I’ve recently returned from the RAND Corporation’s Graduate School in Santa Monica. RAND was created after WWII to help the U.S. analyze Cold War policy. It is surely the world’s premier think tank. (See their web site, www.rand.org, for the full breadth of their research.) Among applicants to their Ph.D. program, the most common score […]
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The rising price of gas and the Montanans in combat with our armed forces remind us daily of the dangers we face from our Islamic enemies. If the situation worsens, the economic effects could hit real estate prices and hurt the local construction boom. So what is this “war” we are in? It is a […]
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Most who believe the end is nigh are mere curiosities, disappointment their shared reward. In contrast, Islamic terrorists know precisely when their world will end and they murder on their way out. Empathy doesn’t help me understand these terrorists. Economics and ethnology do. The explanation has less to do with money than with culture and […]
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Sunday, NPR awakened me with this wonderful news: Saddam Captured While Hiding in Hole Near Hometown. And I immediately thought, another monster finally came down. Let’s be joyful and proud of America’s good work. On the Wall Street Journal’s web site Peggy Noonan wrote: “He can’t kill anybody now. He cannot gas women and children […]
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Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria writes in The Future of Freedom: “First, a government must be able to control the governed, then it must be able to control itself. Order plus liberty. These two forces will, in the long run, produce legitimate government, prosperity and liberal democracy.” Now that Saddam’s regime is gone, the U.S. […]
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Our pride in the U.S. military’s men and women is bound to increase even further. Why? In this war their demonstrated bravery, competence, and daring are barely diminished by bureaucratic and political dishonesty. Lies from the top in any organization demoralize and diminish those below. This is true for churches and colleges as well as […]
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Many of those opposed to our military action in Iraq shout, “No blood for oil!” They believe our desire for Iraqi oil, not security, motivates our actions. Do these people think in terms of slogans, or causal relationships? If they don’t understand the driving force of allied military policy, they may be correct, but not […]
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Fundamentalists are people who believe they are God’s chosen people with a monopoly on Truth. Fundamentalism has attracted millions of adherents for centuries. Relying on revelations from God, it elevates, it comforts, and it offers meaning and direction to those lost when uncertainty and ambiguity reign. However, lives are lost when fundamentalists seek the coercive […]
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There were more people in our church on September 16 than last Christmas or Easter. And Billy, my old logger buddy, and his wife Pam, were sickened by events and saddened by assaults on American Muslims. The outpouring of sympathy and constructive reactions represent America at its best. We believe that America is the world’s […]
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