Orthodox Editors

Pity the Postmodern Cultural Elite

7/20/2010 – Victor Davis Hanson –

I think most of our problems transcend politics, which is increasingly a reflection of an elite, insider culture that is completely at odds with the majority of the country that it oversees.

So what is a cultural elite?
It is a sloppy term that might include the academic class in the university that educates our children in college. The upper echelons that run government departments constitute part of this cultural elite. So does an entertainment cadre that oversees television and Hollywood. Corporate managers are elites as well.

There is no racial, regional, religious, or tribal commonality. One shared allegiance perhaps is to higher education that certifies the cultural elite by diplomas of all sorts from a “good school,” as well as a respectable salary and a nice home with appurtenances. The good life of the elite is defined by both the absence of worry about necessities, and a certain status that accrues from properly recognized advanced education and sensitivity. [Read more…]

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Read the Label

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson

7/19/2010 – Chuck Colson –

Everywhere you turn, someone is warning Americans about the dangers of childhood obesity. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver toured the country preaching the gospel of healthier school lunches. The first lady has made fighting childhood obesity her top priority.

While I’m all for healthier eating and exercise, I can’t help but think, however, that in our concern over our kids’ waistlines, we have overlooked a far bigger threat—the one to their souls.

The threat I’m referring to is pornography. [Read more…]

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An Independent Witness to Marriage

7/16/2010 – Stuart Koehl –

In the pending court case for overturning California’s Proposition 8, which banned “gay marriage,” two leading conservative legal scholars face off: Charles J. Cooper, taking the classical conservative line that organic social institutions such as marriage have an inherent value and cannot be redefined by legal fiat, and Theodore Olson, taking the more libertarian line that government should simply regulate contractual relationships between individuals and not become involved in private matters. [Read more…]

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Oh No You Didn’t!

7/14/2010 – Conn Carroll –

Last week the Obama administration began rolling out new campaign titled, we kid you not, “Yes, we did.” Did what exactly? Waste nearly a trillion dollars on an economic stimulus that by every objective measure has completely failed to perform as advertised? Then yes you did. A new CBS poll out today shows that 74 percent of Americans believe the Obama stimulus either damaged the economy or had no effect. Clearly the White House is on a different planet than the rest of the country.

In another dispatch from Planet Obama, the White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report today purporting to prove that President Obama’s stimulus has saved or created 3 million jobs and is on track to meet its goal of 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year. Where do they come up this slop? [Read more…]

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Dictatorship of Relativism, Catholic Professor Fired for Being Catholic

Professor Ken Howell
Professor Ken Howell

7/12/2010 – Deacon Keith Fournier –
Professor Howell is a victim of the “Dictatorship of Relativism” which Pope Benedict XVI warned of. This is an egregious violation of constitutional rights and overt censorship of speech unpopular to the Cultural revolutionaries who have grabbed the reigns of Western society. Warning to all who hold that truth exists in an age which has followed the pied piper of relativism.

URBANA, IL (Catholic Online) – From every indicator, Professor Ken Howell was an exemplary professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign. He is a faithful Catholic, in fact a convert from the Presbyterian Church and ministry, who was asked to teach courses on the Catholic faith and intellectual tradition. He is extraordinarily qualified on every front. He taught those courses in complete fidelity to the magisterium, the teaching office, of the Catholic Church.

He is now a victim of the “Dictatorship of Relativism” which Pope Benedict XVI warned of in the homily he gave prior to the Conclave wherein he was chosen to become the successor of the Apostle Peter. This egregious violation of the Professors constitutional rights and overt censorship of speech which is unpopular to the Cultural revolutionaries who have grabbed the reigns of Western society, is now being reviewed by the Alliance Defense Fund for a legal response. [Read more…]

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A Long Catalog of Injustice

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson

7/9/2010 – Chuck Colson –
Should American taxpayers pay for economic aid to a nation that persecutes Christians? This isn’t a trick question.

Imagine that you are a government official in a country I will call “M.” Despite your efforts to promote economic growth, unemployment and poverty rates remain high. As a result, many of your citizens have gone abroad in search of work.

What has been called “the human face of a long catalogue of socio-economic ills” are the many thousands of orphaned and abandoned children living throughout your country. Their plight has been the subject of news reports and even an award-winning film.

So what do you do about it? Well, if you are Morocco, you declare war on those seeking to help them. [Read more…]

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New York Public School Teaches Children that ‘Religion is a Disease’

Public Schools Bias Atheism6/24/2010 – Andrea Peyser –
God is dead? At a top Brooklyn middle school, He is.

Just when you thought the separation of church and state was more than an option, like paper or plastic, the matter has been settled at MS 51 in Park Slope. And the lesson falls on the side of atheism.

“RELIGION,” a sheet from English class, handed out to eighth-graders, is provocatively titled. The typewritten paper presents some 20 quotes that can be described as anti-God, coming from philosophers from Kierkegaard to Schopenhauer. Even a “Yiddish proverb.”

“Religion is a disease, but a noble disease,” reads the first quote, attributed to Heraclitus.

“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they will think,” reads one by Schopenhauer. [Read more…]

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The Character Deficit

Character Counts Character Matters6/22/2010 – Steve McCann –
When the framers of the United States Constitution completed their work in 1787, they acknowledged that the success and future of the republic as established by that document was dependent on the honor and integrity of its leaders and citizens. As John Adams wrote: “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Today, the Obama administration, the majority of the members of Congress, much of the Judiciary, academia, and the media represent the culmination of the degradation of ethics and character, which has put the United States in the nearly inevitable position of joining the annals of the rise and fall of great nations.

The die was cast in the early part of the 20th century, when Congress and the president discovered that they could bribe the public with the public’s money. The focus of politics began to shift from public service and adherence to the Constitution to seeking, centralizing, and maintaining power, as well as amassing individual wealth. [Read more…]

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America’s Road to Serfdom

Terry Paulson
Terry Paulson

6/21/2010 – Terry Paulson –

Thanks to the attention from Glenn Beck, a recent top seller on Amazon.com is Austria’s Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. The book was written in 1944 to fight the drift from individual freedom and free-market competition to a growing dependence on economies controlled by central planning authorities. To Hayek, Stalin’s Soviet Russia was no better than the Nazi “National Socialists.” In all its forms, the increasing spread of socialism has and would always be a threat to individual freedom and economic progress.

Hayek’s book remains a wakeup call to apathetic citizens who take for granted that the improvements achieved through democracy, individual freedom and capitalism have been “acquired once and for all.” Hayek knew what history confirms; freedom must be earned and reearned in every generation. [Read more…]

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