Tag Archives: Conservative

Commentary

Doug Groothuis’ message for all Christians who are able to vote on Tuesday

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Dr. Doug Groothuis, well-known Christian apologist, wrote this on his Facebook wall and asked everyone to share it:

To my Christian readers.

You are a child of heaven but also a citizen of earth. You are to seek the welfare of the city to which you have been exiled (Jer. 29:7) and be “salt and light” in this broken world (Matthew 5:1-18) We are to render to state what is the state’s (which is not everything) and to God what is God’s (Matthew 22:15-23). We are to see the welfare of “the least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46).

1. Being apolitical is being apathetic about how God’s world is governed in the civil sphere. Not everything is politics, but politics is crucial to our life together on God’s earth. Some political views are closer to a biblical ethic than others. Therefore:

2. Seek the good of the city, the least the last the lost, by voting for candidates that deny statism (see Ezek 28:1-10). This idolatry and bad news for any society.

3. The state does not create wealth; people and other institutions do that. Let the people and voluntary assembles thrive (under the rule of Law, not the rule of men).

4. Putting more and more souls on welfare and food stamps does not dignify them or help solves their problems. Happiness is earned, it is not derived from state handouts. That fosters a parasite mentality.

5. Allowing over one million unborn human beings made in God’s image to be killed each year through abortion is morally wrong. Fifty-four million (54,000,000) have been so killed since Roe v. Wade in 1973. We have blood on our hands and are tracking it into our churches, homes, and schools. We need to be watchman, prophets who call out sin for those who cannot: the unborn. You cannot make your cheap peace with a President that would expand “reproductive rights” (abortion on demand) and insure that abortions are paid for with tax money, that would make religious organizations insure for abortion.

6. The Bible teaches that debt is unhealthy. It should be limited not protracted. We must get our debt under control, or it will control us, and crush the life out of our economy and our spirits.

7. The state has “the power of the sword” (Romans 13:-17) and has the right to protect its people by force. This is a hostile and dangerous world. Cutty back on the military and not protecting our citizens abroad (Libya) is a dereliction of duty and a disgrace.

8. Be not deceived, but judge properly (see John 7:24). The political language of compassion, it not the same thing as real policies that give the poor a chance. Moreover, since the state is an impersonal agency based on coercion, it cannot be compassionate, but it can be just. Individuals, churches, private groups can be compassionate, and should be. When they are taxes up to their eyeballs, they have less to give.

In light of (1)-(8), please vote knowledgeably, wisely, and prayerfully.

And maybe this is a good time to point to this essay that Doug wrote about why he is voting for Mitt Romney on Tuesday. (I featured it about 3 weeks ago)

Excerpt:

Many conservatives (Christian or otherwise), me included, are disappointed that Mitt Romney will be the Republican candidate for President. They lament that a more principled conservative (such as Michele Bachmann, or, to a lesser degree, Rick Santorum) was not selected. Perhaps they stand for the libertarian principles of Ron Paul. Whatever the case, many will be tempted to not vote at all or to cast a protest vote. This is a deep mistake, based on faulty ideas about politics and the meaning of a political vote. In this short essay, I will labor to convince fellow conservatives, whether Christians or not, to support and vote for Mitt Romney for President. I have waited to endorse Romney until all the other competitors have been eliminated. I do not expect to convert political liberals to this cause, which would require much more argumentation.

Please send this to any Christians who are not planning to vote for Romney!

News

New survey finds that university professors are moving further to the left

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From the Inside Higher Ed.

Excerpt:

Academics, on average, lean to the left. A survey being released today suggests that they are moving even more in that direction.

Among full-time faculty members at four-year colleges and universities, the percentage identifying as “far left” or liberal has increased notably in the last three years, while the percentage identifying in three other political categories has declined. The data come from the University of California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute, which surveys faculty members nationwide every three years on a range of attitudes.

Here are the data for the new survey and the prior survey:

2010-11 2007-8
Far left 12.4% 8.8%
Liberal 50.3% 47.0%
Middle of the road 25.4% 28.4%
Conservative 11.5% 15.2%
Far right 0.4% 0.7%

Gauging how gradual or abrupt this shift is is complicated because of changes in the UCLA survey’s methodology; before 2007-8, the survey included community college faculty members, who have been excluded since. But for those years, examining only four-year college and university faculty members, the numbers are similar to those of 2007-8. Going back further, one can see an evolution away from the center.

In the 1998-9 survey, more than 35 percent of faculty members identified themselves as middle of the road, and less than half (47.5 percent) identified as liberal or far left. In the new data, 62.7 percent identify as liberal or far left. (Most surveys that have included community college faculty members have found them to inhabit political space to the right of faculty members at four-year institutions.)

Professors are extremely liberal, especially in non-quantitative, non-scientific departments like English. It’s much harder to be liberal in academic areas where there is some connection to the real world that can be tested, like economics, business and computer science. Liberal bias is something to look out for if you go on to higher education. What you’ll find there is that there is often a lack of critical thinking on many topics. The left isn’t welcoming of other points of view. Their side doesn’t read our stuff, but we read their stuff. They think we’re evil, and we just think they’re wrong.

Here’s my previous post surveying several academic studies of liberal bias in the mainstream media.

News

Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith proposes reforms to the UK welfare state

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Dina sent me this exciting article from the UK Daily Mail about our favorite conservative MP.

Excerpt:

Jobless couples with more than two children should have benefit payments limited, Iain Duncan Smith suggested yesterday.

The Work and Pensions Secretary said there were ‘large numbers’ of couples on welfare having big families – unlike middle-income parents who had to weigh up if they could afford to have another child.

Mr Duncan Smith condemned the ‘madness’ of the state subsidising large workless families – saying it would be fairer to the ‘vast majority’ of responsible taxpayers if benefits were limited to the first two children in future.

He has agreed to find another £10billion in welfare savings by 2016, having already slashed £18billion from a vast budget that grew by 60 per cent under Labour.

As well as cuts to child benefit and tax credits for large workless families, he suggested housing benefit could be stripped for those who expected to go straight from school on to welfare and a state-subsidised house.

[…]He [insisted] the real cruelty was leaving people languishing on welfare for years. ‘We have accepted for far too long in this country that it is possible for people to just stay on benefits,’ he said. ‘It is all about saying, we will give you massive support to find work… But also, we have an expectation, as the taxpayer pays for these bills, that you try your hardest to find work.’

Most controversially, Mr Duncan Smith suggested the present system encouraged poorer families to have large numbers of children without worrying about the cost.

‘When you look at families across the board, at all incomes, you find the vast, vast majority make decisions about the kind of numbers of children they have, the families they want, based on what they think they can afford,’ he said.

‘Where you see the clustering of the large families is really down at the very lowest incomes, those on significant levels of welfare, and those on the very top incomes. In other words, the problem for those who are paying the taxes, paying the bills – they make the decisions about their lives, even if they sometimes would like to maybe have extra children, they make decisions.

‘People who are having support through welfare are often free from that decision. We want to support people if they have children when they are out of work, of course.

‘But can there not be a limit to the fact that really you need to remember you need to cut your cloth in accordance with what capabilities and what finances you have?’

The UK Telegraph added:

Official figures show that 120,000 of the most troubled and difficult families cost the taxpayer about £9 billion a year. Every household is now spending the equivalent of £3,000 a year in tax for welfare payments.

There are about one in five households where no one works and 1.5 million children are growing up with a parent addicted to drugs or alcohol.

[…]Mr Duncan Smith will say that the poor use of government money in recent times has led to people being “written off”.

“Our failure to make each pound count has cost us again and again over the years, Not only in terms of a financial cost – higher taxes, inflated welfare bills and lower productivity, as people sit on benefits long term. But also the social cost of a fundamentally divided Britain – one in which a section of society has been left behind. We must no longer allow ourselves to accept that some people are written off.”

[…]The Liberal Democrats are threatening to block further cuts in benefits unless the Coalition also introduces new taxes on the rich.

The article notes that members of the British socialist party (the Labor Party) British communist party (the Liberal Democrats) oppose the cuts to welfare. Of course! That’s how they get their votes – by redistributing money from working people to many more people who don’t work.