Reporter: how are you going to make everyone hold hands and sing Kumbayah?
Becton: I’m not going to.
Reporter: aren’t you concerned about all the really bad thoughts out there?
Becton: No. I can’t change what you believe but I can damn sure modify your behavior.

It had an elegant simplicity that has stuck with me ever since. You can’t waste your time trying to change what people think. You need to focus on what you can change, which is behavior. When Becton left VII Corps in 1981, he left a combat-ready organization that, though it still had problems, had largely vanquished the racial divisions that had made it nearly combat ineffective.

I think the people questioning Trump’s sincerity have to ask themselves three questions. First, do the Democrats act on their promises to Black America, or are they pandering? Second, if the Democrats are pandering, how is Trump’s pander more offensive? And third, if Trump delivers on his promises, even if they are a pander, are the results less valid?

Let’s take, for instance, sentencing reform. Assuming sentencing reform is just a pander, the questions that must be answered by those carping are a) were federal sentencing procedures changed, and b) are the people released from long prison sentences under the reforms actually out of prison?

We, on the right, have gone through the same thing with President Trump and abortion. Is President Trump, in his heart, pro-life? I really have no way of answering that? Are his pro-life rhetoric and acts a pander, or do they represent an actual conversion? Again, I have no way of knowing. Putting that aside, though, I can look at his actions. He has put overtly pro-life judges on the bench. He is the first president to ever speak at a March for Life. He’s defunded Planned Parenthood and defended the Mexico City rule. He’s signed an executive order that attempts to protect the lives of children who’ve survived abortion.

I hope he’s had a spiritual conversion because we should always pray for the salvation of all souls, but do I set up night worrying about it? No. I do not doubt that George W. Bush was, deep down, pro-life. I also know that Donald Trump has done more for the cause of life in less than four years than Bush, who I admired, did in eight.

My advice to the people worrying about pandering is that they are concerned with the wrong issue. There is no way they can ever truly know the answer to that question and it is not important. They should have precisely two concerns. Does Trump deliver on his promise, and is the initiative executed in good faith, that is, is it resourced and managed properly?

I don’t care about what you believe. I do care about your actions.