Camille Kampouris says she and her husband have long carried with them a desire “to raise up men and women, old and young, to be like [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer, to speak out when there’s evil.”  Bonhoeffer was a German theologian, a pastor, an anti-Nazi dissident, and a spy who took part in an assassination plot against Adolf Hitler. About 14 years ago, Kampouris read Eric Metaxas’ book on the life of Bonhoeffer, and she and her husband, Emmanuel Kampouris, were so moved that they set out to make a film about Bonhoeffer with the famous last words, “How hard could it be?” More than a decade later, the film is hitting theaters ahead of Thanksgiving.  Bonhoeffer, an author himself, has had many books written about his life, but now, Angel Studios is bringing the incredible story of Bonhoeffer to life on the big screen beginning Nov. 22. “The beauty of Bonhoeffer’s story is that it shows what a real Christian should be like, and it shows a failed church, so you see both,” Kampouris, who served as one of the film’s producers, told “The Daily Signal Podcast.” Because of this duality, Kampouris says the film should appeal “to everyone.”  Camille and Emmanuel Kampouris join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share about the long, and sometimes harrowing, journey of making the film, and what they hope audiences take from it.  Listen to the podcast below, or watch the interview above. The post Over a Decade in the Making, ‘Bonhoeffer’ Finally Hits Big Screen appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge. Americans spend over $500 billion per year defending themselves against the IRS. That’s spitting distance from the $800 billion the Defense Department spends protecting us against foreigners—well, failing to protect, in the case of the border. So, forget Ukraine. Forget ISIS. The calls are coming from inside the house. The number comes from my based colleague Richard Stern, who reports on a new Tax Foundation study that the income tax costs Americans $546 billion per year in compliance alone. Compared toour national defense budget of $849 billion, which is supposed to protect the American peopleyet completely fails to protect us from the IRS. Note this $546 billion is on top of the $4.9 trillion the IRS actually took from us in taxes. And, of course, it’s separate from the economic impact of taxes, which might add another $15 trillion in lost income. Breaking it down, the $546 billion is made up of 7.9 billion hours Americans spent complying withthe tax code. Which, at 10 million words, is the length of 21 “Lord of the Rings” trilogies. Of course, nobody actually understands the tax code—that’s why big corporations hire $500-an-hour tax lawyers. But regular Americans—many of whom cannot name a state, thanks to government schools—are assumed to have complete mastery of the entire 10 million words of legalese, or the IRS willthrow you in a cage. For perspective, an entire lifetime of work is 86,000 hours—40 hours times 48 weeks times 45years. So, tax compliance entirely consumes almost a million lifetimes of work. Every single year. Put differently, that’s equivalent to nearly 4 million Americans working full time and without paydoing nothing but tax paperwork. That’s the population of Los Angeles. It’s also 46 times the workforce of the IRS. Meaning for every tax bureaucrat we pay to steal from us, another 46 Americans have to spendtheir evenings and weekends helping the IRS steal instead of playing with their kids. On top of the hours, Americans spend another $133 billion a year out-of-pocket on things like taxsoftware—about $1,000 per year per household. So, you could have bought groceries; instead, you bought TurboTax. Note, $546 billion doesn’t begin to estimate the cost of the IRS. In previous videos, I’ve mentioned studies estimating that we lose $3 in production for every dollar taken in taxes, since taxes discourage production. Why work? Why build or expand a business if the government just takes it? That suggests the $4.9 trillion in taxes the IRS takes actually cost us roughly $15 trillion inlost output. So, $546 billion in compliance, $4.9 trillion in lost taxes, and $15 trillion in lost output. Rarely have so few taken so much from so many. For perspective, that comes to roughly eight times what Americans spend on housing. It’s 10 times what we spend on food. So what’s next? A constant theme in our administrative state is spending trillions protecting us from threats that aren’t real—Ukraine, climate, transphobia. While it ignores the threats that are very real, from inflation to street crime to predatory taxation, that forces us to run on a treadmill until we’re 70. Between Donald Trump’s promised tax cuts, Elon Musk’s spending cuts, and slashing the administrative state that strangles the economy, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But there’s a lot of special interests—from uniparty politicians to millions of parasitic bureaucrats—who desperately want it to keep going. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post IRS Compliance Costs $546 Billion Per Year appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sunday Smiles, Toxic Masculinity Edition

My new friend Michelle recently told me she had an abortion when she was younger and lived with deep sorrow and regret. She cried out to the Lord for healing and forgiveness for her regretful decision, then promised the Lord that she would never have another abortion again. Years later, she remarried and found herself once again pregnant, but this time at age 40. Her husband was livid. He wanted nothing to do with his child — so much so that he tried bribing Michelle with a vacation to Hawaii if she aborted their baby. She couldn’t do it because she had vowed to God she would never again abort her child. So what did she do? Though her husband was enraged, Michelle ended up doing one of the bravest things any woman could do: She gave her precious daughter up for adoption. The story was a real tear-jerker when she told it to me in its entirety. I felt righteously angry at her husband, who claimed he was too old to have a child, begging her to abort their little girl. I can’t fathom any dad desiring to abort his child, no matter the circumstance. But that’s probably because the men in my life love children and welcome them with open arms. My dad fathered nine of us and worked hard to provide for all our needs. My husband is the best dad to our kid. And my father-in-law is the world’s best grandfather to our toddler. These are real men, not boys. But what about the men who plead with the mothers to have their babies? They rarely get a mention. Many of these men live with silent sorrow, told they have no voice in this debate and that their opinion doesn’t matter. Slogans like 'no uterus, no opinion' have been shoved down men’s throats so successfully that men have been bullied into silence and shoved into a corner. We know post-abortive women are more susceptible to struggle with substance abuse, depression, and even suicide. But what about the men? In an article titled, "'The Hollow Men': Male Grief & Trauma Following Abortion,” Dr. Vincent Rue found in a preliminary study that four in 10 men experience chronic post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, which occurred roughly 15 years after their partners had an abortion. “Other disconcerting findings included: 88% feeling grief and sadness, 82% guilt, 77% anger, 64% anxiety, 68% isolation, 31% helplessness, 40% sexual problems,” Dr. Rue said. Of course, these factors included whether or not these men desired the child, but it shows how sobering the aftermath of abortion is for men — a problem that is largely ignored. Earlier this month, 10 states voted on one of the most controversial issues of our day: abortion. Three states — including my home state of South Dakota — said no to abortion, while seven unfortunately did not. Collectively, initial reports show that roughly $234 million was spent on the abortion fight in this recent election cycle. Feminists and pro-abortionists alike continue to stamp abortion as a women’s rights issue, justifying it by touting, “My body, my choice,” “Restore women’s reproductive rights,” and “No uterus, no opinion.” But this messaging leaves out a crucial part of the conversation: Fathers. Widely used slogans like “no uterus, no opinion” have been shoved down men’s throats so successfully that men have been bullied into silence and shoved into a corner. The abortion lobby continuously tells men there’s no room for them to fight in the arena. It takes two to tango and make a baby, so why have fathers been largely cut out of the equation? As in the example of my friend Michelle, there are varying kinds of fathers. There are the good ones and the lousy ones. There are the dads who don’t want their babies and pressure the mothers into abortion; there are the dads who will never know they fathered a child; and there are the fathers who plead with the mother to keep the baby, but she aborts their child anyway. Not having a supportive partner to help raise a child leads many women through Planned Parenthood’s doors. The sexual revolution in the 1960s and the 1970s birthed the idea that abortion would be “safe, legal, and rare.” But instead, abortion became common, easily accessible, and the biggest form of birth control. Men and women were then “liberated” to have sex whenever, wherever, and with whomever after Roe v. Wade became the status quo in 1973. Pregnant? No problem. There are various reasons women get an abortion, but given the loose reporting requirements, we have to rely heavily on studies and surveys. Medical News Today examined a five-year survey asking women why they sought an abortion. Approximately 40% of them said the reason was financial, while 36% said it was timing and 31% said it was based on their partner situation. In another study, Care Net found nearly four in 10 (38%) women indicated the father of the baby was the most influential factor on whether or not they would seek an abortion. Another study found that nearly 74% of women who have had an abortion felt some kind of pressure to get one, as in Michelle's case. Abortion decisions primarily boil down to the father and whether or not he’ll support the mother and his child financially, emotionally, and physically (even if he never marries her). It doesn’t help that the majority of women (85.5%) who get abortions are unmarried, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Not having a supportive partner to help raise a child leads many women through Planned Parenthood’s doors. An ally in the pro-life movement told me recently that after visiting hundreds of pregnancy help centers across the country, he found the number-one reason women sought an abortion was because of the father’s lack of support and involvement. They didn’t want to face motherhood alone. As a mother, I can empathize with them. Raising a child is no walk in the park. It’s hard work, and having a husband by your side makes all the difference. It never justifies taking a life, but I can understand how a mother would be worried and scared. Out of the over 63 million babies aborted since Roe v. Wade, imagine how many women would have chosen life if the father had stepped up and taken responsibility for his child. It’s cowardly, unmanly, and selfish to abandon the mother of your baby as well as your own flesh and blood at the altar of sexual and childless “freedom.” Boys don’t take responsibility for their actions, but real men do. Sexual “freedom” has been more costly to men, women, and, ultimately, children than our culture admits.

Life is strange and uncomfortable in many ways, so it’s not all that surprising that the Bible, being our guide to life, is also full of strange and uncomfortable topics. However, there’s one topic Jase Robertson says tops the list — as least for men. And that subject is circumcision. However, the practice is far more than a physical act. The history of what a large portion of American male babies receive following their birth has a long and storied history. “Some of what I’m fixin’ to say could be graphic and offensive to people who don’t understand what circumcision is,” says Jase. “When a baby is born, they're circumcised. You go to the nether region, and there's some skin that is removed. ... They do it now for cleanliness. It’s not an identity thing,” he explains. Many forget, however, where the concept of circumcision came from. It was a physical representation of the covenant God had made with Abraham and his descendants (the Jewish nation) — that God would give them a homeland, protection, and prosperity if they obeyed his commands. But that’s just the beginning. There’s another layer to the concept of circumcision that many Christians don’t understand — circumcision is not merely a physical act. There’s a spiritual kind of circumcision of the heart that the Bible lays out. Jase points to Romans 2:28-29. “A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person's praise is not from other people, but from God.” Jase also points to Colossians 2:9-12. “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.” “In this case, Christ is the one doing the cutting, so this is not Jewish people back under this promise that God made with Abraham. This is a new sort of promise,” he says. To hear more of Jase’s analysis on physical versus spiritual circumcision, watch the episode above. Want more from the Robertsons?To enjoy more on God, guns, ducks, and inspiring stories of faith and family, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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