I haven’t written anything on this site for a long time, as there’s so much good stuff out there that’s much better than I can produce–plus, for the most part, those other writers are getting paid! But I wanted to do something brief today, sparked by my listening to two podcasts just in the last week or so. One was on the Matt K. Lewis podcast in an interview with Napp Nazworth, an editor at the Christian Post who put his money where his mouth is and resigned from said publication over the whole Christianity Today flap. If you’re not up on that issue, I’ll just say that CT published a solid editorial laying out why Donald Trump deserves to be removed from office. Nazworth explains why he resigned rather than be the editor in charge of publishing CP‘s rebuttal. But then he goes on to say some pretty scathing things (and deservedly so) about Wayne Grudem, whose flip-flops on Trump since 2016 have been legendary. Here’s the history of Dr. Grudem’s viewpoints:
I’ve had a couple of people mention this program on Dec. 2, 2018, in which conservative writer Ben Shapiro interviewed John MacArthur on his weekly “Sunday Special.” Shapiro has a wide range of guests on this show, and this one has gotten a lot of buzz in the Evangelical world. So I decided to watch it, as I’ve done with some of Shapiro’s other specials. His podcast, “The Ben Shapiro Show,” heard every weekday, goes in and out of my “favorites” podcast playlist, depending on how shrill and obnoxious he is at any given time. I do like a lot of what Shapiro says, and I think he wrote the most incisive article of the 2016 election season, “
As long-time readers of this blog and Facebook page know, I don’t write very many articles myself. So many excellent writers out there are saying such good things, much better than I could possibly do, that I usually content myself with posting a selection of said articles with perhaps a short intro from me. But every now and then I feel compelled to weigh in a little more when I get particularly riled up, a reaction that often happens when I get some particularly outrageous comment on Facebook.
This morning at around 2:00 as I lay awake in bed (I was having one of my insomniac nights), I realized that my appetite for continuing to post on this page has dried up. In particular I was thinking about the next episode of my political podcast in which I was planning to give a brief overview of the stretch of time from June 2015 to the 2016 conventions, tracing how Donald Trump became the nominee. But the thought that struck me was, ‘What’s the point?’ I’ve been posting my own and others’ articles for well over a year and half, spending hours that could have been allocated better, and to what avail? I know there are people who have really appreciated my efforts and have been introduced to writers and publications they wouldn’t otherwise have known about, and that’s a good thing. But have I changed any hearts and minds? I would say that, sadly, the answer is almost certainly no.
by David Frum, published in January 2018.