Independence Day Reflection: Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness

Life Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness by F. K. Bartels –
Man’s natural desire for happiness is of “divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One who alone can fulfill it” (CCC 1718). …

In June of 1776 Thomas Jefferson, seated in the second-floor parlor of a bricklayer’s house in Philadelphia, brilliantly composed the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence. After some revision, the bulk of the document was approved by Congress on 4 July, 1776. While the Declaration would soon become one of the world’s most significant documents, its second sentence is perhaps most famous:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” [Read more…]

Earning Happiness — The Moral Promise of Free Enterprise

Prager University The words “happiness” and “free enterprise” don’t usually appear in the same sentence. Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, explains that the two are intimately and profoundly connected. The free enterprise system not only creates real wealth, it also provides individuals with the best chance to achieve personal satisfaction.

Brooks’ lecture, titled “Earning Happiness: The Moral Promise of Free Enterprise,” makes a strong case that the free market economic system is most conducive to human welfare. Brooks explains

“Free enterprise matters not just because of its unparalleled material benefits but because of its unparalleled moral benefits.”

[Read more…]

Prediction: Global Warming Will Cause Everything

Global Warming Will Cause Everything by Daren Jonescu –
The following news headline appeared on the internet last week: “Scientists warn global warming will fuel spread of ticks that carry Lyme disease.”

The corresponding article begins this way:

Another effect of climate change may be crawling up your leg this summer as you frolic in the woods. Scientists say our warming world is speeding the spread of ticks that carry potentially debilitating Lyme disease.

Okay, given that many in the climate change fraternity — including, famously, Phil Jones of East Anglia University — have been forced to concede that global warming has been on “pause” since 1995, how exactly is it “speeding the spread” of disease-carrying ticks? [Read more…]

The Republic is Finished, the America We Knew is Gone

Obamacare Destroys Liberty America by Fr. Johannes Jacobse –
With this morning’s decision that Obamacare will stand as the law of the land means that America — home of the brave, land of the free — is no more. This great country, the one to whom all great refugee movements of the world for over two centuries saw as the light to escape poverty, political bondage, and hopelessness now turns its back on that legacy of freedom for what will, in a very short time, amount a bowl of pottage.

The turn to tyranny won’t happen overnight and it won’t be recognized as tyranny — not at first anyway. But as freedom gets chipped away the straight jacked gets tighter and then hardens to envelop the mind like a steel casket. By the middle of the next generation those who gave away their freedom in the name of freedom will be cursed by their own children. The children will weep by the waters of Babylon, unearthing old movies and books of an America they never knew. “Why did you not shout out against the decline?” they will cry. [Read more…]

John Roberts, America’s Latest Benedict Arnold, Betrays the American People

John Roberts Benedict Arnold Betrayer by Mike Razar –
You win some; you lose some. It is doubly painful to lose because of a betrayal by someone you admired and trusted. Caesar’s dying words were “Et tu Brute”. Judas Roberts has broken faith with everyone who cares about Constitutional freedom.

Given the opportunity to at least slow two centuries of the assumption of dictatorial power by the federal government, Roberts has chosen to side with the Jacobins. His name henceforth is inexorably linked with Benedict Arnold, the one-time hero of Saratoga who mysteriously changed sides when his loyalty was most needed by General Washington. Nathan Hale must be sobbing in his grave today.[Read more…]

Obamacare Ruling Reflects Technocratic Imperative

ObamaCare A nightmare for America by Wesley J. Smith –
Why is anyone surprised? Obamacare was never going to be overturned. Not that it is constitutional, as the Constitution was originally conceived. It surely isn’t. But that Constitution has been terminally ill for a long time. Now it is dead.

Why would the Supreme Court’s conservative chief justice rewrite the individual mandate’s penalty to be a tax, when the law’s authors unequivocally stated it was not a revenue generator during the legislative process? Let’s call it the “technocratic imperative” — faith in big government solutions for societal problems — a mindset that generates a far stronger gravitational pull than the standard conservative/liberal paradigm. The technocratic imperative is why, when push comes to shove, conservative judges almost always move “left” and liberal judges almost never move “right.”

The case was always about two contrasting approaches to law and government. Opponents of Obamacare mounted a legal challenge to the individual mandate. They argued that the government does not have the constitutional authority to force Americans to buy anything, and indeed that such a legal compulsion is unprecedented in American history. [Read more…]

What is the Meaning of Life?

Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)
Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)

by Hieromonk Job Gumerov –
Man has given thought to the meaning and purpose of life since antiquity. The Greeks had the myth of Sisyphus, king of Ephyra (Corinth). As punishment for his deceitfulness, in the underworld he had to roll an enormous rock up a mountain for eternity. But as soon as he reached the peak, an invisible force propelled the rock back down to the bottom – and then the same pointless labor began all over again. This is a striking illustration of the meaninglessness of life.

In the twentieth century, the writer and philosopher Albert Camus applied this image to modern man, judging the central feature of his existence to be absurdity:

“At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.” [Read more…]

The End of America? The HHS Mandate’s Threat to Freedom

HHS Mandate’s Threat to Freedom The Obama’s Administration’s mandate requiring the Catholic Church to conform to government dictates on contraception and abortifacent drugs is more than a war on the Catholic Church argue Jennifer Roback Morse and Eric Metaxas. It’s a war on freedom.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has mandated that social service providers, including those run by Christian institutions and the Catholic Church, pay for abortion inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilizations through their health insurance plans, even if this violates their religious beliefs.

Eric Metaxas and Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse articulate the grave dangers of the Health & Human Services (HHS) Mandate with regard to religious freedom in America. [Read more…]

Antarctic Ice Shelves Not Melting at All, New Data Shows

Antarctic Ice Shelves Not Melting by Lewis Page –
Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic have been compared with reality for the first time – and found to be wrong, so much so that it now appears that no ice is being lost at all.

“Previous ocean models … have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place,” says Tore Hattermann of the Norwegian Polar Institute, member of a team which has obtained two years’ worth of direct measurements below the massive Fimbul Ice Shelf in eastern Antarctica – the first ever to be taken. [Read more…]

Godfather of Global Warming Criticizes Climate Change Hysteria

Global Warming Climate Change Hysteria Drivel James Lovelockby Lorrie Goldstein –
Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change. The implications were extraordinary.

Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.

Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic. [Read more…]