Tag Archives: Capitalism

Videos

Videos showing the folly of government-run health care

2 Comments

Get your butt over to Hot Air right now, and read this post on health care policy by my blog-friend Laura, who blogs at Pursuing Holiness. Laura writes about the myth of the millions of uninsured who cannot afford coverage. She outlines the many ways in which free care is available to everyone, including illegal immigrants, and those who cannot pay the full price. This is a MUST READ post.

Excerpt from Laura’s post:

…basic care and life-saving care is available to every human being who manages to set foot in this country, regardless of their ability to pay.

…Thanks to EMTALA, emergency rooms are required to help you.

…Thanks to hundreds of thousands of charity hospitals and community health centers – via both charities and government – you can get free or sliding-scale payment care.

I wanted to supplement her post with some of my own videos.

Two Women:

The Lemon:

And one more video from On The Fence Films called “Dead Meat“.

Dead Meat is a 25 minute short film which shows the reality of health care under Canada’s socialized medical system: Canadians wait … and wait … and wait. … And sometimes they die while waiting for free government health care.

Previous posts from me:

News

Evaluating Democrat policies on the budget, health care and cap and trade

1 Comment

A Harvard economist says that tax hikes will kill the recovery: (H/T John Boehner, Mike Pence)

Harvard economist Martin Feldstein writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Even if the proposed tax increases are not scheduled to take effect until 2011, households will recognize the permanent reduction in their future incomes and will reduce current spending accordingly.  Higher future tax rates on capital gains and dividends will depress share prices immediately and the resulting fall in wealth will cut consumer spending further.  Lower share prices will also raise the cost of equity capital, depressing business investment in plant and equipment.

Tax hikes for the poor:

Mr. Obama’s biggest proposed tax increase is the cap-and-trade system of requiring businesses to buy carbon dioxide emission permits. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the proposed permit auctions would raise about $80 billion a year and that these extra taxes would be passed along in higher prices to consumers. Anyone who drives a car, uses public transportation, consumes electricity or buys any product that involves creating CO2 in its production would face higher prices…

But while the cap-and-trade tax rises with income, the relative burden is greatest for low-income households. According to the CBO, households in the lowest-income quintile spend more than 20% of their income on energy intensive items (primarily fuels and electricity), while those in the highest-income quintile spend less than 5% on those products.

Bye-bye, American manufacturing sector. Or maybe Obama will nationalize the entire industry, who can say? He’s already practically doing it now.

Remember the no tax increases pledge that Obama made? Kevin Boland writes:

If you drive a car or flip on a light switch – Democrats have a new national energy tax for you.  If you’re a small business owner or if you’re employed by one – Democrats have a new tax for you.  If you’re a charity – Democrats have a new tax for your donors.  If you’re looking to produce more American energy – Democrats have a new tax for you.  If you own stock – Democrats have a new tax for you.  And when you’re finally able to relax – after paying all your taxes to Uncle Sam – and you want to kick back, relax, and have a cold beer, you guessed it, Democrats may have a new tax for you too.

USA Today asks where the promised fiscal restraint of Mr. ACORN lawyer has gone off to. (H/T Mike Pence)

When it comes to federal spending, there’s a pattern emerging with President Obama, and it’s not a flattering one. The president says all the right things about the importance of getting the deficit under control, but his actions don’t come close to matching his rhetoric.

An early sign of the disconnect was his heavily publicized demand last month that his Cabinet secretaries shave $100 million from their administrative budgets. Obama said the cuts would “send a signal that we are serious about how government operates” and would help close the “confidence gap” with skeptical Americans. Those cuts amounted to a less-than-confidence-inspiring 0.003% of the 2009 budget, or about 3 cents out of every $1,000.

Then, when he unveiled his 2010 budget last week, Obama made a big deal of his demand for $17 billion in cuts, insisting that the cuts “even by Washington standards … are significant” and that $17 billion is “real money.”

The president got it backward. Out in the rest of the world, $17 billion is a ton of money. But in Washington, where the president is proposing to spend $3.6 trillion next year, $17 billion looks puny – a little less than half a percent of the budget, or the equivalent of cutting a $100 grocery bill by handing back a 50-cent pack of gum.

Anybody who read David Freddoso’s book or looked up Obama’s voting record could have known that his rhetoric was just lies for the gullible.

Over to the health care issue, where John Shadegg explains how capitalism is the right way to reduce health care costs.

President Obama’s pledge to work with health care providers and insurers to scale back costs misses the entire point: health care costs are so high because we are not giving patients choice and forcing insurers to compete.  We need robust market reforms – not symbolic gestures.  The way to lower prices is to put control in the hands of patients.  We need to empower Americans by giving them the freedom to either keep their employer plan or purchase the plan of their choice through a tax credit.  Choice and competition will drive prices down and quality up.

Shadegg goes on to explain why the Obama plan does none of this. And why should it? We already know that the Democrats want private health care to fail, so they can usher in single-payer health care. (Just they want private industry to fail so they can nationalize more of the free market)

Putting 120 million Americans on government coverage will create a monopoly that sends costs skyrocketing. Choice will be lost because the enormous government-run plan will put the private plans out of business.  In other words, if you like what you have, you will lose it.  And while health insurance will be provided, health care will not – like every nationalized health plan across the world, as costs escalate, care will be slashed, patients waitlisted, drugs denied.

Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann notes the looming entitlement crisis is now closer than ever, with the Medicare insolvency date moving earlier.

Yesterday, the Medicare and Social Security Trustees issued a new report that laid out unequivocally that our current Medicare and Social Security programs are on a path for financial implosion and are in need of serious reform.

In fact, the Medicare insolvency date has moved up to 2017.  And, that doesn’t include the impact of the so-called “stimulus” bill, which could accelerate insolvency by about 6 months.

And, we’re facing a strain on Social Security like never before, with nearly 80 million retiring Baby Boomers tapping into the funds soon we’ll be spending more to pay benefits than what the system receives in payroll taxes. Yet, we continue to carry on with the status quo, every now and then saying that we need to reform it, but not actually doing anything about it.

Michele is trying to do something about it, but the House is filled with Democrats who never ran a business in their entire lives.

I’ve introduced the Truth In Accounting Act to make government finances truly transparent and open.  Not only would financial commitments be crystal clear to Congress, but also to the taxpayers.

Currently, when Congress and the President prepare budget proposals and pass spending bills, they have the luxury of ignoring shortfalls year after year.  They prepare, present, and approve budgets which project these estimates over the short-term – usually five or ten years.  And, there are a lot of things that can be done on paper to paper over the long-term shortfalls.

My Truth in Accounting Act would require the President to consider these long-term shortfalls when he proposes his budget.  And, it would require both the GAO (Government Accountability Office) and the U.S. Treasury to report this information to the Congress so that the numbers can be used when we’re finalizing the annual budget.

Furthermore, my legislation would require that the report be translated into easily comprehensible terms so that nothing could be hidden by complex jargon.  The government’s fiscal imbalance would be presented in the whole, and as distributed per person, per worker, and per household.

I hope she is somehow able to pass this bill.

Mentoring

Should atheists or Christians be blamed for communism’s 100 million deaths?

5 Comments

UPDATE: Welcome readers from the the Western Experience! Thanks for the link, Jason!

I have had some atheist commenters lately. Initially, I try to post a provocative article to attract them, and then I make a conscious effort to be polite as they challenge my initial post. Recently, I had this exchange with a commenter called Robert, and I thought this was worth posting to see what you all thought of my style. Was I too mean?

I think it’s important that angry atheists who want to blame God for atrocities should actually know what God is like, as revealed in the Bible, and especially in the life of Jesus. For that topic, check out a post by Neil, on 4Simpsons blog, that expresses the problem that I am trying to resolve below.

Here is the initial post that generated the challenge, which talks about who is more responsible for the mass murders of communism: Christians Or atheists? (By the way, I see that Chad, on Truthbomb Apologetics, has posted a breakdown of the numbers murdered and who did the murdering)
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Here is Robert’s first rebuttal:

Communism did not arise from atheism. In fact, some of the first communists were Christians, and there are even Christian communists today. Communism actually owes an intellectual debt to Christians and the Bible. You can read more in my article on atheism and communist atrocities found here. More articles debating Christian apologists Dinesh D’Souza and Dr. David Aikman can be found at my site too (yes, these guys actually responded to me).

It’s interesting you quote Dr. Rummel as a source for your views. Do you know what else he wrote?

Q: Is atheism the principal factor in democide, such as that committed by the “Big Three,” Stalin, Mao, and Hitler?

A: No. I find that religion or its lack – atheism – have hardly anything to do in general with wide-scale democide. The most important factor is totalitarian power. Whether a church, atheists, or agnostics have that power is incidental – it is having the power that is a condition of democide. Incidentally, some ideologies, such as communism, function psychologically and sociologically as though a religion. The only distinction is whether the subject is a god or a man, such as Marx, Lenin, Hirohito, Hitler, Mohammed, Kim Ill sung, Mao, etc.

Your view is explicitly debunked by the very scholar you use to support it.
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And here is my reply:

I trust Rummel’s numbers, not his personal opinions about the numbers. All totalitarian systems that murdered massive numbers of people have been atheistic, because the content of the worldview (materialism) does not forbid it. Atheism does not have a ground for human rights, human dignity, etc. The content of the worldview makes the murders possible.

Communism is a system of economics built upon materialist atheism. No Christian can believe in atheism, the two are mutually exclusive. Marx himself wrote about atheism and he was an aggressive atheist. His economic views emerged directly from his metaphysics. That is why Marx wrote that “religion is the opium of the people”, while the New Testament says that if a man does not work, neither shall he eat. The New Testament values private, voluntary charity. Marx values redistribution of wealth by a fascist state.

Here is a citation from a communist web site:

In the body of his study Marx pointed out that: “The proofs of the existence of God are either mere hollow tautologies… all proofs of the existence of God are proofs of his non-existence.” (Marx, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, 1841, MECW 1.)

…In 1841 Marx and Bauer planned to publish a radical philosophical periodical, Archives of Atheism. The views of some contemporaries give some indication of the scope of their project.

Arnold Ruge wrote: “Bruno Bauer, Karl Marx, Christiansen and Feuerbach are forming a new montagne and are making atheism their slogan. God, religion, immortality are cast down from their thrones and man is proclaimed God.”

And Georg Jung wrote to Ruge: “If Marx, Bruno Bauer and Feuerbach associate to found a theological-philosophical review, God would do well to surround himself with all the angels and indulge in self-pity, for these three will certainly drive him out of his heaven… For Marx, at any rate, the Christian religion is one of the most immoral there is.” (David McLellan, Marx before Marxism, 1970)

Flowing from his atheism, Marx opposed organised religion and the role of religion in politics. A flavour of Marx’s attitude can be gleaned from his journalism at the time.

…in “The Leading Article” in No. 179 of the Kölnische Zeitung (1842), Marx accused the Prussian state of disseminating Christian dogma, criticised the police and the censor for protecting religion and insisted that no distinction should be made between religion as belief and the religious establishment. (MECW 1)

Robert’s comment gives me a chance to plug Jay Richards’ new book from Harper-Collins. Now Jay Richards is a Princeton educated theologian and philosopher, who writes advanced books about the nature of God. Whatever he says about whether Christianity is more compatible with capitalism or communism should be considered authoritative for Christians. His specialty is explaining what is and is not compatible with orthodox Christianity, and he is the best.

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Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem

Does capitalism promote greed? Can a person follow Jesus’s call to love others and also support capitalism? Was our recent economic crisis caused by flaws inherent to our free market system? Jay Richards presents a new approach to capitalism, revealing how it’s fully consistent with Jesus’s teachings and the Christian tradition, while also showing why this system is our best bet for renewed economic vigor.

The church is bombarded with two competing messages about money and capitalism:

* wealth is bad and causes much of the world’s suffering
* wealth is good and God wants you to prosper and be rich

Richards exposes these myths, and other common misconceptions about capitalism, and reveals the surprising ways that capitalism is, in fact, the best system to respond to the biblical mandates of alleviating poverty and protecting the environment. Money, Greed, and God equips readers to take practical steps in their own lives to conduct business, worship God, and serve others without falling into the “prosperity gospel” trap.

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You can listen to a good lecture featuring Jay Richards on the agreement between Christianity and capitalism here.

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And don’t forget agnostic historian/sociologist Rodney Stark’s book: “The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success“.

So, I think you’re mistaken. What is that noise I hear? The theme from Jaws? Oh, my God! Run! It’s ECM! He’s coming for you!

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And here is Commenter ECM, who is a deist:

Communism did not arise from atheism.

I’d say he makes a more compelling argument than you do, unless we’re supposed to simply take you at your word.

In fact, some of the first communists were Christians, and there are even Christian communists today.

Wow, no kidding: you’re telling me that in a day and age when Christianity was as ubiquitous as the preening of religious atheists on the Internet that some of them might just be Christians? Wow, my mind is, like, totally blown.

Of course there is the sticky points that WK makes and the simple fact that, based on the quotes below (and writings and beliefs) of the arch-priests of communism that the two are painfully and obviously mutually-exclusive but, hey, you’re making a point here…I think…so to hell with intellectual honesty.

Communism actually owes an intellectual debt to Christians and the Bible. You can read more in my article on atheism and communist atrocities found here.

Again, so what? Most of the philosophies in human history owe a debt, no matter how potentially perverse, to the ones that came before and is, generally, what one might call ‘progress.’ (Though i’ll be the first to admit that ‘progress’ isn’t a good unto itself.) As a key example, does it bother you that science, as we understand it, owes a tremendous debt to Christianity, i.e. it wouldn’t exist in the terms we comprehend without its influence.?

More articles debating Christian apologists Dinesh D’Souza and Dr. David Aikman can be found at my site too (yes, these guys actually responded to me).

And (again!) so what? What does that have to do with what you’re arguing here? I mean, other than self-promotion and/or auto-ego stroking.

With all that said, though, I figured I’d pull some quotes from the leading lights on communism to show the depths of their tolerance and belief in religion and how that might make Christian communists (whatever they are) sorely confused at best and devious liars using Christianity as a foil to make converts at worst:

Marx:


The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Lenin:


Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death as impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the like. Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labor of others are taught by religion to practice charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.

Mao Zedong:

But, of course, religion is poison. It has two great defects. It undermines the race (and) retards the progress of the country. Tibet and Mongolia have been poisoned by it.

(Note: having read several of your blog posts, I am fairly certain you would agree with the statement ‘religion is poison’, yes? Incidentally, this is why most blogs like this one require comment moderation: far too many religious atheists are unable to be civil and decent in debate, even when they are busily assuring the rest of us that they have lots of “empathy” for those with which they disagree.)

Anyway, those are just a few of the big-time communists (you can, I’m sure, dig up more from, say, monsters like Pol Pot and Stalin) and how they view religion and not a one of them has a kind word for it. It’s also painfully clear that communism sees relgiion as an arch-rival that must be stomped out of existence with extreme prejudice, and that one of the pillars of communism is, obviously (yes, obviously), rabid, blood-thirsty, atheism–how anyone that’s read the Communist Manifesto or the writings and speeches of any number of communist leaders could believe otherwise calls into question the intellectual honesty of the individual in question.