Why Does the Government Patronize Us?

WSJ
Why Does the Government Patronize Us?
By Edward C. Prescott
November 11, 2004; Page A16

Radicalism: The conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today. --Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary."

Of all the economic issues facing Washington these days, one looms larger and larger as more time passes without a solution -- how to fund our Social Security obligations. We often hear that the main problem is our aging demographics or the political games that are played with Social Security funds. While these may be problematic issues, they are only symptomatic of the fundamental predicament: Government has made promises that it can't keep.

...Consumers already know how to invest their money -- why does the government feel the need to patronize them when it comes to Social Security? It would be one thing if the government's Social Security system paid a decent return, but as the President's Commission reported, for a single male worker born in 2000 with average earnings, the real annual return on his currently-scheduled contributions to Social Security will be just 0.86%. And for a worker who earns the maximum amount taxed (then $80,400), the real annual return is a negative 0.72%. A bank would have to offer a pretty fancy toaster to get depositors at those rates of return.

Further, about two dozen countries have reformed their state-run retirement programs, including Chile, Sweden, Australia, Peru, the U.K., Kazakhstan, China, Croatia and Poland. If citizens in these countries can handle individual savings accounts, especially citizens in countries without a history of financial freedom, then U.S. citizens should be equally adept...The benefits of such reform extend beyond the individual retirement accounts of U.S. citizens (although that would be reason enough for reform) -- they also accrue to the economy.

As noted above, national savings will increase, as will participation in the labor force, both to the benefit of society. On the first point, more private assets means there will be more capital, which will have a positive impact on wages, which benefits the working people, especially the young. More capital also means that the economy will have more productive assets, which also contributes to more production.

Regarding labor supply, any system that taxes people when they are young and gives it back when they are old will have a negative impact on labor supply. People will simply work less. Put another way: If people are in control of their own savings, and if their retirement is funded by savings rather than transfers, they will work more. And everyone is better off.

These are the type of win-win situations that politicians and policy makers should be falling over themselves to accomplish.And those policy makers need to get beyond the idea of creating only voluntary savings accounts. Voluntary accounts are not the full answer. There is nothing wrong with making a reasonable level of savings mandatory. Remember that our current Social Security system is mandatory, but as it stands it is a mandatory tax that perpetuates a welfare system.

It doesn't have to be this way. We should separate retirement savings from a system of welfare, and the most efficient way to do that is to turn our mandatory transfer system into a mandatory savings system.Some analysts have suggested that we can't move from a transfer system to a saving system because current retirees will be left in the lurch. Who will pay for them if workers' money is suddenly shifted to individual savings accounts? There will indeed be a period of time, likely no more than 10 years, when narrowly defined government debt relative to gross national income would increase before decreasing. But government debt is small relative to the present value of the Social Security promises that currently exist.

Further, the sum of the value of government debt and the value of these promises will start declining immediately.Under a reformed system there will always be some individuals who, owing to disabilities or other reasons that prevent them from working, will not have sufficient savings in their old age. The solution is to include a means-tested supplement to ensure that those citizens receive a required payment -- just like they receive today. Nobody gets left behind under this new system, and most will move ahead. U.S. citizens deserve more than a minimum payment, and the U.S. economy deserves more than to have its savings, capital and labor weighed down by an increasingly costly tax-and-transfer system.

So how would such a reformed system work? Here's a proposal: Have three-quarters of employer and employee Social Security contributions (currently 12.4% of wages, salaries and proprietors' income up to $87,900) put into an individual savings account. This would be deferred income with taxes paid when people receive their retirement benefits.

The other one-quarter of Social Security contributions would finance welfare and increase the labor supply, resulting in higher output and an increase in tax revenues.Reforming Social Security into a system of mandatory individual savings accounts is not as radical as it sounds. The world is moving in this direction, and here in the U.S. our citizens have been dealing with individual accounts for many years through their employers -- and some of these are mandatory. As Ambrose Bierce's definition of radicalism suggests, someday we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Mr. Prescott is co-winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics, senior monetary adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and professor of economics at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.

Family Dinners Improve Kids' Health, Grades

WSJ
By HILARY STOUT
November 11, 2004; Page D8
"Study after study finds that kids who eat dinner with their families regularly are better students, healthier people and less likely to smoke, drink or use drugs than those who don't. A University of Michigan study of children ages 3 through 12, for example, found that more meal time with the family was the single strongest predictor of better achievement scores and fewer behavioral problems -- even better than time spent studying or in church...Sixty-one percent of youths ages 12 through 17 said they ate dinner with their families at least five nights a week in 2003, up from 47% in 1998, according to a recent study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, which has researched the importance of family dinners in preventing teen drug and alcohol use."

articles 11/11 - Happy Veteran's Day

Belmont Club
The River War

ABC News
Conspiracy Theories Abound After Bush Victory
Web Sites, E-mails Conjure Phantom Voters, Invented Malfeasance

A Moveable Feast of Terrorism
by Maureen Dowd

'Groundhog Day' in Iraq
by Thomas Friedman

The gay marriage deception
By Thomas Oliphant

Money
By Larry Kudlow

In the end, Democrats wrong about those 'loony rightists'
by Robert Novak

'He's Got Two of 'Em'
Why I can't stop being happy about the election result.
By Peggy Noonan

The Forgotten Revolution
Americans are oddly uncurious about the military history of the war that made us a nation.
By Geoffrey Norman

WSJ Editorail
General Gonzales
Ashcroft left a better Justice Department than he inherited.

Powerline
Omitted From Arafat's Obitiuary

Weekly Standard
The "Controversial" Ashcroft
The New York Times laments how "controversial" John Ashcroft was as attorney general. But who fomented the controversy?
by S.T. Karnick

A National Party?
What Zell Miller can teach Republicans about Arlen Specter.
by Hugh Hewitt

Blacks Need to Become a Swing Vote
By John McWhorter

NY Post
The Bush Rebound

NY Sun
Rebellion Brewing at the AFL-CIO Over Union's Future

Bush Country
By David Warren

Burning Questions
Building the next World Series champion starts now
By Tom Verducci

GM meetings dish: Beltran chronicles
By Ken Rosenthal

Sir Bitch Is Back
The Rocket man is flying higher than ever
By David Wild

John Kerry
The Rolling Stone Interview
By Jann Wenner

The Generals Speak
Seven retired military leaders discuss what has gone wrong in Iraq
By Paul Alexander

The constant quest for magic
U2's new album was two years in the making – and will go to number one around the world. Neil McCormick joined them in the studio to watch their pursuit of perfection

U2 fans wait no more/three reviews of HTDAAB

MTV.com & VH1.com Exclusively Premiere U2's How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb a Week Before It Hits Stores; VH1.com & MTV.com to Stream Album in Its Entirety Beginning Nov. 16

The long awaited album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (Interscope) will make its debut exclusively on VH1.com and MTV.com a week in advance of its November 23 release. Users can log onto www.vh1.com to "Hear Music First: U2" and www.mtv.com to "The Leak" beginning Tuesday, November 16th to stream the entire album for free. Visitors to VH1.com can also view a video retrospective of favorite videos from each U2 album from the past. Finally, MTV2 will be airing "Viewer's Choice: U2's Greatest" premiering on Friday, Nov. 19th at 10pm ET/7pm PT. Fans are invited to visit www.MTV2.com now to vote for their favorite U2 videos to be included in the show.

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb Reviews
BlogCritics.com
u2tour.de
Chrissi Blaesing

The South Has Risen, Again!

Video of Carole Simpson of ABC News from a post-election panel, which was televised on C-Span.
"I got a little map here of pre-Civil War free versus slave states. I wish you could see it in color and large. But if you look at it, the red states are all done in the South, and you have the Nebraska territories, the New Mexico territories and the Kansas territories, but the Pacific Northwest and California were not slave states. The Northeast was not. It looks like the map of 2004, and when you say, "Let's let the states decide," I remember what the states decided when they had slavery. I think they're going quickly after social programs, despite what he says. I think we're going to get a rollback on all kind of things. Affirmative action is a bad word; liberal is a bad word; gay is a bad word, diversity. All these words that are perfectly fine words now are these touchstones, these trigger points, and that frightens me."

Good Riddance

Wall Street Journal
By Marty Peretz (editor-in-chief of The New Republic)

articles 11/10 p.m.

Most Charitable Red or Blue States?
The Generosity Index, compiled by The Catalogue For Philanthropy. It is computed by taking each state's average income and average charitable contribution, then subtracting the second rank from the first to get a single number for each state.

Shooting Republicans, ethical? Discuss
"Let's face it, when Grover Norquist is doing the media rounds...when his agenda of eliminating all taxes on billionaires and letting the poor pay all taxes and carry the debt burdon, and let them scounge around in the garbage for food...builds character.....when THIS type of criminal extreme right wing "thought" is entering the mainstream...it's time for extreme action...Is it now morally excusable to organize midnight raids on republican groups in the red states and "terminate" them with extreme prejudice?"

Dupes and Dopes Of Campaign '04
By Richard Cohen
"The operative word is 'duped,' and it explains, almost by itself, why the Democratic Party is in the pits and John Kerry is not the next president of the United States. Only a dope thinks these [Bush] voters were duped.... It seems to me that they saw through [Democratic] promises for what they were -- empty -- and voted on what mattered most to them. They knew, just as we all know, that nothing in the Democrats' oh-so-moderate program was going to make much difference to them -- or, even if it did, it was not worth what they would have had to give up in exchange."

Suspicions grow that Arafat is dying of AIDS
By israelinsider staff

Real Clear Politics
Mandate? No. Consequential? No Doubt About It

AP
Falwell Plans for 'Evangelical Revolution'

Re. Specter
by Hugh Hewitt

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld Press Briefing

Dems must decide which faction will revive them
Hype & Glory
By Walter Shapiro

Page Six
Axed Apprentice A Love Stud

Page Six
Brow-Beater

USA Today
Iraq troops find 'hostage slaughterhouses'

The Corner
Letter from Soldier in Fallujah

Second Wind
GWB may be the GOP's LBJ.
By Brendan Miniter

The Presidential Elections of 2004 and 2008
by John Zvesper

NY Times
'Moral Values' Carried Bush, Rove Says

Chicago Tribune
Rove: Marriage issue and role of money were big

Secession
By Tony Blankley

Of God and Men
Unlike America's, Europe's political establishment is hostile to Christianity.
By Rocco Buttiglione


Dear Kofi...
Wall Street Journal
November 10, 2004; Page A16
The battle for Fallujah is raging, and we all hope for a rapid victory by the U.S. and Iraqi forces trying to root out the terrorists holding the city. Meanwhile, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has replied to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's letter objecting to coalition efforts in Fallujah. We reported on Monday that Mr. Annan had warned last week that a coalition offensive might increase violence and disrupt the elections. Missing from his high-minded prose were such words as "terrorist," "kidnapping" and "beheading." Now comes Mr. Allawi's pointed reply: "At the moment, we have parts of the country in which the civilian population has been hijacked by the terrorists and insurgents. That is unacceptable. Worse still is that the terrorists and insurgents operating from places like Fallujah are exporting their violence to other parts of the country, terrorizing and killing innocent Iraqis and those seeking to protect them. I cannot allow these terrorists to continue to murder with impunity. "I was a little surprised by the lack of any mention in your letter of the atrocities which these groups have committed. I believe that the blame for the violence and difficulties in Iraq at the moment should be laid squarely at their door. The same group who murdered so many of your staff in the bombing of the U.N. headquarters last year, has since murdered hundreds of innocent Iraqis and committed countless other atrocities. We have overwhelming evidence that they have used and continue to use Fallujah as a base of operations."

ABC News Tampa
Video of beheadings found for sale at Tampa gas station

articles 11/10

No Litmus Test
I've backed pro-life judges before, and I'll do so again.
By Arlen Specter

Democrats Need To 'Get Religion.' It's Not Scary
By Mort Kondracke

Newsweek
Kerry Knew That Values Mattered

AP
Online Learning Has Schools Nervous

The Hill
Tide runs against Specter
Uproar continues over comments on federal judges
By Alexander Bolton

HBO
The Noam Chomsky/Andrew Sullivan/Bill Maher Debate

Modern Reformation
How Long?
By Eric Landry

Modern Reformation
EARTH on PEACE & Peace On Earth
Ever since the Fall, the world has longed to restore peace on Earth. Unfortunately, history testifies that most of our efforts to bring peace have backfired and compounded suffering. In this “present evil age,” we are tempted to ask if God’s efforts have backfired as well. We dare say they have not. Here’s why.
by Shane Rosenthal

Modern Reformation
Keeping Watch
What are the true signs of the end of this age when God will put an end to sin, death and suffering? When will God interupt human history and usher in his eternal Kingdom of Peace on Earth?
by Kim Riddlebarger

Vertigo
By Steve Stockman
(author of Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2)

The Dick Staub Interview: Exegeting U2
Get Up Off Your Knees preaches U2.

Abortion and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
By John Piper

articles 11/9

"One week after suffering devastating losses in the House and Senate, Democratic campaign committees in both chambers find themselves mired in debt. Late in the campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took out a $10 million line of credit -- the largest ever by a party committee at the conclusion of an election cycle ... [and] the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee took out a $5 million line of credit to finance its final campaign push" -- Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.

What Bush Won
by John Podhoretz

Election Fallout: Faith in Democracy, Not Gov't
by Victor Davis Hanson
"Television commentators Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers,Andy Rooney or Ted Koppel have morphed from their once sober and judicious personas into highly partisan figures that now carry political weight among most Americans only to the degree that they harm any cause or candidate with whom they are associated. Readers do not just disagree with spirited columns by a Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd, but rather are turned off when they revert to hysterics and condescension."

Why Did Kerry Lose?
Answer: It Wasn't "Values"
By James Q. Wilson

Seizing a Stable Majority
By Newt Gingrich

Democratic Party must be 'born again,' Carville says
By Stephen Dinan

The Sore-Loser Party
by Jonah Goldberg

Kerry Wants to Act as Counter to Bush, Possibly Run in '08
Amazingly prescient quote yesterday from John O'Neill before this story ran today. "I think John Kerry is like Lazarus and he will find a way to rise again," Mr. O'Neill told John Fund. "We have not heard the last from him. Believe me."

Kofi Annan, The Tyrants' Friend
NY Post Editorial

An ominous Specter
by Thomas Sowell

NY Times
What the Mullahs Learned from the Neighbors
by Kenneth Pollack

How Michael Moore Got Bush Elected
by Jay Ambrose

Funniest Line of the Day: In response to the Drudge/Arafat headline -- Arafat Dead/Not Dead -- Monty Python's Holy Grail ("I'm not dead . . . I think I'll go for a walk") and the Princess Bride ("He's only mostly dead. If he were all dead there's only one thing you could do. Go through his pockets and look for loose change.")

City Journal
Dads in the 'Hood
Black America starts facing up to the tragedy of the
Accidental Father.

WSJ Editorial
Supreme Court Strategy

City Journal
Homeland Security? Not Yet
Political correctness still makes us pull our punches.

City Journal
The Myth of the Working Poor
Two Americas? The scaremongering bestsellers that say
so are economically illiterate.

Weekly Standard
Winning the "I Don't Know" Crowd
The problem with Democrats is that they've become the party of moral absolutism.

Weekly Standard
Worse Than It Looks
The political landscape is not the same as it was in 2000. For Democrats, their situation is getting worse.

NRO.com
W.’s U.N. Mandate
Time to rethink this relationship.

AP
Madonna calls for US troops to leave Iraq

Bush's Secularist Triumph
The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them.
by Christopher Hitchens

Real Clear Politics
The Best Campaign In History

articles 11/8 p.m.

Jay Nordlinger
They Hate Us

News Judgment and Jihad
Terrorists depend on the cooperation of the media. It's time to stop providing it.
by Mark Bowden

"...terrorists use sensationalism to vastly amplify their message. They know that horror and drama capture the media's attention, so they manufacture them. This is why...they cut off their heads on camera and broadcast the videos. When that gets old...they will come up with something even more awful...The beheadings led the news in so many places strictly because they were so terrible and because they were on videotape, a medium that so vividly conveys the horror. They led because the cold men behind them wanted them to. I think we should consider the consequences of continually giving those men their way. "


How Not to Catch a Terrorist
A 10-step program, from the files of the U.S. intelligence community
by Anonymous

Nine of the 10 dates listed are during the Clinton administration. It concludes w/ this warning: "Before the Kean Commission's recommendations are implemented, and a vastly expensive and disruptive scheme is undertaken to overhaul an Intelligence Community weaker today than on 11 September 2001, it is worth reviewing the testimonies and documents the commissioners and the other 11 September panels have in hand, and reassessing where primary responsibility lies. Is it really small budgets, poor organization, and legal hurdles that stopped the Community from dealing with Bin Laden to the best of its ability? Or is it the results of decisions by human beings who refuse to do either what is in their power and patently necessary, or that which is asked for by their elected chiefs in Congress and the Executive..."

Among the Hostage-Takers
Twenty-five years ago in Tehran a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy and took hostage the entire American diplomatic mission—igniting a fifteen-month international crisis whose impact is reverberating still. Now, for the first time, many of the leading hostage-takers speak candidly about their actions—which a surprising number deeply regret
by Mark Bowden

Will Iran Be Next?
Soldiers, spies, and diplomats conduct a classic Pentagon war game—with sobering results
by James Fallows

WSJ
The Jobs Rebound
So much for the Herbert Hoover economy.

"Sensible optimists are expecting economic growth to be very good in the fourth quarter. But it's also increasingly possible to look out over the longer term and see a durable expansion that has ample room to run."

WSJ
After Arafat
The end of the era of terrorism chic.
"...after years of blood and hopeless talk, the prospects for Mideast peace are better than at any time since Oslo in the early 1990s. Having watched Israel's democracy flourish next door and seeing events in Iraq and Afghanistan, some brave Palestinians may see this as the time to come forward. Arafat's death will at least make that possible."

Slate
Why Americans Hate Democrats—A Dialogue
Forget Starbucks—head to Wal-Mart instead.
By Hank Sheinkopf

articles 11/8

Robert Novak
Specter blunders on Roe vs. Wade

Belmont Club
The Banner of Zarqawi

Michael Barone
The 51 percent nation

Maureen Dowd
Rove's Revenge

CBS-2 (NYC)
Howard Dean considering bid to chair Democratic Party

NRO.com
What DeWine Can Do

Deroy Murdock
Specter Is His Own Worst Enemy

Real Clear Politics
Which Pollster Was the Most Accurate?

Roger L. Simon
Bush Not "Down and Out in Beverly Hills"

NY Times
Evolving Nature of Al Qaeda Is Misunderstood, Critic Says

Guardian
Onward Christian soldiers
The hopefuls in the Democrat camp really believed victory in the US election was within their grasp. How did they get it so wrong? They failed to appreciate, says Simon Schama, that their country is now in fact two nations that loathe and fear each other - Godly and Worldly America

Meet The Press
Karl Rove's interview transcript

Ronald Brownstein
Dems Need a Red-Blooded Candidate to Stanch Losses

Powerline
Dems Ponder Alternatives: Vote Suppression, Secession and Assassination

W. Post
Battle Rages for Control of Fallujah

AP
Rumsfeld says Iraq cannot remain under the rule of `assassins'

John Fund
The GOP's Blue-State Blues

NY Post
Bush's Mandate For Europe

Black and White and Red All Over?
A look at the past two weeks' good news from Iraq.

NY Post
U.N.'s Unfinished Business

Terry Mattingly
After the Baptist baptism bus tour

Can History Save The Democrats?

U2 interview: Group therapy

For 25 years, U2 have been through personal loss, drugs, alcohol, and rows on a titanic scale, even by the standards of the rock business. And yet they are still together. In a rare interview, Bono and the rest of Ireland's awesome foursome reveal how their closeness has enabled them to survive

articles 11/7 p.m.

Leaks & The Law
What happens when the journalistic principle of protecting confidential sources clashes with the public interest in prosecuting a crime? A cross-examination
by Benjamin Wittes

The Incredible Shrinking Man
K. Eric Drexler was the godfather of nanotechnology. But the MIT prodigy who dreamed up molecular machines was shoved aside by big science - and now he's an industry outcast.

Was Built To Last Built To Last?
It's one of the most influential business books of our era, and it helped turn coauthor Jim Collins into a management rock star. But how well have the companies it lionized and the principles it espoused stood the test of time?

The Confidentiality Fetish
The problem with attorney-client privilege

Can This Institution Be Saved?

A curious alliance of helping professionals is working to rebuild marriage in a culture of divorce. By Tim Stafford

U2's "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" Leaks

Late Friday night, U2's eagerly anticipated new album "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" leaked onto the internet to the dismay of its record company who had thus far orchestrated a very tight preview schedule for journalists worldwide. No word yet on what label bosses plan to do about the leak, or if this will bring the album forward from its original Nov 22nd world release date and Nov 23 domestic release date. When the "Atomic Bomb" went missing in France this summer, Bono was quick to state that a leak would bring the album forward on iTunes immediately. Given the band's recently announced partership with Apple, this possibility could not be far off. Early fan reaction was overjoyed, ecstatic, and in the words of one poster, "U2 have done it, people. This is amazing. I can't contain myself."Stay tuned for fan reviews!

Articles 11/7

NY Times
New Salvo Is Fired in Mommy Wars

City Journal
Yes, the Education President

Wired
The Decline of Brands

Christian Counterculture.com
Fools For Jesus

Boston Globe
Along border, Kurds say, Iran gives boost to uprising

Center for Nonproliferation Studies
A Preemptive Attack on Iran's Nuclear Facilities: Possible Consequences

WSJ
A Gangster With Politics

3D Electoral Map

W. Post
Four More Years Attributed to Rove's Strategy

Boston Globe
Where's the party? What the reelection of W. means for Dems

Newt Gingrich
Values and Bush's victory

W. Post
Ending Our Losing Ways

George Will
Democrats Dilemna

NEWSWEEK ELECTION SERIES
How Bush Did It
Fits & Starts
Inner Circle
Trench Warfare
Teaming Up
Meet The Bush Daughters
The Vets Attack
Face To Face
The Endgame

Bank One Lures in Nortel's Global PR Director For VP Job

PR Week (US)

January 27, 2003

By ANDREW GORDON

WILMINGTON, DE: David Chamberlin has left Nortel Networks, where he was director of global communications, to join Bank One as VP of PR in its card-services division.

Bank One is one of the largest global issuers of Visa cards, and Chamberlin explained that he took the job not just to work with Bank One, but also the numerous companies that create cobranded Visa cards with Bank One.

'This will give me the chance to work with some of the best brands in the world,' said Chamberlin, who worked for Burson-Marsteller before joining Nortel. 'I'll be creating strategic PR campaigns for Bank One and its partners.'

Amazon.com, United Airlines, and Ann Taylor are among more than 1,200 companies that cobrand Bank One credit cards for its 53 million cardholders.

David Webster, SVP of business affairs for card services, said one of the first campaigns Chamberlin will work on is the new cobranded Disney card. 'We are also engaged in a brand-building effort to make Bank One one of America's value brands,' said Webster. 'David brings the values that will help us do that.'

Nortel director of corporate communications Tina Warren will take over many of Chamberlin's duties in the interim, though no decision has been made as to whether his position will be filled, Chamberlin said.

Promise Makers. The founder of Promise Keepers explains why he’s calling for a spiritual assembly of men in the nation’s capital

The founder of Promise Keepers explains
why he’s calling for a spiritual assembly of men in the nation’s capital.

America is suffering from a severe shortage of integrity, and men are behind some of its worst manifestations. Men are more likely than women to break their marriage vows through adultery, violence, or abandonment. Men are impregnating young women in record numbers and leaving them to deal with the consequences--a stint on welfare, an education cut short, or a trip to an abortion clinic. Men are also more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol and then engage in a wide range of criminal behavior. Indeed, it is men, overwhelmingly, who commit most of the nation's violent crimes and dominate its prison system: At least 94 percent of all inmates are male.

Social problems are moral problems, which ultimately have a spiritual cause. For those of us involved in Christian outreach programs, the connection is inescapable: The failure of large numbers of men to live up to their family and social obligations represents a failure of faith.

More to the point, the growing irresponsibility of men points, in large part, to a failure in our Christian churches. Men are much less likely than women to set foot in a church, less likely to say they are absolutely committed to Jesus Christ, less likely to read the Bible during the week or strongly affirm the role of religious faith in their lives. Many--perhaps most--men see church mainly as a place for women and children. A similar separation of men from religious life is to be found in non-Christian communities as well. Uninspired by any religious vision for their lives, more and more men are becoming disconnected from any moral vision.

All of this is taking a tremendous toll on our culture. The absence of responsible men from the home is now widely regarded as the most important cause of America's social decline. If America is truly in the throes of cultural breakdown, then the shallow faith of so many men, and the kind of behavior that follows from it, has contributed to this breakdown.

The Need of the Hour

But here is where many feminists and others who scorn traditional virtue have it wrong: If men are a principal cause of family meltdown, crime, and racial strife, then men also are central to the solutions to those problems. What America desperately needs today is men who take responsibility for their actions, who are faithful to their families, who keep their word, even when it's difficult or costly.

America is crying out for a generation of "promise keepers." Five years ago, when I was still the head football coach at the University of Colorado, I realized that too many men were getting their priorities out of alignment. I'd seen too many men who called themselves Christians and attended church, but had little idea what it meant to live out a Christian ethic, either on the playing field or in their homes. To be honest, I watched my own family suffer as I poured myself into my career. I rationalized my workaholism, of course, but in reality I was letting go of my most basic responsibilities. Family members and friends finally helped me to see that, in essence, I had been directing my own life without reference to God. Because I failed so miserably, I've been able to see that many men today are doing exactly the same thing I did.

I resigned my coaching position in order to help bring together men who were interested in succeeding in the most important areas of their lives: their personal relationships with Almighty God, their wives, and their children. Just over 4,000 men met in 1991 at the Coors Event Center in Boulder, Colorado, for the first conference of our new organization, Promise Keepers. It was not a gathering of angry white males or an exercise in chest-beating or in lifting male self-esteem. This was about men taking stock of their moral and spiritual inventory. We asked men to publicly proclaim their love and allegiance to Jesus Christ and their commitment to their families. Since then, more than 2 million men have attended conferences in which they are challenged to make, and keep, a series of promises to honor God, to remain faithful to their spouses, and to support their churches.

Now we are taking Promise Keepers a step further. We are calling on men to come to Washington, D.C., for a day of heartfelt confession and prayer. Men from all over the country will gather not for any political cause, but for the purpose of being honest with each other and, most importantly, with God Himself, about our shortcomings. We want to see God spark personal renewal in the lives of tens of thousands of men, the kind of spiritual commitment that radically changes attitudes and everyday decisions.

Why Washington, D.C., and why now?

The nation's capital has historically served as the geographical soul of America, the place where national tragedies are mourned, where victories are celebrated, where protests are most keenly felt, and where the nation's attention turns to in times of crisis. Many believe we are in such a crisis. Many Christian leaders correctly see the crisis not only out there in the larger culture, but right here, inside the church. That's why, despite what our critics claim, we aren't interested in political agendas; politics simply can't touch issues of the heart.

Prayer can do that, for it involves communicating with our Creator. It means bowing down before Almighty God. For Christians, humble prayer unlocks the door to a personal, life-transforming relationship with Christ Himself. It is perhaps the most important tool for moral and spiritual rebirth. And so what better place to spark such renewal, to help address our national ills, than in the symbolic heart of the nation?

Signs of the Times

In the game of football, if your team is getting trounced, you'd better have a serious talk with the men at halftime and identify the problems. There is plenty of blame to go around to explain the ills afflicting America, but the decline in responsible manhood is surely one of the worst culprits.

Could it have anything to do with the fact that fathers are less and less likely to live with their sons? In one generation, the proportion of children entering a broken family has more than quadrupled. Patrick Fagan of The Heritage Foundation, using data from the National Center for Health Statistics, calculates that in 1950 about 12 out of 100 kids entered a family torn by divorce or illegitimacy; last year the number was 58 out of 100. More children are growing up without fathers than at any time in our nation's history. And though many women are courageously raising children on their own, kids--especially young boys--need the firm guidance of a loving father.

Why have crimes against American women-assault, rape, spousal abuse-hit new highs among the industrialized West? Is it a coincidence that America leads the world as a peddler of pornography? According to U.S. News & World Report, the number of hard-core pornographic video rentals rose from 75 million in 1985 to 665 million in 1996. Last year, the money that Americans (mostly men) spent viewing hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, computer porn, sex magazines, and the like exceeded all of Hollywood's domestic box-office receipts. Any clearheaded man can tell you: The more that men are exposed to images of women as objects created only to satisfy their needs, the more likely they are to treat women in exactly that way.

The list could go on. In a breathtaking range of categories, America ranks as a leader in vice. "If God withholds judgment from America," Billy Graham once said, "He will owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology." He echoes the warning of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever."

A Weakened Church

One of the most important reasons for America's declining morals is the lack of powerful restraints on people's worst impulses. In my view, every society needs the restraint of the people of God, who act as bulwarks against people's ill-informed and destructive choices, like offensive linemen protecting the quarterback. They are the ones most likely to discourage evil, to argue for moral reform, and to perform heroic acts of kindness. Russell Kirk once put it this way: "Without Christian culture and Christian hope, the modern world would come to resemble a half-derelict fun fair, gone nasty and poverty-racked; one enormous Atlantic City."

Yet today the church in America is grievously compromised. In a 1991 poll conducted by George Barna, 25 percent of regular church attendees admitted that their Christian beliefs made no significant difference in their lives. The problem is especially acute among men: Barna found that men are half as likely as women to attend a church during any given week. Men are also 33 percent less likely to say they are religious and to claim they are absolutely committed to their faith.

Pollster George Gallup reports that, while almost half of Americans attend church services, only 6 to 10 percent are what he terms "highly spiritually committed." Gallup's research has compared behavior of churched and unchurched people in a variety of categories: people who call in sick when they are not, pad their resumes, cheat on tax deductions, and so on. His research has found little difference in the ethical views and behavior of the churched and the unchurched.

How can this be? Despite evidence of interest in religion at the popular level (books about angels, the growth of "psychic hotlines"), people seem to be looking for support, not salvation; help rather than holiness; a circle of spiritual equals rather than an authoritative church or guide. Too many churches are pandering to this trend.

But one of the major functions of the local church is to help Christians continuously deepen their devotion to God, to become more like Christ Himself. That means facing up to personal failures, shedding selfish attitudes, and exchanging destructive habits for healthy ones. In countless practical ways, Christian faith ought to affect how men resolve conflicts, control their tempers, juggle work and family responsibilities, and discipline their children. Without such devotion, there is little reason to expect most men to make good choices most of the time.

How can we recover a healthy fear of God in our lives, our churches, our communities? How can people of faith re-emerge as a powerful, nearly irresistible force for good in our society? It will not happen without prayer: prayer for repentance, reconciliation, and renewal.

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The failure of men to live out their responsibilities
as husbands and fathers reflects a profound failure
in the American church.

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Biblical repentance means taking personal responsibility for our actions, admitting to God where we've gone out of bounds, and asking for His forgiveness and for the strength to change course. Reconciliation means taking whatever steps necessary to repair relationships that we've helped to damage. Renewal involves pledging our best efforts to honor God and meet our God-given responsibilities in our families and communities.

This is what our sacred assembly in Washington aims to bring about. We will spend most of the day in prayer, worship, and confession. Pastors and other Christian leaders will speak about these subjects. Men will be challenged to admit their failings and sins not only to God but to one another. The adage "confession is good for the soul" is much more than a religious platitude. It is an affirmation that there is a spiritual dimension to life, and that when we neglect our spiritual lives, we damage our own souls.

A New Game Plan

We realize that conferences might produce a lot of heat, but not much light. As a former coach, I know it's not enough simply to get men worked up in the locker room about winning a ball game. They need a game plan.

That's why Promise Keepers, since its founding, has worked closely with local churches, which are still the key to revitalizing men's commitment to spiritual growth. Promise Keepers has three roles, all of which we believe will strengthen local congregations: First, we use stadium conferences to challenge men to rededicate their lives to Christ, through biblical teaching, worship, and the Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper (see box, page 19). Thousands of men have made decisions to follow Christ that have profoundly and positively changed the way they regard their family responsibilities.

Second, we offer pastors the tools to challenge men to grow in their faith and in their ability to live out the promises they make to their wives, children, and churches. When it comes to influencing men through our congregations, the role of spiritual leaders is absolutely crucial; yet while men are catching the vision at the conferences, few churches have established men's ministries that are prepared to help them live out that vision. We distribute study materials aimed at men that can be used both in the pulpit and in group discussions.

Finally, we want to see men become significantly involved in serving people in their congregations and in their local communities. From a biblical standpoint, serving others must involve real sacrifice: At a recent conference in Washington, D.C., for example, we mobilized 1,500 men to help clean and repair 47 dilapidated school buildings. On October 3, approximately 5,000 men will go to 90 D.C. schools and do the same thing, all as unpaid volunteers.

Behind our goals is an assumption that one of the ways to help people make real life changes is through relationships. This is why churches are so important: They offer numerous opportunities for men to build friendships with other men, especially in the context of small groups. Whether task-oriented (fixing a church member's car or mowing the lawn for a single mom) or study-oriented (poring over a passage of Scripture), small groups allow men to get involved in each other's lives.

How does that make a difference? Only in the context of meaningful friendships can men hold one another accountable for their behavior, seek advice about their marriages or careers, and be candid about the struggles they're facing. The authors of the Bible understood this when they wrote that "plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed" and that "as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another" (Proverbs 15:22; 27:17).

In our best moments, we want to do the right thing, but often we don't. If men are regularly getting together as friends, with a common Christian commitment, then they'll be asking each other some tough questions about their behavior: Who was that woman you were having dinner with the other night? How are you handling the temptation to pad your expense account at work? The men could lie, of course. But the better a man knows his friend, the easier it is to sense when he's fudging the truth.

Men and Manhood

Many have asked us, why only men? Won't another men's-only club just worsen the relationship between the sexes?

There's no doubt that when men are simply left to themselves, whether roving in gangs or gathering in locker rooms, they often are trouble waiting to happen. That's exactly what our conferences are not about.

Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper A Promise Keeper is committed to: Honor Jesus Christ through worship, prayer, and obedience to God’s Word through the power of the Holy Spirit. Pursue vital relationships with a few other men, understanding that he needs brothers to help him keep his promises. Practice spiritual, moral, ethical, and sexual purity. Build strong marriages and families through love, protection, and biblical values. Support the mission of his church by honoring and praying for his pastor and by actively giving his time and resources. Reach beyond any racial and denominational barriers to demonstrate the power of biblical unity. Influence his world, being obedient to the Great Commandment (Mark 12:30-31) and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20).

Men can meet and work together for positive purposes, whether it's fixing up schools or coaching Little League baseball. And when they do so to establish or deepen their relationship to Christ, something extraordinary happens. It's a dynamic that is hard to describe, but our events seem to reach a level of lasting honesty, vulnerability, and commitment. Our conferences and the friendships that grow out of them help to create a healthy pressure among men to do the right thing. It's a sense that we're in this thing-this journey of faith and commitment to God and our families-together. When I talk to men about the impact of the conferences on their lives, this is one of the first things they tell me.

I've worked closely with hundreds of men over the years, and at least one common denominator stands out: Men are eager to make and keep promises; they want to be challenged to "be all they can be"-that is, to adopt a thoroughly Christian vision for their lives. Promise Keepers is about helping men see a picture, giving them concrete goals and helping them move toward those goals, whether that's spending more time with their children, learning to honor their word to their wives, or learning to own up to failure on the job. It is about becoming men of integrity, because integrity is impossible without keeping promises.

There's another reason to bring men together for training and encouragement. We live in a society that is, almost daily it seems, redefining manhood. That men are carrying more responsibility in child-rearing is a great step; it is one of the most important ways that men can demonstrate their love for their families. But it's not the whole story of what it means to be a husband and father.

From a Christian perspective, men have a unique, God-given responsibility for the spiritual health of their families. Some suspect that in emphasizing this leadership role for men, we seek to put women down or turn back the clock on women's recent gains. On the contrary, by challenging men to take their faith seriously, we think they will work harder at nurturing their wives and children and helping them fulfill their own God-given potential.

Whenever the Bible discusses the issue of male leadership, for example, it is always for the purpose of serving and sacrificing for others-for the family, the church, and the world. To read the teachings of Christ and the apostles in any other way is to distort the Scriptures. Period. Ironically, it is men's masculine qualities, their willingness to provide for and protect their families, for example, or to draw strong boundaries for their children, that seem to be in greatest demand by women today. And so one of the specific promises of a Promise Keeper is to support his family through love, protection, and biblical values.

We realize that many people, even those sympathetic with our goals, remain suspicious about Promise Keepers' challenge to men. Let me suggest that much of this skepticism is a result of some pretty lousy examples of men, even supposedly religious men, who manipulate and exploit the women around them. No woman wants-nor should want-to love and support a husband who acts like a predator or a tyrant. Those who remain skeptical ought to ask the wives and children of men who attend our conferences if they resent or are troubled by their husbands' determination to follow Christ. He is, after all, our supreme model for manhood.

In a few weeks we will assemble men from around the nation and from other countries on the Mall in Washington, D.C., in what will be a national sacred assembly. There are great precedents for such a gathering. Spiritual assemblies such as these played an important role in some of America's greatest spiritual awakenings-which always led both to transformed lives and to significant moral reform.

During the early 19th century, for example, tens of thousands of men and women converted to Christianity in revival campaigns that became known as the Second Great Awakening. The movement began in England and had its roots in a Call to Prayer issued by pastors in Northamptonshire in 1784. The flame of revival eventually spread to America, where it shaped the course of the great national debate on abolition. Large numbers of new converts, determined to follow Christ wholeheartedly, freed their slaves. Many began to preach publicly against slavery. Others helped with the Underground Railroad, which shuttled slaves to freedom in the North.

We sense that America faces a cultural crisis as potentially destructive as that facing the nation in the era of slavery. That's why we are calling the October 4 event "Stand in the Gap: A Sacred Assembly of Men." It's taken from the prophet Ezekiel's plaintive cry for his own people to return to God. In Ezekiel's day, the people of Israel had wandered far from God, their first love. The result for Israel was national disaster: military defeat from without, moral rot from within. Ezekiel despairs that no one is willing to come forward to climb the literal breach in Jerusalem's walls and act as a human rampart against the evils of his day. In Ezekiel 22:30, God tells the nation: "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none."

We believe that God is again looking for a few good men who desire to honor Him in every area of their lives. In so doing, such men will refuse to abandon their wives during the tough times; they will balance their obligations at work with those at home; they'll gladly lose sleep to calm a child who hears ghosts under the bed. Today, more than ever, America needs men like these, men who will "stand in the gap" and stand against a culture that mocks commitment, sacrifice, and virtue. May God find a multitude of such men when He looks upon our capital this October.