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What do today’s elections mean for our national future? · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good day, it's Tuesday, November 4th, 2025.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're glad you've joined us for Denison Forum's daily article podcast.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrating today's daily article written by our co-founder, Dr. Jim Dineson.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a democratic republic, politics and politicians will always play an outsized role in our culture.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, this morning's announcement that former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney has died at the age of 84 is making headlines even though his term in office ended 16 years ago.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's political races are dominating the news as well.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: From the mayoral contest in New York City to gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey to a redistricting vote in California.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: By my calculations, these elections will directly affect 80.3 million people, which is obviously a very significant number of people, but less than a quarter of our national population.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The larger story is what they mean for our own larger story.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to a new poll, 49% of Americans say our best times are behind us, while only 41% think they lie ahead.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Politico, this underscores, quote, a pervasive sense of unease about both individual's own future and the national direction.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, only 39% of Americans believe the Republican Party governs in an honest and ethical way.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Only 42% say the same about the Democratic Party.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most Americans expect political violence to keep growing in the U.S.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're not surprised by reports that Iranians are taught to hate America, but it's distressing that so many Americans are taught the same.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: In cultural commentator Andrew Sullivan's latest blog, The Oxford and Harvard PhD graduate summarizes a new report on American higher education.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: He writes,
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: On race in American history, for example, only one viewpoint is actually taught that the U.S. is a white supremacist state that murders and imprisons black people as its core goal that its real founding was a 1619.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: its constitution is a form of white tyranny, and racial progress is a lie designed to obscure this permanent reality, in quote, Sullivan Grease for recent generations who have been indoctrinated in critical theory and its resultant anti-Americanism.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly, we live in a divided and divisive time in great need of a positive path toward a unified future.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The good news is that this path is as available and transforming as it's ever been.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzakrabin was assassinated in Tel Aviv 30 years ago today.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I flew home from Israel that morning and heard the news upon landing in the U.S.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the years since, I have been many times to Rebeen Square, the site that commemorates his tragic death.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was murdered not by an Islamic terrorist, but by a Jewish extremist opposed to Mr. Rebeen's peace initiatives with Palestinians.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: His death illustrates G.K. Chesterton's Maxim, the Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies, probably because they're generally the same people, in quote.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are clearly to love both.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus insisted in Matthew 5 verse 44, love your enemies and pray for those who persecutue.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: His words can be translated literally from the Greek, continually and unconditionally, love those who hate you and ask God for their best even as they are persecuting you.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our Lord went even further when he taught us in John 13, verse 34, just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: To translate literally again to the exact same degree that I have loved you, you are to continually love one another.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our Savior's love was unconditional as stated in Romans 8, verses 35 through 39, sacrificial, noted in 1 John 3, verse 16, and empathetic recorded in John 11, verse 35.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, we are commanded to love others, including those who hate us in the same way.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine the difference in America if every American Christian obeyed his command.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, as we noted in discussing our love for God yesterday, such love for others is impossible in human agency.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I cannot love my neighbor much less my enemy as Jesus loves me.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am a sinner, but God is love revealed in 1st John 4 verse.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, Jesus never intended me to do so.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wants to continue his earthly ministry through me as his body described in 1 Corinthians 12 verse 27, which includes his ministry of love.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wants to forgive those who sin, comfort those who grieve, and heal those who hurt through me.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: My part is to stay submitted to his Spirit, taught in Ephesians 5 verse 18, and then from John 15 verse 5, measure success by what Jesus does through me.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: When my words indeed express his love for those I serve, I love my neighbor's well.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: When they do not, I do not.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: This works in every dimension of life.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're a teacher, Jesus loves your students and wants to love them through you.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're a doctor, lawyer, pastor, or business person, he wants to love your patients, clients, congregation, and customers.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: through you.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're a parent, he wants to love your children through you.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you've been hurt by someone, he wants to love even your enemy through you.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he wants such love to transform not only our divisive and discouraged culture, but our hearts as well.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: In her classic autobiography, The Hiding Place, Holocaust survivor, Khori Tinboom, told
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was a church service in Munich, Germany, that I saw him, the former SS man, who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbrook.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, it was all there.
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The room full of mocking guards, the heaps of clothing, her sister Betsy's pain blanched face.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: He came up to me as the
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: quote, how grateful I am for your message for a line, he said, to think that, as you say, he has washed my sins away."
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, his hand was thrust out to shake mine, and I, who had preached so often the need to forgive?
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: kept my hand by my side.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boil through me, I saw the sin of them.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lord Jesus I prayed for give me and help me to forgive him.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I struggled to raise my hand.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I could not.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I breathe a silent prayer.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, I cannot forgive him.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Give me your forgiveness.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand, a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart, spring a love for this stranger that all most overwhelmed me.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: She continued, I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on his.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives along with the command the love itself, in quote.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why do you need her discovery today?