America arrives at Thanksgiving this year with plenty to talk about over the dinner table. The nation has been transfixed by recent trials, divided by partisan politics, vexed by a pandemic, and worried about inflation. Economists estimate that this year’s thanksgiving meal will cost 14 percent more than last year’s.

And yet, most Americans will sit around tables filled with food, and the supermarkets did not run out of provisions. Gas is more expensive, but still lower in price than most others pay around the world. We have a court system that works and the rule of law prevails. We are not at war, and America is showing itself resilient in the face of adversities large and small. We face challenges, but would we trade our place in the world for any other people at any other time? I think not.

God still gives grace to this nation and its people, and there is every good reason for Americans to give thanks to God this Thanksgiving Day.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

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Some 2,000 years ago in a letter to Rome, the Rabbi known to history as the Apostle Paul said “they did not acknowledge God, neither were they thankful.”

At that time Rome had been rocked by riots and counter riots and escalating street violence. Paul didn’t focus on the need for more law enforcement—though later in the letter he did affirm the need for the state to punish evil—he focused on gratitude.

Rioting is ingratitude.

Gratitude says, “Thank you for giving us so much that is good.” Ingratitude says—essentially—that what we have is worthless, fit only to burn down. Europe in the 20th century was the theater of violent clashes between community and fascist street mobs, and things got much worse before they got better.

So, yes, we need police, national guard, firefighters, EMTs to fight the violence. We also need to get past the symptoms and to the disease itself: ingratitude.

May your Thanksgiving be blessed—and filled with gratitude.

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The Biden administration’s vaccine mandate is a stellar example of the law of unintended consequences.

Intended to increase the number of people vaccinated, it’s mostly increased resentment against the administration. A U.S. Court of Appeals has permanently blocked enforcement of the mandate in the private sector, though the matter will likely end up before the Supreme Court.

But before that, America saw chaos when pilots staged sickouts to dramatize their opposition to the mandate. It looks like the Biden team angered a lot of Americans for nothing.

Keep in mind that the administration can still enforce the mandate for federal workers, which includes the TSA. At Bradley Airport in Hartford Connecticut last weekend, security lines were out the door, with only two TSA agents were at work. Have the same silent sickouts now spread?

If so, and the Biden administration thinks it’s unpopular now, just wait until Americans stand in long airport lines over Thanksgiving. They ain’t seen nothing yet.

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Which organization has been accused of being simultaneously anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and “anti-Blackness?” Politico reports that the College Democrats of America, a DNC affiliate, has collapsed into tribal recriminations surrounding leadership elections. Each faction claims that their losses result from bigotry within the Democratic coalition, and each faction wants their victimology to prevail over election results.

Politico’s report on CDA’s infighting demonstrates that ethnic determinism, and the victimology it produces, results only in tribalism, fracture, and eventually segregation. When people embrace the concept that ethnicity is determinative rather than character or talent, then every point of conflict becomes tribal rather than intellectual or values based. And this philosophy ironically makes the multiculturalism it supposedly cherishes ultimately impossible to achieve.

The DNC reportedly is considering cutting ties with the CDA over this mess. Democrats should go further and cut ties with their entire embrace of this more-woke-than-thou victimology. It’s not just a dead end for them, but a dead end for America too.

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Global food prices are spiking. Organic soybeans are at 10-year highs and regular soybeans are at 7-year highs. This will have knock-on effects for example on the price of chicken and eggs which are soy fed.

The last time we had a global food price spike, it triggered a wave of regime changes known as The Arab Spring and one of the great humanitarian refugee crises of our time. In the developed world, food inflation strains our budgets. In the developing world food inflation strains the social fabric—and can quickly become a life-or-death issue.

What can we do?

First, inflation starts with the monetary printing press. Governments need to stop debasing currency.

Second, we need a new wave of de-regulation. Time to let business free to run supply chains.

Third, we must end the renewable energy mandates. They force us to turn food into fuel—putting our gas tanks in competition with our stomachs, creating an artificial scarcity for food.

The solution to the problem is freedom. The alternative is another round of global political destabilization.

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One of the basic duties of government—at any level—is providing security for its citizens and their property. How disgraceful that some city governments are failing miserably in this fundamental task.

Last week, the San Francisco Chronicle asked its readers if city residents should just tolerate burglaries as part of city life, and instead focus on making their homes more burglary proof. In a similar vein, Los Angeles authorities are telling robbery victims they should “cooperate and comply” with thieves, and simply report crimes later. Good luck getting George Soros-installed LA District Attorney George Gascon to prosecute them.

This passive acceptance of crime is un-American and wrong. We don’t let law-abiding citizens to be victimized by thieves: our streets don’t belong to the criminals. Instead, we hire police to apprehend the wrongdoers, and then we prosecute them, and then we put them in jail. That’s the way it works in a country bound by the rule of law.

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When the Supreme Court turns to the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization this fall, I believe that six justices will vote to overrule the combined doctrines of 1973’s Roe v. Wade, and then twenty years later, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The entire cobbled-together façade of jerry-rigged, ad hoc and incoherent abortion case law would be swept away if that happens, and the half-century of strained readings and outright judicial inventions overruled.

Abortion will remain legal in many states—even late-term, “partial-birth” abortions in some—but in other states, almost never allowed after a heartbeat is detected in the unborn baby.

The issue will return to the political realm to be decided, and after an initial burst of emotional reactions, the Court and the rule of law will be better for it. And the near-uniform chorus of elite media claiming a republic-ending departure from the Doctrine of Stare Decisis? Well, it will be largely ignored—the media discredited as they are on this issue by their relentless, decades-long effort to disappear half the country’s deeply felt beliefs on the subject.

We’ll all be watching closely.

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Many of you who have heard my voice in these commentaries know that—for nearly 30 years—I’ve had the honor of serving as president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

On November 5, SBTS filed suit in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals against the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate.

The mandate—as handed down by the administration—would effectively turn religious institutions into coercive arms of the administrative state. This seminary must not be forced to stand in for the government in investigating the private health decisions of our faculty and employees, in a matter involving legitimate religious concerns.

That is wrong. It’s unconstitutional. It’s an infringement of religious liberty, and in defense of religious liberty, we must take our stand.

Let make one important point on this: if religious liberty is on the line for any institution anywhere, it’s on the line for all religious institutions and all American citizens everywhere.

Watch closely—and please pray with us.

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Last week’s data showed that the inflation rate over the past year has been 4.4 percent. It’s the highest inflation rate we’ve seen in three decades.

The previous “excuse” for high inflation was the pandemic—that the Covid recession had set such a low baseline, essentially making the recovery look like inflation. But that baseline effect is gone.

The new excuse for high inflation is that we have a “great resignation” and accompanying supply chain disruptions. I fail to see that as much of an excuse. Government policy pays people whether they work or not; vaccine mandates disrupt supply chains by discouraging skeptical workers and suppressing child care provision, and government policy has flooded the world with excess money creation far beyond the needs of the economy.

The time for excuses is over. Our ruling class is down to one skill set only, shifting the blame. It’s time for putting the brakes on government spending and on easy money.

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In workplaces across the country, there’s controversy about the COVID vaccine mandate. Apparently, that controversy extends to the National Institutes of Health—the workplace of Anthony Fauci, himself.

An award-winning physician there, Dr. Matthew Memoli, supports Covid vaccinations for high-risk populations, but not blanket vaccination of those at low risk. He believes mandatory mass vaccinations are problematic, because they prevent more-robust immunity, population wide, from being developed from people overcoming infections.

To her credit, the head of the NIH’s Clinical Center bioethics department—who’s also Dr. Fauci’s wife—has authorized a debate on the topic. It will be held December 1—and it will be open to the public.

This is how public policy for a free people should be formulated—in the light of day, where everyone can see it. Too bad the Biden administration jumped the gun and imposed the mandate before any genuine debate about whether the mandate made good sense—for the public health and the health of our constitutional order.

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