The joy of marriage, where fifty years is hardly enough time to experience it, is finding your completion in opposition. Men are not women and women are gloriously not men. The differences are slight, so slight they are hard to describe, but they are there and the longer you live with your spouse the more obvious they are.

One sort of feminism of the last century attempted to make men and women the same. Of course, men and women are equally human. A visitor from Mars might not be able to tell our sexes apart the differences are so slight, but we are not from Mars or Venus. Humans know the differences, which feel greater because they are so slight that we are always teased into thinking they are nothing, especially in our youth and under the power erotic, but end up looming larger as a result. Just as home conflicts can be slight but mighty, so the not-just-as-I-am differences between men and women loom huge. It can be irritating as women have always known. Some men think they want a man in a woman’s body . . . others that men would be better off without women at all and many women wonder why God created men at all. We are so irritating to each other. But there can be no marriage, no union of key with lock to open the door to two souls, without a man and a woman.

We need no mirror. One technological advance that has been, on the whole, a disaster is the availability of cheap and effective mirrors. They are everywhere and allow us to see ourselves in our own eyes. This is not, for all but the saints who know who they are, a great temptation. It is a temptation to love self or to loath self, but always to see self. The last thing a man needs is another man to reflect his maleness back to him.

I see myself now, best, in the eyes of my wife and I am changed in that place. She sees me, thank God, not as I am or even as I was when we married twenty years ago, but as I should be. There is nothing like that. It leads me forward. She civilizes me and she says, though I find it hard to imagine, that I have helped her become more herself as well. The difference is like a spice in a good meal, small but vital. This vision requires sticking it out through horrid times. It comes only

I have been writing about the danger of a “Brown Shirt” Russia for some time. Russia is rapidly slipping under the control of the Mafia. The economy has problems providing for the aging population and the best way to distract from these problems is (as always) to make the American Eagle scream or engage in a splendid little war somewhere on the ages of the Empire. What edge? China is too big and powerful to control and the West will prevent any reassertion of Russian demands in her direction. The Russian state has a long interest in controlling Persia (Iran) as part of its drive for a warm water port. Only Constantinople is a bigger target for traditional Russian power diplomacy. The kleptocracy in Moscow wants Iran and needs some way to look powerful to its own military and citizens.

The time has come to worry about Putin and the Russian Mafia getting in bed with the theocrats in Iran. Russia has nukes. Iran has a young population it needs to placate with war, anti-Semite ranting (also a problem in traditional Russia), and hatred of the US. Of course Russia is also busy killing Islamic rebels in parts of its decaying Empire, but Iran will be willing to “use” Russia, much as Putin will be willing to “manipulate” Iran. Both will hate the other but work together on the principle that (for a time) the enemy of our bigger enemy can be our friend. Think Iran as Isengard and Moscow as Mordor in terms of the mutual using to the peril of the West.

We need to encourage liberty in Iran and Russia now before the marriage is consummated with nuclear weapons.

Activism irritates me in actors. Of course, I am a philosopher writing about movies so my complaint cannot be that they are stepping outside their area of expertise. What is irritating is that that many seem to assume that playing a role (doctor, lawyer, missionary) makes them an expert on what they are discussing. Let me be as clear as I can be: I am not a Russian historian, I don’t read Russian, and I am not an expert. . . however, before I will opine on Russia I try to read a few dozen books (in English) on that area. That way I can be at least a fairly well informed layman. There is a role for such folks. Most activist actors seem unwilling to do more work than read lines they are given. There are of course notable exceptions. I don’t agree with Rob Reiner but he seems bright and looks as if he has done enough reading to opine in his areas of interest.

I received a very good email arguing that the problem with the “Tip of the Spear” actor (sadly now a title that itself provokes smirks) is that his activism now has dimmed the ability of the viewer to forget him and get into the character. That seems fair enough. Ed Asner is no longer able to be much of anything other that a liberal activist, because when we see him that is who he is. Reagan would not have been able to leave the Presidency and make movies playing anything other than himself.

If that is the complaint with this actor, that like Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds, he has messed up his movie by having a big mouth then that is fair enough. However, that has nothing to do with his being gay per se.

As to “how serious” homosexuality is many Christians seem to confuse its seriousness ontologically (where my lack of charity may be more serious) with the time in which such sins become manifest (near the end of a culture in decay). Widespread homosexuality does seem to indicate that secularism is winding down. . . but a symptom may actually be less serious than the root disease (a failure of love best seen in divorce and other societal ills). The disease that finally kills a man or a culture may not be as bad as the disease that caused that final illness.

There is a movie that looks good hitting theaters today. “End of the Spear” is based on a powerful missionary story that inspired millions in my parent’s generation to serve the cause of Christ. It expands that story by examining martyrdom from the perspective of the killers and not just of the martyr.

This is a good idea. Allegedly, some Christians object to the “fact” (I am assuming it is true) that a major actor in the film is openly gay. If this is true, then it is bizarre on the part of the Christians. My secular readers can also rest assured that this sort of “reasoning” is rare in the Christian community. I don’t know a single student, for example, in Torrey Honors who would not know that such an argument is not just wrong headed (it is), culturally counter-productive (it is), but un-Biblical. Whoever is advancing such claims has achieving that rarity: being wrong in every possible way! Against this they can only place sincerity, but sincere ignorance that leads to folly is no excuse.

Shall we stop doing business with everyone that does not agree with us? But wait doesn’t Saint Paul say:

9I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people– 10not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler–not even to eat with such a one. (ESV)

With all traditional Christians, I believe homosexuality is a disorder. Best reason argues that it is not natural, but then no sin is. How shall I treat my gay co-worker or neighbor? I trust the same way I wish (as a sinner perhaps greater than he) to be treated: as a fallen human in whom the image of God demands that he be given love and dignified treatment.

Since we are all sinners, the idea of sitting about waiting for a Christian film to be made with actors who are not disordered will require a long wait. It will also require living outside of the actual world. Treating homosexuality in this way lends credence to the notion that Christians think it the worst of sins when lack of charity (ahem) is far worse.

Every one hundreth email or so I receive one that complains that the major parties are not Christian (no kidding!). The letter writer somehow has confused the state with the church, wishes to lop off one head of the Byzantine eagle, has never read Dante or Augustine, and lives in a world where wishes are votes.

“Unfair!” the letter writer cries, “all that needs to be done is to stop voting for the Republicans and Democrats! After all, aren’t they all the same!”

Christians should not support the major parties but give their all to the Ye Old Constitutional True Americans Third Independent Party. It is argued that my personal failure to support YOCTATIP (the writers always use acronyms) is the main reason YOCTATIP does not win. “If everyone who says YOCTATIP cannot win voted for us, then we would win!” True, but then once we seriously considered voting for the party, we would also have to listen to your actual candidate and decide that Joe-Bob Snerdly, a retired lawyer from Bakersfield, was actually someone we wanted to be governor/president/senator. The main reason we haven’t examined this in detail is, well, J.B. is not going to win.

“But what good does it do to support the Republicrats?” the anguished old hundreth letter writer cries!

And now with Sam Alito going to the court we know. Change in any culture is either revolutionary or incremental. Incremental change is just about the only sort a Christian can support as revolutions are hardly ever worth the cost in human pain and misery. The Hollywood left has slowly changed the culture by an intentional strategy of presenting distasteful ideas over and over until we succumb. This is wise and good. In that sense, the children of this age are much better than the children of the age to come who wish to change everything today in some political apocalypse. Voting for imperfect Republicans and Democrats who will embrace the culture of life works, slowly, but it works.

Extremism is defense of liberty may not always be a vice, but it is invariably stupid.

It turns off those it means to woo and then often causes pain as side effect of its haste. That (of course) would be vice.

So to the one percent of conservatives who will not vote for a moderate or a person they have some disagreement with, I offer a hearty round of the Old One Hundred that you did not prevail with almost any traditional Christians. The culture of death is less healthy today than it was, freedom is expanding globally, and we have a seat at the table, because extremism failed in our churches and homes.

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow. . . “

Yesterday I pointed out that Hilary was playing to the audience with her “plantation remarks.” She did not mean it and it was obvious she did not mean it. There is only one thing worse than insane ravings and that is to yell over-the-top nonsense and not mean it. You appear both irrational and insincere.

Conservatives who think Hilary (!) is an over-the-top liberal are wrong. By today’s standards of liberalism (which keeps evolving), she is moderate. She is no Pelosi. (Of course, by my traditional Christian standards, she is far left, but then my position does not keep evolving. What was moderate just twenty-five years ago, like support for marriage, is now “far right” to the secularists on the left.)

She knows we are in a War and at one point (before needing the tin foil hat wing of her party) voted for it and the arms we need. The real rap on Hilary (!) should be that she is insincere, or better insecure, in everything, including her liberalism. Her politics are about Hilary (!) (just as her signs were reduced to her name as a slogan) and not about any world view. Hilary (!) wants to be loved by the far left, a product of her years in the Establishment academia, but she is much less about the ideas than she is about getting back to the White House. She believes that she incarnates the moral goodness of the left so that the cause is less important than Hilary (!) finally finding love and acceptance in a great national group hug of Hilary (!).

John McCain is the Republican opposite of Hilary (!). Trapped by his actual heroism early in life, which he seems to believe justifies almost anything he wants, McCain has a conservative voting record but is disliked by many (if not most) conservatives. They know he does not mean it when he speaks to them and that if he had not lived in Arizona could have voted in almost the opposite way. Outside of military and defense issues, John McCain lacks deep convictions other than advancing John McCain. Under pressure, his insincerity shows, conservatives get it, and McCain will never be the nominee. One can be more sympathetic with John than with Hilary(!) because his pain, for which he seeks a national balm, was earned in our service and in genuine sacrifice.

Unlike Bill, Hilary (!) has the McCain problem. She knows what she must say, but she has a tin ear in her delivery. She is too sensible to be a far out leftie and too much of the left to be able to let those folk go. She needs them to get the nomination, wants their love, but cannot get it without being insincere. Her husband was one of those blessed pols who meant whatever they are saying at the moment are were saying it, but can forget it the next moment. Hilary (!) cannot do this. The problem for the Democrats is that she has a devoted personal following large enough to get her the nomination, but she will leave African-Americans and labor cold. They will dutifully support her, but not with the love needed for a Democrat to win. They know that she might hire them to clean her house, but that she is not one of them. Bill came up from poverty and pain (one his good features), but Hilary (!) is a child of privilege and money. She can only posture as a compassionate Woman of the People as she seeks to cover her personal pain by getting the Big Job and proving, once and for all, that her leftist education and compromises with herself have not left her the very parody of the Woman Famous for Her Man that she always despised and feared that she would become.

Instead of parodying her as a leftie (which seems tired to me), Republicans should suggest Hilary (!) call Dr. Laura rather than run for President. Hilary (!) is tired, angry, and bitter with life. (They could give the same advice to John McCain.) If Republicans want to get under her skin and make her mad (as well as needle the lefties who suspect that all this is true), then they will attack her as insecure and insincere and suggest the presidency is no salve for a wounded ego.

Can’t you see the ads, “Yesterday Hilary said (insert extreme left wing rant here). Even her friends thought her insincere. (insert liberal leader tired of patronization) She mouths far-left slogans, and that is frightening enough, but worse she does not mean them. She says what it takes to get power. Is she for the War? Or against it? What is her plan? What does Hilary want? Other than the White House? Can we afford a president without inner convictions, but whose friends are all on the far left in a time of War?”

We all know Hillary does not mean this (CNN):

Sen. Hillary Clinton on Monday blasted the Bush administration as “one of the worst” in U.S. history and compared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to a plantation where dissenting voices are squelched.

Why is she saying it? Does she really think the minority in the House ever gets a “say?” Is she troubled by the notion of majority rule in the House? Can she point to the African-American equals to Rice in her husband’s administration?

Of course not, and the Tyson-Chicken queen from Arkansas is not shocked by “cronyism” in the House either. You cannot get mad at this irrational rhetoric since even as she drones it (a loud drone is still a drone) she so clearly does not mean it. She wants us to complain, but all I can do is feel sorry for this bright woman forced to pander to slake her ambition.

Watch her eyes. Hilary (!) is one of the worst public speakers today at hiding what she really thinks. When she is “pushing the passion button” because an advisor told her to do it. . . you can see her checking out. Her voice is there, but her eyes are not. So what is she doing spouting lunacy? (I still refuse to believe that she means this rot. Look at her voting record. She is not that insane. She is wrong, but not foolish. She did vote for the War after all.)

She is being forced to lock down the base of her party which sadly for her increasingly wants to hear theories and language best reserved for those wearing tin foil hats. It would be as if Romney had to go to the Republican base and argue that the Trilateral Commission controls their life. There are Republicans who believe that sort of rot, but they don’t run the party at a grass roots level. The worst you can say for Republican activists is that they (may) have a view of abortion that is held by a plurality of the people. However, in the past, the party has been willing to nominate folk with less than “true believer” credentials (see Bush senior). The “radicals” of the religious right look more like eighty percent of the population . . . while the secularists of the university towns and the left wing special interest groups have less and less in common with the majority. Romney is looking for the votes of the Narnia crowd. . . Hilary (!) is looking for the votes of the Brokeback crowd. Too bad for her that Oscar voters only get one vote out of millions in a presidential election.

Sadly, for Hilary (!) the sort of folk who think voting machines gave Bush Ohio, but that fraud did not give Kerry Wisconsin (for which there is actual evidence) . . . and that anybody should care at this point. . . or that Republicans want to kill the poor. . . or set up a theocracy (that mullah Condie Rice!) now run the grass roots party.

Good luck losing this sound bite Hilary (!). The old rule of running to the left in the primaries and then moving center will not work if you end up being a lunatic in the primaries.

Is Hollywood about making money or sending a message? If you read reviewers the controversial film of the year was “Narnia.” But according to Box Office Mojo:

Among other holdovers, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’s crusade to out-gross Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is still on track�the family fantasy has amassed $263.4 million after a $12.2 million weekend, and it needs about $25 million more to ultimately top Goblet.

On the other hand, Brokeback Mountain still has not passed “Pride and Prejudice” for box office, even though it has been hyped as the Second Coming of Movie Greatness. It will, of course, pass “Pride and Prejudice” in part because of the hype and all the “awards” and may in fact be a marginally superior movie, but what is most obvious is that there is a great deal of “rooting” going on in the establishment for Brokeback. There was also a great deal of rooting going on for Narnia to fail, or at least not pass Potter into the box office smash levels. . . and note how rarely the Narnia franchise is described in these golden terms still. . .

Now of course I have been rooting for “Narnia” to do well for obvious reasons (beyond the fact I loved the film), but in my case I do not disguise this rooting in “neutral” terms nor am I able to use industry awards to push my agenda.

The real revelation of the year is that there is a big market for religion friendly films. “Narnia” was only a tough call in the Hollywood establishment. Will more be made? (And I don’t mean more Lewis or fantasy, but more traditional religion friendly films? We know we will get more unfaithful cowboy movies.) Or will establishment Hollywood let Walden Media get rich without competing?

Look for the industry to begin to expand beyond the old-line studios as distribution gets more democratic on the web. At first, this has meant that more bad stuff gets made (it is cheap and there is a fast buck market for it that does not care much about quality). Now it means that Mormons, traditional Catholics, and Evangelicals can get their films out there. They will soon be following the old Disney model of making inexpensive films (a few millions) that turn big profits (tens of millions) because they have cut out all the big cost over head. Think “Emily Rose” here as another example.

The only real hold up is in the area of quality script writers. We don’t have them yet in good numbers. . . but I know people like Josh Sikora at Biola’s film program who will soon fill the gap.

Conservatives should rejoice. History is, after all, headed our way. We have it on good authority, and best reason confirms, that a good God watches over the affairs of men. While any given day always seems full of dangers, the right prevails in the end. It is our job to keep our eyes on the big picture, the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and cheerfully go about doing our duty.

The devil is often in the details in this fallen world, but when noticing the Satanic fine print it is a good time to note the angelic big picture.

Here are ten reasons to brighten up in these dark days. I have listed three for state, three for church, and three for family. That leaves one as a bonus!

Cheerful Church News:

First, Benedict XVI is pope. He is healthy and smarter than his foes. He knows Islam and secularism and is ready to begin the process of bringing Christianity back to Europe. He faces an aging, sterile secularism and Moslems with no intellectual ability to deal with liberty.

Second, Orthodoxy is beginning the long retreat from the World Council of Churches. The religious secularists at that institution and many like it have long gained cover from the faithful. The Orthodox in Russia, Syria, Greece, and the United States are beginning to realize that there is no peace to be made with the bizarre religious left. Churches led by patriarchs and full of third world Christians can find no happiness in union with feminists and baptized secularists.

Third, smart evangelicals are coming to the fore who are not afraid of secularism and actually like the people in the pews. J.P. Moreland is no longer alone! Of course, many Christian colleges have continued the long slide to secularism or to bizarre faddish new movements (see Radical Orthodoxy), but there is now a real choice for parents. Christian philosophy and apologetics are still growing (again no thanks to the Evangelical left).

Cheerful Political News:

First, Hilary Clinton is the Democrat front runner. She cannot carry West Virginia and hence cannot carry the White House. She also is losing her grip on the shrill left. She is after all much the sanest person likely to run for president in the Democrat primaries and knows the War must be won even if she does not know how to do it. As a result, the secularists should soon start a blood letting that will make them even more marginal than they are.

Second, radical Islam still has no viable leader, political platform, or alternative form of government. The next time your defeatist friend says we are losing ask them to name one rebellion that lacked all of those things that won. Killing people in random acts of violence is not a program. There is a growing strain of sensible Islam that may at last make its peace with Christianity becoming (at worst) an Arian heresy, but capable of living at peace with religious neighbors and with liberty.

Third, more people are working, the economy is strong without being overheated, and all of this has happened during a war that has thrown the oil markets into chaos. Real poverty and hunger are being banish in this nation. Of course, there is always work to be done and charity to be given, but things are good. We have the only poor in the history of mankind some of whom face the scourge of obesity. Let the clever defeatists keep betting on the destruction of free markets but the poor are best served by the liberty of America and not by socialism.

Cheerful Family News:

First, secularists and Leftists do not have babies. Conservatives and especially religious conservatives do. If you don’t hand your childrens minds to them unprotected via the media or government schools, they will die out. Some of them are beginning to recognize this. A worldview that cannot reproduce itself is doomed.

Second, romance still has a draw at the box office. (Pride and Prejudice did 36 million in box office without the glowing push by the media. We will not mention the attempts to marginalize Narnia which still may be the number two film of the year.) Secularists may think ignoring your vows and following your heart is “love,” but many of us have tried it and found it wanting. We reject the hedonism of Brokeback Mountain or that of Madison County. We find Trollope and Austen more appealing than Ang Lee.

Third, homeschool moms are multiplying. They are smart, counter-cultural, and fecund spiritually as well as biologically. There is also a growing sisterhood of anchorites, nuns, and single persons called to the greater family of God. I will take one holy anchorite or one woman like Elizabeth the New Martyr and you can keep Nancy Pelosi.

Finally, we have the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ that the gates of hell will not prevail against his Church.

I hope that cheers you up this year!

Arlen Specter is not a friend to religious conservatives. Given that, he was the right man to get Roberts and (probably) Alito on the court.

When he was running for the Senate in Pennsylvania last time around, it was tempting to vote him out of office. After all, even a Democrat would be better, yes?

Wiser heads, such as Hewitt’s, argued that making pro-family religious conservatives the majority in the Senate mattered. Specter was a team player who could be counted on to vote for the leaders of his party. Empowering a Sam Brownback was worth a less than perfect vote. The same reasoning applied in allowing Specter to keep his job in the Judiciary. I was (at first) one of those who thought he must go. Again, Hewitt and others like him argued for the need to be a broad enough party to allow rational disagreement, if that disagreement did not lead to an inability to support the President or the majority of the party. To punish Specter, who won in Pennsylvania where a better man like Santorum may lose, would be to write off any voice in the North East for a long time. Specter has to listen to us as a family member. The new Specter-by-way-of-Howard-Dean would have no such good impulses.

I was persuaded and changed my mind. . . throwing my non-existent weight for allowing Specter to keep his job. Too often in the blogging world nobody remembers when someone was right. . . but in this case Hugh was right and his foes (including many at National Review) were wrong. Specter has gotten Roberts and Alito on the court. What better pro-traditional values candidate did anyone expect? Specter in fact has been the perfect chair. . . getting someone everyone knows disagrees with you on some big issues to admit you are very qualified. . . and getting his vote. . . is more powerful than getting the vote of a true believer. In any case, Hewitt was given a hard time by pro-life and other conservative groups. History has spoken and I think that Hugh is owed a “you were right and we were wrong.”

Next time someone tells you that you have to have a whole loaf and that half a loaf (with small progress) is no good say to yourself, “Roberts. Alito. Patience.”

Republicans are deciding on a new leadership team in light of the fact that some of them have, at the very least, been playing games with lobbyists that have a bad odor.

Let’s not be naive. We don’t elect saints to office, but we do demand serious patriotic behavior in serious times. There is a global War on Terror and we cannot afford to let the only party to take the War seriously waste its political power on getting loot for itself or looking like it is.

Integrity matters. My students go to Washington and too often find there is only one part: the party of self. These old boys and girls make rules that serve each other. When one is caught, they react in horror officially, but then work hard to hush things up. We can do better than that in the age of Blogging. Hushing things up is harder than ever.

Sign this petition and let Republicans know that our men and women in uniform demand better.

I am (a little) shocked at how little is appearing on-line about what seems obvious to me. Either there will be a revolution soon in Iran or someone (Israel if not the Coalition) will attack Iran. What will Iran do? Unless the mullahs back down soon, there will be war in Iran. Iran is big, has not been stripped by sanctions (as had Iraq), but also is very, very socially unstable as the theocracy (an actual legitimate use of the word) grinds down liberty and the young respond as the young always do to hapless autocracy.

Question to Hewitt: What do you make out of what seems like the biggest crisis and opportunity in the War? Or is it wrong to begin the storm warnings now?

There is nothing worse than an athlete who plays one too many season. Fans of the Green Bay Packers are going through the agony now. Who can tell a living legend that he should hang it up? Bart Starr played too long. He should have gone with Lombardi. Brett Farve might do it. Who will tell Brett that he will not find salvation on a losing team at his age?

I am reminded of that when I see Ted Kennedy creak into action in the Alito hearings. It is hard to watch him. No conservative has ever been a fan, but he used to be fun to oppose. Kennedy was a towering titan of the libertine left . . . proud to be no good. . . full of flash and cash. . . and now he looks as if his whisky is mostly put into mash as his handlers spoon feed him to get him ready to imitate himself. He should have quit, but as long as he runs his seat is safe and nobody dared to tell the mumbling old sinner that he was about to shame himself.

However, I am no liberal and so they need not listen to me.

I am however a conservative of the religious sort. My brother graduated from Regent University and I have long defended Pat Robertson from more extreme critics more upset by his religion than his foibles and eccentricities. However, in the last few years his behavior and public statements have grown ever more indefensible. Pat Roberston has become the Ted Kennedy of the right.

Of course, Robertson, like Kennedy to the left, was always a mixed bag. It was not clear that his financial dealings were always above reproach and even given the amount he was on television he was too often saying theologically bizarre and morally offensive things. . . from the perspective of his own theological system (Protestant charismatic). Now of late he gets most of his attention by saying God is going to smite assorted folk. He has lost it.

There is no excuse for a theology that claims to know what God is doing in every detail of a man’s personal history. There is no excuse for the hubris that claims that one can look at the Bible and tell exactly what is going to happen on any given day. Augustine settled that a long time ago in his City of God. I am no naturalist. . . and I accept that Divine Providence over time may be made manifest. . . but saying that a given sin “x” will bring on punishment “y” makes one a prophet of Biblical proportions (in which case the Biblical standard of never being wrong applies), foolish, or heretical. Every Christian has to repudiate the bone headed and theological indefensible view that Dover will be punished for a school board vote or that Sharon is ill because of his political actions. God’s will is just too complex for such facile comments.

I prefer the charitable view that Pat, like his peer Ted Kennedy, has lost his fast ball.

Can’t someone tell him to quit or can we all agree to ignore him and advert our heads when he speaks?

If nobody on the left will sigh and send Kennedy packing, perhaps the right will have the decency to someone who did some good to be plain.

Retire Pat. Let someone else step up and fight the battle of this age while you prepare your soul for the age to come. Live to a fruitful and very old age with your family and friends around. Grab the job of becoming a curmudgeon, but leave the spotlight. As our Lord Jesus would say, “Die to the role of leader so that you can prepare for the enternity that is so much greater!”

If you do, before you spoil all, you will leave behind a decent, well funded graduate school and much good work with the poor. You are soiling your legacy. Happier if you had gone sooner, but there is still a chance to leave on your own terms before your self-destructive words forces your friends to act. You can still choose. . . so that in your own way men can say of you when you do see the Face of God:

KKLA gives me a chance to host a monthly radio program with three other fine folk! My shift happened to be on the last day of the old year. Here are my predictions. . . based not on any great prophetic ability and certainly on no psychic powers about what will happen this year.

This way you can hold me to them!

First, Iran will become more important in the news than Iraq. Iraq will begin to move toward peace and the mullahs will feel the threat of reaction to a democratic neighbor in their own people. When in trouble, dictators demonize Jews and Americans. Expect the nuclear program to continue and for someone (Israel if the worst happens) to take it out. Have the doves so ham-strung Bush that he will not be able to keep this rotten regime from getting weapons we know they will use?

Second, the Democrats will be disappointed in the mid-terms. The President is just under 50% in some polls and at 43% in the lowest I have seen. That is not “bad enough” to set up a big reaction. Most folk will pull the lever for their local guy.

Publicly, Democrats may trumpet a few small gains (no more than a net two Senate seats gained and less than 10 house seats), but the in fighting will begin when the hard line crowd measures their wished for gains against reality. I still think the best chance is that the election will be a draw leading to a Democrat blood bath and even more weird vote-losing conspiracy theories.

Third, the success of Narnia will finally cause at least one mainstream studio (Disney?) to become more openly friendly to evangelicals. Disney is never going to win Oscars anyway. Money will talk. Walden Media will slowly become a major studio with a chance to do so outside of the Hollywood system.

Four, the new Pope will be demonized on the front cover of at least two news magazines as he takes off the gloves and goes after Islam, modernity, and post-modernity while defending reason and Western civic values. This time, however, many Europeans will listen. France in particular will have the first stirrings of a Joan of Arc moment when religion begins to perk up. Someone on the left will even notice this and it will horrify them more than the demographic time bomb of their own cultural failure.

Five, the old media has been propped up for little bit, but this the year that Netflix and Tivo (or services like them) really makes it obvious that people are creating their own networks and watching their own programs. “Underground” programming that already has been produced by groups like Mormons for their own consumption will get more “mainstream” as new folk find out about it. This will not be the coming of the Kingdom. However, this is the tipping point year when more people wait for a series to finish so they can watch it all in order on DVD from Netflix than wait every week to follow the story line. . . realizing that more shows will be obvious “rewatch” bait and continue this cycle.