Dear Friends,
First, allow me just a bit of pure political punditry. After all, I basically took the entirety of 2021 off from politics, so I figure you can indulge me.
The Virginia governor’s race was widely regarded as a “bellwether” election—that is, a race that would forecast things to come in next year’s midterm elections. And, boy howdy, there are lessons galore. In case you were busy watching the decisive Game 6 of the World Series (Congrats to the Braves, who not only made MLB host games in the supposedly “bigoted” state of Georgia, but deliciously won the thing!): Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin soundly defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe in a state Biden carried by ten points just a year ago. And the GOP took over the Virginia house while they were at it. And the Republican gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, in a race considered a snooze-fest, ran neck-and-neck to a photo finish. The most heart-warming story of the night is that a Republican truck driver nobody had ever heard of named Edward Durr spent a whopping $153 on his campaign, and he ousted the New Jersey Senate President, arguably the most powerful political figure in the state. Oh, and the Republicans had a clean sweep of judicial elections in Pennsylvania.
What do we learn?
First, it’s really nice of that Venezuelan Election Theft outfit, their Russian hacker friends, along with the Chinese bamboo-laced ballot manufacturers to take the night off. No, seriously: if you’ve been on the “Stolen Election” train all this time, it is time to just eat your pile of steaming crow. The Democrats did not “steal” the 2020 election. Donald Trump lost (while the rest of the GOP did really well).
Second, while Trump amusingly tries to take credit for Youngkin’s victory, the actual results reveal a stark truth: Donald Trump is an albatross. Or as National Review’s Kyle Smith put it, “Kryptonite in the Suburbs.” Trump lost “yuuugely” in the Northern Virginia suburbs, and, what do you know? Glenn Youngkin didn’t. Maybe the candidate actually has a role to play in all this? But Trump is actually right for the wrong reason: he did contribute to victory. He did it by staying in Palm Beach and far, far away from the Commonwealth of Virginia. His absence is what mattered.
Something more astonishing: the conventional wisdom has been that, sure, Trump may have lost some ground in the suburbs, but he energized the conservative rural vote (the so-called “real America”) so as to offset the losses. Here is Tuesday night’s reality: Glenn Youngkin outperformed Donald Trump in conservative rural counties. That means that even in rural counties, at the height of his fever-pitch popularity, Trump was leaving potential voters on the table. I know this experientially because I happen to be one of them. There was a moment in August of 2020 when I had the conscious thought that maybe I am just going to have to vote for Donald Trump. And then he did something characteristically obnoxious and I suddenly remembered who he is and so, again, I didn’t. (And, of course, his post-election antics sadly confirmed my judgment about the man.) I was obviously not alone in my hesitancy. A back-of-the-envelope comparison between Trump’s 2020 performance in rural Virginia and Youngkin’s performance a year later tells the tale: Donald Trump does not maximize the potential GOP electorate in the places where he is reputed to do so. A good candidate other than Trump means doing better in the suburbs and rural counties.
The takeaway: The GOP can continue to cling to MAGA and keep Trump front-and-center, or they can win. Choose one, and choose wisely. The only problem is that the latter requires our narcissistic 44th President to be content to remain on the sidelines instead of injecting himself into races playing “kingmaker.” So, that was a nice fleeting thought. Good luck with that, GOP.
Third, if you are worried that the progressive left will suddenly come to their senses and stop with the toxic Critical Race Theory, elitist snubbing of concerned parents regarding education, or spending our country into oblivion, there’s no reason to worry. They cannot help themselves. The talking points are already written. McAuliffe just wasn’t a good candidate. We didn’t explain our message well enough. Voters are only frustrated that we haven’t spent another $3 Trillion yet. And that is the real bellwether: I project the 2022 midterms are going to be a bloodbath for the Democrats. Because they will double down. There’s not a chance they will distance themselves from the academic educational establishment with regard to CRT and curricula, or the teacher’s unions, and they cannot help but try to print money by the trillions.
So, memo to the GOP: You know that thing where you run a normal, well-spoken, confident, secure candidate who doesn’t peddle conspiracy theories about election theft, talks about empowering parents and local communities, expanding school choice, cutting people’s taxes especially in an inflationary environment, rejects divisive and racially charged rhetoric, and so on? Get back to that, please. And hope and pray Donald Trump lets you. Because that was the fine print you didn’t read when you signed him up in 2016.
“Approval” Is The Demand
I received a great deal of warm feedback from last week’s newsletter on “kneeling” to the new prevailing sexual orthodoxy. Thank you for your kind words. There’s no update on my now lost-Twitter account—the company just ignores all of my emails and I imagine that will continue in perpetuity.
At the risk of turning The Square Inch into Rod Dreher’s blog at The American Conservative—that is, a clearinghouse for reader-responses telling chilling tales of workplace discrimination and persecution—I must share with you one particular compelling story from reader Kirk Schoenbein:
A friend of mine just forwarded me your 10/29/21 email regarding your twitter ban. Oh, how it resonated with me! After a state and federal prosecution career of 25 years, I was appointed as a state judge in Peoria, IL in 2013. In 2019 I was up for re-appointment and as part of the process there was a performance review and it was during that review that my passing up on volunteering to do same-sex weddings was brought up. It didn’t matter that under Illinois law judges have the right to recuse themselves from proceedings that violate their conscience, that S.Ct. Rule 40(a) provides that weddings are to be assigned only to judges "willing" to perform them, that the right to a weddings doesn't entail the right to have a certain judge do it, that these weddings were getting covered, and that my immediate supervisor authorized me to pass on these proceedings, what mattered was that one judge out of 21, a Christian, was choosing not to do them. Two of my reviewing judges were homosexual and were pushing this issue.
Eventually, during the review process, my Chief Judge asked me, "Yes or No, if you are assigned to do a same-sex wedding will you do it? I need a yes or no answer." I told him I could give my answer right on the spot but I wanted to write it out and he agreed to that. In my written response I made the above-mentioned points and declared my refusal was out of obedience to Christ's design and command for marriage as "male and female," quoting Matt. 19. Needless to say, three weeks before the expiration of my term I was informed on 6/5/19 that I was not re-appointed. No salary, no health insurance, no judicial retirement (I had not vested), no severance and no unemployment benefits over passing up on what was a volunteer assignment that was always covered by other judges.
After much prayerful consideration, Mr. Schoenbein and his wife elected to not engage in an emotionally and financially costly court case. Instead, he chose a career change and is close to completing a seminary degree in apologetics. His message to us is loud and clear: when I said last week that people are going to lose their jobs and livelihoods, it is already happening. He further warns that soon state bar associations are going to begin interpreting their “morality” and “good behavior” clauses so as to prohibit dissent on the new sexual orthodoxy. And I imagine that will play out, if unchecked, in many other disciplines and industries, essentially locking Christians out of numerous professions.
Activists and ideologues will not stop until you kneel. At the very end of the Apostle Paul’s scathing critique of pagan sexual libertinism in Romans 1, he concludes: “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” (v.32). Did you ever notice that? Approval—not “tolerance”—is the demand, and there is no “safe space” for conscientious objection, not even in your own mind.
You might not be interested in the culture wars, but the culture wars are very interested in you.
Whole-Person Economics
The cover story in the last print edition of National Review, written by celebrated economist George Gilder, is entitled, “Life After Capitalism.” It is currently behind a paywall, but it is well-worth reading if and when it ever emerges into the public domain. I need to read it carefully again because it is deep and thoughtful, but I’ll share a few observations that struck me.
Karl Marx reduced capitalist economics (or, as we should properly call it, free enterprise economics) to a matter of the passions. Particularly, greed. A system set up for the “haves” to manipulate and exploit the “have nots” in order to satiate their unbridled avarice.
Capitalists have typically responded by saying, “No, no no. It is simply about incentives.” Self-interest and incentives are at the heart of a free enterprise system. I’ll gloss this as making economics primarily about human action, or, put another way, the will.
Gilder brilliantly injects another option into all this: free enterprise economics is about the mind, or, more particularly, information and knowledge. It isn’t the passions or the will that fundamentally fuel economic growth and innovation: it is thought, knowledge, creativity, and ingenuity.
I want you to notice something. Each of these explanations identify the “center” (what it’s really about) in one of the three basic human faculties: the heart (passions), the will (action), or the mind (knowledge). It has always been the bane of post-Enlightenment philosophy to engage in unwarranted reductionism. Why in the world are we asked to choose between these things? After all, God created human beings as imago Dei so that these faculties would operate in perfect harmony: head, heart, and hands acting in concert. Indeed, human flourishing and success only comes to the extent that human beings are able, by God’s grace (common and special), to be what they were created to be. Economics is fundamentally about anthropology: a philosophy of the human person. And if the human person cannot be divided or carved up or reduced to only one of these three faculties, then why should we understand economics—the study of human beings and their use of resources—in terms of only one of these things? (Note: I’m not saying that George Gilder is making this reductionism—this is a more general observation.)
The great Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) insisted on a “whole-person” anthropology. In his work on the imago Dei (image of God) he steadfastly refused the various reductionisms on offer with respect to that doctrine. Kant believed everything was fundamentally about the will (e.g., the “categorical imperative”), Hegel believed it was the Mind (e.g., “Universal Reason”), and Schleiermacher believed it was the passions (e.g., the “feeling of absolute dependence”). Bavinck replied, “Yes.” To be the image of God is to have a head, a heart, and hands. And to the extent various thinkers prioritize one and pit it against the others, their systems of thought will be distorted and out of balance.
That is all just prelude to this: David Bahnsen is releasing his new book on Tuesday. It’s called, There’s No Free Lunch: 250 Economic Truths. David is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of The Bahnsen Group, a highly successful independent wealth management firm based in Newport Beach and New York City (with offices also now open in Minneapolis and, in 2022, Nashville). He can be seen frequently on various market-oriented cable news shows.
Why should you buy David’s book? Because David’s understanding of economics is rooted in a biblical whole-person anthropology. He is a champion of the free enterprise system, to be sure. But not for radical “Randian” libertarian reasons about self-interest and incentives, and he’s no Gordon Gekko “Greed is good” caricature, either. His understanding of economics is rooted in the imago Dei: we are created as image-bearers of God with minds full of creative potential, hearts full of desires (e.g., “the pursuit of happiness”), and hands able to cultivate the natural world around us. Furthermore, he also understands that sin has marred that image and that human beings are disordered—an understanding that comes in particularly handy when one is calculating, say, the risk of investing money in human action or institutions.
That’s enough from me. I’ll let David give you his own two-minute sales pitch. Enjoy!
Miscellany
This was a lengthy one this week, so thanks for sticking with it this far. I’d just like to give you your periodic reminder that the United States of America left hundreds of citizens behind enemy lines in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and doesn’t particularly care. And now Jim Geraghty of National Review reports this morning that the number of green card holders (permanent residents entitled to every protection of U.S. law except the right to vote) left behind is 14,000.
The current Administration would like it very much if you would just forget.
Do not forget.
This won’t be for everybody, but I really enjoyed watching classical guitar legend Angel Romero geeking out about a 1958 Hermann Hauser instrument. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!