I just finished reading “The Reluctant Apostate: Leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses Comes at a Price” by Lloyd Evans. It provides a detailed look at the history of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and how Evans’ mother ended up joining the faith after a series of failed relationships. Most Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) are born into the faith and find it very difficult to leave the faith even if they want to.
Why? Lloyd Evans explains his reluctance to leave the JWs in his book and much of it is due to the JW policy of “shunning.” Once a member of JWs are disfellowshipped or disassociated, no one within JW is allowed to speak to the former member, not even immediate family members. In the case of Lloyd Evans, once Lloyd left the JWs and was disassociated, his father disowned him immediately and, thus, never met Lloyd’s newborn daughter.
Trump might not have sky high approval ratings. Never Trumpers like Bret Stephens don’t think Trump should be re-nominated by the Republican party in 2020. But this all might not matter. The Democrats have moved too far to the Left, according to Bret Stephens in his latest New York Times column, The Most Successful Economic System Shouldn’t Be a Dirty Word.
John Hickenlooper ought to be a poster child for American capitalism. After being laid off from his job as a geologist during the oil bust of the 1980s, he and his business partners turned an empty warehouse into a thriving brewery. It launched his political career, first as a problem-solving two-term mayor of Denver, then as a pragmatic two-term governor of Colorado, and now as a centrist candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
