Carl Wells Books

Life is full of things that seem obvious. Or at least they seem obvious to me–but they don’t seem obvious to other people, so I guess they really aren’t obvious at all. So today I propose to discuss some of those “obvious” things that apparently aren’t obvious at all to other people. I will begin with with relatively trivial matters, and gradually move on to more serious things.

1/A great many stickers sent to us by charitable organizations are impractical. I love stickers. I enjoy putting one on the outside of many of the letters I send. A sticker adds a touch of beauty to a letter. Charitable organization often include stickers in their package of gifts to us, as they try to encourage us to donate. Great idea. However, far too often the stickers they send are impractical. I have in front of me a page of nineteen stickers (well, one has been used, so eighteen). The pictures of flowers are attractive. However, each sticker has a message. They vary: Congratulations, Happy Birthday, Thank You, Thinking of You, Happy Anniversary, Get Well Soon. These messages all might come in handy on occasion, as you match the correct sticker to the appropriate occasion. But how many times do we need to wish someone happy birthday or happy anniversary? Most of the letters we send out, including bills paid but also our regular correspondence, do not match up with any of the stickers. So it becomes difficult to use the stickers on an everyday basis. I find myself doing one of two things: a/avoiding using the stickers, or, b/recklessly putting inappropriate stickers on letters. Charitable organizations would help us more, and have their stickers used more, if they would give us stickers of something beautiful, and avoid putting messages on the stickers. Apparently the people who send us stickers never use stickers themselves, or they would realize they are complicating our lives by sending us stickers with messages on them. Why not five stickers with messages (they might come in very handy someday), while the other fifteen or twenty are just beautiful but with no messages? We would be grateful if you did that. Well, I guess I should say I would be grateful rather than we would be grateful, since I have never heard other people complain about this common phenomenon of impractical sticker construction.

2/Charitable organizations often send us stickers and return address tags which are idolatrous of the United States. (Sorry, I can’t get stickers out of my mind today–sort of like Mr. Dick couldn’t keep King Charles’ head out of his writing or copying in David Copperfield.) I have a bunch of stickers/name tags in front of me as I type. They include lots of American flags, slogans such as Let Freedom Ring, United We Stand, Thank You To All Who Serve, etc. What makes all this even worse is that the stickers were sent by a Christian organization. One sticker says, God Bless Our Troops. You want to bless our troops? Stop lying to them about what a great free country this is, and stop wrapping yourself in the flag of a bullying empire which kills and cripples foreigners (as well as our own troops). Tell the truth to our troops, and keep them alive by keeping them out of idiotic foreign wars. That your organization is so mindless makes me wonder how sensible your brand of Christianity is. Is all your thinking so trite? It seems obvious to me that it is ridiculous for any organization, especially a Christian organization, to pretend that the United States is somehow on the side of the God of the Bible. But it must not be obvious at all, because this organization (and others) continue to send out the same ridiculous stickers/name tags year after year.

3/One-handed passing in basketball is impractical and costs the loss of the basketball far too often. (Once is far too often.) One-handed passing sometimes results in the ball being thrown away. That means a chance to shoot the ball and try to score, was lost because of something that should not have happened and need not have happened but did. When a pass is made with two hands, it has a better chance of arriving accurately. Of course there may be situations where passing with two hands is impractical or impossible. Falling out of bounds while trying to rescue a ball may give a player only the option of using one hand. But most situations are not like that. For most situations, two-handed passing is available. Every possession is crucial. If a game is not close, one or two foolish possessions are not important. But countless games come down to one possession. Look at scores: one- or two- or three-point margins of victory (and thus of defeat) are not rare at all. The ball is precious all the time, but especially in close games. Why shoot yourself in the foot by using a one-handed pass and losing the ball? You would think I would need to be chastised for having the audacity to say something so obvious. Yet clearly most coaches, even very successful coaches, do nothing to stop the plague of one-handed passes infecting the game. You can see a one-handed pass go awry, the ball is lost, and the coach does nothing. He isn’t upset, he seems not to have noticed how the ball was recklessly lost, he does not remove the erring player in order to instruct him how to do better next time. Life goes on smoothly, or at least as smoothly as it can without the basketball. It seems so obvious to me that throwing the ball away more than you need to is destructive of your chances to win. But apparently it is not obvious at all.

4/Having two last names is cheating. We all have a first name and a last name. We all have one of each. If you are Bill Harris, we are all glad respectfully to address you as Mr. Harris. But if you marry Nancy Porter, and suddenly you are Mr. and Mrs. Harris-Porter, you’re cheating. Is your son Fred Harris-Porter? The rest of us have one last name, but your family is so special that it deserves to have two? And where does this stop? If your son is Fred Harris-Porter (or Porter-Harris) and he marries Sally Carter-Ffinch, will their son be Reginald Harris-Porter-Carter-Ffinch (or Reginald Porter-Harris-Carter-Ffinch)? So Reggie (excuse my informality) has four last names, and we peasants have one? No. Let’s stop the madness now. One last name for everyone; anything else is simply cheating.

Well, there are four things on my list of obvious-but-apparently-not-obvious things. That leaves more for next time. I hope to give you more last week.

Tucker Carlson is the host of the popular Fox News program, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Fox, though usually just as warmongering as the rest of Main Sleaze Media, is the only somewhat conservative voice (on at least some issues) among the networks. Tucker Carlson is not only conservative in most of his views, he is not a warmonger. Yes, he supported the 2003 Iraq war–and almost immediately regretted doing so, saying he had gone against his natural instinct. A man able to admit he was wrong? Pretty remarkable.

So what we have here is an unusual public voice. His 2018 book Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution demonstrates just how unusual that voice is. The book became a #1 best seller on the “New York Times” best seller list.

Tucker Carlson, now age 49, was born May 16, 1969, into a prosperous family. But it wasn’t all peaches and cream for Tucker and his younger brother. His mother deserted the family when he was six years old. This must have been a blow to him, but it did not destroy his life.

He took a bachelor’s degree in history in 1992, and has been involved in journalism in one way or another ever since.

He is married with four children. His family got some unexpected and unwanted publicity when the good fascists among Antifa (the name stands for anti fascist, which is ironic since they behave like fascist thugs in their behavior) threatened to break into his home a few months ago. His wife was at home, Tucker was not. Thankfully, no entry was gained by the good fascist thugs, but what did Tucker Carlson expect? You can’t hold opinions which go against leftist orthodoxy and expect to get away with it forever.

Tucker Carlson is an Episcopalian. He “loves the liturgy, though he abhors the liberals who run the denomination.” (Wikipedia) It sounds to me like he needs a better denomination. They are out there.

Here’s a quote which shows that this is a man with conservative rather than leftist leanings. ‘”I’m utterly opposed to abortion, which I think is horrible and cruel. I think affirmative action is wrong.”‘ (Wikipedia)

Ship of Fools is a very good book. The cover includes caricatures of some of the elite fools who are “guiding” our nation to disaster. Riding in a ship just on the brink of a steep plunge down a waterfall which will bring death and destruction are the following eight people: Maxine Waters (D), Nancy Pelosi (D), Hillary Clinton (D), Mitch McConnell (R), Lindsay Graham (R), media moguls Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, and bloodthirsty neoconservative journalist Bill Kristol. They are indeed among the leading gravediggers of our civilization. Lots more people are “guiding” that boat, but there is not room for all of them on the cover. Some of them get exposed in this book, including Max Boot, Chelsea Clinton, Barack Obama, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Mr. Carlson’s thesis is summed up by the subtitle to his book. Our elites, he says, are leading us to destruction.

Chapter One discusses how the elites have converged in their beliefs and actions. There is no longer a balance between left and right.

Chapter Two tells us how the elites’ preference for open borders is changing the country. This happens of course against the will of most of us ordinary people.

Chapter Three discusses our foolish wars–again vastly favored by the people running our country. A quote from page 91: “In speeches, war is never a bloody slog where eighteen-year-old boys get castrated by land mines, blasted apart by grenades, or pointlessly massacred in friendly-fire accidents, though that’s exactly what it is.”

Chapter Four has a great title: “Shut Up, They Explained.” Free speech is under threat, because the liberal elites running the country don’t want non-leftist opinions voiced.

Chapter Five discusses “The Diversity Diversion.”

Chapter Six gives us some of fruits of feminism.

Chapter Seven tells us about the moral corruption of the environmentalism movement.

A brief Epilogue advises the elites that they should attend to the needs of the of the people they rule, instead of dismissing our opinions as unworthy of consideration. He could have saved his ink to cool his porridge; they won’t listen. Their arrogance is beyond potential remediation. But he has tried to warn them, not only in the Epilogue, but throughout the book.

The book is entertaining and thought-provoking. I found myself underlining many passages. Of course this is not the final word on our national tragedy. In my opinion, the root of all our problems is a pietist and antinomian (anti-God’s law) Christian church. There will be no chance of reform until Christians repent and change the way we think and act. Don’t hold your breath for that to happen soon. But God may get our attention eventually. He has two by fours, and also smaller and larger pieces of lumber, and will use them at His own discretion. So if He gets our attention, parts of the country may begin to strive toward semi-sanity.

It is doubtful how long Tucker Carlson will be allowed to appear on Main Sleaze Media. Too many of his opinions are opposed to left-wing orthodoxy. Meanwhile, the people running Fox News may be moving leftward, which increases the possibility that some excuse will be found to dismiss him. Pray for Mr. Carlson that he will continue to stand for the truth as he sees it, rather than bow to the pressure to conform. Help him understand that if he is thrown off the air, life will not end, and other avenues to speak the truth will arrive.

Defeat is not necessarily disaster. We are in a war for Christian civilization, and just because the enemies of civilization are winning some battles, that doesn’t mean they will win the war in the long run.

Ship of Fools is readily available on the Internet. The best price I could find today was $6.38 (free shipping; hardcover used) on AbeBooks. AbeBooks, as I have mentioned before, is often a great place to buy books. It is for Ship of Fools as well.

Pray for Tucker Carlson, that he will not desert his principles, that he will continue to learn and to grow spiritually and intellectually. May God bless and encourage him, and guide him in His pathways. And don’t forget to thank God that Tucker Carlson exists. In the bleak arena of Main Sleaze Media, he is the best we have by a wide margin.

Last week my Aged Parent reached a milestone few people attain. She arrived at her 100th birthday. And, after four parties of small, medium or huge size, she is now officially heading for 101.

She is still active and thinking. She moves with a walker, has her hearing and eyesight and her sense of humor. Here’s a recent example of the latter. My sister has done a good job of losing weight and keeping it off. But we have almost (I stress the almost) begun to worry that she is verging on being anorexic. Not seriously worried, but still . . . My mother’s comment to my sister: “Thin but dead.”

She is not without her faults. It is my opinion that nobody gets to heaven by his own merit. We will get there by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, or not at all. It is good to report that she is a Christian, so we in the family are hoping that Christ’s blood will answer for her, just as we are hoping it will answer for us. We’ll find out eventually, I guess.

She is not a theologian. She has never read the Bible all the way through. No one would accuse her of being a sophisticated theoretical thinker.

Yet, having said that, it has long been my opinion that in three ways her thinking and behavior have far exceeded the thinking and behavior of many people–including that of many Christians.

So in this blog post I will list those three ways. Here we will leave aside my mother’s faults, intellectual or otherwise, and briefly discuss three ways in which it may turn out that her name, like that of Abou Ben Adhem, “led all the rest.” (“Abou Ben Adhem,” James Henry Leigh Hunt)

1/She has always known and said that abortion is the murder of unborn children. This, for a start, puts her ahead of the 65,844,954 people who voted for pro-abortion Hillary Clinton. Her insight may seem obvious, but it was not obvious to the 65,844,954 who voted to keep on murdering unborn children. If everyone understood that abortion is murder, our nation would immediately be infinitely better off than we are. Children would live instead of die. Many Christians would agree with my Aged Parent on this issue–but not enough. If enough Christians understood that you can’t in good conscience kill unborn children, the Democratic Party would gradually (but pretty quickly) die a natural death. The Democratic Party would eventually cease to exist–a consummation devoutly to be wished. (Then if we could get rid of the Republican Party also, we could be replacing both the Party of Satan (D) and the Party of Satan Light (R) with two or more parties of a bit better moral standards.)

2/My Aged Parent has always understood that you can’t in good conscience drop atomic bombs on women and children or on any non-combatants. Thus the dropping of bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was something that should not have been done. I have on some occasions heard pastors speak the truth that abortion is murder. Heaven bless those who speak such a truth. But never have I heard a pastor acknowledge that dropping atomic bombs on H and N was wrong. The justification for such bombing often seems to be that if we hadn’t done it, it would have cost countless American lives to conquer the Japanese islands by invasion. This seems to be saying that the end justifies the means. However, the end justifies the means is not a biblical point of view. The biblical and Christian view is precisely opposite. Paul in fact rejected the end justifies the means. ‘And why not say (as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say), “Let us do evil that good may come”?’ (Romans 3:8) People were slandering Paul by saying that he believed that the end justifies the means. The Christian position on such issues is clear: we reach a good end by using a good means. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21) This it seems to me to be exactly what we would expect of a biblical ethic–a common sense, expected way to get to good is to use good means. The Christians and others who have defended the dropping of atomic bombs on H and N are not thinking God’s thoughts after Him. They are operating under an unbiblical ethic in contending that the end justifies the means. My mother never fell for that argument. I’ll close this segment with two points: a/pastors, where have you been on this issue? One of your theologically unsophisticated flock is way ahead of you. And, b/I had to learn to think more clearly on this issue from my mother. I take pride in thinking clearly, but she was ahead of me on this issue. If memory holds, I at one time earlier in life would have contended that it was not wrong to drop atomic bombs on H and N. I had to learn better. My mother helped me get to where I needed to be theologically on this important issue. We get to good by doing good. I was wrong; she was right.

3/If you read advice columnists for any length of time, eventually you will run into plenty of letters in which the writer is lamenting the unfairness of the married son/daughter-in-law (or married daughter/son-in-law) spending the Thanksgiving and/or Christmas dinner with the other family far too much of the time. One set of parents is always unfairly monopolizing the holiday time of the young married couple (and their children). And so on, with endless slight variations, of course. My mother never for one second fell into this kind of whining. She genuinely wanted the parents of her son-in-law to be completely involved in the lives of their son and daughter-in-law, holiday time or any time. This was not a position she took because her conscience told her she needed to take it. No, she felt that way simply out of native generosity of spirit. She also was always ready to invite the in-laws to whatever holiday celebration (or other celebration) was taking place. The more the merrier, was my mother’s position. I think it would have been constitutionally impossible for her to worry that the in-laws may be getting more of the young peoples’ time than she was getting. She loved being host to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter dinners–but never in a self-absorbed fashion. If the in-laws had been the hosts to the young people for ten Thanksgiving dinners in a row, ten Christmas dinners in a row, and ten Easter dinners in a row, I don’t think my mother would have minded. She would find plenty of other times to have the young people over–and would have invited the in-laws to attend as well! This bigness of spirit is an example to all of us, Christian or non-Christian.

There we have three ways in which my Aged Parent has excelled in her life. With all her faults, we can learn from her example in at least these three ways. I echo James Henry Leigh Hunt’s comment concerning Abou Ben Adhem: “may his [her] tribe increase!”

Boys are girls, and girls are boys. There is nothing wrong with homosexuality. Everything we want can be and should be free. Stopping illegal immigration is vicious bigotry. The welfare state is good. Russia is a danger to the U.S. Free speech by right-wingers must be stopped. White privilege is destroying people of color. Toxic masculinity is destroying women. Killing unborn children is good, but killing children just born is even better and worth shouting about.

And so on. By now we have almost become numbed to the constant parade of fantasies. The left seems to have gone completely off its collective rocker.

First the bad news: the left’s nuttiness is not going to stop. The left is not going to change and move in the general direction of semi-sanity. They are having, frankly, way too much fun. They are hooked on the drug of self-righteousness, and they find profound emotional satisfaction in hating the rest of us. They have convinced themselves that they hate us because we are evil, and thus they have a complete right to hate us.

Actually, we ordinary people are just bystanders. The basic hatred of the left is toward the God of the Bible, who made reality so different than He should have made it. He is telling the left they should and indeed must act in a manner pleasing to Him, and that is an unacceptable message. They want to do what they want to do; they want reality to be what they say it is. Hating God, they hate those who to some small degree represent Him.

The left, in fact, is just getting started. Their nuttiness is only going to get worse. Worse is coming. They can’t be bought off by us, nor will they let us go our own way unless forced to do so. Making us completely their tax slaves will not be enough to placate them. Even our deaths will not ease their hatred of us. They will spit on our graves, and celebrate for ten thousands years how horrible we were. For the left, there is no turning back. They will not reform, or semi-reform. They control everything: the political parties, academia, the public schools, the media, large companies. They love to exercise power over other people The 1950s are not coming back.

Now the good news: the left’s nuttiness is not going to stop. Yes, the bad news is also the good news. It seems clear that we needed this. The left’s increasing nuttiness is partly a wake-up call from God.

If we look at our brand of Christianity, it never was all that Christian. We have a hard time seeing that, because we had a lot of financial prosperity for a long time. But our moral and spiritual situation was really not all that good. We have acquiesced in foolish foreign wars, we have stolen our neighbor’s tax money to educate our children. Our church giving is symbolic of our degree of faithfulness. We have, for a long time, been giving God 2.5% of our increase, whereas He requests a tithe (10%). Giving money is the easiest thing in the world compared to doing the weightier requirements of the law, but we have not been willing to do even the easiest thing. So maybe the quality of our overall Christianity is–at best–one-quarter of what it should be, just as our giving is one-quarter of what it should be.

So, I theorize, God is getting our attention. He is telling us that if we continue to go on with our lukewarm brand of Christianity, we are going to continue to get burned by the Powers That Be. Until we wake up to see our danger, we are going to keep on shrugging and saying “Whatever.” And whatever is not going to preserve and extend Christian civilization. Only obedience to God will do that wonderful and difficult job.

Right now we are still in the snoozing stage. The alarm clock is ringing, but we haven’t quite heard it yet. We still make an idol of the U.S., we still make an idol of the U.S. military and pretend that their foreign interventions protect our freedom, we still believe public education is our right, we still somehow believe that “our democracy” is a force for good in the world despite all the evidence to the contrary.

We would just go on shrugging, if we continue to have that option. But it looks like God is going to remove that option. He has given us the left, which has gone so far away from common sense that even we Christians might begin to figure out that something needs to change.

Those whom God would destroy, He first makes mad. (Paraphrasing my old friend Euripides, who is sometimes credited with a similar statement.) God has allowed the left to descend into a deeper madness than that of the rest of us. (I think we are also insane; otherwise we would not have acted as we have.) Their madness will drive them to destroy at least themselves, and perhaps the rest of us with them.

But their madness brings semi-sanity into brighter perspective. If we improve the quality of our Christianity, our semi-sanity will help not only us, but also other people. Some even on the left will come in out of the cold. We will need to act with love and with biblical wisdom. (For further details as to how that works out in practice, please see the Bible.) We are knuckleheads, so surely we ought to have the humility to offer up grace to other knuckleheads. Grace comes through Jesus Christ. He asks and expects loving obedience from us. We just wanted life and fire insurance. That is not good enough. God is getting our attention. The left is telling us: “Make your Christian thinking and behavior real and deep, or we are going to enslave you, enslave and corrupt your children, kill you if we get a chance, and spit on your graves. For a start.”

Fair enough. They have warned us. God has used them to warn us. My guess is that God is sick of our lukewarm Christianity. He knows it hurts other people, and it hurts us. He wants us to be spiritually “mature” people, “who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” (Hebrews 5:14) He admitted we needed practice! So becoming mature doesn’t come easily to us; we need to practice. That seems reasonable.

The left’s nuttiness probably is exactly what we need. Don’t misunderstand me. I enjoy complaining, whining, indulging in melancholy, and despising our enemies, fully as much as the next person–and probably more. But as much fun as such whining is, it sort of misses the point. God is telling us to get up and get to work thinking and acting in ways that please Him. When we do, He will bless us. And my guess is that He will bless even some of our enemies and His enemies as well.