Social conservatives need to become fiscal conservatives
Fiscal conservatives need to become social conservatives
Regarding point #2. It has come to my attention that some well-meaning Christians, who are apparently socially and theologically conservative, nevertheless voted for Obama, because they are opposed to fiscal conservatism and small government.
Specifically, they don’t believe in things like:
lowering taxes
decreasing government or union regulations
shrinking the size of government
preserving the rule of law
protecting private property
protecting the free market and free trade
protecting liberty and personal responsibility
Here is a breakdown of which Christian denominations voted for Obama:
2008 voting broken by religious groups
(Click for full-sized image, courtesy of Pew Research)
On this blog, I examine policies like cap-and-trade, socialized medicine and tariffs. I argue that these policies are bad for the poor. All it takes to understand the economics is a little bit of study. Christians need to study these issues so that they are not deceived by their emotions when it comes time to vote. Otherwise, we will not only hurt the poor, but we will also lose the freedoms we need to live our lives as Christians.
We should not be so envious of our neighbor’s prosperity that we are willing to sell our religious liberty and free speech rights in order to punish their success. We should not be coveting our neighbor’s goods. We should not be stealing from our neighbor, either. Instead, we should try to improve the nation’s prosperity without involving the government. And we can start by working harder, saving more and spending less.
Further study
You might be interested in Jim Demint’s book “Why We Whisper“, which I bought but have not yet finished.
If you’d like to hear more from Jim Demint, he did a 51-minute Town Hall for the Heritage Foundation on the Sotomayor nomination.
For more about free speech in Canada, see these previous posts:
My Canadian friends are telling me that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is under fire for offering 9.5 billion dollars to GM. I tell them, who cares? Canada is 10% the size of the USA, so that would be 95 billion for us. I still believe in Harper, and in any case, he already expressed that his preference would be to let the companies go bankrupt.
But let’s take a look at the latest news from Canada. In Canada, they have corporations that are owned by the government called Crown corporations. Some of them are losing money. So what does Harper want to do about that?
The federal Department of Finance has flagged several prominent Crown corporations as “not self-sustaining,” including the CBC, VIA Rail and the National Arts Centre, and has identified them as entities that could be sold as part of the government’s asset review, newly released documents show.
…Finance Department documents, obtained by Canwest News Service under the Access to Information Act… reveal that the government will consider privatizing Crown corporations that require public subsidies to stay afloat.
“The reviews will also examine other holdings in which the government competes directly with private enterprises, earn income from property or performs a commercial activity,” states a Finance briefing note dated Dec. 2, 2008. “It includes Crown corporations that are not self-sustaining even though they are of a commercial nature.”
In the briefing note, the Finance Department identifies nine Crown corporations that fall in that category, including Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the CBC and VIA Rail.
CBC is their NPR/PBS and Via Rail is their AMTRAK. Harper is taking a lot of heat right now because he is running a 50 billion dollar deficit. That’s chump change compared to our nearly 2 trillion dollar deficit this year alone, with no end in sight. Not only that, but Heritage Foundation reports that Obama’s calling up the mayor of Detroit and reassuring him that GM will not move their headquarters to Warren, from Detroit.
WINTERY KNIGHT 