Carl Wells Books

Why did World War I happen? Who was to blame?

Since many of us would agree that World War I was one of the most significant events in world history, it stands to reason that people continue to be interested in how the war started.

Sean McMeekin helps us immensely. He has written a well-researched, well-reasoned book entitled July 1914: Countdown to War, which was first published in 2013.

The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, in Sarajevo, Serbia, is always pointed to as the spark which set off the war which has had such a disastrous effect on world history. But Professor McMeekin makes it clear that WW I was not inevitable because of the assassination. The assassination took place on June 28, 1914. It took another four to five weeks before it became likely that war would take place. Even then, the war might have been avoided, or perhaps greatly limited. I will make no attempt to trace the diplomacy. Read the book, and it becomes clear that the diplomacy was complex.

Professor McMeekin’s Prologue gives us the background to the assassination, and the events of the day. Here are the last couple paragraphs of that prologue. The archduke and his wife Sophie have already been shot.

‘As the archduke’s car, having turned around at last, sped in the other direction toward the Konak, it was not yet clear to the others in the car that the shots had hit their target. Sophie, sensing something was amiss, thought only of her husband, asking him, “In God’s name, what has happened to you?” Franz Ferdinand, likewise, although knowing he had been hit, could think only of Sophie. “Sopherl, Sopherl,” he managed to say even as blood dripped from his mouth, “don’t die on me. Live for our children.” Asked by Count Harrach whether he was badly injured, the archduke replied, with all the reserve expected of a Habsburg, “It is nothing.” As both he and his wife slowly expired, Ferdinand repeated again and again, each time more softly than the last: “It is nothing.”

‘By eleven thirty AM on 28 June 1914, Ferdinand and Sophie were dead.’ (p. 20)

It is moving to read of their concern for one another in their last minutes alive.

As I read this book and followed the actions of the main characters negotiating with one another, I kept wanting to shout “Turn back!” or “Stop while you still can!” or something similar. No one listened to me, of course. (They never do.)

For me there were several broad takeaways by the time I had finished the book. For one thing, both during the negotiations, and after when the memoirs came to be written, there was a lack of honesty. This is what we would expect, of course. But does it have to be this way? Perhaps everyone negotiating would have been much better off–and the people they were representing would have been much better off–if they had all been more honest.

Am I being naive here? Perhaps, but also perhaps not. One point stressed in the Bible–as research for a future book has shown me–is that truth is a very crucial thing, which God takes very seriously. Maybe if we fibbed less, we all would be better off. That applies to heads of state and their ministers, just as it does to all of the rest of us.

Also, treaties promising to go to war on behalf of another country are a mistake. They are intended to warn potential enemies that “Hey, if you fight us you will have to fight this other country too” and thus keep potential enemies from taking up arms. What they seem to do instead is to cause conflicts to expand in size. If all the potential belligerents had been willing to protect their own country but not necessarily fight on the side of some other country, everyone would have been better off.

If, for example, Austria and Serbia had insisted on going to war with one another after the assassination, why not let them go ahead while staying well clear of the carnage? This would have reduced the harm done, to a huge degree.

Leave aside the fact that millions of soldiers had their lives consumed, and millions more were wounded and often crippled for life, and that most of this could have been avoided. There is also the likelihood that the Russian Revolution of 1917 would have been avoided–if only Russia had stayed out of World War I. Russia’s involvement in the war led to its revolution, and to disaster for Russia and for the world. It did not inevitably lead to the Russian Revolution, but it gave the revolution a much greater chance of happening. Russia should have minded its own business, and should not have been treatied up with France. Germany should not have been treatied up with Austria.

If leaders of Russia, France, England, and Germany have the best interests of their own people at heart, they would all stand aside and let Austria and Serbia have at it. Austria and Serbia, knowing that they would be going at it alone, might even have thought twice or thrice about engaging in a war. At the worst, the carnage might have been limited to the participants of those two countries.

Any country can learn to avoid making treaties with other countries. Notice I said “can learn.” I didn’t say we have learned.

A minor fact I gained from the book is that Winston Churchill, at the time first lord of the Admiralty, with one or more of his actions “had committed an act of insubordination.” (p. 239) The more I read about Winston Churchill, the more it seems to me that it is way past time that we have a reevaluation of this man. This is not at all central to Sean McMeekin’s topic–it is simply a crotchet of mine. But some scholar who cares about ideas and truth, and is also cheerfully suicidal about his own career, needs to examine the career of Winston Churchill in great depth. I think we would find he was largely a disastrous man. I wouldn’t mind taking on the job myself, but I am probably too old to have time to do the proper amount of research.

Which country was most to blame for World War I happening? Professor McMeekin’s 22 page Epilogue deals entirely with the question of responsibility. I will not try to summarize his opinions. I will just say that there is a popular opinion, sort of in the air we breathe, that Germany held the most responsibility. Professor McMeekin believes that the Germans went into the war reluctantly, “kicking and screaming.” (p. 405) Because he has given us 400 pages of careful research and careful evaluation of events, his opinion carries a lot of weight with me. If you want to know more about the professor’s thoughtful opinions, buy and read the book. As you might expect, there was a lot of blame to go around. Buy the book, if you enjoy learning from history.

Buying the book won’t cost you an arm and a leg–unlike the price often paid by the soldiers fighting a foolish war which has brought Christian civilization to the brink of destruction–because July 1914 can be purchased for a pittance on the Internet. Today I saw used hardcover copies available for $5.24 (shipping included, but sales tax extra) at AbeBooks.

Sean McMeekin’s dedication to his book is brief but lovely: “For the fallen”.

Sean McMeekin has written at least seven books. He is currently a professor at Bard College in upstate New York. I hope to read his Stalin’s War soon.

As disastrous as was World War I in its consequences for world history, the thing about the war which is the most important fact, and which still seems not to be understood, is that it was first of all and most significantly, a symptom of the impotence of the West’s brand of Christianity as the twentieth century opened.

At least one man knew it at the time. Nikolaj Velimirovic, a Serbian Orthodox priest, gave a series of lectures in England in 1917, as World War I raged on. Collected in a very short book of 53 pages, The Agony of the Church points us to the fact that it is our brand of Christian thought and action which is crucial for all of history–and which had permitted World War I to happen. The book is available for $8.51 at AbeBooks. I discuss the book at greater length in two blog posts, April 5 and April 12, 2018.

Some weeks ago I completed my reading of Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency by Jack Cashill, a book published in 2020. As I read it, it sparked my thinking, and I found myself making notes about potential lessons we can learn from everything surrounding Barack Obama.

This was the fourth book I have read by Jack Cashill, and they all have been good. He is a gifted writer, with a prose style that encourages us to keep reading. He has a sense of humor, a good-natured calmness, a willingness to be fair to everyone, and a love of truth. Better yet, he even has a connection to the state of Indiana, having taken his doctorate in American studies at Purdue University.

As I read Unmasking Obama, certain ideas kept popping into my head. I needed to write them down, and eventually to tell my teeming millions of readers what I had learned. Some of the ideas may not have come directly from the text (while some certainly do) but that is what a good writer like Jack Cashill does–he makes you think.

So here are ten takeaways from my reading of Unmasking Obama. They are numbered, for my entertainment and convenience.

1/Mainstream Media’s dishonesty is terminal. They have no love of truth. They have a Narrative in their own minds, and anything that does not fit the Narrative can be and should be ignored, at least according to them. They refuse to search for the truth, when a little digging, and a little common sense, would provide myriad openings to find the truth. These are filthy people.

2/Not only is Mainstream Media dishonest. I think they have lost the capacity even to see their own dishonesty. I don’t think any of them say to themselves, “I am going to lie now.” No, lying has become as natural to them as breathing. Do we think about breathing? No, we just do it. Similarly, these people just follow the Narrative, and the Narrative is obviously the truth, so anything that doesn’t fit the Narrative must be wrong. They have arrived at a state of being that makes them feel happy, and nothing is going to make them give up that state of being.

3/Barack Obama was a fraud from the beginning, but among left-leaning people there was a Need to Believe. To make a hero of a man so without honesty and principle, so clearly an empty suit, bespeaks an emptiness on the part of the people who have raised him up. The people idolizing Mr. Obama are numerous. These people are intellectually and spiritually void. People as ridiculous as Barack Obama are always going to exist. That millions of people honor him is far more terrifying than the existence of one unprincipled sociopath such as Mr. Obama.

4/Conservatism Inc. are not our friends. Mainstream conservative pundits have a lack of courage to tell difficult truths. They have no real principles for which they are willing to stand. They are trying to build careers in the media. We need to start ignoring these people. They offer ordinary people no help.

5/The collaboration of Main Sleaze Media and left-leaning politicians is instinctive, not something they sit down together and formally agree to do. Both have a ridiculous worldview, and warm to each other because of that. There is no conscious conspiracy.

6/The arrogance of our elite betters is off the charts. They know themselves to be morally good, and know the rest of us to be foolish peasants, and any other theory is not worth considering. One might have thought such arrogance was unjustified in view of the results of the leadership of these elite people. But our elites think they are doing very well indeed.

7/Now and in the future, the only type of person who is going to offer us much hope is a person with a centered personality of uncompromising integrity. We need people who will stand for the truth and be willing to accept criticism as they do so. If we think such individual people can’t really accomplish much, given the power of the evildoers and given the carelessness of most other people, then we are too pessimistic. Mr. Cashill provides chapter and verse of how individuals of no fame or wealth or power, have made a tremendous difference for good in searching out the truth. They have been called a “coalition of willing Lilliputians”–the Lilliputians, we remember, were the little people of Gulliver’s Travels–and that humorous name is fitting. One person can always make a tremendous difference for good. This fact should encourage each one of us to strive to become such a highly principled person. Plus it’s just the right thing to do anyway!

8/If the Christian church would reform, the consequences would be enormous. The potential among Christians is enormous, if we have been regenerated and have begun even the first tentative steps of conversion. But to reform, we are going to have to face some painful truths about ourselves. We have not been ready to do that. People who are inhabited by the Holy Spirit have enormous potential, if we love truth and pursue it. Christ promised us that the Holy Spirit would guide us into all the truth (John 16:13). But the evidence is clear: if we don’t care much about the truth, the Holy Spirit doesn’t waste much of His time in trying to guide us. We bear personal responsibility. It seems that if we want only a little bit of truth, the Holy Spirit will acquiesce in our decision. If we want “all” the truth then the Holy Spirit will roll up His sleeves, spit on His hands, and go to work on us.

9/We have lots of deadly poisons in our Christian medicine chest. Among them are pietism, antinomianism, amillennialism, and dispensationalism. We need to march into the bathroom and begin throwing away these deadly poisons, just for a start. We have dosed ourselves with these quack medications for decades. What will replace them? Search the Bible, and maybe some good ideas will begin to crop up. Theological profundity begins with wanting to do God’s will. Jesus Christ said of His own teaching: ‘”If any man is willing to do His [God the Father’s] will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from Myself.”‘ (John 7:17)

10/All the distressing facts we learn about our leaders and our media from reading Unmasking Obama are painful–but learning all this can also be a blessing in disguise. Just from reading this one book, any person of normal intelligence can begin to understand how dangerous is our situation. Awareness of our situation has been lacking, for countless of our normal citizens. Once we know how wretched our condition is, then we will be more likely to act in a manner that changes that wretched condition. We can wake up! We have a lengthy task ahead of us: to rebuild (perhaps even extend) Christian civilization. Think of it as job security. Who doesn’t want job security?

The best price I could find for a used copy of Unmasking Obama today was $11.09 total at AbeBooks (sales tax additional). It is a reasonable price for an informative and thought-provoking book. Jack Cashill, by the way, has dedicated his book to “my fellow Lilliputians.” Lilliputians can make a difference for good.

One of the scariest prospects we can imagine is a one world government.

If we are not thinking clearly, it can seem like an attractive idea. “Finally we are getting organized around here! We’ll all be on the same page, rather than competing with one another.”

But if we are all on the same page, what if that page is a really bad page? A page like the Soviet Union under Lenin/Stalin, Germany under Hitler, the U.S. under Abraham Lincoln (620,000 dead bodies, and a formerly restrained republic morphing into an empire), or the U.S. under (fill in the blank with your least favorite recent U.S. president).

In fact, concentrated power held by human beings is intrinsically dangerous, because we human beings are very fallen creatures, and we cannot be trusted to do what is right. That is true of the worst of us, of course, but it is also true of the best of us. We are all potentially dangerous, we all can go badly wrong and harm others in an egregious fashion.

The only person worthy of holding concentrated power is the God of the Bible. If He is not worthy, we are doomed, because He does hold that power. Scripture testifies, as does world history, that God is good. But He is the only fully trustworthy person, when it comes to holding power.

Early on in man’s history, God understood that it was necessary to keep power split up among human beings. The history of the tower of Babel is very instructive. For the full story, check Genesis 11:1-9. The people all had the same language, and were acting together. I will quote only verse 6.

‘And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.”‘

God confused their language and scattered them over the whole earth.

That was very wise.

It is instinctive with a certain type of person to want to concentrate power–and to concentrate that power in his own hands. What “type” of person is that? It is a person without humility, and moreover often a person who enjoys pushing other people around.

Humility is a key virtue–and perhaps correspondingly rare.

Think about the elite people running our country today. Do any of them have humility? Of course not. Do they mind telling the rest of us what to do? No, they feel it is their right to do so, because they are smarter and more virtuous than the rest of us.

Are they really smarter and more virtuous? If they are so smart, why are they willing to fight against the good God of the Bible? Aren’t they smart enough to understand that there may be bad consequences for doing that? No, they think they are smarter than God, who probably, they theorize, does not exist anyway. So their “smartness” is of a certain limited variety. They are smart enough to seek and exercise power, but they are not smart enough to consider that they may be endangering and possibly destroying their own souls in the process. They lack humility, and as a result lack common sense. They are, ultimately, suicidal. All those who hate wisdom, love death (Proverbs 8:36).

A one world government is dangerous because there would be no place to escape to, when facing powerful tyranny. We need nations–lots of nations. Thousands would be better than hundreds.

Leopold Kohr understood, better than anyone else, that concentrated power was dangerous power. Big nations meant big bullies and big problems. Period. He fully understood that such a truth applied to the U.S. as well as to every nation. Can anyone looking at the history of the U.S. deny that he was correct? The United States, for example, has turned into the Soviet Union. We didn’t learn to avoid the example of the Soviet Union; we just became as foolish as they had been.

The Breakdown of Nations by Leopold Kohr can be obtained for about $11.70 plus sales tax, at AbeBooks. That is not cheap, but it is worth the price of admission. Kohr I believe to be thinking the thoughts of God after Him. He is Jewish, but speaks respectfully of Jesus Christ. St. Augustine is one of his heroes. I have discussed his book at length in my blog post for October 13, 2016.

One fact we need to keep in mind is that our elite, as a group, will never learn humility before God. I do think isolated individuals will learn, and will leave their folly. But we should not kid ourselves that we can persuade the elite to change their morality. It is their nature to hate humility, to hate God, and to hate the rest of us. They are the scorpion in the story of the scorpion and the frog. The following is taken from the Wikipedia article on the scorpion and the frog:

‘A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that they would both drown if the scorpion killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. The frog lets the scorpion climb on its back and begins to swim. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: “I couldn’t help it. It’s in my nature.”‘

We ordinary people are the frog. We are going to get stung. If we say that the scorpion can act in opposition to his nature, we are lying to ourselves and setting up ourselves, our families, our friends, even our enemies, for disaster. We have to face reality: the scorpion is always going to be the scorpion, and he is always going to bring disaster on us.

Notice that the scorpion brings disaster on himself as well. How true that is in real life! How many scorpions would be better off is they learned humility before God, dropped their plans to boss us all around, and joined ordinary Christian people in trying to obey God in the way we live? All of them! All of them would be better off. But they will sting us, even if it means destruction for them as well. It is their nature to sting, to hate, to destroy, to be a parasite but eventually to kill the host on which they live, to consider themselves virtuous when they are the exact opposite of virtuous.

Kohr recounts a story of how one lady immediately understood the value of having lots of nations. This is from page 9 of the book mentioned above.

“One of the few ever to embrace the idea of division without reservations was an Italian lady from Siena. As a wartime refugee from Mussolini who had fled to London, she understood perhaps better than most that the vast unity of states imparted vastness also to the reach of terrorism and persecution. She alone seemed genuinely delighted at the prospect of a return to an Augustan world of small states. Clapping her hands, she exclaimed: ‘What a blessing! Imagine, you would have to flee a distance of only fifteen or twenty miles to reach the safety of exile.'”

We should be thinking like that nameless lady from Siena. Wouldn’t it be a blessing if, on the North American continent, there were 100 Christian nations here to which we could flee? I think it would.

The number 100 is arbitrary, but I chose a large number for a reason. We Christians need to watch ourselves like a hawk. None of us can be trusted very far with power. I take my own ideas seriously, and in the past two blog posts I gave some specifics of what a semi-sane Christian nation might look like. I think a country such as I posit would be a good place. But I would not want to be a conqueror imposing those ideas on a country. I want people to begin to agree with me after thinking for themselves for a long time. I want there to be 100 different Christian countries on this continent, not just one or two or three. I want to see the power split up. I don’t trust myself, and I don’t trust my Christian brothers and sisters. I know that at best we are only striving after semi-sanity.

We need to have humility before God. God scattered the people at Babel, and it is good to keep us scattered. If there are 100 Christian nations on this North American continent, and 10,000 Christian nations worldwide, that is safer than five or six or ten large Christian nations.

Meanwhile, we need to beware of those who want the earth organized under some sort of global government. They are scorpions. It is their nature to destroy.

Last week we theorized that it might be possible to move in the direction of having a semi-sane country. Not, I hasten to stress, that the U.S. as a whole could become semi-sane. That ship has sailed. No, the possible semi-sane nation I think could happen would be a small place of 40,000 to 50,000 to 500,000 people, somewhere on the North American continent. The morally bankrupt and financially bankrupt U.S. and A. might be forced by circumstances to break up. If that happens, there could be many small countries. There might even be 100 small nations which wanted to be self-consciously Christian. At 50,000 per country (times 100) adding up to 5,000,000 people, that would leave 320,000,000 to carry on the traditional humanist and antinomian-Christian warmongering, baby-killing, welfare state, sexually perverse, soul destroying traditions we have come to know and love in the U.S. The tiny band of self-consciously Christian nations will not be trying to push the 320,000,000 around. How could we, anyway, given our minute numbers?

Last week we began to think about what a semi-sane state might look like. Let’s continue.

I picture a semi-sane Christian state as one in which every professing Christian is committed to tithing to the church. Tithing is the easiest spiritual exercise anyone can do. Any numbskull can give one-tenth of his income toward the visible church. If we are not willing to do even that small job, we are not likely to be a very wise Christian nation. Of course it would be impractical to expect immediate perfection in this regard. As a Christian people, we are used to giving about 2.5% of our increase to the church (see emptytomb.org), and our consciences will need to have a two by four up the side of the head before we begin to understand what is at stake. We will understand gradually, however, and eventually Christians in semi-sane countries will move toward a situation in which most believers are tithing. If we aren’t tithing, then we probably won’t last long, because tithing is the easiest thing we can do. If we aren’t tithing, we won’t be doing other, more spiritually challenging things.

In a semi-sane nation, everybody would work. There would be no welfare state destruction of our spirit. The church and individuals will handle situations in which people face financially devastating hard providences. God did not create us so that we could be living on the labor of others. He created us so that we could become fully responsible human beings who want to help Him build the kingdom of God.

A semi-sane nation will have honest money. That means silver and/or gold. No more Federal Reserve creating money out of thin air, reducing the value of the money working people earn. If we have honest money, we will eventually begin to be surprised to find that savers are blessed. Unlike now in the U.S. kleptocracy, where savers are suckers having their wealth stolen by the inflation encouraged by the welfare/warfare state.

There will be no fractional reserve banking. If we are semi-wise enough to want to have honest money, we will likely also be semi-wise enough to know that fractional reserve banking is inherently dangerous. It can lead to people losing their savings, when banks fail.

People will educate their children at their own expense. There will be no public education at any level.

There will be no prisons. There will be short-term jails. Criminals will be dealt with according to biblical principles, which means there is no need for prisons. Restitution will be the pattern for crimes of theft and property damage. Murderers and rapists will be executed. This will lead, gradually but fairly quickly, to people deciding not to murder or rape–or to do it in some country other than a semi-sane Christian country. Which will protect a lot of people living in those semi-sane countries.

As a corollary, drunk driving will be rare. Because if you drive drunk and kill someone, you are executed. You won’t drive drunk again.

Wife-beaters will be whipped. I am told this is barbarian and could never happen, even in a Christian country. I don’t think it is barbarian, and I think it could happen. The Bible permitted whipping for some crimes, and it seems that whipping is most practical and fair for some crimes. Do you fine a wife-beater? Keep him in jail for a good long time (which gives him a vacation from working, at public expense)? No, you give him stripes, which helps him understand that we don’t permit men to beat on women in our benighted, backward, simple-minded Christian countries. Call us hopeless romantics, or call us Neanderthal barbarians, or call us both, if it makes you feel better.

No semi-sane Christian nation will wage preemptive war on another nation. I fully understand that warmongering Christians have given permission to the U.S. to attack other nations. But those Christians are not striving after semi-sanity. Remember, I am positing Christian nations in which people really want to be semi-sane. That will include taking seriously the Christian principle that we leave other people alone. If we fight, it is only in self-defense. Therefore we will stay home, cultivating our vines and fig trees, and quite willing to leave other nations alone to do whatever their god calls them to do.

Taxes will be small in semi-sane nations. The civil government will have only a few functions, and so it will not require a lot of money. Taxes on this continent before the American Revolution were under 2%–even lower than England’s taxes (5% to 7%) at the time. We could get back to taxes in the 2% to 5% range, pretty easily. No public education, no welfare state, no prisons, no huge military–those reforms start to add up to saving a lot of public money, very quickly. People will be able to do what they want with the money they earn–save it, spend it foolishly or wisely, invest it, give it away. The civil government will not steal it from them.

I picture a semi-sane country as one in which the people in the churches care about their Christian neighbors (and non-Christian neighbors!) enough to interact in their lives. I’ve been in the Christian community almost 50 years. You can see a lot by watching, as Yogi Berra might say. Do we help those–even those in our churches–who are struggling? Do we help someone get a job when what he needs most of all is to go out to work rather than stay home living off his parents? Do we care enough about people to get to know them? Do we try to find the gifts others have, and encourage them to employ those gifts to make the church stronger and the world a better place? We all know the answer to those questions is that we stay home in our fragmented fragments, and we have nothing to do with other people other than to meet them for church one hour a week. Nor do we actively seek to help non-Christians. But I am saying here that our striving after semi-sanity will incline us to begin to act differently.

A people striving after semi-sanity will begin to be active rather than passive. We will have a vision of where we want to get, and we will move in that direction.

Okay, that is a picture of what a semi-sane country might look like. None of this is pie in the sky impossible stuff. Bad things will still happen in semi-sane countries. There will be theft, murder, rape, violence, horrific accidents, and sadness. But in semi-sane countries we will be moving toward a better world. There will still be murders, but there will be fewer murders. There will still be rapes, but there will be fewer rapes. Just to begin with, remember, we are immediately going to stop killing unborn children. That alone will lift our spirits and encourage us. We can improve our lives and the lives of our neighbors, in countless ways, when we begin to take seriously the teaching of God in the Bible.

Christian adults really could start to move toward having countries which are semi-sane. And remember also that I said might look like, I didn’t say absolutely without fail would look like. Any country wanting to be semi-sane will find its own Christian ways of behaving, which might in certain regards look different from the vision I have. I’m just this guy. But there will need to be a desire to move toward God’s will, and the Bible’s teaching will have to be our guide, or we’re going to continue to present to the world a passive, antinomian, pietist brand of Christianity not worth the expense of the powder to blow it to hell.

I’ve been on written record since 2017 with my theory that everybody is crazy. (Read, or better yet, buy, my book The Way to Do a Thing Is to Do It: Essays.) I haven’t seen anything to tempt me to drop my theory, which I have held for quite a few years beginning long before 2017.

Does that include Christians? Are Christians also crazy? Yes. In some ways we are worse than non-Christians, because we have advantages the non-Christians don’t have. After all, we have the written instructions of the Bible, we supposedly have been regenerated and converted, we supposedly have the Holy Spirit inhabiting us–and yet we still think and act in nutty ways. Practical experience confirms that Christians are not overly sane. Just spend time among us for a while, and you will see what I mean. So yes, everybody is crazy.

Having said that, I have also said that there are degrees of insanity, and that all of us can strive for semi-sanity. I strongly doubt that full sanity can be gained until after death. But semi-sanity I believe to be a feasible goal for all of us.

Today, then, I propose to have some fun by trying to find out what a semi-sane country might look like.

In the first place, a semi-sane country would be self-consciously Christian. It is complete drivel to say that there can be separation of religion and state. Every state enforces the laws of its god. It can not do otherwise. Sadly, we Christians, in our insanity, have not understood this obvious point. But, as we strive to move toward semi-sanity, I think we have a puncher’s chance of understanding this at last. We can have one or many countries where the God of the Bible is the foundation of the nation.

A semi-sane Christian country would likely be rather small. At a guess, 40,000 to 200,000 per country. Sparta in the classical period had a population of 40,000 to 50,000, and they got a lot done–not all of it good, of course!–with that small a population. According to the Internet, many Greek city-states were smaller. Athens, on the other hand, had anywhere from 350,000 to 600,000 people in that era of history. Christian nations also could be bigger than 40K. (Or smaller!) But small is better and more sustainable than huge. Leopold Kohr, in his wonderful book The Breakdown of Nations, explains why that is so. But common sense should teach us that as well: once you get too big, bad things happen. The U.S. is exhibit A.

Notice that positing one (or several) small Christian nations on the North American continent, leaves the humanists alone in their teeming millions. Of the 325,000,000 Americans of the U.S. variety, perhaps 320,000,000 would be quite content to worship their god (man) and enforce his laws. Fine. That still would leave 5,000,000 Christians to have their small self-consciously Christian countries where the God of the Bible was the one setting the rules. Why, we could have 100 small countries of 50,000 each, and we would not be trying to boss around the 320,000,000 who weren’t interested in our kinds of nations.

Would the 320,000,000 really leave us alone? Well, many of them wouldn’t want to. But the U.S. seems to be heading for a financial disaster of unprecedented proportions. Bankruptcy might mean that there could be a serious reorganization of how the North American continent is organized. We can plan for and hope for freedom, and circumstances (Providence?) might some day work in our favor. If the welfare/warfare state implodes financially, we might be surprised to find that we have a chance to have our own countries. Remember, I’m having fun here. I refuse to look on the dark side, at least for a few hours. And not all the 320,000,000 would necessarily be our enemies. Quite a few of them might be willing to leave us alone. Some of them would probably even be Christians themselves, moderately sympathetic to our goals and willing to try to restrain the democommunazis among the 320,000,000. So let’s press on in hope. Idiotic hope, perhaps, but hope.

In a semi-sane country, the standard of justice would be based on the teachings of the Bible. What other morality makes sense? God gave us standards of justice that are wise. He did it for our good. Moreover, we are capable–or semi-capable, at least–of recognizing justice when we see it. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, and so on, all kind of make sense to us because they are attuned to the sense of justice which God created in us. Sometimes this is called natural law. I am not fond of the phrase natural law. I see justice as emanating from the character of God. But I can understand how one could believe that there is something called natural law. Because God did, after all, give us a sense of justice that may seem natural to us. It is not really natural in the sense of existing apart from God; it comes from God. But we won’t quarrel too much on the point. We have much more important things about which to quarrel.

In a semi-sane nation there would be no open false worship, no anti-Christian “freedom of religion.” No open false worship was the standard set in Old Testament Israel, and it makes perfect logical sense. Remember, we are not trying to boss the whole world around. We are just trying to honor our God–the God of the Bible, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–in our own small self-consciously Christian country. That leads to the next point.

In our semi-sane nation, anyone may leave. Enemies of God are encouraged to leave, in fact. Non-Christians may stay–this well might vary from country to country, of course–but they will need to remember that the tail should not wag the dog. There will be countless places on this continent where people who hate God will be welcome, will be considered sophisticated and cool, will be free to advocate and commit all sorts of evil nonsense. But in our little semi-sane country, you will not be welcome. You can leave. Come back when you are ready to grow up.

While those who don’t like our Christian theonomic state–they prefer a humanist theonomic state, or some other kind of theonomic state, because every state is without exception a theonomic state–are quite free to leave us, we do not have an open border policy. We will let in who we want to let in, neither more nor less. We will be the exact opposite of the current U.S., where open borders are the basic standard. Which means, for the U.S., we no longer have our own country. We have the country that the elite humanists want us to have. But that is not the country our semi-sane country will have. We will have our own country. Our dog will be tiny, but he will wag the tail; the tail will not wag the dog.

In our semi-sane country (hopefully, several countries) there will be no abortion. We won’t kill unborn babies. A country which permits the murder of children, born or unborn, is so completely nutty, so morally dead, that it can be salvaged from the ash heap of history only by repenting and changing its behavior. Such a country is suicidal, if unconsciously so. That is the U.S. right now. But our semi-sane country won’t be like that. As soon as we began killing unborn children, we would immediately cease to be a self-consciously Christian country. But we won’t fall that far. We are striving for semi-sanity, remember. Which means we know that we can’t kill children. And, just for sixty seconds or so, take time out and imagine living in a country where children, born or unborn, were safe from being murdered. Where every child conceived would be protected and valued as a blessing from God. The psychological benefit of living in such a country might be surprisingly large. Or maybe it wouldn’t be surprising at all. Maybe we should expect that benefit.

I will try to wrap this up next week, in part II.

Recently I read a newspaper article about school teachers buried in loans from their college days. The article appeared in a big city newspaper. It featured the plight of three public school teachers, all of whom are struggling with large student debt.

The Internet tells us that the average debt incurred by college students is about $30,000.00. That is the average. About 42% are able to avoid debt, so lots and lots of people are going much deeper in debt that $30,000.00.

I won’t link to the article. Nor will I name the three teachers featured. This is to protect the innocent. No, I’m joking; actually it is to protect the guilty. The people featured are very silly people. But their individual foolishness is not the major point I am trying to make. People this foolish are legion, numberless, a horde, a flood. I am not trying to embarrass three people, and single them out as if they are particularly foolish. No, their stories are routine, commonplace. Still, the three individual stories are examples which teach us.

So I will refer to X, Y, and Z. They are real people. X wins the cigar or coconut for having racked up the most debt. The amount? I’m glad you asked. About $130,000.00. That is not a misprint. $130,000.00. X is in his mid forties now . . . and he has $130,000.00 worth of student debt. He tells us he has had every type of experience with student loans–including default, deferment, and consolidation. Did you get that? Default was one of his experiences. So he gets the money and doesn’t pay it all back. Still, he continues to owe $130,000.00.

X, like Y and Z, is hoping the government Public Service Loan Forgiveness program will release him from his debt. His wife also is a teacher and also has debt. She hopes to be rescued also.

Y is in her early 30s. She incurred $60,000.00 of debt in college. Her plea is like that of X. “Save me, Public Service Loan Forgiveness program!” (My words, not hers.)

Z is in her late 30s. After her college years, she had about $36,000.00 debt for student loans. About sixteen years later she still owes $16,000.00. So this budding rocket scientist has paid off about $1,250.00 a year on the principle, on average. She points out that if she didn’t have to make her monthly payment on the college debt, she would have money to do other things, including pay other debts. Being deeply in debt for college loans was not enough for her. She has other debts also.

One thing we have probably all noticed about our current crop of American citizens, is that almost everyone has a sense of entitlement. We all feel like we are entitled to good things. It is our right to have them. If we don’t have them, we are being cheated. The three people featured in this article come well up to the national average in that regard.

But again, X sets the pace. He thinks all student loans should be forgiven. Moreover, all education should be free. What he does, educating people, is supposedly what makes society flourish, so if we want society to flourish, we need to make education free.

Which means, in practice, that people who work for a living and pay taxes, are going to have the great joy of giving a completely free ride to people like X, Y, and Z.

Now I want to back up a bit, and try to get to basic principles. First of all, no Christian should be involved in public education, as teacher or student. How dare we expect our taxpaying friends, neighbors, and enemies, to pay for the education of our children, or to pay us a salary because the civil government extorts money from working people who are forced to pay taxes at the point of a gun? We Christians believe in limited civil government–until we don’t. Suddenly we are no longer for small government, when it comes to our jobs in public education, or when it comes to who pays for the education of our children.

Second, the Bible tells us to avoid serious debt. “The rich rules over the poor,/And the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.” (Proverbs 22:7) The three people featured in the newspaper article are perfect examples of people who, because they are slave-minded, turn themselves into slaves paying interest year after year.

So, any debt we have, we should pay it off very quickly. And we should have an absolute commitment to pay all our debts in full. Default, bankruptcy, should not be options for serious Christians. The three people featured are, once again, completely horrible examples. Instead of going to work to pay back their debt quickly, they just piddled around. X even defaulted in part.

Third, college should be avoided by most people. Get a job. Learn a trade. What is your aptitude? We need plumbers, carpenters, electricians, accountants. Business school, or trade school, is a reasonable option for some of us. Just working for a living at a low paying job is a wonderful thing also. We need people who are simply willing to give an honest day’s work.

If you are gifted in the hard sciences, fantastic. In that case, you may need to attend college. But you should be planning to be among the 42% who exit college with no debt, or with minuscule debt that can be paid off in one or two years.

Fourth, every Christian should learn to budget money wisely. (It is something even non-Christians can do, of course.) For a Christian, that includes learning to tithe (pay 10%) of one’s increase to a local church. A Christian who learns to tithe is well on his way to learning how to budget money. A Christian, unlike X, Y, and Z, is not entitled. He lives in the real world–or should want to do so.

Fifth, if you are interested in, or possibly gifted in, things like history, or fiction, you don’t need college. You need to be reading, reading, reading, and, in your spare time, reading. Get a job of some sort, and read. We need tens of thousands of Christians who care passionately about truth, about ideas, about the arts. You don’t need to go to college to become an historian. You need to love truth, and you need to put in the work reading on your own.

Sixth, college debt is a welfare program for bankers. The interest on college debt is about 5.8%. (This in an economy in which you and I are getting less than one-tenth of 1% interest on our checking accounts!) The poor foolish students are enticed to run up enormous debts, and the bankers collect huge interest with the government expected to make up any shortfall.

Seventh, for most of us, college is a bad investment. Four years of working at a modest salary of $20,000.00 a year, would give you $80,000.00. So the average college graduate is already $80,000.00 behind, since he didn’t earn $20,000.00 a year for four years. Instead, he incurred $30,000.00 worth of debt. So though he is “only” $30,000.00 in debt, in reality he is $110,000.00 behind after four years.

X, Y, and Z are silly people. They are completely unaware that they are foolish. They just went with the flow, and assumed that the world owes them a comfortable living. Now these silly people are teaching our children in public schools. The bare fact that people this idiotic are teaching our children should make us run, screaming like a chicken, from the public schools. That is leaving aside completely the question of whether public education should exist–which it shouldn’t.

Avoid college debt. Better yet, avoid both college debt and college. Do we really want to send our children off to Woke U., to begin life with $30,000.00 worth of debt after being brainwashed for four years?

We are ready for the concluding segment of the series on phrases that have entertained me over the years. The next number is . . .

79/”Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.”

If you think about this one for a little bit, it turns out to be logical. A person can be paranoid–overly willing to see enemies around every corner–and yet this does not change the fact that there really may be someone out to get that person. Maybe someone believes, incorrectly, that he has seven people wanting to do him harm. He is paranoid. But at the same time there really may be at least one person out to get him. This phrase gives us an unexpected truth, and is very funny.

80/”Do something even if it’s wrong.”

This is a phrase I got from my father. I worked with my father. Sometimes things would go wrong, with the machinery or otherwise. In such situations it was my tendency to be passive, waiting for the problem to be fixed rather than pitching in and helping fix it myself. This annoyed my father, who wanted to see me showing some kind of effort to help fix the problem. Hence, “Do something even if it’s wrong.” I really do see his point. We need to be active in life, rather than passive. Of course there are situations where doing something, even if it’s wrong, can lead to disaster. For one example, if you are dealing with electricity, if you are not sure of the wise way to proceed, doing nothing is better than doing something which might turn out to be foolish and dangerous. Still in most circumstances there is a lot of wisdom in my father’s advice. We need to be active in life, not passive.

81/”Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.”

This phrase reminds us that we are not always wise in our desires. We may think a certain outcome is devoutly to be wished. Then the outcome occurs, and it turns out it is a disaster for us. This phrase can be applied to many of our wishes both small and large. For a large example, we may think attaining the hand of a certain member of the opposite sex will lead to wonderfully good things. We wish for such an outcome. Then it turns out that such an outcome was a disaster. (For a fictional example, Mr. Bennet of Pride and Prejudice wanted to marry the woman he did marry. She turned out to be a fool. He married in haste, and repented at leisure.) So we really need to be careful what we wish for, in small things but especially in large.

82/”What, me worry?”

This is the phrase associated with Alfred E. Neuman. He is the mascot of “Mad Magazine.” His feckless grin indicates a foolish overconfidence about life, and the phrase fits the grin perfectly. Still, I can’t help but admire his cheerfulness. I find myself using the phrase fairly often, to indicate that we are in deep doodoo, but that we are not aware of the fact. Perhaps this should be the phrase emblazoned on our national coat of arms. We rush in where angels fear to tread–another lovely phrase.

83/”That teaches you how not to be.”

This came from my mother. I would be complaining to her about the perfidious behavior of some other person, and she would often tell me, “That teaches you how not to be.” She was completely correct. We can learn from observing the folly of others. When we see how harmful that folly can be, to us or to anyone, we really do have an opportunity to learn how not to be. We shouldn’t have to perform every form of folly ourselves, in order to learn that folly is harmful. We can learn just by watching others. Surely we don’t lack for examples.

84/”A puncher’s chance.”

The phrase comes from boxing. It refers to the situation of a boxer who is an underdog in the upcoming fight. He is most likely to be defeated. Still, because he is a puncher–is capable of striking a strong blow–the fighter is not necessarily going to be defeated. One of those punches he throws might hit home in a powerful manner, and allow him to win the fight. He is still the underdog, but he has a chance–a puncher’s chance. We should take heart from this phrase. Often we are underdogs in our endeavors. But we can throw a punch now and then, and who knows, we might just surprise ourselves and others, and accomplish more than we expected. Maybe all of us have a puncher’s chance, if we only knew it.

85/”One over the eight.”

This comes from England. If a person has had one over the eight, that means he is intoxicated. Eight shots of whiskey, eight glasses of wine, or eight beers? Fine. No problem. Ah, but he went one over the eight, and now he is tipsy. The humor of course resides in the outlandish notion that it takes eight drinks of alcohol to become drunk. Two or three will surely suffice, for most of us. “One over the two” would be a more realistic phrase. Which, paired with our knowledge of the original “One over the eight,” is pretty funny in its own right. (Or, for some of us, “One over the one” would be appropriate.)

86/”He won’t set the Thames on fire.”

This is another one from England. If you say someone won’t set the Thames on fire, you are saying that he is no genius, because only a genius could set a river on fire. But of course the phrase is saying more than that. You are subtly trying to hint that the person is a bit thick.

87/”If you keep your head when everyone around you is losing theirs, you don’t understand the situation.”

There can be a lot of truth to this. While we all admire the ability to keep calm in a crisis, there seem to be lots of situations in which calmness indicates that we really don’t understand the situation. For example, the American Christian church seems for the most part to be completely calm as the Deep State endeavors to fasten the chains of slavery on us. I don’t think we understand the situation. Squawking like a chicken would make more sense. We are keeping our heads, but only because we don’t understand the situation. “God is in control.” True, but He gives us the ability to think and act and influence history. I suspect we need to “do something even if it’s wrong,” rather than keep our heads so sedately.

88/”Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

This is a line from Robert Frost’s poem, “The Death of the Hired Man.” It seems like there is a lot of truth just in that one line. It speaks about failure, and about how difficult it is to have a family and a home where you are wanted. We often go home because we “have to go there.” That is, we have made a mess of our lives, and as a last desperate resort we are trying to retreat to home and family. But the hard truth is, the people at our home don’t really want us. They take us in only because “they have to.” They don’t really want our messed up presence among them, but they have to take us in because they are the only home we have. Some of us, of course, are so defeated and alone that there is no place where they have to take us in.

89/”Today is a day of great solemnity. Today I become the king of Spain.”

This is a line from “The Diary of a Madman,” which was a television play I saw many decades ago. The author was the nineteenth century Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. I don’t remember details of the play, but those few words have always stuck in my mind. The madman of the play had convinced himself that he was to be crowned the king of Spain. Because that day was supposedly the day of his coronation, it was a day of great solemnity. He uttered those few words with appropriate dignity befitting the seriousness of the circumstances. It is indeed a serious, solemn thing, to become the king of a country. (Solemnity is a mellifluous word, vastly entertaining all by itself.)

90/”One word of truth outweighs the whole world.”

I have saved my favorite phrase for last. I first heard it when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn used it in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970. (He stayed in the Soviet Union, because he didn’t want to be refused reentry to his home country by the Soviet authorities. Thus someone else delivered his speech in Sweden.) But Solzhenitsyn made no claim to have created the phrase. He was quoting a Russian proverb. It seems to me that the depth of wisdom in that phrase is astonishing. The world weighs how many tons? According to one Internet source, the earth weighs 6,585 billion trillion tons. But as heavy as is the earth, one word of truth is still more weighty than the entire earth. The truth being spoken of is not ordinary undoubted truths. “The bookshelves in this room go all the way to the ceiling.” That is true, but that is not what the proverb is saying. The proverb is telling us that when lies are powerful, and numerous, and everywhere, one word of truth outweighs the lies. Truth may be hated and outnumbered, but truth outweighs lies. As we look around us, we are now inhabiting a world in which lying is constant. It is going to take lots of people willing to imitate Solzhenitsyn by trying to speak unwanted truths, if we hope to defend Christian civilization. I am finishing up a book right now. There will of course be triumphant world tours celebrating Books I Have Loved. But those won’t last forever. I’ll be home again eventually. The book I plan to write next will be entitled One Word of Truth Outweighs the Whole World. I will try to show how dramatically the Bible instructs us that we need to love truth. And I plan to show the cost we are going to have to pay, if we want to be in line with biblical teaching. Are we willing to pay the price? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was willing to pay the price. He changed world history vastly for the better. We can imitate him.

This ends my series on phrases that have entertained me over the years. I hope to try some other topic next week.

Here are a few more phrases which I have enjoyed through the years. We are ready for . . .

73/”Shoot the messenger.”

The need to shoot the messenger seems to be instinctive with mankind. Bad news brought by the messenger? The solution is clear: shoot the messenger. That will fix things. In our current era the need and willingness to shoot the messenger is extremely high, because there is a lot of bad news to bring. I will give two examples. 1/There is large dysfunction in the black community. But to report on that honestly means . . . you must be a bigot. So we shoot the bigoted messenger. Problem solved. 2/American Christianity is pietist, antinomian, truncated, anti-intellectual, and as a result of all its faults not very biblical in its practical behavior, and so American Christianity is 100% the root of our problems in this country. (Okay, maybe just 99%.) If you bring that message, which is clearly true, you must be a mean-spirited enemy of Christianity. So someone who tells us painful truths about American Christianity, like R. J. Rushdoony (Politics of Guilt and Pity–about $24.00 at Amazon) needs to be shot. Problem solved.

74/”We have met the enemy and he is us.”

This is from “Pogo” cartoonist Walt Kelly. It is a clever play on the famous phrase, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” That was part of a message from Oliver Hazard Perry after the U.S. naval victory over the British forces at the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813. The Pogo quote applies to almost everything we do. Our problems are not brought upon us by outsiders. They are self-inflicted wounds. One example. Our public education system doesn’t really teach our children very well and moreover tends to evangelize them toward left-wing verities. But this is a self-inflicted wound. Why should Christians or conservatives, who supposedly believe in limited civil government, expect taxpayers to pay for the education of their children? Our children are being mis-educated because we gave them to the humanist civil authorities to educate. We have met the enemy and he is us.

75/”Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

We like our bathwater clean. We like to throw out dirty bathwater. But sometimes we forget that there is a baby in the bathwater. And the baby may be worth keeping. One example. The writer George Orwell was no Christian, and some of his behavior–not all of it, by any means–was wrongheaded. But along with his bathwater, there was a lot of valuable baby. Some of his books are really helpful to anybody who wants to think about life honestly. I’ll just list 1984, Animal Farm, and Dickens, Dali, & Others as three examples. The bathwater may be a little grimy, and let’s throw it out. But also let us not forget to remove the baby before we throw out the bathwater. Probably most of us have some dirty bathwater in our lives, but we still would prefer not to be thrown out. I’m just saying we should extend that same courtesy to others.

76/”How did I get in this family?”

This was a favorite phrase of my Aged Parent, my mother. She would use it when one or more of us were thinking or acting in ways which she considered outrageously ridiculous. (Not infrequent.) My answer as to how she got in this family was that, “You were adopted.” Since there were six in our family, counting my mother, I told her that the vote was 3-2 to adopt her, and that my father (her husband) was one of those voting to adopt. (I thought it would encourage her to know that.) But I wouldn’t tell her how the other four of us voted. However, the behavior of all of us was sometimes so nutty, that eventually I began to theorize that all six of us were adopted. I have been heard to say, “I know I was adopted.” Come to think of it, no one has ever contradicted me on that point. Hmm.

77/”I believe; help thou my unbelief.”

This was spoken to Jesus Christ by a father whose son was possessed by a spirit. If You can do anything, please help us, was his plea. Christ quoted “If You can!” back at him, saying all things were possible to him who believes. The father didn’t try to bluster through in response. He said he believed, but he honestly acknowledged that unbelief was mixed in. You will not be surprised to learn that Jesus did cast out the demon (Mark 9:14-29). I am glad there are some, perhaps even many, people, whose faith is very strong. They believe, and that is that. Heaven bless them; they are fortunate. But I suspect there are also a lot of us who have to say, with the father under discussion, “I believe; help my unbelief.” I think it is better to be honest with God and with ourselves, than to pretend to Him and to ourselves, that we are rock solid in our ability to believe. And as Jesus Christ was merciful to the father and his son, I suspect He will be merciful to us as well.

78/”Hope porn.”

This is a very new phrase, coming into existence only in the last few years. Pornography of a sexual nature is, we know, something we should avoid. That type of pornography is self-indulgent. Hope porn occurs when something unrealistically optimistic is portrayed as likely to happen, or certain to happen. The phrase came into existence because of how completely defeated are the forces of freedom and responsibility in the current U.S. This is a very painful situation for a lot of us. We feel defeated, outnumbered, and we don’t enjoy feeling like that. The temptation is to believe that wonderful things are just on the verge of happening. One runs into these “wonderful things” frequently on the Internet. Some politician is going to do this, the military is going to do that. The crooked election will be overturned. Everything will be fixed, very soon. This is self-indulgent hope porn. It is vital to stress that not all hope is hope porn. For example, a few days ago I listened to a presentation which indicated that polls show that Americans in larger numbers are becoming open to the idea of secession. That gave me hope, and I don’t think I was indulging in hope porn. I know that we have a long way to go before Americans are truly ready for secession. I know that, even at best, secession is only 3% to 5% of what needs to be done. (The other 95% to 97% is us getting our Christianity to be more biblical.) But there was a gleam of honest, realistic hope for me, in seeing that the American public–pressed by circumstance as they see their moral values held in contempt by the Powers That Be–is beginning to have some understanding that this nonsense really maybe possibly potentially should not continue. I was able to hope, without giving in to hope porn. This is a good place to point out that dispensationalism is a form of hope porn. “Jesus Christ is coming back in visible power, in a year or three, or in a month or three. We are going to be raptured out of our problems, leaving the non-Christians on the earth while we have a good time in heaven.” Yuck. What drivel. It is hope porn, and it is an insult to God to allow oneself to believe things so counter to what the Bible teaches. God has given us plenty of means to get to a semi-sane society–if/when we are ready to use those means.

So much for part IX. I hope to finish this series with part X next week. Adrian Monk (TV series “Monk”) would be proud of me that I finish with an even ten.

We have been discussing phrases that have entertained me over the years. We are ready for the number which is listed below.

63/”If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his fanny so hard when he landed.”

I learned this phrase from my father. I would be talking to him, and I would say if this happened, then so and so would happen. The phrase above spoken by my father reminded me that “if” something might happen was no guarantee that the desired outcome would occur. I have never forgotten the point he was trying to make. Eventually, many decades later, I wrote a book entitled If. The full title, subtitle included, is If: God’s Covenant of Grace. Of course I quoted my father’s phrase, as the epigraph to the introduction.

64/”I don’t care if school keeps or not.”

This is another phrase I heard from my father. The idea was that someone who didn’t care if school kept or not was independent and not overly concerned with the opinions of others. And it seems to me that we need some of that attitude, especially in the current era when the mainstream beliefs are so often ridiculous. We need a jaunty willingness to stand on our own hind legs and accept the consequences of our beliefs. My guess is that if we have enough people who don’t care if school keeps or not, the elite scumbags destroying civilization may discover that we have put a spanner in their works. The question is, will there be enough of us to make a difference for good? I guess we’ll find out, in the next years. Anyway, I aspire to be a person who doesn’t care if school keeps or not.

65/”A beaten pony.”

I first heard this phrase from the mouth of gifted Cincinnati Reds radio announcer Al Michaels, late in the 1971 season. He was describing the San Francisco Giants. The Giants had done really well, and had been leading the division for much of the year. However, late in the season they had begun to fade, losing many games. The Giants were, Al Michaels said to manager Sparky Anderson on their pregame show, “a beaten pony.” I understood immediately what he was saying. They had gotten as much out of their talent as they could, and now were worn out, simply drifting toward the finish line rather than racing strongly. Kudos to the Giants; they hung on to win the division title despite the fact that they were fading. We can all be a beaten pony at times. Is the U.S. a beaten pony? We seem to be drifting to the finish line.

66/”The good, the bad, and the ugly.”

This was a phrase often used by my mother, to describe how life can contain a lot of variety. We know the origin of the phrase, of course. It was the title of the most spectacular of the three Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” There were three main characters, one of whom was good, one bad, and one ugly. The phrase caught on immediately, and we have heard it a lot since the movie came out in 1966. I’m pretty sure my mother never saw the movie, but she appreciated the phrase. Here is the music and scene just prior to the showdown between the good, the bad, and the ugly. Ennio Morricone is the brilliant composer of this music.

67/”The Great Satan.”

We heard this phrase from the Ayatollah Khomeini, the madcap prankster of Iran of a few decades ago, a man prominent during the Iran hostage crisis. He was referring, of course, to the United States. (History of U.S. behavior toward Iran really was horrific, prior to the hostage crisis. Read Ropes of Sand: America’s Failure in the Middle East, by Wilbur Crane Eveland, published in 1980, if you think U.S. hands were clean in our treatment of Iran.) The good ayatollah, I have come to believe, was close. It is not really true that the U.S. is the great Satan. But I think by now we should be able to see that we are a great Satan. Right now on the world scene there are a lot of great Satans among the various countries. Picking the great Satan would be difficult, at least for me. Still, I get much enjoyment out of the phrase.

68/”It’s just about closing time.”

I remember very well the circumstances of me hearing this phrase. I was at a church building where a church was host to a wonderful lunch for local pastors. I was not a pastor, but I was a guest of a pastor friend. The host pastor said something approximately like this: “I wish I knew more about Bible prophecy. I think it’s just about closing time.” His comment indicated that he was buying into the dispensational belief that world history was coming to a close; the visible return of Jesus Christ was imminent. It was just about closing time. That was a memorable phrase. The man speaking was a man I highly respect, a man of godliness and humility. But he was flat wrong. It is not just about closing time. That is not how God works. (If I’m wrong, fine. Come swiftly, Lord Jesus! I’ll be cheering like a son of a gun, louder than anyone else.) God is going to build and extend His kingdom on earth, partly through the heartfelt obedient behavior of His people–if and when we decide to obey Him. So here we had a very godly man, a man deservedly a leader in the American Christian church, telling us, wrongly, that it was just about closing time. I have gotten a lot of enjoyment through the years, teasing my pastor friend who accompanied me that day about how it is just about closing time. I suspect he is more inclined to agree with the phrase, and with his brother pastor, than with me.

69/”Get a life.”

This phrase is telling us that we need to be living in a truly productive, thoughtful way. Which, it turns out, is sometimes not all that easy to do. We exist as solitary creatures, we major in minors (another lovely phrase), we are metaphorically living in our parents’ basements even if we inhabit full scale houses. On the bright side, if we know that we need to “get a life,” at least we have begun to recognize the problem. So it is a phrase we can use to poke ourselves in the ribs to remind us to get moving.

70/”That’s why I make the big bucks.”

This is a phrase I speak often. I use it when I have done something slightly useful, and have had that act recognized. What makes it funny, of course, is that I don’t really make the big bucks. I earn less than the minimum wage during the rare hours you catch me working. Sometimes, among my family, I will follow “That’s why I make the big bucks” with “It’s not all just my movie star good looks–although that is a factor.”

71/”It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.”

This is very useful in a situation in which you have somehow hit the good fortune jackpot. Example: there is one last piece of pizza, and you have been elected to be the one to finish it off. “It’s a tough job, but someone has to do.” Life often gives us these kind of tough jobs.

72/”Columbus took a chance.”

I can remember when I heard this phrase. It was spoken, many decades ago, by a friend, X, and he was recommending some course of action which might or might not be successful. He was pointing out that sometimes you get to a good end by stepping out in faith, or hope–not knowing for sure that it will work out. Columbus took a chance. He discovered a new world. Maybe we too should be willing to take a chance sometimes. My friend’s use of the phrase was definitely, in context, on the humorous end of the scale. It was extremely appropriate to our situation, which had no major project in mind. The phrase had and has a humorous ring to it–but I think there can be a serious undercurrent of meaning in at least some situations. Anyway, I’ve never forgotten the phrase, although I have no memory as to what prompted my friend to say it.

Lord willing, we will continue with part IX next week.

We are ready for the one after the last one. That brings us to number 52.

52/”Live not by lies.”

This is the title of an essay Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in 1974. He was writing especially for his Russian people (and other Soviet citizens) suffering under the rule of the Soviet Union. But the exhortation holds good for everyone everywhere for all time. Surely that must be especially true in times when lying is the accepted way of proceeding for most people. So S. told his fellows, don’t go along with the lies. We in the United States have a choice. We can go along with the routine lies that almost everyone agrees on. Or we can refuse to live by lies. It will probably take courage to refuse to live by lies. But if we keep on agreeing that the emperor is wonderfully and tastefully attired, we will lose the hope of having an honest country. We will lose our self-respect. A few people already have refused to go along with the lies. We can imitate them.

53/”He’s the universal soldier, and he really is to blame.”

This is a line from Buffy Sainte-Marie’s song “Universal Soldier.” Her next lines go on to say, “But his orders come from far away no more, they come from him and you and me.” I think she has nailed our carcass to the wall. Yes, the filthy scumbags who run our country are murdering, lying, warmongering monsters. But the deeper truth is that we ordinary people are really the ones to blame. We have acquiesced in all these preemptive wars. We have wallowed in idolatry of the U.S. military and of the U.S. as a nation. When I say we, that includes Christians–truly converted Christians!–and conservatives. We need to repent and change our behavior. We’re the universal soldiers, and we really are to blame. Here is Buffy Sainte-Marie with “Universal Soldier,” a song she wrote many decades ago.

54/”Libby the Kid is Billy the Kid spelled sideways–sort of.”

Libby the Kid was the cartoon mascot for Libbyland Dinners, TV dinners for kids. The dinners have been gone for a long time, and so has Libby the Kid. But at the time I thought the phrase above was clever and entertaining. I have remembered it all these long decades. I don’t think I ever had a Libbyland Dinner, but I still remember at least this part of their advertising.

55/”What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

Yes, this can be overdone. Something that does not kill us might cripple us so profoundly as to ruin our lives. But there is also a great deal of truth in the phrase. Sometimes bad things happen to us which seem unfair and overwhelming. But if we weather the storm, we become stronger people, more able to stand on principle and to face the future with the determination to do right. What seemed only a hardship, turns out in the long run to be a blessing in disguise–something that toughened us up for future challenges. Hebrews says something similar, in reminding us that God disciplines us as a loving father disciplines his children, for our good (Hebrews 12:3-11).

56/”You’re inimitable, Lewis.”

This is a phrase from one of C. S. Lewis’ books in his Space Trilogy. The books are fiction, but C. S. Lewis is one of the characters. What happened was, Lewis had said something which was so characteristic of his usual way of thinking, that his friend told him, “You’re inimitable, Lewis.” I used this phrase often when dealing with my Aged Parent. She would say something very consistent with her usual idiosyncratic way of thinking. She was completely herself–for better or for worse. So I would tell her, “You’re inimitable, Lewis.”

57/”You go broke gradually, then all at once.”

This seems to me to apply not just to individuals, but also to countries. The Soviet Union went broke gradually–then all at once. I think the U.S. is doing the same thing. We are still in the “gradually” phase, but the “all at once” phase may show up soon. (We are already bankrupt; we just don’t know it yet.) I think this phrase can apply to more than just finances. I think we have been going broke gradually in terms of our morality. Now suddenly our morality is almost completely gone–we are broke morally all at once. Our moral impoverishment happened gradually, but “all at once” we are almost complete idiots on any topic you can name.

58/”The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Here is just one example. The Donald Trump presidency was supposedly going to stop and even reverse illegal immigration, was going to start to reduce our foreign footprint significantly, was going to start the process of dismantling the Deep State. Donald Trump represented incredible change, according to our elites, who got their panties in a wad (see #10) about how horribly Mr. Trump would change things. Well, after four years of Donald Trump as president, we could all readily say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It seems to be a principle of life, that true change comes rarely, and then only after fierce determination and commitment to high principle. Don’t hold your breath that change for the better is going to happen.

59/”There’s no there there.”

This was spoken by Gertrude Stein about Oakland. The idea being that Oakland was just sort of a spot on the map, but not really a city with a distinct personality. My guess is that some people who love Oakland could point out, then and now, how that was unfair! Still, we kind of know what she means. There are things that seem to lack personality. I would say, for example, of American Christianity, that “There’s no there there.” Is that unfair? Maybe, but maybe not. American Christianity is so compromised in its principles and behavior, that we can say, with only slight exaggeration, that “There’s no there there.” Biblical Christianity would look far different. Can we change? Only if we decide to “live not by lies.” That may be “a bridge too far.”

60/”Things hang together.”

This is from Chapter 40 of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. It is spoken by Caleb Garth. I have only read the book once, and don’t feel inclined to read it again, but as soon as I saw that line (many decades ago) I underlined it and wrote in the margin yes. I have never forgotten it, and I think the truth of the statement is constantly enforced upon us. Caleb Garth is telling us, morality fits together in a practical, common sense kind of way. The virtues reinforce each other. So do the vices. If we are willing to steal from our neighbor in how we vote, we probably have other vices we are willing to indulge, because “Things hang together.”

61/”Trees don’t grow to the sky.”

Possibly Aristotle was the first one to notice this. Everything has its natural limit. The reality God has given us has boundaries. We have to learn to recognize the boundaries and work within them. If this seems not worth taking the time to state, consider children being born in the United States these days. Some of them are being lied to egregiously, and their lives are being ruined, because irresponsible adults refuse to recognize boundaries God has set. Boys are boys, and girls are girls. We need to work within those boundaries, or we cause lots of misery for people. Trees don’t grow to the sky, boys don’t become girls, and girls don’t become boys.

62/”Overreaching don’t pay.”

This is a line from Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck says it, or writes it. When we overreach, we put ourselves in position to get a smackdown. It is better not to be in a hurry to do too much. Jesus Christ says something similar, in telling us not to try to take the place of honor at the first table, because the one who gave the invitation may say we don’t belong there, and we would then have to move to the last place. Better, he says, to take a lowly position to start with. Then we can be moved forward by the man who issued the invitations in the first place, if necessary. (Luke 14:8-11) Our human instinct is often to overreach, but Huck is trying to warn us that it can be counterproductive.

I hope to continue with part VIII next week.