Carl Wells Books

“Garage Sale Mystery” was a Canadian/American TV series produced by Hallmark Movies & Mysteries from 2013-2018. It gained enormous fame–but for a very wrong reason. Its star, Lori Loughlin, and her husband Mossimo Gianulli, were arrested for having paid a $500,000.00 bribe to get their two daughters into Stanford University.

It didn’t stop with just arrest, however. Both were sentenced to prison, and actually served time, Ms. Loughlin for two months (late October through late December of 2020). She also was fined $150K, and sentenced to 100 hours of community service. Mr. Gianulli was imprisoned for about four and a half months (mid-November 2020 through early April 2021), and had to pay a fine of $250K, plus, to add injury to insult, to complete 250 hours of community service.

“I paid $500,000.00 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt and a stay in prison.”

I doubt if they got their bribe money back. And one does have to wonder about the practical wisdom of people who spend a fortune in bribes to send their children to college. If they had spent the $500,000.00 keep their children out of college, we might begin to sit up and take notice. That would have made more sense.

I would never have become involved with Lori Loughlin and “Garage Sale Mystery,” except for chance (call it Providence, perhaps). For several of these most recent years I watched DVDs with my Aged Parent. Occasionally my sister Peggy would join us, although not often. Peggy decided to vary our options, so she began to pick out some films at the public library. One of the DVDs she picked out was collection one of “Garage Sale Mystery,” which featured the first four “GSM” films. We tried them out.

Well, the films didn’t go over very well with my mother and with Peggy. I think they watched a couple, then bailed out. I, on the other hand, found myself interested enough to keep watching. I watched all of the four films. It is not the kind of thing I would usually watch, but I found myself intrigued. Collection two was not available at our library, but through inter-library loan I was able to obtain it. Over time I have seen all the collections, and the single films trailing on at the end with belated release.

At the point of my introduction to “GSM,” I knew nothing about Lori Loughlin’s troubles with the law. Eventually I found out that the star of “Garage Sale Mystery” was supposedly headed for prison. Not what you expect from your typical TV star.

Moreover, her troubles with the law meant the end of the TV series. She was fired. Two of the films already completed were eventually released, one only as recently as 2020. Another film supposedly needed only another week of filming to be complete, but that week never took place. And so far Hallmark has not announced that Lori Loughlin and “GSM” will make a triumphant comeback. Personally, I have not given up hope.

This blog post is not intended to generate donations for the Gianulli family. Ms. Loughlin has a reported net worth of $8,000,000.00. Her husband, a designer, has an approximate net worth of $80,000,000.00. They will muddle through, somehow or other.

The sixteen films which make up the series “Garage Sale Mystery” are not great art. But they were fun and I’m glad I watched them. Eventually I will see if they bear up to a second watching.

The idea for the series was prompted by the book Garage Sale Stalker (2010) by Suzi Weinert. That was the beginning of a series of books with the same heroine. I have read the first book. The TV series goes its own way, rather than follow the plot and atmosphere of the first book. And I think the TV people made a wise decision. The book is much darker than the TV series. Hallmark was not going to be able to have a multi-show series of garage sale mysteries, if they copied the tone of the book. Let the book stand on its own, among books. The TV series competes with other TV series. Its artistic arc is different–but not necessarily worse. I won’t be rereading Garage Sale Stalker. (I even found myself annoyed that Ms. Weinert insists on spelling the name of God as god.) The book was not enough to my taste to warrant rereading. But the TV shows may be worth re-watching, and certainly all sixteen segments held my interest the first time around.

There are a couple factors which make the TV series worth watching–at least worth watching for me. For one thing, Jennifer Shannon (Lori Loughlin) is happily married to her husband Jason, a successful builder. They have a profound affection for one another, and treat each other with respect. They have two children, a girl and a boy. The girl is in her late teens perhaps into her early twenties. The boy is of high school age. And here’s what is fascinating about the young people. (Sit down before you read this.) The kids are not smart alecks. The family gets along, affectionately. There is not a hint of Christianity anywhere in the films, of course. But even so it is kind of refreshing to find young people who are not sophisticated wise acres who are ten times smarter, and ten times more morally hip, than their parents.

Then there is the person and personality of Jennifer Shannon. I don’t know how closely Jennifer approximates Lori Loughlin. LL is, after all, an actress. She may be an unholy terror in real life. But in the movies of the series, Jennifer Shannon is a genuinely likeable person. She is of course physically attractive–always an advantage (I blush to say it). She made the shows during the years when she was between the ages of about 49 and 54. She continued to be a physically beautiful woman through all those years. (If I wasn’t supposed to notice, I have messed up again, because I did notice.)

But part of Jennifer Shannon’s beauty arises from her kind and generous personality. She genuinely tries to help other people, and she does so with a radiant smile. She is the kind of person with whom one would want to spend time. Which may be why the series was a success for so many years. And why it might have gone on many more years, if Lori Loughlin had not been stuck in Folsom Prison doing hard time with Johnny Cash in the next cell block.

Lori Loughlin is supposedly a Roman Catholic. Here is one quote from Ms. Loughlin, after her famous troubles with the law : “I ignored my intuition and allowed myself to be swayed from my moral compass.”

Very succinct, and to the point. Well said.

The sixteen films (about 1:25 each in length) which make up the series “Garage Sale Mystery” are not going to be to everyone’s taste. I repeat: they are not great art. Sadly, the DVDs lack subtitles. They are expensive to buy. Today I saw where the complete 16-film series costs $104.90 (free shipping) at Amazon. That is a lot of money for most of us. (I have not been tempted to buy them. I can make do with inter-library loan, for the ones our library does not carry.)

Here’s a link to the Wikipedia article on the series, if you feel like reading more about the show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garage_Sale_Mystery.

Hallmark, as far as I am concerned, Lori Loughlin has paid her debt to society. I think she is ready to go straight and make something of her life. I hope you will give her another chance. Jennifer Shannon has a knack for solving murders while remaining a generous-spirited lady, and she needs to put that knack to work again.

Did Lewis Carroll (b. 1832-d. 1898) visit the United States, via a time machine, in our year 2021? Reading some of what he wrote in 1865 (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) and 1871 (Through the Looking Glass), the question arises naturally. It seems unlikely, of course, since there is no record of him having created and used a time machine. Still, he was a scientific type, a mathematician of some scholarly achievement, and his writings give us a hint that he got to 2021 U.S. & A., observed us carefully, then returned to 19th century England to write down what he saw–without, of course, confessing where and how he got his information. Always a man of mystery, about whom there is still much controversy, this may simply be another mystery about Lewis Carroll which needs exploration.

There are at least three places–there could be more–in Carroll’s books that supposedly are only about the the strange world of Alice, but seem more to be about the United States as we currently are. I will quote the three passages, and comment briefly after each one.

In Through the Looking Glass (Chapter 6) we read:

“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornfull tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less.’

“‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

“‘The question is’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master–that’s all.'”

This puzzles Alice, but we understand Humpty Dumpty completely. Words are a weapon in the war for civilization. The Powers That Be will define what words mean. They intend to be master, and so they will tell us what words mean. They will make up words, if they feel it helps their cause. Think of all the categories of sexual orientation, brand new in the last few years. We are required to go along, or we are in danger of being cancelled. Who is to be master? The Powers are telling us who is to be master. They fully intend to be master.

Somewhere in his voluminous writings, Theodore Dalrymple has pointed out that totalitarians use words in a manner that requires us to bow to nuttiness. The object is not to persuade us that the words make sense. The object is to humiliate us, and to make us feel powerless, and to make us bow to the worldview of the Powers, to acquiesce in lies.

A second passage comes from Chapter 12 of Alice.

“‘Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

“‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first–verdict afterwards.’

“‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first!’

“‘Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.

“‘I won’t!’ said Alice.

“‘Off with her head!’ the Queen shouted at the top of her voice.”

This is our world today, in the U.S. Sentence first, verdict afterwards. I will give just three examples. Did Hillary Clinton’s reckless use of emails when she was in the State Department, rise to a crime worthy of imprisonment? Her sentence was, “Hillary, you are free to go.” A trial and verdict would be redundant.

Is it possible that the Democrats helped concoct the Steele dossier, in order to have something on which to base the charges of Donald Trump colluding with Russia? The sentence was, “Democrats, you are free to go.” No need for a trial and verdict. The media has already given us the sentence. No need for an honest trial and honest verdict. We already have the sentence. What more could we want?

Joe Biden/Hunter Biden foreign adventures with money at stake? “You are free to go.”

If we, like Alice, think this is all stuff and nonsense, then we are low intelligence conspiracy theorists, and it is time for off with our heads. Since our heads are so empty, we won’t miss them much. Right now it is still metaphorically off with our heads. In the future? Stay tuned. We are already being cancelled when possible. From cancelling to off with our heads, may be a short trip.

The third passage I have in mind is from Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 5. The Queen makes a claim about her age, which Alice can’t believe.

“‘Ca’n’t you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a deep breath, and shut your eyes.’

“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one ca’n’t believe impossible things.’

“‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'”

Being able to believe six impossible things before breakfast, is something we can do standing on our heads, in 2021 in the U.S. On Nov. 7, 2019, I devoted a blog post to listing six impossible things which we have believed. I went into some detail on each one of the six. Here I will only summarize.

1/The separation of religion and state is possible.

2/Evolution is a true explanation of how life unfolds in history.

3/The U.S. is the hope of the world, and the U.S. military is protecting us from harm by foreign countries.

4/Democracy is the only legitimate form of government.

5/Public education is a good thing and helps people learn.

6/Any attempt to take a high view of the law of God is to create a works/righteousness brand of Christianity.

For why those are six impossible things to believe before breakfast, please see the blog post for Nov. 7, 2019.

The trouble is, we have not limited ourselves to believing only six impossible things. Here are six more impossible things we have believed. I will not discuss each one; I will simply list them. I will designate them 1a, 2a, etc., since we already have six impossible things listed above.

1a/Black Lives Matter riots and Antifa riots were mostly peaceful.

2a/Derek Chauvin was guilty of murdering George Floyd, a man with a fatal dose of fentanyl inside him.

3a/There is no possibility whatsoever that the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election.

4a/A man “assigned” as being male at birth, can be a woman, and a woman “assigned” as being a female at birth, can be a man.

5a/Russia, a country with an economy smaller than that of Texas alone, is a powerful existential threat to the U.S.

6a/Systemic racism is the cause of the failure of black people in the U.S.

7/Wait, what am I doing? I said I had six more impossible things to believe. What do I mean by listing a seventh? Well, I’m sorry, I just couldn’t stop. I came up with a few more. So bear with me. Number 7 is below.

We create wealth by printing money out of thin air; gold and silver are relics of barbaric times.

8/It is okay to kill unborn children; it is not really murder.

9/Abraham Lincoln saved the union and is a hero.

10/Donald Trump, if he were president, would rescue the people of the United States from the Deep State.

Of course each one of the ten is worthy of discussion, but this blog post is going on long enough. (Adrian Monk of the TV show “Monk” would be proud of me for coming up with an even ten.) So far I have listed sixteen things. We have, as an American people, believed all sixteen, and we did it even before breakfast. I have no doubt many more could be listed.

Two final points.

First, it is impossible to prove that Lewis Carroll invented and used a time machine to get to 2021. If I had to guess, I would guess that he did not have our era in mind as he wrote. Most likely he just unconsciously tapped into his knowledge of mankind’s capacity for self-deception, and wrote things that he knew were strange, but still felt right to put down on paper. He was not a George Orwell writing 1984. He was Lewis Carroll following his instinct. It worked out. If further research does eventually reveal that he used a time machine to get to 2021, well, you heard it here first. I’m not claiming it happened, mind you. Just noticing the possibility.

Second, the Powers That Be will never back off. They will never say, “Oh, gosh, sorry, we realize we’ve gone too far.” No, they want us to believe lies, so that they can continue to tell us what to do, and so that we continue to do what they ask (or order) without complaint. Their ideal world is described in Orwell’s 1984: ‘”a boot stamping on a human face–forever.”‘ They, of course, will be the stampers. We will be the stampees.

Maybe, after all, they are right about us. If we are content to believe six (sixteen, twenty-six) impossible things before breakfast, maybe we are just stupid and morally corrupt, and sort of deserve all the misery they want to give us.

Look at the list of sixteen above. Some of us have believed all of them, some of us have believed some of them. That includes Christian people.

As for me, I stand with Alice. It’s all a bunch of stuff and nonsense. I am going to try to not believe impossible things. I will try to allow words to mean what they really mean, and I will try to have an honest trial and honest verdict, rather than have the sentence before the verdict.

Here’s an example of how that might work out in real life. I believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election. But what happened is what happened. If Joe Biden won, I can live with that. I just want the truth. I will deal with the truth. I don’t want to lie to myself, or to lie to others, and I don’t want to manipulate others. Give me an honest trial and an honest verdict, and I’ll be happy as a clam. Well, maybe not as happy as the proverbial clam, because I think Joe Biden is despicable. But if despicable Joe Biden really was elected, so be it. Give me an honest trial and an honest verdict, and I’ll accept the sentence.

Lewis Carroll, did you visit us from 1865? I wish I knew.

Reading sometimes seems to be dying out, but every now and then I notice something that tells me that it is not time to shovel the last dirt on the corpse just yet. Some people are still reading, and perhaps in numbers that might be surprising.

I have felt some encouragement when I contemplate the website Goodreads. Goodreads is a place where readers can go to rate and even review books. Type in Goodreads and the name of the book you are wondering about, and the chances are good that someone has read the book and has commented on it, or at least rated it.

There are exceptions to this. For example, I have tried to find Goodreads ratings or comments on the excellent children’s book, The Rookie Fights Back, by Burgess Leonard (1954), but so far the book has not been noticed. Also unrated is Nikolaj Velimirovic’s thoughtful short book, The Agony of the Church (1917), a book which makes clear the Christian church’s responsibility for World War I.

I am writing a book titled Books I Have Loved, in which I discuss 46 books which have been important in my life. Rookie and Agony were the only two books which no one else had heard of or read. My beloved Life Is Life: And Other Tales and Episodes, by Gwendoline Keats (pen name Zack) had only one review, an unfavorable 2 stars (out of 5), but at least the book was there, and someone had read it. Maybe I can register with Goodreads and give the book a 5 star review, moving the needle a little bit more toward justice. (Full disclosure: I have written a book about Gwendoline Keats and her books, so I am quite prejudiced in her favor. My book about her is By Noble Things She Stands: The Fiction of Gwendoline Keats/Zack.)

Even a book as forgotten (undeservedly forgotten) as Clancy Carlile’s As I Was Young and Easy has had three readers. There are only ratings and no reviews, but at least three people know about the book, and the ratings averaged out to 4.0, which is decent.

Other books which I might be tempted to think I am the only person remembering, turn out to have a handful of readers. Two examples are Tammy Out of Time by Cid Ricketts Sumner (40 readers), and Sam Small Flies Again by Eric Knight (43 readers). I recorded the number of readers some time ago, for all these books, and the numbers could be higher by now.

A writer we might think is being completely ignored by readers is Anne Bronte. She is the forgotten Bronte sister, an afterthought when compared to Charlotte and Emily. Except that she is not forgotten at all. Her classic book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which every Christian could read with immense benefit, had 92,641 ratings. Ninety-two thousand! You could have knocked me over with a feather, when I discovered that fact.

Of the books I looked up–my 46, and a small handful of others–the two which had gained the most ratings were 1984 by George Orwell (3,340,927 ratings), and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (3,166,454 ratings). People may be reading 1984 in large numbers because they recognize that the people running our country are increasingly like the people running England and the world in 1984. So it is a good thing that people are reading the book and trying to think such issues through. The rating average was a good 4.19.

Pride and Prejudice is the book I often bring forward as a book countless people would enjoy if they only read it. And, to my surprise, many people have taken my advice unbeknownst to me. And the rating is a very high 4.27, one of the highest ratings I encountered for fiction. So I have to be encouraged.

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger is another book with a lot of readers–2,845,708. I was surprised at the relatively tepid overall rating, 3.81. “Tough crowd,” as comics sometimes say when the response is not too enthusiastic. In fact, “tough crowd” often describes the response of Goodreads readers, especially for fiction. But at least they are reading.

Some non-fiction books which I think are very good, got strong ratings. The number of readers was often relatively small. But the ratings were strong. Only highly motivated people with an interest in ideas are reading some of these books. But the ones who are reading are appreciative. Then I think they are motivated to give high ratings, rather than just read the books and give no response, knowing that these books deserve recognition. That is a guess on my part.

Here are several non-fiction books which had under a hundred readers, but gained relatively strong ratings: A Man of Letters (Thomas Sowell), The Breakdown of Nations (Leopold Kohr), The Green Stick (Malcolm Muggeridge), Politics of Guilt and Pity (R. J. Rushdoony), Ain’t My America (Bill Kauffman), Leftism (Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn), Dissent on Development (P. T. Bauer). All the ratings were strong, from 4.16 upward to 4.67! (Only three readers for Dissent, but it got two fives and a four, 4.67. P. T. Bauer, some of us still admire and love you.)

The revised version of Leftism had exactly a hundred readers, and was also respected.

Here is a shocker, and it’s a good shock. Frederic Bastiat’s short masterpiece The Law had 10,942 ratings, and the response was overwhelmingly favorable: 4.37. Christian civilization is not dead, when 10,000 people are reading The Law and appreciating it.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago had 21,623 ratings, with an excellent 4.28. Christian civilization is not dead, when 21,000 people are reading Gulag and appreciating it. (Is there an echo in here?)

Theodore Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom has had a significant number or readings, 2,223, and a quite high rating at 4.22.

Many of the fiction books I love and respect, definitely fell in the category of facing a tough crowd. Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop gained 18,182 ratings, so people are still reading it in fairly large numbers. But the reader response was only 3.78. Wow. Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad, which I am used to thinking of as the most perfect short novel of humor in world history, got a decent number of ratings (2,223), but the reader response was unfavorable: 3.36. Tough crowd. Twain’s Puddn’head Wilson got more ratings (21,422), but the response was poor: 3.79.

Believe it or not–I have trouble believing it–Twain’s Huckleberry Finn received only a 3.82 rating, right up there, I mean right down there, with The Catcher in the Rye.

Reading the comments of reviewers at Goodreads can be frustrating for me. Often people are not thinking about these books in the right way, that is, in the way I think about them. So I have to try to calm down, and just try to be glad that at least people are reading books. I am trying.

I have never tried to rate or review a book at Goodreads. I want to publish my book first. Then I will probably try to do some rating/reviewing at Goodreads. I can give my widow’s might toward seeing that books unjustly treated, get at least a lump of sugar from me. It won’t move the needle much, in every case except one. (Life Is Life is the exception. My 5 rating will at least move the average rating from 2 to 3.5.)

The fact that I have never rated a book at Goodreads, is another fact which should encourage us that more reading is being done than we sometimes fear. There must be countless people like me, who read quite a bit, but never record their response at Goodreads. So if The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has received 92,641 ratings, the odds are strong that in reality many tens of thousands more people have actually read the book. How many? I don’t know. It could be several times as many as those who take the time to rate the book at Goodreads. It has been previously unsuspected by me, but it is possible there are hundreds or even thousands of Anne Bronte groupies out there. That is a comforting thought. Christian civilization is not dead.

Bridget Lalonde was a pretty good high school runner. She was one of the better high school 100 meter runners in Connecticut, as recently as 2018. She made the state finals, and seemed to have a decent chance to win.

Sadly, Bridget Lalonde flopped in the finals. She finished third, well back of the winner, and even behind the second place runner. If she is not too embarrassed to talk about that day with her grandchildren, a few decades down the road, Bridget no doubt will plead extenuating circumstances. (The whiner.)

Bridget, you see, was beaten in the finals by two girls who were boys. Yes, two transgender “girls”–in short, boys–finished first and second in the race. Bridget was third.

If you thought boys should compete against boys, and girls should compete against girls, well clearly there is something morally wrong with you. You are a bigot.

Nancy Armour is a columnist for “USA TODAY.” She has definite ideas about how the world should be put together, and you will be shocked, shocked, to learn that Ms. Armour thinks anyone who believes boys should compete against boys, and girls against girls, is morally flawed in a most egregious fashion.

Here is her column as it appeared a week or so ago.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/nancy-armour/2021/05/18/ncaa-caves-instead-taking-stand-against-anti-transgender-laws/5139338001/

There we learn about the attempts of some states to block boys from competing against girls. Or, as Ms. Armour phrases it, “forcing them to compete based on the gender they were assigned at birth rather than the one with which they identify.”

To me, in my Neanderthal ignorance, that sounds like a way in which girls can have girls sports, and boys can have boys sports, and it sounds to me like the state legislatures are showing some practical common sense.

Boy, was I way off. Nancy Armour has taken the measure of such efforts by the state legislatures. For her, this is all “bigotry,” “mean-spirited,” “cowardice,” “dangerous nonsense,” and “hateful.” Granted, some of her words are directed toward the NCAA and its “toadies” who refuse to defenestrate the states crafting such laws, but putting two and two together we can see that obviously anyone who agrees with the state legislatures is not really a very good person at all.

I think we owe a debt of gratitude to Ms. Armour. By writing such a column, she allows all of us to begin to try to think clearly about what we believe. And this in turn should encourage us to consider what we can and should do.

The legislatures, and the rest of us Neanderthals, are only substitute villains. The real enemy is God. How dare He create a natural order? How dare He allow a child to be born a girl or a boy, and to insist that the child remain a girl or a boy for the rest of her (his) life?

God must go away. Or at least He should keep quiet. Obviously He lacks good judgment, and lacks moral integrity. Nancy Armour understands what righteousness is, and her column explains part of that righteousness.

I admit Ms. Armour has failed to convince me. It seems to me that she is self-righteous rather than righteous. I have noticed in life that self-righteousness is easy, righteousness is hard. Righteousness involves agreeing with what God says is just, and supporting that justice. For one very tiny example, it is just and righteous that boys, who are constructed differently from girls, should compete against boys. When they compete against girls, they have a physical advantage. That physical advantage was programmed into reality by God. To force girls to compete against boys is not righteous. It is unjust and the reverse of righteous.

Self-righteousness is the drug of choice of Nancy Armour, and of countless people who think and live like she does.

Two passages in the Bible seem especially appropriate here. The first is Exodus 23:2.

‘”You shall not follow a multitude in doing evil, nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after a multitude in order to pervert justice;”‘

Ms. Armour is following a multitude in doing evil. Moreover, she is perverting justice. She doesn’t want justice for girls. She wants to consider herself to be righteous, but really she if only being self-righteous.

Then we read Isaiah 5:20.

“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;/Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;/Who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

Ms. Armour is calling evil good, and is calling good evil. It is good that girls compete against girls. But she calls it evil. It is evil that boys compete against girls. She calls it good.

I contend that some of Ms. Armour’s comments are disingenuous. I will quote the following paragraph, and you tell me if you think these comments are honest writing.

‘The lawmakers behind these bills claim that they’re trying to “protect” girls and young women, ensuring they won’t lose their opportunities to compete. But the number of transgender athletes is miniscule, and there is no evidence they’re taking over women’s sports.’

Clearly there is much truth to those comments. The number of transgender athletes is still small (and may even remain small!), and transgender athletes are not yet “taking over” women’s sports, and indeed may never do so. But the lawmakers really are trying to protect girls and young women–not “protect” them as Ms. Armour claims with her insulting quote marks. And the fact that transgender athletes are not yet numerous, does not change the reality that a vast injustice is being done every time a girl or young woman is vanquished on the sports field by a boy or young man who has managed to persuade himself that he is a female.

Our young people look to adults to provide a stable sensible environment. Remember when you were young and you thought adults knew what the heck they were doing, at least knew much of the time? Yeah, I can remember that time too. But it turns out adults were not as clear thinking as I believed. And in recent decades, the adults seem to be getting less and less clear thinking. The inmates, as typified by Nancy Armour and the myriads who think along with her, are now running the asylum. The semi-sane adults have been shown the door. “USA TODAY” actually pays Nancy Armour a salary to tell those of us who aspire to semi-sanity that we are bigots, mean-spirited, cowardly, nonsensical, and hateful people because we want girls to compete against girls.

Ms. Armour’s column offers a salutary challenge to us. Is she correct? Are we mean-spirited and cowardly? Are we going to get our fweewings hurt because she says hard words about us? Or are we going to defend what we believe to be just, even if people like Nancy Armour hate us and call us names?

Ms. Armour says one thing which it seems to me to be incorrect in many ways. She writes, “The majority of the public opposes these hateful anti-trans laws.”

First, these are not really “anti-trans” laws in the thinking of the legislators. Rather they protection-of-girls laws. Secondly these laws are not hateful. Rather, they are wise and are attempting to provide justice. Thirdly, I strongly doubt that the majority of the public is so idiotically corrupt as to oppose laws that protect girls and their sports. Sure, maybe some poll, by phrasing their questions in dishonest fashion, can get a majority to oppose such just laws. But ask the ordinary person if he thinks it is fair for boys to compete against girls, and the ordinary person is still on the side of semi-sanity rather than insanity. (Such is my hope, in any case. If I’m wrong about that, we are in even worse shape than I thought!)

But here is a fourth point about “hateful anti-trans laws.” If we really cared about young people who are considering themselves transgender, we would prayerfully and lovingly try to help them to think more clearly. The teenage years are difficult enough for most people, without all this new-fangled transgender crap thrown in. Maybe if we adults held to a truly Christian view of reality, and lived it out, we could help these young people avoid a lot of misery. Even Nancy Armour admits that transgenders are “a group that already has frighteningly high rates of suicide and depression.” Gosh, what a surprise. But we can’t help them if we are not firmly anchored in God’s reality, and if we don’t care about them. Nancy Armour and people who think like her, can not help these young people. Nancy Armour is the pro-suicide, pro-depression advocate for transgender people. She doesn’t know that, of course. She sees herself as the righteous advocate of people being mistreated by us Neanderthals. That is self-deception.

The choice is stark. Justice or injustice. Calling good good, or calling evil good. Nancy Armour or God.

It matters what we choose.

If you don’t think it matters, put yourself in the shoes of Bridget Lalonde, in the shoes of her parents, in the shoes of all the girls who competed in the 100 meters at the Connecticut state championship in 2018, in fact in the shoes of any person who simply wants to see justice done, and whose stomach burns st seeing evil winked at and called good.

Bridget Lalonde, I am sorry we adults were not there for you on the day you should have been a state champion in the 100 meters in Connecticut in 2018. It should have been a day of triumph, a day to celebrate forever. We let you down. We adults lost a battle, and you were the most prominent casualty.

But the war is not over yet.

Like Brook Benton’s boll weevil, we’re all looking for a home.

Today I want to think about that fact a little bit more, using especially three of our best children’s books.

The three children’s books I have in mind are all relatively famous. They are Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery, 1908), Pollyanna (Eleanor H. Porter, 1913), and Understood Betsy (Dorothy Canfield Fisher, 1916/17). I have written about all of these before, but here I will put them together and mention that what they have in common is that each of the heroines is looking for a home–two of them consciously, and one of them unconsciously

Anne Shirley and Pollyanna are very similar. Both are 11, both are orphans without parents or siblings. Anne is “heart-hungry” (p. 29). Pollyanna is “love-hungry” (p. 247). Both girls are consciously looking for a home. They want to have a home and a family.

Betsy’s situation is somewhat different. She is age 9, and while she is an orphan, she is “understood” and is carefully (no doubt too carefully) and affectionately looked after by two aunts. Betsy is not looking for a home–consciously. But she has not really found her true home yet, as the story opens. Her aunts, for whom she will always have affection, are not really her home, at least not her complete home. She doesn’t know that yet, but she will sense it by the end of the story.

Here’s the thing. We’re all looking for a home. We all need and want a family, whether we know it or not. And it is crucial to understand that our need for a home and a family exist, no matter what. We might have living relatives already taking care of us, as did Betsy. We might have a mother and a father, and siblings, as many of us do–and still unconsciously be looking for a home.

In fact it is really, really, really, really hard to love someone else, to care for someone else as they want and need to be cared for. God has put it into our hearts to have a need to have a family. But He has also organized reality so that it is really hard for us to love other people in the biblical sense. So while we may be in a family, they may not be willing and able to love us as we want (and really need) to be loved.

This is easily seen if we look around us. Look at parents and grandparents, in even most Christian families. Apparently they love the young people. But much of their supposed love is self-indulgent and child-indulgent enabling. They “love” the children and the grandchildren, but what they are often doing is acting in a way that is saying, “This child is great because it is part of me.”

The stories of the three orphan children resonate with us, because we too are looking for a home. We might have had parents and siblings. But did we have family who really cared about us as individual people with individual personalities? Family who loved us with a biblical type of love?

Most of us, I suspect, did not. We, like Betsy, got some good and got some not so good from our family, and we managed to survive and eventually perhaps even to flourish. But we weren’t really home yet, when we were in our families.

Here I am not trying to rake our flawed families over the coals. What I am trying to do is to alert us to the fact that it is difficult to make and to be a family. It takes work, thought, effort, agape love willing to care for someone else in a practical manner.

All three girls found their homes, after considerable difficulty. Anne and Pollyanna became loved by the people who adopted them. It took a while! Anne was almost sent back to the orphanage. Matthew loved her immediately, but Marilla took a little longer. Anne understood that Matthew was “a kindred spirit,” and that he was part of her family from the start. Marilla came around . . . eventually.

Pollyanna was not loved by her Aunt Polly at first. Aunt Polly was determined to do her Christian duty by Pollyanna, but she didn’t have a deep respect for Pollyanna as an individual person. Pollyanna, brave and honest and generous-spirited, was a hard person to shrug off, however. Aunt Polly often found herself “helpless” before the personality of Pollyanna. In the long run Aunt Polly had the joy and the pain of loving someone–pain because Pollyanna faced the possibility of never walking again. But the pain of being deeply worried about Pollyanna, was over-matched by the joy of being able to care for and to love someone. Aunt Polly too had come home. She had found the family she did not know that she lacked.

Jesus Christ knew that there was family, and there was family. Who was our true family? Three gospels make the same point, in case we might miss the point if we saw it only once.

Told that His mother and brothers were outside, Jesus Christ gestured at His disciples, saying ‘”Behold, My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother.”‘ (Matthew 12:47-50; see also Mark 3:31-35; Luke 8:19-21)

Jesus Christ was not rejecting His human family. (He was concerned for the well-being of His mother, in fact, even as He hung on the cross, as we learn in John 19:26-27.) Rather, He was pointing us to the way we can find the true family He wants us to be in. That is, we are to do the will of God the Father. If we do that, we will be in Jesus Christ’s family.

That is in fact how we all can begin to have a true family. It is not a trick. We, many of us, have had families that were far from what they should have been. (Others were more blessed. Thank heaven that is so!) But, as we have grown to maturity and can look back and can easily see where our families failed us, is it not also true that we have not pursued Christ’s royal road to having a family?

We have not worked very hard to do our Father’s will. We have mourned at our own orphan status, but we have not looked around us and tried to be family to someone else. We, like Aunt Polly, have prided ourselves that we are doing our duty. But we seldom are doing our duty as Jesus Christ and God the Father would see it. We are too self-absorbed.

We haven’t cared for other people enough to get to know them, to wonder about their interests and life history, to have a sympathetic desire to see them do well in life. We haven’t offered ourselves as a mother, father, older brother, older sister, to someone who may need another person really to be family to him.

We don’t do it because it is really hard to do, and it has risks. But isn’t that a part of what it means to be family? Jesus Christ loved His family enough to die on the cross for them, so that they would not have to face eternal death. That means He actually died for us, if we want to be in His family. We, if we want to be in a family, may need to see that we are actively trying to be family ourselves. Are there people we could pick out, who need someone who cares whether they live or die? Probably there are, for most of us. Perhaps in being a family to others, God would help us to be happier in His family. He would help us to come home.

Are we even loving our own immediate family with the biblical, agape love that God asks of us? Probably not, for the most part.

Betsy, the orphan girl, helped the younger Molly. As Betsy learned to be more responsible, she was finding her own family. She would always have affection for the aunts who had formerly cared for her, but the Putneys had seen into the depth of Betsy’s spirit, had cared about her enough to see that she developed responsibility, and the Putneys (with Molly also) had become her new family. The final two paragraphs of the book read:

“In the intervals of the game, while Uncle Henry was pondering over his moves, the little girl looked down at her pets and listened absently to the keen autumnal wind that swept around the old house, shaking the shutters and rattling the windows. A stick of wood in the stove burned in two and fell together with a soft, whispering sound. The lamp cast a steady radiance on Uncle Henry bent seriously over the checkerboard, on Molly’s blooming, round cheeks and bright hair, on Aunt Abigail’s rosy, cheerful, wrinkled old face, and on Cousin Ann’s quiet, clear, dark eyes. . . .

“That room was full to the brim of something beautiful, and Betsy knew what it was. Its name was Happiness.” (Understood Betsy; ellipsis by D. C. Fisher)

The orphan Betsy was home. Anne and Pollyanna also found home and family. We too can begin to find our home and family. But we, like those three admirable young ladies, may have to work to find our way home. It will be worth any effort we make.

Today I want briefly to discuss work and leisure. I think we need both.

Personally, I have always been leisure-oriented. Even as a child, I was glad when the school week ended, and was disappointed when Monday rolled around so quickly. I am still that way. I prefer to have as much leisure time as possible. Still, I respect the concept of work–at least theoretically.

In my part-time job I “work” outside my home only 18 hours a week. But work is in quotes, quite properly, because I don’t really work all of those eighteen hours. I can arrange my time at work however I want. I don’t charge for when I am not working, which is only fair. So I might be eating lunch, working puzzles, or reading, for a significant portion of those 18 hours. I might be working only 13 to 15 hours in a typical week. That’s enough to get the basic work done that needs to be done. And, psychologically, that seems to be enough to keep me satisfied that I really am working sufficiently.

Remember, I am naturally leisure-oriented. Even when I was much younger and more inclined to work a 40-hour work week, I often managed to take time off in the winters, in order to write. I had close to zero prospect of publishing what I wrote–this was before my self-publishing days–but I took the time off anyway.

Still, although I am leisure-oriented, I seem to share the human need to work. (I just don’t need to work long hours.)

Human beings, it seems to me, are created by God with a need to be productive. That is how we were created. And it makes sense, from God’s point of view and from our point of view. He gives us the great blessing of life, but with that blessing comes the concomitant requirement that we cultivate and keep the garden (Genesis 2:15). This is not a punishment. It is a blessing: we can sort of earn our own keep, even though our very existence occurs strictly by the grace of God.

So we all have an inborn psychological need to be productive, to earn our own way. We can suppress that need, and can live at the expense of the work of others. Of course we can. We do it all the time, some more spectacularly than others. But when we suppress that need to be productive and we start living as parasites, we pay a psychic cost.

I think we also pay an intellectual cost–we become less able to think clearly. Hence, for example, Christians who refuse to tithe, are less likely to understand economics in general. We blind ourselves morally, then God also allows us to blind ourselves intellectually. It is a covenantal judgment. Sad, but fitting.

I have always been pretty good about earning my own way by working. This was true despite the fact that I was leisure-oriented. But how did I use that leisure time? The results were mixed. Sometimes I used my free time for useful things. Trying to write was useful, even if not likely to lead to success. Reading, in general, was a good use of time. But reading too much about sports was not a good use of my leisure time. There were other ways my use of leisure time was not ideal. I ran more miles than were needed. Running is a good way to exercise, but the number of miles I piled up were more than I needed for health purposes. Sometimes I watched more televised sports than I should have been watching. I was not making an excellent use of my beloved leisure time. Hindsight, of course, gets a lot of criticism as being too late. But I love and admire hindsight. Hindsight gives us the opportunity to do better in the future. Also, other people can look at us and be warned away from our mistakes. I would take hindsight to lunch, and gladly pay his tab.

We all need to find a balance between work and leisure. Finding that balance is not easy, and then using the leisure time in a good way is also not easy.

We need to be productive, but we do not need to earn a huge wage. Every honorable job is of value in the world, even if it is not highly paid. If we can earn a high wage, great, but doing so is not psychologically necessary.

If it is true that we have a psychological need, planted by God, to work and be productive, it is easy to understand why the welfare state is such a vicious attack on mankind. When we are tempted and encouraged not to work, so that we can live on the production of others, our spirits are being violently attacked. Do we want to improve the psychic well-being of our nation by a large amount? One way to do that is to end all forms of welfare immediately. (Of course that includes those forms of welfare which are very often middle class but which we try to pretend are not welfare, such as Medicare, Social Security, public education, farm subsidies, unemployment compensation, for a few examples.)

If we don’t work, we don’t eat. We might grumble at first, but we would all feel better in the long run. In fact we might continue to grumble, but even so it would be better for us that we no longer line up for welfare payments of any sort.

One of my sisters is an example of the great value of work. She, unlike me, is not leisure-oriented. She is more work-oriented. Despite the fact that she is no longer exactly young, she willingly works outside the home for about four days a week. She is respected for her work ethic on the job. This work is of psychic benefit to her. She is being productive in the world. She earns her own way. I think the regimen of work has had spiritual benefit to her. We are made a certain way, by God. By being productive, my sister is doing what God wants her to do, and is blessing the world and herself because she is working.

As mentioned above, we all can be tempted to live on the production of others. The third book I published was Brains Ought Not to Be Overworked. The book was narrated by Wrinklebonk. He, like me, was leisure-oriented. In fact Wrinklebonk preferred living at the expense of others. Circumstances caused him to have to make some hard choices about whether he was willing to work or not. Read the book if you want to see the battle one Jupiterian man had over leisure and work.

We are going to vary in our need to work. I wouldn’t want to put in 32 or 33 hours a week working outside the home, at my age. My sister does it willingly. I prefer to work 13 hours, and to try to use leisure time wisely. I have leisure pursuits which I think are good, and so my psychic need to work is less than if I had nothing to do away from the job.

We all hear of people who quit work, then die within a few months, because they had no way to make good use of their leisure time. They didn’t find the right balance. Retirement can be a danger for those who have nothing worthwhile to do at home.

Leisure time is wonderful. But our use of leisure time can be wise, the reverse of wise, or somewhere in between. Most of us no doubt are in the somewhere in between category.

I don’t want to close without mentioning another partial solution to the psychic and financial ills which beset our nation. That is, we need to end the minimum wage, and to encourage people to hire themselves out as domestic servants. It seems such a practical solution. Being a domestic servant offers such flexibility. Some families are going to need workers 40 hours a week. For others, a servant a few hours a week will work out best. Every worker will find the place that is most practical for him.

If I lost my present job, I might not need to work outside the home. But if I did, I could probably get by on 10 to 15 hours a week as a domestic servant of some sort. End the minimum wage, and probably I would be employable at a salary suitable to me and not overwhelming to my employer. We both would be suited. Keep the minimum wage, and I may not be able to find someone who thinks he would get that much value out of me. It would be better for the both of us if the minimum wage were ended, and we were left to ourselves to find a wage that we can agree on. Who knows, maybe two adults could do that without the national or state government having to tell us what to do. It’s just a theory.

In my book The Way To Do a Thing Is to Do It: Essays, I devote Chapter 8, “Domestic Servants,” (pp. 51-58) to, uh, domestic servants. There I make a longer case for the concept of having lots of domestic servants in the U.S. Actually I think there is a realistic possibility that we will figure that out eventually. It may happen only after an economic collapse makes it much more difficult for the ordinary person to find a place willing to hire him. It would be better if we figured that out before the collapse, but better late than never. Even an economic collapse will not end life, for most people. Some, few or many, may die, but the rest of us are going to have to go on living one way or another. The Rapture ain’t happening. We are still going to have to live on the earth. That will mean we will have to work, somehow or other. Being a domestic servant, for long hours or short, may turn out to be very practical for both employers and workers.

Work and leisure are part of the challenge set before us by God. It behooves us to think how we should employ both, and what the balance should be in our lives.

Most people would agree that World War I (1914-1918) was a turning point in world history. The U.S. entered the war in 1917. Our participation gave the Allies much-needed military help, and Germany eventually gave up in November of 1918. Had we not entered the war, Germany might have won, or the two sides might have struggled to a tie.

Ties have a bad reputation for most people, however. “A tie is like kissing your sister,” as the famous saying goes. I’ve always favored “A tie is like kicking your sister,” but then I have always considered that a tie can be a reasonable and acceptable outcome in many situations, including a war. A tie, like kicking your sister, has its attractions. Perhaps a tie in World War I would have permitted the Allies and Germany to look around at what they had done to each other, and say, “Maybe this was not such a good idea after all.” Maybe World War II could have been avoided.

Lots of people, who are not fond of ties, and who are convinced of the wisdom of U.S. interventions here and there and everywhere, are very glad that the U.S. entered the war. We “made the world safe for democracy.” In fact, our entry into the war was one of the most fateful errors the U.S. has ever made–for us and for the world at large.

Thomas Fleming wrote a brilliant and well-researched book of 543 pages showing how foolishly the U.S. acted in entering that world historical event, and he recounts some of the consequences. That book is The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I (2003). I read the book many long years ago, but only now I’m giving a brief report here.

Thomas Fleming was an historian and a novelist. He wrote over 40 books in a productive writing career. He died at the age of 90 (b. July 5, 1927–d. July 23, 2017). He is one of those writers who operated well under the line of great fame, while at the same time diligently accomplishing a great deal. This is only the second of his books which I have read. The other was very good also. Illusion starts off very well with its first four words: “The Illusion of Victory” is an excellent summary. Most people are still able to convince themselves that World War I was a victory for the U.S. Fleming shows how and why it was a defeat.

While Woodrow Wilson was the chief architect of our foolish intervention in World War I, he had plenty of help. When it came time to declare war on Germany, the Senate and the House of Representatives did their manful worst. (Remember those quaint times when we still needed a declaration of war before we sent young people off to die and to kill for the elite scum running this country? Yes, there was such a time in our history.) The Senate vote was 82-6 in favor of war, the House of Representatives vote 373-50. So Woodrow Wilson had help.

Remember William Jennings Bryan, the thrice-defeated Democrat candidate for president? His finest hour came during the run-up to our involvement in the war. He was secretary of state under Wilson. He bravely tried to keep us out of the war.

“Like most Midwesterners, Bryan viewed the Great War as an outbreak of European insanity from which the United States should distance itself.” (p. 69)

‘When the Lusitania was sunk, William Jennings Bryan was one of the few Americans who resisted the hysteria whipped up by Wellington House and its American mouthpieces. Citing the Lusitania‘s cargo manifest, which listed the ammunition as well as material for uniforms and leather belts in its cargo, he told Woodrow Wilson: “A ship carrying contraband should not rely on passengers to protect her from attack–it would be like putting women and children in front of an army.”‘ (p. 70)

Wilson ignored Bryan. Then, rather than sign Wilson’s proposed second note to Germany which Bryan thought foolhardy, “Bryan resigned, accurately predicting that Wilson’s policy was certain to embroil the United States in war with Germany.” (p. 70) Imagine that–a person in the government standing on principle and resigning rather than going with the flow. We could use a few million people with that kind of integrity.

Woodrow Wilson was just flat wrong in his insistence that American citizens could sail wherever they wanted without consequences. Common sense alone should tell us that.

“invalidated by time and experience is Wilson’s insistence that American citizens had a right to travel on British ships in the war zone, ignoring repeated warnings by Germany that this was a very dangerous thing to do. No such right exists or ever has existed in the history of naval warfare. Nor did U.S. merchant ships have an absolute right to sail into the war zone declared by Germany around the British Isles.” (p. 80)

It is fascinating to note that England’s Winston Churchill was helping get the U.S. into World War I, just as he was later to do in helping get us into World War II.

‘Winston Churchill’s correspondence as first lord of the admiralty offers evidence that getting the United States into the war on Britain’s side was a major consideration. He urged the British government to offer the cheapest possible insurance rates to neutral shippers: “It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany.” The more neutral “traffic,” the better, Churchill insisted. “If some of it gets into trouble, better still.”‘ (p. 67)

(Hopefully someday someone will write a book detailing how Winston Churchill has been the most disastrous non-American in American history.)

Woodrow Wilson was a professing Christian. His life is proof that professing Christianity is no guarantee that one thinks and acts like a Christian. The key to the man’s character was his arrogance. Arrogance mixes well with ignorance, only if you are trying to attain disaster.

Robert La Follette spoke eloquently in the Senate, in trying to keep us out of World War I. Some few years later, he wrote a very insightful evaluation of Woodrow Wilson:

‘”I sometimes think the man has no sense of things that penetrate below the surface. With him the rhetoric of a thing is the thing itself. He is either wanting in understanding or convictions or both. Words–phrases, felicity of expression and a blind egotism have been his stock in trade.”‘ (p. 477)

Fleming gives us a summary of some of the cost in lives and misery, which resulted from our involvement in World War I. (Completely leaving aside for the moment the bad historical consequences which followed.) Some of the costs included: 50,300 U.S. doughboys killed, 198,059 wounded, 62,668 died of disease, almost 1,000 suicides, 41,000+ shell-shock victims (many hospitalized for the rest of their lives) (p. 307).

This brief review only scratches the surface of the excellence of The Illusion of Victory. I marked and underlined many portions. If you are willing to face the truth that the U.S. can be wrong and can bring disaster to other people as well as to ourselves, Illusion will be a book you will respect and from which you will learn. I am happy to say that it can be obtained for a reasonable price on the Internet. Today I saw several copies for sale, at least one of which was a hardcover, for $6.00 total (sales tax extra).

Recently I finished reading a very good book about D-Day. D-Day was June 6, 1944, when the Allies attacked the beaches at Normandy, hoping to begin the liberation of France and of Europe from the Germans led by Adolf Hitler. While D-Day extracted a tremendous price from the Allies, it ultimately was successful. The Allies gained a foothold in France, and as the weeks unfolded, they continued to push eastward. Within a year Germany had surrendered.

The book was Landing on the Edge of Eternity: Twenty-four Hours at Omaha Beach by the English writer Robert Kershaw (2018). The book gave a feel for the difficulty of the invasion, and for the horrors involved. The raw numbers give us almost no feel for the death and crippling. When we read in Wikipedia that the Allies had 4,414 confirmed dead (not counting wounded), and that the Germans took anywhere from 4,000 to 9,000 casualties, the numbers are just numbers, and roll off our minds like water off a duck’s back. Mr. Kershaw’s book is a corrective for that problem. He allows us to have at least some beginning understanding of the bodies killed, of the cripplings, of the fear the men on both sides felt and had to overcome in order to function. D-Day was, for me, painful to read about, and I think most readers will share that emotion if they read Mr. Kershaw’s excellent book.

What I want to do today, however, is to try to step back several paces, and to try to see the big picture. The big picture may be even more frightening than the horrors of D-Day.

Think about it. Christian Germany was fighting Christian England and Christian Canada and the Christian United States. How did this happen? The West was tearing itself apart.

For what? For freedom?

Two generations later, would a visitor from Mars be able to say that D-Day led to a great victory for the forces of good over the forces of evil? About 77 years after D-Day, the West seems completely doomed. Europe aborts its children, and permits the entry of civilization-destroying Muslims. The U.S., ditto. The West seems en route to ending, without one shot being fired in its defense. (Or even without one shot being fired in its conquering. Okay, maybe a few shots being fired in its conquering, by the most violent of the Muslims.)

Where is the great victory of good over evil, of freedom-loving good people over evil Nazis?

In fact, there was no great victory. We deceived ourselves.

Now we need to back up a bit in history. World War I (1914-1918) was the key event in recent world history. In those years the West blew itself apart. But we haven’t backed up enough. World War I was first of all a symptom. It was a symptom that our Christianity had something profoundly wrong with it.

A few people understood that at the time. Nikolaj Velimirovic, a Serbian Orthodox priest and writer, understood. In 1917 he gave a series of lectures in England. Published under the title The Agony of the Church, the book pinpointed the West’s problem: its failed Christianity. No doubt there were a handful of other people who similarly saw what had gone wrong. But the handful must have been tiny. No one paid any attention. We didn’t learn. Germany didn’t learn. Our churches didn’t learn. Half a generation later, we fought World War I over again, in World War II.

And, another two generations later, we still have not learned. “Oh, the evil Nazis! D-Day was the beginning of their defeat, and the triumph of democracy and freedom.”

Really?

The Allies lost 4,414 confirmed dead on D-Day. In round numbers, the U.S. aborts about 2,300 babies a day. So, in two days, we kill as many babies as the Allies lost on that horrific day of courage and carnage.

Something doesn’t compute. Men were torn apart on Omaha Beach so that self-absorbed narcissists could murder their babies? Apparently yes.

The German Nazis were evil, but they flourished because the German church, Protestant and Roman Catholic, was weak and foolish and compromised.

But not for one split second am I trying to single out the German Christians as being particularly foolish. Such bashing would miss the point.

Are we any better? Where has the American Church been, during the murder of 61,000,000 babies in the course of a generation and a half? We have been contemplating our navel.

Another aspect of the big picture, is that our elites are always the same. They always know best what should be done. Except that they don’t. “Why don’t you and you go kill each other, and I will look on and preen myself and direct from afar?” Our elites are filthy. Franklin D. Roosevelt is Lyndon Johnson is George W. Bush is William Kristol is John Bolton is Joe Biden. They are interchangeable, and they never learn and that is because they never want to learn. They cannot be reformed, any more than a rattlesnake can be reformed. They must be replaced. And when we replace them, we will need to work very hard to keep ourselves from becoming as evil as they are. It won’t be easy.

Along similar lines, the country needs to be broken up. This is absolutely essential. Enormous power in the hands of a few people is always going to lead to disaster. Leopold Kohr taught us that huge countries automatically turn to evil (The Breakdown of Nations, 1957). We need to dissipate power so none of us have too much.

The big picture tells us that the West is suicidal. We have been suicidal since well before World War I. That has not changed. ‘”But he who sins against me [wisdom] injures himself;/All those who hate me [wisdom] love death.”‘ (Proverbs 8:36)

Why are we suicidal? I think we are suicidal because we know we deserve to die. We have turned our back on God and on the moral goodness He sets out for us in His word the Bible. Instinctively, subconsciously–certainly not consciously–we agree with His judgment of our behavior. We know we deserve to die, and so we are killing ourselves.

The big picture tells us this fact: our only hope is to begin to develop a brand of Christianity which is biblical, highly principled, and uncompromising.

I understand the difficulty. Pietism and antinomianism are easier. They are easier in the short run, but much harder in the long run. In the long run, pietism and antinomianism lead to the horrors of D-Day, and to babies being killed. They lead to Black Lives Matter, to Antifa, to destroyed lives and destroyed property, to transgender and homosexual fantasies.

The men who fought on D-Day demonstrated terrific courage. That is true of both sides, Allies and Germans. We also need courage. We need moral courage. We need the courage to search the Bible for the truth, and to act in support of that truth. We will need to be willing to think and to act and to be hated. Our filthy elite wants to keep us ignorant and stupid and passive. We are easier to control that way. Then they can go on telling us what to do, and can go on pretending they are wise and good. But they are not wise and good, and we need to quit allowing these people to think and act for us.

Landing on the Edge of Eternity is a very good book. It gives the reader a feeling for the astonishing event which was D-Day. It also reminds us of little known facts, as for example that 19,890 civilians died during the liberation of France (p. 338), or that German soldiers made prisoners were murdered in large numbers by the Allies (p. 298). Robert Kershaw is himself a soldier, and has the ability to portray the events on Omaha Beach in a way that grips us, teaches us, and moves us. He has a very direct connection to D-Day. His father landed with the second wave on Gold Beach on D-Day, and subsequently met and married his mother in Hamburg, Germany. The book is dedicated to them. I have my own slight family connection to D-Day. My father landed in France–but not on D-Day. I think it was about the fourth day after D-Day when he landed. Had he landed on D-Day, someone else might be typing these words.

Landing can be obtained at a reasonable price on the Internet. Today I saw a price of $6.28 (shipping included, but sales tax will add a bit).

I wrote about The Agony of the Church on April 5 and April 12 of 2018. This short book is not quite as much a bargain. Today I found a price of $9.98 (shipping free). That’s a lot for a few pages. But the quality of the insights is tremendous.

Wikipedia tells us this about the iron law of wages:

“The iron law of wages is a proposed law of economics that asserts that real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker.”

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the iron law of wages. That is because the name is so entertaining: the iron law of wages. An iron law, we immediately suspect, cannot be broken.

But in fact iron is something that can be broken. My father worked with metals, and he taught me that. And the iron law of wages is broken all the time. The reason that it is broken is that it is not true.

Apparently the iron law of wages was first named by Ferdinand Lassalle in the mid-19th century. The general bent of the theory reminds us of Thomas Malthus, who forecast starvation. Population is the problem, for both men. Population will increase, and drive down wages (or food availability).

I am not here to bash Lassalle or Malthus. They came up with theories that turned out to be wrong. But wrong theories are often very helpful. We posit something, then try to see if it is true. Seeing that something is wrong often helps lead us to something that is right. I think that is the situation when we think about the iron law of wages.

I am very far from being an economist. But I do have a sort of amateur interest in economics. I admire the free market and think it is very helpful to all of us. Why is it helpful to us?

Basically I think the reason is that God has created reality in such a manner, that the ordinary person can produce more than he consumes. I don’t have to work 12 hours a day, fall into a tent shelter exhausted, just to be able to eat enough to barely keep me alive until the next day, when the whole cycle begins again through a soul-destroying 84-hour week of work. I don’t work 12 hours a day, sleep 11, and eat and do other necessary tasks with the remaining hour. While my less fortunate neighbor starves to death because he got sick and couldn’t work for two weeks.

That is not how reality is constructed. I earn enough to provide food, clothing, and shelter for myself–plus money for lots of other things. This is despite the fact that I work only part-time, and for a wage below the national minimum wage. I am not special. It is just that reality is constructed by God in such a manner that my work buys much more than a subsistence living.

Tools help greatly, of course. Tools help us produce more than we consume. We all benefit from tools. None of us invented the wheel, or engines. That has been done for us. But wheels and engines help move food to us at a modest cost, so that all of us can afford to buy food. We benefit from the tools other have made.

Think about what you pay for groceries. The national hourly wage for everyone in March of 2021 was figured to be $11.31, according to one Internet source. If I earned that much I could pay for a week’s groceries with less than three hours’ work. I earn less than the $7.25 national minimum wage, and even so I have to work only about 4 1/2 hours a week to earn my groceries. I am not skinny, either. Call me pleasingly plump. I doubt if your situation is much different from mine, except that you are earning more per hour than I am, and thus are spending less time paying for groceries than I am. (Plus you’re not as chubby.)

The main thing I want to do here is simply to celebrate the way God created reality. We can all produce more than we consume. Many of us do, and often we do it easily. That is a great blessing.

However, all kinds of caveats must be added. For one thing, many people are encouraged to produce almost nothing of value. Public education, the entire Department of Energy, the entire Department of Education, the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines, the crazy foreign interventions–almost all of this is a dead loss. (We could go on to list many more things which are a dead loss.) Meaning that those who do produce something are really subsidizing all the people who are taking a paycheck to produce nothing.

Moreover, we could still face starvation. Why? Won’t the farmers be productive enough to feed us? I doubt if the farmers will ever fall down on the job. But what if the rule of law breaks down completely, and it becomes too dangerous to take food to the cities? Or the pay for the food is in inflated dollars which end up buying nothing, so there is no longer an incentive to produce and deliver food?

The reality God created permits us to produce more than we consume. But if the Powers That Be enact enough idiotic policies so that they discourage us from producing something–as they have done in countless ways, and seem determined to do in countless more ways–then we could still face disaster and starvation. But don’t blame God if things go wrong. It won’t be His fault. It will be our fault.

Do you want to help poor people so that everyone has plenty to eat, has good shelter, good clothing, and money for extras? “Raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour!”

No, that is the exact wrong direction to go. End the minimum wage entirely, at the same time that you end welfare payments, including unemployment compensation, Social Security, and Medicare. Reduce the number of non-productive zombies (Bill Bonner’s word) from millions to near zero, so that when the zombies get a paycheck it is because they are no longer zombies and now someone voluntarily pays them to produce some good or service.

We would all rapidly begin to prosper. This is all very simple, but it is not at all easy. It is not easy because our hearts are larcenous. We all want to live at the expense of our neighbors.

That includes, of course, most Christians. We generously give God one-quarter of the tithe He asks of us. We want other people to educate our children at the expense of the other people. We want our Social Security and our Medicare and our unemployment compensation. And our farm subsidies. And our this and our that. But God deals with us according to our folly. It turns out that theft is a round game, and more than one can play. God lets us be stolen from, because we were willing to steal from others. It is very fair, but it is also painful.

The iron law of wages is simply wrong. God created reality in such a manner that real wages in the long run tend to produce much wealth, if we are willing to work and are unwilling to steal from others. That is a big “if,” of course. We’re not there yet. Meanwhile, God is so generous that despite our thieving hearts we still can feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves, simply by working a few hours a week.

Here is a link to a real economist, on the topic of the iron law of wages.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/debunking-marxs-iron-law-of-wages/

One topic which does not get discussed much in the current American Christian church, is spiritual gifts. Why not? The Bible seems to give us quite a few passages which talk about spiritual gifts. Compare Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:28-31, Ephesians 4:10-11, and 1 Peter 4:10-11, and a consistent teaching bubbles up.

To summarize, it seems that each Christian believer is given (by God) one or more spiritual gifts. These are to be used for the building up of the church as a whole. While the gifts differ, each gift is important, the less prominent gifts having great value just as do the more visible gifts. Thus while someone may have gifts to be a pastor, evangelist, or leader, another person in the church may have a less visible gift, for example a gift of helping or of showing mercy. These less prominent gifts are needed.

All this is incredibly good news, and should make us sit up and take notice. Isn’t this typical of God’s generosity? What, every knucklehead Christian has a gift which the church really needs to have exercised by that knucklehead? Yes, apparently so, according to the Bible.

Why then do we hear so little about spiritual gifts? Every one of us has at least one spiritual gift, and clearly (by looking around us) we see that most people have more than just one. This is something to celebrate, so why don’t we talk about spiritual gifts much more?

I think the answer is that if we talk about our spiritual gifts, it will be borne in upon us all too clearly that we are responsible to exercise our spiritual gift (or gifts). And if there is one thing we can almost all agree on, it is that responsibility is something we love to avoid.

We all just want to be a Christian and thus to avoid going to hell or being annihilated, and we want to have our ticket punched for heaven (eventually–no hurry). Accept responsibility? Not so much.

By admitting that our default position is to avoid responsibility, we face our situation honestly.

Let’s go back and consider the remarkable fact that God gave each believer at least one spiritual gift. This gift comes “naturally” to the person. By naturally, we mean that God supernaturally intervened to give each believer that gift. But even a natural gift must be cultivated if it is to come to full fruition.

Two examples will suffice to prove this. Michael Jordan, the famous basketball players, had a gift given to him by God, to play basketball. But he had to cultivate that gift. He played basketball. A lot. He worked at becoming a better basketball player. Gradually, as he cultivated his gift, he became one of the greatest players in basketball history.

The second example is painful. In our county we had a young runner who had a lot of natural running ability. This ability was cultivated, but only to a certain extent. A high degree of success was reached, at an early age. This runner almost certainly had the potential to be a national class runner–possibly world class. But the cultivation stopped. The gift was allowed to atrophy. God’s gift was frittered away.

The point is obvious: we must cultivate the gift God gives us, or we may fritter away our opportunity He has given us to help Him build up His church and build up His kingdom on earth.

There is another aspect to gifts, which is also embarrassing to us to contemplate. That is, while we may not have a natural bent from God to be excellent to exercise all spiritual gifts in a dramatically good fashion, still we can improve in developing our non-gifts into something that looks very much like a productive gift. Thus, our natural gift may not be toward service or showing mercy, but we can become markedly better even in serving and showing mercy!

An obvious example proving this embarrassing truth, is readily at hand. God requires of us that we tithe (give 10%) to His church (Malachi 3:8-12). We as an American church give about 2.5%, or one-quarter of what God requires (see emptytomb.org). So we are falling far short of what God requires. But He does not ask of us more than we can fulfill. So every one of us could tithe to God’s church, if we were determined to do so.

Clearly most Christians do not have the gift of giving! Giving is a gift which, the Bible says, the recipient is to exercise with liberality, so yes, giving is a gift from God (Romans 12:8). Some people have a natural gift from God to be willing and able to give generously. It does not pain such people to tithe and even to be further generous in their giving. They are blessed to have that gift. But I suspect that even so they had to learn to cultivate that gift.

People without the natural gift of giving could work at doing better in their giving. If they did so, the 2.5% giving of the average Christian would within a few years move to 4%, 6%, and eventually 10%. We can cultivate non-gifts, just as we can cultivate gifts.

We don’t want responsibility, so we don’t think about our gifts, and so the church leadership does not spend time trying to identify the particular natural gifts God has given every member of the church.

There is one other possible reason why the church talks of spiritual gifts so seldom.

I’ll try to say this gently. I’ve bashed those of amillennial and dispensational persuasion so often, that even I can barely stand it. So I just want to say as quietly as I can: because we do not expect to see the kingdom of God built up on earth in time and history, we are not looking for means to build up God’s kingdom on earth. Spiritual gifts from God, diligently exercised by us, are an obvious means to advance God’s kingdom. But God’s kingdom cannot be advanced in a dramatic fashion on the earth, so spiritual gifts are not really all that practical. They can’t help us do something which can’t be done. So, at least, amillennialism and dispensationalism would have us believe.

One of the most humbling and instructive verses in Scripture surely must be 1 Corinthians 4:7. Verse 6 warns us against arrogance. Then, verse 7, “For who regards you as superior? And what do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”

Salvation itself is a gift. Not something we earned. So boasting is not reasonable. But everything good we receive, not just salvation, is a gift. Are you naturally good-looking? A naturally good athlete? Naturally intelligent in mathematics? You have a gift for anything? The verse encourages us to remember that we didn’t give ourselves these gifts. We are the recipients of gifts. Humility should be the order of the day. Which, of course, is easier said than done.

Note how generous God has been to give us gifts, including (but not limited to) spiritual gifts. If He is generous and does not begrudge giving us gifts, it seems in good logic that we in turn should be willing to exercise our gifts to build up the church and others. (We are recipients of gifts, not the creators of the gifts we received.) Which, in a result typical of God’s organization of reality, when we exercise our gifts in the service of others this tends to build us up at the same time as we become people more in line with what He wants us to be!

I encourage each Christian to try to learn what your particular spiritual gift is. Then cultivate that gift; don’t let it atrophy. Meanwhile, work at improving even those spiritual gifts which are not natural to you. Also, while each person has at least one spiritual gift, experience seems to teach us that most people have more than one gift. Don’t be surprised if two or more spiritual gifts are more or less natural to you. Cultivate every one. God wants you to use your gifts for others as well as for yourself.

Don’t expect spectacular results as you use your gifts. Just do your small part. God has millions of servants. He just needs each of us to do a little bit. He’ll make it work out.

Also, you can help other people realize that they have a spiritual gift or gifts. Most people don’t ever think about this topic. If you keep your eyes peeled, you can begin to see the natural spiritual gift which God has given to someone. You can help other people identify their spiritual gift or gifts. A word of encouragement could bear long-term fruit in another person’s life, and to the benefit of all of us.

If you are a non-Christian, spending half an hour studying Bible passages which speak of spiritual gifts may alert you to the fact that you are the recipient of one or more gifts which God wants to see used for the building up of the church and of others. So, prayerfully, over as many days or weeks as you need, consider whether or not you are being called to humble service of the God who created you. Repent, accept the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, and then use your gifts to serve God and others. You can’t do a lot worse than the rest of us.