Orthodox Editors

The Put-Off, Postpone and Procrastinate Generation

March 10, 2011March 10, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Victor Davis Hanson –

The Obama administration figures that it has read the national mood well. This therapeutic generation of Americans loves to talk and worry about problems and then assumes that either someone else will solve them or they will go away on their own. And why not, since we have had periodic “energy crises” since 1974, have run budget deficits in most years since World War II, and have been warned about a looming Social Security meltdown for the last decade — and yet remain wealthy and affluent.

But now gasoline costs more than $4 a gallon in many places in California, and averages more than $3.50 nationwide. In response, the Obama administration is reportedly considering tapping into the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase supplies and drive down high prices brought on by a recovering world economy and unrest in the oil-rich Middle East.

Yet the reserve depot was not designed to alleviate periodic gas-price spikes, but to ensure our very survival during a global catastrophe that might result in a cutoff of most petroleum imports from overseas. [Read more…]

Confiscate Americans’ Wealth to Pay Government Workers?

March 9, 2011March 9, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Steve McCann –
Michael Moore and his fellow-travelers in the American version of the Socialist/Marxist cabal have picked up the mantle of defending public unionism in their demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin and other state capitals. They are vocally calling for more confiscation of the wealth of the rich to pay for the bloated incomes of government workers and openly stating that all wealth belongs to the state while their true motives are deliberately obfuscated.

The age old premise and threadbare exhortation of class warfare has long found fertile ground among the lower classes but now they are being mouthed in support of one of the most advantaged groups in America today: public sector workers and their unions.

Even the most jaded of true-believers on the Left knows that confiscating the wealth and taxing what they consider to be unjust income would be self-defeating. What could be done one time can never be repeated and there would be no one to create jobs or a higher standard of living for the overall citizenry, particularly those on the left side of the ruling class. A cursory study of the experiences in the Soviet Union, Mao’s Red China and Cuba among others reveals that government control of the means of production and wealth creation is a massive failure. [Read more…]

Moral Matters – It’s Up To Us To Teach Our Kids

March 7, 2011March 8, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Chuck Colson –

As turbulent as the late 1960s were when my children were in school, I’m almost glad I don’t have to raise kids today. Yes, the sexual revolution, questioning authority, rolling around in the mud at Woodstock — all the hallmarks of ’60s culture — were bad enough. But they were just the seeds of a sad harvest our culture is reaping right now. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that many of today’s political, academic, and media elites are products of the ’60s and that they are in the vanguard of the assault on traditional marriage, traditional morality, and the traditional family.

Look around you. The courts are now routinely overturning the will of the people concerning marriage. The Administration refuses to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court — and for specious reasons. And schools are constantly bombarding our kids with moral relativism and pro-gay propaganda. Students are now being taught that all like choices are equal, so you simply decide which one you choose, how you want to live any way you want. It’s madness! [Read more…]

Recalculating the Odds: Obama and DOMA

March 6, 2011March 7, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Ken Connor –
During his campaign, Candidate Barack Obama repeatedly cited his opposition to same sex marriage. On the Human Rights Campaign’s 2008 Presidential Survey, he stated, “I do not support gay marriage. Marriage has religious and social connotations, and I consider marriage to be between a man and a woman.” Despite his formerly firm convictions, the President has now decided that traditional marriage is no longer worth defending in the civil sphere. Having determined that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act is apparently unconstitutional, he has directed the Department of Justice to stop defending the law in federal court.

What gives? If the President was being truthful in his campaign statements about the importance of traditional marriage and his opposition to same-sex marriage, why is he now acting as though he believes the opposite? [Read more…]

We, the Unhyphenated Americans: Meet My People

March 5, 2011March 6, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Michelle Malkin –
My fellow Americans, who are “your people”? I ask because U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who is black, used the phrase “my people” in congressional testimony this week. It was an unmistakably color-coded and exclusionary reference intended to deflect criticism of the Obama Justice Department’s selective enforcement policies. It backfired.

In pandering to skin-deep identity politics and exacerbating race-consciousness, Holder has given the rest of us a golden opportunity to stand up, identify “our people” and show the liberal poseurs what post-racialism really looks like. [Read more…]

In Defense of American Exceptionalism

March 5, 2011March 5, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Herman Cain –
There is no denying it: America is the greatest country in the world. We are blessed with unparalleled freedoms and boundless prosperity that for generations have inspired an innovative and industrious people. America is exceptional.

American Exceptionalism is the standard that our laws reflect the understanding that we are afforded certain God-given rights that can never be taken away. We know that God, not government, bestows upon us these inalienable rights, and because of that, they must not be compromised by the whims of man. This makes us a unique nation, a nation that remains, as President Ronald Reagan once said, “a model and hope to the world.”

Unfortunately, some politicians have either forgotten or chosen to ignore the glory of our founding. [Read more…]

What Would Jesus Cut?

March 4, 2011March 5, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Mark Tooley –
After any successful election for Republicans, the Religious Left immediately becomes alarmed about supposedly massive federal budget “cuts,” i.e. some reductions in budget increases, for some social welfare programs. In the Religious Left’s ultimate vision of the Kingdom of God, the federal government spends unlimited sums on the nation’s every supposed social need, regardless of result, while spending nothing on national defense, and only increasing taxes.

In 1981, responding to President Reagan’s budget “cuts,” the Religious Left endorsed a huge “Solidarity Day” protest march in Washington, D.C. to deplore the “transfer of billions of dollars from the social needs of people to the production of massive new weapons and strategic defense systems.” One United Methodist bishop explained: “For us to take out of the mouths of the hungry and the poor and the oppressed the funds that will build bombs and bullets and airplanes seems to be terribly incongruous with our understanding and the quality of life in the world in which we live.” [Read more…]

Christianity Isn’t Dying, It’s Being Eradicated

March 2, 2011March 2, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Cristina Odone –
It’s official: Britain is no longer a Christian nation. In banning Eunice and Owen Johns, a devout Christian couple, from fostering children, Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson declared that we live in a secular state, and that the Johns’ religious convictions disqualified them from raising citizens of that state. We’ve outgrown Christianity, the judges professed. Instead, we have graduated to the status of a multicultural nation, blessed by a plurality of faiths.

Ironically, the justices who have pronounced that Britain is no longer Christian did so in a court where witnesses swear on the Bible and invoke God’s help in telling the truth. I do not imagine that these judges leave out the first word in “God Save the Queen” – nor would they shun an invitation to the Royal wedding, which is happening not at a registry office but the centrepiece of official Christendom, Westminster Abbey. [Read more…]

Christian Foster Parents Defeated by the New Inquisition

March 1, 2011March 2, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Jane Mingay –
Eunice and Owen Johns are a God-fearing Christian couple, married almost 40 years, who offered a secure and loving family home to foster children aged between five and 10. But they are to be denied the opportunity to do so any longer because they are unwilling to promote a homosexual lifestyle to a child. Neither Mr nor Mrs Johns has anything against gay people but they are not in favour of sex before marriage, whatever an individual’s orientation. Their views were denounced by Ben Summerskill, of the homosexual pressure group Stonewall, as “old-fashioned”. Yet not that long ago they would have been considered mainstream and they are, in any case, the strongly held religious views of the couple.

The reason that they were even asked about their views on homosexuality was because Parliament passed the Sexual Orientation Regulations, making it an offence to discriminate on the grounds that someone is heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. [Read more…]

What Is Hell Like? Does It Even Exist?

March 1, 2011March 2, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Hell is what happens when human beings say to the God in whose image they were made, we don’t want to worship You. We don’t want our human life to be shaped by worshiping You. We don’t want who we are as humans to be transformed by the love of Jesus dying and rising for us. We don’t want any of that. We want to stay as we are and do our own thing.
[Read more…]