Welcome to the Jenkins platform special interest group. It's the 29th of January, 2021. Remember that we are, we abide by the Jenkins code of conduct. So be nice to each other. I'm going to share my screen and let's look at the agenda. So here's what I've got as topics for today. Open action items. Jenkins master, the Docker master branch, Docker changes that I think is probably going to be likely most of the meeting. And Jim, it's wonderful that you're here for this conversation because you're key participant there. Jet platform proposal that we may do just briefly and then contributor summit discussion. Are there other agenda items that need to be added to this list before we actually start through the agenda? All right, then let's get going. That's great. I hope Carl will join us. Jim, you are. Excellent. All right. So open action items. I had the action item to open the JEP for Docker operating system support and platform selection. The draft is there. I'd like to not spend a lot of time here today on it because I think we've got more practical things to discuss in terms of proposals. They're actively in progress, but it is available there and we can certainly look at it if there are questions about what it says. Alex Centos for adopt open JDK. You've submitted the PR. Anything you want to share there further on that? No, I just need some review. I think the last question was making sure we were pinning the version of the JDK, which I've done. So I just need a final review and then we can merge it. And as far as I can tell, that one is not a compatibility threat in terms of it should just continue working. That's great. Okay. So because my review of the earlier change, it looked good to me. I don't recall if I did. So you'd be okay if we merge that one even relatively quickly. There's nothing that needs to gate that one. Correct. Excellent. Thank you. Anyone else with objections on merging that Centos, use adopt open JDK PR, that will give us the benefit that now Alpine, Debian and Centos will all be using adopt open JDK for their JDK. Great. All right. So then I had an action item on the plug-in installation manager and I like that Alex, you'd suggest we consider a shim. The more I looked at that, the more interested I am in doing that to simplify. I think it fits within the context of upcoming Docker changes as well. Yeah. I have a PR almost ready. So I just need to do some more testing and then I can create a PR for it. Great. Excellent. Thank you. So the install plugins.sh script would then continue to exist, but would actually call the plug-in installation manager Java code rather than doing it all from a shell. Excellent. Okay. Jim, we had an item for you on parallelization and multi-art CI. Is there anything you wanted to report there? No. I actually just got done with the internal project. So now I'm paying back up my external projects. The one thing when I was really looking over it, I'll need to get with Alex to understand some more of the groovy parallelization code. I'm not a groovy expert. So I don't fully understand what you were doing in the old way that you have your ad and parallelization for a little bit. So we just need to figure out how to take the PR with some of the improvements I have and kind of merge in some of your parallelization with the groovy code. Sure. Gareth and Cara, I believe, are also at least maybe interested in that area. So Jim, don't be shy. Jim Crowley, Gareth for your info is part of IBM. Gareth is part of CloudBees. Cara is part of CloudBees. And so we're delighted to all be contributing to open source. It's a wonderful thing. Yeah. Again, I'll have to retake my PR and re-pull down master and then look at the changes needed to be made because I think it's been like a month or a couple of months at least since I last looked at it. So. Great. All right. Thank you. Anything else on the multi-arch topic there for you, Jim? No. OK, we'd set ourselves a goal to get the Doctor Master Branch working and I've made no progress on that Alex, anything you wanted to share there? I haven't made any progress either. I think I'm going to just met a PR to not do the publishing to Jenkins for eval. I can probably do that today. And then we can work on doing the publish bringing back that publish when we get Jim's stuff integrated. Great. OK. Certainly with the failing in the jobs failing now, it's not publishing to Jenkins for eval today. So a PR to stop that stage seems harmless. Yeah, good. That certainly won't do damage. All right. Next topic was proposed docker changes. So this one is as I was looking at the things that are pending in various pull requests, it feels like we've got several very interesting changes coming in our docker infrastructure and our docker environment. So Alex, your adopt open JDK change. I proposed an upgrade from stretch to Buster. Jim's got the proposal for multi-arch. And then coming, we've got this Alex, the one you noted that you're working on to replace the contents of install plug install SH with a call to plug in install manager. Those are the controller side. And then Cara has a PR open for non-route user on the agents and for docker build improvements. Some of these, for instance, the one that I'm frightened of is this stretch to Buster. They have compatibility risks. And I think the non-route user has also won Cara, right? Where it's got a compatibility risk to the user. You're muted, Cara. I'm not entirely sure of that, actually. I mean, the PR is failing now. I threw in some extra tests this morning and they're failing. So those need to be fixed. But it's really a test that needs to be fixed, actually. But I will look into the compatibility issue. My thought was that there are probably downstream users that were running the image and today it's running as root. And in the future, it won't run as root, right? The idea is stop running as root. And they're going to see that as a compatibility change and we're going to say, yes, it's intentional. We really mean it. You shouldn't run as root. So how we're handling that, I believe this handles it from a technical perspective is that we are leaving those images up. So these will be published separately. So this will be an entirely different new set. But yes, we will do messaging around why we're making this change, why we're making these available, and why we advise you not to run as root. OK, so the new images will actually use new names or new tags then. OK, got it. I had not understood that. Thanks. OK. So I guess the question to the group was is this, if it sounds like we encourage that on the agent side, is not a big threat? Because if I want the old behavior, I keep using the old tags. If I want the new behavior, I use new tags. So that's not a big, OK, great. Whereas, OK. I was going to say one thing that they won't get updates though. We need to make sure that those are marked as deprecated. Yeah. Oh, OK. So that makes sense. That's we're going to reduce our debt by stopping updates of things that we consider deprecated. So we do need to announce the deprecation of those things somehow. Yes. But what is our schedule? How do we do that? How do we announce it? What is our deprecation schedule? In the past, what we did was we would announce with a blog post. So when we, for instance, switched from Alpine 3.9 to Alpine 3.12, we just did a blog post and then made the change. And that one was actually surprisingly quiet. So I was assuming I'll do a blog post on this stretch to Buster change on this change from stretch to Buster. I'll do a blog post. I would do a blog post on that saying, hey, we're doing this change. Because the user will see yesterday they were running Jenkins slash Jenkins colon latest. And it was actually building using Debian 9. Tomorrow they run Jenkins slash Jenkins colon latest. And it's suddenly running Debian 10. And they'll be, oh, but my scripts are different. Or whatever happens inside them has changed for them. Mark, I think one of the, I think it was in my PR. And I know we had the issue, excuse me, talking about it. But the more verbose tags should help alleviate some of this pressure people having conflicts. Like if we have a verbose tag where it's latest, then we have a Debian tag. And then we have a Debian 9, or Debian stretch, whatever, dash stretch, and then a Debian dash Buster. As we know, people kind of want a more specific tag to stay more stable. That could avoid some confusion of, hey, I'm pulling down just latest, which as everyone knows, if you just pull down latest image on any repository, you're asking for some sort of unstable ability and also for some trouble. Like you don't know if they're ever going to change the latest to be a different distro or whatever. That's why more specific tags allow for that more control for our users. The only thing that I would add to that, though, is we need to let people know that we're no longer going to be building the stretch images, right? So if they're relying on stretch, then those image become deprecated. And so that needs to be made clear as well. We just need to make it clear when we deprecate things so that if people are using those, they know. And we give them an image that says, hey, if you're using Debian Stretch before, now you need to test Debian Buster or our latest, which is Debian Buster, and make sure that works in your environment. Yeah, I think the deprecation is still very important. But hopefully, if they really do care about the OS and specific version of that OS, they can have a more specific image to hold onto for a little bit until deprecation is fully gone and we stop supporting it and stop publishing altogether. Right. So Jim, it sounds like what that does that lobby that we've intentionally held off on PR 1070 waiting to get a formal announcement and et cetera. Seems like we would benefit if we also had yours in so that we could announce those two things together. And I don't think we need to combine it with the agent change. Kara, it sounds like you've got the compatibility of everything solved there. But for the controller side, does that make sense to you, Jim, and is 1034 the PR that adds the more verbose tags? Yeah, 1034 does. Alex actually started producing more verbose tags pretty similar to the exact same style that I was suggesting for Windows images, I'm pretty sure. So again, I think in that PR, I made a comment of a demonstration of what the verbose tags are and how all the tags that you guys still have, or still support right now, are still there. But the verbose tags is at more clarity for users who want a specific version. So I think it does make sense in getting that PR in and then adding the switch over. Great. All right. Alex, does that work OK for you then? It's actually not just on Jenkins for eval. The verbose tags are published on the Jenkins. Good. OK, so it's already published to the Jenkins org as an official. And it's like JDK-Windows server core dash, whatever, right? That's what the tag format is. It kind of follows the adoptium naming conventions for their images. Yeah, that's pretty much where I based it off of. I didn't include all the adoptium tags because they're kind of ridiculous for some of them. But I mean, since it's a base image, having all those tags makes it easier for upstream projects to pull in. OK. That feels OK. So it feels like we want to pair those two sort of together. So Jim, that means I'm now motivated to test PR 1034. I'm already testing 1070 myself. I'll start experimenting with yours so that we can look to do those as a combined thing. Yeah. Yeah, next coming week, I can put a little more time into it. So. OK, great. Excellent. All right, I would also like to propose that we close several PRs in or any other discussion on that question of coordinated announcement. Do we need to, Alex, do we need to include in the coordinated announcement install plugins.sh as part of that? Or is it you have either the separate? We could do it as part of it. I should be able to post the PR today. Oh, wow. OK, so at least it would be an option to consider making it separate because you feel like you're relatively close. All the test pass. So that it's that part's working. So great. All right. OK, so then the last topic on that general theme for me was there are several PRs in the controller repository. But given this path, I think we can safely close. There's one offering JDK 13, another one that's proposing Amazon Linux. And I don't intend to maintain either of those. And JDK 13 is already unmaintained by providers. So any objections, if I were to go in and actively close several of those with the explanation that, hey, we're going forward with this approach and moving towards implementing the JEP as described, hey, we're only going to support a certain number of platforms and we want to maintain or for anything we merge. Yeah, sounds good. All right. Last topic of the platform JEP, I propose we shift if there's any discussion. Let's put it late because I wanted to take contributor summit as a topic here. So there I've sent a proposal out to the Jenkins developer mailing list for this concept of a contributor summit in February 23 through 25, so about a month from now. The idea is we use this as an annual event. We've done it before and use it as an annual event to set the plan for the Jenkins project and where we're going and to coordinate with each other. One of the topics that's on my mind is platform. And what I wanted to ask here is to enlist each of your help to join this exercise and help with having platform discussions around where should Jenkins be going platform-wise and how. So the event is actually a three-day exercise. Day one, we start with a 90-minute Everyone Welcome Together. And then we have separate tracks on various topics. And I proposed a, I don't know if I've put it in yet. So I'll propose a platform track, something like this one that focuses on what the platform will schedule sessions to meet together as people interested in platform and bring proposals ready for the concluding meeting on the last day of the summit. So question here to everyone involved, are you willing to participate in the Jenkins contributor summit towards the end of February? And are there insights or suggestions you'd like to offer? I will not be able to do that. We have a work off-site type meeting. But don't hold up for me. OK. Good to know. All right, that already helps. That way I don't put your name on things, Alex, if knowing that you're absolutely not available. Mark, I should be open those days. Great, Jim. So I'll likely work in more detail with you.  I've got some other platform vendor type people that I want to get enlisted to assist as well. OK, awesome. Kara, Gareth, are the two of you OK and interested and willing? Yes. Yes, Mark, as you know, I'm really looking forward to the event. And I will ask Vibhav if he's available during those days. It would be great to have him in the platform. Well, in fact, I put Vibhav on as a proposal for that. So thanks very much for checking with him. And yes, for me as well. Excellent, thank you. All right, I think that covered everything on Contributor Summit. Any other questions there? Most of the work will happen outside this meeting. OK, and the last one, I'm actually prone to just drop the topic for now because I have not done any further edits to that since initially proposing it. It's there. I'm happy to discuss it here if you'd like. Jim, I suspect you're probably, you and Alex are two crucial ones to see, hey, does this make sense in the way you think about things? The idea here is let's propose to have the concept of a maintainer. And images that don't have maintainers go into the adopt this image program, somewhat like the Jenkins adopt this plug-in program. So the idea being if we don't have an owner for something, we probably shouldn't keep attempting to update it. At the moment, as an example, I feel risky with CentOS 7 because I don't work on it. Alex thankfully submitted a pull request. There are others that similarly worry me, hey, is this getting enough maintenance? Yeah, I will review it for sure. I have not done a review of it yet. Right, I will do that. All right. That that was all I wanted to spend your time with. And squander, are there other topics that you'd like to discuss here as a group? Just as an FYI, I submitted those two PRs. One for the disabling of Publish Experimental and the other one with the install plug-in shim. So they're there. I put them in the chat. Excellent, thank you. So I'm just going to embed them into the notes then. Thanks very much. So that's 10.73. Thanks, Alex. And you say the other one was, oh, 10.72. Great, OK. And it is, oh, cool. Any other topics for today? Thanks, everybody. Recording will be posted within probably two or three hours. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, all. Thanks.


In Psalm 101, David says, I will sing of steadfast love and justice. To you, O Lord, I will make music. I will ponder the way that is blameless of when will you come to me. So I will walk with integrity of heart within my house. I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.  It shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall be far for me and I will know nothing of evil. Radiant these past weeks, God has been redeeming His works in our midst. I don't know if you've seen it, but God has been doing something significant. Here in Richland, I remember last weekend and the weekend before when hundreds rushed the front to receive Christ in an act of salvation. Many of you here today received Christ these past couple of weeks and we want to say welcome. We are so glad that you are here in our midst from those moments of salvation that we experienced. I remember at Portage this past Wednesday we hosted a Gen Z rally. Hey Portage, so glad you guys are here today. And I just remember seeing hundreds of young people set free and delivered from a spirit of suicide, self-harm, self-hatred, anxiety broken off in a moment, the demonic broken off of young people in a moment. Guys, God has been doing something in our midst. Prodigals coming home and not just prodigal kids, prodigal parents are coming home. There's a testimony of one of our RSM students, who's had a parent who's been far from the Lord for years and they've been praying and interceding and seeking God and they have invited their parents to church two weeks ago and during worship, the student looks to the back of the room and their parent is just weeping in the presence of God. Mental health healed, demons cast out, bodies physically restored, God is on the move. And I grew up reading the Chronicles of Narnia and I love, there's this quote from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that has just been resonating in my spirit, I wanna read to you guys the words from C.S. Lewis this morning. And it says, they say that Aslan is on the move, perhaps has already landed. And now a very curious thing happened, none of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do, but the moment that the beaver had spoken these words, everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it has enormous meaning, either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning, too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could go back into that dream again. And it was like that now, at the name of Aslan, each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if she, as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the summer and realize that it's the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer. Aslan is on the move, Jesus is on the move. Jesus is on the move. The icy grip of winter is getting broken off lives. The deep darkness that is covering the people, a light is shining and many of you in this room have experienced it these past weeks. And in praise God, can we just thank the Lord just for a second, for the salvation, for the move of God, for the revival he's encountering our hearts with. I am so grateful for his kindness and his goodness shown towards us. But two weeks ago, pastor Lee came and asked us an incredibly significant question, a question I wanna post to you again this morning, radiant, and that question is this. What do you do when God comes? What do you do when God comes? When God steps out of heaven, releases his power, his glory, his goodness and intersects your life, what do you do when God comes? Do you simply remember it as a moment and memorialize it? Thinking back to the days and times, maybe you met God at camp, you prayed a prayer at an altar and then moved on with your life. Do you try to systemize it, merchandise it? Or, as pastor Lee called us to, do we cry for rain and do we repent? Do we repent and change our lives? At a staff teaching this past week, pastor Lee was encouraging our staff and he said this, he said, you can tell when revival really takes root in a life because it begins to manifest itself in practical things, in practical things. The true proof of revival is the change in behavior and that's what I wanna talk to you about today, church, as we dig in. You can open up your Bibles to Zechariah 10. We were there the other week. I'm gonna get there in just a second. But I wanna share a story with you really quick before we get there. There's a pastor named John Tyson. He's a friend of this house. He pastors a church in Manhattan and he's seeing just an incredible move of God among the people of New York City. It's a praying church. Pastor Lee has been out there a number of times. And John Tyson is a student of history and he shares about his study of revival history specifically in the great moves of God that have happened in times past. And a few years back, he took his family on a revival tour throughout sites where God moved in Europe. He took them to the Welsh revival sites where a third of a nation was saved in 18 months. A third of a nation was swept in the kingdom of God in 18 months. He brought them to Hernhut, the place where the Moravians had a prayer room that continued 24 seven for 100 years. 100 years. But John Tyson, he also shares this story of taking his family to the Hebrides. And many of you maybe are familiar with the Hebrides. They're islands off the coast of Scotland and they experienced a move of God in the 1950s. A move of God that shook the islands to the very core where historians estimate around 90% of the population came into the kingdom in a year. Can you imagine in Kalamazoo, and they had about the population of Kalamazoo, if 90% like radical, earth-shattering glory encounters the transformation. And John Tyson, when he was there, he shares the story of he goes to the chapel where the outpouring started. And he was praying and seeking the Lord. And all of a sudden he hears a noise behind him. Here's a noise behind him. And he turns around and he sees all these elderly, they're speaking Gaelic, like it's that backwards in England. They're speaking Gaelic. And there's these elderly people praying in the back of the room. And they're looking over at him, kind of like, what are you doing? Like ruining our prayer meeting kind of thing. And they walk up to him and they kind of start asking, why are you here? And he says, I'm here for the revival. I'm here to seek what God has done. And they sit him down and these old people begin sharing with him about how they were children saved in the revival in the 1950s. How they were children saved in the revival in the 1950s. And as they share, they said, we were taught, we were taught in times of revival to keep fire on the church and fire on the home. And we're here today because we've got fire on both. Today church, I want to talk to you about fire on the home. Because these past weeks we've seen God move in our corporate altar and we've seen God move in powerful, powerful ways at our altars here in Portage and downtown. We've seen God pour out his spirit in powerful ways. But, but my fear is this, is if, if our encounters with God only exist at a church altar and not in a living room, in a bedroom, we have a false faith. Faith that exists only in the four walls of a church is not a faith at all. And repentance that only lasts in an altar but doesn't change your marriage, doesn't change your time, doesn't change your relationships is actually false repentance and it's a false gospel. I believe God is pouring out fire on the home and that family is God's design to pass the flame of his spirit from generation to generation. I have a picture I want to show you guys today up on the screens. Many of you know, do the other one first. Sorry.  I married his daughter Ashley in 2015. We've had the privilege of getting to serve here at Radiant alongside pastor Lee and Jane and it's one of the great honors of my life to get to serve pastor Lee just in the season. I'm currently the next gen pastor here at Radiant Church. I get to invest into what God is doing in the next generation. And in one of the greatest moments, I believe in my life was this moment that you can see here and this is my son Owen. He's four now and my wife Ashley pastor Lee and those are pastor Lee's grandparents. Pastor Lee's grandparents. So that is my wife Ashley's great grandparents, my son Owen's great, great grandparents. And many of you have heard the story pastor Lee has shared over the years where his grandparents, when he was young, when his dad left his mom for a season and they took in pastor Lee and his mother and into their family and began to give them a home and began to disciple pastor Lee. These two old people are the reason you and I are here in this room today. And yeah, I wanna just honor them in heaven today. And the thing is that they met in the latter rain revival in the 1950s when God poured out his spirit in Detroit where they were marked in powerful ways in a season of revival, but that outpouring and that impartation did not stop in a church. That flame from heaven then in kind of life did not stop in a church, but it transferred to a living room when he had pastor Lee on his lap as a four year old was reading the Bible to him. That flame from heaven didn't stop in a church. Now you can play the next picture. See he's praying and blessing my son. You know, incredibly valuable, like this is the kind of stuff you live for. It's a move of God that didn't stop in a church, but it overflowed into homes and I said it before, but I believe God is restoring families to carry the wine of a third grade awakening. We need new homes and new families to carry the wine of a third grade awakening. And I believe that today and what I wanna talk to you about is how God is restoring the family altar in our midst. And a few weeks ago, pastor Caleb, he shared about the corporate altar and shared about the significance of coming together. It's such a powerful message and encourage you to go back and listen to it if you haven't listened to it. Yeah, but in his message, he shared about how when the corporate altar is polluted that the family altar is polluted. He talked about the significance of how the corporate altar, our time together, it actually is so significant because it overflows into our families. And what I wanna share with you today is that when the corporate altar is restored, the next step that God begins to do is he begins to restore our homes and our families. I wanna read from Zechariah 10. Zechariah 10, pastor Lee read this passage the other week and I just felt like it was so significant. The Lord has gripped me, gripped me with it. This is the passage speaking about revival. And in verse one, in verse one, Zechariah prophesies, he says, ask rain from the Lord in the season of spring rain. From the Lord who makes the storm clouds and he will give them showers of rain to everyone, the vegetation in the field. For the household gods utter nonsense and the diviners see lies, they tell false dreams and give empty consolation. Therefore, people wander like sheep and they are afflicted for a lack of shepherd. What does God do when the rain comes? He floods into our homes and begins to unseat the household gods. And here's the thing today is we're talking about family and talking about home. I recognize for many of us, it's much easier to worship in a prayer room or a church than it is to repent to a spouse or a parent. It's so much easier to worship in a room filled with other people's hands than to worship in your living room at 6 a.m. in the morning. There's something about our homes, if we were honest, that there can be a disconnect and a tension point for many of us. And the thing is this, is that home and family are often the location of the most intense pain, temptation and disappointment that we face. The weight of death and sin is always felt in degrees of proximity. So it's only natural that our families would feel the full brunt and weight of our failure and brokenness. But it's actually exactly for this reason that God is jealous not only for your response in a church but your response in a bedroom. It's the fact that our families experience the pain and brokenness of our sin that God is jealous for them and he wants to move. Move in our families, move in our homes. And as I talk about the family altar, I know many times it can be kind of like confusing what I mean by that. Even I've spoken to young people, single people, and they're like, hey, I'm not married, I don't have kids. Is the family altar I get when I get married? Is that like an upgrade kind of thing? And no, that's not what it is. When I'm talking about the family altar, what I'm talking about is what does your faith look like in your home?  You know, young married, when you and your spouse come home after a long day of work and you close the door, what is taking place in your home? Is it another, just another season of Netflix, again and again and again, or what does it look like? What does your faith look like for parents? You know, how are you passing on the faith to the next generation to your children? What does faith look like in your home? That's what I'm talking about with the family altar and what I wanna do today is I wanna dig in more on Zechariah 10 and even this idea of household gods, household gods. So Zechariah 10 verse two, it says, for the household gods utter nonsense. When God sends the rain, he challenges the household gods. That word household gods in the Hebrew is teraphim. That's the word, teraphim. And in teraphim, what they were is, you know, in pagan culture and in the time of the Old Testament, there were like pagan altars, right?  You can read about them in the Old Testament when the Ark of the Covenant was brought into the altar of Baal in Philistia, right?  Not, yeah, put that on your coexist sticker. But, you know, there's like pagan temples and but, but there were also these things called teraphim. And what the teraphim were is that they were small, personal idols put in places of prominent view in a home. Typically they're small enough that you can travel with. So don't picture like this big giant idol, picture a tiny idol that could be carried around and were often placed in prominent view in a home. And the thing is, is with idol worship in ancient Israel, oftentimes there were a few times it did get to this point but oftentimes it wasn't a complete rejection of Yahweh. But it was a duality where the people would go into the temple of the Lord, make their sacrifices, do their things. And then they would go back to their homes in worship, Baal and Asherah, in the gods of the surrounding peoples. You know, they believed that Yahweh was the God of salvation. He was the storm God. He was in the wilderness. He's the God that would split the Red Sea, bring them into the Promised Land. He's the God that would split the Red Sea, bring them into the Promised Land, give them salvation. But they believed that, hey, for the practical things in my life, we need some help over here. For my business, hey, I need a Baal in my art. For my kids, for fertility, for sex, hey, I need Asherah over here. They had personal idols that represented different parts of their life that they would worship. And it didn't mean that they weren't worshiping Yahweh. Like these guys are still showing up to temple on Saturdays, means Shabbat Shalom. Let's go, like ready to worship. And then going back and worshiping Baal in their home. And if you could look at the history of the Old Testament, the history of Israel, you could just define it as the history of altars. The history of altars. You see Abraham show up in the land. He sets altars to the Lord. The Lord calls Gideon, says tear down the altars to Baal and Asherah that are in your father's house. David makes an altar, Solomon makes an altar. Josiah, King Josiah in the revival, a great revival at the end of Judah's history. You see the Lord anoint Josiah and he goes and he tears down the Asherah poles and the Baals and the tear of him in the homes. When God renewed his people time and time again, what it looked like is that he would raise up men and women who would say enough with duality, enough with worshiping Yahweh on the Sabbath and worshiping Baals on the rest of the week, it is time to be a wholly undivided people to the Lord. And you see a cycle in Israel's history of when they step back into covenant loyalty, they worship Yahweh alone and God blesses them. He blesses their kids, blesses their families, the land increases and then they backslide back into duality. And as they backslide into duality, what you see as a generation is swept away into covenant curses and darkness. And if we are honest with ourselves, we find ourselves in that very situation today. Church, we can't just look at the world and say look at the problem out there. I know this is a heavy word, this is a fun one. I promise I don't preach like this to your kids and I'm childcare. Church, we can't just look at the world and say the progressive agenda in this and that. We can't just look at the world without stopping and looking in the mirror and saying, God, what's in my home? We can't judge the sexual depravity of the home when we have our pet sins that we don't tell anyone about. If we are honest, we find ourselves in the same situation today. We've talked about it, but 67% of young people are walking away from their faith the first year they graduate high school. Guys, I've wept, I've wept for a generation. We can't just point our finger at the world and say the devil's taken on this. There is something in our homes that has to change, guys. And even to some, if we were honest, our homes are just falling apart in this country, guys. There's a 2020 study that evaluated six core factors, key to raising families in 35 developed countries. The United States got second to last on the list. United States and Mexico were the only countries that got an F. In our homes, one in three women and one in five men have experienced some form of sexual abuse, often by a close friend or family member. Many of you in this room have experienced that. I'm gonna tell you that God's heart breaks for you. Today, God wants to restore the years. 41% of first marriages are ending in divorce. The average length of a marriage in the United States right now is eight years. Today, 25 million kids in the United States will go home to a house without their biological father. 25 million, two-thirds of teen girls are describing diagnosable anxiety and depression symptoms of significant mental illness, mental attack. Biblical illiteracy is an all-time high. Only 34% of Gen Z consider themselves Bible users. That's defined as they read their Bible once a year. One-third of Gen Z reads their Bible once a year. 9% read monthly, 4% read weekly. A generation is being swept away to hell and destruction from the world, but also because of the duality of the house of God in the homes of his people. And today, today I know this is a heavy word. I feel like the Lord has gripped me by this this past month. I've spent a decade working with students and teenagers and I've seen this, guys. I've seen this, I've lived this. The power of hell is at work against our generation, but there is also something in our families that needs to change. And I'm coming to you today in the spirit of Elijah, in 1 Kings 18 where he calls the people and he says, how long will you continue limping between two opinions? How long will you continue limping between two opinions? Today, I wanna challenge you right now.  Guys, we have to get it. God's rebuke is in his love. God's rebuke is in his love. It's not in his judgment to crush us, but God rebukes us and disciplines us because he loves us. So what I wanna do today is I wanna spend the rest of the time talking about some specific household idols that we're gonna repent for, call out, dig in. I felt the Lord really gave me a burden to call out household idols in January during Seek this year. And I'm like, really, Lord? Do I have to talk about that? He's like, yep. And as a wrestler, I'm like, all right, God, give me revelation. Like what are some specific things that you're calling us to repent for? Some specific things that you're digging into in our lives. And I had a list on my phone. I was praying through it, really asking the Lord. And then again, pastor Lee a couple of weeks ago comes up. He preaches from Zechariah 10.  And he gave a better list than I ever could. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna pull from that list. But we're gonna talk about it a little bit more today because I believe there was something really revelatory in what he was sharing that I wanna dig into. So we're gonna be digging into some household idols today. And again, I would encourage and fight you, challenge you church as we talk about these things. Don't sit back and say, wow, that must be really hard for those other people. That must be really hard for people that deal with that.  I'm just gonna pray actually, those are part hands on our hearts. Lord, we love you, we thank you. Holy spirit, I just asked for your searching gaze today. Your searching gaze today. God, I thank you that those whom you love, you rebuke. God, those whom you love, you correct. And Lord, we don't wanna have a faith. God, we don't wanna have a faith that just repents at an altar and then doesn't change anything in our bedroom. But Holy spirit, the same prayer David prayed in Psalm 139, Lord, we pray today. God, search us and know us. Test us, know our anxious thoughts. God, teach us the fear of the Lord today in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. First kind of household idol I wanna call out is, is the idol of self. The idol of self. In some of the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, our founders asserted some self-evident truths that we're all familiar with today. They wrote that all men had a God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And while these statements are a fundamental cornerstone to a free and democratic society, at the same time, they are fundamentally destructive and even demonic when they become the true north of how we conduct our home. When the vision statement of your home is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you are giving root to a demonic agenda for your life and your kids. The American dream is not kingdom dream for your life. And here's the thing guys, as we live in this notion, in this world where it's in the water, it's all over, this idea that the highest good for your life is self-actualizing your dream, yourself, your purpose, your calling. And the truth is is that what we see in scripture is that God's best for your life is that when you follow Jesus, who even though he was in the very form of God, took on the form of the servant and poured out his life and served. Guys, we need our families to stop being spas of self-gratification and prideful self-exploration and we need to change them into missional hubs of discipleship and genuine kingdom servanthood. This is what it looks like. It looks like, hey, I come to church on Sundays, but hey, don't mess with the rest of my week because that's when I'm at work. My kid can't come to Wednesday nights. They got supports. Do you really think that your kids, coaches, care about where they spend eternity? And what are you communicating? What are you communicating by the priorities, the time and the money that you spend with your family? What are you communicating? What are the values that you're communicating? I promise you this, parents, your kids are watching you. Your kids are watching you. And there's a generation of kids that have grown up watching their parents communicate to them that the most important thing about their life is them achieving, them having fun, them being happy and them are confused where they walk away. Guys, Gen Z is looking for a costly gospel. They want something to sacrifice for. They want something to give for. And I've seen it these past weeks, guys, these kids. We gave an altar call and it's not like, hey, Jesus wants to make your life better. He wants to help you. He wants to be your friend.   Give up your rights and follow Jesus. Take up your cross and follow him, which Jesus said a lot. And Gen Z will pack the front. They're looking for something real, guys. And I think my fear is this, is that we have given a watered down version of the gospel that's mixed with the American dream, mixed with our pleasure, our comfort, our pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And we have not lived a compelling gospel to stir on the next generation. We haven't given them a vision for something more. We placed our own success, promotion, career and calling above anything else. And anything that limits those things we see as the highest wrong in our life. 1 Peter 5 says likewise, you who are younger subject to elders, clothe yourselves, all of you in humility towards one another. For God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God. We need to repent for pride in our homes, living for ourselves and again living for others. Next idol. It's an idol of perversion, idol of perversion. Here's some statistics to you today. Today in the United States, the pornography industry makes more annual revenue than the NFL, NBA and MLB combined. 47% of families say pornography is a problem in their home. 68% of churchgoing men and 50% of pastors are you porn on a regular basis. 33% of women age 25 and under search for porn at least once a month. 55% of married men and 25% of married women say they watch porn at least once a month. 11 is the average age a child is first exposed to porn. 94% of children will see porn by the time they're 14. Why are we surprised that a generation is being swept away by sexual confusion when they're being parented by a generation addicted to pornography? God help us. God help us.  He responded in mercy. He said, I don't condemn you. But I said, get up and sin no more. Get up and sin no more. We are worshiping Asherah in our homes and then we're judging the LGBTQ community for their confusion.    It's time to smash your iPhone. Do you really want to get free from it? Smash your phone. Delete the apps, cancel the subscriptions, church. It is time to pursue holiness in this area in our homes because a generation is being swept away.  I remember in my life I was first exposed to pornography as an eighth grader, seventh grader. And remember the shame, the shock of first seeing some of those images a friend showed me at school and I remember what started as kind of shame and disgust kind of shifted into curiosity into different things. And for my went into eighth grade got kind of stuck in a cycle of pornography addiction for around nine months. Shame, darkness, confusion. And then my dad took me on a father-son retreat. I'm so, so grateful for the time he spent investing me, discipling me in our home. Took me on a father-son retreat and as we spent time together we had conversation and finally just hit the point he was like, hey, are you dealing with this? Are you dealing with pornography? And I opened up, I confessed and I said we'll never forget the moment as a 13, 14 year old my dad laid hands on me, prayed for me and said this is not what men of God do. I bless you to walk in purity. That was 16 years ago and I have not looked at pornography since then. Fathers in the room, there's a generation desperate for a father's blessing for purity. There's a generation desperate for a father's blessing of purity. We've had the idols of perversion and self-pleasure in our home too long. And this is not judgment, but God is moving. God is calling us through pen, if your pen sense stops here, it's a false gospel, guys. Your pen sense and it's not perfection, that's not what I'm talking about, but it's will you pay the price? Will you pay the price for these things? Last idol is the idol of entertainment. The rhythms of our life center around our amusement and entertainment at the expense of our devotion, discipleship and adoration. The average time Americans spend on screens is seven hours a day. On phones is three and a half hours a day, which is low. Gen Z, the average time Gen Z spends on their phone is nine hours a day. Our generation will be judged by the way we spent our time. So I didn't have time to decipher my kid. I didn't have time to read my Bible. I didn't have time to evangelize. We had time for a lot of other things. This generation will be judged for the way we spent our time. Psalm 101, that I read as we started, I will ponder the way that is blameless of when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my own house. I will not set anything before my eyes that is worthless.  Envy, lust, deception, the spirit of the age is at work discipling a generation on our screens. Will you set your eyes higher? I believe today God is rebuilding a family altar and he will not rebuild a mixed altar. He will not rebuild a mixed altar. Church, today, and I feel the fear of the Lord. I feel the weight of what I'm sharing. I'm not here in judgment today, guys, but I'm here because I believe there's a window of repentance. Isaiah 55 says, seek the Lord while he can be found, call on him while he's near. God can be found, he's near. There's a window of repentance that we need to respond to today. Will you put God back at the center of your home? Not just in words, but in actions. If you took a measure of your time, your money, your conversations with your family, with your roommates, where were the scales tipped? God will not share his glory. Many of you are familiar with my wife and I story this past year where after in 2022, after two years of infertility, we found out we were pregnant New Year's morning, found out shortly after we were having identical twins and then twin girls, we've been carrying a promise for a baby girl for four or five years at that point, named our girl Celia and Reese. Celia after the promise we've been given, Reese after Reese Howells, as an intercessor in the Welsh revival. And last May, we discovered that we were having complications with our pregnancy. We had a thing called TTTS. We were admitted into Michigan Hospital in Arbor and delivered our girls at 24 weeks on ascension day. Our daughter Celia was a pound and a half. Our daughter Reese was a pound when she was born. And after 10 days, our daughter Reese passed away on our seventh anniversary on Pentecost Sunday. We spent the rest of the summer in the NICU, 119 days. Our daughter Celia has been since discharged, is doing amazing. I wanna thank you all for your prayers, for your support this past year. So grateful for you all. And even these past weeks, God is restoring the years. Restoring the years in our heart. Healing our hearts. I'm so grateful for counselors. I got a great one, but I'm grateful for moments in God's presence where he pours out his love and he restores the years. And I believe that Reese in her life and the short span and now even her prayers in heaven, I believe it's a sign of what God wants to do over the home. A Pentecost over the home, Pentecost over the family. I believe there is a moment church, there is a moment where God wants to pour out the same flame that we're experiencing on these altars into your bedroom, into your living room, into your kids that our faith would not be limited, limited to a quick response at a church altar, but that it would overflow into every area of our life. What value is our faith? If it works great in a church and doesn't work great in your marriage. Where's the power? Where's the power? We believe Jesus sets us free. Why aren't we seeing freedom in our sexuality, freedom in our addictions? There is power in the blood. There's power in the blood. Do you believe a church? Do you believe a church? But here's the thing. God wants to heal, God wants to restore, but God is inviting us today, inviting us today to put him back at the center, to say, God, I've been distracted with many things, but I'm coming back to the one thing. Coming back to the one thing. Church, will you stand with me today? Families, if you're here together, I just invite you. Families, roommates, spouses, friends, I don't care. Just kind of be with your crew who you came here today with. I've just felt, and I know it's been a heavy word, it's the spirit of the fear of the Lord resting on the room. Let's invite you again. Just that prayer we prayed earlier, just look, Lord, search you and know you. Search you and know you. He's not judging you today. He's not coming in judgment, but he's coming in mercy. He's saying, will you put me center again? Will you put me center again? More than the hobbies, more than the sports, more than your job, more than that friendship, more than the career, more than that addiction, more than the time you spend. Will you put him first today? A faith that only exists in the four walls of the church is not a faith at all. And right now, church, I wanna pray for you. If you're feeling the Lord calling you to respond to this, can you just pull your spouse, pull your friend, whoever it is, just close? I just want us to pray together for God to take a first place in our home again. If there's a moment, if there's an area that God is calling you to repent from, to change from. Just come close with your friends, with your family. We're gonna pray together. Lord, Lord, we're asking God for fire on the home. Fire on the home. Lord, we repent, God, I repent. I repent, God, for times, God, that I have put other things above you even in my home. God, we're all gazed on things and then given my attention to things that are worthless. Lord, we want, we want fire on the family again, Lord, that there would be, there would be new wineskins for a new generation to come into the kingdom. God, there would be new wineskins for the wine of a third grade awakening. God, I ask for holiness on the home today. Holiness on the home. We sing and we worship a holy God.   I want you to identify that thing and I just want you to rebuke it, rebuke it, rebuke it, rebuke a spirit of pornography, rebuke that addiction, rebuke that screen time, rebuke that entertainment. Lord, we rebuke the idols, God, and we ask, Holy Spirit, as we pray for rain, as we pray for rain, Lord, would you let the river flow into our home? God, I said the river of God would flow into every home in this place, in Jesus' name.


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Thank you very much, thank you, thank you very much, thank you, thank you, well thank you very much, and thank you very much Wilson Johnson. Your warm words of welcome touch my heart and believe me it's with a happy heart that I join you today for this important milestone the 40th anniversary of the great National Federation of Independent Business. You know I I remember the day you started and a lot of you can't say that and like good wine you just get better and better. Something else is getting better that gladdens my heart and I hope yours too. America, the world's brightest jewel of hope and agenda. Our country is the keeper of the dreams that nourish the soul and spark fire in our breast. This good and mighty nation is rising from a decade of neglect to reclaim her noble heritage. America is getting well. She's growing strong and together we'll keep her free. I confess that looking at you and looking at your faces I get a lump in my throat because it's you and so many like you who were messengers of courage during our baptism of fire. You were never sunshine patriots. You didn't cut and run. I heard from a great many of you and your letter said in various ways hang in there Mr. President we're sticking with you. A lot of us are hurting but we're tired of seeing America drag down. We're tired of empty promises and quick fixes that only make things worse. You gave me you gave me priceless words of courage that I'll always remember. Do what you know is right and do it with all your might. And there's one man here who epitomizes that unselfish courage that leadership and commitment. He went to the Congress in 1981 and said spending was out of control. We know a lot of people say that but he said more. He said that his organization had no sacred cows and that no program should be spared and to drive home his point he added small business volunteers to go first. How much smaller would the deficit be if we had more of that attitude asking not what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country. And I'm sure by now you know who I'm speaking about your president and my friend Wilson Johnson. We've been in communication many times over the past two and a half years. We could never have accomplished what we have without his and your support. As long as I'm president the door to the Oval Office will always be open to Wilson Johnson and the NFIB. Small business is the gateway to opportunity for those who want a piece of the American dream. One of the most exciting trends in our country is the surge in numbers and size of businesses owned by women. You fellas better watch out you're facing some real competition. Almost three million businesses owned by women bring in about forty billion dollars a year. A solid contribution to the health of our economy at every level of society. At the recommendation of the small business administration we have reactivated the interagency committee on women's business enterprise that was created in 1979. We appointed Bay Buchanan our United States treasurer to be its chairman. The committee will ensure that the activities of the departments and agencies of the executive branch contribute to the establishment and promotion of women's business enterprise. Also I will sign today an executive order that will create the first president's advisory committee on women's business ownership. And we will appoint up to fifteen members with particular knowledge and expertise of women's participation in business. They will they will review the status of businesses owned by women foster further support for women entrepreneurs and provide appropriate advice to me and the administrator of the small business administration. I'm also directing the small business administration to sponsor a series of conferences across the country that will reach thousands of present and potential women business owners. We want to assist them to compete equitably in the total business environment. We'll be asking both the public and private sector to pitch in and help. And I know that NFIB as you have so often before will be there on the front lines to help us. The character and conscience of small business built this nation. You know in his book Wealth and Poverty George Gilder wrote something about entrepreneurs that I've long believed. He said that most contribute far more to society than they ever recover. And most of them win no riches at all. They are the heroes of economic life and those who begrudge them their rewards demonstrate a failure to understand their role and their promise. Well wouldn't it be nice to hear a little more about the forgotten heroes of America. Those who create most of our new jobs like the owners of stores down the street. The faithfuls who support our churches synagogues schools and communities. The brave men and women everywhere who produce our goods feed a hungry world and keep our families warm while they invest in the future to build a better America. That's where miracles are made. Not in Washington DC. We hear so much about the greed of business. Well frankly I'd like to hear a little more about the courage generosity and creativity of business. I'd like to hear it pointed out that entrepreneurs don't have guaranteed annual incomes. Before they can turn a profit they must anticipate and deliver what consumers want. They must risk their money with investments. The truth is before entrepreneurs can take they must give and business begins with giving. And I believe business works best creates the greatest wealth and produces the most progress for all when we're free to follow the teachings of scripture give and you will be given on to search and you will find cast your bread upon the waters and it will return to you many fold. Just think about it in the parable of talents the man with the small business spirit who invested and multiplied his talents his money was praised but the rich who hoard their wealth and are constantly rebuked in scripture. I believe we're meant to use wisely what is ours make it grow then help others to share and benefit from our success. And the secret of success is understanding that true wealth is not measured in material things but in the treasures of the mind and spirit. Oil was worthless until entrepreneurs with ideas and the freedom and faith to take risks managed to locate it extract it and put it to work for humanity. Someday oil itself will be replaced if those driven by great dreams are still free to discover and develop new forms of energy. In his book the secret kingdom Pat Robertson tells the story of when George Washington Carver asked God to explain the mysteries of his universe but according to Pat's book God said little man you're not big enough to know the secrets of my universe I'll show you the secret of the peanut. So Carver began peeling apart the peanut and from this storehouse of wonders came a stream of food and products that helped revolutionize southern industry and all because he invested the gifts of knowledge and that God had given him in a spirit of giving to his fellow men. The principles of wealth creation transcend time people in place governments were deliberately subvert them by denouncing God's mothering faith destroying freedom and confiscating wealth have impoverished their people. Communism works only in heaven where they don't need it and in hell where they've already got it. When we came to Washington I said let us renew our faith and our hope we have every right to dream heroic dreams to believe in ourselves to believe that together with God's help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us. We didn't propose a 20-point federal plan we pursued the one sure plan to get America moving again a renaissance in enterprise everything we've tried to do is guided by three simple words trust the people we wanted to use that special principle of giving by putting America's destiny back in your hands and this meant slowing the growth of an already bloated government and providing you incentives to save to invest and to take risks so more wealth will be created at every level of our society. Take a look at what we've done so far just by sticking together personal tax rates have been cut for every working American for the first time in almost two decades in 1985 tax rates will be indexed to protect you from being pushed by inflation into higher brackets depreciation schedules have been shortened estate taxes on family owned farms and businesses have been cut dramatically to help working wives and mothers we've reduced the marriage penalty and increase the child care credit to give small savers a higher rate of return we've deregulated financial institutions we've introduced strong new incentives for individual retirement accounts extended IRAs to participants in employer sponsored pension programs and doubled the maximum keel contributions further tax breaks for savers will be coming up in 1985 when 15% of interest income up to $450 for single taxpayers and $900 for married couples can be excluded from all taxation I hope I'll be forgiven for reminding our critics that these tax cuts didn't exist when they were in charge these critics say the tax cuts are too big the truth is they're barely big enough to keep people even still I believe it's fair to say this is the most sweeping program of incentives ever passed to help families and firms lift America up and give us all real hope for our future we're doing everything we can to help you rebuild America spending growth has been cut we passed the prompt payment act so that when you deal with the federal government you must get paid promptly we the Small Business Innovation Development Act will direct millions of dollars in research funds to high-tech firms the the paperwork reduction act and the regulatory flexibility act will help your firms you don't have the luxury of hiring extra people just to fill out forms and keep track of new regulations more work needs to be done but by the end of 1983 American industry will have saved 300 million working hours filling out forms and that's a pretty good start take a look at the facts we don't have double-digit inflation anymore it's down to three and a half percent since a year ago from May to May I hope that history will one day judge our progress against inflation as one of this nation's greatest accomplishments of the early 1980s and we haven't stopped yet that terrible 21 and a half percent prime rate that greeted us has been knocked down to 10 and a half percent real wages are improving for the first time since 1978 and the rates of personal saving and productivity have reversed their declines it's clear that recovery is strengthening and spreading throughout the economy venture capital investments have reached record levels new businesses are being formed at near record rates the stock market has awakened from a decade of disappointment to surge into new high ground sunrise industries are springing up like jackrabbits production in autos and steel is regaining strength housing starts in May climbed the highest level in three and a half years factories in May ran at their highest rate in 15 months more and more workers are being called back and as Al Jolson would have said you ain't seen nothing yet but there's an easier way to tell you that our program works that recovery is here and that the economy is beginning to sparkle I've said this a few times before but I'll say it again suddenly our critics are no longer calling the program Reaganomics but just as everything is starting to mesh just as Americans have spotted the dawn of a new age strong growth without a return to runaway inflation and interest rates the guardians of a graveyard philosophy want to resurrect ideas which should remain dead and buried for all time they have a kind of a layaway plan for your lives which never changes it's called Americans make government takes first they tried to raise taxes on typical hard-working families by three thousand five hundred and fifty dollars over the next five years we said no we stopped them now they claim we must cap the third year of the tax cut at seven hundred dollars to reduce projected deficits and ensure fairness well forgive me but truth pierces that story quicker than a hot knife through butter they want to tax more so they can spend more and and you and I must say no and stop them again last year last year they gave me their word that would there would be three dollars in outlay cuts for every additional dollar of revenue that I agreed to in that tax bill they are breaking that promise they voted to balloon domestic spending above our budget request for next year and this is after they bottled up then scuttled a constitutional amendment requiring them to approve a balanced budget and idea back some by some eighty percent of you the American people our critics sob enough about deficits to fill an ocean an ocean of crocodile tears well the same holds true for their argument about fairness capping the third year of the tax cut won't soak the rich but it will drown millions of taxpayers in the middle class the wealthiest earners with incomes above a hundred and ten thousand dollars got their full tax cut in nineteen eighty one and it was a democratic amendment to our tax program that lowered the top rate from seventy to fifty percent in one fell swoop funny how they all forgot about that well I haven't forgotten about it because I think it was a great thing to do the truth of the matter is we're getting more tax revenues at the lower rate from that bracket of people than we were getting when the rate was seventy percent and that's the secret about good taxes but it takes a greater leap of faith to trust the motivation and wisdom of the self-proclaimed champions of fairness we're now attacking the middle class and make no mistake capping the third year would raise taxes on millions of two earner couples earning less than fifty thousand dollars for example a working married couple who together earn just over thirty five thousand dollars in taxable income will go from a thirty three percent tax rate to a thirty seven percent tax rate under the tax cap plan I question whether that couple working to men make ends meet would consider itself rich let's remember that just to keep up with inflation that couple had to double its income in the last ten years the couple which earns thirty five thousand dollars is no more wealthy today than when it earns sixteen thousand dollars in nineteen seventy three capping the tax cut would also raise taxes on two point four million small businesses including three hundred and fifty thousand family farms which file personal not corporate tax returns these people will invest in the new jobs products and technologies for the twenty first century the century that will belong to our children and our children's children putting a cap on small business would put a cap on our recovery and future growth the tax cap is not a fairness bill it's a jobs destruction bill it would cut out on her cut off our nose despite our face Larry Kirby of Greensboro North Carolina wrote me that he and his wife are risking everything they have in a new venture because of the opportunities in our American free enterprise system he said we pay taxes on personal rates and will be hiring another employee this summer we need every incentive that you can allow us and the loosening of red tape Larry I hear you and believe me your dreams and your struggle are what this job of mine is all about you know I try to bite my tongue but I just have to ask would you agree that those who saddle this nation with double digit inflation the highest interest rates in more than a hundred years and the worst tax button burden in our peacetime history are the last people who should be giving sermons about fairness and compassion would you agree that if we're to rebuild our beloved land then those who practice the politics of envy who pit one group against another must rise above their ranker and join us in a new dialogue to encourage honor and reward every citizen who strives to excel and make America great again I have one other request as representatives of Main Street America would you please send Washington a message get your hands out of our pockets get control of your own budget and let us get on with the job of rebuilding America I promise you the full and final portion of the tax cut the 10 percent due July 1st will go into effect in nine days and it will be followed by indexing in 1985 but I must and will oppose the congressional budget resolution it's not good enough to reduce the deficit on paper when in reality you're running up the white flag on controlling domestic spending the last thing we need is more taxes for more spending and if they can't get that through their heads then I am prepared to veto their budget busting bills again and again and again tax rates are prices prices for working saving and investing and when you raise the price of those productive activities you get less of them and more activity in the underground economy tax shelters and leisure pursuits you in small business understand that you can't force people to buy merchandise that isn't selling by raising your price but too many in Washington and across the country still believe that we can raise more revenues from the economy by making it more expensive to work save and invest in the economy we can't repeal human nature president John Kennedy said in 1963 the most urgent task facing our nation at home today is to end the tragic waste of unemployment and unused resources it has become increasingly clear he said that the largest employment or single barrier I should say to full employment and a higher rate of economic growth is the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power initiative and incentive I would only add that the total tax burden on working Americans is higher today than it was when John Kennedy said that we cannot compromise on fundamental principles without compromising ourselves in our future we're not asking the Congress to do what's easy we're asking them Democrats and Republicans alike to work with us to do what's right on that note let me interject a word about our bipartisan responsibility to reduce the risks of war so that our societies can truly prosper in peace we're determined to assure the effectiveness of our deterrent through the modernization of our aging strategic forces and to do everything we can to achieve deep reductions to equal and more stable levels of us and Soviet nuclear forces we are taking important and positive steps in the negotiations in Geneva on intermediate and strategic forces regarding the intermediate force negotiations I have stated that while we continue to favor the complete global initial elimination of the entire class of land-based intermediate range missiles we will agree to any proposed equal number of warheads on which us and Soviet missiles and upon which we can agree two weeks ago I announced that Ambassador Ed Rowney our negotiation in the strategic arms reduction talks the ones we call start was going to Geneva with new instructions to give us greater flexibility in the talks our proposal incorporates the recommendations of the Skokrov Commission on strategic forces it reflects a growing consensus and support crucial to effective negotiations the Soviet Union has not yet responded positively we sincerely hope they will the aspirations for genuine arms reductions stability and peace are shared by all mankind and I pray the day will come when nuclear weapons no longer exist anywhere on earth we're not going back to that old road where government decides it knows better than us what should be done with our earnings and how we should live our lives we're not going back to fear envy and failure we're going forward on a new road that's bold and filled with hope and opportunity so let us remain united and true to our vision of progress a vision that begins with your families your churches your synagogues and schools and neighborhoods we don't ask you to trust us we say trust yourselves trust the values that made us a good and loving people working together giving and trusting each other and trusting in God and we'll do what is right to preserve our freedom and America the last best hope of man on earth and now I'm delighted to sign the executive order creating the first presidential advisory commission on women's business ownership thank you and God bless you all


May it please the court, and frankly, even if it doesn't please the court. Since 1843, when a Christmas carol was first published, we have witnessed a thoroughly one-sided treatment of my client, Ebenezer Scrooge, at the hands of the prosecution, as represented by the author Charles Dickens. On the basis of emotionally riddled allegations, coupled with pure economic ignorance, we have been asked to find Mr. Scrooge guilty of the most ill-defined wrongdoings. Most of us have been dissuaded from even imagining the possibility of a defence for a man like Scrooge. Not unlike the allegations in a child abuse case, many may be inclined to respond. What kind of defence could be made of a man like that? What would you expect someone who had done such a horrible deed to say? Made in this age of political correctness and tabloid thinking, some might even say that the more atrocious the allegations, the less evidence is needed to sustain the charges, and the greater the burden upon the defendant to refute and disprove them. From the outset Mr. Dickens engages in a subtle form of vilification by giving my client a pejorative name. Scrooge. The name seems designed to evoke prejudice, animosity and revulsion in the mind of the reader, so that they will be predisposed to support any case against the man, no matter how ill-founded. Compare Ebenezer Scrooge to other more wholesome names chosen by Dickens, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nicolby, Mr. McCorber, Fezziwig and so on.  What is the bill of particulars with which my client is charged? Pay close attention to Mr. Dickens's allegations. His case comes down to just two points. One, my client has managed to become very rich, and two, he insists on keeping his money for himself. That's it. That is the essence of his alleged wrongdoing. Taking my client as the miserable fellow Dickens has presented him as, let me be the first to admit that if Ebenezer's obsession with materialistic pursuits rendered him an unhappy person, and were it the purposes of his detractors to help extricate him from his self-imposed miseries, and to restore him to that state of happiness and innocence so common to most of us in our childhood years, no one would be happier than I. But it is not my client's happiness that the prosecution endeavours to obtain, but his money. The case against Ebenezer Scrooge is nothing more than a well-orchestrated, vicious conspiracy to extort from my client as much of his money as can be acquired through terror, threats of his death, and other appeals to fear. The only happiness that ensued to my client from this campaign arose from the ultimate cessation of terror inflicted upon him. In addition to extortion, the conspirators against my client are guilty of such torts as intentional infliction of emotional distress, libel and slander, trespass, assault, malicious prosecution, battery, nuisance, and false imprisonment. For this reason my client may elect to bring his own suit, but for now let us focus upon his defence to this action. As we do so, pay particular attention to the utter contradiction underlying Dickens's case. My client is charged with being a greedy, money-hungry scoundrel, and yet it is the conspirators against him who will resort to criminal means to obtain his money to fuel their own greed. Dickens's Scrooge, unlike his antagonists, earned his money in the marketplace by satisfying the demands of customers and clients who continue to do business with him, and did not, as far as we are told, resort to terror or threats of death to get it. It is instructive that Dickens tells us virtually nothing about the nature of Ebenezer's business. We are told that he is something of a banker or financier, but we are told nothing about the nature of his investments. He has presumably been responsible for financing many successful enterprises over the years, which have not only benefited the rest of the community in terms of the goods and services they provide, but afford employment to countless individuals. For all we know, Scrooge may have provided capital for researchers, seeking a cure for the very ailment from which Tiny Tim suffers. It would seem to be beneath Comrade Dickens's sensibilities to ask what good Scrooge's investments have done or care about the answer, preferring to focus upon the fact that Scrooge has profited from his sound business decision-making. If we are to understand the essence of the case against my client, we must inquire into the nature of the collectivist thinking that produced it. In matters of economics, such people believe that wealth is simply a given, something that has come into existence in mysterious ways and in a fixed amount that has somehow managed to get into the hands of a few people through presumed and unspecified acts of dishonesty, exploitation and unscrupulousness. Dickens expresses the idea central to all collectivist thinking that presumes individual self-interest to be a source of social misery rather than the font of human well-being. That the pursuit of self-interest can generate good for others as an unintended consequence was far too complicated a concept for Dickens's simplistic, fragmented mind. To all collectivists, including Dickens, the idea that more wealth could be created never manages to invade their imaginations. To them, the only question is how is this fixed body of wealth to be most fairly redistributed? The question of how can more wealth be created and what conditions would be necessary for accomplishing such ends never enters their minds, for the pursuit of such conditions would utterly destroy all socialist systems. The beneficiaries of such redistribution are looked upon as passive and dependent recipients of other people's decision-making. In this connection, it is to Mr Cratchit that I would now like to direct my attention. The central character in this campaign of terror and extortion against my client is one Bob Cratchit, the 19th century's version of Forrest Gump, a witless and chronic loser with no apparent control over any significant aspects of his life, save perhaps for his body's biological functions. Apparently his only purpose in life is to absorb the blows visited upon him by others. He is the poster boy for victimhood, a flatliner devoid of any dynamic sense of life. At this point, many of you are probably thinking to yourselves, surely he's not going to denounce the Cratchits, is he? They are one of the most revered of all families, a part of the pantheon of secular gods in our culture. Yes, I am. I am going to attack the Cratchits. One of the offences with which my client has been charged was that he had not paid Bob Cratchit a large enough salary. Cratchit has allegedly been underpaid, whatever that may mean, by my client for many years. Why? Why did he not quit? Why didn't he go to work for some other employer, perhaps one of the politically correct businessmen who periodically show up at Scrooge's office to solicit and browbeat charitable contributions from my client? Put yourself in Cratchit's position. Imagine yourself to have been the victim of years of underappreciated and underpaid work, head of a large family, one of whose members suffered from a life-threatening ailment. What would you have done?  Certainly in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, wherein Dickens wrote, when new businesses were starting up all over the place in a great burst of economic creativity, there must have been all sorts of opportunities available for a competent bookkeeper. Great fortunes were made by those who rose up out of abject poverty, such men as Andrew Carnegie come to mind, a young boy who went from seeing his father begging in the streets for work to become the richest man of his era. At no time in history had there been a greater opportunity for self-betterment than during the Industrial Revolution, where demonstrated merit helped to destroy the state-conferred privileges of feudalism. To anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of economics, two things should be clear. One, if, as has been alleged, my client is a tight-fisted, selfish man, he surely would not have paid Bob Cratchit a shilling more than his marginal productivity was worth to Scrooge's firm. And two, if Bob Cratchit was being woefully underpaid by my client, there must have been all kinds of alternative employment available to this man at higher salaries. If Cratchit cannot find more immunerative work, and if my client is paying him the maximum that he is marginally worth to his business, then Cratchit must be worth precisely what my client is paying him. Economic values are subjective, with prices for goods or services rising or falling on the basis of the combined preferences of market participants. It is this interplay of marketplace forces, which Dickens neither understands nor favours, coupled with Cratchit's passive, sluggish disposition when it comes to improving his marketable skills or opportunities that accounts for Cratchit's condition in life. My client should no more be expected to pay Cratchit more than his marketable skills merit than would Dickens have paid his stationer a higher-than-market price for his pen, ink and paper, simply because the retailer needed more money. Dickens' ignorance of basic economics would, if acted upon by Scrooge, have produced adverse consequences for Cratchit himself. Had Ebenezer chosen to pay a higher salary for the work being done by Cratchit, Scrooge would very likely have been able to attract employees whose higher marginal productivity might have earned Scrooge even greater profits, leaving Cratchit with no job and no income at all. If there are employers out there prepared to pay Cratchit a higher wage than he is receiving from my client, then we must ask ourselves, did Bob Cratchit simply lack the ambition to seek higher-paying employment? It would appear so. At no time do we see this man exhibiting any interest in trying to better his and his family's lot. Not even when the aforementioned businessmen arrive for their annual shakedown of my client, does Cratchit so much as suggest to them, gentlemen, I have a son who is afflicted with a life-threatening condition, and if you would be so inclined to look upon him as one of the objects of your charitable purposes, I would be greatly appreciative. He is unable to generate even the slightest motivation to rise from his self-pitying position long enough to even speak up for Tiny Tim at a time when any responsible and loving parent would have jumped at the opportunity to plead his son's case. The prosecution, in the form of Mr Dickens, would have you believe that my client is a heartless and irresponsible person. But why should my client be more greatly motivated on behalf of Tiny Tim than was Tim's own father? Neither in this connection can we ignore the behaviour of Scrooge's nephew, who pops into the story early enough to chide his uncle for his miserly attitudes and appears later at a lavish Christmas party fated for his yuppie friends for all his sanctimonious rhetoric about caring for others. Why were no gold coins forthcoming from the nephew's pockets on behalf of Tiny Tim? We see in this nephew the forerunner of the modern politically correct limousine liberal who has all kinds of plans for disposing of other people's money while carefully shepherding his own. A man Mark Twain might have had in mind when he wrote of those who believe that there is nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. If a lack of imagination and ambition is not at the crux of Bob Cratchit's problem in maintaining his inert, status quo position for so many years, then perhaps we should consider the possibility that this man was simply incompetent. Perhaps he had tried but was unable to obtain more highly paid employment because he was incapable of performing at any higher skilled level than that of the bean counter he apparently was and seemed satisfied in remaining. If Cratchit's stagnating in the backwaters of Scrooge's shop was due to his basically poor work skills then the obvious question is why did Cratchit not seek to enhance his skills as by learning a more remunerative trade? Alas Bob Cratchit was once again either too unambitious or too unimaginative to pursue this cause of conduct. Indeed about the only gumption we see Cratchit exhibiting in this story is in his grovelling request for another lump of coal for the stove or his equally weak-need appeal for a day off on Christmas. Such is the extent of his courage, ambition and love for his family. My client, whatever his reasons, has seen fit to keep this incompetent non-creative dawdler on his payroll. But instead of being praised for not terminating this slug he stands condemned for not paying him more than he was marginally worth. More than any other employer would have paid him if indeed any other employer would have hired him in the first place. Perhaps my client's retention of Bob Cratchit should be looked upon as the most charitable of all the acts engaged in by anyone in Mr Dickens's story. To be clear we do not allege this man to be one of the principal conspirators against my client. Far from it for he is both too dull and too lazy to have dreamed up or to have actively participated in a scheme as convoluted and diabolical as the one perpetrated against my client. Cratchit is not a villain, but a tool used by the conspirators. The morally culpable wrongdoers in this shakedown of my client are the spirits who trespass at night upon the quiet enjoyment of my client's premises to terrify him with previews of his own demise should he not succumb to their demands to part with his money. No more blatant act of criminal extortion could be imagined than that visited upon my client by these spirits. At this point you may see the thoroughly dispirited nature of socialism, a philosophy for losers, that feeds upon and requires the continuing nourishment of the mindset of victimology. It might be argued that Dickens's spirits were simply interested in the reclamation and rehabilitation of my client's soul, and that such acts of terror had the well-being of Scrooge at heart. Such were the arguments used during the medieval Inquisition to justify the torture and burning at the stake of heretics, or in later generations to the persecution and hanging of witches. Lest you accept this shabby explanation for their behaviour, ask yourself this question would these spirits have dained to visit Ebenezer if he had been a penniless beggar? Would they have bothered this man for a single moment had there been no money to squeeze from him? Furthermore at any point in the story did these spirits demonstrate regard for the well-being of other persons who might be inconvenienced by Scrooge's being terrorised into giving away his money? If my client is to throw his money around, or pay more for services than only worth to his firm what is to happen to the plans of those who had arranged to borrow money from Scrooge's firm only to be later told that the funds for such loans were no longer available? Do the spirits have any way of compensating them for their disappointments? Or like socialists generally are they totally indifferent to the unintended consequences of the events they set in motion? It is at this point for these spirits arises any decent person with even a minimal level of humanitarian sentiment must look upon the spirits with utter contempt and moral revulsion. Keep in mind these spectres are possessed with the powers to suspend ordinary rules that operate throughout the rest of nature. They can successfully defy gravity, move backwards and forwards in time, cause matter to become invisible, raise the dead and foresee the future. Having all these amazing powers why did these spirits not intervene to cure Tiny Tim of his ailment?   The fate of Tiny Tim was held hostage left to the outcome of an elaborate blackmail scheme. Had the spirits been truly desirous of helping the Cratchit family they would have been better advised to focus their time and energies upon this family rather than upon my client. The ghost of Christmas past could perhaps have taken Bob Cratchit after his youth to help him discover why he had become such a passive wimpy recipient of other people's decision making. The ghost of Christmas present could have warned Cratchit of the dreary fate awaiting his family as a consequence of his incompetence, laziness, passivity and psychic bankruptcy.  These spirits might even have offered him more positive assistance by encouraging him to develop better marketable skills in order that he might remove his family from the dire straits to which Cratchit seems all but indifferent. The Cratchits are good for little more than sitting around the house spouting empty bromides and homilies seemingly oblivious of the need to make fundamental changes in their lives. At no time in the story do we find either of the adult Cratchits considering alternatives by which they could improve their economic condition. We do not, for instance, read of Mrs Cratchit telling Bob as they huddle around their rapidly cooling fireplace Bob, today I saw an advert for a correspondence school where you can learn all kinds of new skills. Perhaps you could study charter accountancy and make more money. Neither is any offer made by Mrs Cratchit to seek employment in order to earn money that could be used to help their ailing son. Tiny Tim continually reminds them God bless us, everyone. But let us not forget that other admonition long since lost on the Cratchits. The Lord helps those who help themselves. Of course any suggestion that the Cratchits exercise independence and self-responsibility in their own affairs would run counter to the political and social agenda that Dickens through his assorted spiritual operatives have over such proto-proletarians. To have the Cratchits of the world become truly self-governing and autonomous would be fatal to the socialist mindset which requires a passive, compliant, conscript clientele only too willing to exchange one master for another. As we reach the end of the story we see my client reduce to such a state of psychological terror at the prospect of his own death that he awakens and begins throwing money out the window to a stranger in the street. In the mind of Dickens Scrooge has now justified his existence by abandoning the rational decision-making that has made his firm successful and adopting the mindset of a worker who barges into the Cratchit household and begins running their lives. While Ebenezer's post-nightmare behaviour reflects what can only be described as the most immature understanding of how wealth is both produced and exchanged in the marketplace they also represent significant legal issues. I would suggest that a man who has been induced by dread fear of his own death to part with his money has available to him the claims of duress and legal incapacity to restore to him what was involuntarily taken from him. The basic principles of property and contract law support the conclusion that transactions entered into under duress or while in a state of incapacity are invalid. In the final analysis this case against Ebenezer Scrooge comes down to an emotional appeal based upon the resentment and envy that is at the core of every second-rate's personality. Such charges as have been leveled against my client only serve to confirm in the minds of far too many that the success of the few is always bought at the expense of the many and that financial wealth is only accumulated through fraud, corruption, exploitation, dishonesty and a depraved insensitivity to human suffering. With such beliefs do the unmotivated or the unsuccessful soothe their shabby egos. I may be poor but at least I didn't sacrifice my principles.  It would be unrealistic I suppose to have expected a different result from a collectivist such as Dickens who had a most restrictive view of the human spirit. Dickens like other socialists is no less materialistic than Scrooge. Their vision of a better world extends no further than obtaining by the invocation of guilt and fear vast sums of money from their more successful neighbours and redistributing it to losers instead of working to remove the barriers that prevent others from bettering their own lot thereby increasing their little wealth. Ebenezer could have been more beneficial to the Cratchits in ways that money can never accomplish.   I recognise that the nature of our relationship helped to condition you well. But what will your future be like when I and my generosity are not around to sustain you? Let me help you by providing some lessons in advanced accounting practices so that you can become marginally more productive to me and in the process help you earn more money. This is the Industrial Revolution Bob and opportunities have never been greater for anyone with a creative idea. Why don't you get one? Who like you might get rich in this setting? Still I doubt that Bob Cratchit would get the message. I suspect that he would still cling to his tin cup lifestyle preferring to trade upon our sympathies rather than develop creative talents. Never to experience the joy of existential equality and dignity that comes from being a producer of goods and services that other people value. Dickens' approach like the underlying methodology of the welfare state does nothing to provide long-term help for the Cratchits of the world. Scrooge's unearned generosity will not only increase his cost of doing business, thus increasing the likelihood of his own business failure, but upon his bankruptcy or eventual death will leave Cratchit in the position of having to find a new host upon which to attach himself for the remainder of his parasitic life. Let us have no more of these drive-by specters from the netherworld who feign their concern for crippled children like other opportunistic parasites who tell us that they feel our pain even as they are causing us more pain Let us have no more of the self-serving guilt peddling that keeps men and women subservient to those who threaten to cut off their dependencies. The claim against my client is without substance and should be dismissed with prejudice. It is the Industrial Revolution's version of a scapegoating action grounded more in bigotry than in fact or reason. In the end I can offer no better answer to such charges than those provided by my client himself. Bar humbug The defence rests.