Making a New Year’s resolution to lose weight has become a cliché—not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to be a healthy weight. But when the government resolves to make us—or more specifically our children—lose weight, that is a problem.

First lady Michelle Obama has made childhood obesity her cause. Who could object to that? People in favor of overweight children? Or maybe people who believe that government-as-nanny hasn’t worked in the past and won’t work in this case either.

Ohio State University released a study earlier this year on childhood obesity. What it found was that there are three activities that actually help reduce childhood obesity rates (and spending millions of taxpayer dollars on healthier school lunches isn’t one of them). They are: eating dinner together as a family, having children get enough sleep, and limiting children’s TV viewing.

What’s the common thread? Strong, involved parents. The cost? Zero dollars. Surely we don’t need a federal program to get the word out about these simple but effective measures. Michelle Obama, like other first ladies before her, has a bully pulpit of her own. Imagine the potential good she could do by encouraging parents to take responsibility for their own children by implementing these three basic, no-cost activities in their own homes.

Focusing on family dinners alone could have a tremendous impact. Other studies have shown that children who eat dinner together with their families are less likely to smoke, drink alcohol, try marijuana, and use drugs. They’re also more likely to get better grades in school. And families who eat together talk together. Just think of it! An opportunity to pass on good values.

Maybe the problem isn’t eating too much, it’s not eating together enough.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!

One of the justifications National Public Radio gave for firing veteran journalist Juan Williams earlier this year, after an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, was his observation that America is at war, whether we like it or not, with extremist Muslims. Williams simply was referring to the claims of the Times Square bomber, but to the leftist mind, this is invalid. For instance, the gals on The View went apoplectic when their guest Bill O’Reilly noted it was Muslims who perpetrated 9/11, and those who didn’t storm off the set only calmed down after O’Reilly qualified his claim with the modifier “extremist.”

“Extremist,” after all, implies “fringe,” which implies “rare.” The throngs of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after 9/11 notwithstanding. The 60 percent of American Muslims who reject the belief that Arabs were responsible for 9/11 excepted. Setting aside the majority in Jordan—and the substantial minorities in Lebanon and Pakistan—who believe in the necessity of suicide bombing. And so on. In other words, barring the data, it’s really just a small tribe of illiterate wing nuts causing all the trouble.

Except that it’s not.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has done the West a neglected service for a number of years, translating the speeches and writings of people who would just as soon not have them translated. For example, in the old days Yasser Arafat could give a conciliatory speech to Westerners, then turn right around and call for the destruction of Israel in Arabic, and Jimmy Carter would be none the wiser. But thanks largely to MEMRI we know right away when Libyan thug Moammar Qaddafi elucidates a Muslim strategy for conquering Europe—a potentiality Western leftists like to mock when voiced by conservatives.

And so witness a respected Egyptian journalist who is calling for Islamists to send more clerics to America in order to convert U.S. citizens. In Europe, Islam takes a different tack: As a culture of self-indulgence has reduced births to well below the rates necessary for sustaining populations, Muslims can simply move in, have babies, and wait. Eighty-one percent of British Muslims see themselves as Muslim first, British second. In another couple of generations, the distinction will be meaningless.

But in the United States, even though we’ve tolerated an abortion holocaust and embraced birth control like a sacrament, the move-in-and-wait strategy won’t work. Conversion is necessary.

Will it succeed? Will the last stronghold of the Christian West stand firm against a soft invasion of Islam? Given that nearly 40 percent of self-described Christians believe that Christ sinned on earth, and given profound ignorance among even serious Christians of something so fundamental as the Nicene Creed, I wouldn’t count on it.

WORLD’s offices are closed this week so that staff members can enjoy the Christmas and New Year’s holidays with their families and friends, so there will be no News Desk reports today. For the latest top news from The Associated Press, click here.

“Make fast” is a nautical term for securing something with a line, as making fast a boat to a dock. “Make fast” and “fix” and “support” lie behind the Greek New Testament word translated “strengthen” and “establish” in the following verses:

“For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you” (Romans 1:11; the NKJV says “establish”).

“. . . and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel to Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith” (1 Thessalonians 3:2).

Isn’t it interesting that Paul and Timothy in these verses have made a long road trip over pockmarked dirt roads (almost 200 years before the half-decent Appian Way), not for commerce, not for conquest—but entirely to “strengthen” and “establish” the faith of other believers? What kind of goal is that?

And Paul couldn’t wait to do it. He said he “longed” to go to Rome. Not to convert these people (they were already converted), but for the sole purpose of imparting “strength.” You would think, for all his eagerness, that he was imparting smartphones. What is “strength,” after all? You can’t see it or taste it. Is it even real?

May the Lord send each of you this year a friend like Paul or Timothy, with a faith that is “established,” and who cares about your being “made fast” too. A “made fast” faith holds firm in any wind of circumstance. After the storm passes, it is still holding on. A friend like that doesn’t let you get away with things. He exhorts you to “continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard” (Colossians 1:23). He likes to “hear . . . that you are standing firm . . .” (Philippians 1:27). In fact, he models it for you himself.

King David had a friend like that in Jonathan. “Jonathan, son of Saul, rose and went to David at Horesh, and strengthened his hand in God” (1 Samuel 23:16). He did it not by talking political strategy but truth.

Happy New Year’s. Be intentional about your conversations. If you are traveling many miles to be with someone, go like Paul and Timothy and Jonathan: Impart words that help “establish” or “make fast” your loved ones’ faith.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

Happy New Year’s Eve!

Random question of the day: As the last random question of 2010, what was your favorite random question of the past year?

My answer to yesterday’s question: Personally, what I’ll remember about 2010 is moving to St. Louis and starting to work.

This is our daily (except for Sundays) open thread, where you can 1) answer my question, 2) talk about something else, or 3) say something truly encouraging to the commenter before you.

Earlier this month, Lauren Winner, an author and assistant professor at Duke Divinity School, wrote an article for Books and Culture on why she still uses cookbooks as her primary source of culinary consultation instead of internet inspiration. She writes:

“I see the appeal of Recipe-By-Google. Indeed, I remember the first recipe I found randomly online and prepared—a raspberry almond tart, which I made for a dinner party I attended in 2002. It was great, and easy—fool-proof dough, raspberry and sugar alike supplied by Smucker’s. Since then, I have made a number of tasty meals from recipes I found online. But in the last year or so, I have begun to return to cookbooks. The service a trusted cookbook supplies is vetting. I still go to the Cook’s Illustrated website at least once a week. But simply typing in (as I did after Thanksgiving) “easy appetizers” or even “shrimp cups” proved overwhelming. My searches turned up three zillion recipes, and I didn’t feel I had any way to sort them.”

I feel her pain. I just glanced over and counted my own collection of cookbooks: I have 50, and this is a pared-down number. Yet I’ve still been guilty of turning to the search engines when I’m in a pinch; it seems much faster to search for a recipe this way than by pulling out a cookbook and hoping it has the answer I’m looking for. But when there are 5,000 variations on a theme (and usually there are many more than that), I want something trusted. That’s when I usually default to Fannie Farmer.

Fannie Farmer isn’t perfect, no. There are two recipes with penciled X’s through them so I know not to make that mistake again, but her imperfections make her all the more endearing to me—almost like she’s standing beside me in the kitchen giving me cooking lessons. She taught me to make a pie crust from scratch; she taught me how to make homemade rolls; she’s always there when I’m curious about a certain cut of meat and just exactly what is it I’m supposed to do with it anyway.

The extension to the rest of life is pretty easy to make. Just as I’ve been guilty of doing a quick search when I’m looking for some specific recipe, I’ve done the same with relationships, looking for friends and community on my own terms and at a time of day that’s convenient for me, when I know the better thing is just a phone call or cup of coffee away. The vetting process Winner alludes to is an important one when it comes to all things internet-related—it saves us from a bad pot roast as well as potentially shallow relationships that are accessible but not necessarily healthy.

Sarah Palin deserves an apology. When she said that the new healthcare law would lead to “death panels” deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not, she was roundly denounced and ridiculed.

Now we learn, courtesy of one of the ridiculers—The New York Times—that she was right. Under a new policy not included in the law for fear the administration’s real end-of-life game would be exposed, a rule issued by the recess-appointed Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, calls for the government to pay doctors to advise patients on options for ending their lives. These could include directives to forgo aggressive treatment that could extend their lives.

This rule will inevitably lead to bureaucrats deciding who is “fit” to live and who is not. The effect this might have on public opinion, which by a solid majority opposes Obamacare, is clear from an email obtained by the Times. It is from Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who sent it to people working with him on the issue. Oregon and Washington are the only states with assisted-suicide laws, a preview of what is to come at the federal level if this new regulation is allowed to stand. Blumenauer wrote in his November email:

“While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet. This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth.”

Ah, but it’s not a myth, and that’s where Palin nailed it. All inhumanities begin with small steps; otherwise the public might rebel against a policy that went straight to the “final solution.” All human life was once regarded as having value, because even government saw it as “endowed by our Creator.” This doctrine separates us from plants, microorganisms, and animals.

Doctors once swore an oath, which reads in part: “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.” Did Dr. Berwick, a fan of rationed care and the British National Health Service, ever take that oath? If he did, it appears he no longer believes it.

Do you see where this leads? First the prohibition against abortion is removed and “doctors” now perform them. Then the assault on the infirm and elderly begins. Once the definition of human life changes, all human lives become potentially expendable if they don’t measure up to constantly “evolving” government standards.

It will all be dressed up with the best possible motives behind it and sold to the public as the ultimate benefit. The killings, uh, terminations, will take place out of sight so as not to disturb the masses who might have a few embers of a past morality still burning in their souls. People will sign documents testifying to their desire to die, and the government will see it as a means of “reducing the surplus population,” to quote Charles Dickens.

When life is seen as having ultimate value, individuals and their doctors can make decisions about treatment that are in the best interests of patients. But when government is looking to cut costs as the highest good and offers to pay doctors to tell patients during their annual visits that they can choose to end their lives rather than continue treatment, that is more than the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. That is the next step on the way to physician-assisted suicide and, if not stopped, government-mandated euthanasia.

It can’t happen here? Based on what standard? Yes it can happen in America, and it will if the new Congress doesn’t stop it.

© 2010 Tribune Media Services Inc.

The minute you start having any kind of faith, it’s amazing how creative your praying can get. Once you believe that God is involved in your life on an hourly basis, and that you can have an immediate experience of His presence, and that He is not after all at roughly the distance from you of the M87 galaxy, praying becomes no chore at all.

I made a special request of the Lord recently. (Never would have done that in the past.) It happened on a day that I was overcome with a sensation of intense beauty. To be overcome with beauty is to know a moment of transcendence, and to have that is to desire it again.

I asked the Lord if he would grant me to taste beauty every day, even just a fleeting glimpse of it. (He knew what I meant: I was requesting not only to be presented with objective beauty, but also the subjective apparatus—to be given the capacity to be overwhelmed.)

Then I went on my way and did not always remember my petition. But the Lord remembered, and daily he has been coming through with delight. One day it was a flurry of swallows that crossed my path with their distinctive swooping and darting flight pattern and their glistening white underbellies.

Another day it was a sunset that took my breath away. And another day, my daughter called me upstairs urgently to see the bruised purples and tangerine celestial farewell from a second-story window—something uncharacteristic of her.

Day before yesterday I was riding through the snow in my friend’s SUV and she turned on “Scarborough Fair” by Simon & Garfunkel that played through her wonderful sound system. (My car is a clunker with Neanderthal speakers.). It was heaven.

Each time this happened, I suddenly remembered that I had asked the Lord, and so I recognized that these were no random cosmic acts but intimate winks from my Father, the giver of perfect gifts, with Whom there is no shadow of turning.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

WORLD’s offices are closed this week so that staff members can enjoy the Christmas and New Year’s holidays with their families and friends, so there will be no News Desk reports today. For the latest top news from The Associated Press, click here.

Good morning!

Random question of the day: What in your personal life will you remember the most about 2010?

My answer to yesterday’s question: I think in the long run, the midterm elections would be something I’d remember about news in 2010.

This is our daily (except for Sundays) open thread, where you can 1) answer my question, 2) talk about something else, or 3) say something truly encouraging to the commenter before you.