Moral issues
The U.N.’s Shocking Sexuality Guidelines
American Thinker | Janice Shaw Crouse | Aug. 30, 2009
During the summer slump, two United Nations agencies — United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) — issued highly controversial new guidelines for sexuality education of children around the world. These groups have a long history of pushing “reproductive health care,” and the new report, International Guidelines on Sexuality Education, builds on an earlier report released by the International Planned Parenthood Federation to promote the “need and entitlement” for sexuality education for children beginning at age five. [Read more…]
Scotland’s Turn To Shame the West
Townhall | Dennis Prager | Aug. 25, 2009
This week, it was Scotland’s turn to shame Western civilization. And though it seemed impossible to outdo Yale, Scotland has. The Scottish government released Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the one person convicted in the mass murder of 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988.
As the Chicago Tribune noted in an editorial appropriately titled “Scotland’s Shame,” at al-Megrahi’s 2001 trial, the Scottish prosecutor pointed out that “four hundred parents lost a child, 46 parents lost their only child, 65 women were widowed, 11 men lost their wives, 140 lost a parent, seven lost both parents.” [Read more…]
Justice Undone
Investor’s Business Daily | Aug. 24, 2009
Lockerbie: To Scottish authorities, the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, serving a life sentence for planning the Pan Am jet bombing that killed 270, is a “humanitarian” act. But to any civilized person, it’s an outrage.
Scottish justice officials and Britain’s government should be deeply ashamed. Not only have they let an unrepentant killer go, but also they have advertised the weakness and stupidity of Western European governments when it comes to terrorism. [Read more…]
Obama the Repo Man
American Thinker | Robin of Berkeley | Aug. 19, 2009
If you live in your heart, you look around and see the kaleidoscope of humanity. People of different abilities, ages, challenges all trying to live happy and meaningful lives. But if you don’t live in your heart, if you live in your ideology, then your eyes see a different reality. You divide the world up into those who can serve the state and those who cannot.
In the world of Obama and his friends, there are able bodied people who can be used. Then there are the clunkers, the parasites and sponges. The welcome mat has been pulled out from under us; the Statue of Liberty is sinking. [Read more…]
Unhappy Fault – Christian Perspectives on Righteous Anger
Touchstone | Leon J. Podles | August 2009
Any institution tends to preserve itself by avoiding conflict, whether external or internal. In addition to this universal tendency, many Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, “What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.” [Read more…]
Without a shared moral code there can be no free society
Office of the Chief Rabbi | Rabbi Jonathan Sacks | July 31, 2009
Subprime mortgages, financial collapse, MPs expenses: these and other recent scandals are more than mere passing events. They have left Parliament and the market, the twin foundations of the free society, in disarray. What has been lost is trust, our trust in those we chose to look after our affairs, and trust is the basis of society. If we are to recover it, we must ask some deep questions.
Thus far we have had a festival of blame, and there have been some sacrificial victims. But our great faiths teach the principle of collective responsibility. In that spirit we should ask, What has gone wrong in society as a whole? [Read more…]
Our Adolescent Culture
BreakPoint | John Stonestreet | June 3, 2009
What Diana West is suggesting in The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Threatens Western Civilization will undoubtedly sound ridiculous to thousands of youth pastors, family therapists, and advertising gurus whose livelihoods depend on entertaining, counseling, and selling to teenagers.
Nevertheless, West argues that adolescence didn’t always exist. In fact, it is a quite recent phenomenon. The word “teenager” wasn’t really used until 1941, after all. In virtually every other culture in the history of the world prior to late 20th century Western culture, kids became adults. Not so anymore. They now become teenagers, or, to put it in more sociologically acceptable terms, they become adolescents. [Read more…]
The Pope, the Rabbi, and the Moral Economy
Acton Institute | Samuel Gregg | July 15, 2009
The pope and the rabbi had a similar message, which amounts to the following. Some of our contemporary economic problems reflect a deeper moral crisis within Western civilization. Until we acknowledge this, shifts in economic policy and business practice will only provide limited solutions.
To be sure, it’s not a message everyone will appreciate. But that doesn’t diminish its accuracy.[Read more…]
Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg: Roe Would Help Eradicate Unwanted Populations
Catholic Exchange | Kathleen Gilbert | July 10, 2009
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seems to have made a stunning admission in favor of cleansing America of unwanted populations by aborting them. In an interview with the New York Times, the judge said that Medicaid should cover abortions, and that she had originally expected that Roe v. Wade would facilitate such coverage in order to control the population of groups “that we don’t want to have too many of.”
The statement was made in the context of a discussion about the fact that abortions are not covered by Medicaid, and therefore are less available to poor women. “Reproductive choice has to be straightened out,” said Ginsburg, lamenting the fact that only women “of means” can easily access abortion. [Read more…]