some Suggestions” please click HERE)

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Feel the Hate, Feel the Love, and Thanks for the Teamwork

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As we come to the end of 2016, by all counts a highly unusual and even surreal year, I wanted to take a moment to thank each of you who have read my articles or watched my videos and shared them with others. Through our teamwork here online, we are getting a message out to the world, and together, we are making a difference. I couldn’t do it without your help!

Of course, not everyone likes it when you tackle the controversies, confront the culture, and challenge the status quo, and to the extent you hit the target, you will get a lively, sometimes ugly response.

Feel the Hate

In response to one of my video debates, where I called out a professing Christian leader who wished that the American government would execute gays, one man wrote, “Dr. Michael Brown is a sell-out and a failure and lost because of his old age he needs to give up the show because he’s irrelevant besides his 60 plus year old YouTube video subscribers.”

Another wrote, “You are a f—–g joke. You kiss the a– of f-gs.”

In response to my video on National Geographic’s “Gender Revolution,” one woman posted, “You don’t deserve to live in a liberal world,” while another added, “I was expecting something actually smart and thought stimulating but this is some religion bs lmao also stop misgendering you Old idiot.”

Then there are the regular death wishes and occasional death threats, like “Dr. Brown you should be stoned”; and “Your days are numbered you freak”; and, “Go away and f–k yourself, Dr. Brown. I hope you die of cancer, long slow and painful.”

Of course, there are the constant accusations that I do what I do for selfish gain, such as these: “you are Jew first [meant as an insult] and a Christian for $”; “you are a rightwing shill”; “you serve the g-o-d of mammon”; “this man is a con”; and, “Don’t buy the book. Vampires like Brown only want your money. They use Christianity for get rich quick schemes.”

Then there are the religious conspiracy theories, like this one: “It looks to me like he’s had Jesuit training.” But of course!

And there are the endless accusations of sexual perversion, most to vile even to repeat. Among the more mild is this: “You’re obviously a closeted tranny chaser so just come out with it already.”

There are even some readers who get the color of my skin wrong, despite my picture accompanying my articles, like this woman who was upset with my warning to believers about voting for Hillary: “You are BLACK…do you think you are exempt from Lord Trump’s discrimination? Go sit down!! or get your dumb A$$ in the basket of deplorables!!” (This is almost as bad as the man who called me a “shill for Hillary.”)

Conversely, a black man reprimanded me for denying that Jesus was black, saying, “Dr. Brown you are a f—-g demon and have no knowledge the scriptures” and, “You so called white ppl are devils . . . are gonna pay for your whitewashing brainwashing genocide and just being a f—-g cancer to the planet.”

In a similar spirit, a viewer taking exception to my video lecture, “Is Israel an Evil Occupier” began his post with, “Good speech Dr s–t liar mother f—-r,” before getting to his points.

One gay man, whom I tried to reach out to, even branded me “the least Christ-like pastor of all time,” while a Muslim told me that, “Ali Khamanei [the Supreme Leader of Iran] is closer to Jesus than you are.”

Feel the Love
This, of course, is the tiniest selection of hate-filled posts coming from a wide range of viewers and readers on a daily basis, but they are completely outweighed by comments from those whose lives have been positively impacted, like the two, young Christian men from Syria, recent refugees to Australia, who said to me with tears, “You are our voice”; or the Christian woman who emailed me, eager to share how she had been completely delivered from an intense, long-term lesbian relationship and was now happily engaged to a man; or the 15-year-old high-school student who thanked me for being the grandfather she never had and for helping to preserve her sanity in the midst of the hostile environment.

Thank God for the lives He has touched!

As for all the hate mail, it’s actually a source of encouragement to me, a sign that we’re doing the right thing (Matthew 5:10-12) and another reminder to pray for those who malign us. May they receive the same grace and mercy I received 45 years ago.

So, as we enter this new year, a year filled with opportunity and expectation, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your help in disseminating our message, for your constructive and thoughtful comments (including when you disagree), and for your prayers and support.

You would be massively encouraged and full of hope if you could sit where I sit and see and hear the reports that come our way on a regular basis, and you would be full of faith as we enter 2017, eager to prove out the Scripture that says that nothing is impossible to him or her who believes (Mark 9:23.)

It’s true! (For more from the author of “Feel the Hate, Feel the Love, and Thanks for the Teamwork” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

30 Years Later, President Reagan’s 1986 Christmas Address Is More Relevant Than Ever

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On Dec. 20, 1986, President Ronald Reagan gave a national radio address, centering on the importance of family values. He thought the family unit had begun to lose its place in American society.

In his speech, Reagan made reference to Will and Ariel Durant, a married pair of Pulitzer Prize-winning philosophers who wrote a multi-volume work of history called “The Story of Civilization.”

“Will and Ariel Durant called the family ‘the nucleus of civilization.’ They understood that all those aspects of civilized life that we most deeply cherish — freedom, the rule of law, economic prosperity, and opportunity — that all these depend upon the strength and integrity of the family,” Reagan said.

“Yet, for all that,” he continued, “in recent decades the family has come under virtual attack. It has lost authority to government rule writers. It has seen its central role in the education of young people narrowed and distorted. And it’s been forced to turn over to big government far too many of its own resources in the form of taxation.”

Reagan’s remedy? Along with his honest, yet impactful, words speaking to the importance of the American family’s indispensable role, the president called on Americans to look toward the holy family in Bethlehem as a model: “[L]et us remember that in the midst of all the happy bustle of a season there is a certain quietness, a certain calm: the calm of one still night long ago and of a family — father, mother, and newborn child.”

Ronald Reagan’s message on family values is as relevant today as it ever was. Indeed, it is even more important today.

Consider: In 2015, over 40 percent of babies born in the U.S. were born to unmarried mothers. In 1986, the number stood around 25 percent.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 9.9 million single mothers raising children younger than 18 last year. In 1985, that number was 7.7 million. Further, among women who gave birth in 2015, over 415,000 were simply cohabitating with a partner (i.e. not married).

A lot of ink has been dedicated over the years about the unmistakable correlation between lower crime rates and offspring from a traditional household. And it only makes sense; kids growing up with single moms miss out on the immeasurable benefits such as confidence and discipline fathers provide.

Children from broken homes are also significantly more likely to live in poverty, and are more likely to suffer from mental health problems (especially in single-mother homes) as a result of the stress and anxiety they may face growing up in an unstable and/or unpredictable environment.

Raising children in broken households is not good for our communities, not good for our country, and not good for our world.

So, what’s to be done?

The real solution to this problem is something Pres. Reagan looked to in 1986: the perfect example of filial love, humility, and sacrifice, exemplified by the holy family — and which we celebrate on Christmas.

Of course, the holy family represents an ideal. But, religious or not, it’s an ideal we would all be better off striving toward. (For more from the author of “30 Years Later, President Reagan’s 1986 Christmas Address Is More Relevant Than Ever” please click HERE)

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Will This Holiday Season Rekindle the Religious Fervor That Sustains Liberty?

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This time of the year is when Americans celebrate their religious foundation. The overwhelming majority of Americans are Christian and celebrate Christmas, the most important day on the Christian calendar. Jewish Americans celebrate Hanukah, which commemorates the victory of religious liberty over pagan authoritarianism.

Sadly, in the year 2016, religion finds itself under unprecedented assault in a nation founded upon the Judeo-Christian tradition, and, in the words of Sam Adams, a nation founded as the last “asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.”

In just one generation, we have gone from a nation that downright fosters (but doesn’t coerce) religious virtue to a nation that doesn’t even tolerate religious adherence deeply rooted in our history and tradition with one’s own private property. How did we drift from the sentiment of our very first president — that it is impossible that “morality can be maintained without religion” — to the expungement of all public religious symbols from our public places? How have we deviated from the days of Madison when conscience was regarded as “the most sacred of all property” to having no conscience or property rights?

A more secular culture should not engender political paganism

There is no denying the fact that, unfortunately, American culture itself has become much more secular, even ignoring the secular trends in our body politic and legal structure. That the fabric of our society as a whole will be more secular than it has been since our Founding is already a reality. But that pagan ideals should become the law of the land and enshrined into our Constitution and legal structure is not a logical or imperative outcome of a relatively more secular society. It is the result of coerced debauchery from a secular judicial theocracy that has legislated immorality from the bench.

In other words, we might be far from the days when a majority of people unflinchingly understood the truth expressed by Justice Joseph Story that “Piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well-being of that state, and indispensable to the administration of civil justice.” However, that doesn’t mean our society supports the legal profession’s effort to banish all religious references and monuments from our state, redefine the Constitution and marriage for all 50 states, and promote transgenderism. And it most certainly doesn’t mean that most people support the notion that private citizens should be coerced to violate their conscience with their own property or business.

Yet, even those who officially try to abide by God’s word and support the Constitution as it was originally conceived have become so diffident in our own views that we needlessly acquiesce to the most radical agenda items of the cultural Marxists under the false pretense that the transformed society supports and even demands such change. It is this inferiority complex and a false sense of defeat among the religious community in this country (along with phony Republicans supposedly representing them) that has allowed the Left to win 50-year culture wars overnight without firing a shot.

It’s not just that social conservatives won’t even fight in any meaningful way for social conservatism. Instead, social conservatism itself is long gone. By social conservatism, I mean the principles expressed by people like Benjamin Rush that “the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.” Or the truism of Sam Adams that “Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.”

No, Allah forbid anyone within the Republican Party to ever stand for such things in this day and age. But one would at least expect them to fight for social libertarianism and the preservation of natural law, federalism, and governance by the consent of the governed. We don’t even have enough people who care to fight for the right of private individuals to worship according to our founding beliefs.

The shocking indifference following the 2015 Supreme Court massacre

It’s been 18 months since Obergefell, when the court redefined the building block of all civilization from the bench. The ramifications of this decision regarding our system of government, inalienable rights, and religious liberty are devastating. Yet, shockingly, there has been no organized revolution to fight back against judicial tyranny despite the torrent of religious liberty problems spawned by the court decision since 2015.

This was perhaps the worst decision ever made by the Supreme Court in terms of the violence it does to our system of governance. Obviously, we are not talking about deadly outcomes like Roe or slavery in the case of Dred Scott, but in terms of the ramifications to our system of government, no case more is detrimental than Obergefell. If a court can now redefine the most foundational and immutable laws of nature and mandate that outcome on the rest of the federal government and all 50 states — and be regarded as the final and exclusive “law of the land” — then there is nothing the courts cannot do. They are now the judge, jury, and executioner of our entire system of government and civil society.

Moreover, as I explain in chapter three of Stolen Sovereignty, the decision is now leading to the gradual but steady trend of criminalizing religion. The litmus test for determining whether an asserted liberty interest is a fundamental right was always whether that act was “deeply rooted in our history and traditions.”[1] Yet, the homosexual agenda, which is antithetical to a right deeply rooted in history and tradition, is now forcing Judea-Christian adherence — which (like it or not) is manifestly rooted in our history and tradition — to yield before its ever evolving tenets.

Thus, we see courts mandating individuals to service the homosexual agenda with their private businesses while forcing taxpayers to fund Planned Parenthood, a private entity under investigation for selling baby parts. Schools are being forced to treat boys like girls. Pharmacies are being forced to sell every type of contraception known to man, even when those products are all available elsewhere within a few miles. Puny lower courts judges are forcing towns to rip down monuments of the Ten Commandments.

Consequently, it’s not just that the political elites, led by the legal profession, have succeeded in accelerating the transformation from a faith-based society and government to one built upon paganism. It is now coercing adherence to its agenda.

Liberty thrived with a religious foundation, which is a prerequisite for a civil society

Even at the pinnacle of religious observance in this country, nobody was ever coerced to service religion if they personally chose to live a secular life. Yet, paganism, like other theocracies that existed before the American republic, seems to be incompatible with freedom even as it scandalously invokes its virtues. As Tocqueville observed, “The character of Anglo-American civilization … is the product … of two perfectly distinct elements that elsewhere are often at odds. But in America, these two have been successfully blended, in a way, and marvelously combined. I mean the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty.”

Liberal secularists like to think of their ideology as the ultimate guardian of freedom. But as we’ve learned from history, paganism and hedonism invariably lead to the same tyranny as Islamic theocracies. That is exactly what the Jews were fighting during the time of Hanukah around 2,200 years ago when the Hellenists sought to criminalize their religion. Obviously, religious societies can also be tyrannical and that is exactly what we are seeing today with political Islam, which ironically, yet not surprisingly, is excused by the secular Left.

Our founding was different, though. It wove together a brand of Judeo-Christian ethos that harnessed the principles of the Enlightenment and the “freest principles” of English Common Law[2] to eschew the practice of faith as a tool for theocracy and use it instead as the foundation for public liberty. Not all faith-based societies are inoculated from despotism even post-Enlightenment, not by a mile. But any society built on freedom must be fueled by faith. As Tocqueville famously said, “[D]espotism can do without faith but liberty cannot.” Indeed, this is why other religious faiths (or non-religious people), including the very descendants of the Jews persecuted by the pagan Greeks, have enjoyed unparalleled freedom in this particular majority-Christian country.

Despite the decline of religious adherence and respect in this country, the overwhelming majority of Americans are spending time celebrating a religious holiday this week. Clearly, it doesn’t automatically translate into a more religious society, for as Benjamin Rush quipped, “O! ’tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments.” However, we can hope and pray that this season will rekindle that spark and return this country to its foundation of religious piety that gave rise to the freest nation on earth, and which is needed to ensure that we remain a free people. (For more from the author of “Will This Holiday Season Rekindle the Religious Fervor That Sustains Liberty?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Beagles, Frank Capra, and the Real Meaning of Christmas

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This year I had big plans for Christmas. I was going to fly from Dallas back home to New York City. I’d stay with my best friend since second grade, Anthony, and visit with other old pals who are still in the city. Then I’d schlep out on the Long Island Railroad to see my sister, her kids, and two-year-old granddaughter — who I’m told is now talking up a storm. Their family tradition, inspired by Seinfeld, was to go out to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Eve and slurp down big stupid umbrella drinks while pretending to celebrate Festivus. After that I’d take Amtrak to Manchester, New Hampshire, to visit another whole set of neglected friends. My girlfriend would watch over Susie, my beloved aging beagle, and I’d see her for New Year’s Eve. (Most years I watch the dog while she goes to see her family in New Orleans — the girlfriend, not the beagle.)

I think it was Mother Teresa who said, “If you want to make God laugh, make plans.”

Not one thing in my chipper Christmas tour went right. First and worst, dearest Susie came down with cancer over the summer, right after running four miles to mark her 16th birthday. (Read more about Susie here.) I had to skip two gatherings with candidate Donald Trump because of surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy appointments. Despite all that, Susie fell to the cancer in late September. That sweet little sinless creature passed peacefully as I petted her.

I was heartsore — having loved her for almost as long as parents do a child they send off to college. The best way to handle that, I decided, was to rescue more beagles. (It is what she would have wanted.) So I dropped a note to a Dallas beagle rescue, and said that come January I thought I’d be ready to take in two — preferably young siblings who liked to play together. They said they would keep me in mind. And so I prepared for my trip.

Be Careful What You Wish for

Then I learned what it means to be “careful what you wish for.” There were indeed two needy beagles, Finnegan and Rayne. They were bought as Christmas puppies from a pet store last year, and their owner couldn’t handle them. I could see from the pictures that they were kept tied up in a yard with some kind of twine — hence the rope burns on both their precious little necks. And no, he couldn’t wait till after Christmas. Or Thanksgiving. Or even Halloween. In fact, if they weren’t placed somewhere else soon, they might very well end up at a kill shelter, with a lifespan of maybe 48 hours at best.

So home they came with me, this sweet one-year-old brother and sister (complete with roundworm and hookworm), to race back and forth like jackrabbits, chew up my girlfriend’s shoes and devour books that I’d actually written. They found the dog training DVD I’d hopefully purchased, and showed me what they thought of the idea of “training” by chewing the case to bits. They race through the bustling streets every morning and launch themselves in the air to greet each passerby, and plant a couple of paw prints on his business clothes. As part of their crate training, they insist on six walks per day, starting lately (as they decided) at 4:30 AM. And they think that the point of the exercise is to try to dive beneath moving city buses. I have never been so tired or quite so delighted in my life.

George Bailey Made Plans, Too

So I’m missing friends and family this year, to do right by the little lunatics whom God has entrusted to me. Thursday night I left the hellions for two whole hours to see It’s a Wonderful Life at Dallas’ gorgeous Majestic Theater. And that’s when the movie’s meaning hit me, with all the force of an airborne puppy paw. What was George Bailey’s life but a series of plans aborted, trips canceled and chances missed — at each point because God knew a whole lot better than George what he really needed?

That’s the story of Christmas, too — and everything that led up to it. Adam and Eve had a vision of how their lives ought to be. But it differed from God’s. They insisted on it, and their Fall took the whole world with them. It’s the reason people die and little dogs get abused.

God’s chosen people, the Jews, expected one kind of Messiah and got a very different one. The Lord as Our Father sees further than we do, and is always a step ahead of us. He showers us with graces unexpected, unasked for, even unwanted. But we must learn to trust Him, to gaze at Him with the simple, adoring eyes which our beloved pets turn on us. He will not give us stones when what we need is bread, or swap a fish for a serpent.

But sometimes He’ll point us down a very different path than we wanted or ever planned for. The very heart of the Fall was in refusing our Father that trust. What saved us were Jesus’ words, “Not my will but thine be done.”

Now let me go sweep up those shredded rolls of toilet paper. A blessed Christmas to all! (For more from the author of “Beagles, Frank Capra, and the Real Meaning of Christmas” please click HERE)

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Rand Paul’s Festivus Tweets Are the Best Thing You’ll See Today

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Happy Festivus! On this holiday for the “rest of us” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky (A, 92%) provides some of the best entertainment on Twitter you’ll see all year. It has become an annual tradition for Paul to participate in the “airing of grievances.” Nobody is spared.

Here’s Paul on the new administration.

Poor Rick Perry …

Paul won’t be getting a tee time invite anytime soon.

(For more from the author of “Rand Paul’s Festivus Tweets Are the Best Thing You’ll See Today” please click HERE)

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Is It Un-Christian for Christians to Defend Our Fellow Christians?

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The mainstream media narrative of recent events in Syria is hand-wringing and intensely moralistic. If all you read were standard liberal media, the account you’d get of what’s happening in Syria would be something like this:

Innocents are dying because the West lacks the moral courage to step forth and protect the weak. Especially Muslims. Those thuggish, bigoted Russians are cooperating with an evil dictator to slaughter women and children, all because they wanted a democracy. If we expect them to settle for anything less than we have here, it’s because we’re inherently racist. President Obama tried to pressure the Assad regime, but Congressional Republicans tied his hands, and the result was a massacre of civilians. For shame.

Turn to hawkish neoconservative sources, and as they see it here’s what went wrong in Syria:

Obama’s muddle-headedness, cowardice and desire to placate the Iranians prevented America from decisively aiding the moderate rebels in Syria, who share our values and wanted to install a U.S.-friendly regime, in coordination with our Turkish and Saudi allies. Instead, thanks to the weakness of the liberals and the Russian connections of the Trump team, Putin has gained a valuable strategic base in the Mediterranean region, and moderate Muslims have learned that they cannot trust us. So more of them are going to rally to the Islamists, such as ISIS. We should have seen that Assad is a dangerous dictator, and intervened decisively as we did in Iraq, to remove him.

Based on his statements on the campaign trail, it seems that the Trump administration takes another view of what happened in Syria, one that tracks with traditional, Jacksonian “realism” in foreign policy. Here’s that narrative:

Like every other Arab Muslim country, Syria has no tradition of democracy or religious tolerance. Because the Assad regime is secularist, it finds it useful to protect the rights of religious minorities, especially of one million Christians.

The “Arab Spring” revolts that President Obama encouraged across the Middle East might have started with the tiny minority of secularized Arabs on Facebook, but they were quickly taken over by the intolerant Sunni Muslim majorities. That happened in Syria, too — where the main rebel groups are allied with al Qaeda and funded by Saudi Arabia — who are no more tolerant of Christians or dissident Muslims than ISIS is. The aid we tried to send to “moderate” rebels mostly ended up in the hands of radical Islamists, who have terrorized Syrian Christians and other religious minorities.

Now in Aleppo, these al Qaeda allies used tens of thousands of civilians as human shields, but the Russians and Assad attacked them anyway, and won. If we help to bring down Assad, the result will be much like Iraq: an Islamic tyranny ruling over a smoldering ruin of a country. (See the NY Times for a heart-breaking account of what the U.S. invasion left behind for Iraqi Christians.) So forget it, we’re staying out. The Russians are welcome to that quagmire.

Leave aside for now the intrinsic merits of each of these views — which there isn’t space to settle here. Let’s consider how each of these narratives affects us emotionally as Christians, whether applied to Syria, Muslim immigration or other related issues.

Preening About the Purity of Our Intentions

The first narrative convicts us of sin, and gives us the chance to beat our breasts. So that’s appealing. Since we are looking out for Muslims instead of our fellow Christians, we also get the chance to be high-minded and disinterested, which offers a pleasant buzz on a Christmas morning. “Thank you, O Lord, that I am not as other men. …”

The second view lets us bash an unfriendly president for not resolving an intractable foreign quagmire. Since Obama has succeeded at advancing the LGBT agenda and keeping our abortion laws the laxest on earth, it feels good to point out his failures — especially on issues that really matter to him, such as protecting Muslims. Furthermore, he wounded our national pride by letting Russia replace us as the “decider” in Syria. The Russian regime is still the enemy of our freedoms and always will be, no matter who is in charge. We feel morally certain of that.

The third narrative both attracts us and repels us. On the one hand, it seems natural to care in a special way about the religious freedom of our fellow Christians, especially in one of their last safe havens in the Middle East, where Jesus was born. We realize, too, that there are dozens of Sunni Muslim countries who are looking out for the interests of the Syrian Sunni majority — while no country on earth seems to care much about the Christians except (perhaps for cynical reasons) Russia. Since nobody else is advocating on behalf of Syria’s Christians, maybe that ought to be our job.

But the moment we assent to any of that, we start to feel guilty, don’t we? Surely as Christians we ought to be above religious tribalism, to care as much about the rights and interests of Muslims as of Christians? In fact, that temptation of tribalism is so powerful a part of our fallen nature, we probably ought to bend over backwards to resist it — and hence to try wherever we can to help the Muslims instead of the Christians, because that’s what Jesus would do. Wouldn’t He?

It’s this last twist of our heart-strings that explains most of the chaos that’s tearing apart the continent of Europe, where church leaders are complicit in the mass colonization of their countries by intolerant Muslim migrants, while Christian religious refugees freeze and starve in the desert. A twisted Kantian caricature of disinterested duty has replaced true Christian charity in the hearts of too many believers. We preen about our purity as the real world burns down around us. And the heirs of that desert bandit and warlord Muhammad chuckle softly into their beards. They know what Muhammad would do, and they are doing it. (For more from the author of “Is It Un-Christian for Christians to Defend Our Fellow Christians?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

5 Ways the Feds Might Trip up Santa Claus This Year

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While most people know Jolly Old Saint Nick as a friendly figure, he too is not immune from the perils of administrative overreach and overcriminalization.

To get you in the Christmas spirit, here is a list of some of the potential crimes and violations of federal law Saint Nick as he prepares to take flight for 2016.

1. The Reindeer Act

Many have tried finding Santa’s workshop—without success—but children have long mailed letters to the Santa Claus House located at 101 St. Nicholas Drive in North Pole, Alaska. This office location is the first source of trouble for Father Christmas. Under the Reindeer Act, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937, only Alaska Natives are allowed to own reindeer in Alaska.

While Santa has been operating out of the North Pole for many years, only Eskimos, Indians, and Aleuts inhabiting Alaska at the time the United States purchased the land from Russia are considered natives under the act, and Saint Nicholas is from the Greek village Patara in modern-day Turkey. Luckily for Santa, he might be able to avoid the $5,000 fine for violating this provision of the Code of Federal Regulations, but only if he applies for and is granted a special use permit to possess reindeers as a non-native.

2. The Lacey Act

Even if Santa gets around the Reindeer Act, he may face civil and criminal penalties under the Lacey Act if his purchase, sale, possession, or use of reindeer—or any other flora or fauna— violates any state or federal law or the law of any foreign nation, no matter what language or code that foreign law is written in.

Just as some unwitting Americans have been convicted of offenses such as the
“importation of Caribbean spiny lobsters from Honduras” in violation of Honduran packaging laws, Santa could be committing a crime each time he crosses borders to deliver flora or fauna.

3. Flying Without a License

Despite Santa’s many years of experience, there is no Mr. Claus listed in the Federal Aviation Administration’s pilot certificates database. If Santa is piloting his sleigh without an airman’s certificate, he is in violation of 49 U.S.C. § 46317.

Any pilot who operates an aircraft without a proper license is guilty of a federal crime punishable by three years in prison (the sleigh would almost certainly be deemed an aircraft under 49 U.S.C. § 40102(a)(6)). And that is only for Santa’s role as a pilot. If his sleigh is not deemed airworthy, Santa will be in violation of 14 C.F.R. § 91.7 and subject to additional civil penalties by the FAA.

If Santa’s sleigh is approved, he then must post “within” the “aircraft” a copy of the registration, airworthiness certificate, and other official documents, to be displayed “at the cabin or cockpit entrance so that it is legible to passengers or crew,” per 14 C.F.R. § 91.203(b); the sleigh’s baggage compartment must be installed subject to Subsection C with a copy of FAA Form 337 authorizing such installation maintained on board the sleigh; and all fuel venting and exhaust emissions must meet additional requirements.

Hopefully Santa has a good compliance team.

4. False Statements

Any white lie that falls within the jurisdiction of the U.S. government could be a federal crime. As Heritage scholars have written elsewhere, there is one general federal statute for false statements that “should be broad enough to reach any fib or whopper that the federal government could have a good reason to prosecute.”

But there are dozens more specific criminal statutes that punish false statements regarding such minutiae as fluid milk products. If Santa parks his sleigh on federal land and encounters a park ranger while coming down the chimney, he’d better not tell a fib about what he’s up to or he could end up in big trouble. (He would also be violating another federal law if he parks his sleigh in a way that inconveniences another person on federal land, but I digress.)

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once observed that, under federal false statement statutes, “the prospect remains that an overzealous prosecutor or investigator—aware that a person has committed some suspicious acts, but unable to make a criminal case—will create a crime by surprising the suspect, asking about those acts, and receiving a false denial.”

Here, once Santa gets off the ground, his real legal trouble is only just beginning. A government agent need only ask Santa if he committed burglary, trespass, or larceny, or ask him, “Are you really Santa Claus?” In that case, Santa really would need a Miracle on 34th Street to stay out of the slammer for lying.

5. IRS Tax Gift

Even if Santa evades capture during his Christmas Eve flight, he then must deal with Uncle Sam upon his return to the North Pole. Under IRS gift tax rules, the giver of gifts above a certain threshold is taxed at a rate up to 40 percent of the value of the gift. While individuals are allowed to make gifts up to $14,000 per recipient without encountering any tax consequences—most toy trucks and dolls would probably fit under this exemption—gifts above the limit must be reported on IRS Form 709.

As such, each time Santa drops off a shiny new BMW for mom or dad, he will be on the hook for an even bigger tax bill on April 15. Willful failure to file a gift tax return can land Santa in prison for up to one year under 26 U.S.C. § 7203. Let no good deed go unpunished.

The List Goes On

While those are just a few examples of how Santa may be held criminally and civilly liable for violating U.S. law, there are several other ways in which he operates in legal gray areas.

For instance, how does Santa compensate all of his elves who are working around the clock to finish making toys before the big day? If they are not receiving proper overtime pay in a safe work environment, Santa will be in violation of numerous provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Finally, given the size of his operation, Santa must be complying with the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate.

If Santa cannot even stay in line with every single government rule and regulation, how is the average American supposed to keep up? Attorney Harvey Silverglate argues that the average American unwittingly commits three felonies a day due to vague laws and governmental overreach.

The American people—and Mr. Claus—deserve better. Heritage scholars have identified a comprehensive strategy to combat the problem of overcriminalization, which threatens liberty by using the criminal law and penalties to attempt to solve every problem in society and compel compliance with regulatory schemes.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. (For more from the author of “5 Ways the Feds Might Trip up Santa Claus This Year” please click HERE)

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3 Ways Politicians Play Politics With Public Employee Pensions

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Pensions are a huge part of public employees’ compensation, often providing a quarter to a third of their total compensation. A new report from the American Legislative Exchange Council shows how politicians play politics with public pensions, threatening public employees and taxpayers alike.

State and local governments across the U.S. hold about $3.8 trillion in public employee pension assets. Unfortunately, the politicians and pension officials who manage these assets often sacrifice higher returns for personal and political gain.

Pension plan officials are supposed to look out for the best interests of pension beneficiaries, but the American Legislative Exchange Council report, “Keeping the Promise: Getting Politics Out of Pensions,” tells a different story:

Rather than investing to earn the best return for workers, [lawmakers and pension plan officials] use pension funds in a misguided attempt to boost their local economies, provide kickbacks to their political supporters, reward industries they like, punish those they don’t, and bully corporations into silence and behaving as they see fit.

The report shows three ways that pension officials play politics with public worker pensions:

1. Economically targeted investments. These are a way for public pension plans to buoy local projects at the cost of receiving significantly lower returns. These subpar investments strip pensions of billions of dollars in returns. Alabama is the biggest offender, with over 16 percent of its pension assets invested in them.

One particularly egregious example is Alabama’s pension fund investment in the troubled oil repair and shipbuilding firm Signal International. Alabama invested $21 million and later loaned $73 million to Signal (despite three years of it providing 11 percent losses).

Shortly thereafter, Signal was forced to pay $21 million to settle what was called “one of the largest cases of labor trafficking in modern times.” Signal later entered bankruptcy and was purchased by one of Alabama’s pension funds.

2. Political kickbacks. These allow private individuals and companies to buy access to public pension investments by making political contributions to certain local politicians, and by lobbying pension funds to invest in them. Investments based on politics instead of performance costs the average pension fund over $200 million a year.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS, suffered massive losses from political investments, largely at the helm of board member and union leader Charles Valdes.

Despite having no investment experience and twice filing for personal bankruptcy, Valdes spent 25 years as a CalPERS board member where he added significantly to pension deficits by granting investment contracts to political donors and engaging in suspect behavior with other board members.

During his 13 years as the investment committee chair, CalPERS experienced one of the worst investment performances of any public pension plan in the nation.

3. Political crusades. These are a way for politicians and pension officials to use pension investments to advance political views or causes. The most common example of late is pension funds divesting from energy companies.

Since divestment is based on political agendas instead of returns, it should come as no surprise that it results in significantly lower returns. A hypothetical portfolio showed divestment from energy products resulted in a 23 percent loss over five years, compared to no divestment.

There are also significant administrative and frictional costs (the impact of selling large quantities at once). Administrative costs for large college endowments were 12 times higher than socially conscious funds, and frictional costs were estimated to reduce the value of a fund by 2 to 12 percent over 20 years.

Moreover, political crusades have extended from certain sectors of the economy to personal objections.

For example, the American Federation of Teachers union has used its influence over an estimated $1 trillion in pension assets to “blacklist” about three dozen individual hedge fund managers who donated to causes and organizations that the union doesn’t like. Consequently, pension funds in at least seven states divested their pensions from these hedge fund managers to some degree.

One of the main reasons state and local pensions can get away with politically motivated pension fund management is that they lack adequate regulations and enforcement. State and local pensions are not subject to the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, but rather are regulated by states themselves.

The easiest way for states to eliminate the negative influence of politics in pensions is to shift to defined contribution plans. This would require governments to pay their workers’ retirement benefits immediately and would prevent politicians from having any role in workers’ personal investment decisions. Moreover, taxpayers would no longer be on the hook for unfunded promises.

Short of a complete shift to defined contribution plans, however, states need to strengthen fiduciary responsibilities to ensure pension officials are acting in the exclusive interests of participants, require greater oversight and transparency of public pension operations, and diversify pension boards.

State and local governments have already promised an estimated $5.6 trillion in pension benefits that they can’t afford to pay. Governments cannot afford to continue sacrificing valuable investment returns for the sake of short-term political and personal gains. (For more from the author of “3 Ways Politicians Play Politics With Public Employee Pensions” please click HERE)

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Shapiro: Obama Tries to Define Away Reality, but Reality Wins

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Last Friday, President Obama gave his last press conference as commander in chief. Undeterred by his would-be successor’s devastating loss to Donald Trump in the presidential election, unswayed by Republicans’ complete domination of Congress, state legislatures and governor mansions, he maintained his cool and collected self-aggrandizement. Why not? According to Obama, Obama has been a major success.

Perhaps the most hilarious moment of delusion came when he talked about terrorism. “Over the past eight years, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed an attack on our homeland that was directed from overseas,” Obama stated. He then continued, saying no attack has been executed “in a rainstorm with the attacker driving a tractor with one hand, drinking a Miller High Life with the other and wearing a clown nose.”

To be fair, Obama didn’t add those final qualifiers. But he might as well have. In order to define away the problem of terrorism that has grown dramatically worldwide on his watch, he simply spoke of terrorism as a problem of organized groups within defined territories. That’s not how modern terrorism works. Terrorist groups can recruit without formal structures and can operate as independent cells within various countries.

Just three days after Obama’s statements, an alleged jihadi plowed a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin; the same day, a Turkish terrorist murdered the Russian ambassador to Turkey. These latest attacks aren’t outliers. In the past several years, we’ve seen terrorist attacks in Turkey, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain, Canada and Australia.

This sort of terrorism isn’t relegated to foreign countries, of course. Here is an incomplete complete list of radical Islam-related terror attacks and attempts on American soil under Obama: shootings of American military recruiters in Little Rock, Arkansas; the massacre at Fort Hood; the Boston Marathon bombing; an attempted bombing of the airport in Wichita, Kansas; hatchet attacks on New York City police officers; attempted shootings at the “Draw Muhammad” event in Garland, Texas; the attacks on military recruiters in Chattanooga, Tennessee; the massacre at the San Bernardino Inland Regional Center; the Orlando nightclub shooting; the New York and New Jersey bombings; and the Ohio State University car attack.

Obama still thinks he can cover his abysmal record with closely drawn definitions of terrorism. It’s the equivalent of President Bill Clinton saying he’s been faithful to his wife except for certain areas, like sex. It’s technically true so far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far.

Americans know that, and they reacted to Obama’s consistent lying-by-omission by electing Trump, a man who needs little evidence to jump to conclusions. Obama is so careful to avoid spotting fact patterns that he simply omits inconvenient data points. Trump is so eager to spot fact patterns that he simply includes convenient non-data points. But Americans would rather have Trump’s jump-to-conclusions mentality than Obama’s avoid-conclusions-at-all-cost mentality — Trump’s mentality may lead to mistakes, but those mistakes are less likely to cost Western lives.

So Obama can hawk his faux sophistication on terrorism as much as he wants. If Democrats want to ensure that Republicans continue to win elections, they ought to follow his lead. (For more from the author of “Shapiro: Obama Tries to Define Away Reality, but Reality Wins” please click HERE)

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