Townhall Review | Commentaries

The Coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally altered American—and global—life. Right now, we don’t know if this season of distancing will last for weeks or months.

Here is something we do know: for families, this can be a time of quietness and togetherness. We are used to a super-heated, super-busy lifestyle. Many families barely see each other and rarely share a meal together during a normal week. We dash from activity to activity, missing many opportunities for closeness, love and training.

No one wants a global pandemic. We’re working and praying for its end. But fathers and mothers should not miss the real chance we have here.

Amidst many difficulties, we can prioritize the family.

We can plug back in with our children: Read good books, play board games, laugh and pray together, hope together.

This is a tough season—but if we seize the moment, we can redeem the time.

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In the twinkling of an electoral eye, frontrunner Bernie Sanders’ campaign is near death and Joe Biden’s has been resurrected. How could this happen?

Bernie said the American system needed a “political revolution,” and his revolution was “for all”: Medicare for all, free college for all, housing for all and jobs for all. The price tag was tens of trillions of dollars and a revolution in how America operates.

Even Democrats were not ready for that.

Perhaps it was about stopping the Trump revolution: a CNN Poll shows that 66 percent of Democratic voters thought Biden could best oppose Trump, 26 percent for Sanders. Or maybe concern over the coronavirus revolution changed things: the same poll showed Biden could best handle a major crisis by 65 percent over Sanders--at 23 percent.

It turns out 2020 is not the year for a revolution.

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After Super Tuesday, the choice for president narrowed to three well-known—and very elderly—candidates.

By time of November’s election, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders will range in age from 74 to 79; whoever wins will qualify as the oldest president ever inaugurated.

The decisive advantage for Trump, Bernie and Biden involves their name recognition.

Even before he ran the first time, Trump’s decades of celebrity status gave him decisive advantages since most citizens pay scant attention to politics, and instinctively prefer a familiar figure to names you don’t recognize. That’s particularly true at a time when most voters perceive the country’s doing well, or at least holding its own.

In that context, familiarity reliably trumps advanced age.

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While we all wait to see the long-term economic impact of the coronavirus, it worth a moment to look at the economic data before the virus.

By practically every measure, the economy in January and February was not only solid, but trending upwards. Trade war uncertainty was off the radar screen and job creation was well over a quarter-million per month.

House purchases were also trending up well.

Whatever economic problems this virus brings, it will be that natural disaster’s fault and not the fault of the policy mix.

Once we get past the anxiety about coronavirus, we’re likely to see a sharp and strong recovery.

The Trump administration has proposed temporary payroll tax cuts—an idea that should happen sooner rather than later, allowing plenty of time for people to feel the recovery before they go to the polls in November.

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Many liberals in America are advocating for Medicare for all, a change that would fundamentally transform our health care system to look more like the one in the United Kingdom.

But the global coronavirus outbreak has highlighted the weaknesses of such systems. The UK right now is bracing for hospital overcrowding, supply shortages and increased rationing of care if cases of the coronavirus continue to rise. Doctors quoted in a recent New York Times article expressed worries about how the British health care system would handle such an outbreak, with one intensive care doctor predicting that, “only those with a high chance of getting better would get near a ventilator.”

Liberals here attribute these challenges to a lack of funding. But that only highlights the problem with government-run systems—they only have a prayer of working if taxpayers are willing to pour more and more money into them.

That’s a prescription to break the bank … And our health care system.

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The Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments last week in the first big abortion case since the confirmation of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

The case is known as June Medical Services v. Russo. It comes from a Louisiana state law—passed in 2014—requiring abortion clinics to have physicians who are recognized with admitting privileges at local hospitals.

Pro-abortion advocates are using the case to argue that if a woman has a constitutional right to abortion, then she must have a constitutional right to access to abortion.

It’s a very deadly logic. Pro-life Americans seem not yet to understand what’s at stake in this case, but tellingly the pro-abortion side understands it full well.

The issues at stake are enormous.

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Last Wednesday, the Democratic leader of the United States Senate, Senator Chuck Schumer, stood on the steps of the United States Supreme Court as that court was considering an abortion case, and issued a threat to two sitting justices of that court.

Senator Schumer said, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

That then brought a rebuke from the chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts, and never was such a rebuke so well-deserved. Senator Schumer did what no American politician should ever do, he issued what can only be described as a threat to sitting justices of the United States Supreme Court and he dared to do it standing on the steps of the court as the court was in session.

That tells us a lot about Senator Schumer, but it also tells us a lot about the desperation of the pro-abortion side.

They know exactly what's at stake in this case, and that's why they are so desperate.

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Big government Democrat politicians are happy to be puppets of corporate interests so long as the strings don’t show. They need rhetorical deniability for the campaign trail.

Similarly, Democrat primary voters generally embrace socialism by any other name so long as you don’t lay bare the repressive implications. They too need rhetorical deniability so they may continue to tell themselves they are the true heirs of American values or “the thing,” as Joe Biden affectionately terms it.

Bernie Sanders flamed out on Super Tuesday because he couldn’t keep the revolutionary in him under wraps on 60 Minutes two weeks earlier.

Rather than sticking to his fairy tale of socialism as harmonious, Nordic-style communal living, Sanders let his true self show in the form of cringe-worthy praise for Fidel Castro’s literacy program in communist Cuba.

Democrat primary voters came to Bernie Sanders for the “free” goodies but they couldn’t stay for the gulags.

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Despite partisan grandstanding from politicians on all sides, scientists view the Coronavirus with surprising unanimity. No, COVID-19 isn’t a hoax; it’s a serious menace that’s already impacted tens of millions around the world and will likely disrupt hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States.

At the same time, it hardly represents a cataclysmic threat to civilization: within six months—in time for the American election—the health and economic threats will have begun to recede. Prominent leaders will of course claim credit for a “miraculous” rescue, but they won’t deserve it.

If nothing else, this virus should force elected representatives into more cooperation across party lines, along with recognition that politicos can’t control dangerous diseases. They can’t magically protect your health, but they CAN work together to improve the health of the body politic.

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Many people expect religious types to lead the way ethically.

In recent days, one religious publisher went the opposite way. Christianity Today ran a piece entitled “Polyamory: Pastors’ Next Sexual Frontier.” Polyamory—from the Latin “several loves”—refers, please note, to three or more adults in consenting sexual relationships.

Alongside general common sense, the piece by Preston Sprinkle and Branson Parler identified positive elements of polyamorous instincts. The desire for family, rejection of individualism and focus on community in polyamorous desires are “good things” that draw people to polyamory.

One thing is for sure: this isn’t your grandfather’s religion.

It’s a strange day when an evangelical publisher puts out material identifying polyamory in positive terms.

We need a clearer word: polyamory is wrong. There is nothing good in it.

Let’s return to the day when religious types led the way ethically.

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