Some are touting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s proposal to take an ax to Social Security as an act of bold political leadership. Sorry, I see the opposite. America needs leadership to replace old dysfunctional baggage with new programs and ideas fitting for a free 21st-century country.

I know that if you’re like me, you’ve probably seen dozens of these “Hitler” videos in various scenarios. But this one, where Hitler is upset that he can’t seem to force Christian businesses to make things for homosexual events, is worth watching for a number of reasons.

Consider the multi-billion dollar industry of Madison Avenue. It is devoted to manipulating people to desire things they probably cannot afford, so that they buy things they do not need to impress people they don’t even care about. How do we oppose this lure of covetousness in our own heart, how do we oppose the politics of covetousness in our culture?

The United States ranked second among new billionaires, contributing 57 new billionaires. Who is the most famous rookie on the billionaires list? Michael Jordan, just doing it! Just under 23 million households or 46 ½ million persons rely on food stamps. Twenty percent of American youth are now dependent on food stamps.

Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas and Congressman Luke Messer of Indiana have introduced a bill that could produce positive, badly needed change in American K-12 education. The bill allows for Title 1 education funds “to follow low-income students to any public or private school of their choice.”

his past week, following the nation’s celebration of the birthday of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the U.S. Supreme Court heard an important case related to landmark law enacted during the civil rights era – the Fair Housing Law of 1968. This case highlights how some policies that followed civil rights era legislation – in this case government low-income housing projects – actually have hurt the very communities they were supposed to help.

Those who crafted the American constitution did not intend limitations on the federal government’s role out of mean spiritedness. They did so out of a sense of what would best serve the public. It stands to reason that bureaucrats spending other people’s money - funds taken by force - is not going to produce good results.

In 2013, Social Security ran a $71 billion deficit. This means there have been four years of consecutive cash-flow deficits, which means that the inflow is less than the outflow. According to the 2014 annual report from the programs’ trustees, the combined 75-year unfunded obligation of the Social Security and Disability Insurance Trust Funds (referred to collectively as the OASDI Trust Fund) is $13.4 trillion.

It is hard to conceive how any society can flourish in the long-term without a well-balanced, multigenerational demographic and a culture that supports it. With our increasingly aging population, self-centered attitudes, high rates of abortion, and low birth rates, you can bet that our future will be fraught with tension and that the gap between the Boomers and the younger generations will widen in more ways than one.

Frederick Bastiat, in his famous work “The Law”, wrote that “no society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree.” The way to make laws respected, Bastiat said, “is to make them respectable.” But “when law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”