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Was the Alaska summit a success? · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Greetings on this Monday, August the eighteenth, twenty twenty five.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're glad you've joined us for the Daily Article Podcast.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrating today's Daily Article, authored by our CEO, Dr. Jim Denison.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Last Friday, the world watched history being made as U.S.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Alaska.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the question after the summit concluded was, what history?
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Mr. Trump, it was, quote, a great and very successful day in Alaska.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The conservative outlet, the Daily Signal, listed as its first takeaway, Putin, no invasion had Trump been president.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: On the other side, the New York Times headline, Trump bouts to Putin's approach on Ukraine, while time claimed Trump and Putin didn't make a deal, but Putin still won.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: When Mr. Trump meets with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and several European leaders this afternoon, we can expect partisan coverage to remain partisan.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your opinion of Mr. Trump prior to the Alaska meeting is likely your opinion this morning.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are either giving him the benefit of the doubt on the summit or you're doubting its benefit.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to identify a political or cultural topic over which Americans are not deeply divided on partisan or ideological lines from abortion to same-sex marriage to jury-mandering and whatever political stories make today's news
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: We seem to be unable to agree on the most fundamental issues of our time.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Philosophers like me typically describe our post-truth culture as a phenomenon that began with the rise of post-modern relativism and the sexual revolution in the late nineteen sixties.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But its cultural origins actually go back much further in American history with consequences that affect us all today.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Joseph J. Ellis is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian specializing in the American Revolution and the founding fathers.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have read several of his works over the years with great profit.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just finished his recent book titled The Cause, The American Revolution and its discontents, seventeen seventy three to seventeen eighty three.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: which I found fascinating and informative on a variety of levels.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: He describes the quote unquote cause for which Americans fought as the quest for independence from England.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is obvious to anyone who knows our history, but Ellis explains in great detail that this was the only cause that united thirteen very disparate colonies.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: The founders knew that seeking unanimity or even unity on the disputes that divided them would end their revolution before it began.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a result, they took no substantive position on three key issues.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The first was states' rights versus national authority.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their initial governing document, the Articles of Confederation, had no centralized power, no executive or judicial branch, and no ability to regulate commerce or enforce laws.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The national army led by General George Washington was supplemented by state and local militias.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were often given greater credit than the army for the victories over the British.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: This ideological fissure continued to produce various tremors until it led to the earthquake that was the civil war, which I have heard some in the south still call the battle for state rights.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The second was slavery, a cultural fracture that produced the civil war and was not resolved legislatively until the civil rights act of nineteen sixty-four, though issues related to racial prejudice continue today.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: The third involved the rights of indigenous people who lost ninety eight percent of their ancestral homelands from fourteen ninety two to nineteen hundred.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: The founders knew these issues and debated them fiercely, but they also knew that seeking their resolution as part of their revolution would likely doom the revolution.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: They also knew that their movement to ensure the unity needed for its success could not center on religious convictions.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Ellis reports, Thomas Jefferson's initial draft of the Declaration of Independence stated, we hold these truths to be sacred, which Benjamin Franklin changed to self-evident.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a world of difference in the difference.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: The word God, nowhere appears in the U.S.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Constitution, while religion is used only twice.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Article six states that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification for public office, while the first amendment states that the Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You and I would likely wish for our nation to be more committed legislatively and judicially to the Christian worldview that has been true across our history.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Americans of other religions and no religion would wish the same commitment to their versions of truth.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And within the spectrum of those who identify as Christian, there is deep disagreement over abortion, LGBTQ ideology, and even the nature of moral authority.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can lament the secular nature of the nation the founders' birth, or we can use the level playing field they created to advance the religious movement that is foundational to our national future and our personal flourishing.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Experiencing God's love through faith in Christ changes sinners into saints as nothing else can.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It makes us a new creation according to second Corinthians five verse seventeen and empowers us to be partakers of the divine nature noted in second Peter one verse four
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: so that we can, from first Corinthians six verse twenty, glorify God in our body, and from Galatians five twenty two and twenty three, manifest the character of Christ in our lives and influence.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: This transformation is the only path to the sustained morality that George Washington considered indispensable to our political prosperity.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the absence of such morality as John Adams warned,
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our Constitution is wholly inadequate to govern our nation.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The key is to submit each day to the authority of God's Word and the sanctifying power in His Spirit stated in second Timothy three verses sixteen and seventeen and Ephesians five verse eighteen.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the key to such submission is remembering each day the unfathomable love of our Father for us.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: David could say in Psalm fifty-two verse eight while facing great danger, I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is because our Lord promises his people in Jeremiah thirty-one verse three, I have loved you within everlasting love.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: God's love extends to you and me today.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: revealed in Ephesians one first four and loves us as much as he loves his own son according to John seventeen verses twenty three and twenty six.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is not due to our merit, but his nature as the God who is love proclaimed in first John four verse eight.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we believe this, we trust our fathers will even when we don't understand it.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: We believe that seeking holistic holiness and serving our Lord unconditionally are best for us every moment of every day.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we will pay any price to help others experience His love as well.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: David testified in Psalm fifty six verse nine, this I know that God is for me.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you will say those eight words right now and believe what you say to be true, their truth will change your life.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: and your change life will change your world.