Orthodox Editors

Who Knew Conservatives Loved the IRS?

Economic Slavery IRSby C. Edmund Wright –
If there’s one thing that the ongoing national debate over Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan has exposed, it’s how much some conservatives love our current tax code and its enforcement arm. Who knew?

Okay, that may be an exaggeration — but it is not an overstatement to say that much of the criticism of Cain’s plan coming from the right is based in a stunning comfort with and knee-jerk reliance on our current system. It’s as if there is an undercurrent of belief that our IRS system is very, very good and can be replaced only by perfection. At the very least, much of the negative analysis is based on picking one aspect of the Cain plan and applying it to our current reality as if the 9-9-9 plan was ever designed to be applied piecemeal. This notion can come from only an intellectual vacuum where tax realities do not change human behavior. [Read more…]

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Science and Humility, Rewriting Physics?

Neutrinos Speed of Light by Chuck Colson –
One of the most potentially exciting — or confounding — scientific discovery happened recently. It depends on your point of view.

The expression “physics envy” refers to the way that the social sciences try to emulate the mathematical precision and certainty of physics.

It’s easy to understand the envy: No one argues with Newton’s Laws of Motion. Physics is authoritative in ways that economics and even biology can never hope to be. But “authoritative” isn’t the same thing as “omniscient” — when it comes to studying creation, humility and an appreciation of mystery are indispensible

Recently, scientists at the super collider at CERN in Geneva announced that subatomic particles called neutrinos sent from CERN to Italy arrived 60 billionths of a second faster than expected.

If the measurements are correct — a big if — this would mean they traveled faster than the speed of light. Any ninth-grade science student can tell you that shouldn’t happen. [Read more…]

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Judge Judy – Here’s Who You Support With Taxes

Judge Judy speaks out on where our tax dollars go in the case of Duane Brooks, Jr. who is scamming the government with all of his stipends, subsidies, and assistance – and using none of it for what it was intended for. These are the types of entitled, lazy, and irresponsible individuals your hard work and high taxes help support and enable.

[Read more…]

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An Open Letter to a College Freshman

Timothy Dalrymple
Timothy Dalrymple
by Timothy Dalrymple –
At last your time has come. Leaving behind the old world and the deep ruts you carved in the corner of that world that belonged to you, you’re off to explore undiscovered countries, to join a new and ever-replenishing society of fascinating people and learned scholars and impassioned artists and driven achievers, off to a place where the world is new and so are you. Whether or not your college years will be “the best years of your life,” they will almost certainly be among the most transformative.

The question is whether that transformation will be for the better. Unmoored from the people and places that once defined you, you’ll feel a fluidity in your identity that’s both thrilling and frightening. You may feel as though you can be anyone and become anything. I pray that you will become who you are — the individual you most truly and deeply are, the one God dreamt of when he made you — and not the person that you or your parents or your friends think you should be. In service to that end, I thought I would offer seven pieces of advice. [Read more…]

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Turning Fear Into Faith

faith Christianity worry fear by Ken Stevens –
That ugly and omnipresent thorn called worry! Since it’s a chronic, recurrent condition, it’s been called the “Worry Disease.” I think worry must be Satan’s best weapon against man. Our minds are incessantly preoccupied with our daily cares. During peace-filled, “quiet time” moments of prayer and reflection we confidently profess our faith to God and feel His peace. Yet, this is so often immediately forgotten, preempted by the next worrisome preoccupation. At time, it’s maddening! Too often our “old nature” chooses to worry rather than to trust God. Worry is a sin because we aren’t taking God at his Word.

Virtually everyone is stressed out today. We fear various problems and what they may do to us. For example, I have worked in pharmaceutical marketing and medical communications for 30+ years and have witnessed incredible changes in the health care landscape. I laugh out loud when I remember how in the past I used to complain about various working conditions. However, they were minimal compared to today’s constant stream of pressures. Now there are insecurities about the marketplace, the unrelenting ferocity of managed care, stressed-out clients willing to change their ad agency “on a whim,” and the constant barrage of economic and socio-political uncertainties. It seems every industry, both private and government, is beleaguered by economic crises today. [Read more…]

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Marxism versus the Middle Class

Anti-communism Anti-Marxism by Jeremy Meister –
Marx’s idea has often been called a “classless society,” but this characterization constitutes one of the biggest myths in modern history. What Marx wanted was a return to the “natural order” — a medieval society where there is a ruling upper class that owns all the property and makes all the decisions while the lower peasant class does all the menial labor. …

Obama’s out there waving around one of the richest men in the world (Warren Buffet) in his attempt to sell average Americans on his “millionaire’s tax.” So now all intellectual talking heads are discussing the goodness and virtue of making those who make seven figures pay more.

But the real focus should be how it is going to affect those at the bottom. Obama and his surrogates have been floating the idea of 250K or 200K as the possible cutoff. Now, it should be pointed out that there is nothing stopping them from making the cutoff as low as 150K or 100K — we’re still in the idea phase, after all. [Read more…]

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Steve Jobs Changed the World: Adoption Changed His

Steve Jobs adoption pro-lifeby Ryan Bomberger –
The news hit me in the gut. I couldn’t believe I was seeing those few numbers, communicating his passing, beneath his photo: 1955-2011. Steve Jobs has, literally, changed the world. I’m typing this on my Mac, will check my emails and Twitter status on my iPad, and will stay in touch with everyone I love through my iPhone.

As a creative professional, his visionary work has helped my own visions become reality.

But his vision, his destiny and his ability to affect people, globally, may never have happened. Jobs was adopted as a baby and loved by his parents, Clara and Paul Jobs. The baby they took into their hearts and home had a purpose in life that would be unleashed by the powerful act of adoption. [Read more…]

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More Fun When You Share

Obama communist socialist democrats by Jeffrey Folks –
This week I received a credit card offer that suggested I share duplicates of my card with family and friends. “It’s more rewarding when you share,” the offer promised. Just call the 800 number, and we’ll zip a duplicate of your card to any of your family members or friends.

Of course, you’ll be responsible for the charges. That’s what sharing is all about.

And that conception of sharing has been showing up everywhere lately. It was front and center in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, when she screeched that she’d like to seize ExxonMobil’s profits and redistribute them to “smart” green energy companies — smart start-ups like Solyndra, not corporations like Exxon that actually produce something of value.

The same idea underlies Obama’s constant talk of “fairness” and of taxing those who “can afford to pay a little more.” Obama is simply reciting the fundamental Marxist doctrine of equal distribution of wealth. That idea of equality never translates into reality in actual Marxist societies — far from it. [Read more…]

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Steve Jobs and American Exceptionalism

Apple America capitalism freedom by Ed Feulner –
Steve Jobs, who died yesterday at the too-young age of 56, was a living refutation of all that liberals constantly tell us about our country — that we’re falling behind others and live now in a “post-American world,” as one of Barack Obama’s favorite books puts it in its title.

As anyone who’s ever handled an Apple product or had his life improved by the technological innovations our system has produced in just a decade (that means all of us) will tell you, Jobs and innovators like him epitomize that immeasurable quality the left somehow finds most abject — American exceptionalism.

The meme of the left is that drudgery and mediocrity is not just our future but probably also our just deserts–for being too imperialistic, consumerist, wasteful, patriarchal, or what have you. (For an inexhaustible list of all our ills and sins, please check with the mob gathered at the “Occupy Wall Street” protest.) One should compare this deadened vision with the wonders Jobs wrought. [Read more…]

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Why Pastors Must Be Free To Preach On Politics

Constitution Freedom of Speech and Religion by Alan Sears –
On Sunday, October 2, hundreds of pastors all over the country did something an astonishingly large number of their fellow Americans had forgotten they had the God-given right to do: namely, address political issues and candidates during a worship service.

Across the nearly 60 years since then U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson pushed through an amendment to the IRS code threatening any church or pastor who gets involved in politics with IRS reprisals – specifically, the loss of the church’s tax-exempt status – conventional wisdom has congealed around the idea that pastors must stay out of politics. As extraordinary as that assertion is to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of our nation’s history, it’s a theme that’s been hammered home unrelentingly for decades by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. [Read more…]

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