Moral issues

Abortion Greater Threat to Europe than Islamic Terrorism

12/20/2010 – Hilary White –
Legal abortion is “the single most grievous moral deficit in contemporary life” and its proliferation will exact an as-yet unknown social price for the countries that have adopted it, said Lord Nicholas Windsor, the son of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, this month.

“The granting to ourselves of the right wantonly to kill, each year, millions of our offspring at the beginning of their lives: This is the question of questions for Europe,” he said.

“The practice of abortion is a mortal wound in Europe’s heart, in the center of Hellenic and Judeo-Christian culture.” [Read more…]

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Democrat Mythology, Part III: Helping The Poor

12/15/2010 – John Hayward –
Socialist politics are based around the need to provide for the less fortunate, whose misfortune is entirely beyond their control. They’re either victims of a merciless system that won’t let them get ahead, or the hapless prey of the Evil Rich. Part of this mindset involves an essential disdain for the capabilities of lower-class individuals. The idea of elevating them by providing opportunity is dismissed as a smokescreen deployed by greedy fat-cats and their paid minions. The poor must be guided and cared for.

Since the poor cannot take care of their own needs, and the benevolence of greedy citizens is unreliable, the power of the State must be deployed on their behalf. Initially, this takes the form of relatively modest welfare programs, but it soon expands into the system of tax-and-spend liberalism we recognize today. The State appropriates huge sums of money from the upper and middle class, to fund various programs for selected constituencies, who reward the socialist with their loyal votes. [Read more…]

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Capitalism’s Gift of Peace

Capitalism Gift of Peace Dove12/15/2010 – J.T. Young –

The Korean peninsula demonstrates the fundamental differences between free and fettered markets. As always, there are the free market’s obvious attributes of prosperity and democracy. However as recent events have shown, peace should not be overlooked. And just as importantly, neither should its proper attribution to a free market.

In one relatively small section of the world, the stark differences between the world’s most important dichotomy is clearly visible. In South Korea, a capitalist market, open society, and democracy exist. In North Korea, a closed market, closed society, and totalitarian regime exist. You also have a stark distinction between peace and war.

Perhaps capitalism’s most overlooked attribute is peace. Virtually all conflicts of the last century have been initiated by fettered market, authoritarian states. Often the world’s armed conflicts have been between two such regimes. Contrastingly, military conflicts have almost never pitted two capitalist, democratic nations against one another. [Read more…]

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American Freedom and Religious Morality

American Freedom and Religious Morality12/5/2010 – Andie Brownlow –

Liberals and conservatives both believe that as Americans, we should be moral people. The major difference is where their morality intersects with their politics. Most conservatives believe that our morality should come from religion, separate from government. Most progressives incorporate moral guidance as a function of government.

The humanistic tendencies of the political left assume that morality can be governed by state laws and dismiss religion as an origin and arbiter of moral law. Therefore, government must become a humanist’s ultimate authority to address and regulate human nature. [Read more…]

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The Immorality of Class Warfare

11/27/2010 – Henry Oliner –
Listening to the declarations of class warfare by congressmen who demonize wealth and the wealthy, I am reminded of these stories of the moral hypocrisy displayed by those who demand without respect. They require more and more, yet they blame these subjects for any setbacks caused by said subjects’ imperfections or unwillingness to bend to the will of those who scorn them. [Read more…]

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The Lost Lesson of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Communism Failureby John Stossel –
Had today’s political class been in power in 1623, tomorrow’s holiday would have been called “Starvation Day” instead of Thanksgiving. Of course, most of us wouldn’t be alive to celebrate it.

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn’t happen.

Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally. That’s why they nearly all starved. [Read more…]

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Curing the Human Condition

Regis Nicoll
Regis Nicoll

11/22/2010 – Regis Nicoll –

Albert Einstein, a man who was often ambiguous about his religious views, once admitted that he rejected the God of his Jewish heritage for that of Spinoza, the 17th-century philosopher.

For Spinoza, “God” was not a supernatural Being but an omnipresent principle of cosmic order and harmony. His universe was one of matter and motion in which every outcome was pre-determined according to that primal physical essence. It was a thoroughly naturalistic worldview, leaving no room for free will.

Enamored of the ideas of Spinoza, Einstein rejected the notion of free will in favor of the belief that everything obeys the deterministic laws of nature. For folks who similarly take naturalism seriously, a human being is not an autonomous agent acting upon nature, but a biochemical machine ruled by Nature. [Read more…]

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Science-Based Morality?

Regis Nicoll
Regis Nicoll

11/12/2010 – Regis Nicoll –

Each of us believes that certain things are wrong, not because we believe they are wrong, but because they really are wrong. And that applies to the moral relativist as well.

If you want to see a relativist sink into a sophistic seizure, ask him about the “virtues” of cruelty, rape, cheating, bigotry, or exploitation. Even the most liberally minded among us believe such things are wrong, even if they don’t know why.

Take the University of Maryland professor who recently engaged a member of the Genocide Awareness Project. In a ten-minute exchange on moral ethics, the professor exhibited great difficulty with the concept of morality, including the terms of the debate: human essence, value, and rights. Nevertheless, she had no difficulty calling her interlocutor’s reference to “mankind” offensive and “wrong.” [Read more…]

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Multiculturalism Today

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
11/7/2010 – Chuck Colson –

“Multiculturalism,” wrote the British scholar Theodore Dalrymple of the Manhattan Institute, “rests on the supposition—or better, the dishonest pretense—that all cultures are equal.”

So, the argument for multiculturalism goes, no culture is superior to another, and no culture should compete with any other. And if we understand that, we can all get along just fine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel went along with that idea for years but has recently changed her mind. Earlier this month she dared to tell a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union party that multiculturalism is a failed experiment that needs to be rejected. [Read more…]

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Go With God

Nov. 2010 – Stanley Hauerwas –
An open letter to young Christians on their way to college
“The Christian religion,” wrote Robert Louis Wilken, “is inescapably ritualistic (one is received into the Church by a solemn washing with water), uncompromisingly moral (‘be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,’ said Jesus), and unapologetically intellectual (be ready to give a ‘reason for the hope that is in you,’ in the words of 1 Peter). Like all the major religions of the world, Christianity is more than a set of devotional practices and a moral code: it is also a way of thinking about God, about human beings, about the world and history.”

Ritualistic, moral, and intellectual: May these words, ones that Wilken uses to begin his beautiful book, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, be written on your soul as you begin college and mark your life—characterize and distinguish your life—for the next four years. Be faithful in worship. In America, going to college is one of those heavily mythologized events that everybody tells you will “change your life,” which is probably at least half true. So don’t be foolish and imagine that you can take a vacation from church. [Read more…]

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