Columnist.
Phil Robertson, star of A&E hit reality show Duck Dynasty, has been suspended from the show because of "anti-gay" remarks he made in an interview with GQ Magazine. Explaining Robertson's suspension, A&E indicated that "A&E Networks ... have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community." But, as far as I read the interview with Robertson, he wasn't responding to a question about homosexuality. He was responding to a question about sin.
A new study just published by the National Institute on Retirement Security -- "Race and Retirement Insecurity in the United States" -- presents a dismal snapshot of the state of retirement savings of minority American families. It reports that 54.3 percent of blacks work for employers that offer retirement plans compared to 62.3 percent of whites. And 43.9 percent of blacks participate in those plans compared to 53.9 percent of whites.
When presidents give speeches, the affair is choreographed like a Broadway production. The message is not just the words of the speech, but where it is given and who happens to be the chosen audience. So it was not by accident that President Obama chose a theater in a poor black neighborhood in Washington, DC, where the average income is barely half the national average, to speak this week about economic opportunity and fairness.
As we experience more of the unpleasant realities of the Affordable Care Act, Americans are questioning, finally, the forthrightness and honesty of their president in his selling of this law. As millions of individual health insurance policies are cancelled, it is transparent that the president distorted the truth when he told Americans, "if you like your plan you can keep it."
I have lined up my Christmas presents this year for our President, Barack Obama, and for his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. I will send them both a copy of the last book written by one of greatest economists of the last century, and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974, F.A. Hayek. The book is called The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism.
Politics is in the eye of the beholder. Post-mortems now gushing forth about why Ken Cuccinelli, conservative Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, lost to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a business-as-usual political retread from the Clinton crowd, tell us more about who produces this punditry than what reality actually might be.
Political discussions commonly assume there are two separate sets of issues. There's a social agenda -- issues like abortion and marriage. And there's an economic agenda -- issues like federal spending, debt, taxes, and government programs like entitlements. It's usually assumed that these two agendas don't have anything to do with each other.
A number of years ago I was between flights on a business trip and was sitting in an airport restaurant having lunch. It was right after the 2008 presidential election and I knew that the election of America's first black president, a man of the hard left, would make my job bringing a conservative message to black communities much more challenging and difficult. As I ate my sandwich I glanced at the wall and saw a sign with a quote from General Douglas MacArthur. It said, "We are not retreating -- we are advancing in another direction."
We ought to think about the cultural roots of the budget crisis in Washington. The political left says the shut down is all about an ideological tantrum of a handful of Republicans. Certainly Tea Partiers have an ideology and vision about what ground rules would produce a more prosperous, freer, and fairer America.
Let's get clear about the political realities behind the budget impasse in Washington and the government shutdown. Nothing captures the distortions being perpetrated more than the headline of a Washington Post column by Anne Applebaum that reads: "The GOP Undermines Democracy." And, according to President Barack Obama, a "faction" of Republicans (read "tea party") is holding the nation hostage to its "ideological demands."
Among the pearls of wisdom conveyed in Ecclesiastes is that everything has its time. "A time to be born ... a time to die, a time to plant ... a time to uproot, a time for war ... a time for peace." The founders of the United States drew up a Constitution to serve as an operating manual, in its checks and balances, for peaceful, deliberative government. They understood human nature and set up a system in which competing interests would have to give in. Compromise, they understood, is a necessary lubricant for the wheels of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" to turn and allow us to move forward.
According to a new Gallup poll, 55 percent of Americans say they have little to no confidence that they can rely on mass media to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly." Forty-six percent say the media is too liberal and just 13 percent think it's too conservative. Justification for this public sentiment is evident as the budget and debt-ceiling issues heat up and the press can hardly restrain its disdain for Tea Party Republicans and the idea that our nation may really be in crisis.
Whether we are talking about respect for a nation or for an individual, nothing undermines respect more than duplicity -- saying one thing and acting differently. I think it is a big reason why President Barack Obama's Tuesday speech to the nation, in which he attempted to explain why he has proposed military action in Syria, fell so flat.
An important new book has recently been published which addresses the question of global poverty, but does so by provoking the reader to also consider our own nation and demand that we better understand ourselves and the wellsprings of our own success. Two evangelical Christians have teamed up, one an economist and one a theology professor, to write "Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution."
One potential benefit that can come from last week's March on Washington 2013, which commemorated the 1963 civil rights event, is the various data publicized about the current state of affairs of black America vis a vis the rest of the country. In particular, it has been an eye opener for many to see how little progress has been made over the last 50 years in closing the economic gap, on average, between blacks and whites.
Looking over the program for the festivities commemorating the 50th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, it's hard to not feel sober about the whole thing. I say sober because there is good news and bad news. What's the good news? There has been monumental progress in the quality of life, on average, that black Americans lead today.
The purging of Grammy Award winner Donnie McClurkin from performing at a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1963 civil rights March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech should serve as yet another wakeup call to Christian black Americans. McClurkin, a black pastor and gospel music superstar, was asked to step down from his featured performance by Washington Mayor Vincent Gray as result of pressure from homosexual activists. McClurkin preaches against the homosexual lifestyle from his pulpit and says he himself departed and was saved from this lifestyle through God's mercy.
Vitriol has gone beyond partisan give-and-take in the nation's politics. It is now seeping into and poisoning the ranks of the Republican Party. Mainstream Republican politicians are cringing at the proposal by senators in the Tea Party movement -- Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida -- that upcoming legislation to appropriate funds to operate the federal government be held hostage on condition that Obamcare funding is withheld.
In a poll done by Gallup earlier this year, the biggest complaint lodged against the Republican Party was "inability to compromise." When I read the daily headlines, I see this theme continue. Republicans, particularly tea party Republicans, are portrayed as obstructionist, extreme, unreasonable, and unwilling to compromise. But let's get perspective.
Amid the dense fog and hot air blowing around the Republican Party, a new voice of clarity has emerged. It's the voice of Louisiana State Senator Elbert Guillory, who announced several weeks ago his departure from the Democratic Party, which he calls "the party of disappointment," to become a Republican.
