Mike Adams - Ratio Christi

In one week, it starts all over again. Thousands of young people will enroll in classes in the sixteen-campus University of North Carolina system. Before the first day of class is over, the professors and administrators will begin the assault on students and their Judeo-Christian values. Parents will have spent their entire lives saving money that will ultimately be used to turn their children against them. Students will unlearn everything they were taught about the foundations of liberty, the basis of morality, and will even begin questioning the very existence of truth. Before long, many parents will realize they have risked bankruptcy funding a legacy of intellectual and moral impoverishment.

I realized the situation was bad when a military officer wrote me a few years ago. While he was off serving his country, his twin teenaged girls were enrolling at Rice University. During “O” week, Rice orientation week, their orientation leader told them it was time to “experiment with their sexual liberty” now that they were off at college and away from their parents. The military officer was outraged over the incident – as he should have been. More parents would be outraged if only they were paying attention.

Later that same semester, I sat through an excruciating graduation speech by a feminist sociologist. She smugly told the parents of graduating seniors that she hoped their children were leaving college with a “different perspective” than the one they brought with them. She said nothing about knowledge during her speech. She spoke only of “perspective” – smugly asserting that hers was better than the one held by the parents who were paying her salary.

If I sound a little edgy when I broach this topic there is good reason for that. I abandoned my faith as an 18 year old college freshman – a mere two months into my first semester of college. It is true that I carried some anger into my freshman year, which fueled that abandonment. But it is also true that I took my first psychology class from an atheist professor who used the classroom to evangelize students.

There may have been a legitimate reason for my psychology professor’s decision to discuss Sigmund Freud’s theory of how man created God, not vice versa. But when he talked about how B.F. Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning “explained away” religion it bordered on obsession. The psychology professor who feels compelled to rid students of their faith is no less perverted than the orientation leader who feels compelled to rid students of their chastity.

eventually made my way back. And reading apologetics played a huge role in my spiritual transformation. For years after that transformation, I wondered why there was no national organization dedicated to bringing resident apologists to campuses in order to establish Christian apologetics groups that would challenge campus atheists.

Then it finally happened. After hearing a speech I gave at Summit Ministries (www.Summit.org) in Colorado, Professor Lonnie Welch of Ohio University invited me to speak at the national conference of Ratio Christi (www.RatioChristi.org) in October of 2011. I did not even know that my friends John Stonestreet of Summit Ministries and ADF attorney Casey Mattox were on the Ratio Christi board.

Speaking at that conference was one of the greatest thrills of my year. During my speech, my friend Frank Turek came in with none other than Josh McDowell. William Dembski and Greg Koukl showed up later for our conference dinner. It was an evening to remember.

While I was there to speak, I was also there to learn. And what I learned was that Ratio Christi is the ideal campus Christian organization. There may be scores of Christian organizations already. But none prior to Ratio Christi were focusing on apologetics training. Such training is desperately needed to keep kids from falling away during college. How can students remain firm in their faith if they are not hearing both sides of the story? And how can they remain grounded if they were never grounded in the first place?

Ratio Christi is dedicated to doing the work that other Christian groups are ignoring. It is also laying the intellectual framework that the church has failed to provide for the last half-century. So it was easy to say “yes” when attorney Aaron Marshall asked me to be the faculty sponsor of the new UNCW Ratio Christi chapter. Aaron will be leaving his law practice in Charlotte and moving to Wilmington to become our new chapter advisor.

In addition to being a chapter sponsor, I am also a financial supporter for Ratio Christi. Throughout the year, I will be sending them 10% of the gross profits from every column I write and every speech I give. If you want to join me, send your donations to:

Ratio Christi

5531 Gardner Drive

Erie, PA 16509

(Aaron Marshall’s account number is 43001 if you want to direct a donation to him).

There is other good news on the anti-indoctrination front. At the end of the school year, Regnery will publish my next book, which is tentatively titled Letters to a Lost Progressive. The book is a collection of 33 letters written by me to a student who lost his way in college. Like our new Ratio Christi chapter, the book is meant to keep young people from following false ideas presented by false teachers. It assumes that ideas have consequences that should not be taken lightly.

I’ll have more to say about the book as the publication date arrives. In the meantime, take a good look at the Ratio Christi website (www.RatioChristi.org). They might make a believer of you. Or make it difficult to make a non-believer out of someone you love.

Mike Adams

Mike Adams

Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus.

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Michael Brown - “Violence And Destruction Are Heard Within Her”

As America reels from yet another devastating tragedy, the message of the ancient Hebrew prophets speaks to us afresh: A nation that is filled with violence is a nation on the verge of collapse. Consider where we stand today.

While grieving families in Aurora, CO come to grips with their agonizing losses, it is sobering to realize that the movie theater massacre was actually the sixth multiple-victim shooting in America so far in July, with a total of 24 killed and almost 100 wounded (again, this represents multiple-victim shootings only).

As we look back over the last five years, the roll-call of horror and pain is overwhelming, especially when we remember that each of these “statistics” represents a precious, irreplaceable, human life (and note that I’m not listing the large number of people who were wounded):

• Jan. 8, 2011, Tuscon, AZ: 6 dead (at a political rally)
• Nov. 5, 2009, Ft. Hood, TX: 13 dead (at an army base)
• Apr. 3, 2009, Binghamton, NY: 13 dead (at an immigration center)
• Mar. 30, 2009, Carthage, NC: 8 dead (at a nursing home)
• Mar. 29, 2009, Santa Clara, CA: 6 dead (family members)
• Mar. 10, 2009, Samson, AL: 10 dead (including the killer’s mother and grandparents)
• Dec. 24, 2008, Covina, CA: 9 dead (at a family Christmas party)
• Sept. 2, 2008: Alger, WA: 6 dead (at several locations)
• Feb. 14, 2008: Dekalb, IL: 6 dead (at a college campus)
• Feb. 2, 2008: Chicago, IL: 5 dead (at a store)
• Dec. 24, 2007: Carnation, WA: 6 dead (family members)
• April 16, 2007, Blacksburg, VA: 33 dead (at a college campus)

And can we ever forget April 20, 1999, the Columbine High School massacre, where the teenage murderers were reported to be laughing as they mowed down their fellow-students and teachers at close range and in cold blood?

Added to this – and perhaps related to this – is the ever intensifying culture of violence in TV and movies and video games, with a whole generation becoming increasingly desensitized to blood and gore. According to a report posted by the University of Michigan Health System,

• An average American child will see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on TV by age 18.
• Two-thirds of all programming contains violence.
• Most violent acts go unpunished on TV and are often accompanied by humor. The consequences of human suffering and loss are rarely depicted.
• Many shows glamorize violence. TV often promotes violent acts as a fun and effective way to get what you want, without consequences.
• Children imitate the violence they see on TV. Children under age eight cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy, making them more vulnerable to learning from and adopting as reality the violence they see on TV.
• Repeated exposure to TV violence makes children less sensitive toward its effects on victims and the human suffering it causes.

When the Academy Award winning movie West Side Story came out in 1961, I remember hearing my family talk about the fact that it was violent. (I was 6 at the time.) Yes, West Side Story, where the gangs wore ties and danced to choreographed songs in the streets, and where the shootings and stabbings were basically bloodless, was considered violent. Just 6 years later, in 1967, Bonnie and Clyde was the big hit, and the blood was certainly flowing by then. And Bonnie and Clyde certainly looks tame compared to Natural Born Killers, which also looks tame compared to the latest spate of mutilation and torture flicks, all for our entertainment pleasure.

And let’s not forget today’s video games, where the gratuitous, explicit, intense, and utterly sick violence is at the control of the person (probably kid!) pulling the joystick trigger (in fact, as you play the game, you are that person). As a columnist noted, one well-known video game included “using cat carcasses as silencers on your gun, hitting people with anthrax-laden cow heads and playing ‘fetch’ with dogs using the severed heads of your dismembered victims.” And there is a massive market for these types of “games.”

The book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, states that one of the reasons God destroyed the world in Noah’s day was because the earth was “full of violence” (Gen 6:11, 13; even if you don’t believe in Noah’s flood, the moral lesson remains the same). What, then, can be said of a nation like America, a nation so filled with violence, not to mention entertained by violence? And I have not said a word about the violence done to babies in the womb, the ultimate example of innocent bloodshed.

Shortly before Jerusalem’s fall 2,700 years ago, the prophet Jeremiah heard the Lord say these words, which could easily apply to our country today: “Violence and destruction are heard in her; her sickness and wounds are ever before me” (Jer 6:7). Yes, America, a nation with so much potential and such a rich history, finds itself in the spiraling death grip of violence. How do we turn the tide?

Talk of gun control or media censorship is hardly the solution. The fact is that we have lost the consciousness of God and the fear of God, and without a heartfelt, genuine turning to the Lord, our future looks more bloody than blessed. The hour is as late as it is urgent.

Dr. Michael Brown

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and is the author of 20 books. He has served as a professor at a number of seminaries and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.

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Michael Brown - Young Americans, Faithless and Fatherless

According to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, almost one in three Americans under the age of 30 doubt that God exists, while, in contrast, the figure for Americans over the age of 65 is less than one in ten. Could there be a connection between the fatherlessness of this younger generation and their struggles with faith? According to a theory called “the psychology of atheism,” the answer might well be yes.

But first, some caveats.

There are many reasons why people struggle with the issue of faith, so it would be wrong to think that “one size fits all.”

The highest percentage of fatherlessness is found in the African American community, and yet African Americans tend to be more religiously oriented than other population sectors.

It cannot be denied that a large portion of contemporary American Christianity is often superficial, hypocritical, and powerless (in terms of radical life transformation), and these serious defects certainly account for some of the faith struggles experienced by American young people. That being said, it is important to probe the connection between fatherlessness and faithlessness.

In 1999, New York University professor Paul C. Vitz, a former atheist himself, wrote a book entitled Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism. In it, he argued that the absence of a father or the presence of a defective father (say, a weak, cowardly father or an abusive father) often played a major role in the development of the atheism of the child (or grownup). A similar argument was made by journalist John P. Koster, Jr., in his 1989 book The Atheist Syndrome.

To be clear, these authors are not denying that atheists claim to have strong, rational reasons for their atheism. Instead, Vitz and Koster argue that what lies at the root of atheism is often the lack of a solid father figure, thereby allowing unbelief to become dominant later in life (or even in childhood).

According to Vitz, “an atheist’s disappointment in and resentment of his own father unconsciously justifies his rejection of God,” a theory Vitz developed while reading the biographies of well-known atheists. He calls it the “defective father” hypothesis.

Under the category of “Dead Fathers,” Vitz lists famous atheists like Nietzsche, Hume, Russell, Sartre, and Camus; under “Abusive and Weak Fathers” he lists Hobbes, Voltaire, Freud, and Wells, among others. He then compares their stories with the stories of theists like Pascal, Wilberforce, Kierkegaard, Chesterton, Buber, Barth, Bonhoeffer, and others, before reviewing apparent exceptions to his theory.

Speaking of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Vitz notes that her son, William, “claims that he did not know why his mother hated her father so much – but hate him she did. In the opening chapter of the book, he reports a very ugly fight in which O’Hair attempted to kill her father with a ten-inch butcher knife. She failed but screamed, ‘I’ll see you dead. I’ll get you yet. I’ll walk on your grave.’” Does this remind you of her desire to eliminate God from American life?

Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “I have absolutely no knowledge of atheism as an outcome of reasoning, still less an event; with me it is obvious by instinct.” As a young boy, Nietzsche was very close to his father, who was a pastor, but he died shortly before Nietzsche’s fifth birthday, having suffered the previous year from a brain disease.

In his early teens, Nietzsche wrote about the agony he experienced when his father died, noting that, “In everything God has led me safely as a father leads his weak child. . . . Like a child I trust in his grace.” So, for the teenage Nietzsche, God was just like a loving father. Unfortunately, Nietzsche also remembered his father as weak and sickly, and it was this image, Vitz claims, that Nietzsche “also associated, naturally enough, with his father’s Christianity. . . . It is therefore not hard to view Nietzsche’s rejection of God and Christianity as a rejection of the weakness of his father,” a father who abandoned him by death when he was but a little boy.

As for H. G. Wells, he was raised by an irresponsible and often absentee father (named Joe) and by a mother whose faith collapsed when her 9-year-old daughter died suddenly from appendicitis two years before Wells was born. Vitz notes, “Whether it was Joe the father or God the Father who gave no answer seems to make no difference to Wells, because for him both were equally absent.”

Describing his mother’s faith struggle in his autobiography, Wells wrote, “My father was away at cricket, and I think she realized more and more acutely as the years dragged on without material alleviation, that Our Father and Our Lord . . . were also away, playing perhaps at their own sort of cricket in some remote quarter of the starry universe.”

Returning to our day, the U. S. Census Bureau reports that as of 2011, one third of American children are growing up without their biological father, and over the last 50 years, the number of babies born to unwed mothers has jumped from 5 percent to 40 percent.

Could it be, then, that there really is a connection between the lack of fathers and the lack of faith among young Americans?

Dr. Michael Brown

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and is the author of 20 books. He has served as a professor at a number of seminaries and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.

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Michael Brown - The Not-So-Massive Non-Believers Rally in DC

The event was expected to be the “largest gathering of the secular movement in world history,” a “massive rally” that could provide “a sort of ‘Woodstock for Atheists,’ a chance for atheists to show their power in numbers and change their image.” But when pre-rally hype gave way to reality this past Saturday (3/24/2012) on the Mall in DC, the results were hardly earth-shattering, let alone movement-making and message-sending (especially to politicians, part of the targeted audience of the so-called “Reason Rally”).

The crowd that turned out for this drizzly Saturday was estimated at between 8,000-20,000 (I have seen atheist reports, however, that put the number at 30,000), which is actually less than some American mega-churches draw every week in their Sunday services.

There were blatantly sexist speakers at the rally, like Bill Maher and Penn Jillette, but their presence was justified by atheist bloggers like Hemant Mehta, who explained that, yes, these men “have their faults, but they amplify our way of thinking more than just about anyone else.” Therefore, Mehta explained, it is still worth having them speak because “we need big-name celebrities to attend. . . . This isn’t just about spreading science and atheism. This is about drawing attention to our movement. This is about getting media attention.”

If that was the goal, the event certainly fell short of its mark, as the Reason Rally Facebook page complained about the lack of media coverage while the Drudge Report didn’t even mention the rally in its weekend news coverage, finding items like this more newsworthy: “Hippies head for Noah’s Ark: Queue here for rescue aboard alien spaceship. Thousands of New Agers descend on mountain [in France] they see as haven from December's apocalypse.” (It looks like the hippies are living out their legacy while the atheists are still waiting for their “Woodstock” moment.)

Prof. Richard Dawkins was one of the keynote speakers, calling on the faithless not only to reject religious beliefs but also to “ridicule and show contempt” for religious doctrines and sacraments, including the Eucharist (Holy Communion). (In keeping with this, he once referred to Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a “submissive cosmic doormat.”) Yes, such are the enlightened sentiments of one of the self-styled “brights” – a self-defeating designation if ever there was one – and we can only imagine how beautiful the world would be if the Dawkins’ mentality ruled the day. (Sarcasm intended.)

And while it is true that “the brights” are still trying to figure out the origin of life, physicist Stephen Hawking has now explained how the universe began without God, stating in his book “The Grand Design,” “Because there is a law of gravity, the universe can and will create itself out of nothing.” Yes, nothing (which is really something) created everything! How did we miss that for so long?

As pointed out by Oxford mathematician and scientist Dr. John Lennox (unfortunately, not one of “the brights”), “The main issue . . . is that gravity or a law of gravity is not ‘nothing’, if [Hawking] is using that word in its usual philosophically correct sense of ‘non-being’. . . . If, therefore, we say ‘X creates X’, we imply that we are presupposing the existence of X in order to account for the existence of X. This is obviously self-contradictory and thus logically incoherent – even if we put X equal to the universe! To presuppose the existence of the universe to account for its own existence sounds like something out of Alice in Wonderland, not science.” (From his book “God and Stephen Hawking.”)

But I digress from the main topic at hand, namely the “Reason Rally.” Perhaps the most illustrative part of the day was the talk given by 16 year-old atheist Jennifer Alquist, who successfully fought to have a prayer banner removed from her Rhode Island High School. Hailed as a hero at the rally, she wanted everyone to know that if she could bring about change, anyone could.

And what, exactly, was so offensive about the prayer banner? It contained these words, written with the encouragement of school leadership almost 20 years ago:

Our Heavenly Father.

Grant us each day the desire to do our best.

To grow mentally and morally as well as physically.

To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers.

To be honest with ourselves as well as with others.

Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win.

Teach us the value of true friendship.

Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.

Amen.

If only those values were inculcated in our schools across America! What a dream that would be. But for the atheists, if those values are associated with God on a banner, then they and God must go.

Atheist David Silverman, one of the event organizers, stated before the gathering that, “We'll look back at the Reason Rally as one of the game-changing events when people started to look at atheism and look at atheists in a different light.”

I believe he was right. From here on, we’ll probably look at them with more pity.
Dr. Michael Brown

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and is the author of 20 books. He has served as a professor at a number of seminaries and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.

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Mary Grabar - Teaching George Washington When Professors Aim to 'Stop Santorum'

In an age and time when I find most of my college students unfamiliar with the story of Adam and Eve or the origin of the phrase, “judge not lest ye be judged,” I enter discussions about religion with some caution. Almost universally my students do not believe that religious belief is necessary for morality, and seem to be offended by the very concept.

But when one discusses the speeches of our earlier presidents, as I do in my composition classes, it is necessary to address religion’s role.

So last week, as we discussed George Washington’s Farewell Address, I asked students to recall the major points he made. Because several of them had already studied the speech in high school, they listed points most emphasized by teachers: his cautions about foreign entanglements, factional discord, and debt. Not many recalled his injunction to use the Constitution as a safeguard against “internal enemies.” Only one recalled his reminder about the importance of religion.

Although it does not take up much of the speech, it is an important passage, and one worth recalling in today’s age when libertarian ideals seem to motivate most college students and when many conservative pundits caution us about focusing on social issues.

But Washington reminds us, as do the other Founding Fathers, of why the Constitution is necessary in the first place.

The Constitution is structured according to a vision of mankind as inherently flawed, as marked by Original Sin. This view of human nature is what sets apart those who established the longest-lasting Constitution from the utopian idealists who see human nature as essentially good. Those human beings who are flawed by selfishness or irrationality (as they see it) can be shaped by the right social and political forces—and woe to the man who resists the efforts by the utopian theorists to make him good! We have seen that in the death tolls of such schemes.

But in Washington’s view, because character alone cannot be trusted, a division of powers helps provide checks against branches of government and of individuals. Washington echoes James Madison.

Yet, even with such multiple safeguards and a contract that stands beyond the immediate interests of parties, Washington still reminds us of the importance of religion. He calls “religion and morality” the “indispensable supports” of the “dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity.” In fact, he implies that patriotism is impossible without “these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.” It’s a sentence I emphasize. I ask students if they agree. Of course not, they almost unanimously say. One does not need to be religious to be patriotic. One does not need to believe in God to be moral.

Washington continues: “The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.”

Notice that Washington calls on the “mere politician” to respect religion and morality. Washington then claims, “A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.” (It’s no wonder that moderns who ascribe to the notion that religion is a private affair that should be divorced from political life would rather forget George Washington or wipe him from the history books.)

Furthermore, Washington maintains that morality emerges from religion, as he asks a rhetorical question: “Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?” This leads to my question of why we ask those who testify in court to place their hands on the Bible. This inspires more looks of consternation among students who have been educated in the idea that any kind of insistence on religious faith is an expression of “intolerance.”

Washington finally ends that paragraph by stating point blank, “And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

That is about as unequivocal a statement as one can get.

Earlier in the speech, Washington had cautioned about regional animosities. Reminding them of the common “religion, manners, habits, and political principles” they shared, Washington encouraged citizens to adopt the identity “American”.

This is where students are apt to point out the changes that have taken place in over 200 years. The United States is no longer as homogenous as it was back then, when the vast majority of Americans belonged to various denominations of Protestantism. Students echo the standard line about “diversity” that infuses our educational establishment. They parrot the notion that it is an expression of “intolerance” to state that our nation is based upon a common moral and religious foundation of Judeo-Christian principles.

Yet, in spite of their constant exposure to “diversity” and a “globalism,” students have almost no ability to place our form of government and society into a global context. I remind students of the historical fact that Christianity introduced the notion that all people are equal in the eyes of the Creator. I ask students about our most basic laws. Why are parents who abuse or kill their children prosecuted? After all, in Greek and Roman culture, the father had the prerogative of allowing his infant child to die of exposure. Why do we take care of our elderly, even beyond the point of their “usefulness” to us? After all, Eskimos and other primitive societies, simply abandoned the weak and elderly, sending them off on ice floes. Apparently, students today don’t hear about such practices, while they are constantly bombarded about the “social injustice” of our economic system.

So, why, I ask, do our laws follow this Judeo-Christian injunction against killing? Other primitive societies, and now professors of ethics, like Peter Singer at Princeton, do not see anything unethical about killing handicapped infants.

When looks of horror register on the faces of students when I tell them about Singer’s proposal to allow parents to kill handicapped children, I tell them that their recoil at the thought of killing babies indicates the fact that even if they are not practicing Christians or Jews they have imbibed the values of a Judeo-Christian culture that values life. Those like Singer, quite significantly, begin by rejecting the Bible, which provides the premise that life is sacred.

The professor who works in a non-tenured position, as I do, broaches such topics with trepidation, lest any student (often called the “customer”) complain to the administration.

But I was pleasantly surprised when several students told me how much they had enjoyed and appreciated the discussion about religion in Washington’s speech. One, who is a Hindu, stayed after class, to tell me this.

Yet, if and when they follow today’s political debates in the news, students are likely to hear attacks upon Republican candidates’ religiosity and lack of respect for the “separation of church and state.” This is especially true about Rick Santorum who has been most outspoken about the importance of religion in public life.

In the classroom students are likely to hear views like those of Georgetown University Professor Jacques Berlinerblau, who charges Republicans with “secular-baiting” in his blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education. He claims Newt Gingrich pioneered the genre and Mitt Romney took it a “milestone” in its “evolution.” It is Santorum, however, whom he charges with demonizing Secularism, by reminding audiences of the atheistic nature of the “’French Revolution, moving onto the facists, and the Nazis and the communists and the Baathists.’”

Instead of considering the historical veracity of Santorum’s statement, Berlinerblau attributes nefarious and crazy motives to Santorum: “It is easy, lucrative, and even pleasurable, to pulverize sinister Secularism. It rallies the base, secures contributions, and helps conservative voters focus on demonic (i.e., liberal, Democratic) forces possessing our political system.” Running with his theory, Berlinerblau assigns an all-or-nothing faith in “divine revelation,” as if Santorum imagines he has a direct line to God. Berlinerblau then posits that religionists like Santorum might hear different things from God and thus have no basis upon which to decide policies. Such “anti-secular rhetoric,” he maintains, is “at its core . . . a demagogic evasion” (italics retained).

After he has whipped himself up to making Santorum a dictatorial theocrat, Berlinerblau concludes ominously, “Santorum and others will keep baiting secularism, and evading difficult issues, until someone stops them.”

In class, it will be worth reminding students about how the French Revolutionists and the Soviet Communists did first kill all the priests and nuns. It will be worth reminding students of the freedom voters have in drawing upon religious principles when they exercise their right to vote—in spite of many professors’ desire to simply “stop” people of religious faith, like Rick Santorum.

Mary Grabar

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Mary Grabar is a writer and college English teacher, whose parents escaped from Slovenia in 1959 and spent a year in a refugee camp in Austria. They immigrated to Rochester, New York, when she was two.

Her views have been formed by experiences as an immigrant during the racial violence in Rochester in the 1960s and then at her alma mater, Benjamin Franklin Junior-Senior High School.

She tried to be a liberal, but then quickly realized that it was an exclusive club. Her conversion to conservatism was cinched when she returned to school in the master's program in English in the 1990's.

In spite of the hostility of most of the faculty and the torture of having to wade through postmodern nonsense, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2002.

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Mary Grabar is a frequent Columnist at Town Hall.com and writes articles for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Newspaper.

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Visit Mary's Website and her other Website: The Literate Citizen

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Austin Hill - Do Social Conservatives Care About Capitalism

The Republican primary races are underway, and pundits are abuzz about whether or not religious social conservatives will embrace Mitt Romney.

That’s an interesting and worthwhile question. But here’s another interesting question: do religious social conservatives care about the free market economy, and capitalism?

I’ve pondered this question over the years, in previous columns and in various talk radio venues. When I do, I usually get very angry, visceral answers – responses like “of course we do,” and “how do you dare even ask?”

Despite the anger and discomfort, this is an important question to be asking. Religious social conservatives are large in number and can influence the outcomes of elections. And as our nation is currently at an economic crossroads, it remains to be seen what our country and our country’s economic system will be like in the future.

But before we think about capitalism, ponder this for a moment: who are “religious social conservatives,” anyway? According to research from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 70 Percent of American adults identify with some form of evangelical Protestant Christianity, mainline denominational Protestant Christianity, Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, or Mormonism.

Obviously, adherents to these various faith traditions do not all think alike on issues of culture and public policy. However many members of these religious groups share common, strongly-held beliefs and values, so it is not surprising that over the past several decades they have often exhibited similar responses to public policy concerns amid America’s changing cultural landscape.

This is to say that not every individual who practices one of these religious traditions necessarily qualifies as a religious social conservative. However, the religious social conservative movement is comprised of members all of these various faith communities, while the movement is most certainly dominated by Evangelical Protestant Christians.

The earliest beginnings of this movement can be traced back to the social upheaval of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s youth culture, and the 1973 Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision. After decades of non-participation in elections and public policy debates, many devoutly religious Americans became alarmed by a “hippie” generation that was determined to overthrow our culture’s authority structures, and by their government arbitrarily determining that unborn children were not really human beings.

Thus, “social conservatism” emerged as a movement that was focused on the most basic of all social structures – the traditional family. Over the past several decades, concerns about the life of the unborn child, the rights of parents, and the definition of marriage have all taken center-stage among social conservatives, while each of these concerns have been openly regarded as “moral issues” that are worthy of religious peoples’ attention.

While the long-standing concerns of social conservatives remain in-play today, the United States now finds itself at another turning point. Will our country continue as the “most free” among the world’s free market economies? Or will the U.S. devolve in to more of a European-styled, socialistic economy, where private individuals and businesses make fewer decisions with their own economic resources, and politicians and government bureaucrats make more of those decisions?

Given our nation’s economic crossroads, and given that social conservatives are so influential among the American electorate, the religious social conservative movement needs to look within itself and answer this question: should economics be regarded as one of the “moral issues” that is worthy of our attention? And if it is, then which economic system do social conservatives prefer – our free market capitalistic system, or a more socialistic, government-controlled system?

Economic systems and policies are, after all, an expression of how a society regards both its weakest and most powerful members and everybody else in between. Likewise, economic policies often play a key role in determining who “wins” and who “loses” in a society, and they can either encourage or discourage positive, productive behavior.

Social conservatives can begin addressing economic issues by first confronting a very common assumption that is widely held as true – the assumption that capitalism is an economic system built on greed and selfishness, while socialism is a system based on generosity and “fairness.”

Despite its prevalence, this is a false assumption. When properly understood and implemented, capitalism is an economic system that allows every willing participant the opportunity to gain entry into the marketplace; demands that every participant abide by a uniform set of rules; rewards people according to a system of merit; and allows private individuals and organizations the freedom both to succeed, and to fail. Special governmental favors – bailouts and so forth – are an anathema to a capitalistic economic system.

Socialism, however, places in the hands of politicians and governmental bureaucrats the power to take away increasing amounts of wealth from certain individuals (generally the more wealthy in a society), and re-distribute that wealth to people that are believed to be “deserving” of it. In such an economic system, personal responsibility, a system of merit, and one’s freedom to succeed and to fail, are all undermined.

Economics is absolutely a “moral issue,” and our nation’s economic dilemmas are numerous and profound. Will the influential social conservative movement have a voice in setting the course for our nation’s economic future?

Austin Hill

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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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Jeannie DeAngelis - Bill Maher: Non-Apathetic Apatheist

Originally posted at Big Government

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The relentless way Bill Maher derides the intelligence of anyone who believes in God is proof positive that Mr. Bill is convinced he’s a genius. Although most liberals exhibit a similar “the dummies need us to think for them” propensity, when it comes to matters of religious faith, Maher elevates the affliction to a whole new level.

And while it’s pure speculation on my part, based on his juvenile behavior, it appears as if Maher is a disgruntled Catholic trying desperately to convince himself God doesn’t exist; so regardless of how bright he perceives himself to be, Maher lacks the insight to realize that he’s revealing something he’d probably prefer the rest of America not to notice

For someone as mentally deficient as Maher believes I am, even as far back as the first grade I recognized that there was no direct correlation between parochial school and the personhood of God. Yet for all Maher’s clever innuendo and sarcastic banter, it must go deeper than that, because this man apparently isn’t astute enough to separate Catholicism from God.

Maher was raised by an Irish Catholic father and a mother (Julie, nee Berman) that he was unaware was Jewish until he was a teenager (which right there reeks of family dysfunction). Seems somewhere around the age of 13, when hormone-infused Bill, had he been raised a Jew, might have been practicing his Hebrew to prepare for an upcoming Bar Mitzvah, Maher’s Catholic dad realized birth control was a good idea after all.

Based on Maher’s animosity toward all religion and toward Christianity in particular, one would guess Dad’s gripe with Rome might have impacted his son.

Since then, William Jr., whose parental religious roots are firmly implanted in a Judeo-Christian heritage, has made it a career to get back at God. Try as he might to prove otherwise, Maher’s contempt for Christianity could very well be rooted in his father’s reaction to the Roman Catholic Church’s undying commitment to the rhythm method.

Since the day Maher’s Dad decided pull out of the Catholic Church, any aspirations young Maher had of one day being an altar boy were left lying like a crumpled cassock on the parish Sacristy floor.

Instead, Willy and Julie’s son changed course and chose to fashion what started as a family disagreement over church doctrine into a successful career portraying believers in God as neanderthal nut jobs with nary a brain cell nor a lick of sense.

From age 13 on, English major and 2009 Richard Dawkins Atheist Alliance International award recipient Maher has spent loads of time demeaning what he and an English Lit degree have identified as the Church’s unscientific teachings on homosexuality, abortion and birth control.

Over the years the comedian has transformed into a liberal/apatheist icon who lacks apathy only when it comes to pocketing millions of dollars earned mocking a God he relegates to the same category as unicorns, the tooth fairy, and JLo’s long-lost plan to cook dinner for only one man.

Apatheism is defined as a “disinclination to care all that much about one’s own religion, and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people’s.” Which means Maher is a pretty lame apatheist, because all he does is focus on religion.

What Maher fails to recognize is that his acerbic comments directed toward God make him look like the proverbial spurned middle-school kid with a crush on the head cheerleader. Who knows, maybe besides the birth control brouhaha, somewhere along the line an overbearing nun denied the future comedian a bathroom pass and he never recovered.

What we do know is that Maher behaves like a confused, madly-in-unrequited-love teenager who spends all his energy defacing God’s locker and calling God and His people floozies as payback for some imagined hurt.

Now, almost 50 years later, one would think that for someone who spends his life pointing out the hypocrisy of organized religion and who believes that when it comes to God, “doubt is the only appropriate response for human beings,” Maher would recognize that, in a roundabout way, making a living off something you don’t believe in is similar to attending Mass while practicing off-beat forms of birth control.

So, with that in mind, when Maher mocks Christians, saying “Who needs government when you have Jesus,” or when he produces and stars in a irreverent movie like “Religulous,” his contempt and derision expose a man who, although he sees himself as brilliant, isn’t quite smart enough to recognize the hypocrisy, not to mention the irony, of making a career out of preaching that one person shouldn’t push their religious beliefs on anybody else.

Jeannie DeAngelis

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Jeannie DeAngelis writes almost exclusively for American Thinker and has been published on the conservative website Pajamas Media, as well as hosting a blog. See Jeannie's Blog

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Jeannie DeAngelis - Barack Obama Doing the Lord’s Work?

Originally posted at American Thinker blog (addendum to Rick Moran post: ‘Obama says God wants House to pass his jobs bill’)

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The President does many things that incite ire in a large percentage of the American population. But the most repulsive thing a left-wing liberal ideologue like Barack Obama can do is quote Scripture, take fake photo-op strolls to church, and use a feigned relationship with God to influence those he thinks are easily manipulated.

Here’s the thing — before the President decides to refer to God when promoting unpopular policy, someone should tell the nouveau Bible scholar that on occasion even Satan quoted Scripture.

With that in mind, the President should probably refrain from dragging God to the podium and using personal conversations with the Lord as a billy club to beat into submission the congressional opposition to Stimulus II, better known as a 10-year, $400 billion jobs bill.

Recently, on the D.C. side of the Key Bridge, Barack Obama called “attention to America’s crumbling infrastructure and the need to put more construction workers back on the job.”

The President, whose political philosophy indicates that, as a rule, he can ignore Judeo-Christian values, “criticized House Republicans for ignoring his legislation, while approving a measure that reaffirms ‘In God We Trust’ [remain] the national motto.”

With the bridge in the background, Barack Obama proceeded with promoting his legislation by informing the bill’s opponents that keeping ‘In God We Trust’ as the national motto, while commendable, does not put “people back to work.” Then, speaking on behalf of God, the sporadically devout Mr. Obama said “I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work.”

If Barack Obama thinks jobs are God’s priority and that Yahweh is on his side, he’s sadly mistaken. God is much less concerned with repairing bridges and blacktopping highways than He is with the dignity and sanctity of life, neither of which the pro-choice President defends.

History has proven that a personal relationship with God infuses leaders with Mosaic boldness to instruct nations what God would have us to do. The danger occurs when a man like Barack Obama comes down from the mountain and then joins those who hammer out and dance around the Golden Calf of government funding and unfettered access to partial-birth abortion.

Barack Obama maintains “God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work,” proving the man is confused. Because the Biblical tenet “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat,” is a principle America’s ‘share the wealth’ president faithfully rejects.

Truth is, rather than focusing on self, anyone who truly ‘knows’ God defends the defenseless; protects the innocent; and helps those who can’t help themselves.

Obama cannot vote against legislation that provides warmth, hydration and oxygen to infants born alive in botched abortions and then tell America what God, whose hand the Bible says placed and “knit us together in our mother’s womb,” wants us to do.

Before installing himself as an oracle for the Almighty, establishing the precedent that all life issues forth from God and that God alone should dictate when it ends is a priority that should trump finding a way to get people in reflective vests a place to stand at night on roads in disrepair.

Maybe the most pro-choice president in the history of United States should rethink the contradiction posed by claiming that God supports fixing pot holes and replacing expansion joints on bridges and roads that are traveled by women visiting abortion clinics funded with government monies.

Nonetheless, Obama’s God/jobs comment was so out of character, it cried out for further explanation.

At a press briefing, when asked to expound on whether the President was implying God stands in solidarity with him on job creation, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney attempted to explain that Obama was simply “trying to make the point that ‘we have it within our capacity to do the things to help the American people’” — most of whom, if not for Obama making it literally impossible to move forward, would be perfectly capable of helping themselves.

Carney arrogantly corrected those who questioned the connection between the jobs bill and the Deity, citing as Scripture a phrase that is nowhere to be found in the Bible, saying “I believe the phrase from the Bible is ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves.’”

No, Jay! Scripture does not say “God helps those who help themselves,” but it does convey the all-encompassing message that God expects His people to help those in the womb who, thanks to Jesus-and-Me job-creator Barack Obama, are destined for destruction and cannot help themselves.

Therefore, the President should be cautious when mentioning God to promote ‘shovel ready’ jobs while millions of unborn children are being aborted and shoveled into unmarked graves with full liberal approval. Before lackadaisically telling America what God ‘wants to see us’ do, maybe Barack Obama should reflect awhile on whether God ‘wants to see’ him legislatively assist in the murder of the unborn.

If the President of the United States seeks divine blessings on the national economy, rather than manipulating Congress to finance gassing up asphalt trucks with 400 billion dollars’ worth of diesel fuel, God would undoubtedly prefer that Obama spend his time “burdening the original decisions” of pro-choice women and doing the Lord’s work by putting an end to the tragedy of legalized abortion.

Jeannie DeAngelis

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Jeannie DeAngelis writes almost exclusively for American Thinker and has been published on the conservative website Pajamas Media, as well as hosting a blog. See Jeannie's Blog

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Austin Hill - A Sadly Secularized 9/11

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York may think himself high-minded and practical. But he has acquiesced to some of the most unfortunate and destructive forces in our country.

As I write this, nobody has any idea, really, how the ten year anniversary of “9-11” will transpire. Hopefully the day will come, and go, without any civil unrest or – God forbid – terrorism.

Hopefully Americans will remember, and reflect. No doubt millions of us will pray, both within houses of worship and privately within our own minds.

But this we do know: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made it clear that clergy have been forbidden from participating in the city’s official 9-11 commemorative ceremony. The city that was ten years ago and is still today regarded as the epicenter of a huge American tragedy, will commemorate the event with a purely secular, irreligious ceremony, devoid of any official representations of any particular religious traditions.

From a historical standpoint, a secularized commemoration would seem to miss some of the essence of what happened on September 11, 2001 and in the days and weeks that followed. It is, after all, a matter of record that many houses of worship provided safe harbor to displaced victims of the tragedy, and that clergy men and women rushed to provide counsel and sustenance.

Bloomberg’s ban also seems to ignore the reality that the first certified fatality in the 9-11 disaster was, in fact, a clergyman. After learning of the attacks, Father Mychal Judge, a Catholic Priest and beloved Chaplain to the Fire Department of New York rushed to the scene to meet then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

At Mayor Giuliani’s request, Father Mychal began praying aloud for the city and the victims. At the moment that he was struck in the head with debris and killed, eyewitnesses noted that Father Mychal had cried out repeatedly "Jesus, please end this right now! God, please end this!"

But that was ten years ago. Today there’s a new Mayor in town, and he has taken a decidedly different approach. And Mayor Bloomberg’s clergy ban is unfortunate, for at least a few different reasons.

For one, Bloomberg’s ban exemplifies a flawed conceptualization of “tolerance,” and “diversity.” While his motivations have not been made clear, presumably Mayor Bloomberg’s ban is intended to protect certain religious groups that might not participate in the ceremony, from being “infringed upon” by those other religious groups that might otherwise be represented by clergy at the event. It is a logic that says “for the sake of diversity of religious traditions, we won’t acknowledge any religious traditions at all.”

Faulty as this view is, it is nonetheless nearly impossible to get most Liberal Americans to think any differently. Not long ago Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was the Attorney General of Arizona and banned all “holiday decorations” – Christmas ornaments, menorah candles, and so forth – from her offices, for the very same “tolerant” reasons.

Bloomberg’s ban also strikes a blow at human freedom. Whereas in the American tradition one has a God-given right to speak their mind and to express themselves, and government’s role is to safeguard that right, in the contemporary Liberal mindset such freedoms are problems to be managed and mitigated by government. “America is a far more diverse and pluralistic country today than it was at the time the U.S. Constitution was written,” Liberals will remind us. “What was intended by the Founders of our country does not, and cannot apply today.”

In the end, Bloomberg’s ban is painfully intolerant and assumes the worst about his country and the city he serves. It says that Americans can’t handle their freedom appropriately, and must have less of it.

It may also say something painful about the Islamic world, and a level of intolerance there. Might Mayor Bloomberg have mandated his ban so as to appease those involved in some of his personal business ventures in the Middle East? If so, why would people in the Middle East object to American clergy praying publicly?

The ten year anniversary of 9-11 will hopefully be meaningful and peaceable. But the intolerance entailed in such flawed ideas of “diversity” will remain – and should be reversed.

Austin Hill

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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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