Alan Greenspan died in June at 100. They got him.

Have you noticed that nobody ever really “dies” any more?

Move the deadline often enough, and eventually everyone dies right on schedule.

Certainly nobody famous. Nobody politically important. Nobody who once knew somebody important, embarrassed somebody important, or appeared in a photograph with the Clintons.

Those people don’t die. They get silenced. They knew too much. They were about to expose something. They crossed the wrong people.

They get “got.”

The lovely actress Hayden Panettiere died last Sunday at 36, about a week short of her 37th birthday. She was found in cardiac arrest at an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina. Paramedics could not revive her.

At the moment, the cause and manner of death remain undetermined. An autopsy found no trauma contributing to her death, and police found no evidence of foul play. The Drug Enforcement Administration is assisting Greenville police. All signs point to a drug overdose, though.

Naturally, the internet has already solved the case: Hollywood killed her.

The former “Heroes” and “Nashville” star published a memoir in May called “This Is Me: A Reckoning.” She described some genuinely ugly experiences as a young actress. At 18, she said, a woman she trusted put her into bed aboard a yacht with a famous British singer-songwriter. At 19, an Oscar-winning actor exposed himself to her at a party. She identified neither man.

You can see where this goes.

She knew things. She wrote a book. Three months later, she’s dead.

Case closed.

Except another corner of the internet identified a different culprit. Libertarian writer Jeffrey A. Tucker responded to Panettiere’s death by asking, “Is it time to stop this absurd gaslighting? Everyone knows the murder weapon.”

He meant the COVID-19 vaccine.

Tucker is a smart fellow. He’s been a hero in the fight against COVID tyranny. But I think he got ahead of himself here.

Or maybe when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

I love conspiracy theories. I love sound arguments more.

RELATED: Saint Anthony Fauci’s index of forbidden questions

Nyia Sissac/Washington Post/Getty Images

Conspiracies exist. Watergate was a conspiracy. COINTELPRO was real. MKUltra was real. Corporations conceal evidence. Governments lie all the time. Sometimes a suspicious death really is suspicious.

Nevertheless, conspiracies require evidence.

That seems to be the part many of us have let go.

Antonin Scalia died in his sleep at a Texas hunting ranch in 2016. He was 79, had serious health problems, and no autopsy was performed. Early confusion about the circumstances — including an unfortunately described pillow — turned his death almost instantly into a murder mystery.

Ah, but Barack Obama needed a Supreme Court vacancy, didn’t he? Even Donald Trump entertained the speculation publicly.

Sure. On the other hand, old men die.

Four years later, Scalia’s “best buddy” Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at 87 after years of recurring cancer.

And, mostly, she died like any other elderly woman.

There was fury over her replacement and a bitter confirmation fight over Amy Coney Barrett. But nobody built much of a murder theory around an 87-year-old woman with metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Evidently, some important people are still permitted to die in peace.

Conspiracy theories about famous deaths are hardly new. John F. Kennedy alone has supported an industry for more than 60 years. What social media has done is speed up production.

Now, within minutes of a public figure’s death, thousands of people can search old interviews, posts, photographs, and acquaintances for the clue that explains everything. Then comes the question: What are the odds?

Usually, nobody knows.

Earlier this year, I experienced what doctors called “stroke-like symptoms.” High blood pressure appears to have been the culprit. I also got two Moderna shots in 2021.

I regret getting the jabs. But according to some of the loudest alarmists at the time, they should have killed me by 2022.

Somehow, I lived.

Five years later, I had something approximating a stroke, and now somebody can point backward and say: See? The vaccine!

Sorry, no. You don’t get to predict that millions of vaccinated people will drop dead within a year, watch the prediction fail, then spend the next few years claiming every heart attack, stroke, cancer diagnosis, and celebrity death as vindication.

Move the deadline often enough, and eventually everyone dies right on schedule.

That doesn’t mean suspicion is foolish. Sometimes the official story really is wrong. Sometimes — often! — institutions deserve skepticism.

But skepticism asks questions. A conspiracy theory that begins with the answer is something else.

RELATED: ‘Conspiracy theory’ is just media code for ‘we hope this never comes out’

Matt Cardy/Getty Images

That’s what makes Panettiere’s death such an awkwardly perfect example. We have an unexplained death, a troubling memoir, a history of addiction, the DEA assisting police, and no final cause — yet.

That is plenty of fodder for speculation.

It isn’t enough for certainty, which we so desperately desire.

So nobody merely has a heart attack. Nobody merely overdoses. Nobody simply grows old. Nobody has a stroke. Strokes are boring; trust me.

No, somebody did it. Somebody got got.

Alan Greenspan lived to 100. He palled around with Ayn Rand. He chaired the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades. He advised presidents. He moved markets by clearing his throat.

Then he croaked.

No assassins. No cover-up. No final secret — as far as anyone knows.

Death got him.

Eventually, it gets us all.

​Alan greenspan, Cardiac arrest, Conspiracy theories, Coverup, Death, Drug overdose, Hayden panettiere, Heart attack, Natural death, Overdoses, The clintons, Vaccine, Opinion & analysis 

BlazeTV host and Lakepointe Church Pastor Josh Howerton recently discussed with the eponymous host of the “Shawn Ryan Show” the ongoing war against Christianity and what set the stage for America’s present “prodigal son” moment.

While he recognized that Christ’s church is now, as ever, assailed on all sides, Howerton emphasized that many have awoken in recent years to the reality that there are dark spiritual forces at work in the world and also that there are also prevailing forces of light whose victory was secured at Calvary two millennia ago.

‘That light has a name.’

Early in their conversation, Howerton told Ryan — who recently announced that he has resumed going to church — that the war on Christianity is primeval; that after the Fall, Satan declared “war on the offspring that God’s going to use to redeem the world. So that’s the storyline of the entire Bible. It’s Word versus world.”

“The Bible says the whole world lies under the power of the evil one. The Bible actually calls Satan the little-g god of this world,” said the pastor, who noted also that when tempted in the desert, Jesus Christ did not correct Satan when the dark one claimed dominion over the kingdoms of the world.

Howerton noted that there is “this tacit assumption throughout the entire Bible that Satan is really over all of the world’s systems — and that’s why everything in the world aligns against one thing in particular, and it’s Christianity — Christ and Christians. That’s baseline.”

Expounding on an observation shared with him by Middle East expert Raymond Ibrahim that this satanic contempt makes sense of otherwise nonsensical political alliances — such as those formed in recent years between LGBT activists, feminists, and Islamists — Howerton noted, “The unifying principle is the enemy of my enemy is my friend: anything but Christianity, and anyone but Christ.”

Howerton also detailed the commonalities between the Antichrist referred to in the Bible and Mahdi, the messianic figure in Islamic eschatology who is supposed to defeat Muslims’ enemies in the end times, and strongly suggests that the purported angel who spoke to Muhammad was the same demonic entity Saint Paul warned of in 2 Corinthians 11:14.

Ryan had expressed interest in whether Christianity was actually growing, citing statistics highlighting the years-long trend of widespread apostasization in America, which recent polling indicates has actually slowed down.

Although Howerton reassured Ryan that Christianity is “globally growing,” he noted that “in my lifetime, Christianity in America has generally been declining. I’m 43; 1983. Feels like the tide’s turning.”

RELATED: America’s fastest-growing Christian voice is joining Blaze Media

Screenshot – Courtesy of “Shawn Ryan Show,” YouTube

Ryan observed that widespread disenchantment with and distrust for government and various institutions has prompted people to seek something concrete and true, and this has driven them to Christ.

He also agreed with Howerton’s suggestion that the increasing immorality and vile actions exhibited in the West have awakened people to the twofold reality “that there was a non-ignorable dark force in the world” and that “if there’s a darkness, there must be a light, and that light has a name, and His name is Jesus Christ.”

The pastor likened this particular moment of apparent religious renewal and spiritual awakening to the biblical story of the prodigal son’s return.

“He spends all his money on parties and strippers and alcohol and, you know, whatever. And then if you read that, there’s this little verse, and everybody skips the verse that I think is most important, where he gets to the spot where he spends all the money and … everything that he thought was gonna make him happy, and it just didn’t,” said Howerton.

“It says, ‘and then he came to his senses,’ and he started running back to his father.”

Howerton added, “We got a bit of a prodigal nation.”

Like the prodigal son, the pastor suggested that it has finally dawned on America, “Everything else didn’t work, but I know I can go home to Dad.”

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​Josh howerton, Shawn ryan, Christianity, Religion, Satan, Islam, Faith 

For nearly 20 years, the same sentence has greeted me every morning.

It first appeared on a yellow Post-it note stuck to the door of my office in Nashville. When my wife and I moved to Montana, the note came with us. Eventually, the paper curled and the ink faded, so my wife had the words beautifully rendered in calligraphy and framed.

A culture that ceases to ponder the character of God will eventually begin reinventing the character of man.

Today, they hang on the wall in my office, where I see them before I begin each day’s work.

The sentence comes from Catherine Winkworth’s 19th-century translation of Joachim Neander’s 17th-century hymn, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”: “Ponder anew what the Almighty can do, if with His love He befriend thee.”

The word ponder is surprisingly rare in our hymnody. Yet Neander was hardly the first to call God’s people to this discipline. More than a thousand years earlier, an ancient text from the Liturgy of St. James, rooted in the worship of the early church, gave us the hymn we know as “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence”: “Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand; ponder nothing earthly minded …”

Silence and pondering belong together. Silence quiets the noise. Pondering fixes the mind on what is true.

Our culture has become proficient at neither.

Relentless conflict eventually exhausts everyone. We were not created merely to react to the world around us. We were created to contemplate the God who rules over it.

Ask friends, family, or neighbors how they are doing, and many will answer with the same word: “Tired.”

Fatigue has become shorthand for nearly every kind of cultural exhaustion: political, racial, social, even digital. The causes differ, but the word keeps returning. We have become exhausted by the demand to react to every controversy, and in the process we have nearly forgotten how to ponder.

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Serggn/Getty Images

That discipline has quietly eroded. We accumulate information without assembling it. We have access to more knowledge than any generation in history, yet seem to spend less time fitting those pieces together into wisdom. We react to isolated events without considering the larger story. We spend more time contemplating the latest controversy than contemplating the unchanging character of Almighty God.

Joachim Neander built his life around a different discipline.

He frequently retreated into a valley outside Düsseldorf to pray and contemplate the majesty of God revealed in creation. That contemplation eventually found its way into his hymns.

The valley where he so often prayed and wrote came to bear his name: Neander’s Tal, or Neander’s Valley.

Nearly two centuries after his death, laborers uncovered ancient human remains there. Scientists named the discovery for the place where it was found: Neanderthal.

Today, the word has become a pejorative. We use it to describe someone as backward, primitive, or unenlightened.

The irony is striking.

Long before the world associated that name with fossils, it belonged to a man who saw with remarkable clarity. While others would one day search that valley to understand where man came from, Joachim Neander walked those same hills contemplating the One from whom man came.

That irony reaches beyond Neander’s name. The habits that shape a people’s souls eventually shape their civilization.

America’s founders inherited centuries of reflection on the character of God, the nature of man, the meaning of liberty, the demands of justice, and the proper limits of civil government. Their constitutional order reflected two convictions especially important to the American experiment: Rights do not originate with government, and human beings possess great dignity while remaining profoundly capable of abusing power.

Those convictions help explain both the founders’ insistence on individual liberty and their determination to restrain political authority.

At its best, America bore the fruit of generations that had pondered questions larger than politics itself.

RELATED: You didn’t build that, Mr. Obama

Pablo Martinez Monsivais – Pool/Getty Images

A civilization eventually follows the direction of its gaze.

A culture that ceases to ponder the character of God will eventually begin reinventing the character of man. Gratitude gives way to grievance. Stewardship gives way to entitlement. And politics begins carrying burdens it was never built to bear.

Which brings me back to the sentence hanging on my office wall. Tomorrow morning, I’ll walk into my office, glance at those familiar words, and begin another day: “Ponder anew what the Almighty can do, if with His love He befriend thee.”

The noise of the moment loses some of its authority. Headlines surrender some of their urgency. The fatigue begins to dissipate. And before long, pondering gives way to praise.

Perhaps that is why Neander ended the hymn where such pondering inevitably leads: “Let the Amen sound from His people again; gladly forever adore Him.”

​Hymns, Doomscrolling, Lyrics, Joachim neander, Pondering, Irony, God, Creation, Dusseldorf, Praise to the lord the almighty, Amen, Opinion & analysis 

The chatter surrounding the Lindsay Clancy murder trial continues to grow more convoluted and contentious by the day.

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts, strangled her three children — ages 5, 3, and 8 months — with exercise bands in January 2023 before attempting suicide by jumping from a second-story window, leaving her paralyzed. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming postpartum psychosis.

Hundreds of women recently gathered in pink outside her ongoing murder trial courthouse (and online via the “Same, Lindsay” trend) to defend her, arguing the medical system failed her and that many mothers share similar postpartum mental-health struggles. Another viral theory perpetuated largely by female Clancy supporters speculates that it was actually her now ex-husband, Patrick, who killed their children and framed her for the murders.

BlazeTV host John Doyle sees beyond the disturbing Clancy support to what he believes is fueling the apologetics surrounding her: the true crime obsession that has gripped so many American women.

True crime, Doyle explains, has become so popular that it’s the subject of many podcasts, television series, and books. There’s even entire true crime conventions that attract thousands of fans.

But it’s predominately women who make up the true crime audience.

Doyle believes there’s a connection between this data and Clancy’s significant base of female supporters. He argues that many of the women who get sucked into the twisted tales of serial killers will find ways to reject the “settled science” when it’s a woman who’s the perpetrator.

To illustrate this point, he reads a tweet from friend of the show Sean Fitzgerald who attended CrimeCon:

This tendency of these true crime fans to support female defendants regardless of the evidence brought against them is what’s fueling the support for Clancy, Doyle argues.

Women, he says, have been conditioned by modern culture to be “extremely paranoid of men” — even in situations when it’s a woman who’s facing conviction.

“The true crime thing, part of what they like about it is the mystery. … It’s like who did what to whom? What’s going on? Oh my gosh, what if this person was framed and it was actually the man?” says Doyle.

What these “junior psychologists” fail to realize, however, is that “most everybody who is actually at the point of going to criminal trial is guilty,” he adds. “They’re in that room for a reason.”

But in addition to their general distrust of men, Doyle continues, there’s the “drama” that pulls them in. A woman being framed by a man is a far more interesting scenario than a cut-and-dry case.

“These people are only interested in drama, in entertainment, in narrative. There’s no part of them that considers the merits of individual claims. This is not about truth for them,” he says.

“If you put something in front of them that contradicts what they are telling you, they will reflexively deny it basically on credit. They’ll say, ‘No, this isn’t true. I just have to go find why,’ and then they go digging to find some piece of information to rationalize their having reflexively denied it,” he continues.

But if pushback continues, the doubling down only intensifies.

“They will even … amplify the drama to themselves by asserting without any evidence at all that you, by not feeding into their fantasy, are actually a part of it — but on the side that’s trying to hide the truth,” says Doyle. “Ultimately though, they’re going to get mad at you for basically pouring water on their fantasy.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from John Doyle?

To enjoy more of the truth about America and join the fight to restore a country that has been betrayed by its own leaders, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​John doyle, Lindsay clancy, Murder trial, True crime, Blazetv show 

Does Israel still have a biblical claim on the Middle East?

That’s the title of a recent article in which a prominent Christian theologian disqualifies himself from his own argument by putting forth a pack of half-truths, innuendo, and outright lies as the foundation informing his biblical interpretation of Israel’s claim to its land.

I’ve also attended services at an evangelical church in Jerusalem, and neither going in nor coming out were we ‘spit on’ or accosted in any way.

Christian theologians definitely disagree on Israel’s role in the end-time and its relevance to us today.

That’s OK. We don’t have to agree on everything.

What’s not OK is undergirding your “biblical interpretation” with ignorant lies.

Michael Horton is a theology professor at California’s Westminster Seminary, and he believes the answer to the question is no; Israel has no biblical claim in the Middle East.

Honestly, I’m not going to address his biblical interpretation (see: above, “We don’t have to agree on everything”).

However, this article slyly uses almost every Jew-hating talking point to build a foundation for Horton’s point.

I’m going to talk to Mr. Horton here.

‘Terrorists’

The only time you use the word “terrorist,” Mr. Horton, you’re referring to Israeli settlers, who can be unpleasant but have yet to dip into pastimes such as raping women or slaughtering children in the most hideous ways imaginable (see: October 7).

Why can’t you bring yourself to apply the word where it absolutely fits — the ongoing campaign of terrorism the Palestinians have inflicted on Israeli citizens?

Instead, you share a whopper like this:

“Since 1948, Israel has fought for its own existence, while Palestinians have also defended their homes. The only way forward was a two-state solution, which was very close in the 1970s and ’80s, but is being brought to a forever-impossible point with the current Israeli government.”

Whew, that’s a lot to unpack.

So what the Palestinians have been doing since 1948 is simply “defending their homes”? How do we explain the existence then of security checkpoints and walls near freeways and all manner of other anti-terrorist setups in Israel? Were those crazy Jews just imagining the suicide bombings and knife attacks and rocks being pelted at cars? Surely you’ve heard of terrorist attacks on Israeli soil, sir?

Nor do you mention that when a two-state solution has been close, it has always and forever been nixed by the Palestinians. All they have to do is agree to stop killing Jews and live in peace. And that, Mr. Horton, has always been unacceptable to them.

And you turn this on its head, by blaming the “current Israeli government” and, later in your piece, “Christian dispensationalists.” It’s never the Palestinians’ fault. They’re the victims, and not once in this piece do you even hint at their own responsibility for so much bloodshed and hatred.

RELATED: ‘Anti-ICE’ Christians mistake moral confusion for empathy

Ryan Murphy/Getty Images

‘Horrible atrocities’

The internet is full of outlandish tales of Christians supposedly being persecuted in Israel, so the Candace Owens/Tucker Carlson fans are afraid to travel there for fear of being “spit on” at best and tortured in a dungeon at worst. You play into this nonsense by claiming you’ve talked to pastors in the Middle East (you notably don’t say where in the Middle East) who tell of “horrible atrocities” by the Israeli soldiers and the Israel Defense Forces.

Surely you are not unaware of the people who have it IN THEIR CHARTER to wipe out the Jews? The people who train their children to hate Jews? The people who pulled off October 7? Is there no place in your seemingly measured discourse to condemn actual “horrible atrocities”?

I know many Christians in Israel, and I have visited there, including non-tourist places. I’ve also attended worship services at an evangelical church in Jerusalem, and neither going in nor coming out were we “spit on” or accosted in any way, because the vast majority of Jews could not care less. The church live streams its services for Pete’s sake. It’s not an underground or persecuted church. Not to mention that the number of Christians in Israel is growing unlike any other Middle Eastern country.

‘Genocide’

Of course you had to use the g-word, even though Israel has never, ever called for genocide. It is, however, precisely what the Palestinians explicitly call for (regularly, and in Hamas governing documents). But you said it is Israel’s far-right Kahanist party that is “demanding genocide wherever Palestinians now live.”

That is simply not an accurate description of Kahanism. Meir Kahane and his Kach Party advocated the forced expulsion — or “transfer” — of Arabs from Israel and the territories under its control. Whatever you want to call that policy, it is not in any way “genocide.”

Words mean something, Mr. Horton.

I also grow weary of the demonization and complete mischaracterization of “dispensationalist” churches. You again:

“In the dispensationalist churches of my youth, the whole Bible centered not on Christ but on the nation of Israel, especially its reconstitution in 1948.”

Yeah. I grew up in dispensationalist churches, too. And at no time, in no way, did the nation of Israel displace Christ as the center of the Bible or anything else. I have heard this nonsense so many times lately, that Christian Zionists or dispensationalists “worship Israel.” It’s not true, outside of some weird sects that may exist, and it is frankly sinful to besmirch fellow believers in this way.

The soft-pedaling of the Palestinian/Islamic worldview that is in fact genocidal toward Jews (and the West in general) is galling. You describe what you call “horrific acts of ultra-orthodox violence” and then sympathetically offer this: “As is too often true in families and national histories, those subject to extreme violence seek revenge through a similar dehumanization of the other.”

So it’s the Israeli settlers who are extremely violent? Poor Hamas has no choice but to burn families alive in their homes? After October 7, I simply cannot see how a professed Christian can twist truth this way.

Whopper after whopper

Let’s finish with one more of your whoppers:

“Christianity in the West Bank, including Bethlehem, is being erased by ultra-orthodox settlers under the protective umbrella of the Israel Defense Forces.”

There is a kernel of truth here. There have been documented incidents of extremist Israeli settlers harassing and attacking Palestinian Christians, vandalizing Christian property, and encroaching on Christian-owned land.

But you take those incidents and spin them into something much larger: a story in which Jews are “erasing” Christianity from the West Bank under the “protective umbrella” of the Israeli military.

Where is the evidence for that sweeping claim?

And just as striking is what you leave out. Palestinian Christians have also faced documented harassment, intimidation, violence, and property disputes involving Muslim Palestinians, including incidents in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Christian communities have been shrinking across the Middle East for decades, including in places where there are no Israeli settlers and no IDF.

That Horton blames Jews for “erasing” Christianity in the West Bank, when said erasure precisely patterns the erasures in every Muslim country — well, it’s just the same old libel: anti-Semitic libel.

Perhaps you didn’t mean to lie. I hope so. I also hope you consider that you approached this all wrong, and you need to try again.

​Bible, Christianity, Dispensationalism, Genocide, Hamas, Israel, Israeli settlers, Jews, Middle east, Muslims, Palestine, Theology, Two-state solution, Faith, October 7