Culture war

New York Public School Teaches Children that ‘Religion is a Disease’

Public Schools Bias Atheism6/24/2010 – Andrea Peyser –
God is dead? At a top Brooklyn middle school, He is.

Just when you thought the separation of church and state was more than an option, like paper or plastic, the matter has been settled at MS 51 in Park Slope. And the lesson falls on the side of atheism.

“RELIGION,” a sheet from English class, handed out to eighth-graders, is provocatively titled. The typewritten paper presents some 20 quotes that can be described as anti-God, coming from philosophers from Kierkegaard to Schopenhauer. Even a “Yiddish proverb.”

“Religion is a disease, but a noble disease,” reads the first quote, attributed to Heraclitus.

“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they will think,” reads one by Schopenhauer. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

The Character Deficit

Character Counts Character Matters6/22/2010 – Steve McCann –
When the framers of the United States Constitution completed their work in 1787, they acknowledged that the success and future of the republic as established by that document was dependent on the honor and integrity of its leaders and citizens. As John Adams wrote: “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Today, the Obama administration, the majority of the members of Congress, much of the Judiciary, academia, and the media represent the culmination of the degradation of ethics and character, which has put the United States in the nearly inevitable position of joining the annals of the rise and fall of great nations.

The die was cast in the early part of the 20th century, when Congress and the president discovered that they could bribe the public with the public’s money. The focus of politics began to shift from public service and adherence to the Constitution to seeking, centralizing, and maintaining power, as well as amassing individual wealth. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Crime and Character

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson

6/16/2010 – Chuck Colson –

Two weeks ago, I told you that crime rates are falling—despite the fact we’ve been enduring tough economic times for three years.

Obviously, this flies in the face of the liberal belief that the cause of crime is poverty. And one liberal columnist, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, dared to look at the facts and ask the question, “Did Liberals Get It Wrong on Crime?”

Cohen has this to say about falling crime rates: “Surprisingly, this has happened in the teeth of the Great Recession, meaning that those disposed to attribute criminality to poverty,” which was his view at one time, he says, “have some strenuous rethinking to do.” [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Peter Singer: ‘Why Not Sterilize the Human Race into Extinction?’

Peter Singer
Peter Singer

6/8/2010 – Peter J. Smith –
Princeton philosopher Peter Singer one of the world’s foremost contemporary utilitarian philosophers infamous for his advocacy of infanticide, would like individuals to consider this question: would sterilizing the human race to spare future generations the pain of existence be a good idea?

In a blog post for the New York Times entitled “Should this be the last generation?” Singer discusses in glowing terms the thought of South African philosopher David Benatar. Singer calls Benator the “author of a fine book with an arresting title: Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.”

“To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her,” explains Singer.[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Knight: We’re Smarter Than God

Smarter than God6/7/2010 – Robert Knight –
Sexual morality is over. That’s the conclusion of one of the smartest men in Washington, the estimable columnist George Will. On ABC’s “This Week” on May 30, Mr. Will agreed with colleague Matthew Dowd that apart from a few glitches, homosexuality will soon be a nonissue in the military. They are wrong, but let’s look at their argument.

The men cited young folks’ liberal attitudes and recent polls as evidence that morality is no longer a factor. Mr. Dowd: “It’s long been decided in the public’s mind. I think the Republicans are so far out of step on this…”

Mr. Will: “For people of Matt’s son’s generation, being gay is like being left-handed. … The Supreme Court has a famous phrase it used in some opinion, the evolving standards of decency that mark a maturing society. Clearly these are evolving, and the case is over, basically.” [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

An Ungodly Immigration Policy?

6/1/2010 – Mark D. Tooley –
The 1.1 million-member United Church of Christ (UCC) is trying to raise $50,000 for a media campaign to blast Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law. Church prelates hope the ad will appear on May 29, when reputedly 500,000 will march in Phoenix against the law.

As America’s most left-wing Christian denomination, the fast declining UCC’s zeal for political activism perhaps compensates for its lack of evangelism. Having lost about half its members in recent decades, and several hundred congregations in recent years, the 1.1 million member denomination, at least as expressed by its elites, unapologetically plunges ahead with the latest causes du jour. [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

PBS: More Christian Terrorists Than Muslim Terrorists

6/1/2010 – Robert Spencer –
PBS’s Tavis Smiley recently claimed that “every single day in this country” Christians commit terrorist acts. Interviewing the heroic ex-Muslim freedom fighter Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Smiley repeated common leftist dogmas about how Christian terrorists are more numerous and violent than Muslim terrorists, and have committed more terrorist acts inside the U.S. than Muslims have. Smiley’s views are silly, but they’re also ultimately misleading and dangerous, as they divert attention from the genuine threat from Islamic jihadists and, by sapping our civilizational self-confidence, weaken our ability and will to resist those jihadists.[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Dancing With Devils


5/31/2010 – Bill Muehlenberg –
One of the great unresolved questions of recent history is why so many members of the Western left have become so besotted with, and apologetic for, ruthless totalitarian regimes. There have always been Western leftists who have idolised brutal regimes — be it the Soviet Union, communist Cuba or Islamist Iran —and preferred them to their own countries in the free and prosperous West.

Others have documented this phenomenon, such as Paul Hollander in various classic works, including Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, 1928-78 (1981) and Anti-Americanism (1995).

Here, in his recent book United in Hate, Jamie Glazov makes an attempt at exploring and explaining the Left’s love affair with terror and tyranny.[Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Crime and Recession, It’s Not What They Think

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson

5/27/2010 – Chuck Colson –
The evidence shows over and over that crime is not caused by deprivation, but by depravity. And the answer is conversion.

The statistics are startling. Across the United States, crime rates are dropping—for the third year in a row. According to the FBI, violent crimes like murder and rape were down 5.5% in 2009. Property crimes were down 4.9%. Amazingly enough, crime rates dropped more in big cities than in smaller cities.

The media is having a hard time explaining why crime rates are dropping. As one major paper put it, the drop in crime is “challenging the widely held belief that recessions drive up crime rates.” But “challenging” puts it too mildly: Since the economic collapse, the rate of decline in crime rates has actually accelerated!

So where does the “widely held” belief that recessions fuel crime come from? [Read more…]

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail