Tag Archives: Statism

Videos

UK media discussing whether Christians are fit to be foster parents

10 Comments

Here’s the video:

Basically, the state thinks that Christians cannot be parents because their individual morality clashes with the moral relativism and sexual hedonism of the state. Many (most) people of the people who agree with fascism will be on the political left. That’s why fascism is only and exclusively a phenomenon of the political left.

But not all people on the secular left are fascists.

Here’s some useful commentary about one of the speakers: (H/T Mary)

The historian, television and radio presenter, David Starkey is gay and an atheist.  He is also an honorary member of the National Secular Society.  You might therefore expect him to be clearly in favour of the ruling in the High Court this week that banned a Christian couple from fostering children because of their religious beliefs.

Starkey is not a fascist. I thought it was interesting that he mentioned his mother but not his father in the clip. Homosexuality is highly co-related with a breakdown in the relationship of the same-sex parent. When you have an absent/abusive/weak father and a domineering mother, that puts you at risk, if you are male. And the situation is reversed for women, where different environmental factors come into play, making the little girl feel devalued and vulnerable as a little girl. Parents – take heed. And be careful how you present Christianity to your children. If you present it as rules with no evidence or warrant, you will get a rebellion. If you present in the context of being informed about science, etc., within the context of a respectful, open-minded relationship, you may win the child over.

Back to the video – I thought it was interesting when the red-haired woman said that Christians could have their pro-life, pro-marriage, anti-slavery, anti-infanticide morality at home, but at work they had to object the state’s version of morality. She would fit in well in Nazi Germany or Communist North Korea. David Starkey would not have fit into to those fascist regimes at all.

Fascism is the imposition of state morality and purposes over individual morality and purposes. Conservatism limits the state’s ability to impose morality and purpose onto the citizens, and also limits involuntary wealth redistribution from one group of individuals to another. In conservatism everyone makes their own choices and pays their own way. In liberalism, the government endorses certain lifestyles over others, and transfers wealth involuntarily from unfavored groups to subsidize the favored groups – as with taxpayer funding of abortion, in vitro fertilization or sex changes. Christians are usually not favored by the state because our strong moral views conflict with the sexual hedonism that is so prevalent today. We have nothing to gain from an overbearing state, and much to lose.

Here’s a debate I posted a while back in which British fascists agree with the red-haired woman that Christians have no human rights to things like free speech, and that some group of people (atheists) have the right to silence other groups (Christians) because they are “offended”.

News

UK judge rules that Christians have no right to religious liberty

7 Comments

From the UK Telegraph. (H/T ADF Alert)

Excerpt:

Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson made the remarks when ruling on the case of a Christian couple who were told that they could not be foster carers because of their view that homosexuality is wrong.

The judges underlined that, in the case of fostering arrangements at least, the right of homosexuals to equality “should take precedence” over the right of Christians to manifest their beliefs and moral values.

In a ruling with potentially wide-ranging implications, the judges said Britain was a “largely secular”, multi-cultural country in which the laws of the realm “do not include Christianity”.

[…]The ruling in the case of Owen and Eunice Johns, from Derby, is the latest in a series of judgments in which Christians have been defeated in the courts for breaching equality laws by manifesting their beliefs on homosexuality.

[…]In their ruling yesterday, the judges complained that it was not yet “well understood” that British society was largely secular and that the law has no place for Christianity.

“Although historically this country is part of the Christian West, and although it has an established church which is Christian, there have been enormous changes in the social and religious life of our country over the last century,” they said.

It was a “paradox” that society has become simultaneously both increasingly secular and increasingly diverse in religious affiliation, they said.

“We sit as secular judges serving a multicultural community of many faiths. We are sworn (we quote the judicial oath) to ‘do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill will’.”

The judges acknowledged that there was a “tension” in the case of Mr and Mrs Johns between the rights of individuals to maintain their religious beliefs and the rights of homosexual people to live free from discrimination.

However, when fostering regulations were taken into account, “the equality provisions concerning sexual orientation should take precedence” over religious rights, they said.

The world becomes a more evil place when Christians are forced to retreat into the shadows by the fascist state. I wonder if the two defendants voted for the Labor government that brought in these anti-Christian changes? I hope that they did not vote for the Labor Party, because it is a fearful thing to be your own executioner.

Related posts

News

Why are Egyptians wealthier in America than they are in Egypt?

2 Comments
Walter Williams
Walter Williams

This is from Walter Williams, my second most favorite economist after Thomas Sowell.

Excerpt:

Why is it that Egyptians do well in the U.S. but not Egypt? We could make that same observation and pose that same question about Nigerians, Cambodians, Jamaicans and others of the underdeveloped world who migrate to the U.S. Until recently, we could make the same observation about Indians in India, and the Chinese citizens of the People’s Republic of China, but not Chinese citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan.

[…]Much of Egypt’s economic problems are directly related to government interference and control that have resulted in weak institutions vital to prosperity. Hernando De Soto, president of Peru’s Institute for Liberty and Democracy (www.ild.org.pe), laid out much of Egypt’s problem in his Wall Street Journal article (Feb. 3, 2011), “Egypt’s Economic Apartheid.” More than 90 percent of Egyptians hold their property without legal title.

De Soto says, “Without clear legal title to their assets and real estate, in short, these entrepreneurs own what I have called ‘dead capital’ — property that cannot be leveraged as collateral for loans, to obtain investment capital, or as security for long-term contractual deals. And so the majority of these Egyptian enterprises remain small and relatively poor.”

Egypt’s legal private sector employs 6.8 million people and the public sector 5.9 million. More than 9 million people work in the extralegal sector, making Egypt’s underground economy the nation’s biggest employer.

Why are so many Egyptians in the underground economy? De Soto, who’s done extensive study of hampered entrepreneurship, gives a typical example: “To open a small bakery, our investigators found, would take more than 500 days. To get legal title to a vacant piece of land would take more than 10 years of dealing with red tape. To do business in Egypt, an aspiring poor entrepreneur would have to deal with 56 government agencies and repetitive government inspections.”

Poverty in Egypt, or anywhere else, is not very difficult to explain. There are three basic causes: People are poor because they cannot produce anything highly valued by others. They can produce things highly valued by others but are hampered or prevented from doing so. Or, they volunteer to be poor.

Some people use the excuse of colonialism to explain Third World poverty, but that’s nonsense. Some the world’s richest countries are former colonies: United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Some of the world’s poorest countries were never colonies, at least for not long, such as Ethiopia, Liberia, Tibet and Nepal. Pointing to the U.S., some say that it’s bountiful natural resources that explain wealth. Again nonsense. The two natural resources richest continents, Africa and South America, are home to the world’s most miserably poor. Hong Kong, Great Britain and Japan, poor in natural resources, are among the world’s richest nations.

What is necessary for wealth is a capitalist economy, that emphasizes the rule of law, private property, judicial restraint, limited government, etc. Egypt has none of those, and that’s why Egypt is poor. India and Chile used to be like Egypt, but then they revamped their societies to be more like America. Now India and Chile are more prosperous. Economics is not rocket science.

Capitalism creates wealth, and raises the standard of living of the poor and the wealthy. It doesn’t matter what rung of the social ladder someone is on – as long as they can keep what they earn, instead of having it redistributed by socialists, then they will work hard to create something of value to share with others. Poverty is caused by economic ignorance.

More Walter Williams stuff here, and more Thomas Sowell stuff here. These are the clearest-thinking economists operating today.