When asked what the U.S. response might be to the Iranian airstrikes on Israel last week, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan suggested it was Washington’s war, too. “We have made clear that there…

Adapted from remarks at Liberty University. This is a speech about achieving the impossible.My parents came to this country with no money, and I’ve founded multibillion-dollar companies. I’ve written…

Politics The Vibes Have Run Out For Kamala  Harris struggles to find footing in softball media appearances. Credit: image via Shutterstock Well, we now know why Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign wasn’t eager to rush her out in front of the cameras for media interviews. Sitting with the ladies of The View, which is hardly entering the lions’ den for a Democrat (even the primary conservative co-host is a Harris supporter), she promptly produced a clip tailor-made for a Donald Trump campaign ad. Asked if there was anything she would have done differently than departing President Joe Biden over the last four years, Harris replied, “There is nothing that comes to mind.” Harris cleaned up a bit by repeating that she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet. She appears to believe that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, or at least their fans, are the most coveted swing voters in this election. Perhaps she is correct, though the liberal replies to a Washington Post reporter’s social media post about this exchange were fairly unhinged. Confronted about the woeful Biden-Harris record at the border on 60 Minutes, the vice president had no real answer as to whether the administration had been too lax for most of its term. But this back-and-forth also illustrated the basic fraudulence of her attempts to blame the border on Trump killing a flawed Senate bill she has been pushing.  Biden was able to bring down illegal immigration through executive actions without this legislation. Trump was able to even more substantially reduce the flow at the border without this legislation. Biden and Harris made certain enforcement and policy choices that were at their discretion. These, as much as the problems in the Northern Triangle that were not resolved by Harris’s diplomacy, are the real “root causes” of the border crisis. Harris made plain that her “solution” to illegal immigration is to have Congress pass an amnesty bill, which she noted that she and Biden had proposed upon taking office. That proposal, along with ending Trump policies like Remain in Mexico and restoring catch-and-release for apprehended migrants, also incentivized much illegal immigration. Migrants believed if they could make it into the United States under Biden and Harris, they had a better chance of being allowed to stay than under Trump. Then there was Harris’s answer that she owns a Glock as her personal firearm. This specific weapon choice raises questions about her record on gun control. She has supported handgun bans and filed an amicus brief arguing against the Supreme Court majority’s position in District of Columbia v. Heller. Dick Heller was trying to purchase a Glock for self-defense in the nation’s capital. One of Harris’s better moments was when she taunted Trump on Howard Stern for not appearing on 60 Minutes himself. “Ultimately, I do believe that this is an election that is about strength versus weakness, and weakness as projected by someone who puts himself in front of the American people and does not have the strength to stand in defense of their needs, their dreams, their desires,” she said. Even that answer contained a healthy serving of Harris’s signature word salad and it also required a certain amount of prodding from Stern, who has hosted Trump many times over the years before the shock jock adopted a more woke personae. Harris demonstrated in her one (and likely only) debate of this election cycle that she can deliver canned anti-Trump lines and get under his skin effectively. Substance is another story. It’s possible this won’t matter much as the presidential race enters the homestretch. But the sudden resort to a busier media schedule appears to be a concession that her reprise of the Biden basement strategy was no longer working. Harris’s running mate Tim Walz lost the vice presidential debate to JD Vance. This was at least partly attributable to the fact that the Minnesota governor wasn’t doing many media interviews, while Vance was sitting down with hostile hosts regularly. Walz couldn’t do more interviews because he didn’t want to upstage the top of the ticket. Even though the public polling still shows the contest a toss-up, with perhaps even a slight Harris edge, Democrats are nervous. She’s behind where Biden was at this point in 2020, and the final results turned out to be closer than the October polling suggested four years ago. Trump is doing a lot of friendly interviews and podcasts too, but we have seen him do hostile interviews before and he is already more of a known commodity. Even this year, the Univision town hall and sit-down with the National Association of Black Journalists were far riskier for Trump to agree to than Harris. To paraphrase James Taylor, Harris can run for president but she cannot hide. At least not forever.  The post The Vibes Have Run Out For Kamala  appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Congress MIA on Possible U.S. War with Iran Experts: They lack the guts to invoke war powers, and are out of town through election anyway. Credit: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images When asked what the U.S. response might be to the Iranian airstrikes on Israel last week, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan suggested it was Washington’s war, too. “We have made clear that there will be consequences, severe consequences, for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case,” Sullivan said during a press briefing at the White House. To which Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) fumed on X: “Work with Israel? Excuse me, the Constitution requires you to work with Congress!” Two days later, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) weighed in on the same platform. “Any offensive action by the U.S. against Iran would be unconstitutional without a Congressional Declaration of War,” he wrote. Nevertheless, as talk turns to the kind of retaliation Israel might deliver against Iran for its 200 ballistic missile attacks (which Israel and U.S. both claim were “ineffective”), it is becoming clear that the U.S. might play a direct role. That was not refuted this week when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called his counterpart Yoav Gallant (he was to meet with him in Washington today, but the confab has been postponed): “I confirmed the United States commitment to Israel’s security and shared that the United States is well postured across the region to defend Israel and protect U.S. personnel and facilities.”  Even more to the point, CENTCOM commander Gen. Erik Kurilla met with Gallant in Israel and had this to say: We discussed ongoing Iranian-backed threats to the region and efforts to stabilize the region, ensure Israel’s security, and deter Iran’s malign and reckless activities, Before departing, I reiterated the strength of our ironclad military-to-military commitment between CENTCOM and the Israeli Defense Forces. In back-to-back radio interviews with Brian Thomas on October 2, Massie and Andrew Napolitano expressed their concern that we may wake up tomorrow and find that the Biden administration had made the executive decision to take the nation to war. “You won’t see a declaration of war because Congress doesn’t want to embarrass itself. It’ll just look the other way while the president does whatever the hell he or she wants. And that’s, to me, just frightening,” charged Napolitano. Unfortunately given the circumstances and recent history, Napolitano is probably right—if the administration decides to let Israel drag the U.S. into direct military action with Iran, there is little Congress or anyone else will be able, or, better yet, willing, to do about it. The executive branch has been consolidating and reaffirming its war powers over the last several decades and has not been constrained by the Constitution nor the War Powers Resolution, which was passed by Congress in 1973 to limit the president’s ability to make unilateral decisions to take and keep the country at war.  Experts point to successive presidents who have used existing Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs) passed for the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars to justify military operations over the last 20 years, including recent airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. They say presidents have abused their powers under Article II of the Constitution to enter into hostilities, which Congress, under the WPR, say he can only do to respond to “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”  Whether the Houthi attacks on global shipping, which the Yemeni militants say will continue until there is a ceasefire in Gaza, are an imminent threat to the U.S., is up for debate. The White House claims that it is a threat to the global economy, regional security, and, once the U.S. Navy got involved and had been sporadically fired upon, American security interests too. The administration has invoked its Article II powers and filed required reports to Congress under the WPR for different strikes, including several against militants in Iraq and Syria over the last year.  This allows the administration to keep “stopping and setting” the 60-day clock for Congressional action or as experts call “salami-slicing.” The AUMFs have been used as ancillary statutory authorities if that clock runs out, as well. This was done in the Trump administration, too. “Finding the statute” is what former State Department legal adviser Brian Finucane calls it. “Through creative interpretations of the War Powers Resolution and the 2001 AUMF and now the 2002 AUMF as well, this White House like its predecessors has been able to involve and keep U.S. troops in wars that Congress never specifically authorized,” he wrote back in January. Other than lambasting the president in the media during the initial Yemen airstrikes in January, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have not raised the issue in terms of forcing a vote under the WPR to declare war—or not—in the current Middle East hostilities. (An attempt by Paul, however, to bring home the approximately 900 U.S. troops in Syria using the WPR failed to pass the Senate in December.) Outside organizations warn that “a new endless war” will be Biden’s legacy, signing a letter to the president on October 3: “We urge you to recognize and respect that Congress has not authorized military force against Iran or militias backed by Iran, and that any potential military action against Iran could only proceed following a debate and passage of a war authorization before entering our troops into any imminent hostilities in the region.” (Disclosure: The letter was signed by the author’s employer, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft). But without a forceful response from Congress — and even then — it would seem war is the prerogative of the executive today. Constitutional law expert Bruce Fein balks at the irony. “In 2007 while seeking the Democratic Party nomination as president, Biden shrieked on Chris Matthews’s Hardball that he would lead the charge for President Bush’s impeachment and removal from office if he attacked Iran without a prior declaration of war,” Fein told The American Conservative in an email. “Biden, days ago, attacked Iranian missiles in collaboration with Israel with the Navy’s AEGIS ballistic missile defense, an act of war not authorized or declared by Congress. Under Biden’s own impeachment standards loudly trumpeted in 2007, Biden himself has committed an impeachable offense,” he added. “Congress should be demanding that Biden testify before Congress to explain the constitutionality of what he has already done in light of Biden’s 2007 statements as President Ford was summoned to explain to the House Judiciary Committee his pardon of former President Nixon. Congressional complacency with presidential usurpations of its war power is stunning.” The complacency is helped along by the fact that both chambers are out of session until after the election. Numerous offices contacted by TAC on both sides of the partisan aisle Monday either did not respond or said they could not comment on the possibility of the U.S. going to war without Congressional authorization. “In essence we were under the leadership of a king,” said the radio host Brian Thomas. “In that regard, no accountability, no representation by our elected officials, no say in the matter. We’re going to drop bombs. This has come up in the context of us doing just random missile strikes and in any given land we find somebody that we don’t like.” The post Congress MIA on Possible U.S. War with Iran appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics America’s Greatest Tradition Curiosity and intellectual ambition are what made this country great. Vivek Ramaswamy (Wikimedia Commons) Adapted from remarks at Liberty University. This is a speech about achieving the impossible.My parents came to this country with no money, and I’ve founded multibillion-dollar companies. I’ve written multiple bestselling books. Last year, at age 37, I became the youngest person ever to run for U.S. president as a Republican. At the start of the campaign, no one knew my name; by the end of it, I had beaten out multiple senators, governors, and a former vice president. I did all of that with my lovely wife Apoorva, herself a successful throat surgeon, while raising our two sons in Ohio.But all of that pales in comparison to the one achievement that I thought was truly impossible: most of you now know how to actually pronounce my name. Vivek, like “cake.” Ramaswamy—like “Ramaswamy.” But my speech today isn’t about me. It’s about all of you. You’re entering your adulthood at a truly special moment in American history. I believe deep in my heart that it’s actually going to be your generation that saves our country. It wouldn’t be the first time that it happened. That was all the way back to 1776.Though I’m talking about our own Founding Fathers, I’ll start with a quote often attributed to the founder of Dubai:[BLOCK]My father rode a camel, I ride a Mercedes, my son rides a Land Rover, and my grandson is going to ride a Land Rover, but my great-grandson is going to have to ride a camel again. Hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times, easy times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.[/BLOCK] He was the founder of Dubai, but he may as well have been speaking about our generation of Americans.When our nation was born in 1776, we were a nation of underdogs. We were a nation of insurgents. Our Founding Fathers stood up to the most powerful empire in the world, declared their independence, and then somehow turned assertion into reality. They were a band of rebels who defeated the reigning incumbent of their era, an incumbent that went on to become just another small nation on the other side of an ocean.But eventually, the insurgent becomes the incumbent. The underdog becomes the favorite. And the new incumbent starts to apologize for its own success, instead of working even harder to create even more of it. Eventually, that incumbent is unseated by a new insurgent born on the other side of a different ocean.Personally, I think that’s what many of us sensed when we heard the call to Make America Great Again several years ago. But here’s what we missed: In order to know how to make America great again, we have to first know the story of what made America great the first time. That’s the story of our nation’s history. It’s a story we’ve forgotten. Malcolm X famously said a nation without history is like a tree without roots: It’s dead. One of the things that I think we’ve lost in modern history is an aspect of our founding culture that’s personally important to me, one that we’ve abandoned in recent years, one that has absolutely nothing to do with politics.It’s the death of intellectual curiosity in America. If you think about who were the most intellectually groundbreaking thinkers of the 18th century, they definitely weren’t our Founding Fathers. Most of them were on the other side of the Atlantic.They were the likes of Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Hume who led the way in philosophy and sociology; Newton and Leibniz in math and physics; Adam Smith in economics and psychology.The thing that distinguished our Founding Fathers wasn’t their genius in any of these disciplines. They weren’t mathematical or philosophical savants; but they learned from the people who were. And what really distinguished our Founding Fathers was their ability to combine those intellectual foundations with a vision for the future that simply didn’t exist in the Old World.Locke and Leibniz, Newton and Hume—these men were true geniuses. But the European society into which they were born was different from ours in a fundamental way: They valued hierarchy and expertise over curiosity. The monarchs and aristocrats who were supposed to run the government ran the government. The people who were supposed to philosophize about economics and sociology philosophized about it. But they weren’t the same people. And the people who were supposed to make discoveries in math or invent new tools were in a different place altogether. Virtually everyone stayed in their lane.You see, the Old World was reluctant to break down boundaries. Boundaries, they thought, existed for a reason. The ruling class existed to rule; the expert class existed to advise them; the doctors’ guild exists to treat patients; the guild of barristers exists to argue cases in court. It was a culture that revered expertise over curiosity.But our Founding Fathers had a different vision, one without those boundaries. They didn’t even really believe in acquiescence to expertise. They believed that no man was confined to the circumstances of birth and upbringing, and that each of us is so much more than just a product of what we happen to be doing at a given moment.For example, you all surely know that Benjamin Franklin—one of the co-authors of our nation’s Declaration of Independence—was a veritable renaissance man, who, in addition to founding universities and hospitals, was also a prolific author, a dabbler in medicine who discovered a treatment for the common cold, and a creator of musical instruments—including one instrument that went on to be used by Mozart and Beethoven. Some of his devices were incredibly practical—a lightning rod for the home, bifocal glasses, and the Franklin stove, a practical tool for heating houses, derived from recent breakthroughs in the field of thermodynamics. Benjamin Franklin was the archetype of the 18th-century polymath; I think most of you know that.But here’s the remarkable part: he wasn’t an exception. He was the norm. Five men served on the committee which drafted the Declaration and all were similar in their intellectual versatility. Take the two lesser-known members: Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman. Livingston worked with Robert Fulton to build the first steam ship—a fundamental building block of the Industrial Revolution—as a side project, while serving as an ambassador to France. Sherman, who was also a signatory to the Constitution, was a self-educated attorney who never actually went to college or studied law. He taught himself in the library of his local parish minister while working as a shoemaker. He wanted future Americans to have greater access to education, and he ended up serving on the governing body of Yale.And of course, in addition to Franklin, Livingston, and Sherman, there were the two most famous drafters of the Declaration—John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, bitter rivals in politics but close friends in retirement. Jefferson’s interests were more scientific, while Adams was more drawn to the humanities. But they were each deeply curious about everything, and unafraid to compete with one another intellectually. One of the famous quotes attributed to John Adams is that: [BLOCK]I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.[/BLOCK] But that was a bit of a humble-brag on his part. It’s true that Adams studied politics and war, but he also studied math and philosophy. And also poetry, while being educated in Greek, Latin, and the other classics. In fact, a little-known fact about Adams that I personally find very interesting is that, after serving as our second President, he immersed himself in Hindu scripture, and wrote to Jefferson in a letter that, were he to live again, he’d have studied Sanskrit literature. The man was a lifelong learner. And so was his great rival. Jefferson was fluent in five languages and capable of reading two more. Over the course of his life, he wrote 16,000 letters. Students in the year 2024 could be forgiven for thinking that means 16,000 letters—that’s like 4,000 words—which sounds doable enough! But no; I’m talking about 16,000 full-length letters, as in essays. That’s basically unheard-of by today’s standards.You might wonder if it was uncomfortable for him to sit in a chair for so long while writing. Well, it turns out he solved that problem by inventing the swivel chair,  which he supposedly built and used to write the Declaration of Independence. He was also an amateur architect. The Virginia Capitol building, standing right here in the state where we are gathered today, was designed by Thomas Jefferson.Both Jefferson and Adams had to spend large sums of money to build their own personal libraries, to continue their learning. In fact, Jefferson almost went bankrupt several times. It’s easy to make fun of him for his taste in wine, but he wasn’t just a drinker of wine; he was a scientist of wine too, traveling to southern France to learn about wine production and to figure out how to build a homegrown industry right here in the United States. It was knowledge-directed at every step of the way; the fact that it sometimes left you drunk was, the French like to say, merely an unintended side effect.There was something in the water back then; something in the culture. It was a culture that valued education; autodidacts; exploration; a fundamental curiosity about how the world works; and an unyielding confidence that even if you weren’t an expert in something, you could still figure it out with the right combination of self-education and curiosity.Compared to nations like France and England, it’s true that America was provincial at the time. We were nothing more than a backwater cluster of small towns scattered along an eastern seaboard. Economically, militarily, and geopolitically, it seemed that we were destined to be nothing more than a footnote in global history. Yet the people who wrote those footnotes were deeply curious about the world they inhabited; about the history to which they contributed; and deeply confident in their ability to change every part of it for the better.So what’s the message for us? We need to revive that special combination of curiosity and confidence. Yes, we want to be a country of people who tinker in their garages. We want people who write great essays in the evenings, while working at insurance companies during the day. We should expect more of one another as citizens. We should expect more of ourselves. We should expect more of our leaders. Back then, presidents who left the White House went on to study ancient works in Sanskrit; today, they sign Netflix deals and play a round of golf.It’s easy to say “how cool were our Founding Fathers,” and then go back to the daily drudgery of our modern technocracy. But why can’t we behave like our Founding Fathers? Political conservatives talk a lot about staying true to the political and legal principles in the Constitution, and no doubt that’s important—but as Americans, we should also be inspired to stay true to our founding culture of exploration and curiosity.The irony is that it should be a lot easier for us to do that today than it was for them back then. For starters, the main languages of scholarship in 1776 were French and Latin, and you had to wait weeks or even months to procure a physical copy of a book that you might have wanted to read. Today, almost everything is available in any language you want, and you’re two swipes on your iPhone away from any book you want to read on demand. The only thing stopping us is our own incuriosity, our own veneration of someone else’s expertise, and our own lack of confidence to build our own.You might expect that our Founding Fathers didn’t have the time—as they were fighting the Revolutionary War and then setting up a new nation—to afford the luxuries of intellectual curiosity. Yet actually, the opposite was true. We were never more curious than when we were fighting for our survival. The special sauce that allowed America to succeed as an insurgent was the unmitigated curiosity and the unjustified confidence of our Founding Fathers.And it wasn’t just a matter of self-indulgence. The reason our Founding Fathers were so curious about the world around them wasn’t just to get drunk on it. It’s because they strived to make America, their nation, a better nation. It wasn’t idle interest that moved them; it was a desire to create a thriving country that would outlive them.And they made that country great. They drew minds as curious and courageous as their own. Joseph Priestley, a pioneering chemist, held beliefs well outside the mainstream of English religious thought. In 1791, a mob looted and razed his home to the ground. He fled England to Pennsylvania, where he was welcomed with open arms. This brilliant scientist moved to America precisely for our free society, inaugurating a tradition that so many others, including my own parents, have continued to follow for centuries. My parents came here for the same reason that Joseph Priestley did: Ours is a free society where creative people are able to pursue their dreams however they see fit. Priestley didn’t come to America for our academic institutions or funding; in fact, we had neither of those things back then. It’s because he had freedom—freedom to explore ideas without fear of being attacked or locked up. Freedom to be himself, including even the freedom to discover who he was. That’s the unspoken part of the American dream: not just the freedom to achieve whatever you want, but also the freedom to discover what it is you want to achieve.It’s precisely at the moment when we stopped being insurgents and started becoming incumbents ourselves that we lost that sense of curiosity and lost that sense of confidence. Why can’t we just remain an incumbent and enjoy it while it lasts? Because pretty soon, we’ll become the Great Britain to someone else’s insurgency. It’s already starting to happen.The way we remain a magnet for the most curious and ambitious people around the world is by cultivating the culture that drew Priestley here, the same culture that drew my own parents here. A culture that prizes free and open debate and inquiry; a culture that doesn’t force a monolithic cultural ideology on everyone; a culture that doesn’t force you to bow down to what a politically appointed expert says on a given day, but instead gives you the latitude to question dogmas in the pursuit of truth.That’s the greatest thing our Founding Fathers invented. It wasn’t a lightning rod or a stove. It was a country that offered freedom of thought, the greatest invention of their era, the one that enabled so many others. That’s the invention we risk losing in a country that focuses on suppressing dissent instead of fostering creativity. Can we sustain that special combination of curiosity and confidence? That’s the defining question of our era, and the answer starts with how we educate the next generation.Those who object to this vision as the exclusive north star for educating our children will say that it’s not enough for our schools and universities to teach our children to be intellectually curious, courageous, and confident, but that we must also teach them to be socially just, and to rectify the injustices created by the likes of our Founding Fathers, who blindly pursued enlightenment without actually abiding by the values that they preached.Yet I’d argue precisely the opposite: that intellectual curiosity and courage, combined with a willingness to traverse boundaries that go beyond your preordained area of “expertise,” beyond your own “lane,” is the most important building block of empathy. And that empathy is the most important building block of justice. The arc of the moral universe is long, Martin Luther King said, but it bends towards justice. I believe empathy is the force that causes it to bend, and I believe that the foundation of empathy is curiosity.So what’s the take-home message from this reflection on our Founders? I’ll leave you with a few.First, it takes about as much effort to do something really small, and to do it well, as it does to do something really big, and to do it well. We’re all given a short time on this Earth. It’s your choice as to whether you want to do the small thing or the big thing. There’s no right answer. But as someone who ran for president at 37, I can tell you that I have my bias. Second, when the pack runs in one direction, my advice to you is to run the other way. That’s what our Founding Fathers did. Today, calling the other side “weird” is considered a political insult. I’m sure you hear a lot about how “weird” Liberty University is. I’m sure it’s irritating when rival schools mock your beliefs by “coincidentally” scheduling their Pride Day the same day they face Liberty in football. But don’t be afraid of being called “weird.” The Founders would have worn that label as a badge of honor. They ended up winning the American Revolution. And Liberty ended up beating UMass. For most of human history, the idea that you get to express your opinion, no matter what it is, was a truly weird idea. The idea that we the people create a government accountable to us, rather than the other way around, was downright strange. But that’s what made America great the first time around. And reviving that is how we’ll make America great again. Third, if you ever find yourself to be the smartest person in a room, then find a different room. I studied biology, worked at a hedge fund, went to law school for fun, started a biotech company, started a health technology company, left all that behind to write a few books, then started an asset management firm before running for U.S. President. Don’t make your identity a product of your occupation. You’re so much more than one thing you happen to be doing at a given time. And there’s no better time to cultivate that sense of adventure and curiosity than in college. You can take a random elective. Join a club. Learn an instrument. Or go on a service trip, whether that’s halfway around the world or as close by as Boone, North Carolina, where I’ve just learned a team of Liberty students is heading to help with hurricane relief. So what am I going to do next? Well, that’s my final lesson for you—and I’m pretty sure it’d be one that Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin would affirm if they were here with us today: every time I’ve made an elaborate plan for how my career would go, it never went according to plan anyway. Your plans are silly! But your purpose isn’t. Find your true purpose, and the plan tends to reveal itself for you every time. We have a longstanding tradition in our country of those who return to public service, even after having successfully served at the highest level. So I’ll close with the story of our first President who wasn’t a Founding Father, but who—perhaps like all of you—took inspiration from them anyway. That was John Quincy Adams.John Quincy Adams was educated by his abolitionist father and went on to serve in Congress after serving as president. He courageously spoke out freely in the tradition of his father’s contemporaries on the Congress floor in defiance of the gag rule when debating slavery. He had a stroke and died in the middle of giving a speech on the Congress floor, and his funeral rites were led by a then little-known first term Congressman by the name of Abraham Lincoln. That’s American history. That’s American exceptionalism. That’s what I’m asking you to revive. That’s what it’s going to take to remain a nation of insurgents. The post America’s Greatest Tradition appeared first on The American Conservative.

The boldness of youth. The post ‘I Speak Because I Can’: How Laura Marling turned teenage hormones into a masterpiece first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

by Steve Kirsch, Steve Kirsch’s newsletter: The CFR didn’t decline after the COVID vaccines were deployed. This means that the vaccines didn’t work! The CDC lied, people died. Executive summary The CDC lied. People died. The COVID vaccine had no benefits It actually increased your risk of getting COVID. We know that from the Cleveland Clinic […]

Where Do You Find Your Joy? You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. – Psalm 16:11 A thief broke into the apartment of an aspiring writer one night. Trying to avoid waking him, the intruder quietly picked the lock on his desk. Suddenly, the silence was broken by a burst of laughter from the bed, where the young author lay watching the thief. "Why are you laughing?" asked the thief as he turned around. "I'm laughing at the risks you're taking to find money in my desk in the middle of the night when I can't even find it there during the day!" It's a tendency for all of us to search for fulfillment in places where it can never be found. Much like that thief searching frantically through a poor man's desk, many people search to and fro for things in the world that will satisfy them. Yet, that search will inevitably end up going nowhere. Real and lasting joy simply can't be found in the things of the world! Don't allow the lure of worldly things to lead you down the path of trying to find joy in them. Enjoy the material possessions you have, but don't let them rule your life and don't think they can fulfill you. Find your ultimate joy in your relationship with Jesus Christ alone! Prayer Challenge: Ask God to help you focus on finding your joy in Him alone, not the things of the world! Questions for Thought: Where have you been tempted to find your joy outside of Christ? What about it tempted you? What's one way you can focus more on finding your joy in Christ alone? Visit the Senior Living Ministries website The post Where Do You Find Your Joy? – Senior Living – October 9 appeared first on GodUpdates.

A Prayer for Embracing God's Purpose in Your Life By Alisha Headley Bible Reading "For I know the plans I have or you, says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for harm, to give you a future and a hope." – Jeremiah 29:11 Listen or Read Below: We often think our purpose in life is that one big thing we are waiting for or striving for. We have prayed prayers asking God to show us what our purpose in life is, thinking it's a grand gesture of some sort and must be something big, like writing a book or becoming a full-time leader at church. Many of us may be called to the stage or to big things the world will see, making large impacts. But what if our purpose is also meant for a smaller audience or for the journey to that big thing, but still with a great impact? What if our purpose is in the exact season we are in? It's the everyday purpose we have as a wife, husband, co-worker, boss, daughter, son, mother, father, or neighbor that we tend to neglect. Not only do we tend to neglect the everyday purpose we have with our position in the Kingdom, but we tend to neglect the purpose we have when we have seasons of drought and hard times. These seasons are all a part of God's purpose for your life, even if it looks like nothing is happening or you're on a detour. Biblical heroes had seasons that didn't make sense at the time, but God had a purpose in it all, and he does for us, too.  Today's verse talks about how God has a purpose for us, and He already knows the plans to lead us to that purpose. He has already seen the ending, as He has had a purpose from the very beginning. And even if things don't look good right now in whatever seasons we are in, we can rest assured that all His plans for us are for good, and not for harm, and to give us a future and a hope. God has a predestined purpose for our life. But what today's Scripture does not say is that all the plans will feel good. This is an important thing to remember because there will be many things we face in this life that don't look like they are leading us to our purpose. But with God, we know that "for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose," as Romans 8:28 promises us.  We need to embrace every season we are in, whether it feels good or looks good, for God is working it all out according to His purpose, just as He did all throughout the Bible. Each season along the way is important, even if we can't make sense of it at the time. When things don't feel good in your everyday life, just remember that He is good, His plans are good, and we can cling to that hope that our future is safely held in the palm of His hand.  Let's Pray: Lord,Thank you for having a plan for us and that your plans for us are good. Thank you for choosing us to be a partner in your Kingdom work done here on earth. Show us what our purpose is in our everyday life. Lead us each day as we follow you step by step walking in our purpose. Forgive us for the times that we create our own plan and don't seek yours for our life. We want to walk with your blessings and favor and in your purpose in our life to keep us safe and away from harm. Teach us how we can embrace each season we are in, as it's all a part of our purpose. Teach us how to embrace our purpose even if what we see doesn't look or feel good in the moment. We trust that you have a plan, and you will turn even the difficult seasons into good. Even if we can't see your final purpose right now, we ask that you use us every day to live out our purpose by walking closely to you and showing the world just how good you are. We love you, and we know you have a plan that is greater than our plan. You're a good Father with a purpose for our life. Show us the way.In Jesus' name, amen. Photo Courtesy: ©Getty Images/aldomurillo Alisha Headley is a writer + speaker who has a desire to meet the everyday woman in her everyday life with biblical truth. Stepping into her true calling, she left the corporate world behind as a former-financial VP to love on her family as a stay-at-home wifey + dog mama, while also being able to pursue her passion as a writer. Healing from a chapter of life consumed with lies she once believed about herself, she is inspired to point women to Christ to experience the freedom + power to overcome those lies with the truth written in God's word. In her free time, Alisha enjoys road trips around the country, working out so she can eat her favorite foods, and creatively styling her outfits with a craft for fashion. Alisha is a proud wifey and dog mama living in Scottsdale, Arizona. You can follow her blog by visiting her website or connect with her on facebook + instagram. Related Resource: Jesus Calling – Stories of Faith Kerry Washington. Andrea Bocelli. Reba McEntire. Mark Wahlberg. Tony Dungy. Matthew McConaughey, What do all of these people have in common? They are all people of faith who have leaned on God in both the good and challenging times-and they've shown up to tell their story of faith on The Jesus Calling Podcast. The Jesus Calling Podcast provides a place for people from all walks of life to share the heartaches, joys, and divine moments that keep them going.  Inspired by Sarah Young’s classic devotional book, the Jesus Calling podcast has brought encouragement and peace to millions. New episodes drop every Thursday! Listen today on LifeAudio.com or wherever you find your podcasts. Now that you’ve prayed, are you in need of someone to pray for YOU? Click the button below! The post A Prayer for Embracing God’s Purpose in Your Life – Your Daily Prayer – October 9 appeared first on GodUpdates.