General

It took place two thousand years ago, but the birth of Jesus Christ changed the world and brought true hope to you and me.

Today we encourage you to minimize the world’s many distractions and worship the One Who was born to die for your sins and bring you eternal life.

Here’s a great song that will remind you why He came.

Merry Christmas from Youth With A Mission.

I am a big fan of Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Charles Krauthammer. In the past few years, like a shooting star, he has ascended the heights of American punditry to become one of the most respected  commentators in the nation.

No wonder his latest book–Things That Matter–currently sits atop the New York Times best-seller list. It is a great read would make an excellent Christmas gift for any of your thinking friends and relatives.

However, after reading the book, it strikes me that although Charles Krauthammer may be among the most robust thinkers of our day, his book reveals a glaring weakness.

Charles Krauthammer has a missing source.

Dr. Krauthammer is a 63 year old  physician/psychiatrist who launched a journalism career the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981. Then, he was left of center politically.

Now he is a staunch conservative.

In 1972, during his first year in medical school, he broke his neck in a diving accident and remains a paraplegic. Whenever you see him on television, he sits upright, almost regal, in a chair, not drawing attention to the fact that he has no feeling from the waist down.

The accident changed his life, but not his spirit. Determined to finish his studies on time, he asked his Harvard instructors to come to the hospital and project his lessons on the ceiling of the hospital room. Thus began years of learning to live without lower body movement.

Her still graduated with honors–on time–with his classmates.

Now forty years later, he has reached the pinnacle of political discourse by being a regular on the Fox News Channel and writing a weekly column for the Washington Post that is syndicated in over 400 newspapers.

How did Charles Krauthammer go from being a liberal (working on Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign) to being a clear-eyed conservative? His simple answer is: “I was young once.”

Meaning? He “grew up” over the years as he watched the Democratic Party go from being strong on national defense to making deals with dictators (e.g. the present mullahs in Iran.) Like Ronald Reagan’s conversion before him, be honestly states that “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. It left me.”

On domestic issues it was a different matter. “The Democratic Party remained true to itself. I changed. The origin of that evolution is simple: I’m open to empirical evidence. The results of the Great Society experiments started coming in and began showing that, for all its good intentions, the War on Poverty was causing irreparable damage to the very communities it was deisgned to help.”

Krauthammer says, “As I became convinced of the practical and theoretical errors of the social-democratic tendencies of my youth, it was but a short distance to a philosophy of restrained, free market governance that gave more space and place to the individual and civil society. In a full circle return, I found my eventual political home in a vision of limited government.”

Charles Krathammer became a foreign policy conservative because he recognized evil in the world which couldn’t be appeased. He became a fiscal conservative because socialism doesn’t work and free enterprise does.

Now to the book. Things That Matter is an updated collection of his best columns of the past thirty years. It’s a fast-paced read with each chapter sharing a distinct thought in usually 2-4 pages. There are three sections in the book

PERSONAL

The opening section contains his most emotional writings on family, friends, manners, follies, space and earth, and his passions and pastimes which include baseball (he’s an avid and knowledgable fan of the Washington Nationals) as well as chess. (His column on Big Blue the computer beating the ‘human” world champion chess player is a riot.)

One of Charles’ greatest gifts is profound pithiness. In an article about bank robber Katharine Ann Power who killed a policeman and orphaned his children, then rationalized her actions, Krauthammer observes, “Allen Bloom once described a man who had just gotten out of prison, where he had undergone ‘therapy.’ He said he had found his identity and learned to like himself. A generation earlier he would have found God and learned to despise himself as a sinner.”

But no. The new, secular world is about self and changing the definition of sin. “Reflecting on the man who learned to like himself in prison, Bloom notes that in the life of this ex-con the problem lay with his sense of self, not with original sin or devils within him. We have here the peculiarly American way of digesting Continental despair. It is nihilism with a happy ending. Except for the orphans.”

I can’t do justice to his writing style in this snippet, but you get the point. In most of his columns, Krauthammer lays out the empirical or common sense understanding of truth and then drives it home with a verbal left jab–leaving you stunned and sobered..

“Except for the orphans.”

POLITICAL

Krauthammer is primarily a political commentator who wanted to keep politics out of the book. He says that “this book was originally going to be a collection of my writings about everything except politics. Things beautiful, mysterious, profound, or just odd. Working title: There’s More to Life Than Politics.

Then he gives a powerful explanation as to why that changed. “But in the end, I couldn’t [leave out politics]. For a simple reason, the same reason I left psychiatry for journalism. While science, medicine, art, poetry, architecture, chess, space, sports, number theory and all things hard and beautiful promise purity, elegance, and sometimes even transcendence, they are fundamentally subordinate. In the end, they must they must bow to the sovereignty of politics.”

“Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything, because, in the end, everything–high and low–lives and dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away.”

“This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933. Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay and everything burns.”

Read those lines again–and never again share a negative view of politics. It makes or breaks everything else–either promoting freedom or allowing tyranny.

HISTORICAL

Krauthammer’s final section is a compilation of his best writings on past history, the 80s, 90s, the Cold War, the Age of Terrorism and what is coming in the future. Three essays in this section are speeches he gave before national think-tanks. They’re worth the entire book. One is called the “Uni-Polar Moment,”a subject you’d better become familiar with. The others are “Democratic Realism” and “Decline is a Choice.”

There are quite a number of essays in the book on the Jews, the Holocaust, Middle East etc. Krauthammer is a Jew–so he knows his own people. Maybe that’s one reason he is so brilliant: by ethnicity, he is one of God’s chosen. On the humorous side, Bob Weiner says, “the reason God created Gentiles is that somebody needed to pay retail.”

(Read that again and you’ll get it!)

Here are a few more Krauthammer quotes:

• Social Security: “The average senior receives in Social Security about a third of what the average worker makes. This is one Ponzi scheme that can be saved. Social Security was not meant to provide two decades of green fees for baby boomers.”
• 20th century: “The uniqueness of the 20th century lies not in its science but in its politics. It invented the police state, the command economy, mass mobilization and mass propaganda, mechanized murder and routinized terror–a breathtaking catalog of totalitarian horror.”
• Left and right: “Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
• Voting: “I don’t really care what a public figure thinks. I care about what he does. Let God probe his inner heart. Tell me about his outer acts. Know them by what they do and judge them by their works.”
• Politics (again): “If we don’t get politics right, everything else risks extinction. Politics is soveriegn in human affairs. Everything ultimately rests upon it.”
• Border security: “When you build a wall to keep people in, that’s a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that’s an expression of sovereignty.”
• Jihad: “The greatest moral monster of our time is the suicide bomber. It is the ultimate perversion of the ‘good death’ done for the worst of motives–self creation through the annihilation of others.”
• Me Generation: “Its genius is to take the stigma out of self-love and turn it into virtue. Its beauty is to take health and hygiene, and make them a religion. In a political era demanding more public displays of piety and morality, liberals can now enthusiastically declare,’We got religion too!'”
• Atheism: “The declining faith in the supernatural has been accompanied by the rise of the monstrous totalitarian creeds of the 20th century. When people stop believing in God, it’s not that they believe in nothing; it is thereafter that they believe in anything.”

I agree with Dr. Krauthammer about 95% of the time. That’s despite the fact that I am a follower of Jesus and he is a non-practicing Jew.

But that brings me to his one missing source--which leapt out from the pages of Things That Matter. In a number of chapters on abortion, the origins of the earth, capital punishment and a few other issues, I put question marks or “No’s” in the margins of the book.

For example, he said he didn’t “oppose capital punishment,” but was against it. He remarked that “For some people, life begins at conception.” Also, he’s against creationism being taught in the schools and says that “The Bible is not about fact. It’s about values.” Again, we shouldn’t teach “biblical fables as science.” He also believes that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and postulates there is life on other planets (one column is entitled, “Are We Alone in the Universe?”)

A final example is a heart-wrenching treatise on the future of the Jewish nation, in which he believes Israel will either be annihilated or never return to their land again. “The Ten Tribes had melted away into history. Every other people so conquered and exiled in time disappeared. Only the Jews defied the norm. Twice. But never, I fear, again.”

On all these points I disagree. God is the author of just capital punishment. Life does begin at the moment of conception (Psalm 139). Creationism and macro-evolution are both faith-theories that should be debated. The Bible is about facts, not fables. The earth may not be billions of years old and there is no evidence of life anywhere but on planet Earth.

As for Israel? God is currently bringing the Jews back to their land where a great end time revival is coming where “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26). The end is not at hand for the Jews. Their salvation is nigh.

So why does is the wise and thoughtful Charles Krauthammer either confused or simply wrong on these issues?

He has one missing source: The Bible. He apparently does read it or know it. It clearly answers all those questions and many more. Charles Krauthammer believes in God, but has not grounded that belief in the inerrancy of Scripture–our guide, compass, sourcebook on reality.

By honest seeking, looking at empirical evidence, and thoughtful brilliance, Dr. Krauthammer has arrived at the truth in many areas of his life. What is lacking in his journalism is the best source of wisdom–the Bible,

I learned the majority of the “things that matter” in my life from the pages of God’s Word. I hope Charles Krauthammer finds his missing source. 

It’s been very painful to listen to the president of the United State this past week because it is now nearly universally admitted that over the past four years, Barack Obama didn’t tell the truth to the American people about the Affordable Care Act.

Some say he misspoke, misled, didn’t give us the truth–whatever term you want to use–it all really boils down to one dubious reality.

He lied.

Period. (to use his own favorite punctuation mark.)

And lying destroys the foundation of trust upon which democratic republics are built. Without faith in our leaders and institutions, laws will not be obeyed and peace and civil society cannot exist.

I’m deeply saddened about the Administration’s deception. Today, I will move in the opposite spirit and share with you the straight truth about Obamacare.

First of all, let’s remind ourselves what constitutes a lie. It is a conscious, intention to deceive. It happens when a person knows the truth, but chooses to ignore it.

Here are two examples from recent history. I’ll choose both a Republican and a Democrat to be fair.

• Richard Nixon – He authorized his political committee to illegally break into an office (at the Watergate complex) to help win an election–then lied about it. His famous falsehood was: “I am not a crook.” A few months later he resigned in disgrace because he was a crook who had lied to the American people.
• Bill Clinton – He committed adultery with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, in a small room just outside the Oval Office, then looked the American people in the eye and said, “I did not have sex with that woman.” Some months later, he admitted that he’d lied about conduct unbecoming  to a married president and was nearly impeached for it.

Let’s give one more example to clarify the difference between lying and simply mis-speaking.

President George W. Bush famously told the American people that we needed to invade Iraq because of the presence of weapons of mass destruction which might be distributed to Al Qaeda or other rogue terrorists.

When we got there, the WMDs were not to be found. Did Bush lie? The judgment of history is a clear nyet. Prior to the Iraqi campaign, all the respected intelligence agencies of the world believed that Sadaam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

We also knew he had them because he had used them on his own people--killing thousands of Kurds in the 1980s. He had them, used them, and then they disappeared. When we didn’t find them, we were left with two options: 1) Either he didn’t have large quantities, or 2) They were moved to another site (Syria?) before the American invasion.

Either way, George Bush didn’t intend to deceive. He simply misspoke based on faulty information.

It’s important to note the difference because this makes or breaks the believability of a leader. When you misspeak because of wrong facts, your heart and motivations can still be trusted. But when you deliberately choose to lie about a subject, then evil has entered your heart and destroys all credibility and integrity.

To state it again: Leaders can misspeak, learn the real truth, correct those mistakes, and still maintain their integrity and following. But when leaders tell a lie, they cause lasting damage to our faith and trust.

Yes, they can sometimes be restored via humility, repentance, correction, and renewed integrity. But that takes time. Rebuilding trust often requires months, years or even decades.

Thus, when a high level leader lies, he is usually finished for life in the realm he served. Trust has been shaken, confidence has died, and people become cynical to following–which is the death knell to his or her government.

In democratic societies (ones that believe in character and integrity), lying leaders either resign, are impeached, are voted out, or their legacies are tarnished.

Sin has serious consequences.

Barack Obama now faces that reality.

But before we hurl any stones, it might be helpful to personalize the discussion. Have you ever told a lie–an intended deception? To a family member or close friend? To the government when filling out your taxes? To a policeman when being pulled over for a violation? To any other person to cover up something you did or of which you are ashamed?

I have–and I have asked forgiveness for those sins. And once I repented, I asked God to help me never do it again.

However, I never did so in a leadership position where it affected the trust of a group of people. That’s where Barack Obama is in serious trouble. At least 36 times–all perilously preserved on video–Barack Obama told the American people:

“If you like your insurance, you can keep it. Period. If you like your doctor, you can keep him. Period.”

You can watch all 36 false promises here.

Even some Democrats are owning up to the lie. Congressman Kurt Shrader D-OR now says:

“I think the president was grossly misleading to the American public  and is causing added stress and added strife as we go through a really difficult time with health care.”

He’s right. At least five million people in the nation have currently lost plans that the president said we they could keep.

And “we’ve only just begun.”

So what is the straight, honest-to God truth about the Affordable Care Act often called Obamacare? I will give it to you, to the best of my ability, in Q&A form.

Q: What were the original purposes of the ACA? A: From a liberal point of view, the main purpose was to provide health care to all the poor (uninsured) in our nation. A second purpose was to win their votes via this dramatic expansion of the welfare state. A third purpose was to super-size the Federal Government to control one-sixth of the American economy. The ACA is the largest wealth redistribution scheme in the history of the USA.

Q: Is the ACA a form of national or socialized medicine? A: Yes, it is the first step that direction which is designed, over time, to collapse the private insurance markets and create a single payer (government) system in America. Government control of health is the holy grail of progressivism. It is the beginning of the end of free and prosperous societies. Just look at Europe–and the former Soviet Union.

Q: Was the ACA wisely passed into law? A: No. Such a large, impacting, entitlement program should have waited for bi-partisan support as Social Security and Medicare did. But not one Republican voted for the bill, many Democrats were bribed into supporting it, and the Congressional rules were bent to force it upon the America people.

Q. Is ACA a good concept and well-written? A: Neither one. Governments are bad at providing services due to lack of competition and competence. They were not meant to be “providers” (done far more redemptively by the private sector), but rather “protectors” of the peace. The ACA is a two thousand page albatross. Here’s a rule of thumb: The bigger a bill, the worse it is (more regulations and bureaucracy are required). The ACA is the longest bill in American history. Get it?

Q: Will people lose their personal policies under the ACA? A: Yes, millions of them. Five million have already been dropped (including my family), and that number will rise to probably fifteen million. After the employer mandate kicks in, the number could rise as high as 130 million people.

Q: Why are people losing their policies? A: Because the ACA limits the freedoms of both insurance companies and individuals. It forces thousands of customized policies to be forced into four. The four approved by the feds require everybody to carry and pay for everything–even if you don’t need it. If you’re a man, you still have to pay for maternity care. If you’re a tee-totaler, you still need to pay for substance abuse counseling. This is the basis of the president’s lie: ACA changes the playing field so that all policies conform to the bureacrats’ wishes. Thus, scores of millions of people will lose the insurance and doctors they like.

Q: Why will people lose their doctors? A: Because ACA will completely change the landscape of American medicine. First, many doctors will leave the system because of financial dis-incentives and dreaded paperwork. There will be a huge doctor shortage. Plus, your new “forced upon you” plan may not include the group or hospital your personal doctor is associated with.

Q: Who will benefit the most from the ACA? A: Those who are currently uninsured and live below the poverty level. They will receive “free” healthcare via a vast Medicaid expansion. This includes a large sector of the elderly and probably many illegal aliens.

Q: Who will be hurt the most? A: The tax-paying middle class and younger Americans. In most cases, the tax-paying “center” of America will be forced into higher premiums and deductibles to pay for the “free” insurance for the poor. This will especially hurt younger Americans, most of whom need little or no health insurance (only catastrophic care), but no longer have that option. They will pay for everybody else.

Q: Why was the ACA roll-out so botched up? A: Because of the size of the program, the disparate computer systems that must communicate with each other, the incompetence and fraud found in most governmental programs, and a dirth of leadership. Computer glitches may someday be worked out, but the tentacles of this bureaucratic overlay on top of your health care will make going to the doctor seem like a visit to the post office.

Q: Will the Affordable Care Act save individuals and the nation money on health care? A: No. It will cost many times the first 900 billion dollar estimate–and for a majority of Americans (outside of the poor), it will cost much more than they are paying now. It will create more poor people.

Q: Will the ACA help produce jobs or bring down the federal deficit? A: No. It is the largest job destroyer in American history and will add trillions more dollars to an already unsustainable debt calamity.

Q: Are some insurance policies “sub-standard” or lousy? A: No. All people don’t need or want a Cadillac. When you’re young, you can save money through a catastrophic-only policy. If you have good health habits, you don’t need de-tox. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The more choices there are in health insurance, the better and the cheaper. At it’s root, the ACA is anti-choice.

Q: Are there any good aspects to the ACA? Yes. 1) The desire to insure all Americans (through a wrong method), 2) The portability of policies (you shouldn’t lose your insurance when you change jobs), and 3) Covering people with pre-existing conditions. But free market, cost-effective solutions can meet these needs better without a “one-size-fits-all” insurance coercion.

Q: Is health care a human right? A: No. Human rights are God-given, and they include life, liberty and property–which all human governments should uphold. Standards of living are not rights. They are outcomes of hard work, financial resources, and circumstances that are different for all people.

Q: How did this bad bill ever pass? A: Through a largely uninformed populace that is increasingly hooked on governmental entitlements rather than hard work, personal initiative, faith in God, and devotion to private charities (such as churches). We voted in bad leaders who are taking us down a road to personal and corporate ruin.

Q: So what can we do? A: We must ask God’s forgiveness for turning away from his truth and principles, rise up to cast off this tyranny, vote out the people that gave us the disastrous ACA, elect a freedom-restoring Congress in 2014 (especially in the Senate), and a liberty-loving president in 2016.

Then we need to repeal the ACA and provide our citizens a free-market based menu that will care for the needs of people and insure that the American medical experience remains the best in the world.