9/13/2010 – Eileen F. Toplansky –
The unremitting degradation of women in most of the Mideast, Africa, and other parts of Asia where Islamic law plays a huge role is horrifying and appalling. Islamic law endorses slavery, demands executions for apostasy, and condones the repression of women.
The debasement of women plays a critical role among Palestinian women, where little girls live under a death threat of honor killing. The male sexual abuse of female children is quite pervasive [Read more…]
Since President Barack Obama has taken office, the numbers of America’s poor has steadily climbed. Working-age poor people are reaching the levels of the 1960s, before the national war on poverty.
Census figures for 2009 are to be released this week, and demographers expect troubling statistics.
The findings come at a most unfortunate time – seven weeks before Congressional elections, with many Democrats and Obama supporters expected to be voted out. The expected increase, from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent people living below the poverty line, would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.
If these estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country — more than one in seven, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959. The previous high was in 1980 when the rate jumped 1.3 percentage points to 13 percent during the energy crisis. [Read more…]
by Editors –
This quote was supposedly written by St. John Chrysostom. Those warnings regarding core principles that form the foundation of socialist/communist ideologies should have been heeded by the Church and taught to the people.
St. John Chrysostom:
“Should we look to kings and princes to put right the inequalities between rich and poor? Should we require soldiers to come and seize the rich person’s gold and distribute it among his destitute neighbors? Should we beg the emperor to impose a tax on the rich so great that it reduces them to the level of the poor and then to share the proceeds of that tax among everyone? Equality imposed by force would achieve nothing, and do much harm. Those who combined both cruel hearts and sharp minds would soon find ways of making themselves rich again. [Read more…]
9/8/2010 – Robert Weissberg –
Judged by all the billions of dollars now flowing into “education reform,” it appears that Washington, and especially the Obama administration, is obsessed with improving academic achievement (see, for example, here). The billions are certainly real enough, but the intent is just the opposite. Rhetoric aside, the Obama administration, like Bush II’s before it, is profoundly opposed to brainpower. Our “commitment” to academic excellence is a cruel joke — we love stupidity and hate smart kids. Tellingly, not even “conservatives” who bemoan America’s educational decline will admit this awkward reality — they, too, are passengers on this reform gravy train heading to the bottom. [Read more…]
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…]
9/6/2010 – David P. McGinley –
Federal Judge Vaughn Walker, who unilaterally redefined the millennia old definition of marriage in his California marriage decision, will not have the last word on this issue. However, it is troubling who will. Many constitutional “experts” from both sides of the marriage argument agree that this issue will inevitably be “settled” by Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. Thus, one judge (one man) may get to tell over 300 million people how they are allowed to order the very basis of their society. How did it come to this? [Read more…]
Amid the threat of a “double-dip” recession, and the ongoing plight of joblessness across America, this Labor Day is bittersweet for many. For those who have the gift of employment, the right to work can seem more like a privilege. And for those looking for work, the hope of being hired soon can sometimes seem more like a fantasy. But it is precisely in this kind of challenging economic environment that we can most clearly see the blessing that work is both to ourselves and to one another.
For ourselves, work helps give life meaning and purpose. Human beings are naturally productive, tending, when unimpeded, to use our minds and hands to make things, to be creative. The very term “manufacturing” comes from root words that mean “making by hand.” Indeed, God has set up the world in such a way that work is a blessing, the way he provides for us to provide for ourselves and our families. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in this context called work God’s “order of grace,” the regular means he has given to take care of our material needs. Anyone who has been out of work knows this to be true: having a job and receiving a paycheck is a great blessing. [Read more…]
9/3/2010 – Mary Grabar –
The recent court rulings against students Jennifer Keeton in Georgia and Julea Ward in Michigan reveal the power amassed by the cabal of radicals in academia who have pushed the gay agenda into education. In both cases, judges upheld the right of counseling departments at public universities to expel Christian students who refused to counsel homosexuals in a manner that affirmed their homosexuality.
In Keeton’s case, Augusta State University mandated that all students completing the master’s program adhere to professional standards that require counselors to counsel all clients in ways that do not criticize their sexuality or attempt to change it. According to affidavits, Keeton, whose attitudes towards homosexuality are rooted in her Christian faith, had stated a desire to refer gay clients to other counselors or to inform them about conversion therapies. [Read more…]
9/1/2010 – Samuel Gregg –
Since 2008, there has been much discussion about the contribution of unethical behavior to our present economic circumstances. Whether it was borrowers’ lying on mortgage-applications or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s politically-driven lending policies, there seems to be some consciousness that non-economic factors played a role in facilitating what we already call the Great Recession.
Unfortunately evidence is emerging that some people have learned nothing. A recent report, for example, commissioned by the Wall Street Journal illustrates that “losses from mortgage fraud—ranging from falsified credit reports to identity theft—rose 17% last year after declining 57% in the two years after its 2006 peak.” [Read more…]
