Tag Archives: Interview

Podcasts

FL senator Marco Rubio: “We need more taxpayers, not more taxes”

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Florida Senator Marco Rubio
Florida Senator Marco Rubio

If there is anyone I like almost as much as Michele Bachmann, it’s Marco Rubio. And boy, can this guy do an interview.

On the Sean Hannity show: (7 minutes)

And on the Rush Limbaugh radio show: (11 minutes)

He’s William Lane Craig-esque. He just talks about the issues without one hem or haw. Not an uh or an ah to be heard. It’s uncanny. Hmmn. Look at that picture up there. He looks very intense. Do you think he might be some sort of conservative super-android designed by the U.S. Military in a secret base under a mountain in Colorado? I’m not sure.

I actually heard him interviewed on the Hugh Hewitt show on Tuesday night. Hugh played the interview back-to-back in two consecutive hours, and then his producer Duane Patterson posted the full transcript. This one was the best interview of all. Hugh does a great interview, and he was blown away by Marco Rubio.

Excerpt:

HH: Now the President is betting, obviously, that he can turn a conservative message into a toxic one for 2012. Your old colleague from the Florida House, Adam Hasner, is running for Senate down there, a lot like Josh Mandel in Ohio, and Ted Cruz in Texas, they’re running as real conservatives with very much a Rubio-like message from 2010. Will that work in this environment of demagoguery from the White House?

MR: Yeah, it will work, because the common sense of the American people is powerful, and I think that too many people here in Washington walk around thinking well, we can spin it this way, or we can use our allies in the media to confuse people and make them not believe their own eyes. But the truth is that we’re way past that today. The ability of people to get information from multiple sources in real time, the ability of us to communicate directly to our constituents, to go on programs such as yours and talk about the reality of what we’re facing, is something that wasn’t around not that long ago, and it’s incumbent upon us who feel passionate about this to go out there and make clear to the people what our choices are. And this is not a complicated issue. It’s very, very simple. The United States spends more money than it takes in, and it’s not generating enough revenue for its government to pay down the debt. So we have to figure out how do we stop spending more money than we take in? We need a balanced budget amendment. We need a spending cap. And we need real reductions in spending starting right now. And what do we do to get more revenue in the hands of government so it can pay down its debt and not grow its government? Well, you’re not going to do that through tax increases. You’re going to do that through new taxpayers, that is getting people back to work, getting people hired and working, so these people will pay taxes, and then we can use that revenue to pay down the debt. That’s what we need. And you’re not going to create new taxpayers, you’re not going to create economic growth and jobs in America if you’re running around threatening to raise taxes.

HH: Do you think the President understands the underlying economics, Senator Rubio, and is just demagoguing it? Or is he fundamentally misinformed about how capitalism works?

MR: I think there are three things going on here. Number one, I think he’s a prisoner to extremist elements in his own base who not only, they don’t care that the taxes don’t solve any problems. They want their pound of flesh. They want to punish somebody, they want class warfare. That’s what they believe in. And this is their chance to do it, and they’re putting pressure on him to do that. So I think that’s his first problem. His second problem is that I think he’s surrounded by a bunch of people who philosophically do not believe fully in the free enterprise system, and in fact, they’d like to see government play a greater role. And they see this downturn in the economy, and crisis such as this, as an opportunity to exert more government involvement in our economy. And that’s the second problem. And his third problem is a level of incompetence. I think the President, quite frankly, is not up to the job. And if you look at every measure of quality of life in America today, unemployment is higher. The debt is higher. The only thing lower is the value of your home. If you look at every measurable economic thing in America today, they are all worse than they were the day he took over. Two and a half years into his presidency, things continue to get worse, not better, and it’s because the President is incompetent in his job as president. He is not, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

I think he’s going to be President one day. And I agree with him on Obama’s competence. The man is not qualified in any way, shape or form to run a lemonade stand, much less to be the President of the most powerful country on the planet. I would like to see a Marco Rubio/Allen West ticket in 2020, after the two Michele Bachmann terms are done.

 

Podcasts

Brian Auten interviews David Wood on Christianity and Islam

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The Dearborn Four
The Dearborn Four in court

(That’s David Wood on the left)

Click here for a 90-minute interview podcast covering a wide range of topics. (Please click through for the MP3 file)

About David:

 David Wood is a Teaching Fellow in Philosophy. A former atheist, David converted to Christianity after examining the evidence for God’s existence and the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. He has degrees in biology and philosophy and is a member of the Society of Christian Philosophers and the Evangelical Philosophical Society. David lives in the Bronx, NY, with his wife Marie and his three sons—Lucian, Blaise, and Reid.

This is interesting:

David Wood is a Teaching Fellow in Philosophy at Fordham University, where he teaches Philosophy of Human Nature and Philosophical Ethics. A former atheist, he became a Christian after investigating the historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. Due to a college friendship with a Muslim named Nabeel, David began an intensive study of Islam, and now reaches Muslims through Acts 17 Apologetics Ministries, which he codirects with his friend Nabeel (who is now a Christian).

Boy, is it great when God reaches out to these scholarly guys.

David is one of the brave Christians who was arrested by Dearborn for answering questions about Christianity asked by Muslims.

Brian’s summary of the interview:

Today’s interview is with David Wood, a former atheist who converted to Christianity after examining the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. As well as being a Teaching Fellow in Philosophy, David directs Acts 17 Apologetics Ministries,  defending the Christian Faith against atheistic and Islamic objections. He talks about the Dearborn Arab Festival, the growth of Islam, the crucifixion of Jesus (Christian view compared to Islam), the usage of the word “Allah,” Muslim arguments for the Qu’ran, the question of Jihad, assessing arguments in favor of Islam, inaccuracies in the Qu’ran, recommended resources on Islam, and more.

Find Acts 17 Apologetics here, as well as great resources at Answering-Islam.
Blog here: AnsweringMuslims.com.

You can find more interviews with the best Christian apologists at Apologetics 315, and be sure and check out his “Must-visit” pages for some excellent links.

Commentary

Jennifer Roback Morse: Father’s Day is also Husband’s Day

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Jennifer Roback Morse is one of my favorite writers on family issues, because she is just so positive about men and the roles that men play in the family, and the challenges that men face while performing those roles.

She wrote this article in appreciation of her husband, and it’s a must-read, especially for men looking for some appreciation and encouragement.

Excerpt:

The feminist movement introduced an unbelievable amount of tension into the relationships between men and women. Feminism gave us women permission to nag and criticize our husbands, which most women can do just fine without any special permission. The legacy of the feminist movement has been to turn the home, which should be the place of cooperation, into a sphere of competition between men and women. And ironically, feminism, which was supposed to be about getting beyond stereotypes, supported the most negative of stereotypes about men.

I have my own pet theory about the stereotype of men dragging their feet about getting married. The socio-biologists claim that men want to invest their seed in as many women as possible, and therefore do not want marriage. I think this is only a dim shadow of the whole truth. The whole truth must include this great fact about men: They are capable of heroic loyalty. When men finally do marry, they are capable of committing themselves to the care of their wives and children. Many men spend a lifetime working at jobs they don’t like very much, for the love of their families. When men marry, they take it very seriously. It is women who initiate most divorces. It is divorced men who commit suicide at twice the rate as married men, while divorce has little impact on the suicide propensities of women.

When women marry, we get things that we want and value. We get the opportunity to become mothers. We get a home, our nest for our little ones. What do men get? They get the right to throw themselves on a live grenade for the protection of their families. Or, as St. Paul suggested to the Ephesians, husbands get the right to be crucified.

Most men, with an insignificant number of exceptions, are capable of this heroic loyalty. We women can call this out of our men. We don’t achieve this by nagging. We certainly don’t achieve it by competing with them over who makes the most money, or by keeping score with them on who does the most household chores. We need to build them up, as St. Paul says. Watch them sit up straighter and taller when we appreciate and admire them.

We need to build up our marriages because our children suffer from broken relationships or non-relationships. We now know that father absence inflicts a wound on children that social science can measure, but only partially fathom. We are finding that even the children conceived by artificial means long for a relationship with their fathers.

So if we are going to honor fathers, we women have to honor our husbands, as husbands. And sometimes, just sometimes, we will find that they will honor and build us up as well.

A woman cannot go wrong by studying what men do, why men matter, and what men want from women and children. Creating the conditions for a married man to thrive in his roles is an important goal for women, after their goal of pleasing God. To get the man to perform, a woman has to create the ideal conditions for him to perform. And that means providing the right environment and loving him as if she had never been hurt. Dr. Morse knows what men are supposed to do, and she knows what she has to do to create the conditions where her husband can perform. Wives need to create the right incentives for husbands to performing their roles, and to fill them up with love by encouraging, acknowledging, recognizing, affirming, accepting and desiring them. If men don’t get the things that they need from their wives, then they won’t be able to perform. They’ll just go silent and withdraw.

Dr. Morse’s podcasts are here, and the recent interview with Warren Farrell is worth listening to for those who would like to understand men a little better.