Orthodox Editors

Sometimes Indoctrination Is a Matter of Life and Death

Salvo Magazine | Karen Swallow Prior | Spring, 2008

In 2005, according to an annual survey of college freshmen by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, “only” 54.5 percent of first-year students agreed that “abortion should be legal.” What this tells us is that when college kids first arrive on campus, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with idealism, they exhibit a relative enthusiasm for life—that is, until the leftists and secularists who overwhelm academia dig their claws into them. Once this happens, research indicates that even the sizable minority who go so far as to actually count themselves pro-life is doomed to diminish. (And this surely can’t be the result of learning per se, since virtually all of history’s great thinkers—from Hippocrates to Maimonides to Mary Wollstonecraft—have opposed elective abortion.) [Read more…]

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High Gas Prices and the Marxist tactic of Crisis revolution

American Thinker | AWR Hawkins | Jun. 21, 2008

Karl Marx, (1818-1883), believed capitalism was the next to last stage in the evolution to an earthly utopia, which would be ushered in through revolution; a revolution resulting from the tensions that existed between workers and the owners of production. According to Marx, the final stage of this evolution toward utopia would result when workers rose up in revolution to overthrow the business owners who were exploiting them through a capitalistic economy. We know Marx’s “utopia” and other aspects of his philosophy by their more prominent name: communism. [Read more…]

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Why Do We Call Them ‘Democrats’?

American Thinker | Lance Fairchok | Jun. 21, 2008

We all knew it even though Democrat spokespersons denied it. Worried that the negative connotations would affect their electability and their eyes glued to the capricious winds of public opinion, they invented new words for the old ideology such as progressivism and communitarianism. Apparently, the camouflage is no longer needed. The masks are off. They now openly call for the nationalization of private business, the establishment of universal entitlements and increased taxation to pay for them. Why worry about socialist labels? The electorate is complacent, prosperity has numbed our senses and the left has worked diligently for many years to sap our national pride and deface our self-image. [Read more…]

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Another Democrat calls for Nationalizing Oil Refinery Industry

American Thinker | Rick Moran | Jun. 19, 2008

The worrying thing is that the Congressman – Maurice Hinchey – isn’t getting laughed out of Washington for proposing a nationalization scheme for the refinery industry. Even at the height of liberalism’s power back in the 1960’s, no Democrat would have seriously entertained the notion.

But a recent Rasmussen poll found a staggering 37% of Democrats – a plurality – support nationalizing the oil companies. This makes one wonder if some kind of serious move might be made to actually bring the industry under government control: [Read more…]

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The Skeptical Inquirer

Touchstone | Edward Tingley | June, 2008

If Only Atheists Were the Skeptics They Think They Are. Unbelievers think that skepticism is their special virtue, the key virtue believers lack. Bolstered by bestselling authors, they see the skeptical and scientific mind as muscular thinking, which the believer has failed to develop. He could bulk up if he wished to, by thinking like a scientist, and wind up at the “agnosticism” of a Dawkins or the atheism of a Dennett—but that is just what he doesn’t want, so at every threat to his commitments he shuns science. [Read more…]

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Top 10 reasons to blame Democrats for soaring gasoline prices

American Thinker | William Tate | Jun. 16, 2008

10) ANWR – If Bill Clinton had signed into law the Republican Congress’s 1995 bill to allow drilling of ANWR instead of vetoing it, ANWR could be producing a million barrels of (non-Opec) oil a day–5% of the nation’s consumption. Although speaking in another context, even Democrat Senator Charles Schumer, no proponent of ANWR drilling, admits that “one million barrels per day,” would cause the price of gasoline to fall “50 cents a gallon almost immediately,” according to a recent George Will column. [Read more…]

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The Progressive Road to Hell

OrthodoxyToday.org | Timothy Birdnow | May 26, 2008

This is what “progressive” social policies and good intentions have wrought! (What is paved with good intentions?) Feminism, welfare, and the sexual revolution, along with the explosion of narcotics, have completely destroyed the black family. This woman had a father, who was probably a drug addict or alcoholic and who likely lived on welfare. In another time, he would have been poor and uneducated, but would have worked and cared for his children. Thanks to the compassion of the Left, he was freed of any responsibility and could destroy himself and everyone around him at his leisure. Because more children mean more government largesse, poor women frequently become baby factories, spitting out more hopeless welfare recipients and keeping our prisons full. [Read more…]

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The Climate Alarmist Manifesto

American Thinker | Marc Sheppard | Jun. 13, 2008

Just as class struggle forms the nucleus of Marxism, so does it sit at the very core of the Left’s climate alarmism. At a glance, the regressive nature of fiscal Carbon control schemes, be they taxation or cap-and-trade, would appear to be antithetical to liberal thinking. But beneath the veneer of both the domestic and international green agenda lies a devious wealth-redistribution plan compared to which all predecessors pale. [Read more…]

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