Penna Dexter
Does it seem to you that things that should be working well are not. Not everything. And not all the time. Just certain things don’t work the way we used to expect in America. Electrical grids. Supply chains. Our medical system. Airlines and airports. The service in some retail stores.
Am I crazy for thinking this? Not according to institutional investor and writer Harold Robertson, who says, “America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.”  But why? He explains in an extensive article for Palladium Magazine entitled “Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis.”
“The core issue,” he writes, “is that changing political mores have established the systemic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent.” By the early 20th century, it had become the norm to emphasize the evaluation and selection of people based on ability and merit rather than on wealth, class, or political connections. We saw the rise of the SAT and other aptitude tests which “revolutionized college admissions” by allowing universities to find the best and brightest.
“By the 1960’s,” he continues, “the systematic selection for competence came into direct conflict with the political imperatives of the civil rights movement.”  Diversity for protected groups became a key priority. In fact, diversity began to trump meritocracy when the two came into conflict. Mr. Robertson says an erosion in “institutional competency” ensued.  He points to “several high-profile enforcement actions against employers” that resulted in their abandoning certain tests and methods of screening potential hires for ability.
Employers turned to degrees from top universities to help them in choosing who to hire. But diversity requirements soon ushered in differing entrance standards for different groups and, increasingly, a lower reliance on standardized tests. Even standards for selecting doctors “have been weakened to promote diversity.”
Diversity requirements are causing America’s interdependent systems, which have brought us history’s highest standard of living, to deteriorate.  We must protect what Harold Robertson describes as the “competency that made those systems possible.”

Kerby Anderson
I believe it is important for Christians to understand the liberal mind. That is why I have written a booklet on “A Biblical View on the Liberal Mind.” Once you examine the assumptions of liberals and leftists you can see how their views are very different from a biblical perspective.
If you do not have a proper view of truth and the world, you will probably also find yourself dissatisfied with life. That is the conclusion of Michael McKenna at the Washington Times. He reminds us that academics have found that Americans who identify as politically liberal are less happy. “The quantity and durability of that data are not really in question.”
There is a reason for this. “It appears — and stop me if any of this sounds familiar — that happiness is at least partially about how connected a person is to other humans, particularly through the mechanisms of family, faith and community.”
Research by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatly Institution found that “happiness is directly related to greater family satisfaction and higher levels of religious attendance.” Another study concluded that liberals have become less happy over the last few decades.
Now you may be thinking, that is sad for liberals but what difference does it make? Michael McKenna connects the dots. He has found that “personal attitudes and beliefs tend to bleed into the body politic and ultimately find their way into government policies that affect us all.”
I think that explains why liberals, and especially leftists, have been in the process of deconstructing so much of American society. We have seen such revolutionary fervor before in places like France in 1789 and Russia in 1917.
That is why we should pay attention to liberal dissatisfaction in society.

Kerby Anderson
Three years ago, a presenter at an international conference compared the printing of currency to alchemy. Although I didn’t hear the message, I read enough about it to see the connection.
If you are not familiar with the term, it points to alchemists who tried to turn cheap “base” metals into gold. The idea goes all the way back to Aristotle, who believed that all matter combined the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. He guessed that these elements could be changed by the action of heat and cold, or dampness and dryness.
Why did alchemists want to create more gold? Gold has been a store of value for thousands of years and has been used as money in so many civilizations. The science of the alchemists was flawed, but so was their economics. If they had been able to create gold, they would have ruined its value because it would no longer be scarce and would decline in value.
The story of gold and alchemy is an apt illustration of what central banks and governments have been doing for centuries. Instead of creating gold, they have been creating currency out of thin air. Although we talk about cranking up the printing presses and printing more dollars, the reality is that the Federal Reserve or the US Treasury merely changes numbers on computers.
You know the result: inflation and a devalued dollar. In previous commentaries, I have posted a picture of the declining value of the dollar since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. A dollar back then purchased what today would be considered $26 of goods and services.
Now that Congress has suspended the debt ceiling, expect the devaluation of the dollar to continue. Alchemists tried all sorts of experiments to create gold. The modern-day alchemists create currency instantaneously with no cost.