Townhall Review | Commentaries

The death of evangelist Billy Graham seems almost unreal.  In our memories, we can still hear his voice, see his smile, and trace his influence. He died on Wednesday—age 99—at his home in North Carolina. From his first crusade to his dying breath he made clear he still believed and always believed what he preached.

 

Billy Graham was a titanic figure on the world stage. He preached in person to more persons than any other preacher in the history of Christianity.  It all began with a crusade in Los Angeles nearly 70 years ago that changed history, and led to the establishment of a global ministry of evangelism and good will.

 

I had the honor of knowing Billy Graham, and he was gracious to speak at my inauguration as president of Southern Seminary and give his name to our evangelism school. He was even greater in person than on the television screen or before a crowd. 

 

He has now gone home to his heavenly reward, to be with the God he loved so much and served so well.

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How can the slaughter of high school students be so polarizing? It is agonizing beyond any writer’s ability to convey, but a political football to begin another round of pro- and anti-Trump throwdowns?

 

I didn’t see that coming out of the sorrow from the Florida shooting.

 

It was like an instant replay of reactions that we witnessed after the massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas and every awful massacre since Columbine.

 

It has left commentary without a purpose. If everyone — always — makes the same demands, nearly instantly; without any room for consideration of the specifics of the murderer’s motivation and history, it’s hard to imagine what “change” will avail.

 

A place to start for us would be hearings.

 

I got the idea from my NBC colleague Chuck Todd. I put it to Education Secretary DeVos and Attorney General Sessions. They both agreed.

 

If hearings occur, we need one more promise: for everyone to actually hear the viewpoints presented.

 

Let’s stop the outrage and just listen.

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What should we expect from the recent tax cuts? In a word, “growth.” At Townhall Finance, we recently reviewed the historical data around the Kennedy, Reagan and Bush tax cuts.

 

What we found is that the economy slowed while waiting for the tax cuts to kick in, and then boomed afterwards. So far—true to form—we’ve seen the economy slow down a bit at the end of 2017 and then show real signs of strong growth this year. The Atlanta Fed, hardly Trump’s home team is forecasting greater than 5 percent growth this year. What would that mean for us? About 400 billion dollars of new wealth this year alone.

 

Let’s say you take your typical tax cut and invest it. Over 30 years it could result in $53k dollar in additional income for your family. We’re talking about real money—the kind of money which can help the Republicans in Congress do much better in the elections than the talking heads are predicting.

 

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Jordan Peterson is a fascinating case study in a how new media mixed with a needed message can—overnight—create a star. His YouTube videos have gotten far more than 100 million views.

 

Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto who has s been talking—among other things—about a crisis of masculinity. He’s Moderate in his politics and Bible-friendly.

 

His breakout moment was when he defeated a hostile feminist BBC interviewer, leaving her literally with nothing to say. It went viral—with over 4 million hits just on the BBC website alone. The interviewer suggested that Peterson was ‘divisive’ simply because most of his YouTube followers are young men.

 

Maybe that kind of toxic attack on masculinity is the reason young men in particular seem to flock to Peterson’s message: be a man, don’t be a victim, stand with your shoulders back and go out into the world to slay your dragon. 

 

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Once again: A school shooting.

 

Once again: Tragedy stares us in the face.

 

Once again: We have the report of numerous fatalities and an even larger and expanding number of those who are wounded.

 

This time, It was a high school in Parkland Florida—and the questions come, the questions that are inevitable in the aftermath of this kind of headline, the questions that vex us, the most difficult of which seem to have no easy solution at all. We’re looking at a reality that is playing out over and over again.

 

In the coming days, we’ll be seeing heartbreak when the world shouts only

headlines.

 

Even as there is an immediate clamor to try to analyze, to explain and to prescribe, what we need to understand is that there are right now very real families, very real relatives, friends, peers. There are very real patients who are wounded. There are very real human beings who are grieving in Parkland, Florida.

 

As hard as it may be to convince the larger world that this is true, the most important issue here is not headlines but human hearts.

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Once again: A school shooting.

Once again: Tragedy stares us in the face.

Once again: We have the report of numerous fatalities and an even larger number of those who are wounded.

This time, it was a high school in Parkland Florida—and the questions come, the questions that are inevitable in the aftermath of this kind of headline, the questions that vex us, the most difficult of which seem to have no easy solution at all. We’re looking at a reality that is playing out over and over again.

Even as there is an immediate clamor to try to analyze, to explain and to prescribe, what we need to understand is that there are right now very real families, very real relatives, friends, peers, parents. There are very real patients who are wounded. There are very real human beings who are grieving in Parkland, Florida and beyond.

As hard as it may be to convince the larger world that this is true, the most important issue here is not headlines but human hearts.

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Liberal media outlets are swooning over North Korea’s “sports diplomacy” at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. They’ve even suggested that somehow the North Koreans have outmaneuvered the Trump Administration in the diplomatic arena.

 

Such assertions are ridiculous. Vice President Pence, representing our country at the Olympics, did the right thing by continuing to shine a light on the threat that North Korea poses to our allies in Asia and to the United States. We cannot be lulled into a sense of complacency.  The North Korean regime remains committed to developing nuclear weapons that can reach the American homeland; their rhetoric continues to be sharply hostile to America and American interests around the world; and they continue to commit human rights abuses and atrocities against their own citizens.

 

If the North Koreans are serious about improving relations with South Korea and de-escalating the tensions that have gripped the Korean Peninsula, it will take more than sending a cheerleading squad to the Olympics. 

 

We should all enjoy the games. But we should not be fooled.

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This is Albert Mohler for Townhall.com.

On the issue of pornography, the New York Times has just given us an example of what moral surrender looks like.

 

The cover story of the magazine is titled, “What Teenagers Are Learning From Online Porn.”

 

The main argument is that pornography has become the main vehicle for sex education amongst American teenagers. Access appears to be such a given in terms of the adolescent experience in our nation today that the New York Times Magazine article is mostly important because of its central message: This is simply a reality you're going to have to find a way to deal with it.

 

In one amazing paragraph, the author—Maggie Jones—actually suggests that the moral issue is not whether or not teenagers are looking at pornography, but what kind of pornography they are viewing and whether or not it brings out a certain form of sexism in them.

 

It’s as if—as a society—we’re really past the ability to render moral judgment.

 

It’s another dark milestone in the moral context of our culture.

 

I’m Albert Mohler.

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President Trump earned significant praise for his first State of the Union Address—and for good reason. It presented an affirmative vision for what unified Republican governance can accomplish. It also laid out policy priorities to keep the homeland secure and strengthen our economy.

One thing that was missing, however, was any mention of our growing deficits and national debt. Washington is spending more money than it has and more than it should—and lawmakers from both parties seem perfectly content to continue on the path we’re on. This spending requires us to borrow money from foreign adversaries, hurts our economy’s ability to grow and leaves our kids and grandkids with the bill.

A change in course is desperately needed. Indeed, reining in spending is never politically easy. That’s why it will take a leader willing to buck trends and attack the special interests—and perhaps even some in his own party—to get the job done. 

Here’s to hoping that Donald Trump can be that leader.

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In the election of 1992 James Carville and Democrats famously said: “It’s the economy, stupid.” And they kept saying it through the reelection and the impeachment defense. Clinton argued that elites were disconnected from the kitchen table economic concerns of ordinary Americans and caught up in wedge issues and the politics of personal destruction.

Democrats argued against impeaching Clinton—for lying in his testimony about sexual misconduct—because it would threaten record highs in the Dow.

My how times have changed. Now the left plays down the importance of the economy. Newly minted pundit, Jay-Z argues on CNN  that record lows in black unemployment don’t really matter.

Well they matter to the people who are getting out of the unemployment lines. They matter to their spouses and to their children. Low black unemployment matters to neighborhoods and whole communities.

To most of us, it’s still the economy that matters and politicians who ignore that fact are, well like the man said, stupid.

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