Susan Yoder

So, basically, 500 million Europeans expect 300 million Americans to protect them from 120 million Russians who can’t even defeat 40 million Ukrainians while those 500 million Europeans don’t even realize they are being conquered by 2 billion Muslims who claim they are being persecuted by 8 million Israelis. Is that about right? 1

God is a polyglot: He communicates and relates to different people different ways. If, however, we don’t respect how others interact and relate to God differently than us … Then relational participatory church – with ministry by one another to mutually build up each other – will sputter and die. For example: Some primarily interact and relate to the Lord through their heart and feelings; Some analytically through their mind and logic; Some through the dynamics of action; Some through the affection of relationships; and Some through the passion of mercy or justice – among other ways. In fact, we need each other and those differences if we want to stay in balance and grow up in our faith. Problems often arise, however, when we think that our primary way for hearing and relating to God is His only way … Or is superior to other ways He uses with others. If left unchecked, this causes us to be dismissive of others … And of what God wants to do, and say, through them. I see it all too often these days: For example, one of the tragedies of many “churches” is the belief that Christian growth and maturity comes almost exclusively through knowledge. And so “church” gatherings are primarily about expository “sermons” and analytical Bible studies. In contrast, those who relate to God through their feelings think everything should be about heart. The same can happen with those who relate to God through action, or in relationships, or via passion for mercy or justice, or whatever. When we wrongly conclude – whether through ignorance or arrogance – that God’s way of relating to us is the best way, or even the only legitimate way, we box Him in and limit His reach. In so doing, we also put His people in a box and limit how God can minister to us – and balance our own limitations – through them. If we are not careful, our box then becomes legalism – as we insist (or more subtly presume) that everyone must comply with how God interacts and relates to us. When this happens, the new legalism of making God and His church all about “compassion” and “love,” for example, becomes just as oppressive and dismissive … As the old legalism of everything being about “doctrine” and “truth.” In reality, God is about all those qualities … As is the multi-part, multi-gifted, multi-functional Body of Christ. Only as we learn to honor and respect the different ways God communicates and relates to others, can we then truly be the church … One to another.

Spencer Pratt said what a lot of us are thinking: if you hate America that much, go back to Mogadishu and try building something there. Elon builds rockets that land themselves and companies that actually function. Ilhan builds resentment and calls the country that took her in one of the worst on earth. One of them creates real things. The other creates grievances. What kind of American do you want in this country? A giver or taker? One who creates? Or one who complains? We don’t need this hostility and ungratefulness from foreigners. Go home!

My dear American friends, I've shown you where the disease came from and who sells it. Now I want you to look at this email. January 5, 2020, 2:44 in the morning. Peter Thiel writes to Mark Zuckerberg, Nick Clegg, Sheryl Sandberg and Marc Andreessen. It became public years later, in a lawsuit between the state of Tennessee and Meta. The subject line is one word: Millennials. Thiel starts from a number: 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist. Read that again. Seven out of ten young adults in the richest, freest, most innovative country in human history say they want the system that ruined every country that tried it. And Thiel, one of the sharpest minds in Silicon Valley, says something important. Don't just dismiss them as stupid or brainwashed. Understand why. His answer: when you're crushed by student debt and housing is unaffordable, you have no capital and no way to build any. And if you have no stake in capitalism, you turn against it. He's right. But follow the thread one step further, because that's where it gets interesting. Who made college unaffordable? Washington flooded universities with easy federal loans, and universities raised their prices year after year, because they could. The same universities that then taught those students, for four years, that capitalism is the problem. Who made housing unaffordable? Zoning rules, permits, environmental reviews, endless regulation that makes it nearly illegal to build. Remember Piketty's famous rise of capital? It was mostly housing. Scarcity created by the state. So here's the full picture. The state creates the scarcity. The universities teach that capitalism caused it. The politicians sell socialism as the cure. The arsonist is selling fire insurance. That's why 70% is not a natural opinion. No generation wakes up one morning wanting central planning. It takes decades of teaching, a captured culture, and an economy rigged to give young people no stake in it. In a healthy country, that number would trigger a serious public investigation into what American universities have been teaching for fifty years. This is not a debate. It's the result of a long, patient operation, exactly the war of position Gramsci described from his prison cell. Now let me tell you what history says happens when an ideology captures a generation and turns it against everything that came before. China, 1966. Mao unleashes the Cultural Revolution and hands it to the youth. Students become Red Guards. Their mission: destroy the "Four Olds," old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas. Temples, books, art, centuries of history, smashed. In August 1966, at a girls' school in Beijing, students beat their vice principal, Bian Zhongyun, to death. She was one of the first. Teachers across the country were humiliated, tortured, killed by the children they had taught. In 1970, a 16-year-old boy named Zhang Hongbing denounced his own mother for criticizing Mao. She was executed. He spent the rest of his life trying to apologize for it. Children were taught that loyalty to the Party came before loyalty to their parents. Historians estimate the Cultural Revolution killed somewhere between hundreds of thousands and millions of people. The Soviet Union did it first. It turned a boy named Pavlik Morozov into a national hero for denouncing his father. Generations of Soviet children were raised on his story. Cambodia, 1975. The Khmer Rouge declare Year Zero. Teenagers with rifles empty the cities. Wearing glasses was enough to mark you as an intellectual. In four years, roughly a quarter of the population was dead. Every time, the same pattern. Take the young. Teach them that the past is guilty. Teach them that their parents, their teachers, their history are the enemy. Then give them power. So when you see statues pulled down, words banned, books rewritten, and parents treated as obstacles in their own children's schools, understand what you're looking at. It's not the end of the story. It's the opening act. It always starts with the young, and it always starts with good intentions. If the West ever gets its Marxist youth revolution, it won't end in Scandinavia. It will end the way it has ended every single time it was tried for real. And we will have learned nothing. Thiel saw the number. I'm telling you where it leads. The answer is not to hate the young. It's to give them back a stake in the system. Let them build. Let them buy a home. Make college worth its price or skip it. Let them start companies instead of drowning in debt. A generation that owns something defends it. A generation that owns nothing will burn it down. I come from your future. Don't let your children write the next chapter of this story.