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Gridlock – Governmental stalemate arising from a deeper cultural divide

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Gridlock is a favorite bogeyman of journalists, columnists, and commentators in recent years, especially following national elections. They may as well save their breath and barrels of printer’s ink for the political divide has never been wider and deeper. Perennial prescriptions of non-partisanship and cooperation disappear as quickly as the morning mist following Election Day. One must ask if political polarization always results in gridlock which is shorthand for the inability of government to govern effectively. A cursory review of American history reveals many times of intense polarization, but the country and its government survived. Why was that possible then and not possible now? An examination of one of the defining moments in our nation’s history suggests an answer. The fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional […]

The difference a day makes – Another interpretation

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The voters of Oklahoma amended its state constitution in November 2004 to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. Following a suit filed in Tulsa County, U.S. District Judge Terrance Kern ruled the ban on same-sex marriage was a violation of the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore unconstitutional. Because the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal, gay marriage became legal in spite of the wishes of approximately 75% of Oklahoma’s electorate. [1] Toby Jenkins, head of Oklahomans for Equality, hails the decision as a sunrise on a new day that ended “marriage discrimination” in Oklahoma. He cites four examples of such alleged discrimination: failure to process loan applications by same-sex […]

“Workplace violence” comes to Canada

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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) defines workplace violence as “…violence or the threat of violence against workers. It can occur at or outside the workplace and can range from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and homicide, one of the leading causes of job-related deaths. However it manifests itself, workplace violence is a growing concern for employers and employees nationwide.” The OSHA website also tells us that workplace violence can strike anywhere and anyone…people in homes, pizza delivery persons, gas meter readers, psychiatric evaluators…literally anywhere work is or can be done.[1] But OSHA’s definition is so broad that it is meaningless. Almost any violence can be classified as connected to the workplace however tenuous that connection might be. Not only does OSHA […]

America’s malaise

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Malaise seems an inadequate word to describe what’s happening in and to America. Synonyms for “malaise” are sickness, illness, disease, disorder, anxiety, depression, and discontent. It appears all are needed to describe America’s mood and condition. One magazine cover reads, “Is the world falling apart?” [1] Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan laments the nation’s decline in a recent column titled “Things fall apart for many public institutions.” [2] He lists numerous examples of this brokenness in recent years including the Center for Disease Control’s fumbled response in protecting Americans from an Ebola epidemic; basic security breaches in protecting the president at and away from the White House; the invasion of the southern United States by 60,000 children and young people from Central America; the Obamacare rollout […]

The synchronization of the American church?

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“This court has no jurisdiction over me, I am a German,” insisted Herman Goring as he stood with other Nazi war criminals in 1946 before an international military tribunal in Nuremburg, Germany. But Robert Jackson, chief counsel for the United States, responded that “…there was a ‘law above the law’ that stood in judgment of all men in all countries and societies.”[1] These contrasting views of the source of laws by which men should be judged continue to be at the heart of the cultural conflict in America—is the ultimate source of law to be God or man? Modern America and the American church face the same dilemma as faced by Germany and the German church of the 1930s. We have previously quoted Eric Metaxas […]

Statistics: Facts often used to replace truth.

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Leonard Pitts’ recent syndicated column was provocatively titled “If GOP is so right, why are red states so far behind?” Pitts raised the question because of the results of a recent study by two Princeton economists that found the economy has grown faster under Democratic presidents. From President Kennedy to and including President Obama the economy grew at 4.35 percent as compared to 2.54 percent growth under Republican presidents during the same period. He also pointed to a statistic supplied by Occupy Democrats, a left-wing advocacy group, that of the ten poorest states, nine are red states and of the poorest 100 counties, ninety seven are in red states. Based on the report’s statistical revelations, Pitts asked several questions, “If Republican fiscal policies really are […]

The end of sustainable government

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America has been a wildly successful country because of its sustainable government, and we can thank our founders for making that possible. However, the Obama presidency has done more to damage that sustainability than any administration in the nation’s history. All governments are systems of ruling or controlling, and every system of government has a source of power. Every government’s source of power may be visualized as being at some point on a continuum of power. At one end of the continuum is anarchy at which there is no law, no order, and no systematic control and quickly slides into some form of tyranny. Tyranny resides at the other end of the continuum and imposes too much control and results in loss of freedom, oppression, […]

This was done by ordinary people – Part IV

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The role government and the role of the church as it relates to government Dietrich Bonhoeffer went to his death on a Nazi gallows in 1945 with a very definite understanding of the role of the church in society, and his death was the eventual outcome of his living that understanding. God ordained the establishment of government for the preservation of order and the establishment of laws that define that order. The church has no right to interfere with the actions of the state in purely political matters. That said, Bonhoeffer also firmly believed the church plays a vital role in helping the state be the state by continually asking if the state’s actions can be justified as a legitimate fulfillment of its role. In […]

This was done by ordinary people – Part II

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Many years ago I read a book about Adolf Hitler and the rise of Nazism in Germany during the early 1930s. Although I don’t remember the details of what I read, the book contained a photograph that disturbed me to such an extent that I still vividly remember it after all these years. It was a picture of a beautiful, well-dressed young woman perhaps in her thirties. She was attending a rally at which Hitler spoke during the time he was gaining political power over the German people. As she gazed at the Fuhrer, there was a smile on the young woman’s face which glowed with admiration if not absolute idolization. Her rapt attention made her appear as though hypnotized by Hitler and his words. […]

This was done by ordinary people – Part I

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The end-product of the Holocaust lay in the gas chambers and ashes of the crematoria within the German death camps spread across Europe in 1945. But the beginning of the Holocaust was much more subtle and seemingly innocuous except to the Jew and others on the wrong side of the German cultural and political wars of the 1930s. In his biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and spy, Eric Metaxas described the events that led to the Holocaust. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became the democratically elected chancellor of Germany. On February 27, the Nazis set afire the building that housed the democratically elected Reichstag and blamed it on the Communists. That same day Hitler pressured the highly respected Field Marshall Hindenburg to […]

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