Abortion, the Death Penalty, and Our Nation’s Hypocrisy
Idaho Senator Bob Nonini has come under fire recently for nodding his head in agreement with the view that those who murder a baby in the womb should face criminal charges. CrossPolitic hosted a live show interviewing three of the Republican candidates for Lt. Governor in Idaho on Monday, April 2nd at the historic Nuart […]
Hitching Their Wagons: Evangelicals and the Politics of Respectability
Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, published a takedown of Trump-supporting evangelicals in the latest issue of The Atlantic. Gerson attempts to answer the question of how a once confident and influential cultural movement became an anxious minority seeking protection from a very un-Christian president. He is at his best when […]
A Christian Case for Gun Rights?
The news cycle following a mass shooting is predictable. Thoughts and prayers are offered, outrage and demands are expressed, and the cable news stations fill up time with people yelling for or against gun control. The week after Parkland has been no different. Yet, the narrative heats up after each successive shooting, and pressure is […]
Statist Prayers for Parkland USA
As you have no doubt heard, there’s been another school shooting, and seventeen people are dead. An evil man took lives he had no right to take. His actions were full of hate and spite. These were human beings made in the image of God, most of them young people, lives cruelly cut short. There […]
Inevitable Controversy
All leaders are controversial. They invariably risk the ire of others. Because they stand for certain things, they necessarily stand against certain things. This causes them to stand out. It makes them more than a little peculiar in this plain vanilla world of smothering uniformity. G.K. Chesterton asserted, “A man with a definite belief always […]
Meaning It, Believing It, and Living It
It is one of the great ironies of our day that Christians can pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven,” and not actually mean anything by it. Indeed, it is a stunning paradox that we can live as if such a prayer could not be answered. Even worse, we can […]
Nursing A Goose Egg: Why Trump’s S***hole Comments Caused a Stir
It has been two weeks since President Donald Trump allegedly referred to Haiti and some African nations as “s***hole countries” in a meeting with congressional officials discussing immigration policy. In the wake of these comments, his detractors offered their collective outrage online for a few days, calling President Trump racist and xenophobic. Many Christians joined […]
Milton’s Political Uselessness
In 1652 John Milton went completely blind. His eyes had been waning, the world fading, for some time. The darkening was complete the same year his first wife and only son died at one year old. He was a published poet, but he had spent his energy in English politics and education since the time […]
True and Lasting Regime Change: Hope for Iran (and all of us)
Iran is once again embroiled in national protest. The demonstrations started a week ago as an economic protest, but have taken on an increasingly anti-government tone, resulting in twenty-one deaths and over 450 citizens imprisoned. This protest marks the largest demonstrations in Iran since the Green Movement of 2009, when disputed presidential election results sparked […]
Reluctant Revolutionaries of the American Republic
“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson “I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve […]
A Person’s a Person, No Matter How Rich
The estate tax (or death tax, or silver spoon tax, depending on who you ask) is the state’s attempt to redistribute the money of the wealthiest families in America. In recent months, it has seen support from Bernie Sanders, and has been sharply criticized by President Trump. In light of this, it has become a […]
Mob Justice in SEC Country: Tennessee Football and the Alabama Senate Race
After another dismal football season, the University of Tennessee has now fumbled its coaching search. Last week, the Volunteers had reached an agreement to hire Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano as its head football coach. However, the deal was dropped because of allegations that he knew about a sexual predator and did nothing—allegations which […]
The Perils of President Pence?
Vice President Mike Pence is one heartbeat, or resignation, away from the top job. But with Trump’s robust health and seeming immunity to the effects of scandals that would have sunk a normal presidency, Pence’s accession is unlikely–certainly not unless the Democrats make huge gains at the 2018 midterm elections and successfully impeach the President. […]
Gun Laws and Heroism after Las Vegas
Like a sniper in a war zone, Stephen Paddock found a defensible position 400 yards from his target, and set to waging his little war on the Route 91 Harvest music fest in the early morning hours of October 1. From the killing fields of the darkened concert ground it was impossible to see or […]
Making Welfare Less Important
We must move toward serious welfare reform not by simply pressuring people to work, but rather by supporting the pursuit of higher-wage employment. The ultimate goal would be to get rid of welfare entirely, or at least reduce it to being a last safety net for those without any other assistance available. If we emphasize […]
Review: CrossPolitic Live
I’ve always wanted to watch an extended political interview where the host stubbornly refuses to allow the politician to retreat to pat answers and stump speech talking points, where he interrupts evasive techniques and forces arguments to their logical ends. Sure, Bill O’Reilly made a career out of his no-spin schtick, but despite the yelling […]
States’ Rights and the Union: An Ongoing Debate
When we think about states’ rights, our minds often go straight to the Civil War. Few of us recognize that the debate is actually still quite alive. Events like those in Charlottesville draw our minds back to unresolved animosity of the War Between the States, but we should be using these events to help us […]
A Just War and Just War
There’s a world of difference between a just war and just war. There is war for a just reason, and there is war just to be able to say you did something while in office. Wars can serve to boost patriotism, nationalism. and For the GOP, it often bolsters the “rah, rah, rah” spirit that […]
It’s Edited: Don’t be Duped by the Newsertainment
Editing is an art form. My son Cedric was coming in the front door a few days ago when his sister asked, “Did you eat an ice cream sandwich?” He replied, “Malachi had two.” That was, strictly speaking, true. Malachi had eaten two ice cream sandwiches. The difficulty is that Cedric had also eaten one. […]
Fading Back to Black and White
After the Charlottesville riots, America was thrown into a fit of iconoclasticism. Tearing down statues of Confederate leaders, demanding the renaming of streets named after “white supremacists.” When did American history become so binary? I always thought that there were more groups than just white supremacists and good people. It’s ironic that, just as our […]