As I ponder tomorrow as a day of thanks and giving, please permit me to share with you those things for which I am most grateful.
Monthly Archives: November 2008
Who will defend us? Some reasons to give thanks
Please read this article. Here’s the highlight:
On the last day of the election, anti-Prop 8 forces ran a “home invasion” ad depicting two young Mormon missionaries ransacking homes. The ad further accuses Mormons in California of trying to take over the government because, as citizens, they participated in the political process by voting and donating to a cause they believed in. A week after the election The Los Angeles Times editorial board opined that No on Prop 8 forces should run more “hard-hitting” ads like “home invasion,” along with more “in-your-face radicalism.”
On the “Dr. Phil” show last week I sat next to a powerful politician — Mayor Gavin Newsom — who ritually rejected violence but refused to decry these extraordinary threats to ordinary voters’ livelihoods. I also sat next to Joe Solmonese, head of the Human Rights Campaign, when a young Mormon in the audience asked him, “Why are you singling out my faith when so many other people supported Prop 8?” Did Joe, an amiable guy, take a moment to call his troops to back off from religious bigotry, to refocus on the larger problem — 7 million Californians disagree with his organization’s gay marriage civil rights dogma?
No. I sat silent, dumbfounded, next to Joe when he pointed at the young man and cried, “We are going to go after your church every day for the next two years unless and until Prop 8 is overturned.”
Is there any doubt that we are in the middle of a cultural war?
Continue reading
A must read: a Libertarian defends social conservatives
This is one of the more interesting articles I have read in a while: a Libertarian agnostic makes the case that social conservatives and the “religious right” promote more liberty than social liberals. Here’s the money paragraph:
The most obvious point to me is that it is the do-gooding liberals who are telling us all what we can and can’t do. The religious right usually just wants to be left alone, either to home school, pray in public or not get their children vaccinated with who-knows-what. Inasmuch as the “religious right” wants some things outlawed, they have failed miserably for at least the last 50 years. Abortion, sodomy, and pornography are now all Constitutional rights. However, praying in public school is outlawed, based on that same Constitution.
I don’t completely agree with this writer’s take. It was primarily the “religious right” that has basically decreed that a Mormon cannot be president. Still, I think he makes some interesting points, and I found his perspective refreshing.
Guest Post: We Wouldn’t Be in This Mess, If… We had been True to the Constitution
M* is pleased to present a guest post from Brother Earl Taylor, Jr., President of the National Center for Constitutional Studies.
About Brother Taylor:
Earl Taylor, Jr. has taught The Making of America Constitutional Study course to thousands of people over the past twenty years throughout the nation. He has developed other study courses for a wide range of participants, from high school students to state legislators.
Educated in Washington State and Arizona, Mr. Taylor graduated from Arizona State University and received his Masters Degree in Political Science from George Wythe College and Coral Ridge Baptist University. He has had the privilege of being privately tutored by Dr. W. Cleon Skousen over the course of many years. He became President of the National Center for Constitutional Studies in 1995, an organization founded by Dr. Skousen in 1971 as the Freemen Institute. The purpose of the NCCS is to teach Americans the exciting message of the Founding Fathers – where they got their great ideas and how they put them all together into a Constitution for the establishment of the first free people in modern times. In 1998, Mr. Taylor was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Law degree from George Wythe College and Coral Ridge Baptist University. He also serves as a member of the adjunct faculty of George Wythe College.
Mr. Taylor served as coordinator in 1985 of the Winter Conference for State Legislators where nearly 400 elected officials from 30 states met to study The Making of America. He has written a special study guide for Boy Scouts to help them earn their Citizenship Merit Badges. He also helped structure courses on the U. S. Constitution for college re-certification of public school teachers.
In his desire to begin to train young people in this most important area, Mr. Taylor established one of the first charter high schools in Arizona, Heritage Academy, where he has developed a special curriculum for the teaching of hundreds of students the exciting message of the Founding Fathers.
Mr. Taylor has also been instrumental in encouraging the celebration of Constitution Week in many cities and schools throughout the nation.
Mr. Taylor and his wife, Ruth, are the parents of ten children and reside in Mesa, Arizona. Continue reading
Mitt Romney wants to bankrupt the U.S. auto industry
Really. In this New York Times article, Mitt says no to the proposed bailout. He’s right, of course. Any bailout now is like putting a bandaid on a chest wound.
Instead, I say let the auto industry suffer from its poor management decisions over the last three decades. Yes, it will mean the loss of probably three million jobs and huge pension obligations in the short term. But as this highly pessimistic study shows, by 2011 most of the people who lose their jobs will find employment elsewhere. That’s the way the market works.
A bailout for Detroit will only keep in place an unsustainable cost structure, as Mitt indicates in the attached.