Even a cursory study of history indicates that the central goal of geopolitics is maintaining a balance of power in the world. This was true in the ancient world with a balance between Egypt and the various Mesopotamian powers. It was true in the Napoleonic era when Napoleon sought dictatorial control over Europe, only to be defeated and a new balance established at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Both World War I and World War II saw Germany destroy the fragile balance of power in Europe. Post World War II saw a perilous balance of power maintained between the United States and the Soviet Union. Today the balance of power in the world is shattered and, in 2023, only the United States can restore this much-needed balance.

The story of the Pilgrims is the story of the beginning of the holiday we know as Thanksgiving. But sometimes in America, we equate the Pilgrims with the Puritans, and assume they were identical groups. They were not. Pilgrims were also known as “Separatists,” meaning they chose to separate from the established Church of England, the Anglican Church. The Puritans remained in the Anglican Church and chose to attempt to “purify” it from within—hence the name “Puritan.” In 1608, a group of Separatists, who would become the Pilgrims, fled England and settled in Holland. They desired freedom of worship there.

Lance Morrow, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, made this poignant observation: “A decent conscience, uncontaminated by ideology, knows what it is looking at. The torments that Hamas ‘militants’ inflicted on Oct. 7—mass slaughter, rape, the beheading of babies—amounted to behavior that the high court of any uncorrupted intelligence in the world would describe as evil.” Indeed, President Biden courageously spoke of the Hamas raids as “pure, unadulterated evil.”

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas on earth. More than 2 million people live inside a sliver of land, just 25 miles long and 7 ½ miles at its widest. On Saturday morning, 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip broke down the barriers separating Gaza from Israel and engaged in a well-planned and well-executed series of raids involving mass murder, the kidnapping of children, elderly and women; the storming of a music festival to shoot and kill whomever they could find; and rape, execute and slaughter every Jew they could find. To add to this horror, Hamas terrorists filmed all of this and placed it on social media sites for the entire world to see.

With the 1945 victory in World War II, the United States began to construct an entirely new world order based on freedom of movement, global trade and a monetary system rooted in the American dollar. The implementation of that order produced the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and other entities. Today, that order is coming apart and its effects are widespread and potentially destabilizing.

As columnist George Will so eloquently puts it: “This nation is slouching into the most predictable fiscal crisis in its history.” On 1 August 2023, Fitch Ratings lowered the credit rating of the United States one notch to AA+ from a perfect AAA. The firm, citing a “deterioration in governance” along with America’s mounting debt load, suggested that “it could be a long time before that decision [i]s reversed.” This credit rating change is similar to the drop to AA+ in 2011 by S&P Global, which has kept its rating there. There is a profound lack of willingness to compromise and reasonably discuss the national debt on the part of both political parties.

When our Founders wrote the Constitution in the summer of 1787, they structured this democratic-republic around a three-part federal government—an executive, a legislature and an independent judiciary. This separation of powers was to provide a built-in set of checks and balances to guarantee that no one individual or group of individuals would amass too much power. From the Marbury v. Madison opinion in 1803 by Chief Justice John Marshal, the judiciary has the authority of judicial review. It is the role of the judiciary to interpret the Constitution of the United States. To that end, the judiciary has the authority to review executive and legislative actions to determine whether those actions are constitutional or not.

The state of Israel captured the West Bank of the Jordan River from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War. Historically and biblically in terms of Israel’s history, this area is known as Judea and Samaria. It is part of the land God promised to Abraham by covenant (Genesis 12:1-7; 15:18, etc.). Since 1967, Israel has been slowly planting Jewish settlements on the West Bank, but this has accelerated and intensified under the current government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The expansion of these settlements runs counter to the so-called “two-state” solution, which refers to the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution, ratified in 1791, begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech . . . .” In other words, there will be no state (i.e., “established”) religion in the US, while the United States will protect and guard the “free exercise of religion.” Even a cursory reading of this Amendment indicates tension and the need to balance prohibiting the Congress from establishing a specific religion with the protection of individual citizens’ free exercise of religious beliefs.

Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan (a church he planted with his wife Kathy in 1989), died of pancreatic cancer on Friday, 19 May 2023; he was 72 years old.