Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Part I

What Is Right? What Is at Stake? The Debate Over SNAP Raises Massive Questions for Conservatives

As you well know, we are now in the second-longest government shutdown in American history and it’s a political standoff. It’s a standoff between President Trump and his administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress and in particular right now, that means the Democratic members of the United States Senate, because that is where the hangup now comes. And you have Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, very liberal Democratic senator who has decided that he’s going to draw a line in the sand. This is going to be his opportunity to grandstand. Honestly, at least until the last several days, both the Trump administration, and that means President Trump himself, and Democrats in the Senate, in particular, they’ve each at least acted like they felt they’re in the driver’s seat, but the situation changed rather significantly in the last 36 hours.

The most important change is that the largest union of federal government employees, the American Federation of Government Employees, came out with a clear plea to the party they generally support. The Democratic Party is generally supported by this labor union of federal employees. That makes perfect sense. And yet these federal employees are now calling out to Democrats because it’s the Democrats they see as the obstructionists. An obstruction to what? At least in part, to paying them. It turns out that’s as important to them as their vote, maybe more important than their vote.

The head of the union, Everett Kelley, made the statement that what was needed was the end to this government shutdown. He said, “It’s time to pass a clear continuing resolution,” and for the government basically to get back to work. And this clean or clear resolution means a continuing resolution that’s a funding mechanism that just continues current rates of government spending. Let’s remember, the Democratic game plan here is to draw a line in the sand and challenge the Trump administration, and it’s over the issue of extending Obamacare enhancement benefits. Okay? They were basically put in place under the Biden administration under the condition of COVID, and at least many in the mainstream media are honest enough to remind us that the Democrats are the ones who put the expiration date on these special benefits. And the reason was they had to meet some fiscal requirements and in order to meet those fiscal requirements, they themselves, because they were in the driver’s seat going back several years ago under the conditions of COVID, and they put these expiration dates in. So now they’re coming back and saying, “These enhancements need to be made permanent, or at least we need to extend them so that people do not lose these benefits.”

That’s the way the game is played. And it’s played differently among Democrats and Republicans. That’s not to say both parties don’t play games, but we ought to recognize the differences in the game. The Democratic game is to pass temporary extensions or enlargements of government spending, and in particular government programs. The argument is we’ll just do this for a time, but the next thing you know, they demand that these benefits have to be made permanent, and that’s one of the big lessons of the welfare state. And just in terms of the Christian worldview and understanding how these ideas work, once people become dependent on a certain level of government support, when that government support ends, they claim that it has been taken away. That’s the moral language that is so artificial here. And the Democrats were absolutely convinced that this would play their way.

In one sense, they did appear to have a pretty strong hand because of popular support for these spending extensions. And you can understand why. People have been receiving a government benefit who had not received it before, and now they have factored that into their family spending, and so no doubt it will come as a rather rude reality when these spending enhancements come to an end. And of course, the Democrats never intended for them to come to an end. That’s the way the game is played.

Now, as I said, both parties play games. That’s just the way this works. But they’re not the same game. So just to cut to the quick, the Republican game is to claim spending reductions that actually aren’t reductions at all. They’re reductions usually in the increase of government spending. So you go back to the Reagan cuts, some were real cuts, others were cuts in the rate of spending enhancement. And so you look at this and you recognize the federal government has almost never actually cut back anything in an honest way. And that’s just the logic of a government that has the power of taxation. It can confiscate your income by taxes. It creates this massive administrative state that has an agenda of its own. Now, wait just a minute. The biggest labor union in the administrative state has now come out saying, oddly enough, the Democrats are the obstacle to their well-being, because their well-being at this point is defined by a paycheck.

Now, there is one particular government program that is going to run out of money at the last hour of this month, so we’re talking about this coming weekend, and that’s the SNAP program. And that’s not an insignificant matter. The SNAP program is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It covers about 42 million Americans. Okay? It is a means-tested program. Now, as conservatives think of the administrative state and think of the welfare state and think of federal spending, almost all conservatives would acknowledge there is some level of spending for the support of those who are in need that comes along with being the kind of nation we want to be.

Now, conservatives look at that, no pun intended, rather conservatively. But the SNAP program is one that involves children, and thus this is where many conservative Republicans are leaning in saying, “If there’s a program we can cut, it can’t be this one because this covers so many Americans who need assistance in buying groceries. And it is means-tested. It is not just available to anyone upon demand. And the impact of running out of money for this program could mean that some children just don’t get to eat.” Now, a group of Democratic attorney generals and governors have sued the USDA, that’s the United States Department of Agriculture, about the suspension of the benefits, but the department’s coming back and saying they can’t spend money, and that’s a legal issue, not just a financial issue, because there is no authorization from Congress to spend the money. This is a high-stakes, high-wire contest.

I think one of the most interesting things that comes out of this is the change in the conversation among many Republicans. So I’ll let the Democrats fare for themselves. Let’s talk about the Republican conversation. There is a group of younger, very conservative Republicans who are trying to differentiate between appropriate government assistance and inappropriate government assistance. That is a difficult challenge. It’s a political challenge. But figures such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley have jumped into this issue and he’s doing so as a conservative, he’s also doing so as a self-identified evangelical Christian, saying, “Look, government has a certain responsibility. If you’re going to acknowledge that government has some responsibility to help those in need, the neediest you would think of would be children who otherwise wouldn’t eat.” And he’s saying, “If anyone should serve as a political pawn in the midst of all of this, it should not be children.”

He says this, “America is a great and wealthy nation. And our most important wealth is our generosity of spirit.” He says this in a statement that was published as an editorial in the New York Times. And he went on to say, “The millions of Americans who receive food assistance include young parents raising children, men and women with disabilities, families suffering from temporary job loss, and workers who have fallen on hard times. Among SNAP’s many beneficiaries are US veterans. Approximately 1.2 million of our warriors, that means veterans, deserve this support.” All right, very interesting debate going on.

As I say, sometimes the most interesting debate is not between the left and the right, but left versus left and right versus right. A rethinking of the conservative Republican position on which is rightful assistance and which is wrongful assistance. That’s going to be a very important debate and it can only be put off for so long. And this particular government shutdown may be the catalyst for that debate gaining a lot of speed.

Part II

The Worldwide Disappearance of the Political Middle: Global Headlines Reflect Increasing Polarization

Okay, now let’s telescope out to look at some interesting developments in world politics. First of all, the recent election in Argentina. The reelection of the Libertarian president of Argentina, President Milei, that comes with a real opportunity for a renewed partnership with the United States, and in particular with President Donald Trump. The Trump administration has proposed a very significant bailout system of financial assistance, but it was predicated upon Argentinian voters voting for President Milei rather than a leftist alternative. But at least a part of what I want us to think about is the fact that when you look at headlines about world politics, it is interesting that the headlines generally say rightist or conservative candidate wins, liberal candidate wins. But increasingly far-right candidate wins and far-left candidate wins. Something is going on here.

So about the same time you had the report coming out of Argentina, a continued turn to the right, you also have the headline that occurred in the Financial Times just yesterday. The headline is this, “Hard Left Candidate Secures Landslide Victory in Irish Presidential Election.” Now, that’s not so important we need to spend much time taking that election apart. And by the way, the Irish president doesn’t have as much power in their constitutional system as you might think. But nonetheless, the point is “hard right, hard left.” The disappearance of the political middle. At least in the terms that many people in the mainstream media and the mainstream academic life, the way they saw the middle, the big belief at the middle of the 20th century, pun intended, is that the political middle was the great stability that would make democracy possible.

And so in the United States after World War II, that became a major argument. It also became a major criticism. You had people like Alabama Governor George Wallace saying there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. And he did have a point. When you look at many of the policies and you look at the platforms of the two parties, they weren’t really very distinct, certainly not in a clearly conservative Republican pattern and liberal Democratic pattern, until the 1970s, and at least in a large sense, until the 1980s. The 1980 presidential election that pitted incumbent president Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, against former California Governor Ronald Reagan, and, of course, Reagan won that election as the Republican candidate in a landslide, the political platforms of the two parties by 1980 were very different than they were just, say, in 1960. You’d be hard-pressed to identify which party had which platform in 1960. You could hand it to a kindergartner who could figure it out in 1980. And since then, you’ve had a continued process of polarization in the United States. It’s not just in the United States. It is elsewhere also.

The political consensus that marked the middle of the 20th century has largely disappeared. And that is because that political consensus was based upon a political and financial unreality. The financial unreality is that democratic governments could continue to spend money and that inflation would solve the problem. You need to understand that’s exactly what was assumed. It was assumed that you could have governments outspend their income by multiple trillions of dollars eventually because you would have inflation that would decrease the net value or the net threat of the debt and you’d have a growing economy. And so that was the argument. We can just keep spending money. Well, the reality is look at Germany, look at France, look at other European nations, and be honest and look at the revenue statements of the United States of America, that theory did not hold.

Okay, if that theory doesn’t hold, you can go in only one of two directions. You’re going to become far more leftist or you’re going to become far more conservative. So don’t be surprised when people act like there’s a hidden conspiracy whereby people are trying to just push the Republican Party to the right, some invisible hand, and the Democratic Party to the left. No, you have two opposing logics, and those logics are becoming more divided and the issues are becoming more urgent. So it’s going to be a very interesting thing to watch. But the disappearance has already happened in American politics, if we’re honest. No one anticipates that in the year 2028, by the time you get to the presidential election, there is going to be a less than very liberal Democrat running against a less than very conservative Republican. The fact is you don’t have to know the names yet. You can fill in the blanks when we get there in 2028.

Part III

Are Young People Looking for a Political Middle? Eventually, Young People Need to Understand What’s at Stake

Now, I raised that because of a very interesting and very large article that appeared just yesterday in the Financial Times. Remember, the Financial Times is something like a combination of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It’s published in London. So it kind of combines the strengths of those two flagship American newspapers. It’s very tilted towards economics and, historically, has come from a position of modified socialism, but lately it has become far more conservative than that. Anyways, it’s very interesting to watch. The headline in The Financial Times yesterday was, “Political Divisions Turn Off Young Americans.” This comes in a series from the Financial Times on the changing political contours of the United States. Ian Hodgson is the reporter. And for this story, he went to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Okay, that’s kind of the heart of America, traditionally speaking, in American politics. If you’re going to go to someplace like Ohio or central Pennsylvania, to a place like Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, you’re making a statement. We’re going to middle class, working class America. Historically, that’s what that has meant. Okay.

So the article tells us something very interesting because it zeros in on young American voters, and the article tells us, “In the eastern Pennsylvania town of three colleges and 22 schools, young people say they are inheriting a world that feels less stable and more divided than the one their parents knew, and they want to have their say in shaping it.” The article tells us about one 20-year-old young woman, and she’s talking about turnout for the election. It was huge among younger voters there in Bethlehem. She said, “They only had two polling spots and they didn’t anticipate the number of young people that would be in line,” but then she went on speaking about her generation, “we knew what was at stake.” Okay, so Pennsylvania, historically a swing state, this part of Pennsylvania rather historically liberal. But the interesting thing is that many young voters voted for Donald Trump in this area, and so they were really a standout from older voters in the same location. So younger voters were more likely to vote Republican than they had been in previous times.

But it’s not just that. There’s a gender divide. So young men were far more likely to vote for Donald Trump, to vote for the conservative candidate, than were young women at the same time. But the big import of this article and the reason I wanted to mention it today is because the suggestion in this article is that young people are looking for a middle way between these two polarized political positions. And here’s where I just want to say eventually these young voters are going to have to grow up. What we have is the political landscape we deserve. And that’s just a fact. We have the political landscape we deserve because of voting patterns and political patterns that have taken place, they’ve unfolded over the course of the last several decades. The reality is that the middle ground has largely disappeared, and that’s because the issues are now as polarized as the voters.

When you look at the issues, the fact is just take the issue of abortion and you can see that the divide over abortion is not a small matter, it’s not a shallow matter. It is a very wide matter and it’s simultaneously deep. That means there is really no middle position on the issue of abortion. Increasingly, you see that on LGBTQ issues, and of course you see it in other situations as well. 

On the left, they have never seen a government program they didn’t want to be bigger, bigger next year than the year before, bigger the next year than even the year that they were budgeting. The fact is, it always grows larger, and that means more government employees and it means more professionalization of the welfare state. 

On the conservative side, you also have a different set of priorities that has become far more, well, you could say politicized, far more identified in terms of the political equation. Put it this way, what would be the chance that you would have, say, a pro-critical race theory candidate become the nominee of the Republican Party in 2028? Let’s just say there’s not a chance. And if you’re looking for middle ground, what exactly would the middle ground on those issues look like? The fact is that I think, number one, some of this comes down to the question that media folks ask people, and in this case, you had the Financial Times asking younger voters, “Do you want a middle way?” Well, how many of them are going to say, “No, I don’t want a middle way.” But the reality is there is no middle way on many of these issues. Now, that isn’t to say there won’t be some kind of political compromise on some of these issues, but that political compromise is going to come at the expense of principle. Regardless of how it’s packaged, that kind of compromise will come at the expense of principle. The principles are not coming together in the middle.

And I think as Christians, we understand that a part of this is that the closer you get to creation order, the closer you get to issues of absolute moral judgment. The closer you get to issues like abortion and the definition of marriage and even just say the honor and dignity of work and other things, the closer you get to rebellion on those issues, the more difficult it is to come up with any kind of truly moderate or mediating position.

It’s not just younger voters who are looking for it, however. You ask older voters and they’ll also say, “I wish there was a middle option.” Okay, here’s the interesting thing. Increasingly, however, when they’re given a middle option, they don’t take it. In other words, when it comes to asking many of these questions, when pollsters ask the questions, the people answering them really don’t know what they want.

Part IV

The White House Needs a Ballroom: The Worldview Behind the Architecture and the Headlines at the White House

Okay, let’s shift gears here and finally today I want to think about worldview in architecture. I know there are many people who would not put the two together, but, frankly, architecture is the result of and a reflection of worldview commitments. And let me just point to something that many people don’t think about. When you go to the founding of the United States of America and you go to the decision to establish a new national capitol that will be known as Washington, DC, and you look at the architecture chosen by the American founders, and remember, this is the same generation roughly that fought in the Revolutionary War and won the war for American independence, and now having created a new constitutional order, they’ve created a new capital and they’ve got to decide what it’s going to look like. What did the founders and the framers of the American experiment decide would be the architecture of the nation? It is a resurgence of Classical architecture.

So you have the new order of the ages, the motto of the United States of America, you have this brand new nation, and what kind of statement did it intend to make by the architecture of its national capital? It wanted to look like Rome. It wanted to look like echoes of Greece. It wanted to look like Classical architecture, which is also one of the reasons why you see some of the founders, and in particular George Washington, sometimes dressed in a toga as if he were a Caesar or a senator of Ancient Rome. That wasn’t an accident. No, George Washington, so far as we know, never went around wearing a toga. The fact is that that was an idealization of the American president and of especially America’s first president.

But here’s the issue. That architecture was intended to say something. George Washington, in hiring Pierre L’Enfant to lay out the city of Washington, said it should be laid out on Classical lines. And those Classical lines were to make a very clear statement about the continuation of a Democratic-Republican experiment, that means a democratic republic. That kind of tradition that, of course, was traced back to the Roman Republic and was traced beyond that back to the fundaments that came in the Greco-Roman civilizational inheritance.

Okay, so it’s Classical architecture, it’s columns, it’s porticoes, it’s the design of Palladio. Classical architecture to make a Classical statement. Okay, so what happened in Washington, DC? Well, first of all, along came expediency during World War II, the federal government grew by leaps and bounds and it grew beyond the ability to build permanent buildings. And so you had the encroachment on the mall of all kinds of temporary buildings. And like most temporary things, they lasted longer than they should have. By the time you come to the later decades of the 20th century, someone’s got to come up with a master plan, and that included the people who were in political control in the 1960s and in the ’70s, and they loved ugliness. There’s just no other word to describe it. They loved ugly architecture.

As a matter of fact, one of the architectural schools that is represented in some of the buildings in Washington, DC, of that era, the architectural style is described as brutalism, and you take a look at it and you’re going to understand why. It makes a brutal statement. By the way, that’s tied to worldview. It was tied to a rejection of the Classical order. It’s tied to a very different understanding, not only of the role of government, but of the nature of what it means to be human and to aspire to some civilizational heritage.

Now, why do I bring this up now? It is because Ross Douthat, a very insightful columnist for the New York Times, has written an article comparing Donald Trump’s new ballroom at the White House and Barack Obama’s presidential library in Chicago. The headline of the article says it all, “Better Trump’s Ballroom than Obama’s Tower.” Okay, he’s making a comparison between what can be seen right now of the Obama Presidential Library and Presidential Center there in Hyde Park, very close to Chicago, and there’re also drawings, of course, of what it’s supposed to look like. And what it looks like is, I think, architecturally just something massively ugly and impermanent, but extremely expensive there in Chicago. Meanwhile, Ross Douthat is supporting President Trump. And as I’ve said on The Briefing, the White House needs a ballroom. No one would doubt that. It’s embarrassing that American Presidents have to take any event of significance outdoors under a tent. For crying out loud, this is not an extended wedding reception at the White House. This is the exercise of the American presidency.

Now, that’s not to say that it has to be on this scale, but then again, if you’re talking about Donald Trump building a building, it is not going to be an inconsequential building. But here’s something else. President Trump did more, and this was in his first administration to some extent, but very clearly in his second administration. It’s not just the ballroom. When he began his second term in office, he declared as an executive order that new federal construction was to comply with the Classical plan of Washington DC. I was one of the happiest people responding to that executive order, and it does reflect a respect for America’s civilizational heritage and our political order. I think George Washington and his colleagues in the Revolutionary and in the Founding era got it right. The United States only exists in continuity with the achievements of classical civilization. And what the American Founding Fathers wanted to say is that we are the result of the logic of that Western civilizational commitment. The last thing we need to do is to build federal buildings that try to take things in a very different direction.

But let’s understand it. There are people who are designing things according to very different styles because they’re intending to say very different things. Architecture matters. For that matter, as Christians know, in worldview terms, everything matters.

Part V

Hurricane Melissa Makes Landfall: Pray for the People of Jamaica

All right, this morning and all during the day, all persons of goodwill, and that certainly means Christians, will be praying for the people in Jamaica as they’re facing an unprecedented threat from a category 5 superstorm hurricane. It is expected to dump as many as 30 inches of water and some of the highest recorded winds in that part of the Caribbean ever. So let’s pray for the people in Jamaica. May the Lord protect them and we’ll be tracking that storm along with them. And let’s also recognize that there are many people risking their lives that we have the ability to understand and to track those storms. Let’s pray for them as well.