Under the Wikipedia entry “What would Reagan do?” one can find the following summary:

The phrase on occasion has been used by iconoclastic conservatives to claim the mantle of Reagan as they criticize mainline conservatives, by some liberal commentators as a way of chastising Republicans whom also they believe fall short of Reagan’s ideals and also by non-partisan public policy organizations that seek to emulate aspects of Reagan’s leadership.

But one Reagan historian doesn’t find that surprising at all. Professor and author Paul Kengor notes that Reagan won the presidency in 1980 by defeating an incumbent in a landslide, winning 44 of 50 states, and then got reelected in 1984 by sweeping 49 of 50 states. Few presidents enjoyed such decisive success at the ballot box and, more broadly, in changingAmerica and the world for the better.

Tomorrow, Dr. Paul Kengor will address the question, “What did Ronald Reagan believe?” Or, even more specific: What would Reagan do if he were president right now?

Dr. Kengor will lay out the underlying thinking that formed the basis of Ronald Reagan’s political philosophy and the policies (foreign and domestic) that he pursued. Dr. Kengor will share what he calls his “Reagan Seven;” that is, seven beliefs that undergirded Reagan’s actions as president and as a public figure. These core principles get us closer to the crux of what Ronald Reagan’s conservatism was about, and what his GOP emulators today might take to heart.

To RSVP for tomorrow’s event, click here: What is a Reagan Conservative?

This is not news any family wants to read.  The last thing our recession-bound country needs are rising health care costs, particularly when we know these costs will be augmented dramatically should the Obama health care plan go into effect.

Buried within the Bloomberg article is a story that is underreported but finally seeping-out into the mainstream press: “Contributing to the rise in premiums are … fewer young and healthy people in the insurance pool.”  This assertion is being made by the respected insurance association president Karen Ignagni, but it is verified by cold data.  The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the following:

… by the end of the 2004 to 2014 period, most of the baby boomers will have turned fifty-five. Consequently, the age fifty-five and older segment of the labor force is expected to grow most rapidly, increasing by 11.3 million, or 49.1 percent. Because of the aging of the American population, this segment of the labor force will increase at almost five times the rate of the overall labor force (10 percent). The numbers of those twenty-five to fifty-four years of age in the labor force will grow by only 3.4 percent, a significantly lower growth than in the previous decade (8.8 percent). The growth rate of the youth labor force, workers between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, will actually decrease between 2004 and 2014 by 0.5 percent.

What does this blizzard of mathematical factoids mean?  Simply that we have a shrinking number of people entering the laborforce, one that cannot sustain our so-called entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) and that is too small to infuse the insurance pool with enough youth and health to keep it fiscally viable.

My colleagues Pat Fagan, Henry Potrykus and I have explained this in detail in “Our Fiscal Crisis: We Cannot Tax, Spend, and Borrow Enough to Substitute for Marriage.”  We argue that our current economic slowdown, “coupled with the increased numbers of dependent citizens, makes closing the deficit impossible for President Obama or anyone else who uses the present welfare state as the economic model to be sustained. It cannot be. This reality arises from two facts: 1) We have proportionately fewer children … (and) up to 20 percent of these children are unequipped to compete in the modern economy because of a lack of essential skills formed within the intact married family.”

What’s the bottom line?  Husbands and wives need to have more children and truly parent those children if our economy is going to thrive.  However substantial our technology-driven productivity gains, they will not compensate for a steadily declining supply of capable, teachable young men and women.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “the rate of population growth, referred to as the average annual percent change, is projected to decrease during the next six decades by about 50 percent, from 1.10 between 1990 and 1995 to 0.54 between 2040 and 2050. The decrease in the rate of growth is predominantly due to the aging of the population and, consequently, a dramatic increase in the number of deaths.”  In other words, we will have a larger population, but the rate of growth will slow to the point that existing citizens will live longer, not because of the size of our families.

For more on the crisis of America’s population and how it is grounded in the erosion of the family unit, visit the Marriage and Religion Research Institute at http://www.marri.frc.org/.  Families are more critical to our nation’s economy, more than education or technology.  As families fail, so fails our country.

What we have to do now, what this Jobs Council is all about, is identifying where the jobs of the future are going to be. How do we make sure there’s a match between what people are getting trained for and the jobs that exist, how do we make sure that capital is flowing into those places with the greatest opportunity? We are on the right track. The key is figuring out how do we accelerate it.

No: Government doesn’t have to figure this out — those who create jobs do. Government needs to remove itself substantially from the equation and allow open markets to determine whom to hire, for how much compensation and benefits, and what kinds of goods and services to produce. This is the very essence of the American economic experiment, one that has led to greater benefits for more people than any other system of finance, production, and income in history.

Mr. Obama also spoke of technological changes that have cost jobs, e.g., the replacement by airport check-in kiosks of counter assistants. Does he not realize that if those kiosks are made in the U.S., they create better paying jobs for well-trained shop-floor workers than a counter job ever could? Creative destruction, ala Joseph Shumpeter, is what makes capitalism vibrant. It is endlessly discomfiting but also continuously productive and financially rewarding.

During the same interview, Mr. Obama was asked about the debt ceiling and Republican demands that any increase in the ceiling be accompanied by significant federal spending reductions. “There is a way of solving this problem,” he said, “that doesn’t require any big, radical changes. What it does require is everybody makes some sacrifices.”

This is false and, in fairness to Mr. Obama, is a classic politician’s answer: We can solve the problem without any noticeable costs or losses to those affected by them. This is silliness. In the context of the federal budget, this is sort of like saying one can perform open heart surgery without cutting the skin. Of course “solving the problem” requires radical change — change that can be meted-out in such a way that the pain is modest, such as a graduated change to private investment accounts in the Social Security system, but if we are to remedy our serious fiscal crisis in anything resembling a serious manner, we must act boldly — even radically — to transform the size, scope, and costs of the federal government. This will involve a disruption in the federal welfare state many have come to know and, if not love, rely on heavily.

Mr. Obama, while in North Carolina yesterday, also acknowledged that there were far fewer “shovel ready” infrastructure projects than he had thought. This is really quite remarkable: He was a U.S. Senator for four years, and surely during the annual appropriations processes, as he tried to get funding for state projects, he must have realized how difficult getting EPA approval for construction is. Or perhaps not — he must have been so removed from this system that he was oblivious to it.

We increase job growth by shrinking the public sector and its vast costs, comprehensive entitlement program reform, tax simplification and reduction, and streamlining and downsizing the federal regulatory process. This is common sense.

What it is not is consistent with Mr. Obama’s vision of an expansive federal state, one that can do everything from demand the firing of an auto company executive to requiring every American to purchase a health insurance plan (one approved by Uncle Sam, of course). Having an invasive, insistent, and comprehensive tax and regulatory structure is a matter of faith for Mr. Obama. He does not believe in the wisdom of private choices made in a marketplace characterized by ordered liberty, but in the genius of benign bureaucratic management from on high. This is, perhaps, grounded in his profound and even hostile skepticism of the private sector, which he seems to see as intrinsically greedy and avaricious. Such perspectives are rooted in the belief that a massive government is needed to protect against the oppression of poor and middle-income by the ignoble rich. This, too, is an article of liberal faith.

Under the just laws envisioned by our Founders (e.g., theft and deception should be punishable by law), free enterprise can thrive in an ethical manner without government intervention or attempts at, in Mr. Obama’s term, “acceleration.” The irony is that such thriving can only happen if Mr. Obama abandons his economic philosophy, which ultimately grows out of a particular kind of view of human nature and the role of government. That this is unlikely is essentially axiomatic and also bodes poorly for the economic future of our country.

Instead, as economics writer James Pethokoukis observes, monies supposedly dedicated to Social Security are used as part of a fiduciary “shell game” to “mask the true depth of the budget deficit.”

How can Social Security and the federal government get away with this?

To answer that, a few foundational facts are needed.

For one thing, there is no Social Security “Trust Fund.”  The “Fund” is an accounting device that’s used to hide the true size of the federal deficit.

The monies collected from taxpayers are, in an act of accounting sleight-of-hand, put into the “Trust Fund” for about a millisecond and are then replaced by “special-issue securities,” Treasury notes that the Social Security Administration (SSA) itself admits are “available only to the trust funds.”

In other words, the federal government takes money out of Social Security to pay for all kinds of things, including payments to retirees.  It issues itself Treasury bonds to repay its “loan” from the Social Security Trust Fund – but they are bonds only Social Security itself can buy. This is known, in stuffy bureaucracy-speak, as an “intragovernmental loan.”

SSA itself clarifies, “Tax income is deposited on a daily basis and is invested in ‘special-issue’ securities. The cash exchanged for the securities goes into the general fund of the Treasury and is indistinguishable from other cash in the general fund.”  “Invested,” indeed – keep reading.

So, the money that the federal treasury siphons-out of the erstwhile “trust fund goes to cover general revenues of all kinds: From the common federal budget pot, the monies are used to pay for freeway projects in Iowa and aircraft carriers to U.S. Postal System delivery trucks.  Oh, yes, and payments to Social Security recipients, or “beneficiaries,” as well.

Here’s how Stephen Ohlemacher of the Associated Press explains it:

The money in the trust funds has been spent over the years to help fund other government programs. In return, the Treasury Department issued bonds to Social Security, which earn interest and are backed by the government, just like bonds sold in public debt markets. When Social Security runs a deficit, it redeems its bonds with the Treasury Department to cover the red ink. But Treasury gets the money to pay Social Security the same places the government gets all its money: either from taxes and other revenues or by borrowing it. Last year, the government borrowed 37 cents of every dollar it spent. This year it’s borrowing 43 cents of every dollar.”

The “interest” earned is merely a designed percentage payment Uncle Sam adds onto the amount of the loan – derived not from any kind of profitable investment itself, but from the printing presses of the federal treasury.  The “interest” is merely added out of fiat-drenched thin air.

Why does the government do this?  Very simply: If Social Security designated funds – the money that comes out of all of our paychecks to pay Social Security income to seniors – were not used for general revenue, the deficit would be shown to be even more gigantic than it is, as noted above.

How much money are we talking about?  As indicated in the first graph of this piece, the CBO says that Social Security contributed $706 billion to the federal budget in FY 2010.  That’s about one-fifth of the total budget.

Some argue that since beneficiaries are getting paid, what’s the big deal?

Last year, the pay-out total to retirees was $41 billion more than what was taken in through Social Security taxes.  For the first time in roughly 30 years, the SSA ran a deficit – one larger, in itself, that all but a handful of the countries in the world.

Second, the false assurance that the trust fund’s dollars are “invested” is a lie – pure and simple.  This “investment” is actually nothing more than a credit slip that says, in as many words, that the money will be put back in by the Treasury with a certain percentage of interest, interest not derived from anywhere but balance side of a phony federal ledger.

Third, were the money actually invested in interest-bearing accounts, using historic rates of return, the SSA would not be facing the historic crisis it faces in the next quarter-century.  Consider: Over the course of its history, the stock market – with all the dips, depressions, recessions, wars, etc. we have faced – has had an inflation adjusted return of between six and seven percent.

Given the monies poured into the Social Security system since its inception in the 1930s, such a return would have prevented the current, and future, profound shortfalls we are facing.

Fourth, and perhaps most ominously, is the dearth of workers who pay into the system.  That number has shrunk from 16 employees per beneficiary to slightly under 3 workers per beneficiary today.  As America’s population ages, that ratio will shrink, to our profound fiscal danger, more and more.

Charles Krauthammer notes that should the debt continue to build like a throbbing volcano, the “full faith and credit” of the federal government won’t mean much – and not just Social Security, but the whole economy, will be at grave risk:

In judging the creditworthiness of the United States, the world doesn’t care what the left hand owes the right. It’s all one entity. It cares only what that one entity owes the world … (W)hat would happen to financial markets if the Treasury stopped honoring the “special issue” bonds in the Social Security trust fund? A lot of angry grumbling at home for sure. But externally? Nothing. This “default’ would simply be the Treasury telling the Social Security Administration that henceforth it would have to fend for itself in covering its annual shortfall.

The other alternative: Treasury tells SSA no such thing and simply “pays back,” using not real assets but accredited and/or printed monies from Treasury’s printing presses, what it owes SSA: The money will, at some point, stop holding much, if any, value.  At that point, the world will care a lot, because it will indicate the Weimar-esque quality of the U.S. greenback.

There are a number of ways to correct the problem before Social Security runs completely out of money in about 26 years.

Former FRC scholar and current Howard Center director Alan Carlson argues convincingly, as Americans have more children, we will remedy at least much of the crisis by having more workers to pay into the Social Security system itself.  House Speaker John Boehner and others argue for raising the full retirement age from 65 to, say 67 or even 70, which more accurately reflects growing longevity and work patterns and would save large amounts annually.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is among the leading advocates of allowing younger income-earners to invest at least a graduated/growing portion of their Social Security dollars into private retirement accounts, not unlike the federal employees’ Thrift Savings Plan (TSP).

This could be done directly, from the employee’s paycheck, and be directed into one or more of several fund-types managed independently, just as TSP funds are.

What is clear is that the current system is neither sustainable nor honest.  While no one expects President Obama to advance the reforms necessary, the next President should.

If Social Security is not just to survive but refrain from being a fiscal anvil around the national neck, the next President must.

Formerly chief of staff to two Members of Congress and a presidential appointee in the George W. Bush Administration, Schwarzwalder is senior vice-president of the Family Research Council.

The New York Times report on the budget negotiations included this gem:

At one crucial moment in the game of chicken over a looming shutdown of the United States government, President Obama and the House speaker, John A. Boehner, faced off in the Oval Office. Mr. Boehner, a Republican heavily outnumbered in the room by Democrats, was demanding a provision to restrict financing to Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions. Mr. Obama would not budge.

“Nope. Zero,” the president said to the speaker. Mr. Boehner tried again. “Nope. Zero,” Mr. Obama repeated. “John, this is it.” A long silence followed, said one participant in the meeting. “It was just like an awkward, ‘O.K., well, what do you do now?’ ”

That meeting broke without an agreement. But while Mr. Obama may have held tough on the abortion provision, he and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, had already made a broader concession — agreeing to tens of billions of dollars in spending cuts that would have been unthinkable had Republicans not captured control of the House from Democrats in midterm elections last year.

Keep in mind, Mr. Obama wasn’t protecting a right to abortion, but something even more radical:  the right of America’s largest abortion provider to reach into our pockets!

Planned Parenthood has almost one billion dollars in net assets and $737 million in reported revenues, not counting the $363 million from taxpayers.   Isn’t that a special favor for “Big Business”?

And what a business.  From its most recent report we learn that Planned Parenthood clinics aborted 332,278 American children, about the same number of people who populate the city of Cincinnati. (For more important facts on Planned Parenthood, see this wonderful piece by Susan Wills)

The budget negotiations revealed, again, President Obama’s abortion zealotry.  We have the Republicans congressional leaders to thank for that.  As my colleague Tom McClusky asks:  “Who is the hard liner on abortion?”

Spring plowing is an ancient ritual in farm country, but what makes this event unusual is that it’s still done with horse- and mule teams. With the notable exception of Amish country, American farms were long ago mechanized. I asked farmer Gaylon Adkins about this. It was Gaylon’s farm that was the location for Plow Days. He joked, saying if diesel fuel goes much higher—it’s at an historic peak—more American farms may have to resort to mules. “A bale of hay is still a lot cheaper than a diesel at $4 a gallon.”

Weather for this farmer—as for all farmers—was the biggest concern this Saturday. This was the fifth annual Plow Days event. Only once, at the first one, Gaylon tells me, did they have to postpone. There were snow flurries earlier in the week. And cold rain was predicted. Happily, all that held off for this year’s Plow Days and the sun even peeked through scudding clouds. Perfect weather, actually, for plowing.

The event opened with a prayer from Rev. Carlo Leto, of the local Salisbury Baptist Temple. Participants and nearly a thousand attendees applauded The Star-Spangled Banner, Maryland’s gift to the nation, soon to be two hundred years old. And all pledged allegiance to the flag. Plow Days President Oren Perdue introduced organizers and special guests

If you can judge by the ball caps worn by young men and old, it’s a pretty patriotic crowd. Retired Navy and Army hats, NRA hats. Lots of Plow Days hats. There was even one International Ice Patrol hat (mine). My wife, a retired Navy captain, got a chance to share experiences with a retired Navy Master Chief Petty Officer as we sat at a picnic table enjoying oyster fritters, a specialty of the Eastern Shore.

Vendors celebrated farm country lore. “What’s that,” I heard someone ask, pointing to a pile of rust-colored stuff. It was sheep’s wool, with a young farm girl skillfully working a spinning wheel turning the pile into yarn.

At one booth, a church-run summer camp invited signups and offered this unusual message: Large families welcomed. Any parents with more than four children could have their fifth, sixth, and other children attend free of charge. Now, that’s pro-family.

A blacksmith was working his small forge, fashioning beautiful knives from high quality steel. He was telling all who came about old processes of fashioning rims for wooden wagon wheels. I paged through the blacksmith’s neatly catalogued three-ring binder, marveling at the large Bowie knives he displayed. “I hope you’re writing all these things down,” I told him, realizing that his skills are a not-to-be-lost resource. The blacksmith carefully explained how his trade used to be divided into specialties—including farriers, who worked almost exclusively shoeing horses and mules.

The children, especially, delighted in stagecoach rides and in seeing the baby goats and calves that were penned for petting. A llama named Cowboy was shown off. Our son Jim asked where Cowboy’s eyes were, since it seemed the llama was sporting an Elvis Costello hairdo. Cowboy’s owner lifted his curls to reveal surprisingly large, intelligent brown eyes. Sometimes llamas get so mad at humans, Cowboy’s owner said, that they spit. “And when a llama spits at you, you know you’ve been spat on.”

The horses hitched up for plowing were Belgians, with furry fetlocks. These handsome animals were rewarded for their labors by Farmers & Planters Co, which donated 25 bags of horse feed. Wicomico County Young Farmers pitched in, as well, to make the day a success.

Once upon a time in America, everyone felt close to the farm and sensed our connections with spring plowing. For four hundred years, we have been blessed with bounty in this country. For most of that time, we all understood our dependence upon the farms for our very lives. Farmers were the first ones to feel the nation’s distress. A full decade before the Great Depression of the 1930s, America’s farms were stricken, especially in the Dust Bowl.

It’s important for us to get back to the soil, if only to visit on occasion. We need to appreciate what our country’s farmers do for all of us. And traveling through farm country is a good way to be reminded of what Martin Luther wrote long, long ago: “Our Lord has written the promise of the Resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.” Nowhere is this message more keenly appreciated than in farm country.

The New Holy Wars proposes that at their cores, both environmentalism and Western economic theory are informed by Judeo-Christian beliefs. However, the theological underpinnings of these disciplines have been “remapped” to form secular versions of Christianity. Taking this a step further, Nelson argues that the clash of these two competing secular religions represents the “most important religious controversy” in America today. It is a startling proposition for which Nelson presents a convincing case. By framing the environmental debate in spiritual terms he makes sense of the intensity with which both sides promote their worldviews. At the same time The New Holy Wars digs beyond the rhetoric to unearth those presuppositions which are essential to understanding both sides of the debate.

Perhaps most intriguing is Nelson’s treatment of environmentalism. Nelson argues what few practitioners are willing to admit—the environmentalist worldview is very much a religious one.   With clarity and perception he explores the Protestant (specifically Calvinist) underpinnings of the movement. Pointing back to the writings of John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Jonathan Edwards, The New Holy Wars shows how key components of Calvinism have been transformed under the guise of environmentalism. Nelson illustrates how the movement’s jargon speaks volumes about its philosophical commitments. Steeped in the language of moral urgency, human depravity, individualism, and asceticism that marked much of the early reformed tradition, environmentalism is not unlike its more traditional religious counterparts. But Nelson is careful not to take the association too far. When Jonathan Edwards looked upon the Book of Nature he was awed by God’s glorious and omnipotent hand in creation. In marked contrasted, John Muir responded to the same beauty with transcendentalist adoration that bordered on pantheism. For Muir and the descendents of his preservationist movement, Nature became the ultimate recipient of their worship. And herein lies what Nelson recognizes to be a serious flaw in environmental theology: its failure to offer an adequate substitute for the “loving and redeeming Christian God” who had been lost.

While The New Holy Wars does not offer a solution to the economic-environmental debate, it does provide significant insight into the issue. Nelson’s stimulating case for the role religion plays in the economic and environmental philosophies dominating current public policy is bound to challenge his readers. Those seeking to equip themselves for today’s challenges should pay heed to Robert Nelson’s work.

In an article published in The Huffington Post, Wallis’ class warfare rhetoric pours forth without stint or measure, spilling over upon those of us who have the audacity to believe that when a person earns money legally, it should not be unduly confiscated by the government.

Here is a sampling of Wallis’ careful, nuanced, ruminative, above-the-fray language:

• “higher tax rates on the very rich”
• “the very wealthiest Americans”
• “Goldman Sachs traders”
• “hedge fund gamblers”
• “a handful of very rich people”
• “There is socialism in America, but it’s only for the rich.”
• ” … fighting the people whose greed, recklessness, and utter lack of concern for the common good have led us into this terrible crisis”
• “casino gamblers on Wall Street”
• “More tax breaks and benefits for the very wealthiest people in America is not only bad economics and bad policy; it is fundamentally immoral.”

Anyone for the barricades?

These huzzahs of indignation, full of stereotyped Leftist boilerplate, reflect either ignorance of how the economy grows or else a bitter ideological conviction that wealth is wrong and that the wealthy are ontologically evil.

Neither proposition is appealing, or convincing. After two years of massive federal spending and micromanagement of the economy (to the point where a President of the United States actually fired the head of General Motors), job losses have climbed and we are now facing the prospect of actual deflation.

Wallis would be more credible if he would simply announce what everyone who has ever read his books or op-eds has known for decades: He is a man of the Left and a highly partisan Democrat. His claim to be “post-partisan” and a man of neither Left or Right is as hollow as it is insistent.

Consider this statement, near the end of his piece – President Obama “waited too long” to “counter the distortions of the Republicans who clearly don’t mind adding huge sums to the deficit as long as it benefits their wealthy patrons.”

Ah, now I understand: Republicans opposed allowing tax rates to go up because they want to do favors for “their wealthy patrons.” Sort of like Wallis’ donor George Soros, perhaps?

Or perhaps they opposed allowing rates to rise because they believe that no poor man ever created a job. Or because they know that capital investment by those who earn the most is essential to those Wallis claims to champion, lower- and middle-income Americans. Or because they realize that a tax increase on those who pay the most in taxes to begin with is both unfair and, as a matter of economic policy, plain nuts during a time of economic duress.

Playing on populist indignation is cheap only if it is a rhetorical ploy. Wallis — along with others like Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren — actually believes this stuff. That is why Wallis uses the language of moral outrage to advocate policies that demonstrably don’t work. If he cares as much as he protests that he does for “the poor,” would he not support policies that produce jobs for them?

“Socialism failed to deliver the bacon or the paradise. Capitalism delivered the bacon but not the paradise,” wrote University of Maryland economist Robert Nelson. Excellent point, but it should be said that no economic system ever will deliver paradise. Only God can do that, and will not do so in an age throbbing with the fall’s curse.

However, capitalism — properly understood — never claims to be the precursor to the Millennial Kingdom. It is a system of commerce, not a pathway to salvation. Christians should, and mature ones do, get that.

Materialism, acquisitiveness, greed, human and environmental exploitation, raw consumerism: These are the sins not of a system but of those who misuse it or whose confidence in its possibilities is misplaced.

Capitalism offers great financial reward for thrift, creativity, risk-taking, and shrewd marketing. It can, practiced properly, dignify labor, strengthen families, and foster a higher standard of living for everyone. John F. Kennedy was right: “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

The way to ameliorate the excesses of capitalists themselves is not by jettisoning the system that permits its own abuse. No economic system in history has produced the prosperity, medical innovation, or the quantity or quality of food and clothing and housing and transportation or improvements of virtually everything that can be conceived, designed, produced and utilized than capitalism.

The challenge for Christians and for a moral society in general is to encourage generosity in place of greed, fair pay for honest labor, liberty instead of constrictions that impede wealth-creation, appropriate and wise regulations that discourage injustice but not opportunity, including the simple act of hiring an employee because your business is beginning to grow.

That challenge is unmet when one demonizes his fellow citizens with puerile epithets (to Wallis, “Wall Street” seems to be an obscenity) instead of pondering seriously how to address inequity, job loss, and economic disadvantage.

Wallis’s hatred of the prosperous is visceral, grounded in his unrepentant Students for a Democratic Society ideology, such that he cannot juxtapose his loathing of the wealthy with the fact that only the well-off produce employment.

Thus, he clings to the mythical belief that only the central government has the wisdom to allocate resources wisely, assigning to the state a benign omniscience the Bible assigns only to God.

“I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted and justice for the poor,” says the Psalmist (140:12). Christians, who are called to imitate their Lord, should do this on His behalf. But the way to do so is not by continually lamenting over the state of those in need while advocating policies that hurt them. It’s to find what works, and apply it ethically and effectively.

Sadly, this simple premise seems to have eluded Jim Wallis for far too long.

Unfettered capitalism, unrestrained by any regulation? No. But capitalism that, under what the Founders called “ordered liberty,” can thrive? For the sake of those on the downside of advantage, yes. Indeed, yes.

To learn more about our upcoming Family Policy Lectures, click here.