Tag Archives: Expression

Videos

Sen. Jim Demint denounces the Democrats’ new Hate Crimes amendment

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UPDATE: NEW MUST-SEE Jim Demint video has been posted here on the the failed stimulus bills and Obamacare!

UPDATE: Welcome, visitors from the Corner (National Review)! Thanks for the link from Mark Steyn!

UPDATE: Welcome Canadian readers from Blazing Cat Fur! Guess what? The Democrats are trying to pass laws that will make us just like you!

Canadian readers, pay close attention, the second half of the video is all about you.

Here’s the video of my favorite Senator Jim Demint: (11:44)

You can read about how Christians are persecuted in Canada here:

But what about the right to free speech here, in the USA?

Why did some Christians vote (indirectly) for anti-Christian policies?

There are 3 themes on the Wintery Knight blog.

  1. Christians must appeal to public knowledge when defending their faith
  2. Social conservatives need to become fiscal conservatives
  3. 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
2008 voting broken by religious groups

(Click for full-sized image, courtesy of Pew Research)

For the record, I am an ethnic evangelical Protestant. You can read all about how I became a Christian and the list of arguments for and against Christian theism.

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:

For two technical articles discussing property rights and the poor, take a look at these two articles from New Zealand philosopher Matt Flanagan.

And here is an audio lecture by Jay Richards on the “Myths Christians Believe about Wealth and Poverty“. His new book is called “Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem“. To understand what capitalism is, you can watch this lecture about the book. Here is a series of 4 sermons by Wayne Grudem on the relationship between Christianity and economics?.(a PDF outline is here)

News

Are things beginning to turn around in Alberta?

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Political Map of Canada
Political Map of Canada

I blogged before about the California school district that is indoctrinating 5-year olds with homosexual propaganda in kindergarten. Well, Canada had a similar problem in the province of British Columbia, where the entire curriculum was going to be designed by gay activists. Now, you might think that the Canadians would be a lot more leftist on such issues, you’d be wrong.

Alberta has a bill in the works to give rights to parents to opt out of programs like this.

Check out this story from the Globe and Mail. (H/T My friend Andrew)

Bill 44, which proposes amendments to Alberta’s Human Rights, Citizenship, and Multiculturalism Act, contains two significant changes. The first adds sexual orientation to proscribed grounds of discrimination. This would bring Alberta’s human rights legislation into conformity with a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that “read in” sexual orientation after it had been deliberately omitted three times by the Legislative Assembly in Edmonton. The amendment has been widely praised.

Section 11 of the new act is more controversial. It requires that parents be notified whenever instructional materials are taught dealing “explicitly with religion, sexuality or sexual orientation.” If parents object in writing, the student can be excused from class.

According to Rob Anderson, Conservative MLA from Airdrie-Chestermere, a riding just north of Calgary, Bill 44 “is one of the most positive and meaningful advances for human rights that this province and this country has seen for many years.” Specifically, he explained, the “parental rights clause” enshrines Article 26 (3) of the United Nations universal declaration of human rights: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” Premier Ed Stelmach added that his government “supports a very, very fundamental right and that is parental rights with respect to education.”

This article was written by a political science professor at the University of Calgary, which is the school where their prime minister Stephen Harper got both his degrees in economics. They are known for their conservative views. They even have a special name: the “Calgary School” of economics, just like you might talk about the “Chicago School” and the “Austrian School”. Awesome!

Here’s a letter to the editor from a University of Lethbridge (Alberta) professor that I found in the National Post, (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

Bill 44 is a response to a B. C. Human Rights Tribunal decision mandating two gay activists to commandeer the Ministry of Education in that province to impose a “social justice” course into the curriculum. Parents’ rights, never mind those of local school boards, were overridden.

The B. C. example and Alberta’s Bill 44 indicate how HRCs have poisoned politics in those two provinces.

Now everyone, not just Christian preachers, has to worry about getting dragged before an HRC. A former chairman of the Calgary School Board once proclaimed the state “owns” children who must be liberated from the supposedly claustrophobic viewpoints of their parents. This goes to show how little this debate has to do with promoting critical thinking or cosmopolitanism, as the Post’s article suggests.

If there is an upside to this, perhaps now there will be sufficient support across the political spectrum to dismantle the HRCs.

Go Canada, eh?

News

What is it like to be a Christian in an Islamic state?

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Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch links to some interesting stories.

First, this story from Singapore, from AFP:

A Christian Singaporean couple were found guilty of sedition on Thursday for distributing evangelical publications that cast Islam in a negative light, court officials said.

Ong Kian Cheong and his wife Dorothy Chan had been charged with distributing a seditious publication to two Muslims in October and March 2007 and sending a second such booklet to another Muslim in December that same year, a district court official told AFP.

The publications were found to have promoted feelings of ill-will and hostility between Christians and Muslims, the Straits Times said on its website….

The sedition charge carries a jail term of up to three years or a fine of up to 5,000 Singapore dollars (3,437 US) or both….

I’m surprised, because Singapore has one of the most free economies in the world, next to Hong Kong. I guess someone there cannot tolerate a public discussion about which religion is more likely to be true. This story reminds me of atheists, who sometimes sue people for offering to pray for them.

Second, this story from Pakistan, from Compass Direct News:

Nine pastors from two neighboring villages in Pakistan could face prison time for using loudspeakers to broadcast prayers and sermons from their churches on Easter Sunday. Martinpur and Youngsnabad, 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of Lahore, are majority Christian villages. The nine pastors who lead congregations there say that local Muslim security forces have twisted the law to solicit a bribe….

This reminds me of the left-wing ACLU, which sometimes sues people for mentioning Jesus in speeches.

Third, this story from Tanzania, from Compass Direct News:

Worship in a house church near Zanzibar City, on a Tanzanian island off the coast of East Africa, did not take place for the third week running on Sunday (May 24) after Muslim extremists expelled worshippers from their rented property. Radical Muslims on May 9 drove members of Zanzibar Pentecostal Church from worship premises in a rented house at Ungunja Ukuu, on the outskirts of Zanzibar City.

Angered by a recent upsurge in Christian evangelism in the area, church members said, radical Muslims had sent several threats to the Christians warning them to stop their activities. The church had undertaken a two-day evangelism campaign culminating in an Easter celebration. On the morning of the attack, more than 20 church members had gathered for Saturday fellowship when word reached them that Muslim extremists were about to attack.

As the radical group approached, the Christians fled in fear of their lives. “The group was shouting, saying, ‘We do not want the church to be in our locality – they should leave the place and never come back again,’” said one church member who requested anonymity.

Scary, but free speech is regulated in Canada, too, thanks to those Human Rights Commissions.

Fourth, this story from Pakistan, from Worthy news:

Suspected Muslim militants with links to the terror groups Al Qaeda and the Taliban attacked a historic church in northwestern Pakistan and burned Bibles and other Christian books, but police are reluctant to investigate the case and detain suspects, Christians said Tuesday, May 26.

The destruction of the St. George Grecian Church was discovered by workers renovating the building, said the church’s pastor Ijaz Masih in a statement distributed by rights group International Christian Concern (ICC).

Masih said that shortly after he presided over a Sunday service, workers “were shocked when they arrived” in the morning of May 12, “and found the church’s cross broken in pieces, the altar demolished and partially burned, Bibles and hymnbooks burned and torn apart, and the pews reduced to ashes.”

Well, the secular left does commit violent acts against defenders of traditional marriage.

I was surprised to learn from an Indian commenter that Christians are also persecuted in certain areas of India for evangelizing. Why do states insist on forcing their view of evangelism on individuals who have a different view? I wouldn’t force my view on anyone else, yet atheists and some nationalist Hindus and fundamentalist Muslims seem to do it all the time.

And it isn’t just dogma or strongly-held beliefs that causes extremism. There is no room for coercion in Bible-based Christianity. The more you believe in Christianity, the less you believe in coercion, and the more you believe in persuasion by reason and evidence. That’s what Jesus did.

http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news&lang=en&length=short&idelement=5938&backpage=summaries