Monthly Archives: December 2022

by - 2 Comments

Daily Broadside | Start the New Year with a New Habit

Daily Verse | Revelation 15:1
I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed.

Friday’s Reading: Revelation 17-19
Saturday’s Reading: Revelation 20-22

Friday and my last day of blogging in 2022.

As a follower of Christ, I try to read through the Bible each year. It’s my guide to who God is and what He intends for me in Christ.

Question: Is a daily verse and daily reading at the top of the blog helpful to you? Should I keep doing it or nah? Let me know in the comments.

I’m in the process of putting together a short course called “Bible Basics: For the Curious, the Serious and Friends of Tiberius.” During my research I came across these stats in the 2022 State of the Bible report from the American Bible Society:

Nearly four in 10 Americans say they never read the Bible outside of church services or Mass. Another two in 10 say they read it on their own no more than twice a year. That leaves another four in 10 reading on their own at least three times a year (Bible Users). Those who read daily amount to 10 percent of all Americans.

This year’s numbers show a major shift away from personal Bible reading. In the 2021 State of the Bible, there were 29 percent in the “Never” group (now 40%) and 50 percent in the Bible Users collection (now 40%).

[…]

The State of the Bible report also demonstrates what the American Bible Society describes as a “major decrease in Scripture Engagement,” which is defined as “consistent interaction with the Bible that shapes people’s choices and transforms their relationships with God, self, and others.” The estimated number of Scripture-engaged Americans dropped from 64 million in 2021 to 49 million in 2022. At the same time, the estimated number of Bible disengaged Americans rose from 100 million last year to 145 million this year.

In other words, roughly 26 million people had mostly or completely stopped reading the Bible in the last year.

A lack of Bible reading isn’t anything new to American Christians. Six years ago Lifeway Research found, “A third of Americans who attend a Protestant church regularly (32%) say they read the Bible personally every day. Around a quarter (27%) say they read it a few times a week. Fewer say they only read it once a week (12%), a few times a month (11%) or once a month (5%). Close to 1 in 8 (12%) admit they rarely or never read the Bible.”

My question is, why aren’t 100 percent of American Christians reading the Bible daily? Do they not believe it is the guide for all of life and faith? Do they not think they need to read it daily in order to benefit from it? Do they even believe they benefit from reading it? Do they think they know it all? Do they sincerely think they don’t have enough time to read it? Are there more important things to do?

My internal urgency about reading the Bible is that I don’t want to stand before the Unspeakably Holy God some day and admit that I never read the scriptures He provided to shape my thinking and obedience to Him. (I also don’t want to admit to Him that I never tried to practice what I read (I do), but that’s another topic for another day.)

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. — 2 Timothy 3:14-17

There’s your motivation, right there — to “be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Which good works, by the way, “God prepared in advance” for you to do (Ephesians 2:10).

For the last couple of years, I’ve offered my personal One-Year Bible Reading Plan (Cover-to-Cover) to readers of this blog. I’ve done it for several years myself and have tried to tweak it each year to better accommodate the days of reading with the number of chapters required to get through it in one year. 2023 is no exception.

BibleReader_C2C2023Download

If you haven’t read through the Bible in a year, I encourage you to make 2023 the year you do it. Download, print, and check your progress.

Thanks for reading in 2022. See you in 2023!

Have a good weekend.

by

Daily Broadside | Rep. Chip Roy Rips Democrats for Anti-American Deception in the House

Daily Verse | Revelation 13:18
If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.

Thursday’s Reading: Revelation 14-16

Thursday and I found this five-minute video of Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) absolutely ripping the Democrats for what we all know is happening — backroom dealing with no debate, discussion or time to hammer out a budget. He and his colleagues are accused of “not coming to the table” and are just expected to vote on the monstrosity.

This isn’t a photo op or some grandstanding on Roy’s part. He’s a prophet shouting in the wilderness. I’d love a coalition led by Chip Roy that results in the overthrow of the anti-American forces at work in the federal government.

You want to know how our government operates? Take the five minutes to listen.

by

Daily Broadside | Life in this World is Temporary and Must be Built on Firmer Stuff

Daily Verse | Revelation 9:6
During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.

Wednesday’s Reading: Revelation 10-13

Wednesday and we’re hitting the top of the week with a long drop to the last day of the year. Up ahead is 2023!

Speaking of new years … I’ve felt myself moving into a new phase of life over the last year or two as it’s become clear that I’m now part of that older crowd that I’ve never associated myself with. It’s not that I’ve dis-associated myself from it; it’s that I’ve never thought of myself as a part of it and now I’m being forced to accept that I am, indeed, a part of it.

A couple of examples in play here. First, one of the great NFL fullbacks and Steelers icon during my growing up years, Franco Harris, died a few days ago at the age of 72. As kids we idolized the man (along with O.J. Simpson, the Buffalo Bills running back turned detective to investigate who killed his wife.)

Then there was Kirstie Alley, the Cheers actress who died a couple of weeks ago at age 71, preceded a few days earlier by Christine McVie at age 79, of Fleetwood Mac, one of the biggest musical acts of my generation (their Rumors album stayed on top of the charts for 31 straight weeks in 1977).

And then yesterday, my wife learned that a cousin with whom she was close died a couple of days ago. She was only a year younger than I am, and I’m approaching my 6th decade.

It was weird, and even a little sad, to hear that Harris died even though he’d been out-of-sight out-of-mind for decades. It hit a little closer to home with my wife’s cousin whom we’d seen earlier this year with no indication that something awful was coming.

No one plans to get old. No one plans to die. We all know that we will; the evidence is all round us. But we live life a day at a time and age and death creep up on us so slowly that they take us by surprise when we see it.

Our lives are lived in the moment, but their totality is made up of memories and experiences that involve others we knew personally or knew through a medium like the written word, or song or film. I never met Billy Graham personally, (I did sit on the platform once during a stadium event he held), but when he died I felt like a little bit of my known, stable world died, too.

My world is different from my kids’ world. The athletes, movie stars, authors, politicians and other celebrities that made up my world as a kid are not the same as those making up my kids’ world. There’s some overlap, sure, especially with today’s politicians, but the “stuff” that makes up their world is going to be different than mine.

As I get older it only makes sense that my generation’s touchstones are “up next.” They’re only a decade or so ahead of me. So, when a Tom Petty or Angela Lansbury or Billy Graham or Franco Harris dies, I feel like they take a little piece of my life with them and I’m not as “grounded” as I was.

At times like this, it’s good to remember: “The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:17). That’s my ultimate grounding and I hope it’s yours too.

by

Daily Broadside | The Worst House Speaker in US History Will Be Memorialized in the Name of a Federal Building

Daily Verse | Revelation 5:13
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
    be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”

Tuesday’s Reading: Revelation 6-9

Christmas is not a holiday for those of us who worship Jesus Christ. I hope you and yours enjoyed the annual remembrance of the birth of our Savior and were able to give and receive gifts in honor of the greatest gift of all, Jesus Christ.

I toyed with taking this week off from writing, but decided only to take Christmas off, so that’s why there was no post yesterday. The sludge that is our politics continues to pollute our culture unabated and there isn’t a worse example of the grifting, power-hungry, reckless, pandering, arrogant and self-important political class than Nancy Pelosi.

Nancy Pelosi ended her final speech as Speaker of the House by wishing everyone a happy ‘Schwanzaa.’

“Whatever it is you celebrate.”

What a perfect encapsulation of our nation’s identity, spoken by the woman who has sat at the head of a legislature that has done more to erase it than almost any other group other than the Marxists themselves.

I have great contempt for this shameful woman and her politics. She’s an irresponsible, unethical drunk who has abused her power over the years as the United States has fallen into an abyss of self-loathing and violence while she abused her office.

She has not responsibly used the political power she was given by God, “for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1). 

Stuck in that monstrosity of a spending bill was a little item that only a few noticed:

Sec. 636 (a) of the bill states: “The Federal building located at 90 7th Street in San Francisco, California, shall be known and designated as the ‘Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building.’

This 82-year-old woman who has greatly contributed to the carnage in our country will live in infamy through a building named after her in San Francisco that has turned into a third-world hell hole under her watch.

What graft. What a self-aggrandizing stroke of her ego.

She will be known as one of the worst politicians in our history.

What tragedy.

by - 1 Comment

Daily Broadside | An Immovable Faith in God Starts With Obedience

Daily Verse | 1 John 5:3
This is love for God: to obey his commands.

Friday’s Reading: 2 John and 3 John
Saturday’s Reading: Jude

It’s the Friday before Christmas and my last opportunity to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas!

While our country is a hot mess and getting worse every day, the one thing that can’t be destroyed is a personal belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and in the birth of his Son, Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is often the only thing that has given people the strength to endure unimaginable persecution and deprivation under some of the worst regimes in history, starting with the Roman emperors and continuing to present day in states like China.

But such faith keeps us from disobedience and, in fact, strengthens us in our resolve to obey our Lord, as today’s Daily Verse shows us: love for God is to obey his commands. In fact, as I wrote here, to hear God is to obey God, and I end the week with the following meditation ahead of Christmas.

In speaking of what the greatest commandments are, Jesus said,

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
— Mark 12:29-31

In Deuteronomy 6:4 we find perhaps the most essential prayer in all of Judaism — the Shema (sh’-mah), a daily recitation affirming God’s singularity and kingship. The name Shema comes from the first word of the verse, which means “hear” or “listen.”

She-ma yisrael, adonai eloheinu, adonai echad.
Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

To “hear” in English means to be aware of sound. In our culture, we can hear someone talking and either absorb and respond to it, or ignore what is said. Not so in Hebrew society. When they’re called “to hear,” it’s a call to act. Hearing and doing are the same thing. To hear God is to obey God.

Immediately following that declaration is what Jesus calls the first and greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” If the preceding is true about God — that He is the singular, only true God, and that He is our God — the first and foremost way of expressing our devotion to Him is by loving Him with everything that we’ve got.

And, says Jesus, the next greatest commandment has the same force as the first: love your neighbor as yourself. No commandment is more important than these two.

Love God. Love others.

In Hebrew culture, love isn’t just an emotion — it’s an active attachment. It means following through on our commitment. If we “hear” (sh’-mah) this command, it means we will faithfully respond out of obedience and loyalty to the Lord. Being commanded to love is a matter of doing, not just feeling.

This is the foundation of our redemption. Above everything else, God desires that we love Him completely and totally. That is the greatest commandment. That is why Jesus came. The purpose God had in saving us was that we might love Him based on His intrinsic worth as the one and only true God. Out of that, we love others.

The baby born in the manger expressed perfect obedience to these two commandments. He always did what pleased his Father (John 8:29) and he loved others to the fullest extent possible (John 13:1). He showed us what it meant to love God through his unwavering obedience to His commands. He showed us what it meant to love others by going to the cross on behalf of a lost world.

O believer, may you hear these words this Christmas!

Have a great weekend.

by

Daily Broadside | The FBI Is Rotten to the Core

Daily Verse | 2 Peter 2:7-8
… and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard) …

Thursday’s Reading: 1 John 1-5

It’s Thursday and I’ve been AWOL the last three days thanks to some PC issues and a touch of something that has me feeling out of sorts. Hopefully I’ll be over it since Christmas is only a few days away and the Christmas shipping deadlines may not be able to accommodate any last-minute purchases.

I don’t know about you, but I think we’re living under what amounts to a lawless regime. The FBI has been outed as a partisan, unaccountable agency that works hand in hand with Democrats against conservatives and Normal Americans. They facilitated the false accusation of Russian collusion against Trump by knowingly using parts of the Steele dossier in their fake FISA applications, set up a group of nobodies in Michigan in an entrapment scheme to kidnap Gov. Wretched Whitmer, were most likely involved on January 6, and now we learn that not only were they strongly suggesting that Twitter censor particular accounts through pressure campaigns, but they also actually paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million to assist them in their illegal censorship efforts—with YOUR tax dollars, by the way.

That’s right, your government paid to censor things they didn’t like.

As reported by Mollie Hemingway, the FBI also primed Twitter to censor Russian disinformation by war-gaming an exercise featuring documents purported to be tied to Biden’s employment at Burisma.

So, when the real Hunter Biden laptop shows up, Twitter and its executives already know what they’re supposed to do and they shut it down because, imagine that!, they had already war-gamed a scenario exactly like it.

With all of this evidence of lawlessness and abuse of power, you’d think that our Republican representatives would be calling for heads to roll and the FBI to be abolished (like former presidential candidate Ron Paul). But no, not only are we not demanding that the FBI be shut down, our reps in Washington D.C. just voted to give the FBI $537 million raise in the monstrous $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill. Here’s the list of the traitors as tallied by the estimable Julie Kelly:

Why the heck should we support the Republican party? They ask for our money and then vote like they’re Democrats. What a choice!

by

Daily Broadside | Free and Fair Elections May Be a Thing of the Past

Daily Verse | Hebrews 7:6
This man, however, did not trace his descent from Levi, yet he collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises.

Friday’s Reading: Hebrews 8-10
Saturday’s Reading: Hebrews 11-13

After the mid-term elections in November my suspicions that our elections are no longer trustworthy were further hardened by results in the governor’s race in Arizona, where Kari Lake is challenging the results with what seems like strong evidence of fraud. I would love to believe that she will prove that the election was fraudulent, but I don’t trust the courts anymore, either.

Last night we had some friends over for a small Christmas celebration and I ended up talking with a woman who is involved politically. She told me that she no longer believes that our elections are free or fair and she is also discouraged by Republican leaders who really only seem to be in it for the money.

As I prepared this post, I came across a couple of articles that seem to reinforce our commiseration. Here’s an analysis of RNC spending since 2017—as if we needed more reasons to withhold money from these grifting RINOs.

According to FEC filings, since 2017, the RNC has spent:

  • $3.1 million on private jet services
  • $1.3 million on limousine/chauffeur services
  • $17.1 million on donor mementos
  • $750,000 on floral arrangements
  • $80,000 in alcohol-related expenditures

Nearly $400,000 has been spent on event tickets and other entertainment activities, including $30,000 for a private box at a Las Vegas Raiders game, $13,000 for Broadway shows, $9,400 at Madison Square Garden, and $43,000 at Top Golf locations in Texas, Nevada, Virginia, and Maryland …

… Under the current leadership, the RNC has spent more than $150,000 on what could be considered non-essential office expenses, including $25,000 on Commonwealth Joe coffee, $7,000 on cupcakes, nearly $7,000 on candles and diffusers, and $75,000 total at Pottery Barn, West Elm, Restoration Hardware, and Crate & Barrel. In addition, the committee’s FEC reports show expenditures totaling $381,000 classified as “Furniture Expense” during the same time frame.

More than $100,000 was spent at high-end clothing stores such as Rhoback, REI, Nordstrom, Vineyard Vines, Footjoy, Ralph Lauren, Carhartt, and Smathers & Branson. An RNC vendor tells RedState that the Vineyard Vines expense ($12,000) was likely for embroidered jackets RNC staffers recently received.

Yep, middle-American schlubs like you and me fork over hard-earned after-tax money in response to the desperate emails and texts we get from the RNC about how they’re being beaten and we only have until midnight to get a 3x match. Then they blow it on fancy clothing and entertainment and tchotchkes for their friends.

I also came across this from one of the blogs I read regularly, which pretty much sums up where I am.

No, the only thing I care about is that we have free and fair elections in this country, and right now I have no confidence that we do. Do you? That should be #1 for anyone who even pretends be right or right leaning. I specifically excluded the Never Trump crowd earlier because they have no function except to attack Trump. They don’t matter. They’re jesters in America’s political court. But the people I’m talking about should care, and they don’t. If tomorrow Trump climbed aboard his star ship and headed for the skies, we’d still be in deep doo doo, because in their zeal to eliminate Trump from public life because they think it’s important for the future, they’ve ignored the only thing that really matters.

Free and fair elections. The foundation of a representative democracy. Without that, and as I said I have no confidence that we have them anymore, we have nothing. There’s no “Republic” to conserve.

Of course, there are others who don’t think all elections are rigged (and neither do I, but clearly there’s some cheating going on). Stephen Kruiser, who lives in Arizona:

I am not full tinfoil hat about every election in America, but what happened in Maricopa County was not just a weird glitch. It’s the most populous county in the state and contains a game-changing number of Republican votes. The fact that the problems with the tabulation machines all happened there stretches coincidence to the point of breaking.

As I’ve mentioned before, we didn’t have any problems with the machines here in Pima County, which is safely blue. Republicans are known for being Election Day voters and the fact that they were the people most affected by the “anomaly” in Maricopa County is what makes this whole thing more than suspicious.

Kari Lake deserves some answers and it is obvious that she’s not going to stop until she gets some. I don’t know if she can get the election results set aside, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Even if Lake can’t get this nightmare thrown out, my hope is that Maricopa County officials will be embarrassed enough to change the way they do things. That would require the Arizona GOP to be more functional and vigilant, and I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Perhaps Kari Lake can goad the party into fighting mode.

I don’t believe our elections are free and fair anymore, not after what I’ve seen in the last two election cycles. I believe that there is some kind of collusion and cheating going on, because what we see on the ground doesn’t match what we see in results—by a long shot.

What’s the answer? A better ground game from the RNC would help. Making I.D. mandatory, along with same day voting with minimal exceptions, like for military personnel posted overseas.

But I don’t know how you keep the Dems from cheating and there’s no way I want the GOP to cheat. We either win clean or we don’t win. But that may be difficult because it appears both parties are involved in the racket.

Multiple polls conclude that upwards of 70 percent of Americans think our elections are filled with fraud.  But we’re learning it’s deeper and more organized than just a few thousand mules dropping fake ballots into election boxes …

… The left and their RINO allies, along with who-knows-how-many other corporate and foreign actors, have set up the most complicated electoral fraud system in history.  Every step of the voting process — from who is allowed to vote, how they vote, how the votes are tallied, to how the results are reported — is compromised.  They are so far into their corruption that being exposed is not an option.  They will do literally anything to avoid being caught.

Read the whole thing and have a good weekend.

by

Daily Broadside | Dictionaries Are Like Canaries in the Coal Mine

Daily Verse | Hebrews 4:13
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.

Thursday’s Reading: Hebrews 5-7

Thursday and we’re quickly losing time to get the Christmas shopping done. If you want to officially track Santa this year, NORAD can help.

You may remember earlier this year that I bought an old copy of Webster’s Secondary School Dictionary and posted pictures of the definitions of what a woman and a female were in 1913. I then compared those to the online Merriam-Webster’s dictionary definitions, where we learned that Webster’s had caved and expanded their definition of “female” to include “… a gender identity that is the opposite of male …”

Apparently not wanting to be left out of the virtue-signaling taking the world by storm, the online Cambridge Dictionary has gone a step further and has added inclusive definitions of a man and a woman.

The Cambridge Dictionary recently updated its definitions of “man” and “woman” to include people whose gender identity doesn’t correspond with their biological sex.

The definition of “man” in the online version includes a second meaning: “an adult who lives and identifies as male though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth.”

It didn’t occur to me at the time of my previous post to check on the word “man” and “male,” so I’ve just taken a look at Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary to compare it to Cambridge’s. The first two are Cambridge’s, the next two are Merriam-Webster’s.

Merriam-Webster gets credit for keeping the definition of “man” rational.

The Cambridge Dictionary also updated their definition of “woman” which Christopher Rufo called attention to.

Note, too, that the definition includes a plural pronoun (they) as opposed to “she.” As Rufo says, “Notice that the dictionary writers say ‘*they* may have been.’ They couldn’t bring themselves to write ‘she may have been,’ because they know they’re lying. That’s the tell,” he tweeted.”

This is how a society is overthrown. Not all at once but little by little, changes persisting like waves against the shoreline until the erosion undermines your house and it collapses around you.

by

Daily Broadside | The Price of Everything is Up and Isn’t Coming Down Any Time Soon

Daily Verse | Hebrews 2:14-15
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

Wednesday’s Reading: Hebrews 4-5

Happy Wednesday my friends.

As we’re all getting ready for the Christmas holidays, I’m wondering if you’ve noticed the prices of consumer products and necessities such as food, gas and housing? We certainly have in our home.

That’s a photo my wife took yesterday as she was food shopping. Almost $5 for a dozen eggs! Seems extreme yet … there it is.

It wasn’t that long ago they were less than a buck a dozen. The increased price includes increased gas prices for transporting the eggs, increased prices for chicken feed and electricity and taxes on the place that produces them, and the increased profit that the store tries to make selling them to you so they can pay the increased costs to run their place, too.

The dollar had an average inflation rate of 7.11% in the last 12 months. A 2021 dollar would buy about $1.10 worth of products in 2022 or, more simply, a 2022 dollar only buys 90% of what it bought a year ago.

Between 2021 and 2022:

CNBC reported that inflation jumped by 8.2% in September 2022 over prices a year earlier.

Food prices have been among the largest contributing categories to inflation in recent months.

The “food at home” index — or grocery prices — jumped 13% in September versus the same time a year ago. That’s a slight decline from 13.5% in August, which was the largest 12-month increase in over 40 years, since March 1979.

Within that category, certain items have seen prices rise sharply over the past year, such as butter and margarine (up 32.2%), eggs (30.5%) and flour (24.2%).

It’s obviously not just food. Services are more expensive, too. We’ve been thinking about building out some unfinished space in our home and are talking to the same contractor we approached about the work five years ago (but didn’t do for a variety of reasons). His new estimate is 60 percent higher than it was five years ago.

How about regular services like getting your teeth cleaned? Here’s a couple of photos I’ve taken at the dentist and at a clock repair shop in the last three months.

Yeah, when everything is more expensive, you sometimes have to choose who gets paid. The dentist is telling his clients that he’s standing at the front of the line.

Sticker shock on batteries, too.

Unfortunately, all reporting on inflation tells me that higher prices are going to be with us for a very long time—years, not months. I pin this all on the politicians who locked down our country (and the rest of the world) during the Chinese Lung Pox terror attack and then deliberately unleashed trillions of unnecessary dollars into the economy.

Our ruling elites love their centralized planning more than they care about us plebes. The higher prices are going to hurt the middle class, because we’re the largest segment of the population and we bear the brunt of the government’s wrecking ball. Unfortunately, though, it’s going to be especially tough on the poor, who really can’t afford higher gas, energy and food costs.

It’s maddening.

by

Daily Broadside | America is an “Indispensable” Friend of Israel

Daily Verse | Philemon 20
I do wish, brother, that I may have some benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ.

Tuesday’s Reading: Hebrews 1-2

It’s Tuesday and less than three weeks left in the year 2022. Only this many days, hours and minutes to Christmas! Have you gotten your Christmas shopping done?

Bari Weiss, who resigned from The New York Times in July 2020 after becoming “the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views,” recently started a new media company called, The Free Press (thefp.com). I found it because I had subscribed to her newsletter, “Common Sense,” whose readership grew to a quarter-million, and a few days ago she announced that the newsletter now has a permanent home as The Free Press.

I haven’t become a paid subscriber, yet, but am thinking this may be a new source of independent reporting that seeks to include a variety of viewpoints. Here’s how they describe the company:

The Free Press is a media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of great American journalism: honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence. We publish investigative stories and provocative commentary about the world as it actually is—with the quality once expected from the legacy press, but with the fearlessness of the new.

We place a special emphasis on subjects and stories that others ignore or misrepresent. We always aim to highlight multiple perspectives on complicated subjects. And we don’t allow ideology to stand in the way of searching for the truth.

Still to be seen, I think, but I like the premise.

I was impressed with an interview Weiss did with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s just been reelected to a third term. Bibi, as he’s called, had some interesting things to say about the United States in his comments, and I wanted to call those out and share them with you (emphases mine).

I believe in democracy, not only within my own party, but also in the public. My views of democracy are informed by the basic texts of American democracy. I read the Federalist Papers, all 80 of them. I’m a Hamiltonian in many ways, but also a Madisonian. And these two basically set the ground rules. John Locke and Montesquieu are my heroes because I think there have to be checks and balances. 

You do not have a proper democracy by having self-chosen moral people who are above the public, above national interests. That’s ridiculous. If you want to look at an instance in history where you had exceptional people who were above the plebeians, look at the founding fathers of the United States. Geniuses, one after the other. But if you told them the way you’re going to secure democracy is by giving the power to the anointed few who will decide for the unwashed many? They’d say that’s ridiculous. But that’s a view of democracy that is penetrating Western democracies and is very, very dangerous. It’s not going to sustain them. I’m the opposite of a strongman. I believe in democracy, obviously, in the balance of between the three branches of government but also in a basic bill of rights. You can have a majority, but you can’t decapitate all redheaded people, and neither can the courts say that you can decapitate all redheaded people. There has to be a balance between the three branches of government. That balance has been in many ways impaired in Israel by the rise of unchecked judicial power. Correcting it is not destroying democracy, it’s protecting it.

I suspected but had not heard Bibi give credit to America’s Founding Fathers as his mentors in democracy. (He speaks of democracy, of course, but a reminder that we are a not a pure democracy but a representative republic.) And he puts his finger on exactly what is going wrong in the U.S. right now: an elite cabal of political, educational, business and media leaders who are determining what we can and cannot see, hear or say.

I have to say that I think America is an indispensable ally. I think America, the rise of America, made all the difference in Jewish history—it’s not merely the rise of Israel in the first half of the 20th century. America became the leader of the world, and it protected liberty, protected democracy, and protected human rights. It would be a tragedy if the United States abandons its role and stops believing in its mission to be the beacon of liberty and the world…

…With the United States in particular, there is a deep bond. It’s really a deep bond. It’s not just something I’m saying or just a figure of speech. There is a deep bond. We are the original Jerusalem. Americans are the new Jerusalem, the new promised land, and we’re the original promised land. There’s a deep bond there, and the same is true to a lesser extent with other Western democracies, however critical I am occasionally of their vacillating positions. I think that common bond is important.

I think it’s true that there has developed a deep bond between Israel and America, but it also seems to be true that the Left (again) is working overtime to weaken that bond. (It actually doesn’t matter what it is in our history; if it was part of American life under democracy, the progressive bullies want to destroy it.)

I like Netanyahu and think he’s the right leader for Israel, and I’m pleased he has such a positive view of the United States. I’m a supporter of Israel and reject out of hand the efforts to demonize the Israelis.