The Houston-based Terry Foundation is the largest private scholarship provider in the state of Texas. Here’s a history talk with current applications I gave at the 1997 celebration of Terry scholars at the University of Texas at Austin. See last month’s “stump speech” about how concerns over corrupt Anglicanism helped spur American colonists to revolt.

Parental advisory: This column quotes some graphic descriptions of Holocaust atrocities.

Amid stories of how the coronavirus focuses our attention, I recalled a Russian short story about an officer marching idealistic political prisoners on a muddy road to where a firing squad waits. He carefully avoids puddles, keeping his boots shiny. Watching these noncriminal criminals die sickens him. On the way back he does not avoid puddles: What does it matter if mud cakes his boots?

Passover and Easter are brothers, as are Jews and Christians, as are (metaphorically) national talk show host Michael Medved and I. We both grew up in Jewish homes and had immigrant grandparents who grew to love America. He became an Orthodox Jew, I became a Christian, and we’ve both written books praising this sweet land of liberty. 

I’ve given more than 300 speeches in more than 180 cities over the years, but since I’m turning 70 this year it’s time to retire from speechifying. I developed over time about 10 “stump speeches” on various subjects to be used with modifications in different places, and we plan to post a few of them on the first Saturday of the month as part of our Saturday Series. Here’s one, first delivered at Hillsdale College in 1996, about causes of the Revolutionary War.

Ten years ago, I felt honored to write a chapter in a book edited by John Piper and David Mathis, With Calvin in the Theater of God. Many of our readers have read John Calvin and are deeply aware of his theological brilliance, but here’s a slightly adapted part of the chapter in which I looked at 10 ways Calvin challenged his era’s conventional wisdom concerning government and economics. In this election year, as the full fury and superficiality of half-blind 2020 politics assaults us, let’s spend a few minutes looking deeper.

Right-wingers of the world: Let’s not be hostile to International Women’s Day, coming up on March 8. Let’s distinguish among the feminism that lets women be all they can be, the kind that keeps men from being all they can be, and the kind that keeps millions of unborn babies from being anything at all. 

Numerous Christian schools sent buses full of students to the March for Life in Washington, D.C., last month. Which museum on or adjacent to the National Mall had about 700 students lined up to enter it at 10 a.m. the day before the March? Which had no line and would be a good one for school groups to visit next January, when many will be back for the 48th annual march? Which should schools avoid unless they want a massive dose of ever-changing but always trendy pseudoscience?