Delegitimizing Liberalism
7/22/2010 – J. Robert Smith –
Five decades after liberalism began to fail, it’s still with us and finding potent ways to diminish liberty. Liberalism has — or seems to have — more lives than a cat. It’s sustained principally by two things, both powerful: myth and interest. If liberalism as a political and societal force is ever to be marginalized, it first must be separated from the myth that it grows in the same garden of liberty and republican virtues as conservatism and libertarianism. Voters and the public need to learn and appreciate that liberalism is largely a statist creed alien to the nation’s heritage. [Read more…]
ObamaCare Mythology: One Man’s Life Is Another Man’s Loss
7/20/2010 – John Griffing –
If President Obama is to be believed, health care is a dwindling, finite resource that must be rationed. According to Obama, quality health care for some deprives the less fortunate of quality care. The only good health care in Obama’s worldview is that which is “redistributional.”
So says Dr. Donald Berwick, Obama’s new health care czar, appointed to oversee the distribution of $800 billion worth of benefits payments. This mostly means denying life-extending treatment to seniors, in practice. Of course, Obama lacks the constitutional authority to appoint an individual with this kind of authority without Senate confirmation, but using the “recess appointment” ruse, shocking even Democrat senators, Berwick now holds vast power over who gets what medical treatment.
But no matter. Obama has decided. Illegality has not stopped other contentious Obama appointments. Obama does what he wants, when he wants, regardless of his sworn oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. [Read more…]
Pity the Postmodern Cultural Elite
7/20/2010 – Victor Davis Hanson –
I think most of our problems transcend politics, which is increasingly a reflection of an elite, insider culture that is completely at odds with the majority of the country that it oversees.
So what is a cultural elite?
It is a sloppy term that might include the academic class in the university that educates our children in college. The upper echelons that run government departments constitute part of this cultural elite. So does an entertainment cadre that oversees television and Hollywood. Corporate managers are elites as well.
There is no racial, regional, religious, or tribal commonality. One shared allegiance perhaps is to higher education that certifies the cultural elite by diplomas of all sorts from a “good school,” as well as a respectable salary and a nice home with appurtenances. The good life of the elite is defined by both the absence of worry about necessities, and a certain status that accrues from properly recognized advanced education and sensitivity. [Read more…]
Read the Label
7/19/2010 – Chuck Colson –
Everywhere you turn, someone is warning Americans about the dangers of childhood obesity. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver toured the country preaching the gospel of healthier school lunches. The first lady has made fighting childhood obesity her top priority.
While I’m all for healthier eating and exercise, I can’t help but think, however, that in our concern over our kids’ waistlines, we have overlooked a far bigger threat—the one to their souls.
The threat I’m referring to is pornography. [Read more…]
An Independent Witness to Marriage
7/16/2010 – Stuart Koehl –
In the pending court case for overturning California’s Proposition 8, which banned “gay marriage,” two leading conservative legal scholars face off: Charles J. Cooper, taking the classical conservative line that organic social institutions such as marriage have an inherent value and cannot be redefined by legal fiat, and Theodore Olson, taking the more libertarian line that government should simply regulate contractual relationships between individuals and not become involved in private matters. [Read more…]
Oh No You Didn’t!
7/14/2010 – Conn Carroll –
Last week the Obama administration began rolling out new campaign titled, we kid you not, “Yes, we did.” Did what exactly? Waste nearly a trillion dollars on an economic stimulus that by every objective measure has completely failed to perform as advertised? Then yes you did. A new CBS poll out today shows that 74 percent of Americans believe the Obama stimulus either damaged the economy or had no effect. Clearly the White House is on a different planet than the rest of the country.
In another dispatch from Planet Obama, the White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report today purporting to prove that President Obama’s stimulus has saved or created 3 million jobs and is on track to meet its goal of 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year. Where do they come up this slop? [Read more…]
Dictatorship of Relativism, Catholic Professor Fired for Being Catholic
7/12/2010 – Deacon Keith Fournier –
Professor Howell is a victim of the “Dictatorship of Relativism” which Pope Benedict XVI warned of. This is an egregious violation of constitutional rights and overt censorship of speech unpopular to the Cultural revolutionaries who have grabbed the reigns of Western society. Warning to all who hold that truth exists in an age which has followed the pied piper of relativism.
URBANA, IL (Catholic Online) – From every indicator, Professor Ken Howell was an exemplary professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign. He is a faithful Catholic, in fact a convert from the Presbyterian Church and ministry, who was asked to teach courses on the Catholic faith and intellectual tradition. He is extraordinarily qualified on every front. He taught those courses in complete fidelity to the magisterium, the teaching office, of the Catholic Church.
He is now a victim of the “Dictatorship of Relativism” which Pope Benedict XVI warned of in the homily he gave prior to the Conclave wherein he was chosen to become the successor of the Apostle Peter. This egregious violation of the Professors constitutional rights and overt censorship of speech which is unpopular to the Cultural revolutionaries who have grabbed the reigns of Western society, is now being reviewed by the Alliance Defense Fund for a legal response. [Read more…]
A Long Catalog of Injustice
7/9/2010 – Chuck Colson –
Should American taxpayers pay for economic aid to a nation that persecutes Christians? This isn’t a trick question.
Imagine that you are a government official in a country I will call “M.” Despite your efforts to promote economic growth, unemployment and poverty rates remain high. As a result, many of your citizens have gone abroad in search of work.
What has been called “the human face of a long catalogue of socio-economic ills” are the many thousands of orphaned and abandoned children living throughout your country. Their plight has been the subject of news reports and even an award-winning film.
So what do you do about it? Well, if you are Morocco, you declare war on those seeking to help them. [Read more…]
Religiously Dissing America’s Independence Day
7/6/2010 – Mark Tooley –
Predictably, Jim Wallis’s Religious Left Sojourners blog dishonored Independence Day by featuring an op-ed headlined “Why Christianity and July 4th are Incompatible.”
In it, a young pacifist pastor explained why Christians can’t “celebrate” having “killed thousands upon thousands of people because they [the British] were taxing us without giving us representation in parliament.” [Read more…]