Month: September 2011

It Is Not the Economy, Stupid

America Liberty Freedom God by Bruce Walker –
Life is the pursuit of truth, of love, of honor, and of liberty. America was created not for purposes of comfort or money. It was created so that each of us could seek, unmolested by public needs, a private path to what is right.

Watching the Republican debates, listening to the droning of our dreary presidential flop, reading what wise pundits on the right as well as the left say, one might assume that economics was the standard of all policy and politics. Twenty years ago, when Bill Clinton ran for president, his mantra was clear: “It’s the economy, stupid!”

I pray that we do not surrender to the damnable vice of utter materialism. If we do, nothing can save us. America is a rich nation which is being drained and hobbled by those who hate it with unbridled venom. “God damn America!” Obama’s preacher screeched. All over the world and all over our nation, grotesque little monsters frown and sneer at our country. [Read more…]

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Half Baked: UC Berkeley’s Diversity Machine Loses Its Mind

Cupcakes diversity half-baked by Heather Mac Donald –

Tuesday’s now infamous affirmative-action bake sale at the University of California at Berkeley is unlikely to dissuade Governor Jerry Brown from signing a bill that would reintroduce race and gender preferences into the state’s public universities. It has nevertheless served one useful function: it has clarified just what Berkeley’s vice chancellor for equity and diversity does for his whopping $194,000 annual salary.

Berkeley’s College Republicans wanted their “Increase Diversity Bake Sale” to serve as a counterweight to a phone bank erected on the campus’s main thoroughfare, where students could call Brown and urge him to sign the preference-reinstating legislation, Senate Bill 185. Like other anti-affirmative-action bake sales on college campuses over the last decade, the College Republicans’ sale priced items according to the race and gender of the customer: whites paid $2 for a pastry, with Latinos paying $1 and blacks 75 cents, while women got a 25-cent discount on all items. [Read more…]

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UK Atheists Push to Censor Academic Freedom

Atheists Censor Academic Freedom Intelligent Design by Christine Dao –
An atheist group is petitioning the British government to issue policy to censor academic freedom and push evolution-only indoctrination on primary school students in the United Kingdom.

Celebrity scientists such as David Attenborough and Richard Dawkins have joined the British Humanist Association (BHA) in the campaign, alleging that organizations like Truth in Science and Creation Ministries International (CMI) “are encouraging teachers to incorporate ‘intelligent design’ into their science teaching.”1

Students in the UK are not forced to learn about evolution until the age of 14 or 15. But the campaign supporters want teachers to teach evolution at both the primary and secondary level in all publicly funded schools.

Meanwhile, Truth in Science maintained that it “has never advocated the teaching of creationism in science lessons in schools. It has consistently advocated, promoted and distributed materials that encourage a more critical approach to the teaching of Evolution as an important component of science education, allowing individuals to follow the evidence wherever it leads.” 2[Read more…]

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You Thought You Were Only Shopping

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
by Chuck Colson –
Did you know that shopping online could be considered a homophobic activity? Neither did I.

Imagine that your laptop finally gives up the ghost. You have several options: You can drive to the store and buy a new one, or you can shop online.

If you choose the latter, you have another option: You can buy it from an online retailer, or you can connect to a retailer via a portal. Why? Because some portals, like CGBG, split its share of the profits with a charity of your choice.

It’s as close as shopping gets to “win-win” in our consumerist culture.

That is, of course, until someone objects to the charities who are receiving a share of the profits. And you won’t be surprised at who is making the objections.

Among the charities CGBG shares its profits with are the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family. In July, a petition asking Microsoft to stop doing business with CGBG hit the Web. The organizer, “Stuart Wilber, a 73-year-old gay man in Seattle,” in the words of the New York Times, says that he was “astonished” that people could buy Microsoft products through CGBG. [Read more…]

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Gay Agenda is a Serious Threat to Religious Freedom

gay agenda threat to religious liberty by Kevin J. Jones –
Legalizing ‘gay marriage’ is having major repercussions for religious freedom.

Once a state recognizes same-sex partnerships as marriages or the equivalent, then naturally the argument is made that in family life classes in schools this has to be taught to be a valid partnership. Religious parents who do not want their children to be “indoctrinated in beliefs contrary to their own” are “out of luck,” said George, who founded the Manhattan Declaration project to defend religious liberty. …

Legalizing “gay marriage” is having major repercussions for religious freedom, according to observers of the latest developments. Princeton law professor Robert P. George cited the words of American Jewish Committee lawyer Marc Stern, who in 2006 said the conflict between religious liberty and same-sex marriage would be “a train wreck.” [Read more…]

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Mugged by Mythology, Liberals Believe the Darnedest Things

Liberal Myths Obama by Jeff Bergner –
Sometimes talking with liberals is perplexing. You never know what claim they will make next or what name they will call you. Take David Axelrod’s response to Standard & Poor’s recent credit action: He calls it the “Tea Party downgrade.” Amazingly, he blames the United States’ loss of its AAA bond rating on the one group that has sounded the alarm about our fiscal crisis. How did the president’s leading adviser come up with a label so detached from reality?

Comforting as it would be to dismiss this as a one-off comment, Axelrod’s words spring from the mental universe of liberalism. It is a vast sphere of assumptions that are found nowhere else. In an effort to promote the civility of debate that is so much in demand these days, here is a compendium of the myths underlying some of the strange things liberals say.

Myth #1: Conservatives are outside the American mainstream. Conservatives can’t be mainstream because it is liberals who speak for the American people. [Read more…]

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When the Wood Is Dry

Cross Christ healing prayer by Daniel Boerman –
The gospel is all about healing and salvation and deliverance. It promises deliverance from sin and the judgment of God. It releases us from guilt and futility and frees us to live a meaningful life in the service of God. And it holds out the promise of a new life in the presence of God after this present life of struggle is over.

But what happens when this Good News seems to pass us by and leave us unchanged? For a period of several years, the gospel seemed to leave me out in the cold as surely as a marooned traveler stranded in a North Dakota blizzard. I struggled with confusion and depression and doubt.

During this period, I constantly prayed for some healing or deliverance. But nothing happened. I had the impression that God was sitting on the sidelines watching my struggle with some interest but also detachment. I questioned my faith and my status with God. It seemed that God wanted me to work out this problem on my own. The healing and grace of the gospel seemed to pass me by. [Read more…]

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This is Your Brain on Atheism

Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman –
The ranks of celebrity atheists lionized by the major media is now being joined by a psychiatrist and journalist who have jointly written the book “Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith.” The two authors claim, in short, that God is nothing more than a figment of our biologically-determined imaginations.

In a recent article about the book, J. Anderson Thomson, a University of Virginia psychiatrist, and “medical writer” Clare Aukofer repeat stale clichés from the repertoire of 19th century German atheism, dressed up as modern “science.” They begin by citing the inane lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” in which he claims that the socialist paradise he envisions will bring “peace” with “no heaven…no hell below us…and no religion too.”

“No religion,” the authors rhapsodize. “What was Lennon summoning? For starters, a world without ‘divine’ messengers, like Osama bin Laden, sparking violence. A world where mistakes, like the avoidable loss of life in Hurricane Katrina, would be rectified rather than chalked up to ‘God’s will.’ Where politicians no longer compete to prove who believes more strongly in the irrational and untenable. Where critical thinking is an ideal. In short, a world that makes sense.” [Read more…]

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Fr. Gregory: Aren’t Taxes Immoral?

Taxes are Immoral by Fr. Gregory Jensen –
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

Does the government have a moral right to levy and collect taxes on its citizenry? Or is taxation merely a legalized form of governmental robbery?

While I’ve now and then heard people argue that taxation has no moral basis, I must confess that I find this assertion deeply troubling. As a matter of prudence, not everything which is immoral can, or should, be illegal. There are a variety of reasons for this chief among them is that as a practical matter the enforcement of a law can sometime cause more harm than good.

For example, the worship of God is a moral obligation both in the Scriptures and under at least some theories of natural law (see Romans 1). However as a prudential matter, a law that required people to worship God would invariably lead to social unrest. [Read more…]

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Why Young Americans Can’t Think Morally

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager
by Dennis Prager –
Last week, David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Below are some excerpts from Brooks’ summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. (It was led by “the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith.”)

“Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing …

“When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all …

“Moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner …

“The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste … [Read more…]

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