Good morning everyone!  Here are the stories, videos, and blogs I enjoyed or felt were interesting enough to share this week, with one warning – a read a lot of WSJ articles, so if you don’t have a subscription you’ll not be able to access all of them (of course I would highly recommend a subscription).

A few items of interest in the political world this week that you may not have heard about (I’m assuming you heard about Georgia’s 6th CD special and have no need of yet another recap).

I thought this was pretty interesting: Protesters plan to greet Mike Pence in ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ garb at Focus on the Family speech in Colorado Springs. This is a gay rights group working to bring attention to their plight, and the supposed closed-mindedness of groups like Focus on the Family.  Note this quote from the group’s leader, “This is the way they see Focus, this backwards organization that’s promoting stuff that’s far beyond what most of us would consider applicable for modern society.”  Especially note his (am I okay to use that pronoun?) use of the phrase “most of us.”  Even just 10 years ago this might have been a fanciful statement, but we have reached a moment where the tyranny of the minority has taken captive the behavior and speech patterns of the majority of the country.

After the shooting in D.C. (the one successfully aimed at several members of Congress), some interesting stories came out.  First, this video from one of the Congressmen who describes the scene is worth reviewing.  Second, there’s an opinion piece in WaPo about the precarious nature of our constitutional backup plans in the event that certain heads of state get killed.  Third, in the aftermath of the shooting, several Democratic members of Congress got together to pray for their GOP colleagues who were shot at (and wounded). However, NPR changed their action from “praying” to “thinking”, and got caught. I’m not just posting that as a “gotcha” moment to shake your head at, rather I’m making your aware (again) that there are serious prejudices in the media against religion of any kind. Also…why is NPR publically funded in the first place? It’s not a public service – if you provide a good product, people will listen and you’ll get sponsors. Period. If not…goodbye.

And how about conservative columnist Erick Erickson calling for us to contemplate secession, and then tempering that post with another right away. Some interesting points to discuss here. Maybe I don’t have space or time here, but read these, and ask yourself if he’s got a point, or whether he’s taken The Benedict Option too far…

In terms of thinking about the nation’s future, Sen. Ben Sasse is out with a book called ‘The Vanishing American Adult.’  There’s a slightly critical review of the book at Cardus this week, which surprised me, given the positive reviews I’ve seen online. Still there are some good points in the review, points about the nature of automation and the future of work that need to be pondered I suppose.

Something actually worth reading from The New York Times: How We Became Bitter Political Enemies.  Excerpt:

Today, partisan prejudice even exceeds racial hostility in implicit association tests that measure how quickly people subconsciously associate groups (blacks, Democrats) with traits (wonderful, awful). That’s remarkable, given how deeply ingrained racial attitudes are in the United States, and how many generations they’ve had to harden, according to work by Mr. Iyengar and the Dartmouth political scientist Sean J. Westwood.

Foreign Affairs…in this week’s Columbus Dispatch: What can US do to North Korea to avenge death of Otto Warmbier?  (Spoiler Alert: Nothing)

More worth reading: 4 charts on how Russians see their country’s place in the world

And…U.S. Jet Shoots Down Syrian Pro-Regime Drone

These guys crack me up: Atheist Driver Spots Jesus Fish Eating Darwin Fish, Repents

“Ever since freshman philosophy class I’ve believed God is a fiction and humans are the product of natural selection, an accidental collocation of atoms,” Boyette recounted to reporters. “Then I spotted that car decal and heard the sound of crumbling. It was my worldview. I saw that Jesus Christ could eat Charles Darwin for lunch, just as the Jesus fish bearing the word ‘truth’ was swallowing up the smaller, weaker Darwin fish.’”

Tech

There are several stories of interest in the technology sector that you might want to check out.  Wired had something on Quantum computing, which was interesting but didn’t quite help me understand the advantages of the new tech. I’ll be on the watch for more information on this as it develops.

Also….How Facebook’s Telepathic Texting Is Supposed to Work – I found this really interesting.

Here’s an interesting piece from The Guardian about Apple’s manufactuing plant in China:  Life and death in Apple’s forbidden city

The ninnies at major corporations crack me up.  They find themselves in a bit of a quagmire (not ethically, because their branding isn’t based on ethics but on fear) when the people they’re happy to take money from also wander onto political sites they don’t like or watch videos on YouTube that make them uncomfortable. Here’s the story headline: Advertisers Try to Avoid the Web’s Dark Side, From Fake News to Extremist Videos  The issue here is that through advanced programmatic buying (the kind my own firm utilizes), companies like Target (for example) follow people around the internet, instead of camping out on certain websites that cater to their demographics. It’s a great way to advertise – it’s like going to a golf tournament. You have to decide whether to follow the players around the course, or sit on one hole and take in whatever action happens on that hole as the players come through – I’ve always preferred the former!

But what happens when that potential customer ends up watching a video you think is a bit risque (not sexually, Target would never care about that – I mean like terror videos or the like)?  What then?  Well, these big companies get mad when Ad buyers don’t block sites they don’t agree with, or want their brand associated with  – fair enough. But things get harder when you are talking about content within a site – like YouTube – that is harder to monitor for ad men placing bids on real estate on the site, and have little to no control over the content posted on said site. The funny thing is, that I wonder if faced with the ability to not take the money from people watching ISIS propaganda videos, whether Target would actually discriminate in this way. Or put more provocatively, what if they learned that 20% of their target audience was actually visiting Brietbart.com for news? Would they block those people from buying at their stores; tracing their IP’s back to their physical addresses, and then declining their credit cards for online or in-store purchases?  I’m just playing out one of the several scenarios that could be only a few years down the road…food for thought!

There are some interesting goings on in Memphis: Memphis activists target Confederate monuments after failed attempt to dig up general’s grave

Entertainment Stuff:  The Han Solo Movie Just Lost Its Directors Midway Through Filming

And…they’re back!  Drive in movies are making a big comeback.  My family recently benefited from this comeback, as a Friday night trip to the drive in proved to be a ton of fun for the kids (thanks to my friend Britain for the idea!).

This is excellent: Never Read the Bible Simply to Know

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this for your amusement, this was floating around social media circles this week, and it was too good not to repost here!  (h/t Kate):

That’s it!  Have a great weekend!

PJW

Good morning and welcome to the weekend!  Every week I gather up some of the most interesting stories, videos, and books that I took in and share them with you. This started about three years ago this month (if I recall correctly), and I appreciate the opportunity to continue to have the dialogue, and hopefully, serve some of my best friends inside and outside of politics.

I feel like it’s been total Comey overload this week. That’s all the media wants to talk about, so there’s some reticence on my part to bombard you with more of the same. But I was struck by a non-political friend, Brittany T., who had caught a part of the hearing and was having trouble remembering what had actually started the whole thing in the first place. Which, is a great question!  So great, in fact, that Jay Caruso over at RedState felt that we needed a quick reminder that there was/is a legitimate investigation going on into Russian influence on the 2016 election. I am personally not yet convinced that Russians did anything to actually change the voting outcome, nor am I convinced that team Trump had any control or influence over their activities, but it’s still a legit investigation nonetheless, and not simply a conspiracy theory.

Lost in all this was the ridiculous interview of Vladimir Putin by Megyn Kelly.  I don’t think she’s that great of an interviewer – a good interviewer knows how to draw out the other person, whereas she simply assaults him with allegations. Of course, it’s hard to imagine what a good interview would look like with someone so adept at deception.

So what was the main political upshot of this week’s Comey hearing? I think it will likely be that the President’s favorability ratings dropped a few points and that partisans on both sides became more entrenched (as the Babylon Bee reported!).  None of this is likely due to anything Comey said, but due to the realization that the President seems to have played fast and loose with the truth. Yes, Comey is a “leaker” and yes he’s too slick by half (I credit Brian R. for the Uriah Heep – as in Dicken’s Heep – comparison). But Comey isn’t the President.  He isn’t leading the nation. He’s just a Washington insider and a smarmy bureaucrat.  Comey isn’t the issue. He isn’t really all that important, even, in the long-term because it seems apparent that the President in no way obstructed justice. What seems apparent is that the President simply doesn’t understand the traditional separation of powers, and the way in which that works – Check out Peggy Noonan’s column in WSJ for more on that.

Aside from the separation of powers issue, there’s also this issue of the President’s veracity. If you’re old enough to remember the Clinton days in the 90’s, you’ll recall that one of the main allegations/issues that were continually brought to bear about the character of President Clinton was that he was a serial liar. Now, we are living in days when conservatives are saying the same of Donald Trump.  This is a major issue and one I’ve brought to the fore in the past. The man is continually waging a self-inflicted war, and for those of us who’d like to see him succeed, and see the country move forward in strength and honor, it’s hard to watch at times.

Okay – isn’t that enough of Comey?  Good!  Let’s move on…sort of…

One of the things I find popping up from reading news articles and political commentary from both sides of the partisan divide is that there is a widely held sense that the country is changing. Politics are changing. Values are changing. And folks are having a hard time pinning down all the ways in which this is so, but especially and what it means for the future of our republic. If you read one thing this week, read National Review’s David French as he grapples with these issues. His headline is ‘We’re Not in a Civil War, but We Are Drifting Toward Divorce’.  Excerpt…

None of this is surprising. Our national political polarization is by now so well established that the only real debate is over the nature of our cultural, political, and religious conflict. Are we in the midst of a more or less conventional culture war? Are we, as Dennis Prager and others argue, fighting a kind of “cold” civil war? Or are we facing something else entirely?

Lots of food for thought in his piece…

Other interesting items this week included this devotional from John Piper on Proverbs 22:13. It’s titled ‘When Reason Serves Rebellion’ and was really interesting for such a short piece.  You might also want to check out R.C. Sproul’s podcast on the difference between Paradox and Contradiction, if you’ve never thought much about those two terms and how they differ, then you’ll find this enlightening and helpful.

And did you catch Al Mohler’s summer reading list?  Here it is if not.  My good friend Derek S. mentioned (rightly) that it’s extremely heavy on history – especially war history. But I think that accentuates the need to be continually reading history. I’ve especially enjoyed his recommendation of ‘The Silk Roads’. I’m about half-way through now, and really like how he’s shown the centrifugal force of trade throughout the ages, and how important (but underappreciated by Western scholarship) the east was for centuries before the gold and silver discoveries in the Americas tilted the balance of population and power in the world.

A few weeks back James K.A. Smith had a thoughtful reminder of how marriage is meant to engage the culture. He obviously wrote the piece with the thought that we’re heading into wedding season, which will be accompanied by the typical social media postings etc. How we celebrate weddings can often distort how we’re to view marriage after the wedding is over.

Two stories that involve Israel this week.  First, it was the 50th anniversary of the 6-day war. If you know nothing about this, then read up. Mohler actually had a recommendation for this I think. But I especially enjoyed ‘The Lion’s Gate’.  Here’s an excerpt from the Federalist story I linked above:

It is no small thing that during the Cold War Soviet arms were left in burning heaps on the battlefield, a blow to Communism’s prestige that foreshadowed its doom. You don’t have to believe in miracles or Providence to grasp how important it is for civilization that the state of Israel persists to this day.

Secondly, our U.N. Ambassador delivered a fever-pitch ultimatum to the so-called UN Human Rights Council which routinely delivers excoriating denunciations of Israel, while ignoring atrocities committed by (U.N.) member nations. The double standard has long been ignored (especially by the Obama administration), and its good to see Ambassador Haley speak some truth to the world on this front.

Two random stories from this week.  First, was about how the Vice-President’s wife has installed a beehive at the official residence. And second, a hilarious story from Atlas Obscura titled ‘The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902 Did Not Go as Planned’.

Books: It’s been a good year of reading thus far. I’ve taken in well over 100 books since January, but my pace has slowed in recent weeks with the final push of finishing a home renovation, and now the workload associated with summer seminary class.  You can find my book list on Goodreads here.  Currently, I’m reading David Copperfield with Kate, a massive introduction to the New Testament for seminary, and I’m almost done with Cinema Alchemist by Roger Christian. Additionally, as I mentioned before, I’m about half-way through ‘The Silk Roads’.  I put aside Eichman in Jerusalem for now after having punched my way through about 60% of it (enough to get the thrust of her observations).  As a family, we finished ‘The Tale of Despereaux’, which was a gift from our good friends the Jacksons, and was really fun. We’re now reading the second installment of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (The Two Towers), which was not even up for debate given the vehement pleadings of my middle child.

I hope you enjoy a fruitful summer of reading!  Any good recommendations to pass along? Let me know!

Finally, I want to note the passing of Bill Todd.  Bill was a Columbus attorney and former candidate for Mayor. I knew Bill for several years and helped out on this Mayoral run in a small way. Bill was an outspoken advocate for conservative principles and truth in the public square, and he will be missed.

That’s it for now. I hope you enjoy the weekend,

PJW

Happy weekend to everyone – and Happy Birthday to my beautiful daughter Chloe!  Let’s get into what was news and what was interesting this week (and maybe last, since I held over a few stories from before the holiday).  I’ll warn you in advance that there are some big topics here, and maybe you won’t agree with me on every conclusion – that’s fine!  Send me your articles and your ideas, I’m always learning, and appreciate your input!

Of course, the big deal politically was the Trump administration pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.  I’ve got a few very helpful articles that frame this for you. First and foremost is Marc Theissen’s rundown on why this is a good thing. 

But perhaps even more helpful is a piece written by Benjamin Zycher from back in December that the American Enterprise Institute linked to this week by way of reminder. This is the one great backgrounder on Trump’s thinking that you need to read this week.

…excerpt to get the flavor:

The grand total (from what would come from the Paris agreement): about half a degree, to be achieved at a cost of about 1 percent to 2 percent of global GDP every year, inflicted disproportionately upon the world’s poor. And so Mr. Trump is correct to conclude that climate policy is preposterous as a matter of the efficient allocation of scarce resources, and that the provision of clean water and the eradication of terrible diseases in the Third World are far more important priorities.

You can find Al Mohler’s take on the Paris story here. Mohler is helpful because he addresses both the economic and Christian worldview implications.

Tech peeps, keep an eye on this: Google could face a $9bn EU fine for rigging search results in its favour (U.K. Spelling, not mine!)

Perhaps this isn’t surprising….but some interesting perspective here: Here’s how chronic conditions drive up health spending

BREAKING: Enlightened ‘Minecraft’ Character Denies Existence Of Game Designer

Couple of personal productivity-type of articles hit my radar this week. The first is from those blind squirrels over at Quartz, who write about Kanban (which is actually a really helpful way of thinking through your daily checklist) who explore the myth of multitasking. The second come from my buddy Matt R and pertains to reading more in the coming year and how to do it/think of it.  Those are always helpful stories!

HOLIDAY WEEKEND RECAP: This was packed full of great information about Memorial Day. They talk about how Memorial Day started as a Civil War holiday, and gradually expanded after the first and second world wars. Check it out and bookmark it for the future.

WORDS MATTER: Something from last week that ought to be revisited, from WaPo: ‘Evil losers’: Trump joins world leaders in condemning Manchester terrorist attack.  I wanted to bring some attention to the reaction of the President to the most recent terror attacks. Of course, he condemns them. And of course, he is right to. But let me just opine….because it’s in these moments when I really miss the leader who can speak eloquently, accurately, and powerfully about the events of our world and what they mean. To call terrorists “losers” really misses the mark, and I can’t fathom how the President and his team couldn’t come up with anything more to the point. Life isn’t a game of winners and losers, and terrorism isn’t one side of that game while the Western World is full of “winners” on the other side. Words matter, and when the President chooses words that don’t live up to the solemnity and import of the moment or fail to accurately depict what is actually going on, he fails at one of the central aspects of his job – to powerfully verbalize the pillars, the principles, and the foundations of the United States of America in matters of policy, be they foreign or domestic.  Where is Reagan?  Where is Thatcher?  Where is the Churchill of our age?!!

Words matter. And it isn’t simply the way in which the President’s words are being delivered, it’s also the fact that many of the things he has been saying and doing in the first few months on the job are the exact same things he ruthlessly criticized Obama and Hillary for on the campaign trail – as the Washington Post detailed here.  What is frustrating about articles like this is that as you read them, if you’re like me, you’re agreeing with the policy positions and the budget ideas that the Post is sneering at. In fact, this is the first President in modern history to seriously go after entitlement spending – something we should all be happy about, even if we don’t agree with every specific cut or idea.

BUT because the President waged a campaign of sarcastic and sneering rhetoric (often at a 3rd-grade level) that now comes into diametric opposition to his actions as President, it makes it difficult to take him seriously. Words matter. Remember the 2004 Presidential campaign??  I do because it was the first major campaign I worked on upon graduating from college. Republicans (like myself) mercilessly branded John Kerry as a “flip-flopper” – that was a centerpiece of the attack campaign – and here we have a Republican President making John Kerry’s flip-flopping look like amateur hour.  As much as I really want him to succeed, I just gotta shake my head at this guy sometimes…

Well…to help balance things out a bit, I was encouraged by Wall Street Journal editor and columnist Kimberley Strassel’s piece about ‘the news you didn’t hear’ this week.  Strassel goes into some detail about how the Trump administration has gotten some good stuff done in the past week or so which affects everyday Americans. This is the kind of thing you don’t hear reported, and yet it really is real news.

On to other things…

Here’s a helpful post from R.C. Sproul: What If I Don’t Feel Forgiven?

Tech and Morality: A few weeks back I read this thoughtful blog post by someone named Samuel James called ‘The Parable of Anthony Weiner’s iPhone’.  He dives into whether or not the unfortunately (though perhaps appropriately) named Weiner would have carried on inappropriate relationships and communications if he was not so tempted by the ease with which technology allowed him these liberties. Well reasoned and worth the read.

In a similar context, Tim Charlie’s blogged about the intersection of humanity and technology and explores whether artificial intelligence designers and technology wizards really desire to “eliminate the human”, even when they never implicitly say as much.  What do they have against humanity, anyway?   If you read this and ALSO listen to the Mohler podcast I posted here, you’ll notice a theme. Mohler even recommends historian Paul Johnson’s book ‘Intellectuals’, which explores this idea that many intellectuals (who are mostly liberals) who call themselves “humanitarians” actually hold to policies which are anything BUT humanitarian.  In fact, the intellectual elites usually prize pretty much any part of nature above the value of humanity. Yet this religion is not often rigorously observed in their lives.  The point is that these stories get us thinking about whether we are consistent in our use of technology (talking about more than simply your iPhones here) and our holding to certain beliefs and worldviews???

Good Culture Story:  Here’s One of the Scenes That Probably Got Tim Allen’s Show Canceled

This is wacky, you gotta check it out: Nancy Lee Carlson Bought a Piece of the Moon—NASA Really Wants It Back

In Case You Missed It: Ben & Jerry’s Bans Same-Flavored Scoops to Support Same-Sex Marriage in Australia

Video of the Week: God Made You Believe in God  EXCERPT:

Grace is not God’s response to our initiative: “first, I will believe, and then you will make me alive.” Are you kidding me? After all of this, you will claim that you will defeat the course of this world, you will defeat the prince of the power of the air, you will defeat the spirit that now is at work, you will defeat the passions of your flesh, you will defeat what’s at work in your body and your mind, you will overcome the nature to be a child of wrath, you will overcome the nature to be a son of disobedience, and you will produce the glorious reality of faith, to which God will say, “Well done: you’re alive — I make you now alive” (see Ephesians 2:1–3)?

Let me conclude with an interesting read from ten years ago: LIVING WITH ISLAMISM: A call for Christians to understand the Islamist narrative, and to adopt a Christian response…..Excerpt:

How should we respond to this radical, worldwide movement with millions of adherents whose programme it is to unite Muslims worldwide into one people, with one divinely sanctioned leader, governed by a reactionary version of Islamic law, and organized to wage a permanent war on the rest of the world—a war that from its perspective can only end in the annihilation, conquest or conversion of all non-Muslims?

AND…

As the late Lesslie Newbigin insisted, Christianity is public truth. Islamism makes public claims for the truth of Islam. Christians must counter with public claims for the truth of the teachings of the Bible. The gospel is not proclaimed in vain, and the present and next generations must proclaim it in every sphere of human life and every geographical area of the earth with both humility and courage.

Finally…

Military action is not the ultimate answer to the challenge of Islamist terror, but it is a political responsibility that we must acknowledge and bear, even as its consequences for affected civilians must break our hearts.

That conclusion is right on point. The challenge to my fellow Christians is this: do you cheer the death of Muslims? If so, what separates you from those Muslims cheering the death of Christians in Egypt?  We fundamentally need a change in attitude toward Islam, in my opinion. A more detailed understanding of its origins would be a helpful start. After all, from the first, Islam was really just seen as another Christian heresy (which is basically is), and not a whole other religion. There are many things we hold in common with these folks – namely our belief in monotheism, and our humanity (we are all created in the image of God). But we mostly need a heart that doesn’t rejoice in the death of the wicked.

So yes, let’s defend our nation. Yes, let’s support our country as it kills terrorists who threaten our citizens and wage war on our people. But let’s do so not with rejoicing, but with heavy hearts, knowing that these are people made by the hand of God in the image of God, who need the truth of God as much as we do. Simply killing terrorists will not transform the Middle East or the world. You cannot do battle on those terms alone while neglecting the deeper driving motives of these warriors (the faith elements). So while the state is concerned to keep us safe (and thank God they are doing a great job of it), the church is charged with saving souls by courageously proclaiming the truth of the gospel to Muslims who have distorted scripture for over 1000 years, yet who need these truths as much as we do.

That’s it!  I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

PJW