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Mentoring

A hero’s legacy: Happy birthday, William Wilberforce

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August 24th was the 250th birthday of the official hero of the Wintery Knight blog, William Wilberforce.

Chuck Colson wrote about it. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Today marks the 250th birthday of William Wilberforce, the Christian statesman who, for 18 arduous years, led the crusade against the abominable British slave trade. And I can think of no better gift I could give my listeners than to tell you about some of the traits that made Wilberforce a man who profoundly changed history-and whose legacy so profoundly shaped my life.

To speak of Wilberforce is to speak of biblical worldview in action. When Wilberforce, one of the youngest members of Parliament, came to Christ, he contemplated leaving office and becoming a clergyman.

Thankfully, William Pitt, who went on to be Great Britain’s youngest prime minister, convinced him otherwise. In a letter to his dear friend, Pitt wrote: “Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple and lead not to meditation only, but to action.”

And indeed, for Wilberforce, Christian faith meant action. He could not stand idly by and see the imago Dei of each person, the image of God, abused. His fiercely unpopular crusade against the slave trade ravaged his health and cost him politically. He endured verbal assaults and was even challenged to a duel by an angry slave-ship captain.

And when the French Revolution began, what had been merely an unpopular position became a dangerous one. As cries of liberty, equality, and fraternity erupted across the Channel, Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists who believed so strongly in human equality were suddenly viewed with suspicion by the British people.

Nonetheless, Wilberforce persevered year after year. Writing about whether to give up the fight, Wilberforce notes, “a man who fears God is not at liberty” to do so.

What Christianity teaches is that every person in the world was made by God for the purpose of responding freely to him. Your job as a Christian is to help everyone who wants to freely respond to God to do so.

Videos

How the Obama administration supports assisted suicide for military veterans

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Chris Wallace interviewed Veteran Affairs’ spokeswoman Tammy Duckworth. (H/T Nice Deb)

Chris Wallace interviews a pro-life activist about the death pamphlets. (H/T Nice Deb)

Megyn Kelly interviews Jonah Goldberg about the death pamphlets. (H/T Nice Deb)

The left is always interested in killing off those unworthy of life.

UPDATE: Lex Communis links to this related Wall Street Journal article.

Commentary

Flush with victory on death panels, Sarah Palin moves on to tort reform

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She's writing things that make me very happy!
She's writing things that make me very happy!

From her Facebook page. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

So what can we do? First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. The two are intertwined. For example, one supposed justification for socialized medicine is the high cost of health care. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, “If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he’ll need to reform the economic structures in medicine—especially programs like Medicare.” [1] Two examples of these “economic structures” are high malpractice insurance premiums foisted on physicians (and ultimately passed on to consumers as “high health care costs”) and the billions wasted on defensive medicine.

And look – she has experiences to appeal to:

Many states, including my own state of Alaska, have enacted caps on lawsuit awards against health care providers. Texas enacted caps and found that one county’s medical malpractice claims dropped 41 percent, and another study found a “55 percent decline” after reform measures were passed. [4] That’s one step in health care reform. Limiting lawyer contingency fees, as is done under the Federal Tort Claims Act, is another step. The State of Alaska pioneered the “loser pays” rule in the United States, which deters frivolous civil law suits by making the loser partially pay the winner’s legal bills. Preventing quack doctors from giving “expert” testimony in court against real doctors is another reform.

SHE WANTS TO REGULATE TRIAL LAWYERS. YAHOO!

This is the third editorial she has written that has gotten me excited. She is citing scholars! She has footnotes! What more could a conservative man want? And I like her tone a lot more than Ann Coulter. She is trying to persuade her opponents, not to back them into stubborn opposition regardless of the facts.

Previous posts:

You know what? I think she is going in the right direction. Like a female Fred Thompson, she is getting used to vocalizing conservative policies and principles – which is exactly what we need to do to capitalize on Obama’s failures. I love it when women write passionately about what they think, especially when women take positions that support men, marriage and family by arguing for limited government and free market capitalism.