A Question for Leftists and Progressives: Is This What You Mean by ‘Equality’?

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I did not intend to write about this story, but when I saw a picture of the teenager in question, I had to. He is 15-years-old, clearly a biological male. Look at his picture for yourself, mustache and all. As Joy Pullman notes on The Federalist, he has “not taken drugs nor undergone surgery to mimic femininity.” Yet he was allowed to compete against girls in a recent sporting event, and to no one’s surprise, he won — quite handily, at that. Is this what is meant by “equality”?

In recent weeks, we’ve read about a female high-school wrestler who identifies as male and who has been taking testosterone to prepare to “transition” to male. Unsurprisingly, she defeated the other girls, all of whom are not taking testosterone.

We also read about a male weightlifter who now identifies as female. Unsurprisingly, he defeated the women he competed against, setting a new record along the way.

Other examples could be supplied as well, since this is becoming more and more common.

How is This Fair?

How is this fair? How can progressives and liberals and leftists and LGBT activists and their allies think this is right? And do the feminists of the world really want to engage in head-to-head athletic competition with their male peers?

If this was done in the world of professional sports, there would not be a single woman winning, let alone playing at the elite, highest levels.

Not one female basketball player would earn a berth in the NBA. Not one female athlete would make it to the Olympics — in swimming or rowing or weightlifting or skiing or running or jumping or hurdling or boxing. Not one.

Men would dominate in every event, and women would be relegated to cheerleading.

That’s why we have men’s sports and women’s sports, men’s world records and women’s world records. And that why we celebrate the accomplishments of female athletes as females rather than comparing them to males.

There is nothing sexist about this. There is nothing hateful about this. There is nothing condescending about this. This is a matter of fairness, equality and common sense.

At least it should be. Today, common sense is in danger of extinction, and concepts like fairness and equality are turned upside down.

Beat by a Boy

The 15-year-old in question goes by the name of Andraya Yearwood, and as the Hartford Courant reported, Andraya’s first event with female peers was a cause for celebration:

With family, friends and teammates cheering her on at her first high school track meet, Andraya won the girls 100- and 200-meter dashes, and helped her 4×100-meter relay team take second place.

What did this look like in person? One picture says it all, as Andraya leaves the other girls behind, girls who trained so hard for these events, only to be beaten by a boy. And I mean beaten decisively.

But Andraya’s mother had a response to anyone would protest the event:

I know they’ll say it is unfair and not right, but my counter to that is: Why not? She is competing and practicing and giving her all and performing and excelling based on her skills. Let that be enough. Let her do that, and be proud of that.

What kind of logic is that? Because this 15-year-old biological male is competing and practicing and giving his all, that makes it fair and right for him to compete with his female peers? No matter what these other girls do, no matter how hard they try, no matter how much they push themselves, they will not be able to keep up with an equally devoted male peer. How is this fair and right to them?

Andraya’s father is also supportive, saying that his son is competing just where he should be competing, also explaining that you are born into a particular body but you grow into being a particular person.

But athletic events are conducted in the body, regardless of how the person inside that body identifies. Yet when people ask Mr. Yearwood, “Why is your daughter running with the girls?”, his response is, “Because she’s my daughter, much like the reason your daughter is running with girls.”

Not Like the Other Girls

With all respect to the Yearwood family, and with understanding that for them, this was a matter of life and death for their child, what Mr. Yearwood is saying is patently false. His child is not running with the other girls the same way the other daughters are running, just like his child does not have to deal with monthly periods or female hormonal changes, since Andraya is not like the other girls.

“But,” you ask, “what about Andraya? What if Andraya has gender dysphoria? What if identifying as female will save her life?”

That is between Andraya and his family and the Lord. But Andraya’s personal struggles cannot be imposed on everyone else, meaning, as a biological male, he has no business competing with other girls, or, for that matter, sharing their locker rooms and shower stalls. That is not the meaning of equality.

Even according to activist ideology, gender is a social construct but sex is biological. And when it comes to male and female athletic competition, we divide based on biological sex.

The Inevitable Trajectory of LBGT Activism

In the end, this is just one more example of why I believe LGBT activism will ultimately defeat itself.

You cannot wage a winning war against gender distinctions any more than you can redefine marriage while preserving its integrity. As expressed by Joy Pullmann,

It’s a pretty sure bet Americans did not expect tolerance for two consenting adults doing whatever behind closed doors to become a spearhead for forcing naked boys to shower next to naked girls and make girls second-class players on their own fields.

Exactly.

And so, I appeal to progressivists, leftists, feminists, and LGBT allies and their allies, along with all those who cherish fairness, equality, and justice. Look carefully at the trajectory of your activism, and ask yourself: Is this really the kind of world that you want? (For more from the author of “A Question for Leftists and Progressives: Is This What You Mean by ‘Equality’?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

‘America First’ Does Not Mean ‘America Only’

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During the presidential campaign when Donald Trump spoke of putting “America first,” I never thought he meant “America only.” It appears that others understood him quite differently. They are not happy with his overseas actions. As summed up by Ann Coulter, “We want the ‘president of America’ back — not ‘the president of the world.’”

Of course, Coulter, along with other Trump loyalists like Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Ingraham, and Mike Cernovich, were not upset because the president bombed another country. They were upset because he bombed Syria after saying for years that we should stay out of there.

They felt betrayed and double-crossed.

They also felt that any American intervention in Syria was unwise, especially if it led to an attempt to remove Assad.

But we did not only bomb Syria. We sent warships to North Korea, warning the demented dictator of that country to behave, or else.

For Coulter, this means that Trump has already become a pawn of the Washington establishment. As she wrote:

Looking for some upside to this fiasco, desperate Trump supporters bleated that bombing Assad had sent a message to North Korea. Yes, the message is: The Washington establishment is determined to manipulate the president into launching counterproductive military strikes. Our enemies — both foreign and domestic — would be delighted to see our broken country further weaken itself with pointless wars.

What, then, are we to make of this? Has Trump caved in to the establishment already? Has he abandoned his pledge to put “America first”?

Nothing Unique About Trump’s ‘America First’ Promise

On the larger question of President Trump and the Washington establishment, time will tell. The same can be said about which direction the president will go. Will it be the way of Jared Kushner or will it be the way of Steve Bannon (a dramatic oversimplification)? Only time will tell.

But when it comes to Trump’s bombing of Syria and standing up to North Korea, I see no contradiction between these actions and “America first.” There is nothing exceptional with the elected leader of a country saying that they intend to put the interests of their country first. But of course! (For more from the author of “‘America First’ Does Not Mean ‘America Only'” please click HERE)

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No More PC Blindness and Appeasement: Trump Is the Wartime President We Needed

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Under Barack Obama, not only did the world become a more dangerous place, but his lack of will to defeat ISIS, the baloney fed to us by his failed secretaries of state, and his willingness to accept an apparently yet unreached number of American deaths due to the activity of those barbarians actually caused the demise of his party’s effectiveness nationwide. Obama was on the wrong side of history.

In May 2015, ISIS claimed responsibility for the shooting of an unarmed security guard at a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas. In July of that same year, a lone jihadi killed four marines in attacks in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In December of 2015 a husband and wife team of ISIS jihadis shot up a social service center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14. A little over six months later, another ISIS jihadi murdered 50 in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. All of these attacks happened in America after Barack Obama said that ISIS was merely a “JV” team.

Many Americans, like my husband and I, finally decided to vote for Donald Trump when the shooting in Orlando happened. Our preferred candidate, Ted Cruz, R-Texas, had pulled out of the race. Seeing a very nasty side of Trump, we were unconvinced he would have a level head and be able to lead the nation. So for about a month, I was sure I could not vote for Trump, nor could I vote for Clinton.

But Orlando did happen, and we agreed with Ted Cruz who believed our nation was already at war with the sickness of ISIS. My husband and I could only see more terror happening in our own country with Clinton. For all of his flaws in the understanding of basic constitutionalism, separation of powers, the proper role of government in the economy, and his tendency to relish in big government, we could see the difference between Trump and Clinton in that respect. He was gonna “bomb the shit” out of ISIS.

And so he has started. Thank you, President Trump.

Did Obama know that cave formation in Afghanistan Trump recently bombed was being used by ISIS as a hideout? I don’t know the answer, but I think rational people could see that it is more than likely that he did. How long was ISIS using that area? What kind of attacks were carried out while that area was used by ISIS? Did the people in the tunnels cheer when Americans were killed in the numerous attacks by their “soldiers” of ISIS here in America? Why didn’t Obama take them out?

When President Trump bombed the Syrian airfield, so many were skeptical. From where I sit, the Russian propaganda machine here in America has been gaining steam for years, as Putin used imbecilic mouthpieces here to fill the void of American leadership. Many pro-Putin Americans continuously praised him as a “Western” reformer, a real “Christian,” and just the type of “strongman” our nation needed. Many of them saw the strength of Trump and figured Putin and Trump would be able to team up to kill ISIS together. But the bombing in Syria and the ridiculous propaganda from Assad and Putin since should crystallize whose side Putin is really on. For those who refuse to admit they have been duped by a superior propaganda campaign from the former KGB agent, well, I guess you’re on your own.

Now that the bombings have started, and we are answering a war that was declared on us, regular folks are concerned that President Trump has started WWIII. But it is not possible for President Trump to start a war we are already in. The jihadis received appeasement and America’s other cheek, arm, leg, and throat year after year under Obama. Those attacks on America mentioned in the beginning of this article could have been prevented, had we had a leader who took ISIS seriously, who followed through on ridding Syria of chemical weapons, who didn’t blame the Syrian war on the silliness of global warming, and who didn’t take every chance he could get to downplay the dangers of radical Islam. Who, instead of acknowledging the violence brought on by fundamentalist radical Islamists, took time rather, to repeat that America can’t be at war with a “religion,” insinuating that it was Americans who didn’t understand the threats, when it was him all along.

At the same time, it seems pretty clear Americans don’t want to be seriously involved in nation-building. We don’t have a reason nor ability to try to make countries that don’t understand how civil societies operate into countries that do.

Let the history books show that it was the continued blindness of and appeasement toward radical Islam that caused so many innocent deaths around the world of late. Let history record that America didn’t fall asleep after 9/11, but that she was hobbled for eight long years while her enemies grew stronger.

We needed a wartime president, and we got one. Now we need resolve. (For more from the author of “No More PC Blindness and Appeasement: Trump Is the Wartime President We Needed” please click HERE)

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Doctors Are Getting Used to Killing. They’re Getting Good at It.

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The new killing fields are hospitals and health clinics.

It is government that gives them this power. Government, it turns out, gets used to having this power over your life or even worse, that of your beloved baby boy.

Charlie Gard’s daddy pleaded with the British judge for a chance at life for his son, who suffers from a rare genetic disorder. Charlie “should not have to die because he will not be like another little boy.”

“Please,” he begged the judge, “give him a chance.”

Instead last week Judge Nicholas Francis ruled: “It is in Charlie’s best interests” that “Great Ormond Street may lawfully withdraw all treatment save for palliative care to permit Charlie to die with dignity.” Charlie’s parents are appealing the ruling. Charlie’s death sentence is stayed for a few weeks.

When I first tweeted this story (@MaggieGallaghe) most of my American followers assumed it was the story of national health insurance and death panels.

No, it’s worse than that. Charlie’s parents had started a GoFundMe campaign. They raised more than $1.5 million from 80,000 donors for an experimental treatment in the United States.

But instead the doctors intervened and requested the power to pull the plug on Charlie. Loving parents asked for their natural right to try everything to save their son’s life. Instead the judge ruled they had no say in their own baby’s medical care.

The State Becomes Lord of Life and Death

The law began by stepping in to protect children from abusive parents. Today in Great Britain the government chose death for a baby with two parents, whom the judge himself described as showing “absolute dedication to their wonderful boy, from the day that he was born.”

Government gets used to taking away our natural rights. Sometimes the slope is slow and gradual and sometimes it’s a rapid slip and slide.

In the Netherlands for example, doctors have gotten used to killing. At first doctors only helped kill the dying in great physical pain. But in short order, doctors made “unbearable suffering” of any kind a good reason to kill. And the government let them. In 2012 an End of Life clinic opened up to “help” patients whose own physicians refuse to kill them. In the first year alone clinic doctors helped kill 11 people whose only recorded complaint was they were “tired of living.” Half of Dutch patients who were killed at this clinic said in part they suffered from “loneliness.” Sure, a dose of cyanide seems a reasonable cure.

In just ten years, the number of cases of death-by-doctor tripled. One out of 30 deaths in the Netherlands is now doctor-assisted, claiming close to 5,000 people.

Of course the real number of deaths by doctors is much higher, for that ignores the almost 31,000 aborted babies in the latest Dutch data. Doctors are responsible for almost 1 in 4 deaths in the Netherlands.

Doctors Playing God

From that perspective, the situation is even worse here in the United States. Doctor-assisted suicide is now legal in 5 states, including the heavily populated California. Good statistics are not yet available. But our abortion rate alone means doctors killed more than one out of 3 people who died in 2014.

We may not yet have gotten used to the idea a judge can tell fit and loving parents they may not spend their own money to save their child. But we’ve grown used to being part of the vast killing fields of the West that makes health clinics the most dangerous place to be. (For more from the author of “Doctors Are Getting Used to Killing. They’re Getting Good at It.” please click HERE)

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Is President Trump Being Transparently Hypocritical?

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In a break from his predecessor, President Trump has decided he will not reveal the logs of visitors to the White House until leaving office, White House officials announced Friday.

The new policy, which was first reported at Time Magazine, is an about-face from the Obama administration, which — despite its infamous lack of transparency — regularly published White House visitor logs for public consumption.

“By instituting historic restrictions on lobbying to close the revolving door, expanding and elevating ethics within the White House Counsel’s office, and opening the White House press briefing room to media outlets that otherwise cannot gain access, the Trump administration has broken new ground in ensuring our government is both ethical and accessible to the American people,” reads a statement about the decision from White House Communications Director Michael Dubke.

“Given the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually,” it continues, “the White House office will disclose Secret Service logs as outlined under the Freedom of Information Act, a position the Obama White House successfully defended in federal court.”

Under the new policy, logs of those entering the White House complex will be kept secret until at least five years after Trump leaves office — only then will they be made available to the public.

A WhiteHouse.gov page that previously held the public rolls of who had visited the executive mansion has been blank since the transition to a new administration.

The change is from the same president who, as a private citizen years ago, openly criticized Obama for not being transparent enough about his records on a number of issues.

Friday’s news come in the wake of reports that first daughter Ivanka Trump has been meeting privately with groups like Planned Parenthood in order to find “common ground.” Meanwhile, reports from inside the West Wing indicate that Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner and Goldman Sachs CEO have been gaining more hold over the president’s ear.

As evidence for the Oval Office’s new ideological trajectory, some have cited the high number of flip-flops from the administration this week on key campaign promises, including declaring China a “currency manipulator” and avowing strong support for NATO – an organization he called “obsolete” during the campaign.

So the question remains, is this decision to defend the privacy of White House visitors or the meetings of ambassadors for a leftist agenda that appears to continually pushing President Trump leftward? (For more from the author of “Is President Trump Being Transparently Hypocritical?” please click HERE)

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A Modest Proposal: Deport Obama to Libya and Clinton to Kosovo

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Perhaps you’re weary of reading about Syria. So instead let’s speak of Libya. That’s the most recent country we attacked without provocation and “liberated.” Minus the evil dictator which NATO bravely bombed from orbit, Libya has returned to some native traditions: It is chaining up black Africans and selling them as slaves. Great job, President Obama! You really were a post-racial president after all! But in a totally different sense than most people thought.

Millions of “right-thinking” Americans have this weird idea: that our foreign policy is a form of virtue-signaling with deadly weapons. That’s why they are demanding the overthrow of yet another foreign government that hasn’t attacked us: that of Syria. (News flash: Trump’s targeted military strike, while probably unconstitutional, was limited. And now he is promising we won’t send troops to Syria.)

Are Americans who favor full-on “regime change” in Syria thinking through what would happen next to Syrians? What would happen to one million Christians if al Qaeda takes over?

No. They are watching news of an atrocity and demanding that “something be done.” What we do doesn’t really matter.

What happens to Syrians after we’re done with them? Not interested.

How will things be in Syria ten years from now? Boring. By then we’ll be busy in Myanmar.

Who will take over the country when we’re finished? Doesn’t matter. Talking about that is just a way of making excuses not to do… something … about an atrocity we saw on the news and thought about for ten whole minutes.

Occupy Wall Street. Or the Entire Middle East.

Ugly, sad images (like Syria’s chemical attack on al Qaeda that also killed civilians) make us really upset! So do something already, Mr. President, and make us feel better. Overthrow Syria’s government and replace it with … something. Make us feel strong, decisive, and freedom-loving. And make it quick: We have short attention spans. Oh look, a squirrel!

It’s probably too much to expect an administration to resist such a national tantrum. (Heck, we’re lucky that the Commander in Chief isn’t under pressure to blow United Airlines jets out of the sky.)

But as patriotic Christians, we’re supposed to at least make an effort to avoid fighting unjust or foolish wars that kill thousands of people and make things worse, not better. Right? Or am I being too moralistic here?

We Must Learn from King Kong’s Sad Fate

America is more powerful, relative to our rivals, than any empire on earth has been since the Roman Empire. The Mongols, Napoleon’s France, even Hitler’s Germany: compared to America 2017, they’re Liechtenstein waving a popgun.

We’re the 16-ton gorilla. All the more reason we must resist the impulse to act out like King Kong. We need to stop seeing countries that look interesting or sad, then picking them up to play with them — till we break them and leave them behind.

There’s just one way to make the average voter think twice about sending our troops to foreign shores: Bring back the draft. Today a tiny percentage of Americans defend all the rest of us. They bear the brunt of our bravado. Alas, most Americans don’t even know personally any serving soldiers or airmen. So it’s easy for us to treat them like foreign mercenaries and ship them off to distant shores, on a moralistic whim.

If voters themselves, or their own sons and daughters, might have to march off into the desert, you can bet they would think twice about joining the rush to war. Also, a draft today would get many thousands of sullen Millennials out of their parents’ basements. So chalk that up in the “plus” column.

Don’t Draft the People. Incentivize the President.

But the draft has many down sides. For one, it violates liberty. Only in the gravest national emergency should we force our citizens, on pain of imprisonment, to dress up in uniforms and follow orders. In peacetime, that’s literally un-American. (Germans, by contrast, will spontaneously dress up in uniforms and follow orders at the slightest encouragement.)

More importantly, a peacetime draft would never pass muster in Congress. We can’t even figure out how to make people repay their student loans, much less get them into fighting trim with decent haircuts.

So I have a better plan. It harms very few Americans, so it should be easy to pass in Congress. But it maximizes impact. I promise you: Pass such a plan, and the U.S. will never get involved in another poorly considered foreign war.

The Ultimate Presidential Retirement Plan

Congress must pass a law with these provisions: Any future president who invades and occupies another sovereign state that has not attacked America, with the aim of overthrowing its government will be subject to the following penalties upon leaving office.

He must surrender his U.S. citizenship, in return for citizenship of that country. He must relocate to live in it. If he leaves his new homeland for more than 30 consecutive days, his pension is permanently cancelled.

He will be granted no Secret Service detail or U.S. Marines to guard him. He must rely on the local police, like everybody else.

He will have to build his presidential library in that country’s largest city. Again, it will be guarded by the same cops who guard — or looted by the same mobs that loot — every other local business, school, or church.

His pension will be paid in the local currency, which may well have collapsed, or been replaced by some pre-civilized form of primitive barter. So we might have to pay it out in tethered goats or cartons of cigarettes.

If he has invaded and toppled more than one such country, he will not be granted a choice among them. (Talk about perverse incentives!) No, he will be granted citizenship in the one with the lowest Gross Domestic Product.

If such a law were passed then President Trump and every one of his successors would need to think very carefully about their decisions on countries like Syria. He would need to flout public opinion, if it was out of step with reality.

He’d have very strong personal reasons to tell senators like Lindsey Graham and John McCain and pundits like William Kristol what he thinks of their latest war of choice. He would face the same conditions that his policies left behind in a helpless foreign country whose citizens never voted for him. What could be fairer than that?

Where Would Dante Send Ex-Presidents to Live?

The Constitution forbids retroactive laws. Otherwise, such an act would demand that our recent ex-presidents reap the harvests that they sowed:

Bill Clinton forced to live in Kosovo, under the rule of increasingly radical Islamists who blew up its historic churches. They are also training al Qaeda and ISIS operatives for attacks all over Europe. He might not feel comfortable there, but Huma Abedin would, so at least poor Hillary would be happy (should she choose to join him there).

George W. Bush living in Baghdad, enjoying every day the exciting sights and sounds that his invasion and occupation of Iraq left behind. He might have trouble finding a church to attend, since most of the country’s 1 million Christians were driven out on his watch — precisely as antiwar conservatives had warned him would happen.

Barack Obama living in Benghazi. As a beloved elder statesman who holds a Nobel Peace Prize, he could certainly work out a diplomatic solution among the many violent factions — al Qaeda, ISIS, and a dozen tribal militias — which his bold, decisive action put in control of that country. But that might put a crimp in his golf game.

I hope that some statesmanlike senator, such as Rand Paul, will get behind this plan. We can call it the “Skin in the Game Act of 2017,” after The Black Swan author Nassim Taleb’s core principle of policy: Don’t let someone make major decisions for which he bears no personal risk.

Fear not! Presidents who fought countries that had actually attacked the U.S., or who didn’t spend trillions trying to bomb chaotic, hostile hellholes until they turned into Colonial Williamsburg, would go unpunished. (For more from the author of “A Modest Proposal: Deport Obama to Libya and Clinton to Kosovo” please click HERE)

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Why Don’t We Care about the Slaughter of Christians?

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A United Airlines passenger is violently hauled off a plane, and there is national outrage, rightly so. Press Secretary Sean Spicer says that Assad is worse than Hitler, and again, there is national outrage, rightly so. Forty-five Egyptian Christians are slaughtered by ISIS while attending church services on Palm Sunday and scores of others are wounded, and there is barely a national yawn. How can this be?

You might say, “That’s easy. The first two events took place right in front of our eyes, here in America. The third event took place in Egypt, and as tragic as it was, it’s a matter of out of sight, out of mind.”

I understand that. But what about the Islamic terror attack on the Brussels airport last year, killing more than 30 people? That was covered by our media day and night, with footage from the blast shown over and over by the hour.

And what about the Islamic terror attack in France, when a driver plowed his truck into hundreds of people in Nice, killing more than 80? That too received day and night coverage, with the bloody footage, including dead children lying in the streets, put before us by the hour.

But when it’s Christians being slaughtered by Islamic terrorists while worshiping the Lord in the safety of their church buildings, it only receives passing mention on our networks. Why?

We have the video footage of the attacks, which took place in two different locations in Egypt. We see the bomber being directed to walk through the metal detector, and then we see the massive explosion. And we see the carnage within one of the church buildings — blood all over the floor; corpses scattered in the debris; wooden pews torn apart; the sound of people moaning and crying.

The video footage is compelling and agonizing, just as much as any of the footage from Brussels or Nice. Yet most of us have not seen this footage on major TV networks, or if it has been aired on these networks, it has received a fraction of the coverage that the other attacks have received. Why?

But I’m not the only one asking this question. Nor is this a new question. For the last decade, a Christian genocide has been taking place in the Middle East representing one of the ugliest chapters in recent human history, yet most Americans remain sadly uninformed. The secular media is complicit.

As expressed by none other than Piers Morgan,

Unfortunately, if it happens in the Middle East, this kind of atrocity, it just does not seem to attract the kind of media attention in America that it would if it happened, as we’ve seen in attacks in Sweden the last few days, in London two weeks ago. I was there for that. Huge attention in the American media. In Paris and Nice. These get huge attention. Yet what happened in Egypt was unbelievably significant.

If you look at what ISIS really stands for, what they are carrying out now in the Middle East and the Egypt in particular, is a kind of genocidal attack on Christians and Christianity. They want Christianity eradicated and they want to convert all Muslims to their crusade, they want it to be a holy war. They want Christians gone. And I don’t think that narrative is getting the attention it should get in the American media and, I have to say, in other media around the world.

These are strong words: What happened in Egypt is a “genocidal attack on Christians and Christianity.” These Islamic terrorists “want Christianity eradicated. … They want Christians gone.”

Morgan added, “I think this is a huge story. This is the kind of story that ought to be dominating cable news in America. It should be dominating headlines around the world. ISIS have declared war on Christianity. I’m not seeing that being covered enough.”

He is absolutely right, and somehow, the secular media is barely covering one of the most important humanitarian stories of the age. Again I ask: Why?

We’re talking about multiplied hundreds of thousands of Christians being displaced, exiled, attacked, maimed, tortured, starved and killed. We’re talking about a crisis of epic proportions, yet the news coverage of this ongoing tragedy receives is negligible. Why?

Whatever the reason, there is a solution to the media’s relative silence.

All of us can raise our voices and draw attention to the suffering of our brothers and sisters in the Middle East (and elsewhere). And all of us can pray for their protection, their courage and their comfort. In the words of Letter to the Hebrews, “Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies” (Heb. 13:3 NLT). (For more from the author of “Why Don’t We Care about the Slaughter of Christians?” please click HERE)

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Why Jesus Washed the Apostles’ Feet, and Why We Do It Too

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My wife has nice feet. Mine aren’t. I think of this every Holy Thursday. Our pastor washes the feet of twelve people, in imitation of Jesus washing the Apostles’ feet at the start of the Last Supper, and I always think “I’m glad I’m not up there.” Vain, I admit.

While I’m being honest, the washing always seems to me a little hokey. It feels to me more like theatre than worship. Bad theatre. Twelve people sit on chairs at the front of the church, most of them with their pantlegs rolled up, holding their shoes and socks in their hands. It doesn’t look real.

I know the reason we do it on Holy (or Maundy) Thursday. But the symbol is so far away from anything we do in our culture, it feels artificial to me. Who washes a guest’s feet? How does this apply in downtown Phoenix or the suburbs of Boston, or the corn fields of western Nebraska? We don’t do anything like that. It feels hokey.

The Sacramentum Christi

It may feel hokey, but it isn’t hokey. Like so many things in the Christian life, we learn backwards: first obedience, then understanding. In this case: first obedience, then understanding, then being able to enter into the symbol and feel its power.

Pope Benedict can help with this. The pope gives the Holy Thursday homily every year and Benedict talked about the washing in his homily in 2008. He called the washing a “sacramentum Christi.” That means the mystery of Christ as he comes to us.

Jesus’s washing the Apostles’ feet points to “the sacramentum Christi in its entirety: his service of salvation, his descent even to the cross, his love to the end, which purifies us and makes us capable of God.” His being a servant to his friends in that way — even to Judas, who he knows will betray him — points to the even greater sacrifice he would make for us the next day. He washed his disciples’ feet as a sign that he would die for them so he could wash their souls.

What does this mean for us? Lots, of course, but in this homily Benedict offers two lessons.

First, he says, it tells us to confess our sins. “We need the ‘washing of the feet,’ the washing of our everyday sins, and for this we need the confession of sins.” He points us to John’s first letter: “If we say, ‘We are without sin,’ we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing.”

Notice he says “everyday sins.” He means the little sins we commit: snapping at the children, watching a TV show when we should be praying, pushing in front of someone in a line, saying snarky things about someone behind his back, thinking lustful or covetous or greedy thoughts. We may not have killed anyone, but we’ve gotten ourselves dirty, like having dirty feet. We must confuse those sins to God and ask him to clean us up.

The Gift to Others

This points us to something else, Benedict says. Washing others’ feet is a gift to them. He says this: “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Not literally, in our culture. (For which I’m very glad.) Benedict explains: “We must wash each other’s feet in the daily mutual service of love. But we must also wash our feet in the sense of constantly forgiving one another.” Because, he says,

The debt that the Lord has forgiven us is always infinitely greater than all of the debts that others could owe to us (cf. Mt. 18:21-35). It is to this that Holy Thursday exhorts us: not to allow rancor toward others to become, in its depths, a poisoning of the soul. It exhorts us to constantly purify our memory, forgiving one another from the heart, washing each other’s feet, thus being able to join together in the banquet of God.

The Pastor Up Front

I will never, not in a million years, volunteer to be one of the twelve people sitting up front with their pantlegs rolled up having their feet washed. I suspect the ceremony will always feel a little hokey to me.

But less so now that I’ve read Benedict’s explanation. And less so, I hope, as God teaches me how better to confess my sins and love others more sacrificially. Especially by forgiving them, as I hope they forgive me. Which, to be honest, is probably easier than actually washing their feet. (For more from the author of “Why Jesus Washed the Apostles’ Feet, and Why We Do It Too” please click HERE)

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A Constitutional Amendment That Would Drain the Swamp

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Congressional reform begins with stopping Congress from spending us into oblivion—and that begins with a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

To make that happen, I propose using a tool our Founders gave us—the Article V amendment process.

Some of the Founders themselves recognized the need for such an amendment. For example, Thomas Jefferson first proposed an amendment in 1798 to keep Congress from borrowing money. Twenty trillion dollars in debt later, we can understand why.

On top of that, we need to put more limits on federal power, which can be done with the budget, and term limits on members of Congress.

I propose these solutions as someone who has experienced Congress’ business-as-usual corruption firsthand. I know they can work. And I know what won’t work.

What won’t work is expecting Congress to fix the problem on its own. Congress is not going to force itself to balance the federal budget and eliminate deficit spending, because the congressional leadership has little incentive to do so.

We need to give them that incentive.

Congress came close to passing a balanced budget amendment as recently as 1995. Voters swept Republicans into a congressional majority in 1994 based on the Contract with America, which promised a vote on a balanced budget amendment.

The House passed the amendment easily. Fourteen Democrats joined with 52 Republicans in the Senate, but it wasn’t enough.

The amendment failed to clear the two-thirds requirement when Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield sided with the remaining Democrats to defeat the effort by one vote.

One vote would have sent the amendment to the states to be ratified. Polls showed an overwhelming majority of Americans favored the amendment. Looking back now at the trillions in debt we’ve accumulated since then, that was a pretty expensive vote.

It was even closer than it looked. Some Democrats had said they would vote for the amendment if Congress were barred from dipping into the Social Security trust fund to balance the budget. The Senate couldn’t agree to that.

The first balanced budget amendment was proposed in Congress in 1936. In 1982, in the Reagan era, the Senate passed a balanced budget amendment, but it failed to get the needed two-thirds approval in the House.

And there are proposed balanced budget amendments in Congress right now, but they are going nowhere, because most congressmen think they get reelected by spending more. They will continue to do so until Americans make them stop.

>>> Check out Rep. Ken Buck’s new book, “Drain the Swamp: How Washington Corruption is Worse than You Think.”

Forty-one states have some sort of balanced budget requirement; 33 of them are required to have balanced budgets by their state constitutions. If the states can balance their budgets, so can the federal government.

At the simplest level, a balanced budget amendment would require Congress—and the president—to spend only the money actually received as revenue.

With a balanced budget amendment in place, it would be illegal for the federal government to run an annual budget deficit, except in extreme cases of war or national emergency, and then only with the approval of a supermajority in Congress.

The president could not propose it, the House could not offer to do it, and the Senate could not approve it.

A balanced budget amendment would result in the following key benefits to the American people. It would:

Restrict the ability of congressional leaders to manipulate the budget process for personal and political gain.

Lower the national debt.

Attract investment by improving America’s bond rating.

Bolster the American dollar.

Free up credit, otherwise taken up by government borrowing, for job-creating private investment.

Stop the immoral burdening of our grandchildren with debt.

Force Congress to make the tough, but necessary, budget decisions it has been putting off for far too long—$20 trillion too long.

A balanced budget amendment would force Congress to finally do its job of actually taking responsibility for the nation’s finances.

Agencies would come under closer scrutiny, because every dollar would matter. Government would be more responsible because it would be on a financial leash, and ineffective, wasteful, and unaffordable programs would have to go.

And, as part of the balanced budget amendment, we would need to ensure that fees and fines are accounted for in the general budget—no more shadow budgets.

Some have worried that a constitutional convention would become a “runaway” convention and dramatically change the Constitution. But that’s not how it works. A constitutional convention is called for a specific purpose and it would only have authority to propose amendments related to that stated purpose.

Even then, any amendments would need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states, hardly an easy accomplishment.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia noted that Article V was intended by the Founders to serve as a popular check on Congress and the federal government:

The Founders inserted this alternative method of obtaining constitutional amendments because they knew the Congress would be unwilling to give attention to many issues the people are concerned with, particularly those involving restrictions on the federal government’s own power. … The Founders foresaw that and they provided the convention as a remedy.

I do not have a lack of trust in the American people. …. The people do not feel that their wishes are observed. They are heard but they are not heeded, particularly at the federal level. …. The one remedy specifically provided for in the Constitution is the amendment process that bypasses Congress.

On no issue is this more applicable than the need for a federal balanced budget amendment.

Note: This condensed excerpt is from Rep. Ken Buck’s new book, “Drain the Swamp: How Washington Corruption is Worse than You Think.” (For more from the author of “A Constitutional Amendment That Would Drain the Swamp” please click HERE)

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What the Fallen Governor of Alabama Can Teach Us

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I am not writing this column to throw stones or condemn. Rather, I am writing this column to help us learn some important lessons, because sin’s pain is always greater than sin’s pleasure. Whatever rewards sin promises you, whatever pleasure it gives you, whatever thrill or excitement you experience because of sinful behavior, one thing is certain: In the end, it is never worth it. Dr. Robert Bentley, who was forced to step down as the governor of Alabama after an embarrassing sex scandal, has learned this the hard way.

What Bentley’s Actions Cost

Just think. Robert Bentley is a medical doctor, representing years of hard work and dedication. And he rose to one of the most powerful positions in America, one of just 50 state governors.

Now he is disgraced and mocked, accepting a deal to avoid jail time.

As a result, he can never run for public office again. He lost his retirement benefits. And he must do 100 hours of community service as a doctor.

All for what? For a sexual fling? For a romantic tryst?

Yet he was not the only one affected by his actions. There was his sexual partner (and political adviser), Rebekah Caldwell Mason. There was his wife and family. There was his political party. And there was the whole state of Alabama.

As Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey said when she was sworn in as the new governor, “Today is a dark day in Alabama, but also it’s one of opportunity. I ask for your help and your patience as together we steady the ship and improve Alabama’s image.”

A Christian Leader Falls

The governor’s actions also brought reproach on the Church and the name of the Lord. As The New York Times announced, “For Alabama Christians, Governor Bentley’s Downfall Is a Bitter Blow.”

Alan Blinder gives the relevant background:

As governor, Robert Bentley would quote the Bible before the Alabama Legislature and say that God had elevated him to the State Capitol. In his dermatology practice, in the city where he was a Baptist deacon, he sometimes witnessed to patients. And when he was a first-time candidate for statewide office, his campaign headquarters were often filled with volunteers from local churches.

Yet this upstanding, trusted, Christian leader committed adultery against his wife, and he did so repeatedly. How can this be?

Again, my purpose here is not to condemn. My purpose is to warn — and to warn loudly and clearly.

No One is Exempt From Temptation

If a Christian leader like Robert Bentley can fall, you and I can fall. If biblical heroes like David and Solomon can fall, you and I can fall. If Rebekah Caldwell Mason and Monica Lewinsky can fall, you and I can fall.

And that is where we all must start: If we play with fire, we will get burned, no matter who we are and no matter who we know.

No one is exempt, and no amount of privilege or power can shield us from temptation. To the contrary, increased privilege and power often open the door to temptation, especially when we believe we have the right to special perks.

And let’s not think that the older we get, the less prone we are to sin.

Perhaps at a certain point that is true — in terms of some sins that we can no longer commit — but Gov. Bentley was in his 70’s while having an affair. Youthful passions can be alive and well in older people too.

Learn From Bentley

Ironically, some of the people who mocked Vice President Mike Pence in recent weeks because of his safety guidelines to preserve marital purity are now mocking Robert Bentley because of his infidelity. Perhaps Mr. Pence is on to something after all?

Sin makes us stupid, emboldening us to engage in risky behavior and impairing our moral judgment. And sin tells us we’ll never caught, to the point that the most powerful man in the world chooses to have sex with an intern while sitting in the Oval Office. What was he thinking (or, not thinking)?

And one moment of flagrant sin can outweigh years of integrity and honor and sacrifice and discipline. As the Scriptures teach, “Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a stench; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor” (Ecc. 10:1).

I pray for the Bentley family and for the Mason family and for all those affected by this scandal, believing that God can forgive and redeem.

I also pray for myself and for every reader. Let us learn from the fall of Robert Bentley.

This is a teachable moment. (For more from the author of “What the Fallen Governor of Alabama Can Teach Us” please click HERE)

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