Conservatives | OrthodoxNet.com Blog

Why the Right Fears Transforming America — and the Left Seeks It

September 7, 2010

Dennis Prager

9/7/2010 – Dennis Prager -
The giveaway regarding presidential candidate Barack Obama’s plans for America was his repeated use of the words “fundamentally transform.”

Some of us instinctively reacted negatively — in fact, with horror — at the thought of fundamentally transforming America.

The “us” are conservatives.

One unbridgeable divide between left and right is how each views alternatives to present-day America. Those on the left imagine an ideal society that has never existed, and therefore seek to “fundamentally transform” America. When liberals imagine an America fundamentally transformed, they envision it becoming a nearly utopian society in which there is no greed, no racism, no sexism, no inequality, no poverty and ultimately no unhappiness.

Conservatives, on the other hand, look around at other societies and history and are certain that if America were fundamentally transformed, it would become just like those other societies. America would become a society of far less liberty, of ethically and morally inferior citizens and of much more unhappiness. And cruelty would increase exponentially around the world. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Culture war, Leftism, Philosophy

Manufacturing Liberals

August 12, 2010

8/12/2010 – Larrey Anderson -
Liberals are not insane, as many conservatives believe. Most liberals (I am not speaking here of the political or intellectual class) are ordinary human beings pursuing everyday human lives — just like the rest of us. Here is a brief summary of why most liberals are liberal and what we can do to help at least some of them understand conservative thought:

1) Indoctrination, not education
Polls consistently find that over 70% of college professors identify themselves as liberal. The percentage of liberal faculty members is even higher if one removes responses from those teaching the “hard” sciences. In our prestigious universities, the figure approaches 90%. Both of these reported percentages are probably lower than the real figures [i]. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Culture war, Education, Leftism

Christian Academics Cite Hostility On Campus

August 11, 2010

8/3/2010 – Barbara Bradley Hagerty -
One of the hot debates in academia is now reaching the courts. The question: Do universities discriminate against religious conservatives? Some professors and students say they do, but it’s not an easy charge to pin down.

When Elaine Howard Ecklund began asking top scientists whether they believe in God, she got a surprise. Ecklund, an assistant professor at Rice University and author of the book Science Vs. Religion, polled 1,700 scientists at elite universities. Contrary to the stereotype that most scientists are atheists, she says, nearly half of them say they are religious. But when she did follow up interviews, she found they practice a “closeted faith.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Christian Persecution, Conservatives, Culture war, Education

George Demos: We Must Rebuild Orthodox Church at Ground Zero

August 7, 2010

George Demos

8/3/2010 – Anastasios Papapostolou -

Greek-American Conservative Republican Candidate for Congress in the First District of New York George Demos appeared on Fox News recently. Demos called on The Port Authority’s Executive Director Chris Ward to immediately stop his bureaucratic roadblocks and that the rebuilding of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at Ground Zero must be a top priority.

Demos stated that it was disgraceful that the Port Authority of New York/ New Jersey reniged on a deal with Church officials and for over a year has refused to meet with the leaders of the only house of worship actually destroyed on September 11, 2001. Demos noted that our government is spending billions of dollars to rebuild the infrastructure of Ground Zero, yet no plan exists for rebuilding the Church. Demos reiterated that our Judeo-Christian values are under attack in our nation and that rebuilding the Church transcends any particular denomination. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Christian Bashing, Conservatives, Culture war, Orthodox Church

Delegitimizing Liberalism

July 22, 2010

7/22/2010 – J. Robert Smith -

Five decades after liberalism began to fail, it’s still with us and finding potent ways to diminish liberty. Liberalism has — or seems to have — more lives than a cat. It’s sustained principally by two things, both powerful: myth and interest. If liberalism as a political and societal force is ever to be marginalized, it first must be separated from the myth that it grows in the same garden of liberty and republican virtues as conservatism and libertarianism. Voters and the public need to learn and appreciate that liberalism is largely a statist creed alien to the nation’s heritage. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Culture war, Leftism

The Left’s War on Free Speech

May 18, 2010

5/18/2010 – Bruce Walker -
The left pretends to be the biggest champion of free speech. When the New York Times wrote articles about how our government was tracking the activities of terrorists, journalistic behavior which directly endangered the lives of Americans by providing intelligence information to those terrorists who are at war with us, the sanctimonious left insisted that this newspaper was simply exercising its constitutional right of free speech and free press. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Freedom, Leftist Hypocrisy, Media Bias, Totalitarian Democrats

A Carefully Crafted Immigration Law in Arizona

April 28, 2010

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signs the illegal-immigration bill

4/26/2010 – by Byron York –

The chattering class is aghast at Arizona’s new immigration law. “Harkens back to apartheid,” says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Cynthia Tucker. “Shameful,” says the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne. “Terrible…an invitation to abuse,” says the New York Times’ David Brooks.

For his part, President Obama calls the law “misguided” and says it “threaten[s] to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.” Obama has ordered the Justice Department to “closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Culture war, Politics

Liberals and the Violence Card

April 28, 2010

Wall Street Journal | by Rush Limbaugh | 4/26/2010

The latest liberal meme is to equate skepticism of the Obama administration with a tendency toward violence. That takes me back 15 years ago to the time President Bill Clinton accused “loud and angry voices” on the airwaves (i.e., radio talk-show hosts like me) of having incited Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. What self-serving nonsense. Liberals are perfectly comfortable with antigovernment protest when they’re not in power. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Leftist Hypocrisy, Politics

Why Left Talks about “White” Tea Parties

April 27, 2010

Dennis Prager

by Dennis Prager | 4/27/2010

Opponents of the popular expression of conservative opposition to big government, the tea party, regularly note that tea partiers are overwhelmingly white. This is intended to disqualify the tea parties from serious moral consideration.

But there are two other facts that are far more troubling: The first is the observation itself. The fact that the Left believes that the preponderance of whites among tea partiers invalidates the tea party movement tells us much more about the Left than it does about the tea partiers.

It confirms that the Left really does see the world through the prism of race, gender and class rather than through the moral prism of right and wrong. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Leftism, Leftist Hypocrisy, Moral issues

Fighting Statism

April 25, 2010

American Thinker | by Justin Blackman | 4/25/2010

Individual rights must be the rallying point for reclaiming liberty.

The Founders of the United States hoped to create a society of free individuals, but for at least a century, the nation has been marching ever more quickly in the direction of tyranny. The independent Tea Party movement represents a renewed desire to roll back the tide of government expansion, but this cause will fail unless its participants take an uncompromising stand in favor of individual rights. A building, no matter how rigid, cannot stand upon a weak and cracked foundation. In the same vein, errors and inconsistencies in a society’s philosophical foundation will cause its downfall — even in one as great as ours. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Freedom, Politics, Pro-America

Democracy and Freedom

March 30, 2010

Freedom Flag Liberty

American Thinker | by Bruce Walker | 3/28/2010

We often confuse democracy with freedom. The greatest good of government is liberty — that is what our Declaration of Independence emphatically states. Simply implementing the “Will of the People” is no more noble, true, or decent than the will of a kind and wise autocrat: Democracy has no value at all, except to help keep us free.

The world today shows the tension between freedom and democracy. Canada is a well-functioning democracy. Yet, as Ann Coulter and Mark Steyn and other conservatives can attest, it is an intolerant and censorious democracy which denies its intellectual critics the right to speak. The United Kingdom is democratic. Yet Geert Wilders and Michael Savage have been kept out of the country, at different times, for “hate speech.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Constitution, Culture war, Freedom

Hope and Change … the Constitution

March 29, 2010

Larry Elder

Human Events | by Larry Elder | 3/25/2010

We live in a fundamentally different country from that which existed only days ago. The government now requires that every American purchase health insurance. The Constitution has been attacked, interpreted in a way beyond its original intent. Therefore, we must change it.

Ignoring the will of the majority of the American people, the discouraging experiences of countries with socialized medicine, and the already staggering amount of entitlement debt, President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats “reformed” health care. Once a nation under a Constitution that restricted government intrusion, we now want government to provide for our “needs” by calling them “rights.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Constitution, Freedom, Leftism

Why the Left Despises Personal Responsibility

March 18, 2010

Townhall.com | by Kevin McCullough | 3/7/2010

As an individual citizen, is it more American to believe that you have a personal responsibility to be personally accountable for your actions, and those of your family? Or is it more American to believe that you should wait for the giant collective to take care of you?

This did not use to be a controversial concept. Until liberals decided that power is more highly coveted than freedom. Once they did, they started systematically enslaving people to the collective. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Freedom, Leftism

Government, Yes! God and Parents, No!

February 28, 2010

Townhall.com | by Dennis Prager | Feb. 23, 2010

One of the major differences between the right and the left concerns the question of authority: To whom do we owe obedience and who is the ultimate moral authority?

For the right, the primary moral authority is God (or, for secular conservatives, Judeo-Christian values), followed by parents. Of course, government must also play a role, but it is ultimately accountable to God and it should do nothing to undermine parental authority.

For the left, the state and its government are the supreme authorities, while parental and divine authority are seen as impediments to state authority. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservatives, Culture war, Leftism, Moral issues

Thank You, Glenn Beck, for Exposing Communism’s Evils

February 8, 2010

Anti-Communism_01_150x150
Pajamas Media | by Jamie Glazov | Feb. 5, 2010

The tortures included laying a man naked on a freezing cement floor, forcing his legs apart, and then an interrogator stepping on his testicles, applying increasing pressure until the confession surfaced. Imagine the consequences of no surfacing confession. Indeed, many people refused to confess to a crime they did not commit.

Daughters and sons were raped in front of their fathers and mothers — for the sake of extracting “confessions.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Communism, Conservatives, Leftism, Totalitarian Democrats