Orthodox Editors

Death of the Global Warming Myth

Global Warming Myth Fraud12/11/2010 – Peter Heck –

When your cockamamie theory is collapsing around you, it’s probably best to take your plight to a higher power. But if that isn’t possible, a fake jaguar goddess could work.

According to the Washington Post,

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was … “the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving.”

I’ll give this conglomeration of exploiting profiteers five stars when it comes to creativity. You can’t manipulate data to produce fatalistic scenes of New York City being overwhelmed by tidal waves and Yellowstone erupting into volcanic ash without having a robust imagination. But reason? I think that went out the window long before they started praying to a jaguar. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Why Do the Poor Stay Poor?

12/9/2010 – John Stossel –
Prosperity is impossible without property rights.

Of the 6 billion people on Earth, 2 billion try to survive on a few dollars a day. They don’t build businesses, or if they do, they don’t expand them. Unlike people in the United States, Europe, and Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc., they don’t lift themselves out of poverty. Why not? What’s the difference between them and us? Hernando de Soto taught me that the biggest difference may be property rights.

I first met de Soto maybe 15 years ago. It was at one of those lunches where people sit around wondering how to end poverty. I go to these things because it bugs me that much of the world hasn’t yet figured out what gave us Americans the power to prosper. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Homeschooling and Socialization

Homeschooling and Socialization12/7/2010 – Mark T. Mitchell –

Recently my wife and I stepped into a new wine shop in a town near where we live. The shop was very small and we were the only patrons. The young lady minding the store was friendly and talkative. We chatted about various wines and about the fact that in our state people tend to favor beverages with names like Bud and Coors over Merlot and Chardonnay. As the conversation drifted away from wine, the young lady, Kate was her name, told us that her fiancé owned the shop but he was occupied that day with his primary job. Her summers were free because she taught at a local elementary school. My wife then mentioned that we homeschool our three boys.

I’m always interested to watch the reaction of people when they learn this fact. Quite often the response is enthusiastic. Once my neighbor sadly shook his head and told me that my wife and I were lucky that we were educated enough to teach our kids at home and keep them out of the local schools. Kate, for her part, smiled and nodded and then she asked the question that I sometimes think has been put to rest but for some reason lingers on as one of the central criticisms of homeschooling: “What about their socialization?” [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

American Freedom and Religious Morality

American Freedom and Religious Morality12/5/2010 – Andie Brownlow –

Liberals and conservatives both believe that as Americans, we should be moral people. The major difference is where their morality intersects with their politics. Most conservatives believe that our morality should come from religion, separate from government. Most progressives incorporate moral guidance as a function of government.

The humanistic tendencies of the political left assume that morality can be governed by state laws and dismiss religion as an origin and arbiter of moral law. Therefore, government must become a humanist’s ultimate authority to address and regulate human nature. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Happy Holydays

Saint Nicholas - Bishop of Myra, Defender of Orthodoxy
Saint Nicholas - Bishop of Myra, Defender of Orthodoxy

12/6/2010 – Lisa Fabrizio –
The conclusion of Thanksgiving, originally a day of solemn acknowledgement that all that we have that is good is a gift from God, brings us to the celebration of the greatest gift from our Creator: the incarnation of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And just as many have seen fit to ignore the giving of thanks to God on Thanksgiving Day, so too have countless others deigned to divorce the birth of Christ from Christmas.

The reasons for this disturbing disconnect vary, but the main one seems to be that the worship of the deity recognized by the great majority of those in this country might be the cause of offense for a few; God himself excepted of course. And so in a few weeks we will commence the season of attempts at discrediting Christianity and its founder while distancing Christmas from any connection with him.

One of the most common ploys will be to claim that the date itself is nothing more than a pagan observance. Most scholars have agreed that the date of December 25 derived from pagan Rome’s celebration of the Natalis Invicti; birth of the deity, Mithra, the Sun God. But this should not, as has become fashionable, justify the notion that Christianity is an offshoot of paganism, even though Scripture is filled with literary allusions to the Sun of God. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Filmmakers Make Documentary Promoting Late-Term Abortions

Documentary Promoting Late-Term Abortions 12/3/2010 – Dave Andrusko –
Since we are approaching the Christmas season, I have vowed to be extra-civilized toward people whose attitude and behavior I find extra-uncivilized. What makes it easier is that so often there is little I can add to their own words that would reveal more about whom they are and where they are coming from.

The Huffingtonpost.com reprinted a piece that first ran in Women’s Media Center titled, “Late-Term Abortion: Filmmakers Seek To Boost Understanding.”

We learn that there are two filmmakers who are producing a honorific documentary about the two most infamous “late-term” abortionists in the world: LeRoy Carhart –who reportedly has moved his late-term abortion business from Nebraska when the state said he couldn’t kill unborn babies capable of feeling pain which lawmakers have recognized as beginning at 20 weeks– and Warren Hern –most famous for (in referring to his own abortion technique) the remarkable statement that “there is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator. It is before one’s eyes. The sensation of dismemberment flows through the forceps like an electric current.” [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Liberals and the Coming Redistribution of Fault

Leftism Failure12/2/2010 – J. Robert Smith –
It’s coming. Expect it. Liberals blaming everyone and everything but themselves for the nation’s continuing economic crisis. And the mounting crisis of government. It’s already begun, in fact, over at U.S. News and World Report, where Mortimer B. Zuckerman dusts off Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West to mull over the notion that the West — including the United States — may be reaching the end of the line.

Let’s congratulate Zuckerman for pointing the way in the coming attempt to foist blame on Western civilization for what is, essentially, a failure of leftism. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Knowing God, Crucial to Living as a Christian

Knowing God Packer
Eminent Christian theologian J.I. Packer’s best known book is Knowing God. In the book he emphasizes that a lifelong pursuit of knowing God should embody the Christian’s existence. According to Packer, however, Christians have become enchanted by modern skepticism and have joined the gigantic conspiracy of misdirection by failing to put first things first.

11/30/2010 – Chuck Colson –

According to Packer, studying the nature and character of God isn’t, as many Christians suppose, abstract and theoretical, but, instead, the most practical project we can undertake. This knowledge is crucial to living as a Christian.

In fact, attempting to live the Christian life without this knowledge isn’t only foolish, it’s a kind of self-cruelty—denying ourselves the riches of our own faith. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

The Immorality of Class Warfare

11/27/2010 – Henry Oliner –
Listening to the declarations of class warfare by congressmen who demonize wealth and the wealthy, I am reminded of these stories of the moral hypocrisy displayed by those who demand without respect. They require more and more, yet they blame these subjects for any setbacks caused by said subjects’ imperfections or unwillingness to bend to the will of those who scorn them. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail