Every week I go out of my way to speak to teenagers just to see what's going on in their minds. Too often the answer is, "Nothin'." Public school students seem to have this glassy, disorganized, disoriented look about them. They're preoccupied with things that don't matter, especially image and conforming to peer pressure.

An outstanding salesman is one who can tell another to go to hell and make him feel very happy that he is on his way. Such a feat requires intense creativity, deceptive semantics, and the ability to lie creatively and utter warm, loving words to the victim while concealing the intense hatred the perpetrator feels for him.

World events seem to press forward in a confusing whirl of exhilarating noise and babble, leaving the average onlooker confused as to its significance. In reality, these reports only haunt those viewing world events through the filters of post-WWII and Cold War assumptions, rather than the new global paradigm in play, which is global governance.

Incoming! "Kahwump!" Few Americans have connected the collapse of Enron with the collapse of the World Trade Center and with the collapse of Argentina's currency. However, they are all opening salvos in the first war of the 21st century, which may well be recorded as World War III when the dust settles and the dead are tallied.

"Freedom is under attack" has been the battle cry since 9/11. Freedom is indeed under attack, but our intelligence sources indicate Osama bin Laden is not the chief culprit. The attacks on 9/11 were on America, not freedom. In reality, freedom has long been under attack by those in the West who have sought to destroy the foundations upon which Western thought, culture and law rest.

Oslo was dead, to begin with. "There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner..." Old Oslo was as dead as a doornail. The yearlong wake called an "intifada" began in September 2000, coupled with Israeli reprisals and assassinations, during which it was rumored the peace process might be made alive again.

In July we wrote an article, "The Oklahoma City Bombing: A Past and Future History", documenting how the tragic bombing of the Murrah Office Building in Oklahoma City was a watershed event that scuttled the Religious Right and short-circuited efforts to bring an ever-expanding and frequently abusive government back to its constitutional guidelines.

Hate brings together a diverse group of people: an imprisoned pastor in Sweden, the Boy Scouts, people who violate their country's hate speech laws, gays and anti-gays, not to mention a whole herd of shouting, virulently angry, but of course, "tolerant" people at the third UN Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa, last month.

Kaboom! A rousing first shot across the bow had been fired. Humanists declared their intention of transforming western culture and moving it from its Christian base into the enlightened religion of humanism. In 1933, when Humanist Manifesto I appeared, its co-author John Dewey was made honorary president of the National Education Association (US).

The extradition in July of Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague was a subtle shift in the march toward global "law." It was the first time a former head of state had been successfully extradited for trial as a war criminal. However, while some might consider the trial of a "war criminal" a positive event, it should be considered negative because the precedent it is setting in global law is dubious.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution establishes the right of the people to be secure in their papers, persons and possessions and to not be deprived of them without due process. There was a reason the Founding Fathers wrote this amendment into the Constitution: they recognized that privacy and property are essential foundations of a free society, and that freedom cannot exist without them.

In May the United States braced itself for the inevitable carnival that would surround the execution of Timothy McVeigh for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Then suddenly the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) revealed that - oops! - it had failed to turn over 3,000 pages of evidence to McVeigh's attorneys during the discovery process at McVeigh's trial.

"So, where are we?" This is perhaps the most cogent question that could be asked about the Middle East after a year of peace process go-arounds, collapses, violent attacks and reprisals: all of which ended a decade of "no-war."

For decades the planet has been awash in doomsday environmental propaganda proclaiming the imminent demise of earth due to environmental calamity, which only drastic action (and large amounts of government money) can avert.

Two thousand years ago, a governor in an obscure eastern province of the Roman Empire asked a condemned prisoner what his definition of truth was. At the time it was a sarcastic response to his prisoner's absurd claim that he was the way, the truth and the life.

It's December 26, the day after Christmas, when the death of the church's first martyr, Stephen, is traditionally commemorated. Trivial, yes, but most Christians can't give me the correct answer.

This has been an active year for the Middle East peace process. Beginning with the Oslo Accord in the early 90s, the Middle East may not have achieved a permanent peace, but it did enjoy a stable condition of "no war." Prior to this, there had been decades of strife, riots and terrorist activities.

Over the last decade, the United Nations has unabashedly been reinventing itself into a global government, striving to obtain the legal teeth and financial resources to implement its policies. Government reinvention is frequently an effort to avoid the consequences of failed policies in the past, or to justify a government's continued expansion by posing solutions to the problems it has created.

The past several months have witnessed the emotional media controversy surrounding the fate of six-year-old Cuban refugee Elin Gonzlez in Miami. A debate raged - even among conservatives and Christians - as to whether or not Elin should be sent back to live under a communist dictatorship or be allowed to stay with relatives in the U.S.

The move by the world's governments to number, track and spy upon their citizens is arousing serious concern on several continents.

After a decade of negotiations, assassinations and terrorism (i.e., life as usual in the Middle East), this year will most likely see the peace process wind down to its conclusion.  Its final outcome is laced with many uncertainties, but what is certain is that when it ends, both sides will realize that everything possible by means of peaceful negotiation has already been achieved.

The performance was called "Showtime." It lasted 51 days and when it was over, more than three score Branch Davidians lay dead in their church home in Waco, Texas: dead from gunfire, smoke inhalation, fire and cyanide poisoning - dead by their own hand according to the federal government.

Intelligence experts are warning that 1999 is likely to be a year of serious upheaval in the Middle East. King Hussein of Jordan is suffering from lymph cancer, and a major conflict between Turkey and Cyprus over the issue of the delivery of S-300 missiles has been postponed only temporarily until the end of the year.

"This is America. That can't happen here." It's a popular phrase among Christians who have been warned about the rapidly deteriorating protections in this country and the possibility of oncoming persecution. In Jeremiah's time, the Israelites chanted a similar mantra: "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord."

The battle of the decade is upon us and the majority of Christian parents are snoozing through it. The outcome will determine whether or not your children or grandchildren will be raised in the Christian faith. Such language is alarmist but for one thing: it's true.