Doing Good for Goodness Sake? An Atheist’s Game of Scrabble

God and Adam Creation by Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq. –
In the order of being, there can be no natural moral law without the existence of God. In the order of being, implicit in the belief of a natural moral law is the existence of God. A moral law makes no sense without a Divine Legislator.

In a comment to a recent article I wrote, the notion that God is necessary for a natural moral law to exist was challenged by reader who identified himself as an atheist. God was unnecessary for morality to exist, he argued. “I am an atheist,” he observed. “I do good for goodness’ sake,” as if Christians don’t.

There is no reason not to take him at his word. If we take him at his word, our atheist reader believes in the first self-evident principle of the natural moral law: do good and avoid evil, which is the same thing as “do good for goodness’ sake.” [Read more…]

Keynesianism and the Collectivist Dream

Democrat Communist Marxist no difference by William Sullivan –
It’s campaign season, and as usual, Democrats are employing their class struggle rhetoric to position a redistributive government agenda as the only way Americans can be saved from themselves and the greedy capitalists who prey upon them.

Accustomed though we may be, this might seem an odd campaign strategy in light of recent polls showing widespread distrust of, and even contempt for, the federal government.  But they have no choice but to keep their talking points emotional rather than substantive, you see.  The core economic model of the American left is Keynesianism, which is less a viable economic path than it is an unrealistic pipe dream that stirs the collectivist’s blood, much like the notions of world peace and Utopia.

Keynesianism is a model based upon how collectivists think the economy should operate, rather than how it actually operates.  As Ron Ross puts it, “Keynesianism is definitely not an evidence-based model of how the economy works. [Read more…]

Same-Sex Marriage: How Did We Get Here? And Where Are We Going?

Fr. Lev Semenov
Fr. Lev Semenov
by Archpriest Lev Semenov –
President Barack Obama recently affirmed his personal support for the legalization of same-sex marriage. For a perspective from Russia on this momentous development, we offer the following commentary by Archpriest Lev Semenov, Dean of the Faculty of Further Education at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University and cleric of the Church of St. Nicholas in Kuznetskaya Sloboda, both in Moscow.

The political heavyweight of the Western world has taken a step towards the abyss. If we are to believe the news report broadcast on the radio, and later confirmed in the press, President Barack Obama has made his first public statement in support of the legalization of same-sex marriages.

One can only sympathize with the citizens of this country who hold the Christian faith, just imagining how they must have felt when they heard this statement from their head of state. [Read more…]

Motherhood is a Life Given Up in Love

Motherhood Life Given Up in Love by Randy Sly –
Sacrifice is the great virtue of motherhood
Nothing speaks more highly to me of this self-sacrifice than the witness of a mother, who daily gives of herself for her own. Often depriving herself, she offers to others; often preferring others, she offers herself. Motherhood is a call to stay firm in the face of uncertainty, despair, sickness, poverty, and even danger, where her children are concerned. One could almost say that as the father is the sword, she is the shield. A mother lays down her life by taking it up on behalf of these precious ones entrusted to her care. …

Once upon a time there was a young woman who loved her Lord. There was nothing she withheld from Him. Her life was always “yes” to Him, the proverbial “fiat” – “let it be to me as you have said.” She fell in love and, hearing the “Divine Yes,” married the man whom she loved. They grew in Him as one in the sacramental mystery.

A child was born and she loved the child. The child brought something out of her that had always been a part of her yet never expressed. Like a hidden stream now discovered, rivers of love flowed out of the woman to her child. [Read more…]

America’s Useful Idiots

Useful Idiots Communism Obama Marxist Radical by Steve McCann –
Many years ago, a phrase was coined by the leaders of the Soviet Union to describe those in the West who naively promoted the cause of Russian Communism when in reality they were held in contempt and were being cynically used by the Soviet hierarchy. The term “useful idiot” more than ever applies to a vast swath of citizens in the United States who have been cynically used by the hardcore left for a cause they are unwilling to understand.

Among the mysteries confronting those of us who have immigrated to the United States from countries that have experienced the devastating outcome of socialist/Marxist ideology is why seemingly successful and educated people could be so easily swayed to support those whose end-game is to transform the country into a socialist “utopia” and to control the day-to-day lives of all Americans. [Read more…]

What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism

Bible Capitalism America Freedom by Rabbi Aryeh Spero –
Who would have expected that in a Republican primary campaign the single biggest complaint among candidates would be that the front-runner has taken capitalism too far? As if his success and achievement were evidence of something unethical and immoral? President Obama and other redistributionists must be rejoicing that their assumptions about rugged capitalism and the 1% have been given such legitimacy.

More than any other nation, the United States was founded on broad themes of morality rooted in a specific religious perspective. We call this the Judeo-Christian ethos, and within it resides a ringing endorsement of capitalism as a moral endeavor. [Read more…]

Beware of the Petty Totalitarian Left

Petty Totalitarian Left - Tyranny by Mark Judge –
People who argue against reducio ad Hitlerum, the tendency to reduce every political argument to a Hitler comparison, usually have a good point. Welfare reform was not the Third Reich. Neither is environmentalism.

Yet in rejecting Hitler argument, people have forgotten an important aspect of totalitarianism: its pettiness, and how that pettiness can morph into greater forms of repression.

Many totalitarian states don’t start by shoving people into death camps. Most begin by micromanaging everyday life. This is why I fear liberalism so much.

For the past several decades the left hasn’t resembled Stalin liquidating millions — although pro-life people could make that case — but rather the nitpicking, control-freak oppression of a low-level bureaucrat in a new totalitarian regime. [Read more…]

Without Justice, What Else is the State But a Great Band of Robbers – St. Augustine

St. Augustine Without Justice State is a Great Band of Robbers by Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq. –
In his book City of God, St. Augustine famously said, “without justice, what else is the State but a great band of robbers?”  This statement seems to be a favorite of Pope Benedict XVI, and he has recruited it in warning lawmakers, particularly lawmakers in the Western nations with Christian heritage, of the way to which they are headed.

He referred to these words in his address to the German Parliament or Bundestag when he visited Germany.  Some years earlier, in his encyclical Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI referred to those very same words.

It is useful from time to time to recall these words of St. Augustine and the deep truth that they convey. [Read more…]

Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shall Support the Welfare State

Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shall Support the Welfare State by Larry Elder –
As a candidate for the presidency, George W. Bush took heat for supposedly saying something like, “God wanted me to become president.” He never said that. But no matter. Here comes another yet another Bible-banging religious conservative “taking his marching orders from God.” Apparently, if you feel God endorses a particular path, God wants you to keep the news to yourself.

Religion, to many liberals, is a sign of weakness, a demonstration of the inability to reason for oneself. With the Bible telling him what to do, how to think, what to believe — why, such a person is downright scary. Recall Obama explaining how small-town Midwesterners deal with difficult economic times: “They get bitter,” as the then-presidential candidate put it. “They cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them … as a way to explain their frustrations.” [Read more…]

The Economic Paradox No One Wants to Talk About

Patriot Post Economic Paradox by Arnold Ahlert –
There is an economic paradox that few people understand, much less wish to acknowledge, because to do so would reveal the level of societal deterioration that has caused it. In simple terms, there are two schools of economic thought: one posits that massive amounts of government spending, aka stimulus in all its odious forms, is the only way to save an economy.

The other posits that until massive over-spending by government is brought under control, aka austerity, economies over-burdened by debts and deficits will continue to founder. Who’s right? There is merit to both arguments — but only because we’ve reached the aforementioned level of societal deterioration. Let me explain.

For decades, the growth of government both here and in Europe, has been inexorable. [Read more…]