The president spoke at the annual prayer breakfast this week and had some "interesting" things to say about tax policy, New Testament theology, and the role a Christian should play (and pay) in society.

I wrote about the whole thing over at AEI's "Values and Capitalism" blog.  Here's an excerpt:

Most of the verses that sound like the president’s reference have nothing to do with charity and speak to the need a true believer has to be utterly dependent and subservient to the Spirit and Word of God. Matthew 25:29, which reads, “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance,” is a call to Christians to use their God-given abilities and advantages wisely and productively. This is seen as a non-negotiable aspect of being a disciple of Christ. The reward for such behavior is additional opportunities to serve God “faithfully and fruitfully,” as one commentator puts it.

And here is where “faith and politics” smash right up against one another. As I said before, nearly every American is on-board with the notion that people should pay their taxes. We all (correctly) praise those who give their time and money to those in need. We’re all for helping and fairness and puppy dogs.

The problem, simply put, is this: If another self-proclaimed Christian is using scripture and doctrine to promote things that I know to be detrimental to an economy and society, I can’t support that Christian merely because he brings up “Christian stuff” in convoluted ways. I can pray for that Christian. I can be cordial and kind. If that Christian is willing, I can use the Matthew 18 model of coming to that “brother” in hopes of admonishing and correcting him. But if he persists, if entire swaths of our society persist, then I am duty-bound to oppose the ill-fated plans. Regardless of intentions—something only God can assess anyway—I must apply the advantages I’ve been gifted. In this instance, President Obama unfortunately learned at the feet of people who believe in economic policies that can’t work.

Please read the entire thing right here.

Just to prove we don't only talk political/economic issues here at A Voice in the Wilderness, I wanted to quickly post a few videos of songs and bands that I currently enjoy listening to...while reading and writing about politics and economics. Keep in mind, this is purely a list of music that I like listening to right now.

First up is a little ditty from my good friend Andrew Belle.  He has a new record coming out this spring, but my current favorite A-Belle tune is this one "Sky's Still Blue":

I'm not just saying this because I eat Chipotle with this kid once a week (or more), but Andrew Belle is awesome. Listen to this song.  Buy his stuff on iTunes.

Next up is a band that I only found out about because of - free market conservatives, plug your ears - Public Broadcasting Service (channel WTTW here in Chicago) and their "Austin City Limits" program. The Heart and The Head is a Seattle-based group that sounds a lot like The Avett Brothers, and that means they sound fantastic. It's fun music.

The third song and band I wanted to share is "Better Life" by Paper Route. I actually have a friend in this band as well, but again, I would listen to this song even if Al Franken and Barney Frank had formed a super-group and constructed such a ballad.  Paper Route is a Nashville band and if you haven't heard of them yet, you probably will in 2012.

The final video I have for you comes from my boys, The Black Keys.  Their new album "El Camino" is out and makes me so very happy every time I listen to it.  The song "Gold On The Ceiling" is my favorite track and it will soon be yours.  If you like blues at all, you'll appreciate these guys.

I'd love to hear from others what contemporary music I should be aware of, so post a comment and clue me in.

The year was 1994.  I was about 11 years old.  My father, as he was wont to do, was watching his favorite weekly news program The McLaughlin Group.  As I sat and tried desperately to understand what was being said on the television screen about the 1994 mid-term elections a man named Michael Barone chimed in with an anecdote about Newt Gringrich and former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.  I went and looked up Mr. Disraeli in the family encyclopedia and thought to myself, "Who was that smart guy who knew how to bring this dead British politician into a conversation about an American election?"

That man was Michael Barone.  He's on my podcast this week.  The circle is closed.

This week's episode of The R.J. Moeller show starts with R.J.'s candid interview with AEI Resident Fellow, Michael Barone.  Mr. Barone is a political analyst and journalist who studies politics, American government, and campaigns/elections.  The principal coauthor of the annual Almanac of American Politics (National Journal Group), he has written many books on American politics and history. Michael is also a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner.

Topics covered include: the electoral college's relevance, the likelihood that the GOP takes back a majority in the U.S. Senate, and what brought a young Michael Barone from idealistic liberal to sober-minded conservative.

In the second segment, R.J. chats with his friend Brett Kunkle, Student Impact Director for the organization Stand to Reason in Los Angeles.

Brett is passionate about seeing students and adults “transformed by the renewing of their minds.” He has more than 18 years of experience working with junior high, high school, and college students. He spent 11 of those years as a pastor to students and young adults at Chino Valley Community Church in Southern California and Creekside Church in Colorado.  A dynamic communicator who engages both heart and mind, Brett speaks to thousands of students and adults at churches, conferences, and college campuses across the country.

R.J. talks with Brett about the work STR is doing, and some of the challenges people of faith are confronted with when it comes to equipping young people with the intellectual and rhetorical tools needed to articulate and defend what they believe in the public square.   You can follow Brett on twitter at @BrettKunkleSTR!

Stream the episode live below, or find (and subscribe to) us on iTunes!

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By: A.E. Carnehl, Guest Contributor

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The turn of the 20^th century was marked by a number of new philosophies that had grown out of the Darwinism, Marxism, and scientific skepticism of the 19^th century.  Theosophists, or individuals following the ideas of Helena Blavatsky, maintained that personal spiritual ecstasy and open-mindedness were the means of encountering the Divine.  Others, like those following Tolstoy (among other prominent writers), were rebelling against the Church and Catholicism declaring that Christian dogma was constricting and out of date.

In philosophy, the focus began to shift more and more toward individual subjectivity when it came to truth and morality.  Communism, materialism, atheism, anarchism, pragmatism, and many other "–isms" stood in the path of common sense and Christianity.

Straddling this path with a sword cane and a pen stood G.K. Chesterton.

Chesterton tirelessly defended the idea that a human being was an animal that created dogmas, or to put it another way, a human was an animal in the Image of God.  As a dogmatic creature, human beings had in their nature to make judgments and have beliefs.  All the talk at the turn of the century of having an “open mind” for no other reason than to have an open mind was sheer nonsense to GKC.  To hope, to dream, to pray, to love, to hate – all these human actions require basic beliefs, and the sum of one’s beliefs make up his dogma.

Chesterton is famous for declaring, “Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”

The following excerpt from a 1909 essay shows in more detail what G.K.C. meant by all this:

“In a vast number of cases, an adjective is ornate or exquisite to the point of artificiality; but that the word it is applied to is entirely forgotten.  Thus, when they [free-thinkers] say, “Give us a broad religion,” it is reasonable enough, since one religion is really broader than another.  But every religion is a religion; that is, it ties a man to something.  A faith can be free up to the exact point where it is unfaithful.  Or, again, there are politicians who call themselves “independent” politicians; and who boast that they are not attached to any part.  They are not; but they would very much like the party to be attached to them.  They have some theory or proposal or other; they cannot be any broader than that theory or proposal.

The truth is that if a man wishes to remain in perfect mental breadth and freedom, he had better not think at all.  Thinking is a narrowing process.  It leads to what people call dogma.  A man who thinks hard about any subject for several years is in horrible danger of discovering the truth about it.  This process is called becoming “sectarian,” also “hardening in later life”; it can also be described as “giving up to party what was meant for mankind.”  It is a terrible think when a man really find that his mind was given him to use, and not to play with; or, in other words, that the gods gave him a great ugly mouth with which to answer questions, and not merely to ask them.  The crocodile finds it easy enough to open his mouth and wait for a [tribesman] or an explorer.  It is in knowing the exact moment at which to shut it that they really fastidious and dexterous crocodile shows his training.  In the same way the modern man fancies he has reached supreme culture because he opens his intellect.  But the supreme culture (in the forcible modern phrase) is to know when to shut your head.

There is one odd aspect of the man with this sort of open mind – a man whom one imagines with an open mouth.  It is that being thus gaping and helpless, he is really brutal and oppressive.  He tyrannizes; he forces on all other men his own insolent indecision.  He forbids his followers to come to any conclusion till he has done so.  He will allow no one else to find the truth, as Peary will allow no one else to find the Pole.  He is the worst tyrant that the world has seen; he is the persecuting skeptic.  He is the man who has held up the whole world now for over a hundred years.  I thought of one or two examples, but there is no space to mention them.  Perhaps it is just as well.”

-Illustrated London News, October 16, 1909

By: R.J. Moeller

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We're roughly a year away from the next Inauguration Day.  At this time next year, one of three men will be sworn in as our president for the following 4 years.  For all intents and purposes, it's between Mitt and Newt for the Republicans, and then obviously between Barack Obama and the winner of the GOP family feud.

It's a frustrating and nervous time for many voters - especially conservatives.  Many people who share my worldview are disheartened by the prospect of having to vote in the primaries for someone they aren't thrilled about, followed by 6 months or more of wall-to-wall partisan quarreling.  Added to this is the fact that all Americans are frustrated and nervous about things like the economy, education, and foreign policy time-bombs that appear on the verge of massive explosion.

The hard, bitter truth is this: all of those worries are legitimate and justified.  No sense in denying it.  Acceptance is the first step to recovery.

But alas, all is not lost.  Not yet, anyway.  I stumbled upon one of my all-time favorite YouTube clips this evening and it reminded me of something very important: This is a special place, our country.

The ideas, ideals, and values we have built our society and government on are different.  They are special.  We aren't individually special or better than the people of other countries.  We're all God's children.  We're all fallen men and women, no different than Americans of any other age.  The times in which the Founders or Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan lived in weren't special.

The beliefs those men lived by, governed by, were special.

It's easy to grow nostalgic when you watch a clip like this one above.  It's easy to grow discouraged when you step back and take an honest assessment of the political and cultural landscape of our time.

But I still believe that this is a special place, made so by our ideas, ideals, and values.  The capstone of the American experiment in self-government - one which the progressive builders of a secular welfare state have rejected - is simply this: "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights."  That's it.  That's everything.  With it we may still fall, should it be God's will.  Without it, we cannot help but fail.

Americans still claim a faith in God, however weak the beating pulse of true religion in this country may be.  We still acknowledge the importance of family, even to the point where we have contentious on-going debates about how "family" (and its precursor "marriage") will be defined.  We even still have huge swaths of young men and women who volunteer their lives to serve and protect their fellow citizens. (Thanks Brent and Matt!)

God, family, country: and in that order.

It may be a different time, but it's still the same place. We don't need another Reagan.  We need an intellectual and spiritual revival - a moral resuscitation.

We need 300 million "Reagan's" who share in the vision articulated above.  Or - and this is in closing - at the very least can agree on the moving words from a WWI soldier's diary that The Gipper quoted that cold, blustery Inauguration Day 21 years ago:

We are told that on Martin Treptow's body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, "My Pledge," he had written these words: "America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone."

Men and Women live in the same world, so why do they see it so differently? Renowned relationship expert, Alison Armstrong, provides answers that are provocative and profound in this entertaining fully animated Prager University course, the first in a new series.

Hope you like it! Let me know what you think!

It's here.  It's what you've been waiting for.  Joining R.J. and Eric Teetsel on American Enterprise Institute's "Values & Capitalism" podcast this week is our first liberal Democrat!

And who did we bestow this sacred honor upon, you ask?  Why, none other than Tim King, Director of Communications for Jim Wallis' Sojourners organization.

A native of New Hampshire, Tim is a graduate of North Park University, a former community organizer (on the South Side of Chicago, no less), and has been with Sojourners since 2008.  He frequently posts thought-provoking pieces at God's Politics Blog.  Tim is a young man who takes his faith very seriously and has committed his life to affecting real change in matters of poverty and justice.  Follow our friend Tim King on Twitter at @tmking.

You are going to enjoy the conversation R.J. moderated between the free-market Teetsel and social-justice King.  Topics discussed include: caricatures of the "Religious Right", how Sojourners views a place like AEI (and vice versa), and what common ground can be found among Christians who differ in their views on economic solutions to our nation's current troubles.

The goal was to engage in a serious, thoughtful, and civil dialogue.  You can judge for yourself, but as far as the three key players in this exchange were concerned - mission accomplished!

Stream the episode live below, or subscribe and listen for free on your iTunes!

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Few things interest this blogger more than WWII history.  It is the single most important event of the 100 years, and perhaps well beyond that.  Andrew Roberts is a fantastic historical writer from Great Britain and has penned an excellent new book, The Storm of War, for which he sat down with Peter Robinson and Uncommon Knowledge to discuss recently.

Here's the entire interview, but even if you only have time to watch part of it, watch some of it!

I also highly recommend Roberts' Napoleon and Wellington.  He is England's David McCullough.

Stream ProLifeCon 2012 live below!

Follow me on Twitter at the hash-tag #ProLifeCon

From the movie Patton:

"For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph - a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: That all glory is fleeting."

Very sad to hear about Joe Paterno's passing. He wasn't a bad guy, in my estimation. He was, however, proof that "all glory is fleeting." Decades of doing so many right things at Penn State - of being a great coach, upstanding citizen, and leader of men - can be brought crashing down by a few key poor decisions. It's a lesson we can all learn from (in so many ways).

Being a young man myself, it's hard for me to even ponder what my "legacy" might be one day (hopefully) far into the future.  But the primary lesson I will take away from the saga of Joe Paterno is this:  Worry about doing the right thing in every situation and not about your legacy. The former will take care of the latter.

RIP, JoePa.