patrick_fowler1

Christian, husband, father, pastor conservative, tech geek, systems guru, and theologian (formally trained). The views I express are my own.

[Glenn Beck @glennbeck]

If you have a son or daughter who's starting to think that socialism is the answer to our problems, I want you to try something and report back:

Next time you talk, don't argue. Sit down, ask these questions, and just listen:

- When you say "socialism," do you mean that you want the government to pay for a bigger safety net like in Denmark, or that the government owns the means of production? Because those are two very different countries.

- You say the system is rigged. Who rigged it? And who should be handed the power to un-rig it?

- Who sets the price of bread? If not a single person or corporation, what causes that price to remain steady or go up?

- Can you name a country where the state took ownership of the means of production and the poor got richer?

- When borders open or the walls fall down, anywhere in the world, which direction do people run? Towards the free market system or the socialist system? And before the boundaries fell, which way were the guns pointed?

- Would you rather be poor today, or rich in 1900? By the way, only one of those has antibiotics.

- If you and I make a voluntary trade, and we both walk away happy, who got hurt?

- Someone has to decide what your work is worth. Would you rather it be you and the person paying you, or a bureaucrat with an army who has never met either of you?

Try having this conversation with your kids this week. Don't argue. Only listen. And if you want, call into my radio show and tell me how it went.

[GINGERSKOL💜💛 @GlowSurfing]

Spot on!! 🎯😎😆

I can’t wait for the comments!!

Nicklas Nilsson explains the difference between right-wing and left-wing people in spot-on text on Facebook:

"If a right-wing person is gay, then he is, and he doesn't care what others think.
If a left-winger is gay, then he demands legal changes, protests against everything and everyone, and turns it into a political struggle.

If a right-winger is vegan, then he simply doesn't eat meat.
If a left-winger is vegan, then he wants to ban meat, halt food production, and protest outside farms and chicken farms.

If a right-winger doesn't like guns, then he just doesn't buy any.
If a left-winger doesn't like guns, then he tries to ban them, prevent everyone else from owning one, and hates those who do.

If a right-winger is worried about the climate, then he flies less, drives an electric car if it suits him, and sorts his waste.

If a left-winger is worried about the climate, then he wants to ban fossil fuel cars, air travel, and meat for everyone else, protest outside factories, and demand that the state forces the change.

If a right-winger wants to give his children a good education, then he moves to an area with good schools, or chooses a private school, or gets involved himself.
If a left-winger wants to give his children a good education, then he demands more tax money from everyone, equal results for all, a ban on charter schools, and protests against every inequality.

If a right-winger complains about his job or workplace.. he doesn't. He changes jobs or starts his own business.
If a left-winger complains about his job – then it's the boss, the company, or the colleagues who are at fault. He demands collective agreements, strikes, changes for the whole community, and protests against the company so that it suits him.

If a right-winger is dissatisfied with his housing or rent, then he moves, renovates, or buys something else.
If a left-winger is dissatisfied with his housing or rent, then he demands rent freezes, more subsidies, regulations for everyone, and protests against landlords and politicians.

If a right-winger fails with a business or an investment that goes wrong, then he gets up, dusts himself off, and tries again tomorrow.
If a left-winger runs out of money on the 24th, then he blames the rich for having too much and needing to contribute more, blames the lottery win that didn't come home last week, and mutters that he has such damn bad luck.

If a right-winger sees this – then he sends it to a few friends for a good laugh.
If a left-winger sees this – then he tries to argue against it, get it removed, and delete me from Facebook."

[Stacy is Right @PoliticalStacy]

I'm old enough to remember when everybody was MAGA.

Bill Clinton 1993: "We have to end welfare as a way of life and make it a path to independence and dignity."

Barack Obama 2005: "We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected undocumented unchecked and go around our communities without our knowledge of them."

Hillary Clinton 2008: "If they've committed a crime deport them. No questions asked. They're gone."

Chuck Schumer 2009: "Illegal immigration is wrong plain and simple."

Joe Biden 2006: "I voted for a fence. I voted for 700 miles of fence."

Harry Reid 1993: "No sane country would grant citizenship to children of illegal immigrants."

Bernie Sanders 2015: "Open borders is a Koch brothers proposal that would make everybody in America poorer."

The Secure Fence Act of 2006 had yes votes from Obama, Hillary, Schumer and Biden.

Don't you dare allow them to gaslight you into thinking your values are racist and radical. These used to be mainstream Democrat positions.

They only changed their minds once their party decided to use illegals to steal power from the American people.

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

He told his students to go to the windows.
Get out. Jump if you have to.
Then Liviu Librescu walked to the classroom door and pressed his body against it.
He was 76 years old. He weighed 140 lbs
The gunman was in the hallway.
It was April 16, 2007. A Monday morning. Solid mechanics class at Virginia Tech, Room 204. Twenty-two students, most of them 19 or 20 years old.
At 9:45 AM, gunshots echoed through Norris Hall. Room by room, the shooter was working his way down the corridor.
Liviu heard it. He understood immediately.
He had survived the Holocaust. He had survived a labor camp. He had spent decades living under Communist oppression. He knew exactly what evil sounded like.
He told his students to escape through the windows. Second floor — it was a drop, but they'd survive. Then he walked to the door and held it shut with his body.
The shooter tried to force it open. It wouldn't move.
He fired through the door. Wood splintered. Bullets came through.
Liviu stayed.
Behind him, students were climbing out the windows. Dropping to the ground. Running. One by one, all twenty-two of them got out.
The shooter kept firing through the door.
Liviu held it shut until every student was safe.
Then the bullets killed him.
When police arrived, they found his body at the door.
All 22 of his students survived. Not one was injured.
Liviu Librescu was born on August 18, 1930, in Ploiești, Romania.
He was Jewish. In 1941, when he was eleven years old, Romanian authorities sent him and his family to a labor camp. His father died there. Liviu survived. When the war ended, he was fifteen.
He went back to school. Studied engineering. Earned a doctorate from the University of Bucharest.
But Communist Romania had no interest in allowing a Jewish intellectual to succeed. He was blocked from academic positions. Passed over for jobs he deserved. He applied to emigrate. The government kept refusing.
Finally, in 1978 when Liviu was 48 years old — Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally intervened. Romania let him go.
He had spent most of his adult life trapped in a country that didn't want him.
In Israel, he taught at Tel Aviv University. Published over 300 papers. Became an international expert in aeroelasticity — the science of how air flows over aircraft wings.
In 1985, Virginia Tech offered him a position. He moved to Blacksburg, Virginia. He taught there for 22 years. His students loved him — demanding but kind, high standards, genuine care.
He was still teaching full-time at 76. Still publishing research. Still showing up every Monday morning for solid mechanics.
April 16 was the first day of Passover — the Jewish holiday celebrating liberation from slavery and oppression.
Liviu Librescu died on the day his tradition sets aside to celebrate freedom.
He spent his entire life escaping death and oppression by luck, by persistence, by the intervention of others. And on his last morning, he chose to stand at a door so that twenty-two young people could have the future he had fought so hard to reach.
He could have run. He could have hidden. He could have climbed out a window with his students.
He chose to stay.
The Virginia Tech shooting killed 32 people that day — the deadliest school shooting in American history at the time.
Room 204 had zero casualties.
Because a 76-year-old Holocaust survivor held a door with his body until every student behind him was gone.
His funeral was held in Israel. Students from Virginia Tech flew across the ocean to honor him. The Israeli government awarded him the Star of David Medal posthumously. Virginia Tech named a scholarship in his memory.
His son said his father died the way he lived — protecting others.
A man who survived everything evil threw at him for 76 years.
On his last day, he made sure 22 kids survived too.
Professor Liviu Librescu. August 18, 1930 — April 16, 2007.
Holocaust survivor. Labor camp survivor.
302 published papers. 22 years at Virginia Tech.
22 students out the window.
He held the door.

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

For the last year, I’ve disappeared down a rabbit hole that has completely changed how I understand America.

Like many of you, I watched strange alliances form seemingly overnight. Movements on the right and the left, people who otherwise despise one another, began arriving at many of the same conclusions.

Christians turned on Christians. Institutions I had trusted seemed to change almost overnight. Israel became the flashpoint for almost everything.

None of it made sense.

Until one day, I realized I was asking the wrong question.

This isn’t about Israel. The deeper battle is over something most Americans may have forgotten.

What is America?

That question consumed me. It led me through Scripture, covenant theology, the Protestant Reformation, the American founding, political philosophy, and history.

I came to see the American founding as resting on two covenants.

The first is the Declaration of Independence. It is our covenant of promise. It declares that our rights are not gifts from kings, legislatures, courts, or majorities. They come from our Creator. They exist before government exists. Government does not create them. It recognizes them.

The second is the Constitution. It is our covenant of law. It establishes the limits of civil government, restrains power, and creates a political order capable of protecting liberty without becoming the source of liberty.

Together, they answer one of the oldest questions in history.

Who sits on the throne?

Every civilization answers that question.

Some place an emperor there.

Some place a party there.

Some place a church there.

Some place the state there.

Some place the common good there.
America did something different.

America placed God above the throne.

That is why no court, no majority, and no church possesses ultimate authority over the human conscience.

Government has real authority, but it is delegated authority. It is not ultimate authority.

The state governs laws.

The state governs courts.

The state governs taxes.

But the human soul belongs to God.
I have become convinced that this is America’s greatest inheritance. It is also the inheritance many of us have forgotten. We don’t need to be more Christian we already are one.

If we do not understand what made America different, how can we possibly defend it?

That is why I wrote The Covenant Versus the Common Good: The Battle for the Soul of America.

This is not another book about the culture war. It is an attempt to uncover the foundation beneath it.

It argues that the battle over Israel is not the disease but the symptom. It examines why Israel has so often become the focal point of attacks throughout history while asking what lies beneath those attacks. It explores why movements on both the American right and the American left, despite profoundly disagreeing with one another, are increasingly converging on the same destination.

Some pursue that destination intentionally.

Others pursue it with the very best of intentions.

But history teaches the same lesson over and over again. Whenever man occupies the place that belongs to God, freedom gives way to power. Not necessarily because men are evil, but because every one of us falls short of the glory of God.

This book is my attempt to document that pattern carefully, honestly, and with evidence rather than speculation. More than anything, it is an attempt to recover an inheritance that I believe is worth preserving for our children and grandchildren.

The Covenant Versus the Common Good: The Battle for the Soul of America will be released on December 4, 2026.

Between now and then, I’ll be sharing research, draft chapters, and the historical journey that led me here to those who have subscribed.

Because I have become convinced of one thing.

If we don’t understand what we’re fighting to protect, we will lose it. Not because our opponents were stronger, but because we forgot what made it worth defending in the first place.

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

In September of 1814, America was once again in trouble.

The young republic was only thirty-eight years old. The War of 1812 had gone badly. British troops had marched into Washington, burned the Capitol, set the White House ablaze, and now turned their sights toward Baltimore. If Fort McHenry fell, the harbor would be open, the city would likely follow, and another devastating blow would be dealt to the fragile nation.

Amid this uncertainty, a young American lawyer named Francis Scott Key sailed under a flag of truce to the British fleet. He had come to negotiate the release of a friend, a physician the British had captured.

He succeeded.

The British agreed to free the doctor.

But there was a catch.

Because Key and his companions had seen too much of the British fleet and learned too much about its plans, they were not allowed to return to shore. Instead, they were detained aboard a ship in the harbor and forced to watch the coming battle from behind enemy lines.

On the morning of September 13, the bombardment began.

For the next twenty-five hours, British warships unleashed somewhere between 1,500 and 1,800 bombs and rockets upon Fort McHenry. These were the “bombs bursting in air” and the “rockets’ red glare” of the song—not poetic embellishments, but terrible realities.

Key stood on the deck through the endless day and the long, terrifying night. Every explosion lit the darkness for a fleeting instant before the smoke swallowed everything again. Somewhere beyond that wall of fire stood the fort. Somewhere beyond it flew an American flag if it still flew at all.

He could not see.

He could only listen.

As long as the guns continued firing, there was reason to hope. The British would not waste ammunition on a fort that had already surrendered.

Then, just before dawn…

The guns fell silent.

For the first time all night, there was only stillness.

It was the most frightening sound of all.

Had the fort finally fallen? Had the defenders surrendered? Had the flag been torn down in the darkness while no one could see?

There was nothing to do but wait.

As the first light of September 14 slowly pushed back the smoke, Francis Scott Key strained his eyes toward the distant fort.

Then he saw it. Not a British flag.

The American flag. Still there. Still flying.

That flag was no ordinary banner. Months earlier, the fort’s commander had commissioned a Baltimore flagmaker, Mary Pickersgill, to sew a flag so enormous “that the British would have no difficulty seeing it from a distance.” It measured roughly thirty by forty-two feet, carried fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, and was so large it had to be assembled on the floor of a brewery because no ordinary room could contain it.

That was the Star-Spangled Banner.

The very flag Key saw through the morning mist.

The very flag that still survives today in the Smithsonian.

Overcome by what he had witnessed, Key reached into his pocket, pulled out an envelope, and began writing. The words came from a heart that had spent an entire night fearing his country might disappear with the dawn.

He first titled the poem Defence of Fort M’Henry.

Within days it was printed and circulating throughout the country. Before long, people began singing it to a melody they already knew—an old British tune called “To Anacreon in Heaven,” originally written for a London social club. There is something beautifully ironic in that: America’s most beloved patriotic song borrowed the melody of the very nation it had just survived. It also explains why the anthem is so notoriously difficult to sing. It was never written for ordinary voices gathered in stadiums or school assemblies.

The song spread quickly and became one of America’s favorite patriotic hymns, but it would wait more than a century before receiving official recognition. Not until 1931 did Congress declare “The Star-Spangled Banner” the national anthem of the United States.

[Selene Mariposa @Selene_Mariposa]

America turns 250 today.

Let me read back the resume.

We started by telling a king to pound sand, in writing.

By 1803 we bought half a continent from France for about four cents an acre.

We fought a war with ourselves and somehow stayed one country.

We strung a railroad across the entire thing.

We handed the world the lightbulb, the telephone, and the airplane in about thirty years flat.

Then a man named Willis Carrier invented air conditioning and made half the planet actually livable.

You are welcome, Texas. You are welcome, Dubai.

Twice the whole world caught fire, and twice we showed up and helped put it out.

We split the atom.

We put men on the moon in 1969.

Then we went back and hit golf balls up there, because why not.

We invented jazz, blues, rock and roll, and hip-hop, and the whole planet is still dancing to it.

We put a burger and fries on every corner of the earth.

We built rockets that fly themselves home and land standing straight up.

We flew a helicopter on Mars.

We launched a car into actual space and it is still out there cruising.

We also invented ranch dressing and somehow talked the entire world into putting it on pizza.

Priorities.

We even invented three of our own sports so we could win them.

Baseball, basketball, and football.

Real football, the kind with hands, because we named it and we are not taking corrections.

The rest of the planet can keep soccer, which is fine, we are hosting it in our backyard this summer anyway.

And yes, Canadian football exists, wider field, extra man, one fewer down, and we try very hard not to think about it.

Frankly it was generous of us to invent our own games.

If we put all that energy into soccer, nobody else would ever lift that trophy again.

We would win it so often they would just rename it the America’s Cup and hand us the keys.

You are welcome for the suspense.

And in 2026 we threw a birthday so big a German tourist live-tweeted our gas stations to 750,000 people.

Not every chapter was clean.

We argued, we stumbled, we fixed what we broke, and we kept building.

That is the whole trick.

Two hundred and fifty years in, and we are still the loudest, brightest, most improbable experiment on the map.

Not bad for a country that started as a strongly worded letter to a king.

Happy birthday, America.

🦋

[Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson]

To the Americans:

I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.

And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.

This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.

Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.

This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.

But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.

This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:

Thank God for the United States.

Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.
Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man.
Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning.

Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.

Thank God for the USA.

Happy 250th.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

[patrick_fowler1 @patrick_fowler1]

@ProLifeisProGod I'm glad you brought the issues you saw in your church to the pastor's attention, but I do think your story begs the question: did you talk to the person who was gossiping directly? It's not solely on the pastor to solve problems in the church.

[patrick_fowler1 @patrick_fowler1]

@ProLifeisProGod I'm glad you're looking hard for a community of believers where you can belong. Our face should never be based on sermons.

I would encourage you to have believers over to your house on a weekly basis and build some of that community yourself. Hostor attend a Bible study.

[Brent Money @brentmoney]

“We are NOT a Christian nation!”
“Separation of church and state!”
“Benjamin Franklin was a deist!”

On this date, June 28, 1787, Benjamin Franklin delivered his famous “Prayer Speech” at the Constitutional Convention.

This is the one where Franklin, amid deadlocks and frustrations in the Convention, implored the delegates to begin sessions with prayer, acknowledging human limitations and seeking divine assistance. Here is the full transcript (from James Madison’s notes and standard historical sources, with minor spelling normalizations for readability):

Mr. President:
The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other—our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ays, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed modern states all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstances.
In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the Contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection.—Our prayers, Sir, were heard, & they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance?

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that “except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.

[T.S. Eliott Wave @tselliottwave]

As you’ve been saying, @howertonjosh

[Race 🕊️ @multiplanet1]

Elon Musk got rejected by Netscape. He walked into the lobby, was too shy to talk to anyone, and walked out. Never got the job.

At his first company Zip2, the board demoted him. Twice. They refused to let him be CEO.

He got fired from PayPal as CEO while flying to his own honeymoon. The board voted him out mid air.

He almost died of malaria in 2000. Ten days in intensive care. Lost 45 pounds. A day from death.

His first child died at 10 weeks old.

His first rocket exploded. Falcon 1, flight one. Burned on the pad.

His second rocket exploded.

His third rocket exploded. The last of his money was nearly gone.

Tesla nearly went bankrupt in 2008. The closest he ever came to a nervous breakdown.

Both companies almost died on the same Christmas Eve.

He was sued by investors. Mocked by the people who built cars before him.

His childhood heroes, the astronauts who inspired him, testified against his company to Congress.

The Cybertruck window shattered on live stage in front of the world.

He overpaid for Twitter by his own admission and watched its value collapse.

He was beaten unconscious as a child and thrown down a flight of stairs.

He has said he goes to sleep alone and it kills him.

He failed in public, over and over, for thirty years.

He is the richest man in the history of the world.

The difference was never the absence of failure. It was the refusal to stop after it.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The year is 1949.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine has just gone to the man who invented the lobotomy. Your doctor suggests one for your sister, who has not been herself since the baby came. It is the most celebrated advance in psychiatry of the age, and he is simply current. By the time the prize curdles into an embarrassment, close to twenty thousand Americans have had the operation, and proportionally more here in Britain.

The year is 1956.

Lay the baby down on his front, the doctor says. So does the most trusted childcare book ever written, the one on every new mother's shelf. On his back he might choke, the reasoning goes. Millions obey. The advice holds for nearly thirty years, long after the evidence has quietly turned, and a generation of cot deaths is counted before anyone thinks to roll the babies over.

The year is 1966.

A bestselling book informs your wife that menopause is a disease, that she is, in the author's word, a castrate, and that a small daily pill will keep her youthful and tolerable to live with. Her doctor agrees. The drug becomes one of the most prescribed in the country. Nobody mentions that the author sat on the payroll of the company that made it. That detail surfaces decades later, in the same year the landmark trial is halted early for raising rates of breast cancer, stroke and clots.

The year is 1979.

Your ulcer is caused by stress and sharp food, the doctor explains. Calm down, drink milk, take the antacid that happens to be the best-selling medicine on earth. Two Australians are about to prove that most ulcers are caused by a bacterium and cured by a fortnight of antibiotics. The profession laughs. One of them eventually drinks a beaker of the stuff to settle the matter. The establishment takes the better part of twenty years to stop laughing. The Nobel lands in 2005.

The year is 1985.

Butter is dangerous, the doctor says. Switch to margarine, it is modern, it is heart-healthy, the experts are united. The spread he nudges you toward is loaded with trans fats, which the next decade will identify as the genuinely dangerous one, and which will eventually be banned outright. The butter goes quietly back in the fridge. No correction is ever printed at the volume of the original warning.

The year is 1992.

There is a pyramid on the surgery wall, and the very same one in your grandchild's classroom. Bread, cereal, rice and pasta form the broad virtuous base, up to eleven servings a day. Fat is exiled to the tiny tip. The chart was reportedly held back a year while the relevant industries had their say. It is wrong at the bottom and wrong at the top.

Now it is today.

Your doctor has new guidelines, new studies, a fresh consensus, delivered with precisely the steady confidence of every guideline above. He believes it, and he has good reason to. So did every doctor in this thread. None of them were villains. Each was sincere, most were kind, and all were certain, reading from a map that somebody else had drawn and handed them. That is the part worth sitting with.

So when the man in the white coat tells you what to eat, what to fear, and what to swallow every morning for the rest of your life, you are allowed to ask. Who paid for the study. What the evidence says beneath the headline. What he was just as certain about thirty years ago, and where that advice sits now.

Then make up your own mind. Call it scepticism, or call it whatever your grandmother called it when she ignored the advert, kept the butter where it was, and lived to ninety-one.

It has outlasted every consensus on this list. It will outlast this one too.

[Secretary Kennedy @SecKennedy]

Sheryl. Your article exemplifies the biased reporting we have come to expect from you and @nytimes. It was unfair, inimical, and inaccurate. All one needs to refute your argument is to glance at my publicly available calendar and to review my unprecedented list of accomplishments on a wide range of issues, all of which I drove. You evidently never undertook these foundational due diligences. Why let facts obscure a good story?

You fault me for missing a couple of monthly counselor meetings. However, I meet one-on-one with my counselors every day to decide policy and strategy. We schedule the monthly meetings to give the divisions a chance to keep each other informed about HHS-wide policies with which I’m already intimately familiar. Had you read my calendar, you would have seen that I have back-to-back meetings all day, every day, with both career and political staff, with my counselors and with outside stakeholders, interspersed with press conferences and other policy announcements.

I am knowledgeable and active on every issue in every division of my department, and I always make the final decisions. I meet with the principals at FDA, NIH, CDC, and my senior counselor every morning, something, I’m told, is unprecedented in HHS history. I try to get out of the office between 4:30 and 6:00 PM, so that I can spend three hours, in quiet, responding to emails. I normally work until 11 PM every night, mostly on phone calls to staff.

In order to prove your preconceived case for my disengagement, you quote anonymous employees, some of whom I fired or who quit to avoid being fired. You also deceptively quote HHS employees without identifying whether they were among those I fired, thereby depriving your readers of the opportunity to make an independent judgment about their credibility.

I came into this job to change the culture of a broken agency that has presided over the worst decline in public health in American history. Of course I fired people—lots of them! It's an easy task for even the laziest journalist, to comb that flotsam and jetsam for malevolence toward the Trump administration. And of course, this species of journalist will always be able to find disgruntled individuals among the 70,000 employees of the Department from whom to cherry pick "facts" to flesh out a preordained hit piece. All that is required for this brand of journalism is the ethical elasticity that you seem to have in spades. You had a preconceived thesis, and you set out to prove it. This is a widely accepted technique in journalism today, but I grew up in an era when it would not have been tolerated by the New York Times.

Ultimately, God puts us all on this earth to search for existential truths. I've tried to instill this mission at HHS by implementing gold standard research to end the regime of politicized science that COVID exposed to the American public. There was a time that journalists were proud to be the fearless and uncompromising champions of truth. Standards have devolved, and journalism is dead. The Times now employs propagandists. Your capitulation to partisanship further compounds your journalistic challenges; since we all are aware of your predictable bias, we at HHS are unwilling to talk to you about the topics that are important. The fact that you have minimal access to decision makers leaves you covering trivia and relying on your own capacity for invention.

Btw. When I took this job, the building was empty. About 90% of the employees were not coming to work. I changed that, but your newspaper never covers my reforms. Nor did you cover the fact that my predecessor almost never showed up for work here during his four years in office. When we came in, there were still artifacts from the first Trump administration in many of our office drawers because no one showed up for work during the Biden years. Just as Rochelle Walensky spent her entire term as CDC Director in Cambridge, Xavier Becerra reportedly spent most of his term as HHS Secretary in California. (I live in California, but I’ve only been there once in fifteen months).

His only notable accomplishments here were losing 300,000 children, referred to HHS for custody and care, to human traffickers and drug runners, encouraging transgender surgeries, and disabling the entire program-integrity apparatus, allowing hundreds of billions of dollars of theft from my agency. I have set out to find the children Becerra lost. He is now the front-runner for the governor of California. These are not invented stories; they are genuine scandals that the Times will never cover, presumably, because the malefactors are Democrats.

Finally, you criticize me for spending time with the Indian tribes in Alaska. I consider that part of my job. I run the Indian Health Services, and I’ve had unprecedented success in transforming IHS from a backwater to a top priority for this department. I’ve made more trips to Indian country and to Indian health clinics and hospitals than any HHS secretary in history, and I’ve brought Indians into high positions on the sixth floor for the first time in agency history. This is another success story that the Times will never cover.

[Gabe Pluguez @Gabepluguez]

Marriage stuff the church never warned me about:

1. Sex is a skill. It’s a gift from God and It’s worth learning how to do well. Being better at sex (only with your wife) only blesses your marriage. And the “best sex” isn’t what you think. It’s facilitated through intimacy, safety, and love. For the man - this means you need intimacy with the Holy Spirit, first. You need to view your wife as a daughter of the King and love her in way she’s worthy of. You need to die to yourself, serve her, protect her, provide for her financially, emotionally, and spiritually. You need to LEAD her. That typically translates into more frequent, more pleasurable, more intimate sex - which energizes a marriage.

2. Your view of money matters. If all you want is more, you won’t steward it well, you'll still live in comparison to what you want next, and funny enough - you'll probably end op with less of it. On the contrary, if you don’t prioritize increasing your wealth, you’ll miss out on the abundant opportunities God gives you to glorify him through what money can do. Money is a tool. It's a gift God has given you to steward and multiply for his glory (yes you can buy nice things to the glory of God, and you can exhibit financial discipline to the glory of God). Worship him with every dollar you receive, and every dollar you deploy.

3. Pray together every single day, even if you're really tired or you just fought. The divorce rate for the average couple is 50%. The divorce rate for couples that pray together is less than 1%. God hates divorce. Divorce is hell. God can always redeem divorced believers, but avoid it if you can. Establish the basic discipline of praying together every single day. This is more important than brushing your teeth and eating food.

4. Be willing to cut friendships. Especially ones that began before you were married. The two of you have became one flesh. Your dynamic with every human being you interact with has forever changed. Everything you do directly affects your wife, everything she does directly affects you. Have conversations early on about who is no longer welcomed in your life, cut them quickly. And if there are people who simply need to be kept at greater distance, orient your calendars accordingly. Do the same in reverse. The couples who sharpen you, draw near to them, prioritize them. They will be there for both of you in your hardest times. They will fight for your marriage in moments where you offend one another. Your friends matter. And no - your wife cannot have male friends that are not directly friends with you, or vice versa.

5. You are not part of your parent’s family anymore. Non-believers have a harder time with this, but the Bible speaks to it so directly. You are no longer part of your parent’s family. They are now extended family. If your parents have friction with how you live your lives, that’s OK. There is tension between consistently honoring your parents, while being OK if they disagree with you. Bring that tension to the Holy Spirit and ask for his guidance in every interaction, every boundary, and all communication.

6. Marriage isn’t the goal. It’s the beginning of a journey. It’s a common temptation to become complacent in improving yourself after getting married. There’s this mindset of “jobs done! We’ve arrived.” and that’s absolutely hilarious. The most challenging, and most rewarding work begins after you’ve gotten married. This is where you’re now directly cleaved with the person who’s supposed to sharpen you. Then this means men, you need to lead, cast vision, and continually grow. And women, you are the person this man is willing to die for, you’re the person he’s trusting to deliver his child, and nurture his offspring. You’re the primary helper God designed to support his mission. It is your duty as a woman of God to continue to grow. A proverbs 31 woman was not a weak, powerless housewife scrolling Instagram all day. Read it.

7. Set the culture of how you’re going to steward your bodies in the home, early. How you honor the temple of God is such an integral part of your daily life, it impacts sleep schedules, grocery lists, it impacts every single meal, it impacts how you use your time. If there’s not agreement in the home about how you’re going to honor your bodies, it will become an intense point of contention in your day-to-day life. The person with greater health will be burdened with taking care of the one who has worse health. And although some things are not preventable, most prognosis are totally preventable. Don’t burden your partner because you couldn’t stop eating Twinkies and never worked out. Do your part so that you can show up well with them, with energy, presence, and confidence in who God made you. Your health will be the #1 determinant of your quality of life in your later years when grand babies come. Heck - after your relationship with God, it's one of the primary determintants of your quality of life even before grand babies come. And - back to my first point, you want to be able to keep those hips moving as you guys get older 👍

8. Marriage is not a thing you do for mutual benefit. He provides, she makes the home - in practice yes, but that's not the point. The point of marriage is so that you know Christ more deeply. It's a reflection of the most valuable thing in the universe. Eternal life, knowing God. Take that view into every trial, and every mountain top - you work towards an excellent, intimate marriage - to know Christ more deeply, as a testemant and service to his people, and to glorify his Holy name.

Married people, what would you add?

[Will Knowland @beherleader]

Many husbands today were never taught the basics about women.

Women do not experience love mainly as problem-solving. They experience it through attentive presence, gentleness, and regard for their feelings.

A wife is not a subordinate appliance in the home. She is a companion. Masculine headship without consultation is crudeness.

A woman often needs to feel safe, considered, and chosen before she can feel open, warm, or receptive. Marriage is not merely a physical union but also a social one.

Disagreement is not always disrespect. Distinguish discord of wills from mere difference of opinion. Many men were never taught that a woman’s resistance, tears, hesitation, or different judgment may not mean rebellion. It may mean she sees something he does not, or that she needs to be heard before she can unite with him.

Provision is not only financial. Many men think, “I work hard, so she should be fine.” But women often measure love less by income than by whether he brings strength, steadiness, protection, moral seriousness, and peace into the home.

Tone matters as much as content. A man may be factually right and still wound his wife by harshness. The opposite of charity in daily life is often not hatred but roughness, coldness, or habitual unpleasantness. Many men were taught to avoid adultery, but not to avoid contempt, brusqueness, and emotional neglect.

Women need to be specially loved, not merely fairly treated. A wife does not want to be managed like a team member. She wants to be cherished as wife. Justice keeps a marriage from breaking, but affection makes it live.

Women are usually more responsive than confrontational. If they go cold, sharp, or withdrawn, that often follows a longer period of feeling unseen, unsafe, overruled, or emotionally alone. Men are often never taught to read female withdrawal as a signal of hurt before it becomes hostility.

[Josh Howerton @howertonjosh]

This one thing explains way more in our culture politically, culturally, and ecclesiologically (“with regard to the church”) than anyone probably wants to admit:

Until a man (in particular) has kids, he isn’t as emotionally tied to the future of society at a visceral level.

When a man has kids, it does something to his energy and produces a desperation to use his strength to ensure a better societal and ecclesiological future for his children and grandchildren to inherit.

[patrick_fowler1 @patrick_fowler1]

https://t.co/1j34HlBdMU

[patrick_fowler1 @patrick_fowler1]

@SethAbramson Do we really want the contract for sealing this highly visible part of the nations capital to go to the lowest bidder? I'm happy to see someone pick a reliable and quality vendor rather than submit such an important project to a bunch of bidders.