Orthodox Editors

Digitally Dangerous, Rewiring Our Minds

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
12/13/2010 – Chuck Colson –
Spending too much time in the digital world, which hurts our ability to focus, is going to make it hard to engage in spiritual disciplines, which require concentration. And our minds will not develop as God intended them to. […]

Vishal is a bright high school senior who hopes to study filmmaking in college. There’s just one problem: Vishal is rewiring his brain in such a way that he may never enjoy the career he dreams of.

As Matt Richtel reports in the New York Times, like many teens today, Vishal spends a big chunk of his day on his computer–on Facebook, playing video games, creating digital films, or sending text messages to friends.

Richtel writes that the digital world—cell phones and computers—may actually be changing how developing brains work. He notes that many kids do homework at the same time they’re texting friends. Others talk on the phone while texting other friends at the same time. And they all spend many hours every week surfing the Internet. [Read more…]

The Assault on Christmas and Other American Norms

12/12/2010 – George Scaggs –

Over the last several decades, government’s sanctioning of secular fundamentalism has emboldened its proponents, aiding a slow but sure erosion of our societal norms. Nothing escapes its wake. Ultimately, Christmas, right along with everything else, is swept up in it.

Sadly, our most basic time-honored expressions of Christian faith and celebration have become contentious issues. Today, it wouldn’t be Christmas season without someone being offended by it. Previously unthinkable assaults on the cherished holiday that an estimated 91% of Americans celebrate now occur all too routinely. [Read more…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]