10/14/2010 – Bruce Walker –
There is far too much government in our lives. Government regulates the light bulbs we can use, the process of hiring employees, the licenses which businesses need to operate, and, of course, the mammoth monster of public debt and taxes which have reached such surreal levels. Every American — man, woman, senior citizen, and infant — owes a mind-numbing $44,000 of federal debt. Each day, we are bombarded with the results of photo-ops for our president or his family, or with the president’s speeches against certain offending classes of Americans, such as the Chamber of Commerce or Fox News. [Read more…]
Orthodox Editors
Eastern Christian New Media Awards: 2010 Awards Nominations Open
10/11/2010
Nominations are now open for the best Orthodox blogs in 2010! To nominate an entrant click on the link listed below and select that Category that you would like.
Multiple nominations are welcomed and encouraged. Nominations aren’t votes, this is putting people on the ballot to be voted on later (during the voting phase). We will be accepting participants until October 31st. The categories this year have expanded by two since 2009.
Eastern Christian New Media Awards: 2010 Awards Nominations
http://ecawards.blogspot.com/2010/10/2010-awards-nominations-open.html
If you like the work that it’s being done on this blog, kindly consider nominating the OrthodoxNet.com Blog for the specific Category that best fits the articles, editorials, and other information regularly being posted here.
Is Obama’s Position on Religious Freedom ‘Mosque, Yes; Cross, No?’
10/10/2010 – Margaret Calhoun Hemenway –
It would be unimaginable for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to pursue the removal of thousands of crosses in Arlington National Cemetery, situated so near the seat of the federal government in the nation’s capital and where so many of America’s veterans and honored heroes are laid to rest. Likewise, it would be seemingly unthinkable for the ACLU to try to sue to eliminate the Senate and House chaplains (both of whom are of the Christian faith), who, in accordance with longstanding tradition, open with a prayer the upper and lower chambers each day that Congress is in session.
But like the predatory wolf that searches for the lamb at the outskirts of the flock, the ACLU targeted a lone cross — a war memorial — in California’s Mojave Desert, off a desolate highway, perhaps believing it to be an easy target for removal. The ACLU was mistaken. For ten years, a battle has been waged to preserve this solitary Latin cross, first erected in 1934 to honor World War I veterans. In fact, the Mojave Desert War Memorial is our nation’s sole congressionally designated World War I memorial.
A former National Park Service (NPS) official (who now lives in the State of Oregon) objected to the cross memorial and enlisted the ACLU to sue to remove it. [Read more…]
Two Steps Forward
10/10/2010 – Jeffrey Folks –
Lenin famously described his strategy for communist domination as “one step forward, two steps back.” Of course, by that he did not mean to suggest steps of equal length. The step forward was a lot more like two large steps, and the two steps back were more or less symbolic, designed to diffuse opposition.
Clearly, in the past two years the United States has moved two giant steps in the direction of socialism. We have seen the redistribution of hundreds of billions of dollars, the seizure of major industries by the state, the re-emergence of a hard-core welfare state, the virtual nationalization of healthcare, takeover by regulation of the energy and financial sectors, and much more. This resurgence of state control has been accompanied by the new power of labor unions, environmental lobbyists, tort lawyers, and state bureaucracies. But now, having reached the limit of what the public will stomach, the Leninists who run the Democratic Party see that it is time for two baby-steps back. [Read more…]
The Green War on Children
10/8/2010 – Michelle Malkin –
Halloween isn’t for another three weeks, but environmental ghouls are on the haunt. A sadistic video released by global warming fear-mongers reveals an inconvenient truth about eco-radicals: They despise the very children for whom they claim to be saving the planet.
In the opening scene of “No Pressure,” a four-minute short clip produced by carbon reduction activist group “10:10,” a teacher urges her elementary school charges to fight climate change by cutting their carbon emissions by 10 percent by Oct. 10. When a few uncooperative students object, the teacher (played by actress Gillian Anderson) presses a red button at her desk — which immediately detonates the nay-saying children. Their heads explode in graphic, bloody detail. Skin and body parts splatter all over their horrified classmates. [Read more…]
Pushing Junk Science on Children
10/6/2010 – Chuck Rogér –
Humans have angered Mother Nature. Our species must stop multiplying, give up our addiction to huge-screen HDTVs, stop eating so many steer, and travel on twenty-pound electric tricycles forty miles at a time between charging stations. Otherwise, we are doomed.
This is a story about the ruling class promoting ruling class interests. Every year, scientists for sale compete for government grants to perform “research” that advances the human-caused global warming hoax. In order to keep the hoax alive, politicians must generate a steady supply of believers to conduct “research” as well as vote for said politicians, who keep the grants flowing. [Read more…]
Thieves Hijacking the Language of the Christian Moral Tradition
10/4/2010 – Fr. Johannes Jacobse –
What happens then when people leave Christianity and want to promote ideas about morality that violate the moral tradition? They have only one option: Hijack the language. They use the terms of traditional Christianity but mean very different things by them. Words don’t mean what they used to mean. Language gets inverted, turned upside down. Do this long and loud enough, and in less than a generation the new meanings take hold. When hijackers use the language of the moral tradition, they implicitly claim to stand inside that tradition. It’s only a pose of course, but their pose fools many people.
NAPLES, FL. (Catholic Online) – In a recent Catholic Online article (Social Justice: Take Back the Term from the Thieves and Build a New Catholic Action) Deacon Keith Fournier writes about a question he was asked at a recent conference:
…the host of the conference made a suggestion that we get rid of the term “Social Justice” because it is now used by ‘the left”. He asked for my thoughts. I strongly disagreed. I insisted that we take back the phrase from those who have stolen it, either on the “the right” or “the left”. He then suggested the Church does not use the phrase “Social Justice”. An attendee did a “google” search of the Vatican documents on his handheld device and reported it was used thousands of times in the magisterial teaching of the Church.
Fournier is right on two counts: The Christian moral vocabulary properly belongs to Christians, and we should not cede the vocabulary to the thieves. [Read more…]
Progressives and Communists: Out of the Closet — Together
10/4/2010 – Paul Kengor –
A close look at the Saturday “One Nation” rally in Washington reveals something quite telling. It was a major gathering of the “progressive” left, highly billed, vigorously promoted. And it happened to include — in fact, it warmly accepted — the endorsement of Communist Party USA.
Expectedly, a bunch of the rally’s endorsers carried the word “progress” or “progressive” in their title, from People’s Organization for Progress to Progressive Democrats of America. More still unhesitatingly describe themselves as progressive, from racial eugenicist Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood to Norman Lear’s heirs at People for the American Way, plus the usual suspects from the “social justice” Religious Left. [Read more…]
Is America a Christian Nation?
10/3/2010 – Carl Pearlston –
The use of Christian religious references in the recent Presidential Inauguration prayers has served to reopen the debate over religion in America’s public life. Professor Alan Dershowitz led off with an article strongly objecting that America wasn’t a Christian nation; Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby replied that it certainly was. Who is right? Is America a Christian nation? The answer is both yes and no, depending on what one means by the phrase.
When President Harry Truman wrote to Pope Pius XII in 1947 that “This is a Christian nation.”, he certainly did not mean that the United States has an official or legally-preferred religion or church. Nor did he mean to slight adherents of non-Christian religions. But he certainly did mean to recognize that this nation, its institutions and laws, was founded on Biblical principles basic to Christianity and to Judaism from which it flowed. As he told an Attorney General’s Conference in 1950, “The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and Saint Matthew, from Isaiah and Saint Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days. [Read more…]
Political Correctness: Morality’s Poison Pill
10/2/2010 – Greg Halvorson –
There is much talk, and much to say, about what ails America, but one problem, certainly, is political correctness, which along with “tolerance” has become entrenched in daily life. Tolerance and its cousin diversity have become hegemonic in society, a dominant narrative which undermines dialogue with respect to truth. It’s one thing to be civil and to strive for compassion, and quite another to deem it offensive to judge behavior, regardless of whether that judgment is sound.
Eric Holder called us “a nation of cowards,” and as much as it pains me, I agree (don’t tell anyone!). His use of “coward” is telling because not only is it politically incorrect, but it describes what politically correct citizens become. We are cowards, both in our discussion of race, as he specified, and our discussion of life… When it comes to truth, we shrink from dialogue, cowering beneath “tolerance” as a personal badge. [Read more…]