Townhall Review | Commentaries

New research in the health sciences indicates that making a point of regularly expressing gratitude can bring numerous benefits in physical and emotional health.

Robert Emmons, psychology professor at University of California-Davis, declares that “gratitude enhances performance in every domain that’s been examined, psychological, relational, emotional, physical.”

Asking research subjects to regularly write down reasons for thankfulness in a daily “gratitude journal” appears to bring immediate results; a study at University College London showed better sleep quality and lower blood pressure after just two weeks of keeping gratitude journals.

With the nation painfully afflicted by an epidemic of “deaths of despair” involving suicides, drug overdoses and alcoholism, thankfulness may provide a promising antidote, offering an alternative to our current culture of complaint, competitive victimization and indulgent self-pity. Taking time for thankfulness may be good for your health—and the nation’s.

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In the first 175 years of the nation, the House of Representatives impeached only one president, Andrew Johnson. Now in the last 57 years, it’s impeached two, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, and it may be ready to impeach a third.

Why the rise in impeachments? Because we forget that impeachment is extraordinary. The normal way to remove a president is by the people through elections. The extraordinary way is impeachment, with its Constitutional requirement of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Lacking political patience, we threaten to make the extraordinary now ordinary.

Politics is an ugly business. Quid pro quos in foreign policy? They doubtless happen more than we think and, if we don’t like them, we have a chance to cast our vote in one year. But a case of high crimes and misdemeanors demanding an extraordinary remedy?

I think not.

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Despite strong economic growth of recent years, an even more important number tells a much less encouraging story.

For three years in a row now, we’ve suffered an unprecedented decline in life expectancy—with self-inflicted harm striking more Americans in the prime of life. The lead author of a new study for the American Medical Association says, “the whole country is at a disadvantage compared to other wealthy nations.”

While people around the world enjoy steady increases in longevity, America has been moving in the wrong direction for the first time in a century.

Experts say prime causes are drug overdoses, suicides, and alcoholism—“deaths of despair” that inflict a horrible toll, despite declining rates of crime and poverty, and dramatic improvements in medical care.

Prospective leaders in an election year must confront this threat to our national well-being that prematurely steals spouses, parents, neighbors and work colleagues from those who need them.

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What does exposing the truth cost you? In the case of pro-life activist David Daleiden, it will cost $870,000.

Recently a California jury ruled that Daleiden’s undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby parts caused substantial harm to the organization. Many will remember that Daleiden caught numerous Planned Parenthood workers on camera talking about the sale of baby parts from aborted children. His undercover work could be compared to what we’ve from 60 Minutes over the years. And he’s paid a heavy price.

His videos have shown the horrible nature of the abortion industry. Planned Parenthood is just not in the business of health care. The organization enables the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of unborn babies and is the foremost representative of our anti-human culture of death.

Daleiden is in the crosshairs now. But time—and hopefully the courts—will ultimately vindicate him.

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Of course you already know that Thanksgiving is associated with the Pilgrim’s feast at Plymouth plantation. You’ve seen the paintings and heard the story of the bountiful harvest, but have you heard the whole story?

 

I just published a piece on Townhall Finance which documents how—when the Pilgrims arrived—they were required by London elites who financed the expedition to practice a form of communism, which was in vogue at the time.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the result was famine, starvation and plague. The settlers decided to defy the planners in London, to reject what they called “the conceits of Plato” and instead embraced the 10 commandments and instituted private property. The result was abundance.

That history was taught to earlier generations of Americans, but no longer. Maybe this Thanksgiving, skip the arguing about politics and simply share the real ‘hidden history’ of America.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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To balance their four leading contenders over age 70—Sanders, Bloomberg, Biden and Warren—the Democrats also offer 37-year-old Pete Buttigieg. He’d be by far the youngest chief executive in our history, easily beating 41-year-old Theodore Roosevelt and 43 year-old-John Kennedy.

Mayor Pete’s defenders note that both TR and JFK used their youthful vigor to become successful presidents, but Buttigieg can’t compete with   them in leadership experience. He’s won two terms as a small city Mayor, while Roosevelt was State Assembly minority leader, New York’s Police Commissioner, Assistant Navy Secretary, Governor of New York and Vice President. JFK served two terms in the House and two in the Senate, while writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning history book. 

The young candidate’s limited life experience raises inevitable questions about his preparation for the presidency.

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Nearly 400 years ago, Harvard, named after a Puritan minister, was founded to educate clergy. Some 65 years later Yale was founded to do the same.

Today, the two institutions share the common pursuits of denying God’s existence and decrying man’s.

That was on display during the annual gridiron meeting between the two schools recently as students from both institutions staged a climate-change sit-in at the 50-yard line delaying the game for almost an hour.

Who were they protesting? The Leftist professors who indoctrinated them? Or the wealthy donors who underwrite those Leftist professors?

And: Why, exactly, is Frankenstein pummeling his creators?

This display of conspicuous conviction at mid-field was the pursuit of social status, not of policy change. They don't really care if you give up your private plane or SUV. And they don’t care whether the schools’ endowments divest from fossil fuel companies.

Their only demand is that you applaud them just as they applaud themselves.

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This week, we have the opportunity to do something truly radical: we can give thanks.

Thanksgiving long predates the founding of America. It’s a tradition that dates to the arrival of the Pilgrims in Plymouth. Following extreme hardship—including numerous deaths, conflict, bitter cold—a group of Christians decided not to complain against God, but to thank Him for his sustaining grace.

Over the centuries, Thanksgiving became more than an exclusively religious event. In the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln made the occasion a federal holiday, a remarkable move.

In modern America, Thanksgiving signals for many an opportunity to come together with family and friends to enjoy the goodness of life. It’s a pause on the madness and delirium of our divided times.

In a time of entitlement, chaos, and self-focus, giving thanks to God is a radical act.

Be a radical this year: eat turkey.

Laugh.

Choose gratitude

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Our fascination with polls sometimes produces premature conclusions about next year’s presidential race, including the assumptions that Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden will fight it out for the Democratic nomination. Past polling a year before elections has demonstrated scant predictive value: for 2004, Wesley Clark and Howard Dean were the clear Democratic front-runners, but neither survived the early primaries; John Kerry, who grabbed the nomination, ran fifth at this point.

Four years later, for 2008, Rudy Giuliani was way ahead among Republicans—topping the ultimate nominee, John McCain, more than 2 to 1. And in 2016, Donald Trump was a full six points behind then front-runner Ben Carson—who’s now in Trump’s cabinet. Primary contests are unpredictable, particularly with complicated races and multiple candidates. There’s still time for new entrants like Mike Bloomberg, or some other surprise latecomer, to shake up the faltering Democratic field.

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Many see Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as two peas in the liberal Democratic pod but they are actually quite different. Bernie Sanders is a revolutionary who wants to change what he calls the rigged American system. He comes from a European political tradition, socialism, and seeks to turn the economic order upside down.

Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, is a regulator. If the system is rigged, she has the plans to regulate it, not revolutionize it. She made her political splash creating of a new consumer regulatory bureau and she teaches the laws of bankruptcy. She is in the American progressive tradition of trust-busting and regulating business.

There is nothing subtle about Bernie. How will he pay for Medicare for All? By taxing the rich, he openly says. She says, I have a plan for it.

In the end, the regulator may be more effective at getting elected and more dangerous than the revolutionary.

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