Carl Wells Books

The official rate of unemployment, according to the government, is currently about 3.7%, which is very good. But John Williams’ ShadowStats website puts the unemployment rate at approximately 21%.

Well, which is it, a low 3.7% or a very high 21%?

I don’t trust the U.S. government on much. They have ways of fiddling with numbers and with reality. If half of the U.S. population died, the government take on it would be a report noting that “Housing Problem Eases Dramatically As More Homes Open Up.”

Doing some basic (very basic) Internet research, it turns out that there are about 94 million people who could be working but are not. Many of those are not working because they really don’t want to work, however. Retired people make up many millions. Another 15.3 million are ill or disabled (at least officially disabled, if not so in real life.) About 14.5 million are in school or in job training. (Again, this can be tricky. Are some of them in school because they could not find a job, or were unwilling to find a job?)

Only about 1.6 million were listed as being unemployed for the reason that they had given up looking for work. About 5.9 million gave their reason for not working as “Other.”

I actually came away somewhat encouraged. I would have thought that people who had given up looking for work was a lot higher. Despite our trillion dollar budget deficits each year, despite the madness of adding to the money supply which drives prices higher, if someone is out there working–even if at a low-paying job or even at a completely useless job–it becomes more difficult to ruin the country completely. The fact that lots of people get up and go to work each day is encouraging.

And if we look on the bright side, there are plenty of ways in which we could easily become more prosperous. Let’s think briefly about Gross Domestic Product, which is defined as “the total value of goods and services provided in a country in one year.”

GDP is a very deceptive figure. According to GDP, if we work and earn a salary we are adding to the nations goods and services. But what if our work is not productive of any good?

Here are three examples of types of workers who earn salaries–often very high salaries–but who produce nothing or almost nothing of value to the country as a whole and to us as individuals.

1/The Department of Energy has lots of workers and a high budget. The contribution to our well-being is zero. Well, actually it is far below zero, because these people could be working at real jobs and if there were no Department of Energy then it could not steal tax money from us taxpayers. Energy is a very important part of life! Which is why we can and should leave its production in the hands of the free market. We used to live without a Department of Energy, and we did fine. We need to get rid of it, and when we do so we will be moving in the right direction.

2/The Department of Education has lots of workers and a high budget. Which is fine, because we are turning out so many well-educated and thoughtful people in the U.S. Okay, I admit I was joking in the last sentence. Everything we said about #1 can be said for #2.

3/The armed forces have a lot of workers and a high budget. They cause us nothing but misery. They butt their noses into the business of foreign countries, cause our soldiers to be killed and crippled, and they kill and cripple a lot of foreigners. We are loved, oops I mean hated, by lots of countries as a result. I don’t blame those countries for hating us. Many of the founding fathers tried to warn us of the dangers of a standing army, but we are currently too smart to listen to them. To our own destruction, and to the destruction of others worldwide.

According to the GDP, the people involved in 1 through 3 are adding to our goods and services. But they really aren’t adding anything of value. They are bankrupting us. We are actually paying them our taxpayer money to do silly stuff. What they are doing is the equivalent of carrying a pile of small boulders from one spot to another spot, then carrying them back to the first spot from the second spot, repeating day after day–punctuated with occasional breaks to kill or cripple our own people and foreign people. No wonder they call it “gross” domestic product.

Now picture all the people at the departments of Energy and Education, and in the armed services, working at real jobs. They would really be producing a good or service that we need or want, instead of drawing salaries at taxpayer expense to do nothing of value. The free market would figure out what was that something of value. It might take some time, but it would happen, and relatively quickly. Those “workers,” currently bankrupting us, would when working at real jobs be adding to our prosperity by producing a good or service ordinary people want.

The three items listed above are examples only. Dozens of other applications could be made.

There are lots of other things we could do to make our nation more prosperous. I will start with a point which seems to have nothing to do with economics. We could stop killing unborn children. First, if God exists (and to me it seems like He insists upon existing), then He is in control of world history. When you kill His children, He doesn’t like it and He has the power to do something about it. We need to get on His good side, or for a start at least less on His bad side. Just a thought.

Secondly, when you kill unborn children, they eventually don’t grow up to work and produce something of value. Selfish of them, but there you are–dead human nature is almost as bad as living human nature.

We could end the minimum wage, so that people of very low skills could join the job market and produce something of value to all of us, earn a modest sum, earn some self-respect, gain working experience and improve their skills. At the same time we could end welfare payments so that people would not be tempted to avoid work. (Keeping in mind that welfare payments include Social Security and Medicare and all forms of public education, of course.)

We could stop adding to the money supply (that means we would stop inflation) which would have the effect of stopping the growth of prices. Over time, prices would fall rather than rise. Which would allow our wages, small or large, to purchase more both in the short run and in the long run.

We could preach a more biblical brand of Christianity, which would encourage people to save, to want to earn their own way and the way of their family rather than to resort to the property of taxpayers. Biblical Christianity also encourages us not to expect to live beyond our means, and not to live wallowing in materialism. When Christian morality dies out, some other sort of morality replaces it. The welfare state morality most of us possess is deadly. Granted, biblical Christianity is a pain in the rear, because it sets high standards for our behavior, but it covers our need for a sensible morality which helps us and helps others.

So, what is the real unemployment rate? I don’t know. It seems clear that we could easily have full employment–everyone who wants to work would be working–and moreover we could have a full employment that had all of us working at a job which really produced something the rest of us wanted. All of us–and I mean all of us–would be earning enough to feed ourselves and our children. There would be no “food insecurity.” But to have that kind of world we would have to be more honest with ourselves. I am not holding my breath for that to happen.

Still, it is all fun to think about, and I find myself encouraged on the whole.

We are trying to have some fun thinking about how the break-up of the U.S. might play out. This is part II, after last week’s beginning.

The break-up could happen in stages. It won’t necessarily be just state by state. Indiana, for example, may leave the empire, oops sorry, I mean the union, as one state. But there is nothing to keep Indiana one nation in the long run. Unquestionably many cities are likely to become city-states. Many of our cities, nation-wide, already are infected with leftist super insanity. That is sad, but also an advantage to the rest of us, because possibly the virus can be quarantined. If the Democratic Party controlled large cities want to continue to be Democratic Party controlled, they have my blessing. If they can make it work, fantastic. Another advantage: if it doesn’t work, and the rest of the state (and the nation) is no longer there to subsidize the leftist nonsense, the quicker the people in the large cities have a chance to wake up and begin to say, “You know, this doesn’t really work as well as we thought it would. Maybe we need to change the way we think and behave.”

So Indiana could end up seceding, becoming then seven or eight separate nations, some of which would be city-states, some of which would be largely rural. I have already seceded and am currently part of the nation of Indiana, but in the longer term I expect to be part of the nation of Southern Indiana, and possibly even part of a smaller nation yet.

All this is messy and is going to take time to work itself out. As long as enough of us are committed to leaving other people alone, the messiness need not lead to violence and starvation. We Southern Indiana hicks will gladly sell our sweetcorn and other farm produce to anyone, as long as we are being paid in real money (gold and silver, or currency soundly based on gold and silver).

That is one aspect of the break-up: somewhere, somehow or other, real money is going to exist again. The Federal Reserve counterfeiters will be gone, when the U.S. no longer exists. Or at least the Federal Reserve, or what succeeds the Federal Reserve in leftist nations, will be confined to those countries with a fondness for counterfeiting and inflation.

While I find the leftists appalling, they are not really the core problem which is driving the U.S. to a break-up. The core problem is that our Christianity was not very Christian. I’ve said this so many times in so many ways, but I will continue to say it, because it is true. If our Christianity had been biblical, it would have changed the way the U.S. operated, and the union might have been preserved. It is better that the U.S. cease to exist, but nevertheless we Christians bear most of the blame for the depressing way things have unfolded.

About our Christian corruption, I have bad news and I have good news. Which do you want first? Bad news? Okay, you asked for it.

Our Christian corruption is widespread. We don’t tithe (we give one-quarter of what God asks), we are welfare queens (Social Security, Medicare, public education), we shrug at abortion, we have made the U.S. and the U.S. military into idols, we murder and cripple foreigners with our preemptive wars.

So the bad news is very bad indeed. But I think there is good news too. Our corruption is wide, but it is also shallow. That may be too wildly optimistic on my part, but it could also be true. There are reserves of goodness in our Christian population. We have not been challenged with a fully biblical brand of Christianity. If we were challenged, I think we would be angry, and we would whine and complain, and we would chase the truth tellers out of town on a rail . . . but I think we would admit in the end that the truth tellers were right. We would admit our sin and we would change the way we think and act. After all, if we really are inhabited by the Holy Spirit, we have the potential to love and live by the truth. Jesus Christ tells us that the Holy Spirit will guide us ‘”into all the truth”‘ (John 16:13). All the truth is going to include a lot of painful truths about our brand of Christianity, but if we are supernaturally regenerated by God then we have the ability to put on our big boy and big girl pants and really live and think the way Christians are supposed to live and think.

My experience with Christians is that we are not thinking very biblically. But I am very hopeful that that can change when we begin to be challenged with biblical thinking. Sure, many of the non-Christians in our churches will desert us, but that will be good for us and will actually be better for them in the long run. We are not doing them any good now, by letting them think of themselves as Christians. It will be much better for all concerned that we speak and live the truth.

Maybe I am too optimistic, but I think there are tremendous reserves of potential for godly behavior in garden variety Christians who are currently greatly corrupted. We need to be told the truth, but once we are told the truth we will think and act much better. It will happen gradually, of course. We don’t like facing up to our responsibilities. But it can happen. I am often told by my Aged Parent that I always see the glass as half empty rather than as half full. Well, on this point at least I see the glass as half full. I think when we are given hard truths, we will take them to heart. Many of us will be able to change for the better–and greatly so. Our potential is very high even if our current performance is very low.

More possible good news: the corruption of some of the leftists may also be wide but shallow. Some of them are far gone, of course, but not all of them. We haven’t given people (true Christians, self-deceived professing Christians, or ordinary non-Christians) much that was biblical for them to ponder, for a very long time. This humanist leftist stuff really is drivel, and some people who are shallowly leftist will see that when we give them truth and a type of behavior worth following.

Here’s an example. Ron Paul spoke the truth about the wickedness of our foreign policy. He was immediately respected and even loved by some people who made no claim at all to be Christians. Truth spoke to their hearts. It was a start.

What if there is no God, and thus Christianity, while attractive to some of us because its values match our own Neanderthal instincts, is really just sound and fury signifying nothing much? Well, even if there is no God, it seems to me that the universe itself seems to fight on the side of things like honesty, hard work, generosity of spirit, kindness, leaving other people alone, and much else that Christianity recommends. So we could have better countries even if the God of the Bible does not exist.

And if there is the God of the Bible (as I believe), then we are on the winning side. He tells us that He has plans for our well-being. ‘”‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.'”‘ (Jeremiah 29:11) A future and a hope. It sounds promising. When we get small Christian countries covenanted with God and we want to love and obey Him–ditching our unbiblical dispensationalism and unbiblical amillennialism for something more true to what the Bible teaches–then those small countries can become places where God is honored and people are protected.

The break-up of the United States will be a good thing, but it will not be a sufficient thing. We Christians are going to need to learn to love according to the way the Bible defines love. Then we might start to get somewhere really good. That may be a topic for another day.

For now, try to think about how the break-up of the United States may present us with opportunities, and may permit people to gather in basically homogeneous groups yet leave other vastly different people alone. Read and think for yourself. Let your mouth water at the prospect of a country or countries where they don’t kill unborn babies. (Sorry, I notice I have forgotten to take my meds.)

This concludes our two-part series on the coming break-up of the U. S. and A.

It seems that the U.S. is headed for a break-up in the relatively near future. I could be wrong about that, of course. Maybe we’ll go on being the United States, rather than the Disunited States, as Huck Finn might call us, for a very, very long time. But my feeling is that we are headed for a break-up, and it could happen fairly soon. So today I just want to sort of put forth some musings on the topic. This will be a multi-part series; there is too much to say in one blog post.

These musings are certain to be wrong in detail, and perhaps even wrong in broad outline. Why expose myself to people looking back, twenty or forty years in the future, and saying, “Wow, look how many things you got wrong”? Well, I believe that when we ponder these issues that our ability to think more clearly becomes improved. Being wrong is better than not thinking about stuff at all. It stimulates our minds when we think about challenging but important issues. Besides, realistically, who is going to look back and criticize me, anyway? Few people read this blog. If I’m wrong, I’ll be dead anyway. I may have lots of other things to worry about, twenty or forty years down the road, than the fact that my musings about the possible approaching break-up of the United States turned out to be way off base. Also, I just think this kind of thing is fun. The country has become nutty, or perhaps I should say nuttier, so why not at least have some fun speculating how the nuttiness might play out?

First off, it is not a tragedy if the U.S. breaks up. Smallness is the design of God, as Leopold Kohr told us in his wonderful The Breakdown of Nations (Chapter Five; see my blog post on the book, Oct. 13, 2016). He’s right. The U.S. has been too durn big since at least 1861. Big countries become bullies. They cause misery in the world. We are exhibit A. It is for the betterment of the world that we cease to exist. If this sounds like too dark a view of the United States, ask the 61,000,000 aborted babies what they think of us. Maybe if we had broken up into many smaller nations, way back in 1973 at the time when Roe v. Wade legitimized the murder of unborn children, a significant portion of those babies would have been born. Some of the countries which would have come into existence in 1973 might not have been willing to risk killing babies. So, who knows, maybe half, call it 30,500,000 (total speculation as to number, of course) of those murdered babies might be living right now, enjoying life, and working at jobs that bring benefits to all of us. (I wish one of you guys would mow the back yard of my property and that of my Aged Parent, and remove the fallen trees. We’ll pay you the market price, gladly. Alas, all I hear is crickets.)

The Soviet Union broke up because they were financially bankrupt. We in the United States are financially bankrupt as well; we just don’t realize it yet. What seems clear, however, is that we became morally bankrupt first, then as a result we became financially bankrupt. ‘”Things hang together,”‘ as one of George Eliot’s characters said in Middlemarch (Chapter 40). Our financial bankruptcy happened for a reason, just as the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union happened for a reason.

Our financial bankruptcy is likely to be a factor in why we break up. While I support immediate peaceful secession from the United States, and in fact consider myself to have seceded already, most people still view secession as a bad thing, something which no honorable person wants. Wasn’t the wickedness of secession proved in 1861-1865? So our population as a whole hasn’t been thinking about secession much, although that is beginning to change. Thank heaven. Still, it likely will take something big to push us toward break-up. A financial disaster might do it. Hyper-inflation destroying everyone’s savings, so that many people begin to see that our “elite” leaders are thieves and liars. An atomic bomb killing a million of us. Price controls on food prices so that farmers can’t afford to grow food for us, and a bunch of us starve. There are other ways something big could happen to push us to be willing to break up. It will probably take something big to get us to change. It won’t be a case of everybody thinking things through for ten years, agreeing “Yes, it is better that we part; Godspeed to you.” No, we are going to have to be forced to change, by circumstances, by God working though circumstances. We will have to have a two by four up the side of the head. Likely it will not be much fun, especially at first. I don’t look forward to whatever it is that causes us to change. I am trying to be very careful about what I wish for. I am aware that I may be one of those whose savings completely disappear. I may be one of those who starve, or I may be killed by a marauding band of thugs.

I hope for a peaceful break-up of the United States, and that could happen even if some kind of financial disaster is the catalyst for the break-up. Think about how much we hate each other. That may allow us to split up peacefully. The left may just hate us so much that they finally become willing to say, “Go away; we can’t stand you being part of us any more.” And we would feel the same about them. Wouldn’t it be more pleasant for them to have their own countries, and do things the way they want to, and for us to have our own countries and do things the way we want to? They would be happier, and we would be happier. Unity of the United States is no longer possible. If you hear anyone say we need to come together in unity, you can be certain that that person either 1/hasn’t thought about the issue at all, or, 2/is a stone cold liar. Unity is not possible when people differ so completely on what is good and what is bad. “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3, King James Version) The obvious answer is, no, they can’t. I can’t and won’t feel unity with people who want to do things I consider evil. They in turn can’t and won’t feel unity with me, because they consider that I want to do things they consider evil. Unity is not possible. I say, fine. I am quite willing to leave others alone to follow their vision of the good. I hope they will be willing to leave me alone to follow my own benighted vision of the good. They are probably not very likely to want to leave me alone, but a financial disaster (or some other kind of disaster) may force them to leave me alone.

Well, that is enough for one blog post. I hope to continue next week with more musings about the break-up of the U. S. and A. (Li’l Abner’s name for us, via Al Capp).

The official date of publication was July 17, 2019, so this one is hot off the presses. The last one came out in February of 2017, so it has been almost 2 1/2 years since I have had a new book out. So it has been a relatively long time in the making.

I am talking about my sixteenth book, If: God’s Covenant of Grace.

You will be “shocked–shocked” to learn that I love all of my books. But some of my books seem to fall into a category of could-only-be-written-by-me. By Noble Things She Stands: The Fiction of Gwendoline Keats/Zack is an example. At this point in world history I am the only person who knows enough or cares enough about the works of Gwendoline Keats/Zack to write a book about her. Hopefully that will change, and someday my book on her books will be only the 17th best book on the topic, but for the moment I am the only person who could have written that book.

If: God’s Covenant of Grace may be another book that couldn’t be written by other people. Not because the topic of the covenant of grace is unknown. No, there must be countless treatments of the covenant of grace. But what makes my book potentially different is that I think Christianity has taken some horribly wrong turns specifically because we have been ignoring what the Bible teaches about the covenant of grace. We have harmed ourselves, we have harmed our neighbors, we have harmed foreigners, we have harmed our enemies, we have harmed mankind as a whole, because we have a very wrongheaded understanding of how God deals with mankind according to what He says in the Bible.

How dare I write such a book? I’m just a guy. I certainly make no claim to be a theologian. But I can read the Bible (and I have read it a lot, albeit only in the original English) and I think God intends for the Bible to be understandable by ordinary garden variety people who read the Bible and care about what God says there. I think some things are said plainly, but somehow have been ignored by Christians. So I guess I dare to write the book because I see Christians making a lot of wrong turns, and logic dictates that quite possibly that is because our brand of Christianity is tragically flawed in its understanding of what God is saying. If I am wrong on all this, well, sometimes some of us have to be wrong so that the other people can see what is right. Meanwhile, I will believe I am not wrong until the inevitable two by four up the side of the head convinces me otherwise.

As I explain in the Introduction, my book has six basic goals. In condensed form, here they are.

1/To examine the Bible’s use of the word if. The word if is a very important word, and God uses it a lot in writing the Bible.

2/To warn openly non-Christian people that God has revealed clearly how He deals with all of us, and these ways can be understood and appreciated.

3/To warn professing Christians that many of you may be deceived in considering yourself regenerated and converted, and that you need to consider much more carefully what the Bible actually says, or face unpleasant consequences as a result of your failure to take note of what God says.

4/To warn truly converted Christians that you are bringing unnecessary misery upon yourself, your family, your neighbors, your enemies, and the world because your brand of Christianity is largely in opposition to what the Bible teaches.

5/To help all of us begin to understand God’s covenant of grace.

6/To contribute what I can to ending the antinomian pietism (including the mindless warmongering) that passes for acceptable among most Christians. Antinomianism is anti-God’s-law-ism. Pietism reduces the faith to a small part of life, whereas biblical Christianity says that our faith applies to all of life.

This book may not be an easy read. It is probably not the kind of book where you comfortably rip off sixty pages a reading session. My advice is, take your time. What’s the rush?

If: God’s Covenant of Grace is a paperback book of 312 pages. It is for sale at Amazon and at Barnes and Noble for $19.95, and there will be shipping costs on top of that. I can do better than that, however. I will sell it to you from my home for $19.00, with zero shipping and handling costs. Get in touch with me at carlwells@protonmail.com, if you want to buy a copy, or if you have questions about the book. I sell all my books (in the U.S) for prices with zero shipping costs. That should give you a reduced price as opposed to Amazon, etc., and at the same time I make more money than I would if you bought it at A. or at B. & N.

The ebook version costs only $1.99, at the Internet sources mentioned above.

If you read the book and like it, consider reviewing it at Amazon. (Ditto for any of my books; reviews give potential readers some idea of what they might be getting in for, and make it more likely that they would take a chance on an unknown writer.) If you don’t like If: God’s Covenant of Grace, may squirrels fall down into your underwear. Just kidding. Probably lots of people would dislike this book, if they read it, so you are welcome to join the crowd without a violent response from me. I’ll be disappointed, but I won’t sic the squirrels on you.

Personally, I love the book, and think it has some useful things to say. But then I would, wouldn’t I?

A few years ago I read The Autobiography of Mark Twain in an edition edited by Charles Neider. I enjoyed it, and there were a couple segments that really stuck with me. One of them began at page 452. The passage was written in September of 1906, so the incident related happened in late 1905 or early 1906. Here are the words of Mark Twain:

‘For good or for evil, we continue to educate Europe. [sentence was in italics] We have held the post of instructor for more than a century and a quarter now. We were not elected to it, we merely took it. We are of the Anglo-Saxon race. At the banquet, last winter, of that organization which calls itself the Ends of the Earth Club, the chairman, a retired regular army officer of high grade, proclaimed in a loud voice, and with fervency, “We are of the Anglo-Saxon race, and when the Anglo-Saxon wants a thing he just takes it.” [last four words in italics]

‘That utterance was applauded to the echo. There were perhaps seventy-five civilians present and twenty-five military and naval men. It took those people nearly two minutes to work off their stormy admiration of that great sentiment; and meanwhile the inspired prophet who had discharged it–from his liver, or his intestines, or his esophagus, or wherever he had bred it–stood there glowing and beaming and smiling, and issuing rays of happiness from every pore–rays that were so intense that they were visible, and made him look like the old-time picture in the almanac of the man who stands discharging signs of the zodiac in every direction, and so absorbed in happiness, so steeped in happiness, that he smiles and smiles, and has plainly forgotten that he is painfully and dangerously ruptured and exposed amidships, and needs sewing up right away.

‘The soldier man’s great utterance, interpreted by the expression he put into it, meant in plain English, “The English and the Americans are thieves, highwaymen, pirates, and we are proud to be of the combination.”‘ (pp. 452-453)

Back to moi. That was a fascinating episode, and it gives us early warning that the U.S. had given up all humility about its place in the world. What the elite was saying in 1905-06 is pretty much what the elite is saying in 2019: “We are the fount of wisdom, and do whatever we want.” Granted, we would phrase it differently today. No honorable U.S. thieves or highwaymen would even dream of thinking of ourselves as “Anglo-Saxons.” That smacks of racial bigotry. No, we are secular missionaries helping other nations move toward becoming democracies so that someday they can be somewhat like us (though admittedly never quite as great as we are, of course).

Mark Twain goes on to say that not one person got up and protested at the outburst–Mark Twain included, of course. One senses that he felt somewhat uneasy about his own failure to speak up. Join the crowd of humanity, Mark Twain; we all fail to speak up sometimes when we sense that we really should stand up on our hind legs, open our mouths, and squawk like a chicken, let the consequences be what the consequences may be. We are grateful to you that at least you reported the incident, and gave us your thoughtful evaluation.

Twain goes on to say that the outburst:

“looked suspiciously like a revelation, a secret feeling of the national heart surprised into expression and exposure by untoward accident, for it was a representative assemblage.” (p. 453)

And isn’t this true today? It’s all of us, not just our filthy elite. One might expect that Christians would have a more skeptical attitude toward the theoretical wonderfulness of the way the U.S. treats foreign countries, but such an expectation turns out to be hopelessly naive. Many of the most committed supporters of an interventionist foreign policy are Christians waving a flag. They are convinced that we are doing God’s work in invading Iraq and Libya and (fill-in-the-blank). Have you ever heard one word from the pulpit raising the possibility that maybe the U.S. should mind its own business and deal with the issues of our own country rather than bomb other people? I didn’t think so. Neither have I. (Although thank heaven there are some Christians and some Christian pastors who smell a rat, and say so frankly. It is just that they are thin on the ground.)

Twain goes on to point out that while our public motto might be “In God we trust,” our private motto is ‘”When the Anglo-Saxon wants a thing he just takes it.”‘ [he just takes it in italics; p. 454) Of course it is unfashionable now even to claim to trust in God, but our private morals are much what they were in Twain’s day. ‘”Our private morals find the light in the sacred phrase, “Come, step lively.”‘ [step in italics; p. 454)

In a few brief paragraphs (nine, by my count) covering under three pages, Mark Twain has given us an insight into the American character. We had stopped, long ago, being a republic trying to mind our own business. By 1906 the rot was all the way through our hearts. It probably was there from the beginning, of course. A few of the early founding fathers tried to warn us to mind our own business. The attitude of those fuddy duddies seems to echo Hank Williams: “Minding other people’s business seems to be high-toned./I got all that I can do just to mind my own./Mind your own business.” Alas, we have no more listened to Hank Williams than we have to those of the earlier founding fathers who counseled the same thing without putting the sentiment to music.

What we were in 1906, we are in 2019. It has cost us many dead, and cost other countries many dead as well. We won’t mention the crippled. (Oops, I guess we just did.)

Is there any solution? I think so, but I think it will involve admitting our Christianity is not very Christian and not very biblical, and then after we repent we will need to change the way we Christians think and act. That’s probably a bridge too far for most of us. I have no other bright ideas on the subject.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain, edited by Charles Neider, is readily available, in paperback, on the Internet, for reasonable prices. The lowest price I saw today was $4.99 (shipping included) at Alibris, but other copies were available at Amazon for under $6.00 (total). His nine paragraphs on our American character are worth the price of admission, but there are plenty of other thought-provoking and entertaining portions.