Tag Archives: Socialism

News

Harvard-educated evolutionist arrested for multiple-victim school shooting

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The leftist NYT reports:

The Huntsville Times identified Dr. Bishop as a Harvard-educated neuroscientist.

[…]Dr. Bishop had told acquaintances recently that she was worried about getting tenure, said a business associate who met her at a business technology open house at the end of January and asked not to be named because of the close-knit nature of the science community in Huntsville.

“She began to talk about her problems getting tenure in a very forceful and animated way, saying it was unfair,” the associate said, referring to a conversation in which she blamed specific colleagues for her problems.

And a student review from her page at RateMyProfessors.com:

This class was great. Bishop makes the class interesting by talking about her research and her friends research. That speaker she had for class was hard to understand but smart. She expects a lot and you need to come to every class and study. She is hot but she tries to hide it. And she is a socialist but she only talks about it after class.

Shot her brother dead:

A Massachusetts police chief is now saying that UAH shooting suspect Amy Bishop shot and killed her brother during an argument, and the case may have been mishandled by the police department more than two decades ago when the fatal shooting occurred.

According to this web page, she likes to advocate evolution to members of the clergy.

UPDATE: From the Boston Herald.

Excerpt:

Reyes confirmed he is working with the FBI to learn more about why Bishop was a suspect in the attempted bombing of Dr. Paul Rosenberg, who received a double-pipe bomb in the mail on Dec. 19, 1993. He ran from his Newton home with his wife, escaping without injury. The bomb never exploded.

[…]A family source said Bishop… was a far-left political extremist who was “obsessed” with President Obama to the point of being off-putting.

Very strange. Like a female version of Bill Ayers.

UPDATE 2: From the Boston Globe.

Excerpt:

In March, 2002, Bishop walked into an International House of Pancakes in Peabody with her family, asked for a booster seat for one of her children, and learned the last seat had gone to another mother.

Bishop, according to a police report, strode over to the other woman, demanded the seat and launched into a profanity-laced rant.

When the woman would not give the seat up, Bishop punched her in the head, all the while yelling “I am Dr. Amy Bishop.”

Sounds like a pretty typical Obama voter to me!

Related posts

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2010/02/police_chief_says_uah_shooting.html
Commentary

Does the Bible support redistribution of wealth or private property?

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Article here. (H/T C.S. Lewis Society)

Excerpt:

The fundamental question for those who consider the Bible authoritative is not whether it advocates charity or helping the poor. Obama, Wallis, and other statist Christians are not arguing for charity. They are arguing for government appropriation of property. The issue isn’t charity, but property rights. If the Bible rejects the notion of a right to property, then these people may have a basis for their perspective. But if the Bible supports a right to own property, safe from government redistribution to others, then their policy proposals are unbiblical.

What follows is an analysis of what the Bible says, in both the New and the Old Testaments, on the subject of property rights. Whether the Bible, or parts thereof, should be considered authoritative or useful for Christians I will leave to theologians. My concern is with the text itself.

I would like to be able to report that the Bible argues firmly for an absolutist view of property rights. I would like to be able to write that the Bible is a strictly libertarian document. It is not. Yet in the balance and taken as a whole, the Bible support the individual’s right to own property and hold onto it. Briefly summarized, the Bible’s teachings are that humans are stewards of God’s property in a rental relationship and are accountable to him, not to the state, for the disposition of that property. The Bible advocates charity for the poor and condemns the parsimonious, but it does not grant authority to the state to act on God’s behalf to redistribute wealth. It is mostly a laissez-faire system of ideas, which libertarians should not forfeit to statist misinterpretations.

The Bible suggests three central principles regarding property rights. One is the prohibition against theft, enshrined in Exodus 20:15 “You shall not steal.” The second is the idea that the world ultimately belongs to God (not to the state), as exemplified by Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains, the world and those who dwell in it.” The third is a corollary: humans are temporary tenants upon God’s property, as King David said in 1 Chronicles 29:15: “For we are but sojourners before You, and tenants, as all our fathers were.”

Worth reading even if you disagree, because it’s well-written. I’d like to see a good debate on this topic, wouldn’t you? Jay Richards vs. Jim Wallis, maybe? I’d like to see that.

Commentary

Cato Institute asks how many senators are more liberal than the socialist one?

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Article here about the self-described socialist senator Bernie Sanders. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

According to the National Taxpayers Union, 42 senators in 2008 voted to spend more tax dollars than socialist Bernie Sanders. They include his neighbor Pat Leahy; Californians Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, who just can’t understand why their home state is in fiscal trouble; and the Eastern Seaboard anti-taxpayer Murderers’ Row of Kerry, Dodd, Lieberman, Clinton, Schumer, Lautenberg, Menendez, Carper, Biden, Cardin, and Mikulski. Don’t carry cash on Amtrak! Not to mention Blanche Lambert Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who apparently think Arkansans don’t pay taxes so federal spending is free. Sen. Barack Obama didn’t vote often enough to get a rating in 2008, but in 2007 he managed to be one of the 11 senators who voted for more spending than the socialist senator.

Meanwhile, the American Conservative Union rated 11 senators more liberal than Sanders in 2008, including Biden, Boxer, Feinstein, and again the georgraphically confused Mark Pryor. The Republican Liberty Caucus declared 14 senators, including Sanders, to have voted 100 percent anti-economic freedom in 2008, though Sanders voted better than 31 colleagues in support of personal liberties.  The liberal Americans for Democratic Action provides more support for the Post’s claim, rating Sanders 100 percent liberal. Most raters, though, don’t see it that way. In this compilation of ratings from left-leaning interest groups, 17 senators get higher scores than Sanders.

Socialism is actually the mainstream position of Senate Democrats. The rest of them just don’t label themselves as such.