All Politics, No Principles

American Thinker | by Jeffrey Folks | Oct. 5, 2009

In separate Associated Press reports, President Obama was said to be “mulling options to boost job growth” and “considering a range of ideas” for dealing with Afghanistan. The president seems to spend a great deal of his time these days mulling and considering, and one has to ask why. As an indecisive president mulls and considers, the unemployment rate approaches 10% and casualties in Afghanistan have risen to an all-time high.

It would seem that a commander-in-chief, locked in a momentous war with extremists who wish to destroy this country, would already have a clear idea as to his general course of action. [Read more…]

Getting to Know An Unknown God

OrthodoxyToday | by John Kapsalis | Oct. 2009

You could almost imagine Paul, with his battered and bruised legs, jumping with a happy ‘Eureka!’ This, finally, was the answer to everyone’s prayers. The unknown God of the Athenians was the one true God. And Paul preached this unknown God to the Athenians and to people everywhere he went. This same unknown God is the one that Christians believe, worship, proclaim and die for. Whew! That takes care of that. But wait a minute.

Who is this God? Who is this unknown God that has touched all of world history? Who is this being for whom so much ink has been spilled trying to understand? Well, the answer is (and must be) essentially unknown.

Yes I know, Scripture has revealed God to be the Lord of all creation, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I know that God IS. But there is still so much I don’t know. This unknown God also chose to become a man and live among us, only to be spit upon, punched, ridiculed and violently killed—all because He loves me. [Read more…]

Nation of Men, Not of Laws

American Thinker | by Tad Wintermeyer | Oct. 1, 2009

Roman Polanski and his allies seek to rape the United States and her Constitution. While this metaphor may seem repugnantly acerbic, it rings true. Webster defines rape as the act of seizing and carrying away by force. The thin raiment that hid the left’s hatred and disdain for our Nation’s Constitution has been torn to shreds by their vocal support of a convicted rapist and sodomist. Instead of defining what ‘is’ is, the left has stooped to define what ‘rape’ rape is. The left has laid bare its enmity towards justice and the rule of law. According to the left, the Constitution is “fundamentally flawed” because it is a concrete, tangible document based on moral absolutes, granting individuals superior power over their government. [Read more…]

Gore and Google: Pants on Fire

American Thinker | by Brian Sussman | Oct. 1, 2009

Earth’s self-anointed global warming czar, Al Gore, has teamed up with his business partners at Google (he’s an Advisory Board member) to make the latest pitch for a planet that is about to burst into a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Together they have created an internet video which heralds Google’s entrance into the world of climate forecasting. [Read more…]

Education Normal

Touchstone Magazine | by Mark T. Mitchell | September 2009

“Are you ever afraid that homeschooling your kids will make them, um, oddballs?” We were staring into the campfire. The kids had all been tucked more or less comfortably into their sleeping bags, and we parents were savoring the opportunity to talk. With the cool night crowding us closer to the fire, the conversation was lively, though tinged by a reflective mood.

As anyone who is the parent of small children will know, the conversation eventually turned to kids. Soon we were talking about how to raise godly children in a culture that, in many ways, seems intent on undermining their faith. And not only their faith. Many of today’s cultural forces create impediments to a sound education as well as a solid faith. These must be resisted. But that persistent question remains. [Read more…]

Why Obama Bombed on Health Care

Wall Street Journal | by HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR. | Sep. 29, 2009

The public wasn’t dumb enough to believe the public option would save money.

Someday this country will have a health-care debate that’s not abject in its idiocy. It will involve a term used by Congressional Budge Office chief Doug Elmendorf, who has become a notoriety for harping on the word “incentives.” The same word was used the other day by Warren Buffett, about what’s missing from the health-care plan on Capitol Hill. [Read more…]

Are We Witnessing the Collapse of Liberalism?

American Thinker | by J. Robert Smith | Sep. 29, 2009

Less than a year into his presidency, Barack Obama’s world grows bleaker. Liberalism’s world is bleaker. At home and abroad, liberalism, as advanced by the President, is failing. Are we witnessing the beginnings of another historic event, loosely comparable to the fall of communism twenty years ago? Now the fall of liberalism? [Read more…]

The Appearance of Design


BreakPoint | by Stephen Meyer | Sep. 23, 2009

For almost a hundred years after the publication of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin in 1859, the science of biology rested secure in the knowledge that it had explained one of humankind’s most enduring enigmas. From ancient times, observers of living organisms had noted that living things display organized structures that give the appearance of having been deliberately arranged or designed for a purpose, for example, the elegant form and protective covering of the coiled nautilus, the interdependent parts of the eye, the interlocking bones, muscles, and feathers of a bird wing. For the most part, observers took these appearances of design as genuine.

Observations of such structures led thinkers as diverse as Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Maimonides, Boyle and Newton to conclude that behind the exquisite structures of the living world was a designing intelligence. As Newton wrote in his masterpiece The Opticks: “How came the Bodies of Animals to be contrived with so much Art, and for what ends were their several parts? Was the Eye contrived without Skill in Opticks, and the Ear without Knowledge of Sounds? . . . And these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from Phænomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent . . . ?” [Read more…]

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark Levin


SalvoMag | reviewed by Terrell Clemmons | Autumn 2009

In Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, Mark Levin identifies and analyzes two divergent, mutually exclusive philosophies of governance. Tracing the threads of each through American history, Levin discusses America’s founding, the Constitution, federalism, the free market, environmentalism, immigration, and the rise of the welfare state and shows how the conservative principles upon which America was founded have fostered opportunity, prosperity, and strength, and have preserved freedom.

Established on belief in divine providence and natural law, conservative principles recognize “a harmony of interests” and “rules of cooperation” that foster “ordered liberty” and a social contract, which brings about what Levin calls the civil society. In the civil society, the individual is recognized as “a unique, spiritual being with a soul and a conscience.” [Read more…]

Warning: Obamacare May Be Hazardous to the Unborn

Center for a Just Society | Ken Connor | Sep. 18, 2009

President Obama attempted to allay the concerns of pro-life advocates last week by assuring Americans that federal funding for abortion will not be included in “his” health care reform plan. […]

What’s going on here? Either President Obama has experienced an epiphany regarding the sanctity of human life at every stage of development, or once again his Administration is attempting to pull the wool over the American people’s eyes with a rhetorical bait and switch. A review of the facts may provide insight as to which is the case. [Read more…]