White House hopeful Newt Gingrich called the House Republican plan for Medicare “right-wing social engineering,” injecting a discordant GOP voice into the party’s efforts to reshape both entitlements and the broader budget debate.
In the same interview on Sunday, Mr. Gingrich backed a requirement that all Americans buy health insurance, complicating a Republican line of attack on President Barack Obama’s health law.
The former House speaker’s decision to stick with his previous support for an individual mandate comes days after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney defended the health revamp he championed as governor, which includes a mandate.
The moves suggest the Republican primary contest, which will include both men, could feature a robust debate on health care, with GOP candidates challenging the Democratic law while defending their own variations.
Newt Gingrich’s appearance on “Meet the Press” today could leave some wondering which party’s nomination he is running for. The former speaker had some harsh words for Paul Ryan’s (and by extension, nearly every House Republican’s) plan to reform Medicare, calling it “radical.”
“I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” he said when asked about Ryan’s plan to transition to a “premium support” model for Medicare. “I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”
As far as an alternative, Gingrich trotted out the same appeal employed by Obama/Reid/Pelosi — for a “national conversation” on how to “improve” Medicare, and promised to eliminate ‘waste, fraud and abuse,’ etc.
For Ms. Clinton, standing side by side with her husband’s onetime nemesis gives her the chance to burnish her credentials among the moderates she has been courting during her time in the Senate.
But in comments this week, she portrayed the rapprochement as one born of shared policy interests, not calculated politics.
“I know it’s a bit of an odd-fellow, or odd-woman, mix,” she said. “But the speaker and I have been talking about health care and national security now for several years, and I find that he and I have a lot in common in the way we see the problem.”
For his part, Mr. Gingrich, who helped lead the impeachment fight against President Bill Clinton, called Mrs. Clinton “very practical” and “very smart and very hard working,” adding, “I have been very struck working with her.”
Maybe he is actually running to win the Democrat nomination this time.
What I am suggesting is that the public packaging of Darwinian theory has become intensely political, and that would-be critics face certain pressures.
But don’t take my word for it. Listen to what evolutionists themselves are saying.
Consider the words of philosopher Jerry Fodor and cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini in their book What Darwin Got Wrong:
We’ve been told by more than one of our colleagues that, even if Darwin was substantially wrong to claim that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution, nonetheless we shouldn’t say so. Not, anyhow, in public. To do that is, however inadvertently, to align oneself with the Forces of Darkness, whose goal is to bring Science into disrepute.
(Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, What Darwin God Wrong, p. xx (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)
Likewise, theoretical biologist Günter Thieβen wrote in Theory in Biosciences:
It is dangerous to raise attention to the fact that there is no satisfying explanation for macroevolution. One easily becomes a target of orthodox evolutionary biology and a false friend of proponents of non-scientific concepts.
(Günter Theißen, “The Proper Place of Hopeful Monsters in Evolutionary Biology,” Theory in Biosciences, Vol. 124: 349-369 (2006).)
Again, philosopher and biologist John Dupré writes in American Scientist:
The enduring debates with creationists have also undoubtedly tended to discourage admission that major conceptual issues about evolution remain unresolved.
Such words are not harbingers of some kind of a mass conspiracy to hide problems with evolution from the public. No such conspiracy exists. But they do show evidence of the hyper-political nature of this debate, where scientists feel political pressure to avoid lending credence to those they call “creationists.”
It’s important to point that what materialists mean by “science” is presuming materialism and then carrying on a charade of investigating the world and discovering that materialism did it. They can’t be open to agent causation, because their religion doesn’t allow it.
Give me that old-time religion
Imagine a materialist CIO who thought that code was written by large numbers of monkeys pounding at keyboards instead of by engineers. He would be firing all the software engineers and replacing them with monkeys in order to generate better code. And he would call this method of generating new code “science”. It’s the scientific way of generating new information, he would say, and using software engineers to generate new code isn’t “science”. It’s what he learned at UC Berkeley and UW Madison! His professors of biology swear that it is true!
It seems to me that there are incentives in place that make it impossible for Darwinists to discuss their materialistic religion honestly. They feel pressured to distort the evidence in the public square, and there are political pressures on them to distort the evidence in order to avoid being censured by their employers and colleagues. When questions about the evidence for Darwinism come up, they have to rally around their religion and chant the creeds that comfort them. There can be no questioning of their faith in the presupposition of materialism.
My favorite Congresswoman stole the spotlight in Iowa when she lectured for the Family Leader Presidential Lecture Series. She’s back to the passionate arm-waving that I always liked so much.
Bachmann started her speech sharing her testimony saying she understood the Gospel for the first time at age 16 after growing up in a Lutheran Church and then she gave her life to Christ. She said that it “changed her life forever.” She said she had a hunger for the Word after then, and explained that the Holy Spirit “lifted the veil” from her eyes so she was then able to understand it. She participated in YoungLife and another Bible study when in high school. That first year in Christ was, Bachmann said, “was the defining year of my life.”
In college she participated the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at her school, and cited Francis Schaffer’s film, How Now Shall We Live, made an impact on how she lives out her faith. During law school at Oral Roberts University Law School she did advocacy for better homeschooling laws. She and her husband, Marcus, homeschooled their five children in their early years. She got involved in public schools as they did foster care for 23 kids since they were not allowed by Minnesota law to put those kids in private school or to home school them.
She noted a change in public schools where “knowledge, facts, and information” were taking a back seat to indoctrination. She noted the 2000 Goals to Work standard implemented in the public schools that was a federal program implemented in all 50 states. She advocated for its repeal in Minnesota – the first state to do so. She said later this is where she got her start in politics.
She highlighted her prolife advocacy in the Minnesota Legislature – a requirement to fund prolife groups if they were going to fund Planned Parenthood and a woman’s right to know act.
[…]On marriage, she commended Iowans for booting the three Iowa Supreme Court justices up for retention last fall. She said that Minnesota could possibly vote in favor of a Marriage Amendment now that Republicans She noted that Congress can limit the subject matter jurisdiction for Article Three courts federally denying them an opportunity to rule on marriage. “This is the first time in recorded history that we have seen marriage in society defined as anything other than between one man and one woman.”
[…]On life she said that she and her husband has done more than just talk about life, but have tried to live it out through being sidewalk counselors and taking unwed mothers into their home. Quoting Francis Schaeffer she, “life is the watershed issue of our time.” Bachman proclaimed her commitment to life, “I will not give up until we give life the position it deserves in the United States and is protected from conception until natural death.”
She explained how taxes has impacted the family where in the 1950s would pay approximately 5% of their income to taxes. She said now some families can pay up to 50% which explains why we have fewer one income families. She noted the spending which has fueled anti-family tax policy. She said the first thing on the House’s pro-family agenda was to rein in spending. Regarding education reform, she noted how the Supreme Court has recently ruled that tax credits for private religious schools is constitutional. She also said that she’d abolish the Federal Department of Education. She also called for the abolishment of the United States Tax Code.
[Note: commenter Francine notes that Michele says that this is the first time that marriage has been redefined to not be between men and women – the summary is in error about what she said]
She ends the speech with her concern for the fact that over 40% of children are beig born without a mother and father in the home, and she blames bad fiscal policies for this injustice. She makes the connection between left-wing fiscal policies and social breakdown. It’s so important that social conservatives understand that big government, high taxes, excessive regulation and massive spending are major causes of virtually all of our social problems. The breakdown of the family is what makes soul-destroying secularism possible.
There was also a press conference after the speech.
During the press conference that was held after Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann’s speech in Pella, IA for The FAMiLY Leader’s Presidential Lecture Series, she was asked to elaborate on the bill in Minnesota she helped to get passed that allowed funding for prolife organizations basically putting them on the same footing as Planned Parenthood. During her answer she mentioned that she said that she introduced a similar bill in Congress.
She was also asked about what programs would she be open to abolishing other than the Federal Department of Education. She listed the Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce as ones that have been discussed in Congress. She said “anywhere we can abolish we might as well cut back and abolish.” Saying in particular that our private sector has the capability to handle our energy needs. She was asked about her disappointment with the House budget deal and where she would like the House leadership to put up a fight. Bachmann said, “defunding Obamacare, this will change our country forever.” She noted later that some may not be willing to take on budget battles in the future, she said that we have to… she said, “we have to change course.”
I have been pushing Michele Bachmann on this blog since the beginning two years ago, because she represents what I consider to be an ideal Christian woman. She is everything that I have ever hoped a Christian woman could be in my wildest, wildest dreams. I could not give any politician a more ringing endorsement. I hope with all my heart that she will some day be President of the United States.
She explained how taxes has impacted the family where in the 1950s would pay approximately 5% of their income to taxes. She said now some families can pay up to 50% which explains why we have fewer one income families. She noted the spending which has fueled anti-family tax policy. She said the first thing on the House’s pro-family agenda was to rein in spending. Regarding education reform, she noted how the Supreme Court has recently ruled that tax credits for private religious schools is constitutional. She also said that she’d abolish the Federal Department of Education. She also called for the abolishment of the United States Tax Code.
WINTERY KNIGHT 