How Evil Works

FrontPageMag | by Jamie Glazov (David Kupelian interview) | 4/20/2010
How Evil Works
If we don’t understand that we are created by God and that we live in a moral dimension in which we constantly can choose between good or evil, and that things go really badly when we choose the wrong way – if we don’t recognize this basic reality level of our lives, then it’s very difficult to understand evil, or to understand ourselves for that matter. […]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Soviet dissident who exposed the evils of the gulag system to the world, once wrote: “More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.’”

Decades later, Solzhenitsyn said that in trying to explain the totalitarian horrors that permeated the 20th century – which he himself endured – he could not improve on the explanation he had heard as a child: “Men have forgotten God.” [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

America’s Great Divide: Tax Payers vs. Non-Payers

Human Events | by Martha Zoller | 4/23/2010

“So I’ve been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you.”—President Barack Obama, April 15, 2010

Mr. President, with all due respect, you don’t get it. The Tax Day Tea Parties weren’t about taxes alone, they were also about spending.

And the tax cuts the President often talks about are, by and large, one-time checks that will do nothing to protect the taxpayer from future tax hikes. And he is concealing many tax increases in his budget right now. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Creation and Man

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson

Christian Post | by Chuck Colson | 4/22/2010

… Christians are rightly concerned that extremists have turned Earth Day into “Worship-Earth Day.”

Just listen to a few of these suggestions for Earth Day 2010 that some of the more radical groups are proposing: taking down “global eco-criminals” like Exxon-Mobil; having school kids meditate about the Spirit of Life (that’s “Spirit of Life” with capital letters); seeking international cooperation on reducing the human population; or working for, and I quote, the “ultimate, inevitable, and necessary dismantling of industrial civilization.”

We Christians certainly do not want to be yoked with new agers, neo-pagans, or folks who just downright hate humanity. But there’s no reason for us to surrender creation care to them, either. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

The Earth Is Not My God

God Creation

by Bob Lonsberry | 4/22/2010

Earth Day is a crock.

It is the high holy day of the environmentalism cult and I choose not to engage in that particular brand of idol worship.

I choose not to worship the earth as if it were a god and I were a savage. I am its steward, not its slave. I wasn’t created for it, it was created for me.

Man exists not as an accidental product of earth’s evolution, the earth exists as a home for man. It did not produce us, it was produced for us.

God made the heavens and the earth, and he made them for a purpose – and humankind is that purpose. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Not Celebrating Communism’s Collapse

by Mark Tooley | 4/20/2010

America’s Religious Left, having invested decades in dialogue with and advocating accommodation of the Soviet Bloc, was flummoxed and uncelebratory about the momentous collapse of East European Communism in 1989-1990.

The United Methodist Council of Bishops, representing 9 million church members in the U.S. were actually in session when the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. They reacted by blandly commending the East Germans for their “openness and growing self- confidence” and by urging a “new trust and compassion throughout the world.” They also warned against the imposition of Eastern or Western value systems, as though the two were morally equal. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

God in Our Classrooms

Bradley Johnson 1
Bradley Johnson and one of the two banners he was ordered to take down

Townhall.com | by Joseph C. Phillips | Apr. 15, 2010

Such was our founder’s belief in the preeminence of God that when the First Continental Congress convened in 1774, Massachusetts delegate Thomas Cushing suggested to the assembly that together they pray for divine guidance and protection. The historical events that would forever change the world were preparing to unfold: war loomed on the horizon; the Declaration of Independence would be signed, and a nation “conceived in liberty” would be born. In this moment, men of varied religious beliefs — Presbyterians, Episcopalians, some Quakers, others Baptists or Congregationalists – were led in prayer by an Episcopal priest in an appeal to the almighty that was described as “extraordinary…filling the bosom of every man present.”

It would not be the last time the founders appealed to the Almighty God.

James Madison acknowledged God’s favor in our founding in Federalist 37 referring to “a finger of that almighty hand, which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.” I dare say that men like Madison and Cushing would not recognize the America of today, filled with politicians afraid to confess their faith or educators fearful of offending the sensibilities of their students with any mention of God. Math teacher Brad Johnson of Westview High School of the Poway School District in San Diego, California, is a case in point. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Cultural Marxism in Education: The Gathering Revolt

American Thinker | by Chuck Rogér | 4/18/2010

For decades now, American schools corrupted by cultural Marxism have been eroding the moral fiber and judgment skills of schoolchildren. Unless sensible parents and teachers put a stop to the indoctrination, today’s free speech-crippling political correctness, tolerance of immorality, and lack of knowledge of our country’s birth will continue to grow until America is no more. To stop the indoctrination, parents and teachers must understand how cultural Marxism came to permeate school curricula. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

What the Popes Have to Say About Socialism

TFP.org | by Gustavo Solimeo | 2/24/2010

Anyone who examines the ideology of socialism will see the contrast between the socialist doctrine and the doctrine of the Church. All the same, it is not out of place to review the condemnation of the popes starting with Pius IX and ending with Benedict XVI. Thus, we present what the popes have to say about socialism as they condemn the socialist doctrine thoroughly and entirely. This is not a comprehensive compilation, but just some samples.

Pope_Pius_IX.jpg
PIUS IX (1846-1878):
“Overthrow [of] the entire order of human affairs”
“You are aware indeed, that the goal of this most iniquitous plot is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism, by confusing them with perverted teachings.” (Encyclical Nostis et Nobiscum, December 8, 1849)

LEO XIII (1878-1903):
Hideous monster
“…communism, socialism, nihilism, hideous deformities of the civil society of men and almost its ruin.” (Encyclical Diuturnum, June 29, 1881)

Ruin of all institutions
“… For, the fear of God and reverence for divine laws being taken away, the authority of rulers despised, sedition permitted and approved, and the popular passions urged on to lawlessness, with no restraint save that of punishment, a change and overthrow of all things will necessarily follow. Yea, this change and overthrow is deliberately planned and put forward by many associations of communists and socialists” (Encyclical Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884, n. 27).

[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Same Old: Liberals Then and Now

American Spectator | by Ben Stein | 4/15/2010 (1976)

Back in 1976, when Gerald Ford was President, Ben Stein, then a consultant on Washington and conservatism for the Normal Lear show All’s Fair, sent this memorandum to its creators:

What I don’t like is the way rich liberals, who have made their money through the operations of the capitalist system and who would be miserable bureaucratic cogs in a socialist system, are nevertheless socialists. I suspect that a large part of their motivation is a style of asceticism which has been fashionable among the rich since the time of the Pharisees. Another motivation for the rich liberals to dislike the capitalist system is that they have already gotten theirs and they don’t want to be challenged by other people coming along and getting theirs.

I don’t like the way liberals of any income group assume that they have a monopoly on morality and that the only conscionable position on issues is their position. A sanctimoniousness runs in the liberal mind which is a direct descendant of the Calvinist assuredness of moral superiority. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail