At a memorial service for Eugene Peterson last November, his son Leif said the pastor/author for 50 years had one main message: “God loves you. He’s on your side. He’s coming after you. He’s relentless.”

I alternate New York Times (NYT) and Washington Post subscriptions because reading either of them illuminates the “progressive” agenda—and for two years their main message has been: We hate Donald Trump. We’re coming after him. We’re relentless.

When walking Greeley, my dog named after the 19th-century editor, I sometimes listen to Conversations With Tyler, a podcast featuring interviews by a smart George Mason U. economics professor who leans toward libertarianism. But Tyler Cowen’s Stubborn Attachments (Stripe, 2018) offers two philosophical starting points that cancel out each other. First, “‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are very real concepts which should possess great force,” and second, “We should be skeptical about the powers of the individual human mind.”

How crazy have some of our media leaders become? With federal workers back in their offices, we can now pay even more attention to supposed scandals like the one revealed in this headline: “Vice-president’s wife Karen Pence to teach at anti-LGBT school.” 

WORLD members have said my American history reading recommendations in our Dec. 29 issue are useful, so here’s one more column of suggestions as we head into February, Black History Month. As a white person with African-American family members and friends, I may have some gnosis, knowledge, about parts of the black experience, but not epignosis, intimate knowledge from having lived it—so I’ve learned more by reading 30 books that show individual struggles in often-toxic environments.

I grew up in a Jewish household, went to six years of Hebrew school three days a week after public school, and chanted my way through a bar mitzvah service at age 13. I then started going evenings to a school for studying the Talmud, which is made up of ancient rabbinical debates. One edition runs 73 volumes.

The year of our Lord 2019 began with a declaration of war by 2012 Republicans against 2016 Republicans.

On Jan. 1 new U.S. Sen. (and 2012 presidential candidate) Mitt Romney declared in The Washington Post, “A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse. … With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.” 

William Inboden is a Christian with sterling establishment credentials. Educated at Stanford and Oxford, he gained a history Ph.D. at Yale, worked as a congressional staff member, and gained George W. Bush administration appointments: Department of State policy planner, senior director on the National Security Council.