Printed in the Indianapolis Star, October 7, 2018
I have been trying to warn my fellow conservatives for over twenty years that school vouchers are a bad idea. With government money comes government strings, and once you accept money from the state you accept that the state can put conditions on receiving that money. When you become dependent on government money, it becomes tempting to abandon your principles to keep the gravy train moving.
Why is Donald Trump the President of these United States?
Here is a historical example. Nineteen years ago, I attended a plan commission meeting where a member of the commission said that landowners concerned about a regulation on minimum lot size were just like people who owned slaves. Yes, if you are worried that you will not be able to subdivide your own land and give some to your children, you are exactly like the people who participated in the brutal system of chattel slavery. It was an absolutely morally abominable statement.
Far too many on the Left cannot debate public policy on philosophical or practical grounds. If you disagree with them, then you have bad motives, or you are owned by the developers, or you hate women, or you do not care about the environment, or you are trying to personally enrich yourself, and so on and so forth. This makes the Pharisees of the New Testament look completely tolerant by comparison.
I sent the following press release last Friday, as part of my campaign for Perry Township Board:
When I called for expanded transparency back in July, the most recent meeting minutes on the Perry Township website were dated February 16, 2017. I am pleased that Perry Township has taken my advice and posted meeting minutes for the last year and a half. There is even an announcement for the adoption of the budget. Even as a candidate, it appears I am getting results for the taxpayers of Perry Township. It is not enough to abide by the bare minimum legal standard. Township government should go above and beyond to be as transparent as possible. In the Information Age, that means putting things online.
We hear all the time about “outrage culture” and how everyone in politics is angry all the time. Vitriolic rhetoric flies across social media and people would rather insult, accuse and call people names than actually engage on ideas, policy, or ideology. Principles are gone, and only tribal hatreds remain. It is only a matter of time until we fall into civil war. If you spend much time online, that seems very plausible.
And yet I am not sure the “outrage culture” is as bad as it appears.
I think it would be a good twist in one of those vigilante movies (like Death Wish) if the protagonist, instead of executing murderers, accidentally executed an innocent person due to a case of mistaken identity. Or he executes someone guilty of a non-violent petty crime. This is why we have civil rights and due process instead of just murdering people we think are bad. Even with due process, horrific errors can be and have been made and innocent people are railroaded, but at least there’s a chance of exoneration in front of a court of law. That does not exist with a vigilante.
Far too many conservative Christians (especially libertarians) base their philosophy of government on a flawed premise: Government is bad. But authority flows throughout all of Scripture, and the Apostle Paul teaches us in Romans 13 that the civil magistrate was established by God. Forgetting that leads to heresy.
With that in mind, examine this statement by Andrew Klavan on his podcast on September 24:
“It’s in the Bible. Pharaoh stored up the grain and then when people were starving he could distribute the grain. So the Hebrews came to Egypt to get the grain, in a generation they were slaves. That’s Leftism in a nutshell.”
First, Klavan knows absolutely nothing about the story from the Bible he references. Let me explain the truth, instead of the blasphemy and heresy that Klavan is promoting on his podcast. Pharaoh had a dream. God’s servant Joseph interpreted the dream: Seven years of plenty would be followed by seven years of famine. Joseph (who was a Hebrew) told him to store grain during the years of plenty so there would be food during the famine. Both the interpretation and the plan to save Egypt from famine were from God.
I released the following statement on Monday, from my campaign for Perry Township Board:
Monroe County is a place with a progressive ideological bent, and many voters are upset with Donald Trump. But I urge voters to not simply vote for every Democrat on the ballot just because they do not like Trump. Examine each race, and what the candidates want to do while in office, before you vote. The responsibilities of local government are very different from policy at the national level. Voters are doing a disservice to themselves and their community when they cast a straight ticket vote.
Domestic violence is real and it is scary.
Standing across the room, he threw the screwdriver towards me just inches from my head as it stuck into the wall behind me. I asked him to stop, grabbed the screwdriver and asked him to leave. He said with even more evil in his eyes, “That’s OK, Babe, I’ve got this!” flipping out a 4 inch pocket knife.
I went to high school with the author. The fact that she was a hair’s breadth from being a statistic is chilling.
It got me thinking when Ben Shapiro said that Elizabeth Warren could do a better job than Hillary Clinton answering the question “why do you want to be President?” Clinton’s answer was “because I deserve it!” Warren would be able to provide a policy justification for why she is running. Basically, if you are going to run for office, you need to tell the voters why you should be elected to that position and what you plan to do. If you are running just to run, then you are doing a disservice to the voters.
