Tag Archives: Government

News

Democrats vote to discriminate against students of faith

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Did you know that Obama’s massive stimulus bill contains a provision that “prohibits renovation money for schools that allow religious groups to meet on campus”? Jay Sekulow of the ACLJ describes the provision here. According to this Fox News story, Senator James “Jim” Demint (R. – SC), proposed an amendment to the pork-filled bill to remove the anti-religious provision. However, Demint reported that the amendment failed in the Senate 43-54, with almost all Republicans voting for religious liberty, and almost all the Democrats voting against it. The provision had previously passed in the Democrat-controlled House, with every Republican voting against it.

I think this defeat is a helpful reminder to people of faith about the role of government-run schools, and teacher’s unions, in imposing secular-leftist values on the next generation. I recently finished reading Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism”, in which the author explains what the word fascist really means. Fascism is the political philosophy that seeks to undermine individual goals and values, including religious and entrepreneurial values, and to substitute the values of the society, as expressed by the party in power.

A common thread in fascist regimes is the effort to separate children from parents at a young age, so that adult teachers can impose the state’s values on the children when they are least able to resist them. That is why, accoring to the Guardian, the National Socialist party abolished homeschooling in fascist Germany in 1938. (A review of Goldberg’s book by Canadian author Denyse O’Leary is here). My favorite quote from Goldberg’s book is about the role of government-run schools in a fascist state:

Hence a phalanx of progressive reformers saw the home as the front line in the war to transform men into compliant social organs. Often the answer was to get the children out of the home as soon as possible. An archipelago of agencies, commissions, and bureaus sprang up overnight to take the place of the anti-organic, contra-evolutionary influences of the family. The home could no longer be seen as an island, separate and sovereign from the rest of society. John Dewey helped create kindergartens in American for precisely this purpose — to help shape the apples before they fell from the tree — while at the other end of the educational process stood reformers like Wilson, who summarized the progressive attitude perfectly when, as president of Princeton, he told an audience, “Our problem is not merely to help the students to adjust themselves to world life … [but] to make them as unlike their fathers as possible.”

The United States is also heading in this direction. In California, Human Events reported that homeschooling was effectively banned by an activist court. Dinesh D’Souza frankly explains why the left is so intent on keeping control of the schools here. He notes that secular people do not form families and do not have children, because it is too much of a constraint on their autonomy. Instead, D’Souza writes, secularists simply seize control of the children of religious parents, and pass their values on to the children in the mandatory government-run schools.

This plan has become so successful, that even young evangelicals are abandoning their faith at the ballot box. Phyllis Schlafly recently noted that 32% of young evangelicals voted for Obama in 2008, compared to 16% of them who voted for Kerry in 2004. Some of this slide to the left is due to parents focusing too much on entertainment and material gain. But a large portion of the blame should be pinned on the government-run schools and universities. USA Today notes that 70% of Protestant Christians abandon their faith by age 23.

Once you understand that the secular left has an interest in separating children from their parents, you begin to see why they support policies that transfer more familial responsibilities to the state. Higher taxes ensure that mothers must work, so that the child’s vulnerable pre-school years may be spent with government-certified instructors in day care. The emphasis on sex-education in the government-run schools leads young people into behaviors that later undermine marital stability. And, as Stephen Baskerville argues, the state encourages divorces to make business for itself.

I’ve argued here that Democrats favor secularizing government-run schools in order to undermine the faith of children. This is something that people of faith, who want to pass on their worldview and values to their children, need to think about. If you voted for Obama for nationalized health care, taxing of the rich, stopping global warming, etc., then now may be a good time to think again. Do a little studying about what conservatives believe – you may find out that conservatism is more consistent with the goals of faith-based voters than you had first thought.

By the way, as Ezra Levant reports, it happens in Canada, too. Often.

UPDATE: Wow, Ezra Levant is really mad at the University of Calgary for censoring pro-life students! National Post story is here.

Polemics

Obama’s anti-free-trade policy angers the world

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Well, I thought that Obama was too smart to enact protectionist policies, but it looks like he does indeed mean to try to plunge the USA into a new depression, just like Hoover did when he signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930. What protectionism says to consumers is this: working families must pay more for inferior products manufactured by government’s favored special interest groups, (e.g. – unions). The standard of living of consumers of those protected products will be reduced, because consumers are overpaying for something that they could get cheaper elsewhere.

What this means that those of us who prefer to use our dollars for purchases that are important to our worldviews (e.g. – Christianity), is that we will have less purchasing power to spend on charity, private schools, apologetics resources, or anything else we want to buy to express our values. Money is the fuel that people use to live out their worldviews in the public square. The more money is wasted by government, the less money we have for our individual priorities. And the way that a secular government spends money is never as good as the way an informed Christian individual will spend it.

Reactions to Obama’s “Buy American” plan worldwide have been swift and alarming:

Over at Pat Toomey’s Club for Growth, Andrew Roth notes that India is angered at the prospect of having their exports taxed. The headline from Reuters India is “Policymakers sound alarm over protectionism“. We can expect to pay more for goods imported from other countries, because they will retaliate against our tariffs. More consumer purchasing power is lost!

Over at William J. O’Neill’s Investors Business Daily, an editorial describes how firms such as GE and Caterpillar faces job losses because they are denied access to cheap foreign steel. By the way, if you haven’t clicked on the IBD podcasts over there on the rightmost column, what are you waiting for? Those are the best podcasts on the Internet!

Over at the Cato Institute blog, Daniel Ikenson notes that the American Steel industry has been enjoying record profits, and that the steel tarrifs supported by Obama’s plan cause other companies to lose exports to foreign nations, because businesses here are forced to pay too much for steel that they could get cheaper abroad.

It was Adam Smith who first explained so long ago:

It is a maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker. The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own clothes but employs a tailor.… What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry employed in a way in which we have some advantage. (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II)

A more complete explanation of the effects of imposing tariffs on imports can be found in Robert P. Murphy’s new introductory book to free market capitalism, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism. A review of this book is here. Another good book analyzing free market capitalism applied to a number of different areas including crime and abortion, is Freedomnomics by John R. Lott. A review of this book, by the eminent economist Walter Williams, is here.

News

Birth control funding to stimulate the economy?

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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse is an ideal exponent of the view that conservative libertarian capitalists do have an interest in promoting intact families as the best environment for raising children. She argues that certain social issues can impose huge costs on the taxpayer, and also increases the size and scope of government. Government should at least do no harm in discouraging traditional marriages and even stay-at-home mothers.

In this article, she examines Nancy Pelosi’s recent comments regarding the inclusion of contraceptives in the the Democrat’s so-called stimulus package. This bill is no stimulus. It is a giveaway to the secular left’s special interest groups, on the backs of the productive private sector. Dr. Morse argues that supporting marriage instead of contraceptives would reduce taxpayer costs.

Here is an excerpt from Dr. Morse’s excellent article:

If Nancy Pelosi wants to reduce the costs to taxpayers, she should be promoting marriage. Out-of-wedlock childbearing is one of the surest roads to poverty and, thereby, to taxpayer expenditure. A recent study by the Institute for American Values conservatively estimated the taxpayer costs of non-marital childbearing to be $112 billion per year, or roughly the GDP of New Zealand. Responsible, sustainable childbearing takes place within marriage. And, incidentally, if Speaker Pelosi really wants to reduce abortions (which she hinted at, but did not say) she should also be promoting marriage. Some 80 per cent of abortions, year in and year out, are performed on unmarried women.

Here is a related research paper by Christine C. Kim of the Heritage Foundation on teen sexuality and the effects of family structure and stability in curbing it.