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Should Christians support government-run day care?

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Recently, a Gallup poll came out about human origins.

Here was an interesting finding in the survey:

A significantly higher percentage of Republicans indicated a creationist view of human origins, which Gallup experts say reflects in part the strong relationship between religion and politics in contemporary America. Republicans are also significantly more likely to attend church weekly than are others. Democrats and Independents showed similar views on human origins:

  • Republicans: 36 percent think humans evolved through a God-guided process; 8 percent say God had no part in the process; and 52 percent held the creationist view.
  • Democrats: 40 percent agree with evolution through a God-guided process; 20 percent say God had no part in the process; and 34 percent held the creationist view.
  • Independents: 39 percent agree with evolution through a God-guided process; 21 percent say God had no part in the process; and 34 percent held the creationist view.

Gallup officials wrote that it’s not surprising some 80 percent of Americans hold a view of human origins that involves God, since most Americans believe in God and about 85 percent identify with a religion.

What I find interesting is this – how the heck can someone be a young earth creationist, (which is a view that people can only hold because they are getting it out of the Bible), and yet vote for Democrats? Democrats stand for the enlargement of the secular leftist state, for the destruction of marriage and family, and for the complete elimination of religious liberty and traditional morality from the public square. No mature, authentic Christian votes Democrat.

What happens when Christians for left-wing parties?

Now, with that said, let’s look at the most liberal province in Canada, Quebec. Quebec is a French-speaking province that was traditionally dominated by Roman Catholicism.

Consider this editorial in the National Post, Canada’s best newspaper.

Excerpt:

It’s never too early to close the minds of the young. That’s the thinking of the provincial government in Quebec, which announced earlier this month a ban on religion in subsidized daycare centres.

Subsidized daycare is a central part of social policy in Quebec — parents pay $7/day, and provincial government pays the rest, which is about $40/day. The government of Quebec is now increasing its vigilance on what dangerous ideas the toddlers might be exposed to.

Just before Christmas, Family Minister Yolande James announced regulations that would seek to ban religion instruction from daycare centres that take government money. Given that four-year-olds are unlikely to be studying theology, the Quebec government is out to stamp out religious expressions — prayers, songs, bible stories, manger scenes and even explanations for religious dietary practices.

[…]Our editorial board argued on Tuesday that Quebec’s massive subsidies for approved daycare spaces has effectively crowded out non-subsidized daycare. The economic argument is clear — subsidize one form of child care over all others, and soon there will effectively be just one form of child care. Daycare has been de facto nationalized in Quebec, and the national religion of intolerant secularism will now be imposed.The cultural question is more troubling. So serious is Quebec’s government about imposing its view on all children that, concurrent with the new regulations, it will triple the number of inspectors to enforce them. Quebec will soon have 58 inquisitors dropping in on daycares to ensure compliance. One can only imagine the scene when the inquisition arrives, sifting through the sandbox in search of clandestine religious items. And who will write the code for the bureaucrats, ensuring that miscreant daycare workers don’t mention that la fête nationale was once upon a time Saint-Jean-Baptiste?

There is an economic cost to big government. There is also a cultural cost, if everywhere government goes alternative values and viewpoints must retreat. If government goes everywhere, including the care of babies, then not even babies are entitled to hear views that dissent from government dogma. Quebec has long since abandoned the neutral state in favour of the aggressively secular state. Where the Quebec state goes, religion must retreat, and there is no limit on where the Quebec state will go.

The heart of every culture is its attitude to the big questions of human life and existence. That’s why a sensible people leaves culture in the hands of the churches, the artists, the musicians and the writers. Only a deeply insecure society entrusts culture to bureaucratic inquisitors. And only bureaucratic inquisitors see threats emerging in the cradle.

Totalitarian states have always sought to control the kindergartens and the schools and the youth groups, all the better to ensure that the influence of parents on their own children is attenuated. There is the hard totalitarianism that comes by force of arms. Soft totalitarianism comes by way of subsidies, where first the family is embraced by the state, and only then is it suffocated.

The educational world in Quebec does not leave much room to breathe. On religious and cultural matters, the consensus position, as defined by the curriculum apparatchiks, must be taught without exception in all public schools, private schools and even at home. Until now, the preschoolers had escaped the stifling grasp of government. No longer.

As our editorial pointed out, the actual educational results of Quebec daycare are poor. Quebec’s nationalized daycares don’t teach little Quebeckers very much. Now they will ensure that the youngsters know even less.

And remember, the effort to ram sex education into the minds of younger children over the objections of their parents is quite common in Canada, and other European countries, too.

Every time a Christian votes to tax their rich neighbor or their rich employer, they are taking money away from the private, individual realm, and transferring it to the realm of government. Politicians use that money to buy votes from the masses by subsidizing their selfishness, irresponsibility and recklessness. Instead of having money spent by responsible workers and businesses for responsible workers and businesses, it gets wasted on people who are often lazy and who make poor decisions. To understand what this redistribution of wealth means, you need look no further than the skyrocketing out-of-wedlock birth rate and the resulting social problems, which imposes costs on all taxpayers.

There is a right way to look at politics and economics from the Christian perspective. And mature Christian should have thought these things through.

Now might be a good time to recommend Wayne Grudem’s new book, “Politics According to the Bible”. Grudem is a Bible-believing Christian with a Ph.D from Cambridge University. He is the author of the most widely used and respected systematic theology book. I also recommend Jay Richards’ book “Money, Greed and God”. Richards’ Ph.D is from Princeton University. Those looking for a smaller, simpler book can try “The Virtues of Capitalism”. A good economics book for beginners is “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism”. And a good longer book for beginners is “Basic Economics”, 4th edition, by Thomas Sowell.

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Socialist Hugo Chavez begins to use his new dictatorial powers

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Are Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez very different?
Are Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez very different?

In Venezuela, Obama’s buddy Chavez is enjoying his new decree powers.

Excerpt:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made his first use of new decree powers on Sunday to create a $2.3 billion fund for reconstruction after widespread flooding that left more than 130,000 people homeless.

The South American OPEC member nation’s socialist leader has infuriated opposition parties and been criticized as a dictator for assuming fast-track powers for the next 18 months that will enable him to rule by decree and bypass parliament.

Chavez has justified the measure as necessary to enable the government to respond to recent torrential rains that swept away houses, smashed bridges and roads, and also killed around 40 people in the nation of 29 million.

But critics say the president has cynically exploited the disaster as an excuse to outwit opposition parties who were due to take a larger share of seats — 40 percent — in the incoming National Assembly which convenes on January 5.

The problem with socialists is that they think that the people who actually make money will just keep on making money even though the government keeps confiscating a larger and larger share of it. Think about it. People on the left in academia, in government, or in the voluntary poor (single mothers, drug addicts) are basically subsisting by confiscating the wealth produced by others in business who have to start and run businesses or work in those businesses. They actually have contempt for people who take risks and take responsibility, because they think that those people are “stupid”.

What you have is one group of people with a tenuous grasp on reality who are acting as parasites on an increasingly over-taxed and over-regulated host. Eventually, the host gives up working – why work if you are constantly being abused by taxes and regulations? And that is why the policies of Obama and Chavez lead to catastrophes like North Korea and Zimbabwe. They don’t understand that their ability to spend money depends on the very people they hate the most, and understand the least.

I actually had one woman in academia recently telling me how she deserved to receive more money from businesses and workers to support her Ph.D studies in a non-engineering and non-scientific field. She also thought that the Comedy Channel was more reliable than Fox News. I produced two studies from UCLA and Harvard showing that Fox News was dead center in terms of news bias. I produced a survey showing that mainstream journalists donate almost exclusively to Democrats. She produced no evidence, but urged me to show more “critical thinking”. “Critical thinking” is the word that people on the left use to mean uncritical acceptance of whatever counter-factual assertions their inexperienced professors tell them about the world. They have to believe in these high-minded delusions – otherwise they cannot get research money, scholarships, or degrees. That is called “critical thinking”. And they want you to pay more to support them in their “critical thinking” so that they can have money to research how up is down, left is right, and hot is cold.

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MUST-READ: Correcting the economic myths that liberals/leftists believe

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Here’s a nice New York Post. (H/T Mary)

Full text:

According to Barack Obama, “The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact.” But according to Margaret Thatcher, “The facts of life are conservative.” Who’s right?

Myth: The deficit was caused by Bush’s tax cuts.

Fact: For over four decades, 1960 through 2000, federal revenues averaged 18.2% of Gross Domestic Product and the trend was virtually flat. The final Bush tax rates became effective in 2003. In 2006 and 2007, well after the new tax rates were in effect, federal revenues were 18.2% and 18.5% of GDP, above historical levels. The federal government collected over half a trillion dollars more in 2007 than it did in 2000.

Myth: Republicans spent like drunken sailors.

Fact: Federal spending from 1960 through 2000 averaged 20.3% of GDP, with a slightly upward trend. The average over all Bush years, 2001 through 2008, was 19.6% of GDP – below the historical average. The 2001-2008 average deficit was also below the 1960-2000 average.

Myth: Republicans exploded the federal debt.

Fact: Per the US Constitution, “all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” Democrats controlled the House from 1955 through 1994, leaving the federal debt held by the public at 49.2% of GDP. Republicans then controlled the House from 1995 through 2006 and left it at 36.5% of GDP — below the level left by Democrat Congresses.

At the end of Bush’s presidency the debt was 40.2% of GDP. Now, two years post-Bush and four years of a Democrat Congress, the debt is 64% of GDP, the highest it’s been since Harry Truman was paying off World War II.

Myth: The deficit is due to the Iraq War.

Fact: The Congressional Budget Office calculated that the Iraq War cost $709 billion from 2003 through 2010. Total federal deficits over those eight years added up to $4.944 trillion, with the bulk of that ($2.968 trillion) added in just the last two years, after Bush was out of office.

By contrast, federal spending on education over 2003-2010 was $792 billion, and Obama’s stimulus will cost $814 billion. How often do you hear that our deficit problem was caused by education spending?

Myth: The Reagan and Bush tax cuts only benefited the rich.

Fact: According to the CBO, “The lowest three income quintiles have seen declines in their average tax rates since the early 1980s .¤.¤. The average tax rate on the top quintile has fluctuated more, with periods of increases and decreases, and was somewhat lower in 2007 than in 1979.”

In fact, the top quintile (top 20% of taxpayers) paid about 25% of its income in federal taxes in 2007, about the same as it did in 1982. By contrast, the middle and bottom quintiles paid less than 15% and 5%, respectively, both lower than at any time since 1979. The bottom two quintiles had negative average income taxes – they received more in tax credits than they paid in income taxes. Per the CBO, “In 2007, about 35 percent of households did not owe any federal income taxes.”

Myth: The deficit is due to military spending.

Fact: If federal military spending had been eliminated in its entirety in 2009, the deficit would still have been $776 billion, a historical high. Defense spending is less than one fifth of the federal budget and less than 5% of GDP. When the economy was doing quite well in the 1960s, defense spending was twice as high in those terms. In fact, President Bush presided over smaller defense budgets (as a fraction of GDP) than all presidents from 1941 through 1993.

Myth: “The last eight years,” “the last ten years,” “the last decade,” “the lost decade.”

Fact: From 2000 through 2007 real GDP grew 2.4% annually and real disposable personal income grew 2.8% annually. The economy added 5.5 million net new jobs in those years. The unemployment rate stood at 4.4% in May 2007, just before the newly elected, Democrat-controlled Congress raised the minimum wage.

From August 2003 through December 2007, over eight million net new jobs were created.

Fiscal year 2007 was the last one under a federal budget written by a Republican-controlled Congress, and marked the peak in real GDP, jobs, and the stock market. The bad economy of the “last ten years” was all in the last three years – under federal budgets written by a Democrat-controlled Congress.

Myth: Bush deregulated banks, causing the financial crisis. Fact: President Bush did not deregulate banks, or much of anything else. He increased staffing and spending on economic regulation more than President Clinton did. The number of pages in the Federal Register averaged more in Bush’s first term than at any prior time in US history. He signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the most sweeping regulation of business since the New Deal.

The New York Times, no cheerleader for President Bush, said in 2003, “The Bush administration is rightly pushing for the Treasury Department to regulate the two giants [Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae], along with the network of federal home loan banks.” It was Barney Frank and other Democrats who helped kill such regulation. Frank said, “These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis.”

Not a Myth: The above facts are matters of historical record. The sources of many myths are computer models rather than results from the real world. Remember the economic model that said the unemployment rate would not go above 8% if Obama’s stimulus was passed? The stimulus was passed, yet the unemployment rate went above 10% and has been above 9% for the last 19 months.

The models that say extending today’s tax rates would add to the deficit assume that tax rates have no effect on taxpayer behavior. That is an assumption virtually all economists, and most non-economists, know is false. Yet Congress requires the CBO to base its predictions on that bogus assumption.

The reality is that government spending is the problem. It is absurdly above historical levels right now and is unsustainable. It is driven by payments for individuals (64% of 2010 federal outlays) and entitlements, especially health care spending. ObamaCare did not bend the health-care cost curve down, either; it bent it up.

We have to go with Margaret Thatcher on this one.

What a great find by Mary!

Let’s re-post a Margaret Thatcher video and bask in her glorious competence and intelligence.

[youtub=http://www.youtube.com/v/okHGCz6xxiw]

She had a background in the hard sciences, like Angela Merkel, another conservative.

I think if Christian women want to impress men, they should talk like  the Iron Lady. Liberalism / leftism is really just selfishness, envy and blaming others for your own choices. What man wants to marry someone like that?