Matthew Comments

Here is a list of podcast episodes I recommend. I included a date and episode number where possible. Life Kit 6/14/21, You’re Probably Apologizing All Wrong 5/19/21, Be a Better Bystander 3/31/21, Raising Kids Who Help With Chores 1/6/21, What to Tell Kids When the News is Scary Quick to Listen (by Christianity Today) 7/2/21, Critical Race Theory: What Christians Need to Know Hidden Brain 6/21/21, The Power of Apologies 6/7/21, This is Your Brain on Ads 4/12/21, An Unfinished Lesson 99% Invisible 6/29/21, #449, Mine! Radiolab           11/13/20, Breaking Benford The Holy Post 6/25/21--7/16/21, Jesus & John Wayne: Episode 1--4 5/19/21, #457, Paul, Power, & Patriarchy with Beth Allison Barr 3/31/21, #450, The Evangelical Industrial Complex 3/10/21, #447, The Danger of Useful Christianity with Russell Moore The Psychology Podcast with Barry Kaufman E-241: Robert Cialdini: The New Psychology of Persuasion Stratfor Podcast RANE Insights on COVID 19: (Whatever the most recent couple

I posted Voter Fraud a decade ago, when Wisconsin passed a Voter ID law. That article holds up pretty well today. Sadly, voter suppression efforts have also held up quite well. It’s time for an update, plus some commentary on a discussion I saw. First, I need to correct an error in my older post, where I referred to the “Constitutional right to vote”. Alas, the Constitution contains no right to vote! While our Founding Fathers did a lot of things pretty well, they didn’t bother to guarantee the vote. It’s a difficult right to guarantee, as it does require some agency on the part of the voter, and voter agency is something you cannot guarantee. The Founding Fathers could still have done better than they did. They couldn't commit to a right to vote when they wanted more people kept out of the ballot box than allowed inside. This initial error led successive generations to fix the Constitutional “sorta maybe right to vote” with amendments. But like a roof, patching up a Constitution

I’ve heard a number of commentators--right, left, and center--characterize Trump as the pivotal problem with Republican leadership. But why was Trump overwhelming to the Republican party? Why was he gradually embraced by nearly all Republican leadership? And would the Republican party be much different today without him? Each party is made up of different interest groups. Two large factions of the Republican Party are fiscal conservatives and the Christian Right. The fiscal conservatives are dominated by Free Market Fundamentalists. Anti-tax pledges and opposition to virtually any government regulations are Free Market Fundamentalist positions, and those positions are prominent in the current Republican party. The Christian Right wants white Christian conservative values to dominate American culture. They once did dominate American culture, and they want to turn back the clock. These two influential factions of the Republican party do not make natural teammates. Free Market Fundamental