Chapter 11 -- Ours for the Taking

I have been filling in the final gaps in a sweep of US history I mainly worked on in the week leading up to July 4. Here are some of the excerpts I've posted:

• 20. Protest is deeply American. 
• 18. Happy No Kings Day
• 17. Church vs. State
• 8. Hitler the Clown

This morning I finished chapter 11 on America's expansion in the late 1800s/early 1900s. The more I've worked on this material, the more I'm convinced that there is a mastermind of history in the current administration. I have my own sense of who it might be. Unfortunately, I sense they admire the dark side of US history rather than the truly Christian side. I'm praying that such individuals will lose favor with the president.
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We’re coming for whatever you got.

Progress at Home, Power Abroad
By the dawn of the 20th century, America had cleaned up its living room but started eyeing the neighbors’ houses.

The Progressive Era had arrived. Reformers at home were calling out corruption, monopolies, poisoned food, child labor, and slums. These were journalists, pastors, politicians, teachers. They wanted to fix things. Teddy Roosevelt led the charge with his “Square Deal,” busting trusts and regulating railroads. The government, they argued, could be a force for good. And sometimes, it was.

But while America was busy scrubbing up the inside, it was also kicking down doors outside.

Expansionism wasn’t new. Manifest Destiny had already pushed America westward in the early 1800s. It had swallowed land from Mexico and forced Native peoples off their ancestral homes. But by the late 1800s, America had run out of frontier – at least on the mainland. So, the eyes of Washington and Wall Street turned outward.

In 1898, the U.S. declared war on Spain, supposedly to help Cuba gain independence. The real reason? To prove we had the muscle of an empire. Within months, the U.S. had scooped up Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. That same year, we annexed Hawaii, claiming it was about security and civilization. The sugar plantations told a different story. We backed a coup, overthrew a queen, and called it progress.

A few years later, we took part of Colombia to carve out Panama, building a canal to connect the oceans. We wrapped it all in the language of liberation and progress. But our real motives were clear: land, labor, leverage.

This wasn’t just history. It’s a mindset that never fully left. Apparently, it’s always been there lurking in the minds of some.

In his second term, President Trump has resurrected this conquest mindset. In one of his rallies, he joked about buying Greenland, calling it “prime real estate.” It wasn’t really a joke.

He floated the idea of making Canada the 51st state. The result? A Canadian conservative who had been leading in the polls lost support overnight. Canadians weren’t interested in becoming America’s 51st state.

Trump said we should “take back Panama” – “because we built the canal, didn’t we?” And he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” As he put it, “Why should Mexico get to name it? We’ve earned it.”

Some laughed. Some cheered. But to the rest of the world, it wasn’t funny.

It’s like the same story all over again in a new century. Finders keepers, losers weepers.

The Spanish American Grab
If Manifest Destiny was about claiming the continent, 1898 was about claiming the globe.

The Spanish-American War lasted less than four months, but it changed America’s role in the world forever. The official reason for the war was to help free Cuba from Spanish rule. That’s what the newspapers screamed. It’s what President McKinley told Congress. We wrapped the war in slogans about liberty and democracy.

But wars usually have more than one reason. And the real reasons are often less noble. "The good of the people" was mostly propaganda.

This was about proving America could play empire, just like the old European powers. It was about territory. It was about ports and shipping lanes. It was about sugar and rubber and new markets. We were flexing our new-found muscles. And the world noticed.

When the war ended, the U.S. walked away with prizes: Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. These weren’t accidental acquisitions. They were trophies.

In the Philippines, things turned ugly fast. Filipino revolutionaries had fought alongside the Americans against Spain, thinking they were about to win independence. Instead, they woke up to find out they had traded one colonial power for another.

The U.S. flag went up. The new empire wasn’t Spanish. It was American.

What followed was the Philippine-American War, a brutal conflict that is rarely taught in U.S. history classes. Between 200,000 and 300,000 Filipinos died from combat, famine, and disease. As is often the case, they were mostly civilians. American troops burned villages and tortured prisoners. Some of the same politicians who had spoken about freeing Cuba now spoke about “uplifting” the Philippines, as if democracy could be delivered at the end of a bayonet.

Civilians were rounded up into concentration camps. One general issued orders to kill every male over the age of ten – reminiscent of what Pharaoh did to the Israelites in Exodus. Another general described the war effort as trying to "pacify" a people he called savages. Some liberation. 

U.S. officials described the occupation as a civilizing mission. President McKinley claimed God told him to “uplift and civilize and Christianize” the Filipinos. By the way, they were already overwhelmingly Christian – just Catholic. It was colonial arrogance wrapped in missionary language.

Meanwhile, Guam and Puerto Rico became U.S. territories. They are still in limbo today. They’re stuck in that half-American status where you get the rules but not all the rights. Wouldn't it be nice to give them the statehood they deserve?

This is the pattern. “Liberation” as a mask for control, freedom as a brand name for U.S. interest. And when the people we “helped” didn't fall in line, we acted surprised. It was as if freedom was only freedom if it followed our instructions.

It wasn’t just about land. It was about narrative. If we were the good guys, then nothing we did could be imperial. It had to be noble. It had to be generous. It had to be for their own good.

But history is less flattering. We didn’t just plant flags. We planted lies. And we called them liberty.

This was Manifest Destiny internationalized. It was a shift from continental conquest to global ambition. We didn’t just want to be a country anymore. We wanted to be an empire like the big boys. And just like that, the land of liberty got into the empire business.

It goes without saying that none of this is Christ-honoring in any way. It is violence for self-gain. It doesn’t do to others what we would have them do to us. It isn’t love of neighbor or enemy. It is love of self.

Certainly, there have been “Christian” nations who have done such things, nations with state religions that call themselves Christians. Since Constantine in the 300s, there have been many instances where a visible church became fused with the powers of government.

They might have used Christian language. But they weren’t following Jesus. They were following power. These weren’t the actions of the true, invisible church. William McKinley might have used some Christian words. But this had nothing to do with Jesus.

Empire and the Dollar
America’s new empire wasn’t just built with bullets. It was built with business plans.

Behind every military intervention was a profit motive. Sugar, rubber, tobacco, bananas, oil, shipping lanes. These weren’t side benefits of expansion. For many, they were the point. People get conquered. American gets land. Business gets rich. It’s the same playbook Europe used when it came to the New World.

The Philippines became a steppingstone to China, opening up new markets for American goods. Hawaii wasn’t about security. It was about sugar plantations and pineapple companies. Puerto Rico became a hub for American sugar production, with local economies restructured to feed the U.S. market – not their own people of course.

In Panama, we didn’t just want a canal for global commerce. We wanted to control the toll booth. Owning the path between the Atlantic and the Pacific meant we could control trade itself.

It’s no coincidence that President Trump has talked about taking the canal back. From a business perspective, Carter was stupid to give it to the people of Panama. Far too authentically Christian. Didn’t he get the memo that governments are only supposed to use Christian language? They’re not supposed to actually be Christian.

This wasn’t a new idea. “Dollar diplomacy” became the official policy under President William Howard Taft in 1909. Use money, not just military, to expand influence. Set up banks, control debt, install friendly governments that owe you favors. If that didn’t work, send in the Marines.

American companies weren’t just doing business abroad. They were becoming the tentacles of empire. United Fruit Company in Central America. Standard Oil in the Caribbean. American Sugar Refining in Hawaii and Puerto Rico. These corporations shaped foreign policy just as much as presidents did.

We told ourselves we were spreading democracy. But what we really spread was economic dependency. We were making sure that other countries produced what we wanted, bought what we sold, and stayed in line with our rules.

It was conquest by contract.

And just like the military empire, the business empire has never really gone away. We don’t always send troops anymore. We send lobbyists. We send trade negotiators. We send corporations so big that governments bend to their will.

When you control the market, you don’t have to fire a shot. You can just sit back and watch the cash flow in.

Fortress America
While America was expanding its footprint abroad, it was tightening the gates at home. We will explore these dynamics in more detail in the next chapter.

By the early 1900s, the same country that claimed to be spreading freedom overseas was busy closing its borders and purifying its population at home. This wasn’t a contradiction. It was the same story, just in reverse. Conquer abroad, control at home.

The Progressive Era had a dark side. Alongside the food safety laws and labor reforms came eugenics, anti-immigrant hysteria, and “Americanization” campaigns. Eugenics was one of the ugliest undercurrents of the early 20th century. It is the pseudoscience of human breeding. Progressives didn’t just want cleaner streets and safer factories. Many wanted a cleaner gene pool. 

State fairs held “fitter family” contests. Universities taught courses on racial hierarchy. Forced sterilization programs targeted thousands of people – the poor, the disabled, immigrants, Black women, Native women, anyone labeled “unfit.” In some states, sterilization was performed without consent, sometimes without the patient even knowing it had happened. We like to tell ourselves this was a European problem. But the truth is that America wrote the first draft of the playbook Hitler would later use.

And the abuses didn’t stop with sterilization. From 1932 to 1972, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment let hundreds of Black men suffer untreated syphilis so government doctors could “study the effects.” The men weren’t told what was happening. They were promised free healthcare. Instead, they became test subjects in a cruel exercise of medical racism. It was the kind of experiment we usually accuse dictatorships of running. But this wasn’t Nazi Germany. This was Alabama.

Immigrants were told to drop their languages, their cultures, even their names. Scientists gave speeches about “racial hygiene.” Politicians warned of "undesirable stock." The goal was simple. Build an empire outside, keep it pure inside.

This wasn’t just about race. It was about fear of dilution. Fear that too many new people would change what America meant. Fear that “real Americans” would lose control.

It’s the same fear Trump has tapped into again in his second term. At the same time that he has talked about expansion abroad – taking back Panama, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, absorbing Canada – he has been building walls at home. People are being sorted into categories: who belongs and who doesn’t. Who’s allowed to stay, and who’s disposable.

This isn’t about safety. It’s about identity. It’s about drawing a line around who counts as an American and who doesn’t. And it’s about keeping that line wherever it serves the empire’s needs, whether it means expanding it for land and labor. Or closing it to keep power in the right hands.

Who do we want to be?
America has always had a choice.

We can be the takers. We can be the sugar barons, the canal-grabbers, the men who talk about civilization while cashing checks and counting profits. That’s one version of America. It’s the William McKinley and William Howard Taft version, where expansion is destiny and moral language is just the marketing department of greed.

Or we can be something else.

We did eventually do the right thing for the Philippines. When the Japanese took over the Philippines in World War II, they brutalized both the Filipino people and the captured American soldiers. General MacArthur made a promise: “I shall return.” And he did.

It took decades of control, war, and occupation. But after World War II, we finally did what we had claimed we were doing all along. On July 4, 1946, we recognized Philippine independence. It was late. But it mattered. Doing the right thing, even after failure, is still better than never doing it at all.

We did eventually do the right thing in Panama too. After almost a century of holding the canal as our own personal shortcut, President Carter brokered the deal to hand it back. He was mocked for it. Called weak. But it was the right thing to do.

History has given us this choice over and over again.

Do we want to be the country that talks about liberty while practicing domination? Or do we want to actually live out the words of the Declaration of Independence?

“Let America be America again.” That was Langston Hughes’ plea. And it wasn’t about nostalgia. It was about living up to the promise we keep making but don’t always keep.

It’s not just history. We still make this choice over and over.

Do we want to be a “finders keepers, losers weepers” empire, grabbing land and locking out immigrants? Or do we want to be a nation that does to others what we would have them do to us?

We’re still deciding whether that’s the road we want to stay on. It’s not too late to do the right thing.

Chapter 17 -- Church vs. State

I had been scrambling to publish a sweep of US history by July 4 but didn't make it. I might still publish it as it was almost finished. Here is another segment in addition to other excerpts I've posted:

• Protest is deeply American. 
• Happy No Kings Day
• Hitler the Clown
  

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Jesus didn’t run a political party. Your pastor shouldn’t either.

Freedom to Impose
When we talk about religious liberty in America, the story often starts with the Pilgrims and Puritans. We know them as those very serious, buckled-shoe figures of Thanksgiving lore. We imagine them as holy seekers of freedom, fleeing oppression in England to build a new society where everyone could worship God freely.

But the real story is a little more ironic – and a very important mirror for today.

The Puritans didn’t come to the New World because they loved religious freedom. It’s actually quite funny to think that. They came because they couldn’t take over England.

They had tried. Throughout the 1600s, Puritan reformers fought to “purify” the Church of England. They desperately tried to rid it of anything that smelled Catholic – vestments, ceremonies, bishops, holidays. Some Puritans worked within the system. Others left it entirely. They briefly took over Parliament and even put a king to death! 

But when the monarchy was restored, the dream of remaking England as a Puritan nation collapsed. So, they packed up their theology and set sail across the Atlantic.

In Massachusetts, they finally had their shot. And what did they do with their newfound freedom? They imposed it on everyone.

Puritan Massachusetts was not a land of religious tolerance. It was a theocracy – at least in theory. A theocracy is the idea that God is ruling directly rather than any human or group of humans. The fatal flaw with this concept, of course, is that someone has to interpret what God says. The Bible must be interpreted, as the tens of thousands of little church groups around the country prove. For some reason, they can’t seem to agree on what the Bible means.

Any notion of a theocracy is thus a farce. Ask yourself who is interpreting the Bible. That’s who’s really ruling.

In Puritan New England, church attendance was mandatory. Dissent was criminalized. The idea wasn’t to build a place where everyone could follow God as they understood Him. It was to build a place where everyone followed the Puritan understanding of God.

“A city on a hill,” yes. But only if you agreed with the sermon. Disagree, and you were out. Or worse.

Roger Williams believed in freedom of conscience. He argued that the government should not dictate religious practice, and he insisted that Native Americans had legitimate land rights. This was a deeply unpopular stance in Puritan Massachusetts even though it seems rather Christ-like. From a theological standpoint, we may disagree with some of his views. But politically, his vision was clear: the state should not control a person’s faith. 

And, actually, no one can. Even God lets us decide. Romans 1 makes this clear when it says that God “gives people up” to their sinful desires (Rom. 1:28). Otherwise, God would be the author of sin. If God is dictating everything that happens, then he would be a rapist, a child-molester, and a serial killer. No, God allows sin. He doesn't dictate it.

The Puritans banished Williams from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He fled into the woods and eventually founded Rhode Island. It was the first colony built on the principle of religious freedom. There, not only could various Christian denominations worship freely, but Jews and even atheists were welcome too. It was radical for its time. 

And it totally went against the Puritan way.

Anne Hutchinson dared to interpret the Bible for herself. A woman! Imagine that! She led Bible studies. She criticized the clergy for preaching works over grace. She was exiled, too. And even after her death, Massachusetts leaders expressed relief that God had “judged” her. 

Mary Dyer was a Quaker. She didn't leave. They put her to death.

The story of America’s founding isn’t just one of escape from religious oppression. It’s also a story of how quickly the oppressed can become the oppressor.

And the Puritans weren’t alone. Other colonies carried their own religious baggage. Maryland was founded as a haven for Catholics. But Protestants quickly took over and passed laws punishing those who observed Catholic Mass.

Pennsylvania, founded by Quaker William Penn, offered a broader tolerance to Christians and even some non-Christians, but still drew clear boundaries. New Amsterdam (later New York) was initially founded under the Dutch Reformed Church. It did offer some economic opportunity to Jews and Baptists – but not much patience.

Virginia and Georgia were Anglican strongholds, closely tied to the Church of England. Accordingly, there, dissenters like the Puritans could be fined or jailed. Each colony, in its own way, wrestled with the tension between religious conviction and civil freedom. Some loosened their grip over time. Others didn’t.

By the time the Constitution was written, Americans had over a century of religious conflict behind them – persecutions, executions, riots, bans, and backlash. Europe had seen even worse. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) had devastated Central Europe, as Catholic and Protestant forces fought for dominance in a brutal religious tug-of-war. After all that bloodshed, one lesson stood out: when religion and government mix, people suffer. And more often than not, faith itself is corrupted in the process.

That’s why religious liberty in America wasn’t just about avoiding persecution. It was about avoiding power. It was about making sure no one version of faith could use the government to enforce its will – and in the end oppress others. The lesson wasn’t just to escape tyranny. It was to make sure we didn’t become it.

A Wall Between
The First Amendment was a boundary. It was clear, deliberate, and hard-earned. After centuries of religious warfare and persecution, both in Europe and the colonies, the Founders drew a line. Government would not establish a religion. And religion would not control the government.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Continental Congress would not have approved the Constitution without the immediate promise of a Bill of Rights. The First Amendment reads: “No law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

In those few words, the Founders rejected the idea of a national church. They would bar religious tests for office. They made space for Methodists and Muslims, Quakers and Catholics, deists and dissenters alike. All would enjoy equal dignity under the law.

Some argue today, “Sure, that’s what they wrote, but they really meant ‘Christian.’” The truth is more complicated. The Founders were thinking a variety of things. And yes, some may have had Christianity in mind. But what they agreed on and wrote down is what became law. And what they passed is what governs us now. Unless we change it.

Thomas Jefferson made the principle vivid in 1802, when he wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association. Baptists in Connecticut were worried. They were a minority in a state with an entrenched Congregationalist establishment. Jefferson assured them the federal government had no intention of privileging any denomination. Instead, he said, the First Amendment had built “a wall of separation between Church & State.”

This wall wasn’t designed to keep religion out of public life. It was meant to keep religion from forcing itself on anyone. It wasn’t hostility toward religion. It was protection from religion.

James Madison, another architect of the Constitution, made this clear. He believed religious pluralism was essential to liberty. Pluralism means different religions can coexist peacefully in the same society. It doesn’t require believing all religions are equally true. It just means the government stays neutral. If religions are the raisins, the government is the oatmeal. It holds them all without favoring one.

Madison opposed government funding for religious institutions, even in the form of “non-denominational” chaplaincies, because he feared the long-term effects of entanglement. When government takes sides in religion – even subtly – it usually corrupts both.

None of this meant faith had no place in the public domain. It meant that the government would stay neutral, not that it would be against religion. Churches have always shaped moral conscience. Religious leaders helped lead the abolition movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and more. But there’s a difference between moral influence and political control.

The church is not meant to wield the sword. The government is not meant to pick a creed. When the two blur their roles, history shows us what happens next: oppression, corruption, and a loss of integrity on both sides.

The wall between church and state isn’t a rejection of religion. It’s how religion stays free. It’s how democracy stays safe. And when either side climbs over that wall, it’s not faith that wins. It’s power.

A Century of Peace
For nearly two centuries after the Constitution was ratified, the United States tried to keep a careful balance. Religion was respected, even revered, but not officially enforced. Faith was a major force in American life. But it wasn’t mandated by the state. That was the whole point.

From the beginning, American public life was saturated with religious language. Presidents invoked the Almighty in inaugural addresses. Congress opened sessions with prayer. The calendar honored Sunday as a day of rest.

No one was being forced to be religious, but these practices reflected a population that was overwhelmingly Christian – especially Protestant. In many towns, Christianity was simply the air people breathed. That reality shaped public life, but it didn’t define the government’s authority. No national denomination was ever enshrined. 

Religious liberty was a real (if imperfect) commitment. Baptists and Methodists could thrive alongside Presbyterians and Catholics. Jewish communities took root and grew. And in most eras, the courts held the line. Religion could shape personal life and public conscience, but it couldn’t be imposed by law.

There were tensions, of course. Anti-Catholic riots broke out in the 1800s. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s opposed not just Black Americans but also Catholics and Jews. Religious minorities often had to fight for recognition and equal treatment. When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, many voters feared his Catholicism would make him a puppet of the Pope. JFK famously countered with a speech affirming the separation of church and state: “I do not speak for my church on public matters – and the church does not speak for me.”

There were some religious additions to national symbols. But they were more cultural than theological. “In God We Trust” was added to paper currency in 1956. Why? Because of a revival? No, because of the Cold War. “Under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. Why? As a way to distinguish the U.S. from the atheistic Soviet Union. These additions reflected the era’s religious tone, but they didn’t create a national church or compel belief.

During this long stretch, religious life in America didn’t just survive without government enforcement. It flourished. Churches multiplied. New denominations emerged. Missionary societies expanded globally. Faith-based institutions launched hospitals, colleges, and charities. Revival movements drew massive crowds from the Second Great Awakening of the 1800s to the Billy Graham crusades of the 1950s.

Why did religion thrive? In part, because people were free to choose it. When faith is not coerced, it can persuade. When it is not armed with state power, it can speak with moral authority.

The genius of the early American experiment wasn’t that it removed religion from public life. It’s that it gave religion room to breathe. Faith could inform the conscience without controlling the sword. And for almost 200 years, that balance has held.

Were there inconsistencies? No doubt. Only as America has become more diverse have we begun to recognize how many of our laws and customs assumed a Judeo-Christian norm. But they do not negate the principle of separation. 

We are simply realizing places where we have not practiced what the Constitution preached. We’ve been on a journey for over two centuries. We may not have reached the destination yet.

The Religious Right Rises
For most of American history, evangelicals stood at a cautious distance from political power. They believed in influencing culture through revival and moral example, not partisan machinery. But something shifted in the late 20th century. A movement arose that wasn’t content to shape hearts. It wanted to shape laws. And it began to trade spiritual integrity for political influence.

In the 1980s, this movement took form under banners like the Moral Majority (Jerry Falwell) and the Christian Coalition (Pat Robertson). Evangelicals who had once been cultural outsiders became political kingmakers. They were wooed by politicians, given direct lines to power, and promised policies in exchange for pulpits.

The language was moral. The goals were legislative. School prayer. Abortion. These weren’t just concerns of conscience. They became litmus tests. Rallying cries in an escalating culture war. Christian voters were mobilized not to bear witness, but to win. Not to live out the gospel, but to legislate it.

Here, we see a distinct theological shift, one that Reinhold Niebuhr described as “Christ above culture.” It’s the idea that Christian truth should not merely speak to the world. It should take it over. The nation must be brought into line with God's laws whether the people consent or not. Faith isn’t just personal. It should be public policy.

That vision may feel noble. But it raises a crucial constitutional problem. When laws are crafted to reflect a specifically religious understanding of morality – especially one not shared by all citizens – those laws risk violating the First Amendment...

Unfortunately, the rise of the Religious Right wasn’t just about affirming morality. It was about acquiring power and using God as a campaign slogan. When any faith becomes a tool for political control, it’s not just democracy that suffers. It’s the credibility of the faith itself.

It's absolutely right for faith to influence conscience and values. But when the line between pastor and politician disappears then we’ve lost both gospel and government. When churches become voting blocs and candidates become messiahs, both institutions suffer. Neither was meant to serve the other. And both are cheapened when they try to...

Jesus is Not Your Party
If Jesus showed up today, he wouldn’t be speaking at anyone’s political convention. He wouldn’t be at a campaign rally. He wouldn’t be wearing a red hat or a blue one. And it's doubtful he would be forwarding political memes endorsing candidates on social media.

Jesus didn’t run for office. He didn’t fundraise. He didn’t command an army. He didn’t write legislation. When people tried to make him king, he slipped away.

That should tell us something.

When pressed about politics, Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Jesus draws a line between an earthly kingdom and the kingdom of God. It echoes what theologian Reinhold Niebuhr later called the "Christ against culture" model. It is a posture of resistance, not endorsement. Christ doesn’t baptize Caesar. He doesn’t sanctify the sword. Jesus reminds us that there are higher loyalties, a kingdom that is not of this world (cf. John 18:36).

In that light, Jesus would almost certainly not belong to a political party. And if he did vote, he might do it with a broken heart, well aware that no party platform fully embodies the justice, mercy, humility, or truth of the kingdom of God.

That’s not to say Christians shouldn’t care about politics. Of course we should. Laws matter. Policies affect people’s lives. But when faith becomes fused with party identity, we’ve crossed a line. When we start treating political leaders as spiritual ones, we’ve become confused. We’ve traded kingdom thinking for tribalism.

Clearly, that line has been crossed by a large number of American Christians.

Too many Christians today conflate loyalty to Christ with loyalty to a party. Or worse, a single politician. They wrap the cross in a flag and then act surprised when people confuse the two. But when we do that, we don’t elevate politics. We shrink faith. Jesus becomes a mascot. The gospel becomes a stump speech. And the world hears something far less than good news.

There’s a reason the early church didn’t try to take over Rome. They weren’t apolitical. They were just clear about where real power lived and where it didn’t. Their job wasn’t to conquer, but to witness. They cared for others and lived so that the world saw something different.

The church does its best work not when it commands the government, but when it reminds the government who it’s supposed to serve. Not when it demands special privilege, but when it loves its neighbor – especially the ones the world would rather forget. The credibility of the church has never come from controlling the culture. It has come from resembling Christ.

Jesus is not your party. He’s not a Democrat. He’s not a Republican. He’s not waiting to be nominated, and he doesn’t need your vote. He wants your life. And the world needs a church that can finally say, without fear or hesitation, “We have no king but Christ.”

Through the Bible -- Mark 8

Previous posts at the bottom
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1. The middle of this chapter will mark the midway point in the Gospel. Starting at verse 27, the tone of the Gospel will change, and Jesus will set his face toward the cross.

Mark 8 begins with the feeding of the 4000. The story is strikingly similar to the feeding of the 5000, which we encountered in Mark 6. The main difference is the quanity of food that Jesus has to distribute (7 loaves here) and the quantity picked up (also 7 baskets here). In chapter 6, there were five loaves and two fish, with 12 baskets of fragments left afterward. Jesus blesses the bread, and it feeds the whole crowd.

Some have seen these as two versions of the same story. The idea is that oral traditions about a single event found its way into two versions -- one with 5000 and one with 4000. Such a scenario would of course speak strongly to the historicity of the core event. Others would of course preclude this possibility from a sense that the truthfulness of Mark requires historicity on the level of detail. Yet it is not clear that ancient history writing was as concerned about such things as we are. Papias in the early 100s suggests that Mark's main concern was more to record all the stories that he had heard. [1]

A multiplication of food and feeding of multitudes is recorded in all four Gospels. In John 6, it is one of seven signs that likely came from some source tradition known by its compilers. It was thus a core memory of Jesus tradition.

Some see these two stories relating to two different audiences. The feeding of the 5000 might take place within Jewish territory. The feeding of the 4000 is in the Decapolis and thus in a more Gentile area. They thus suggest that two different audiences are in view.

2. Verses 11-12 give a key statement of Jesus on signs. The Pharisees demand a sign from Jesus. He tells them that no signs will be given. The saying is preserved in Matthew and Luke as well but with the exception of the sign of Jonah. That sign is then differently interpreted as being three days in the fish (Matt. 12:40; 16:4) or the fact that Nineveh repented (Luke 11:29-30). [2]

The contrast with John's Gospel is striking, where the whole of the first half of the Gospel seems structured in part around 7 key signs. This difference fits well the contrast between Mark's secrecy theme in contrast to John's "megaphone" about Jesus' identity. 

Neverthless, there is no contradiction here. A sign in Mark is a sign on demand, it is a call for Jesus to do something spectacular for those who do not believe. In actually, Jesus provides countless signs for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. So the difference is that John calls those miraculous deeds "signs" even though they are not done on demand. Mark, on the other hand, does not call them signs.

It is thus a difference of vocabulary not of substance. It is a reminder that God inspired each biblical author within their own language and style. If they were only mindlessly typing God's dictation, this would be more of a contradiction. But once we take into account individual vocabulary, there is no contradiction here.

3. Following Jesus' statement on signs, Jesus warns his disciples about the "yeast" of the Pharisees and Herod. He is talking about the corrupting influence they have on society. He is warning them to avoid them. This is not controversial to us, but the religious leaders -- especially the Pharisees -- were highly revered at the time.

But while Jesus is talking on a deep level, the disciples are still on the surface. They are worried about having enough bread to eat in the boat. Jesus reminds them that he has just fed 4000 and that earlier he had fed 5000. He's got bread covered!

The story thus reveals the difficulty the disciples had in understanding Jesus, a key theme of Mark's Gospel. Back in Mark 4, we first saw this theme in full bloom as the disciples failed to understand the Parable of the Soils, a parable whose point was that only those with faith would understand his parables. As hear it would seem that they did not have "eyes to see" or "ears to hear."

This theme of the dullness of the disciples probably arose especially in their failure to see that Jesus as Messiah was going to die on the cross, as we will see at the end of the chapter. They expected only the victorious Christ, not the suffering one. Jesus even asks here if their hearts are "hardened."

4. In Bethsaida, Jesus heals a blind man. This is the only healing that seems to take place in stages. Jesus spits on his eyes and his vision partially returns. Then he puts his hands on his eyes again, and his sight is completely restored. In John 9, Jesus also spits as part of the healing.

Matthew 11:20 suggests that Jesus did many miracles in Bethsaida, the village where Philip was from -- and possibly also Peter and Andrew originally (John 1:44). However, this is the only miracle that the Gospels mention specifically taking place in Bethsaida, although it is possible that the feeding of the 5000 took place nearby. Bethsaida was a little northeast of Capernaum. Jesus will heal another blind man near Jericho.

5. Mark 8:27-33 is arguably the turning point, the pivot of Mark's story. Up to this point, the mood as been optimistic and positive. Jesus heals. He casts out demons. It's "go, go, go." He faces opposition, but it is hardly forceful. Jesus is an unstoppable force and any resistance is ineffective.

From this point on in the Gospel, Jesus is facing the cross. Three times he will predict his imminent death, and three times the disciples won't get it. They are expecting a militant Messiah. Jesus is a suffering servant in this stage.

The conversation begins with the question, "Who are people saying I am?" It is a reminder that, while the demons know that Jesus is the Holy One, Jesus' identity as Messiah has not yet been established yet in Mark among his disciples. Here we are at the very end of Jesus' earthly mission. They are about to head to Jerusalem, and only now is the subject coming clear.

Some say Jesus is John the Baptist come back from the dead -- which Herod had feared. Some say he is Elijah, the forerunner of the Messiah. Still others think he is a prophet, perhaps the prophet of Deuteronomy 18:15-18.

Then Jesus asks who they think he is. Peter is the one to say it. "You are the Christ." Christ is Greek for anointed one. In Aramaic, it would have been meshiach, meaning "anointed one." Jesus accepts this belief. But in keeping with the secrecy theme, he warns them not to tell anyone.

6. At verse 31, Jesus makes his first prediction of his death. Referring to himself as the "Son of Man" or the "Son of Humanity," he connects the phrase to the suffering he is about to endure. Remember that this phrase chiefly appears in three contexts: 1) places where it is a idiomatic self-reference that means something like "the man," 2) a phrase connected with his identity as the suffering Messiah, and 3) places where it alludes to Daniel 7 and Jesus' victorious coming on the clouds of heaven.

Jesus will suffer. He will be rejected by the elders. He will be killed. Then after three days, he will rise again.

Peter does not understand. The disciples "don't get it." He takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him. "You're not going to die. You're a winner, Jesus. You're the Messiah. You're going to pound the Romans." 

But Jesus says, "Get behind me Satan." While satan can mean "adversary," Jesus may suggest that Satan is using Peter's ignorance to test him, to try to derail him from the cup that is set before him. Jesus tells Peter that he simply does not understand the things of God. He is thinking on a merely human level.

7. Now Jesus instructs Peter, the rest of the disciples, and the crowds. He indicates that following him is a way of the cross. Following Jesus is not a call to conquer. It is not a call to win. It is a call to suffer, perhaps even to die. If we are to follow Jesus, we must be willing to go to the cross. [3]

"Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake and the gospel, will save it" (8:35). This is the paradox of following Jesus.

Part of the paradox is the difference between now and that which is to come. If we invest our life's meaning too much in this current world, we are not likely to abound in the world that is coming. If we betray Christ now to survive, we will not live in the kingdom to come. If we are ashamed of Christ now, he will be "ashamed" of us at the time of his second coming to set up the kingdom in its fullness.

[1] Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39. It might say something about the author of Mark, however, if he incorporated into his Gospel two version of the same story. Might it imply a greater distance from Jesus than we might expect of John Mark? For example, would Peter have recorded both a feeding of 5000 and a feeding of 4000 if he knew these were two versions of the same story?

[2] In my estimation, this is probably an example of a saying that was both in Mark and Q. The Q version of the saying must have included the statement on Jonah, which Matthew and Luke then variously interpreted. Some of the Baptist material likely also fits in this category of overlap. I find it less likely that Luke has modified Matthew's version.

[3] This seems likely to be a paraphrase -- "take up your cross." Such a statement would have made no sense at all to Jesus' disciples or the crowd at this point. On the other hand, it is an incredibly powerful statement to those of us who live after the crucifixion.

Mark 1:1-13
Mark 1:14-15 
Mark 1:16-45
Mark 2
Mark 3
Mark 4:1-34
Mark 4:35-5:43
Mark 6
Mark 7

Mark 11:1-11 (Palm Sunday)
Mark 11:12-25 (Temple Monday)
Mark 11:26-12:44 (Debate Tuesday)
Mark 13 (Temple Prediction)
Mark 14:1-52 (Last Supper)
Mark 14:53-15:47 (Good Friday)
Mark 16 (The Resurrection)   

Ben Kantor's Reconstructed "Early High Koine" Greek Pronunciation

Because of a project, I've had to wade a little into Ben Kantor's recent, unbelievable, staggeringly detailed work on the pronunciation of Greek in Judeo-Palestine at the time of Christ (long version, short version). He's mostly reconstructed it on the basis of misspellings (which reveals what sounded the same). He's used computers to process all the data.

Man, I feel old. So far, I haven't found anywhere where the darn thing is summarized in a user friendly way (including in his own book!!!). There are YouTube videos but they just seem to rant on and on about the project. They never seem to get to the summary I'm looking for.

So, here is a shot at summarizing. I call on the scholarly forces of the universe to correct me.

Hitler the Clown

They thought Hitler was a joke. Then they gave him the country.

When Adolf Hitler first appeared on the scene, few took him seriously. To Germany’s elite, he was a joke. He was a loudmouth with a funny mustache, a failed artist ranting in beer halls. His ideas were extreme, his gestures exaggerated, his speeches were easy to mock. Many dismissed him as a political joke. He was a nobody shouting nonsense in beer halls to angry men with too much time on their hands.

But behind the spectacle was something more dangerous. His message resonated with men who felt forgotten and ignored. He resonated with people who felt like Germany had become a loser.

Germany was hurting. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles had humiliated the country. It had stripped it of land and saddled it with crushing debt. It was forced to accept sole blame for the war.

The economy collapsed. Hyperinflation made money worthless. Unemployment soared. For many Germans, the republic that replaced the monarchy felt weak and chaotic.

And in stepped a man who said he could fix it all.

Hitler didn’t rise through competence. He rose through resentment. He tried and failed to seize power outright in 1923 during the Beer Hall Putsch. It was a botched coup that landed him in prison. Even then, people mocked him. He used the trial as a platform. He used prison to write Mein Kampf – a horrid book. And over the next decade, he used words to rebuild his movement. The bullets would come later.

By the early 1930s, elites in German business and government thought they could use him. He had popular support. Maybe they could harness it. They believed they could control him, contain him, keep him on a leash. He’d serve their ends, and they’d clip his wings if he got too loud.

They were wrong.

Hitler didn’t need to take power by force. He was elected chancellor in 1933. Within months, he turned that office into a dictatorship. He was no longer the punchline. He was the Führer. And the people who had laughed found themselves silenced – or “disappeared.”

Authoritarianism doesn’t always announce itself with a bang. Sometimes it arrives wearing a smirk. Sometimes it looks ridiculous, unserious, unqualified. And that’s part of the danger. We underestimate it. We laugh at it. We assume that the systems will hold. We assume the adults will step in, and the joke will burn itself out.

Until it doesn’t.

Guardrails matter. They’re there for a reason. They shouldn’t be brushed aside with jokes like, “You’re being too dramatic” or “Lighten up.” The tragedy of Hitler’s rise wasn’t just in what he did. It was in how many people saw it coming and laughed.

Arresting the “Criminals”
Once Hitler had power, he needed a target. Authoritarians often do. To unite a country through fear, you must first give it an enemy. And so, Hitler didn’t waste time blaming Germany’s collapse on a long list of “others.” Jews. Socialists. Communists. Homosexuals. The disabled. The “degenerates.” Anyone who didn’t conform to his vision of a pure and obedient German state became a threat to be neutralized. The goal wasn’t just to silence dissent. It was to cleanse the country.

And he probably was a true believer, which almost makes it worse.

The strategy was simple. Criminalize your enemies, then claim to be restoring order by removing them. Hitler’s followers didn’t just tolerate the arrests, beatings, and disappearances. They cheered them. Because these weren’t innocent people to them. They were “traitors,” “parasites,” “criminals.” Or so they were told.

Historians still debate the details, but many believe that Hitler either had the Reichstag – the German Parliament building – set on fire or at least exploited the fire in 1933 to consolidate his power. The blaze gave him the perfect excuse to invoke emergency powers, suspend civil liberties, and sideline Parliament.

With the legislature neutralized, there was no serious check left to oppose him. Predictably, Hitler blamed the fire on the Communists, who were his most powerful political rivals at the time. The move gave him an excuse to arrest thousands, dismantle their party, and eliminate meaningful opposition. It’s a strategy as old as human history.

Enter Brownshirts. They were Hitler’s private militia of street thugs and vigilantes. They weren’t police. They weren’t military. But they were loyal. They broke up opposition rallies, beat journalists, harassed minorities, and intimidated voters. All while the government looked the other way – or applauded.

If someone wanted to take over a country, this is a clever way. You by-pass ordinary groups like the police or the military. You don’t have complete control over them. Instead, you find a way to fund and raise an “army” of highly motivated loyalists who don’t mind breaking the rules. You work around the system with this group that will follow your every command.

Propaganda did the rest. The Nazi press wasn’t just biased. It was fully integrated into the state. Newspapers, films, and radio all carried the same message: Germany is under threat, and only Hitler can save it. “The people” were under siege. And anyone who questioned that version of the story wasn’t just disagreeing. They were dangerous and needed to be eliminated.

The first concentration camps weren’t built for Jews. They were built for political enemies. They were built for those who refused to toe the Nazi line. The goal was clear. Make resistance painful, and make silence feel safe.

This is how authoritarianism works. It doesn’t begin with mass graves. It begins with lists. Labels. Slogans. Enemies. It begins when people are told to fear each other. When the government defines who belongs and who doesn’t.

When a leader tells you who to fear and promises that only they can protect you, keep this in mind. Fear is a tool, not a solution. Ask yourself, “Who is really the threat?”

America First
When fascism rose across Europe in the 1930s, much of the world watched and hesitated. Germany wasn’t the only place drifting toward dictatorship. Italy had already embraced Benito Mussolini, whose iron-fisted rhetoric inspired Hitler himself. Japan, fueled by imperial ambition, was expanding aggressively across Asia, leaving brutality and conquest in its wake.

It wasn’t just Germany. It was a moment in time. It was a movement that was sweeping across continents. Strongmen were rising. Democracies were retreating. And fear was turning into strategy.

Faced with this growing danger, America’s response was clear. Stay out of it. After the trauma of World War I, the U.S. leaned hard into isolation. Many Americans believed Europe’s problems were Europe’s to solve. That impulse took political form in the “America First” movement.

The America First Committee argued that war was a foreign entanglement we couldn’t afford. The real threat to America, they claimed, wasn’t fascism. It was intervention. Among its members were prominent business leaders, celebrities, and even a young Charles Lindbergh – the first person to fly across the Atlantic. “America First” became a rallying cry for those who wanted to shield the country from global conflict. Even if it meant ignoring the rise of tyranny abroad.

But for some, the hesitation wasn’t just about neutrality. It was hiding sympathy. Nazi ideas about race and power found receptive ears in parts of the U.S. In 1939, just months before Germany invaded Poland, a pro-Nazi rally drew 20,000 people to Madison Square Garden in New York City. They raised their hands in salute beneath a giant portrait of George Washington, flanked by swastikas. 

American fascism wasn’t theoretical. It was on full display. We like to look back at World War II and congratulate ourselves for our virtue. But the Germans of the 1930s weren’t uniquely evil. They were human – just like us. Under the right conditions, any society can be deceived, manipulated, and swept into horror. Some will cheer it on. Some will realize it too late to do anything about it.

Even as Germany began its violent march across Europe, many Americans insisted it wasn’t our fight. Even as reports of brutality mounted, even as Jews fled and warnings grew louder, leaders chose political caution over moral clarity. In one of the most heartbreaking episodes, a ship filled with Jewish refugees – including children – arrived in New York Harbor in 1939. We turned it away. Most of those passengers would later die in the camps of the Holocaust.

By the time Pearl Harbor forced America’s hand in 1941, much of the world had already descended into darkness.

Looking in the Mirror
They say war changes a nation. World War II didn’t just shake the world. It fundamentally changed America. The American war effort was nothing short of staggering. Factories roared back to life, turning out tanks instead of toasters, bombers instead of Buicks. Women flooded into the workforce. “Rosie the Riveter” became a national icon. African Americans joined the effort too, despite facing brutal discrimination both in and out of uniform. They worked in segregated units. They were denied basic rights at home. Yet they still showed up to defend a country that didn’t yet fully defend them.

This was the “arsenal of democracy.”

However, while we fought Nazi racism overseas, we quietly practiced our own version at home. In 1942, the U.S. government forcibly relocated more than 120,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps, two-thirds of which were citizens. They were never charged with crimes. There was no probable cause. They were never given trials or a chance to defend themselves.

Their homes, businesses, and dignity were stripped away, not because of evidence but because of fear. We told ourselves it was for national security. But the truth is, it was easier to scapegoat than to defend the rights of those who looked like the enemy. We sinned against the United States of America and its Constitution.

Meanwhile, American soldiers pushed through the heart of Europe. And when they reached the Nazi concentration camps, they saw what unchecked hatred becomes. They smelled it. They walked through the bones. The Holocaust wasn’t a rumor anymore. It wasn’t enemy propaganda. It was ovens, mass graves, and gas chambers. It was the industrialization of genocide.

The U.S. military didn’t just liberate the camps. In places like Dachau, they forced German citizens to walk through them. These were neighbors, bystanders, patriots. They claimed they didn’t know. But ignorance was no longer an option. You can’t unsee what you’ve seen.

They had believed the lies. They had swallowed the propaganda. They had laughed at the alarmists – until those alarmists quietly disappeared. The truth they denied now lay at their feet, silent and undeniable.

Truth was the first step toward justice.

But justice didn’t just mean winning battles. It meant facing uncomfortable truths. It meant asking how a civilized society could become so complicit in evil. And it meant asking what kinds of injustice we had tolerated in our own country while pretending to be the world’s moral compass. 

Philosopher Hannah Arendt studied the men who led the Nazi movement. What struck her more than anything was how ordinary they were. They were not geniuses. They were not brilliant strategists. They were just people. Pencil-pushers. Bureaucrats doing what they were told. To sum it up, she called it the “banality of evil.”

We fought fascism abroad while excusing it in a corner at home. We liberated camps in Europe while building them in California. You can’t claim to stand for human dignity if that dignity only applies to some.

It is the height of naivety to think that similar atrocities couldn’t happen here. Human nature hasn’t changed. Our capacity to be deceived and manipulated hasn’t changed. If anything, the newness of social media, AI, and the sophistication of propaganda have made us more vulnerable to misinformation than ever before.

Like the townspeople of Dachau, some of us would not believe it unless we saw the rotting bodies with our own eyes. And even then, some would come up with an alternative explanation.

The Weight of Victory
There was certainly a fair share of celebration after World War II ended. But there was much to mourn too.

Seventy million people were dead. Cities were ash. Borders were redrawn. Empires collapsed. Humanity had seen the depths of its own depravity and barely survived it. But amid the rubble, one nation stood tall. The United States hadn’t just won. It had emerged as a superpower: economically dominant, militarily unmatched, culturally influential.

The question was what kind of superpower we would be.

That’s the real test of power. Not how you fight, but how you lead. Not whether you can conquer evil, but whether you can resist becoming it. In the years that followed, America helped rebuild what it had helped destroy. The Marshall Plan invested billions in Europe’s recovery. The United Nations took shape. NATO was born. The idea, however imperfectly executed, was that America would use its power not just for self-interest, but for peace. Not just for dominance, but for dignity.

That tension has never gone away.

Power always tempts us to forget why we fought in the first place. It makes it easy to trade ideals for advantage, to silence critics in the name of security, to put flags over principles. It makes it easy to think that because we won, we’re always right. That we’re always the good guys. That the ends always justify the means.

That’s the danger of victory. It whispers, “You’ve earned this.” And we stop asking whether what we’re doing is still just, or simply convenient. Or maybe selfish.

Happy No Kings Day!

Today is July 4th, the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I had Notebook LM create a podcast discussion of the Declaration. Pretty fun. You can listen to it here.

I had hoped to have a quick writing project done by today, but alas. It is a carefully presented comparison of the history of the United States with this moment. Having missed the deadline, my goal now is the week after next.

But here are excerpts from chapter 19: "No More Kings." The book is 20 chapters and proceeds backward from the present day to America's founding. So this is one of the last chapters. It also has as an appendix the fully compiled sweep of US history that I did on this blog last week.

Here then in celebration of Independence Day are these excerpts from chapter 19.

No More Kings
The Founders didn’t dump tea in a harbor to trade one king for another.

1. When the Founders put ink to parchment in 1776, their clearest grievance was this: too much power in one person’s hands is dangerous. The Declaration of Independence isn’t just a poetic breakup letter to King George III. It’s a catalog of abuses by a monarch who saw no limits on his authority. He made decisions without consent. He dissolved legislative bodies when they disagreed. He stalled laws, delayed justice, and treated opposition as treason.

The American colonists didn’t start out demanding independence. They began by asking for respect. They wanted representation, fairness, and a say in how they were governed. But King George wouldn’t hear it. He ignored petitions, punished dissent, and doubled down with force. In the words of the Declaration, “He has refused his Assent to Laws... He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly..."

It was a pattern: power concentrated, voices silenced, systems sidelined. That’s what “tyranny” looks like. It often expresses itself in cruelty. But it is enabled by the absence of limits... The Founders insisted that power be shared between the President, Congress, and the courts... 

The Founders weren’t perfect. Many of them were deeply flawed. But they understood one thing with clarity: Power must be checked, or it will check us...

2. In the Declaration of Independence, the colonists listed King George III’s obstruction of justice among their most damning accusations. He had, they wrote, “obstructed the Administration of Justice,” and “made Judges dependent on his Will alone.” These were not technicalities. They were seen as fatal to any free society.

The Founders understood: If you cannot count on impartial justice, you are not free. If legal outcomes are determined by political allegiance rather than law, then you are not a citizen. You are a subject...

A government of laws, not of men, requires more than slogans. It requires limits. It requires courts that can operate without fear. It requires leaders who serve the law, not the other way around.

The colonists knew what it meant to live under a king who saw courts as tools. That’s why they rebelled. That’s why they listed judicial interference right alongside taxation without representation. Because they understood that once the legal system serves only one man, the republic is already gone. Justice must be impartial. It must be independent. It must have the power to say no – even to the president. In fact, especially to the president...

3. One of the most striking grievances in the Declaration of Independence was that King George III punished those who challenged his authority. He dissolved local legislatures. He revoked colonial charters. He quartered troops among civilians not as a defense strategy, but as a warning. Rule wasn’t based on consent. It was enforced through fear. Obedience was demanded. Dissent was punished...

One of the clearest complaints in the Declaration of Independence was the colonists’ outrage over being governed without their consent. They were taxed without representation, subjected to laws they had no voice in shaping, and forced to live under decrees imposed from afar. For them, legitimate government was not about power. It was about permission. As Thomas Jefferson famously put it, governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed”...

The Declaration of Independence was not just a break from Britain. It was a break from monarchy. It was a break from the idea that one man should have unchecked power over millions. The Founders weren’t perfect, but they understood one crucial truth: freedom demands limits on power. That’s why they created a government of checks and balances, with coequal branches designed to restrain tyranny in all its forms.

That’s why we don’t have a king.

American History part 4 -- From Carter to Obama

This is taking longer than I anticipated. I guess 250 years is a long time. 
1. From Revolution to Fracture
2. From Civil War to World War
3. From Roar to Reagan
__________________________

18. But the real shift came with Ronald Reagan

But first, we should mention Jimmy Carter. Before Reagan swept in with a cowboy hat and camera-ready smile, there was a one term Democratic president. He was a soft-spoken peanut farmer from Georgia, quite unexpected really. Sincere. Intellectual. Doomed.

He called himself a "born-again" Christian, the first president to say somethng like that. Of course, that didn't mean anything in my Christian circles. After all, he was a Democrat. We always had a reason to vote against a Democrat even before Roe v. Wade. The reasons changed, the vote remained the same. After all, we humnans are herd animals.

Carter promised honesty after Watergate, and he delivered. He was a truly honorable man. Thus of course, doomed. 

He was everything Nixon wasn’t. He was transparent, humble, moral. Maybe too moral. Can you be moral and be president? He told Americans we were addicted to consumption. He asked us to turn down the thermostat. He wore sweaters on TV and talked about rising above our national gloom. 

Meanwhile, inflation soared. Gas lines stretched for blocks. Iran took Americans hostage and wouldn’t let them go. In one of the final acts of his presidency, we botched a rescue attempt and lost 8 servicemen in the process.

Carter did broker a landmark peace in the Middle East between Egypt and Israel. An astounding achievement. Since Israel had declared itself a state in 1948, there had been little but war and hostility with its Arab neighbors. But that diplomatic triumph was overshadowed by domestic frustration. What Americans remembered was inflation, gas lines, and the failed rescue of hostages in Iran -- not the breakthrough at Camp David.

He was a good man in a bad moment. Far too boring. Far too intellectual. And America wanted a showman, not a sermon.

19. Reagan was charming, confident, camera-ready. He talked about America like it was a sunset movie. He said the government wasn’t the solution. It was the problem. Sounded good to people who were tired of the government telling them what to do (especially when it came to blacks).

Reagan marked the end of a decades long flipping of the parties. The Democrats had once been synonymous with Jim Crow and "state's rights," a tool to keep the blacks in their place. Now the Democrats had somehow become the champion of civil rights and voting rights. And the Republicans, once the party that had freed the slaves, now found itself now the champion of state's rights and resistance to these developments.

They called it Nixon's "southern strategy." Appeal to the disaffected Democrats in the South who were angry over the changes the rest of the Democrats were leading nationwide. It worked. By the end of Reagan's presidency, many of those who were once southern Democrats had become southern Republicans. Reagan himself had once been a Democrat.

By the 1980s, what remained of the earlier Republican Party’s identity was its loyalty to big business and deregulation. As Hoover had said, "Let the markets self-correct." Now Reagan put a new spin on the economics of the 20s.

"Trickle down economics." If you slash taxes on the wealthy and on big business, their increased investment in the economy will "trickle down" to the ordinary person. That was the concept. With more money in hand, businesses will raise wages for their workers. Their increased wealth, the theory went, would eventually drip down to the rest of us.

It has never seemed to work, although two more Republican presidents since have also tried it. Each time, the pattern repeated: tax cuts for the wealthy, soaring deficits, and eventually, economic trouble. Reagan's own Republican rival, George H. W. Bush, famously called it "voodoo economics" -- before becoming Reagan's vice president, and later, president. 

The rich got richer. Wages stagnated. And despite the promises, prosperity never quite trickled down.

20. Perhaps the most significant piece of Reagan's puzzle was the full alignment of evangelicalism with the Republican Party. Evangelicals in the North had long leaned Republican, while many Southern evangelicals had historically voted Democrat -- the party of segregation and state's rights. 

That all changed in the late 20th century. The issue that fused evangelicalism with the Republican Party was abortion. It became almost unthinkable for an evangelical to vote for a Democrat. The thing is, many southern Democrats initially supported Roe v. Wade. The outrage came later. Something deeper was going on.

What was it? Southern evangelicals had been angry about the federal government telling them to desegregate their schools and allow interracial dating in their colleges. But instead of defending segregation outright, they shifted that anger to something with stronger moral force: abortion. “The government can’t make me accept Black children at my private school” became “The government can’t make me accept abortion.” It was the same defiance -- repackaged around a more righteous cause.

While southern evangelicals had first been ambivalent even supportive of Roe v. Wade, it now became the sure sign that God was totally aligned with the Republican Party. Democrats were sheer evil.

Reagan welcomed the rise of a new force in politics: the Religious Right. Evangelicals, once wary of politics, got organized. They saw a country slipping away -- too secular, too sexual, too progressive -- and they made a deal. Vote Republican, and we’ll fight your culture wars. “Family values” became their brand. They didn’t just want to save souls. They wanted to shape policy.

And Reagan delivered. Not just with rhetoric, but with judges. Policies. A whole new political theology.

In the meantime, other biblical values were gutted. Reaganomics gutted public programs. The mentally ill were turned out into the streets as government funded facilities were closed. The war on drugs targeted Black and Brown communities. The AIDS crisis was ignored as thousands died. Many thought that gay people were being punished by God and getting what they deserved. It took the possibility that "normal" people would get AIDS to see any action.

But the story America told itself was that the country was back on track. Prosperous. Traditional. Strong. Becoming great again.

Reagan had changed the playing field. Now, freedom meant tax cuts. Patriotism meant military strength. The government could control people's moral values (but never corporate power). The backlash had become the blueprint.

Just like that, the gospel got a party platform. And the party got God's vote.

21. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The red star dimmed. The Cold War was over.

Reagan gets a lot of the credit. The Soviet Union just couldn't keep up with his spending on defense. Communism is a failed economic system, and they finally gave up.

The Berlin Wall cracked open like an eggshell. East Germans streamed west. The Iron Curtain rusted into memory. Within two years, the Soviet Union was gone, collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, corruption, and economic stagnation. For nearly fifty years, America had shaped its foreign policy, its budget, its fears, its identity around this one opponent. And now the opponent was gone.

It was called the "end of history." Capitalism had won. Democracy had won. America had won. There would be no more ideological battles, no more existential threats. The world would now become a free market shopping mall. And the United States owned the mall.

But history doesn’t end. It just changes costume.

With the Cold War over, the military budget didn’t shrink that much. But the mood changed. America relaxed. It seemed like we had earned our happy ending.

Still, the West squandered a rare opportunity. After communism collapsed, Russia stood at a crossroads. The hope was that it might join the democratic world. But instead of helping it build the institutions of a healthy republic -- courts, transparency, a free press -- we sent over economists with a Hoover-era playbook: unleash the free market and let it sort itself out. "Shock therapy." Let the "Unseen Hand" take care of it.

What followed wasn’t democracy. It was chaos. A handful of insiders seized everything: factories, oil, media. The state was gutted, and oligarchy filled the vacuum. Instead of freedom, Russia got a fire sale. Now there was a new ruling class wearing suits instead of party pins. 

And soon a new approach to war with the West.

22. Enter Bill Clinton.

He didn’t campaign on moral crusades. He wasn’t Reagan with a smile. He was Elvis with a saxophone. He was a Southern Democrat who talked like one of the guys but governed like a centrist economist. He promised to modernize liberalism. Make it leaner, smarter, more market-friendly. He called it “Third Way” politics -- not left, not right, just whatever works.

In practice, it meant welfare reform. It meant deregulating banks. It meant free trade agreements like NAFTA that promised more jobs but hollowed out whole regions. Clinton balanced the budget. He charmed Wall Street. In some ways he was a Republican in Democrat's clothing. He turned the Democratic Party into something that could win national elections again -- but only by sounding more like Republicans on economics. 

He had out-Republicaned the Republicans. A Democrat had turned his back on the unions and sent jobs sprinting to Mexico. Ironically, the budget balanced more than under any Republican president and abortion rates declined more too.

In the 90s, some of the biggest changes in human history in hundreds of years were rising. Technology boomed. The internet was born. Cell phones shrank. Cable TV exploded. For some, the 90s were prosperity and promise. 

But the other America -- the one that didn’t go to college, didn’t get stock options, didn’t get heard -- it began to simmer. And while the culture wars subsided, they weren't dead. They just put on different clothes.

Clinton’s presidency became a proxy battle over sex, morality, and the role of character in public life. His affair with an intern, and his bald-faced lie about it, became the stuff of impeachment. The outrage seemed real. Although it's easy to act with moral outrage when it's the other party. We're more apt to overlook moral failure from our own team. 

Outrage over Clinton was good political theater. The same party that had aligned with televangelists in the 1980s now used moral outrage as a sword.

Still, Clinton survived. His approval ratings soared. The economy roared. At the same time, cynicism deepened. The right had weaponized scandal. The left had compromised itself into confusion. There was money, there was power, but there wasn’t much meaning.

By 2000, a new millennium was beginning. But the fault lines hadn’t gone away. They’d just been covered over by Nasdaq stocks and cable news.

23. The year 2000 ended in confusion. Florida ballots. Hanging chads. A Supreme Court decision. It wasn't quite as dramatic as 1877, but the outcome remains questionable to this day. For sure, George W. Bush entered the presidency without winning the popular vote. Yet even in the Electoral College, the Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida with him ahead by just 537 votes. 

But he was a good guy. A good old boy. Someone you would enjoy having a beer with. How much damage could a president do? 

Then came September 11, 2001.

Terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers. Smoke choked the New York skyline. The Pentagon was hit. A fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field. Nearly 3,000 people died that day. Everything changed in a morning. The American psyche had dramatically changed.

The country united around grief. But that unity was quickly channeled into war. First Afghanistan. Then Iraq.

Afghanistan made some sense. After all, that's where the perpetrator was hiding, Osama bin Laden. We had worldwide support. The Arab world was more sympathetic to us than ever. It was a tremendous opportunity to end our long term differences.

Iraq was different. It had nothing to do with 9-11. The Arab world wasn't buying it. An opportunity for reconciliation turned into heightened alienation. Some holdovers from the Reagan era -- neoconservatives -- saw this as a chance to reshape the Middle East. It was probably well intentioned if culturally ignorant. Bush naively called "Mission Accomplished" 

We said it was about fighting terrorism. We said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It didn’t. But the war happened anyway. The military-industrial complex got its blank check. The media played along. The public, stunned and scared, mostly nodded. In my little town of 20,000, the mayor barricaded the courthouse in case of jihadists in Indiana.

America went from being the world's grieving friend to its unpredictable enforcer. Endless war became a business model. Fear became a political strategy. The Patriot Act. Wiretapping. Airport scanners. A surveillance state wrapped in a flag. Fear allowed all that.

At home, Bush tried Reaganomics 2.0. The economy soared -- and then crashed. Everyone loved deregulation until the housing bubble burst. Banks gambled and lost, but got bailed out. Homeowners didn’t. Ordinary Americans watched their savings disappear while Wall Street collected bonuses. It was 1929 with PowerPoint. Wall Street was rescued. The rest got a foreclosure notice.

And then came something no one expected.

24. Barack Obama.

A Black man (with a name that sounded a little too much like Osama) rose on a message of hope. He was calm, intellectual, composed. He spoke with clarity and conviction. He didn’t scream. He inspired. For a moment, it felt like the country might be ready to grow up.

Obama inherited a recession and two wars. He passed the Affordable Care Act -- a messy, compromised attempt at universal healthcare based on something Republicans had done in Massachusetts. He brought troops home. He stabilized the economy. He killed the real Osama. And in the process, he became both a symbol of progress and a trigger for backlash.

For millions, Obama was proof that the American Dream was still alive. That the words of 1776 still meant something. For others, he was the nightmare they’d always feared. Not because of what he did -- but because of what he represented.

They called him a socialist. They called him a Muslim. They said he was born in Kenya. Some didn’t even try to hide their racism. 

It was enough that gay marriage became legal during his presidency. No, he wasn't on the Supreme Court. He had nothing to do with making it happen. But for many it might as well have been him. 

The Tea Party rose, claiming to be about reducing the deficit -- a deficit that came back under Bush and was exacerbated by the bailouts of the recession. But mostly what the Tea Party did was grind Obama's movement to a halt. Attempts to fix immigration were stopped in their tracks, making the situation snowball into what we have today.

Every effort was made to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, as if there was something immoral about the government helping people get health care. Bring back Hoover and let the church do it. Better yet, make them get a job with good health care. In his last major act in Congress, John McCain stopped the repeal of the ACA by voting against his party, which was trying to kill it more out of vengeance than for a good reason.

Gun violence had dropped to historic lows during the Clinton years, thanks in part to the federal assault weapons ban. But under President Bush, the Republican-led Congress let the ban expire in 2004. The floodgates opened. Assault-style weapons returned to the shelves, and gun violence has climbed ever since, with school shootings especially rising in popularity. That lapse let a genie out that we may never get back in the bottle.

We say that people kill people, not guns. While that is true, the correlation lands the blame for our current crisis squarely on 2004 and a Republican Congress.

25. Conspiracies were increasingly America's favorite brew. The undercurrent of white grievance found a new fuel source. Facebook and Twitter rose to the challenge, and feeble minds were putty in the hands of foreign social media accounts.

Obama tried to lead from the center. His presidency was more careful than revolutionary. But just his presence in the White House felt like too much for some. Too much change too quickly.

He wore a tan suit. Scandal. He put Dijon mustard on a hamburger. Un-American. He cried after a school shooting. Weak.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party kept shifting. Reagan’s dog whistles had become bullhorns. Moderates were pushed out. The word “compromise” became a slur. More than any other single force, Fox reshaped America. Rupert Murdoch skillfully wielded it as a propaganda channel -- it was forced to admit in court that it was actually more entertainment than objective news. Meanwhile, innocent minds were manipulated into outrage at whatever Fox wanted them to be upset about.

Birtherism. Fake news. Online rage. The internet wasn’t just connecting people. It was radicalizing them. And cable news wasn’t informing people. It was inflaming them.

By the end of Obama’s presidency, America was breaking.

The backlash wasn’t just political. It was cultural, racial, psychological. The mere idea of a changing America -- less white, less Christian, more complex -- was enough to ignite a movement. One that would soon storm the stage in a red hat.