Texas Pledge Dispute

Governments have a nasty habit of diverting people's attention from real issues to side problems. For example, the Cato Institute reports that an atheist couple wants the word "God" out of the revised Texas state pledge, which is now being recited daily by students (civil religion, anyone?) in many Texas public schools.

If people truly wanted to reduce school conflicts, the solution isn't to enforce more government controls upon educational efforts. Rather, the government must exit education once for all.

Neal McCluskey has written an excellent policy analysis called "Why We Fight" explaining this position.

Throughout American history, public schooling
has produced political disputes, animosity, and
sometimes even bloodshed between diverse people.
Such clashes are inevitable in government-run
schooling because all Americans are required to
support the public schools, but only those with
the most political power control them. Political—
and sometimes even physical—conflict has thus
been an inescapable public schooling reality.







To end the fighting caused by state-run schooling,
we should transform our system from one in
which government establishes and controls
schools, to one in which individual parents are
empowered to select schools that share their moral
values and educational goals for their children.

Why You Need Hard Money

Chris Brunner makes some fantastic points regarding Ron Paul's monetary policy and why it is good for everyone. Here's the #1 reason...

1. The Fed would not be causing artificial booms, inevitably followed by a busts Ever wonder where economic bubbles come from? The bubbles of modern times like the Great Depression of the 1930's, Dot-com boom of the late 90's, or the boom that's coming to an end now in the real estate market occur when central banks expand the money supply and dump new money into various sectors of the economy, often in the form of cheap credit. Banks loan the new money to consumers and entrepreneurs, including those who aren't credit worthy. In turn, they spend it or invest it, which causes prices to rise. As people see prices rise, they are drawn to invest, causing prices to rise further. Meanwhile, the Fed continues to inject new money. We've seen this lately in the form of house flipping. Eventually, the market begins to correct itself, and whoever owns the inflated property when the correction begins to occur gets stuck holding the bag. People all over the country are finding themselves in Adjustable Rate Mortgages they cannot afford. Many times this results in a foreclosure, which in turn causes problems for the fractional-reserve banks, who then begin to face insolvency. Insolvency manifests itself in the form of bank runs, and if it gets bad enough, leads to economic collapse. There is much to be explained here, but for now suffice to say that inflation from the Fed creates booms that are inevitably followed by busts.

LewRockwell.com Blog: Top 8 Ways Hard Money Would Change Your Life

Global Warming

The Acton Institute is a Christian organization dedicated to promoting a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. In the following linked article, they weigh in on global warming yet again.

The Global Warming Debate: Yada, Yada, Yada - Acton Institute PowerBlog

The problem, argues Samuelson and others like him (include me in their number), is quite simple. What really causes global warming and what can we do about it? What troubles me deeply is the way many evangelicals, to cite just one segment of the Church, want us to buy into the global warming theories and solutions as a matter of faith and morals. Here are the facts that make this approach pious nonsense:

1. Almost everyone who is sane about this issue knows that we can only cut emissions incrementally and that China and India will more than offset the small gains we can make in the US and Europe. But the blame America cry heard in all of this smacks of politics more than of real science and pragmatic workable solutions.

2. No single theory is the accepted scientific model that has been approved, or universally accepted. We are working off of various theories and hunches and the debate needs much more light and less heat, no pun intended.

3. What we can do is more research and development. We need to do this and we need to resist avoidance of the serious aspects of this matter.

4. We can find better ways to dispose of waste material than into the environment. Some of these are both safer and more cost effective. Real solutions will be found by those grapple with both sides of this equation.

5. Samuelson gets it right when he concludes: “The overriding reality seems almost un-American: we simply don’t have a solution for this problem.” This is hard for us to admit. We are so convinced that we can solve anything and everything, especially if we created the problem in the first place (as is assumed in this debate).

This is why Samuelson suggests that we steadfastly refuse to address this issue as “a morality tale.” Amen! Someone please tell this to Richard Cizik of NAE, or to Jim Wallis of Sojourners, or to Tony Campolo the prophetic screamer, and to all the others who have made this into one of the biggest moral issues of the day for Christians. We can all do a lot better in addressing this complex and real concern if we keep this type of rhetoric and silliness out of the picture. All it does is assign categories, or labels, and then we all know who the “good guys” really are. Game, set, match!

Absolutely nothing is resolved in this kind of zero-sum game of cheap moralizing.

Ron Paul Dominates YouTube

What's the #1 most viewed, top rated, most discussed, and top favorite News and Politics video on YouTube? Yeah, it's Ron Paul at Ames...

LewRockwell.com Blog: Ron Paul Wins Iowa Straw Poll on YouTube

Integrity

In the September 2007 issue of Tabletalk, there’s an article by R.C. Sproul called “Duty and Honor” with a great paragraph:

Now, these definitions [of integrity] describe persons who are almost as rare as the use of the term honor. In the first instance, integrity would describe someone whom we might call “a person of principle.” The person who is a person of principle is one, as the dictionary defines, who is uncompromising. The person is not uncompromising in every negotiation or discussion of important issues, but is uncompromising with respect to moral and ethical principles. This is a person who puts principle ahead of personal gain. The art of compromise is a virtue in a politically correct culture, which political correctness itself is modified by the adjectival qualifier political. To be political is often to be a person who compromises everything, including principle.

Good stuff.