Milton Friedman – University of Chicago School of Economics Professor
As I read the comments by Milton Friedman, I can’t help but think about how his words relate so much to today’s economic and political issues.
“Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.”
“The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that’s why it’s so essential to preserving individual freedom.”
“The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.”
“My major problem with the world is a problem of scarcity in the midst of plenty … of people starving while there are unused resources … people having skills which are not being used.”
“The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes.”
“The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.”
“The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.”
“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”
“Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.”
“The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.”
“So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.”
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
“We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.”
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”
“Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.”
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 23)
This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.
Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”
“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Randy Hultgren (IL-14) released the following statement after voting against the Budget Control Act.
“Tonight, I voted against a flawed bill that doesn’t go far enough,” said Hultgren. “I’ve been clear from the very beginning I would not support any effort to increase our nation’s debt ceiling if the proposal does not hold true to the values of Cut, Cap, and Balance, as well as enact serious structural changes.
“It is my opinion that the proposal approved by the House tonight falls short of what we need to do to put our country back on the right track. By failing to require Congress to approve a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) prior to any further increases in the debt ceiling, this bill does not provide the structural changes that I stated were necessary to earn my support.
“When leadership changed the bill on Thursday night to strengthen the BBA provision, that change earned my support; in failing to keep that strong language, I could not, in good conscience, support this bill.”
I have been saying over and over that the USA is heading to Greece. I will post this story in two different posts. It should show us why the destination of European Welfare State is not a good one even though we are heading there fast under President Obama.
For decades now, one of the most tragic costs of the European welfare state has been Europe’s structural unemployment, especially among the young, combined with welfare payments that turned unemployment into an acceptable—even desirable—status, while stripping those affected of their dignity and sense of responsibility. The recent riots in the U.K. are an ominous reflection of this failure.
One of the key questions now is: How much longer will workers and taxpayers in Germany and other relatively more fiscally prudent countries in northern Europe be willing to work into their late 60s to subsidize (via eurozone bailouts and managed defaults) their neighbors in southern Europe so that the latter can retire early in their 50s on generous state-funded pensions and go to the beach?[3]
The Next Monetary Policy
The euro elites’ response to date has been to try to address the solvency crisis through fiscal policy, and the liquidity crisis through additional debt—ignoring the EU’s monetary policy failure because they have no politically acceptable solution. It is obvious where this will lead, as Heritage Foundation analysis has noted in the past.[4]
Maybe, instead, some of the PIIGS will decide to exit the euro. Or perhaps the northerners will leave the euro (and the euro-denominated sovereign debts of the PIIGS) behind and resuscitate the Deutschmark? One path or the other appears inevitable.
The European social welfare state has contributed mightily to this situation by making all of Europe less competitive relative to the rest of the world, which is why the U.K., though not subject to the monetary policy failure, cannot escape the growth consequences entirely. Meanwhile, Germany’s inherent strengths have allowed it to take advantage of its Euro-linked trading partners.
Lest there be any doubt, the underlying monetary policy failure is the euro. It is now quite clear that this policy was doomed, not solely because Europe failed to harmonize it with other policies, but because monetary union between fast-growth states and slow-growth states can only end in tragic monetary disintegration. The hope that it would cause slow-growth states to catch up was a pipe dream.
Will Europe’s elites succeed in making one more try to save the eurozone, perhaps by creating a central EU treasury that alone has the power to issue new debt for EU countries? This would guarantee that the PIIGS pay lower interest rates than their credit histories would mandate, while the north pays more.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly aims “to seize the Greek crisis to make a quantum leap in eurozone governance.”[5] The recent assertion by Berlin and Paris that a new eurobond is dead on arrival,[6] however, suggests Germany’s patience has just about run out—apparently, that quantum leap will have to be in a different direction.
For the U.S., Europe is the ultimate object lesson—a warning of what happens when government is allowed to run wild, with the resulting loss of liberty and fiscal deficits. Fortunately, though the United States has a single currency, it largely achieved the necessary conditions for such an arrangement to be successful long ago.
Rescuing Europe and Protecting the U.S.
It is almost certain that this crisis will produce something new out of Europe. The emergence, whether collectively or individually, of stronger European societies with durable financial and monetary regimes would certainly be in the best interest of the U.S. and the rest of the world.
As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports in The Telegraph (U.K.),[7] the likely short-term outcome is described by Daniel Gross from the Centre for European Policy Studies: “Germany and the other AAA states must agree to some sort of Eurobond regime. Otherwise the euro will implode.” However, as noted above, France, and especially Germany, have been stoutly opposed to a eurobond, and for very good reasons. Assuming Gross is correct in his assessment, and he most likely is, the future of the euro is bleak indeed.
Meanwhile, spending by the U.S. government—presently on track to consume one-third of the economy by the time today’s newborns graduate from college—must be reduced. Entitlements must be reined in and reformed; non-defense discretionary spending must be rolled back to 2008 levels.
To reduce federal spending and prevent economic collapse, U.S. policymakers should follow The Heritage Foundation’s plan in “Saving the American Dream.”[8]
James M. Robertsis Research Fellow for Economic Freedom and Growth in the Center for International Trade and Economics, and J. D. Foster, Ph.D., is Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow in the Economics of Fiscal Policy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
The Tea Party members in the Republican Party voted against the debt deal and have even claimed that the debt deal did not cut enough out of the budget and that is why the USA got a downgrade in the credit rating.
Calls on Geithner to resign followed by reversal of radical agenda
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Washington, DC — Congressman Steve Scalise today released the following statement after the S&P downgraded the US credit rating from AAA to AA+.
“The unprecedented downgrade of the US credit rating is a resounding indictment of President Obama’s failed extreme liberal agenda that has run millions of jobs out of our country due to job-killing taxes, rampant out-of-control government spending, and radical policies like the President’s health care law,” Scalise said. “We cannot allow our nation to keep sinking like quick sand into financial ruin, and we need immediate accountability to correct the damage done by the Obama Administration. Just a few months ago, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner assured Americans that there would be no downgrade, and in light of last night’s announcement it is time for him to do what is best for our country and resign from his post, followed by a reversal of the extreme liberal agenda pursued by President Obama that devastated our once-golden credit rating under his watch.
“The U.S. House of Representatives continues to offer solutions to create American jobs and get our economy back on track, only to have those bills be opposed by the White House and liberals running the Senate. Senate Leader Harry Reid and President Obama must stop playing politics with America’s future if we are going to preserve the American dream and create good jobs.”
Washington, Aug 6 – Iowa Congressman Tom Latham issued the following statement on Saturday following Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating:
“Standard & Poor’s had been attempting to send Washington a wake-up call since April when they changed their outlook on U.S. Treasury securities from “stable” to “negative.” Friday’s credit downgrade is yet another alarm to warn us that our national debt and reckless spending has reached a point of crisis. It reinforces my opposition to the recent debt ceiling agreement as it did not go far enough to put us on true path towards long term fiscal sustainability.”
“Washington must heed this warning and recognize that regardless of political differences, the simple truth is that we have a responsibility as a Congress and as a government to work together to find real solutions to these problems – to put people before politics and progress before partisanship. I am, as I have always been during my service to Iowans, committed and ready to work with any members of the House or Senate, regardless of political affiliation, who are willing to join me to move our country forward on the path to fiscal responsibility to save the American Dream for our children and grandchildren.”
My son played football for Coach Carter at Arkansas Baptist in 2004 when the Ark Bapt Eagles won their only Conference Championship in Football that they did not have to share (in 98 they shared a championship with Carlise and Harding). I will be pulling for my Ark Bapt Eagles but I wish him well too.
CCS’ Carter has seen football from many viewpoints
Michael Carter has a range of experience, both public and private, in Arkansas high school football.
He played at Greenbrier when it was a AA school, then coached at Vilonia, Clinton, DeWitt, Arkansas Baptist and Little Rock Christian. He worked at many of those programs when they were AA schools.
So he’s ready and eager to take over the reins at Conway Christian from Chuck Speer, who birthed the program and guided it through infancy during a seven-year span before leaving for Corning last spring.
“I’ve coached public and private schools and there is not really any difference with the kids; kids are kids,” he said. “The difference is public schools don’t have to rely as much on outside help for just about everything. You have to do a lot of community work in the community and have to have support from the private sector to get to where you are.”
He’s been pleased with the support of the Conway Christian community as the school has its sites set on making the state playoffs for the fourth straight year as an Arkansas Activities Association member.
“The hardest thing and the biggest challenge has been the mental aspect of what we’re doing — not only for players, but for parents in getting them to buy into what is going on and they’ve done a great job of buying in,” he said
“We’ve been coaching the heck out of these players and I have been very pleased with how the players and the community has bought in,” said Carter, who was a quarterback at Greenbrier and a tight end under Harold Horton at the University of Central Arkansas. “The most pleasant surprise is you hear talk about this kid and that kid when you arrive and now a couple of kids have stepped up who nobody talked about and expected to step up. We have some great kids, smart kids who have picked up the new offense well.”
Carter, who has coached 14 years, has installed a completely new offense and defense. The run-powered pistol spread of past years has been scrapped for the more wide-open spread, very similar to what Conway High runs.
“We’ll run a lot of option out of it,” he said. “And we’re not abandoning the run, just throwing the ball more. I think this is the style of offense that will help us compete year in and year out.”
Defensively, the Eagles will switch from a read-and-react style to one more aggressive at the point of attack. “We’re are going to attack all over the field,” he said.
While his offensive and defensive philosophies are different than when he played under Horton, the basics are the same.
“Coach Horton always said that everything runs through the front and we want to make the offensive line the strongest part of the team, this year I think it is our strength,” he said.
And from what he’s seen early, he’s not bashful in setting his sights on the Eagles making another playoff appearance.
“The first week I was here, people asked me how I was gonna replace a good quarterback (Kirby Powell) and two good running backs (Bates Isom and Adam Ragland),” he said. “Now that I’ve seen what we’ve got, I’ve got high hopes for this team.”
John Brummett in his article, “A new civil rights struggle in Little Rock?” Arkansas News Burea, August 25, 2011, asserted the main role vouchers should have is “providing new models for regular public schools to emulate, not about replacing regular public schools.”
The Heritage Foundation cares nothing about saving the public schools. If the public schools do not adapt then they will fail under the voucher system. That is the point. I am sure that many public schools will adapt and survive. However, those who don’t will be knocked out of business. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO SAVE ALL THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
The cost of public education per student is too high. Over $28,000 for kids in Washington D.C. and over $12,000 in Houston, Texas.
What is the true cost of public education? According to a new study by the Cato Institute, some of the nation’s largest public school districts are underreporting the true cost of government-run education programs.
Cato Education Analyst Adam B. Schaeffer explains that the nations five largest metro areas and the District of Columbia are blurring the numbers on education costs. On average, per-pupil spending in these areas is 44 percent higher than officially reported. Districts on average spent nearly $18,000 per student and yet claimed to spend just $12,500 last year.
It is impossible to have a public debate about education policy if public schools can’t be straight forward about their spending.
Getting the economy on track will require deep cuts to the federal budget and a fairer tax system, Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said Tuesday.
National defense, Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid will account for more than 60 percent of federal spending in 2012, according to pie charts he displayed. Spending in those areas will have to be reduced along with cuts to other programs if Congress hopes to get the budget under control, he said.
“Everybody’s going to get cut,” Pryor said. “We’ve been living beyond our means.”
The two-term senator spoke at a Rogers Rotary Club luncheon in the John Q. Hammons Center.
Pryor said various tax breaks have created a system in which 45 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes.
“It’s hard to have a fair tax system where only about half the people are paying,” he said.
It is funny to me that Mark Pryor has been one of the biggest spenders in the U.S. Senate history with all his votes with Obama in favor of an almost 800 billion stimulus and a government overall of our healthcare system, but Pryor now wants to talk like a conservative.
I read this letter below from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on August 13, 2011:
Time to stop insanity
The president has told us for 2 1/2 years that he is focusing “like a laser” on jobs. Well, looks like it’s time to replace this “Jobs Guy” with someone who has actually had some experience running something. We have given him a chance. Yes, he reads a pretty mean TelePrompTer, but his cockamamie Keynesian economic theory that only works in the ivory towers of academia has proved itself wrong again. We have lost a net 2.5 million jobs since his inauguration, and the few jobs the Obama administration has created have cost the American taxpayer about $250,000 each, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And how about his explodingthe national debt? To all the happy parents who have just welcomed their new baby into our world, here is the bad news: Your baby’s share of the national debt is $46,156.05 as of August 2 and is still climbing. Both Republican and Democratic politicians are responsible for our national debt, which now tops $14.3 trillion.
In the recent debate regarding raising the debt ceiling, the only grownups in the room were the Tea Party congressmen who tried to force a vote on a constitutional amendment to require the federal government to balance its budget like every state and city in the land is required to do. In the 2012 election, I suspect the Tea Party of Republicans, independents and Democrats will finally demand that politicians stop this insanity. God help us if they don’t.
RALPH C. PATTERSON Bella Vista
Mark Pryor has supported about every bill that President Obama has pushed. The stimulus was probably the biggest budget busting bill so far. Did that help get our economy going? Not according to Kathy Fettke:
President Obama is urging Congress to raise the $14.3T debt ceiling or else, he warns, the U.S. would be forced to default. Perhaps our representatives need a little lesson on good debt vs. bad debt.
Good debt gives the borrower the potential to create more money. Bad debt gives the borrower something he can’t afford but wants anyway.
In real estate, for example, good debt might be a loan used to purchase an investment property. The borrower acquires an asset that creates income. That income is used to pay off the debt. The borrower then owns an asset free & clear that continues to produce income, long after the original debt is gone.
Bad debt serves a need for instant gratification by borrowing income from the future.
An example of bad debt is getting a loan to purchase a new car. The car is worth less the moment it’s driven off the lot. From day 1, the borrower owes more than the car is worth, and the “asset” doesn’t create monthly income. It becomes a liability, unless it is used as a rental, trucking or any other profitable business use.
Is Obama asking for more good debt or more bad debt?
Politicians are expert wordsmiths who can spin facts into a slick campaigns designed for getting what they want. That’s why President Obama and the money magicians at the Federal Reserve are preaching that more debt would help the economy.
Has their plan worked so far? Let’s take a look:
During the past 5 years, the federal government has borrowed 4.5 trillion dollars to stimulate the economy. That’s a 40% increase in government debt!
Did the stimulus work?
Political spin doctors say it did, claiming that US GDP climbed 1.9% in Q1 of 2011. But how much did that increase cost us?
We spent $4.5 Trillion over 5 years to create $690 Billion in GDP growth. Doing the math, that means the US will receive 14 cents for every dollar of debt incurred to stimulate the economy.
With losses like this, the “stimulus” plan is really a bad debt deal – one in which borrowing results in more liabilities, not assets. And now our leaders are trying to talk us into more of it.
Just say “NO!” to raising the debt ceiling! It’s not just bad debt, it’s ugly debt.
The cure for bad debt is pretty simple and boring: cut spending and increase income. If you can’t do either, you default.
Borrowing just to keep up with interest payments and avoid default is reckless and only exacerbates the problem. It does not fix it.
Politicians must agree to cut spending. And they must avoid increasing income through taxation. As much as the general population would love to rob the rich, that method doesn’t work. Business owners who get punished for making money will stop producing and hiring.
Instead of taxing productive businesses to extended ugly government debt, offer businesses good debt so they can continue to grow.
Members of our society with solid business plans should be the ones borrowing – not the government.
Kathy Fettke is CEO of www.RealWealthNetwork.com, an educational resource for new and experienced real estate investors.
Dustin McDaniel praises Obama (says Bill Clinton knew what hard decisions had to be made to balance the budget)
Origins of the Universe (Kalam Cosmological Argument) (Paul Kurtz vs Norman Geisler)
Published on Jun 6, 2012
Norm Geisler argues via Kalam Cosmological Argument for the origins of the universe with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. No matter how much evidence Geisler gave, Paul Kurtz refused to fully acknowledge the implications of it, while NEVER giving evidence for his own interpretation of the universe’s beginning.
Vincent Bugliosi has struggled with whether God exists. He’s not sure, and he contends that both sides in the debate should not be dogmatic. The opening words on the flap of his new book Divinity of Doubt: The God Question[1]summarize his position: “Do you believe in God? If your answer is yes or no, Vincent Bugliosi will prove you wrong.” That’s a pretty bold claim for an evolved human. If God does exist, Bugliosi argues, “he has chosen to keep those he created in the dark about him.”[2] He sets forth his operating assumption in a clear and unapologetic way:[W]hat follows [in this book] is an almost unremitting, scathing, indictment of God, organized religion, atheism, and theism.[3]I’ll come back to his interpretive paradigm in a moment. How good of a prosecutor is he?Mr. Bugliosi has had a storied legal career. He was the prosecuting attorney for the city of Los Angeles during the Charles Manson trial in the Tate-LaBianca murders. He was also a professor of criminal law at the Beverly School of Law in Los Angeles. Bugliosi was something of a prosecuting phenomenon during his tenure, “in a class by himself,” at the time, “105 convictions out of 106 felony jury trials; . . . 21 murder convictions without a single loss.”[4]Bugliosi came to my attention when I read his book Helter Skelter (1974), a disturbing chronicle of events leading up to the Tate-LaBianca murders and the subsequent trial. The book digs deep into the bizarre motive behind the murders: Manson saw himself as the prophetic voice of the Beatles as he deciphered their cryptic messages embedded in songs like “Revolution 1,” “Revolution 9,” “Piggies,” “Blackbird,” and, of course, “Helter Skelter.” Manson believed that the Beatles were calling for a revolution, “an imminent black-white war.”[5] Family member Gregg Jakobson explained it this way:“It would begin with the black man going into white people’s homes and ripping off the white people, physically destroying them, until there was open revolution in the streets, until they finally won and took over. Then black man would assume white man’s karma. He would then be the establishment.”[6]After the mass killings and eventual black ascendancy, the blacks in charge would turn to Charles Manson for help. Manson reasoned that blacks had been under “whitey’s” influence for so long that they would not be able to rule effectively. He would then put the black man back in his subservient position, and he would then rule the world.[7] Manson, standing only five feet two, was convincing enough in his peculiar scheme that he got a group of teenagers and twenty-somethings to kill for him.
To a certain degree, justice was served in the Tate-LaBianca murders. Manson and five of his followers got the death penalty for their vicious crimes. But on February 18, 1992, the California Supreme Court had voted 6–1 to abolish the death penalty in the state of California. While California has since restored the death penalty, the new statute was not retroactive. Manson and his murdering compatriots remain in prison.
While Bugliosi had no official role in the O.J. Simpson trial, he followed the case with a prosecutor’s eye and wrote Outrage in response to the not-guilty verdict and what he believes was gross incompetence on the part of the prosecution. Unlike the Manson case, Bugliosi believes that justice was not served. In the Epilogue to Outrage, Bugliosi bears his soul and the struggle he has had with justifying God’s goodness with the presence of evil in the world and God’s “inaction” in the trial in allowing a murderer to go free:
When tragedies like the murders of Nicole and Ron occur, they get one to thinking about the notion of God. Nicole was only thirty-five, Ron just twenty-five, both outgoing, friendly, well-liked young people who had a zest for life. How does God, if there is a God, permit such a horrendous and terrible act to occur, along with countless other unspeakable atrocities committed by man against his fellow man throughout history? And how could God–all-good and all-just, according to Christian theology—permit the person who murdered Ron and Nicole to go free, holding up a Bible in his hand at that? When Judge Ito’s clerk, Deidre Robertson, read the jury’s not-guilty verdict, Nicole’s mother whispered, “God, where are you?”[8]
Mr. Bugliosi’s honesty is refreshing. He’s not an atheist. He finds it difficult to believe in God under the circumstances and according to his criteria.
On what grounds, however, can the atheist object? Mr. Bugliosi assumes the existence of God and the ethical system espoused by Christianity to make his case against God in light of the existence of evil. “The unbeliever,” Greg Bahnsen writes, “must secretly rely upon the Christian worldview in order to make sense of his argument from the existence of evil which is urged against the Christian worldview!”[9] In the end, the unbeliever uses stolen credentials (Christian presuppositions), establishes himself as prosecutor and judge, and then takes his seat in the jury box to render a verdict against God. Everything he uses to construct his system has been stolen from God’s “construction site.” The unbeliever is like the little girl who must climb on her father’s lap to slap his face. . . . [T]he unbeliever must use the world as it has been created by God to try to throw God off Hs throne.”[10]
None of this is designed to demean Mr. Bugliosi. But we are justified in putting his arguments on trial since he has seen fit to put God’s existence on trial. In an interview, when he was asked whether he believed in God, he stated, “If we were in court I’d object on the ground that the question assumes a fact not in evidence.”[11] The evidence is there, but Mr. Bugliosi has set the ground rules for what he will enter into evidence. In essence, if the evidence does not fit his operating presuppositions, then for him it is not evidence. John Frame answers such flirtations with wholesale autonomy in an unbending manner, as John Frame puts it:
Unbelievers must surely not be allowed to take their own autonomy for granted in defining moral concepts. They must not be allowed to assume that they are the ultimate judges of what is right and wrong. Indeed, they should be warned that that sort of assumption rules out the biblical God from the outset and thus allows its character as a faith-presupposition. The unbeliever must know that we reject his presupposition altogether and insist upon subjecting our moral standards to God;s. And if the unbeliever insists on his autonomy, we may get nasty and require him to show how an autonomous self can come to moral conclusions in a godless universe.[12]
Mr. Bugliosi consistently criticizes the prosecutors in the O.J. Simpson trial for not raising crucial points of evidence. One wonders why he nowhere deals with the argument that if there is no God then there is no morality or a call for outrage when personal sentiments (like his own) are offended.
Remember, Mr. Bugliosi is a prosecutor. He’s noted for doing exhaustive research. In addition to Outrage, he has also written Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (2007) and The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (2008). Reclaiming History is more than 1600 pages. It includes a CD-ROM with an additional 1000 pages of footnotes. “It analyzes all aspects of the assassination and the rise of the conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s assassination in the years subsequent to the event. The book won the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.”
Divinity of Doubt is different. Yes, there are endnotes, but only a few of them cite any contrary evidence. He doesn’t spar with contrary evidence put forth by those who have wrestled with similar questions and have not turned into theistic skeptics. In light of 1000 pages of footnotes on the Kennedy assassination, one would expect a more rigorous interaction with what other theistic scholars have written on the subjects Mr. Bugliosi discusses. We are talking about God here! It’s like a prosecutor making his case without a defense attorney present. Piece of cake.
Endnotes:
Vincent Bugliosi, Divinity of Doubt: The God Question (New York: Vanguard Press, 2010), 129. [↩]
Starling Lawrence, “Editor’s Note” in Vincent Bugliosi, Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), 11. [↩]
Vincent Bugliosi, with Curt Gentry, Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1974), 244. [↩]
Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith (Atlanta, GA: American Vision, 1996), 170. [↩]
John A. Fielding III, “The Brute Facts: An Introduction of the Theology and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til,” The Christian Statesman 146:2 (March-April 2003), 30. [↩]
I’ve only found one modern author who even suggests that John might still be alive. David Dolan’s Israel in Crisis is a perfect example of forcing the Bible to fit an already developed prophetic system. Dolan tries to explain Jesus’ comments in John 21:18–23 in which Jesus says to Peter about John, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me” (21:22). Because Dolan holds to a futuristic eschatology, he must force Jesus’ words into his dispensational mold: “In further nonbiblical research, I discovered that many early church authorities believed that John had never died. This was based on the Lord’s mysterious words in John 21 and also on the fact that, unlike the other apostles, no credible account exists about his death. I suspect that may be because John did not die.” (David Dolan, Israel in Crisis: What Lies Ahead? (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 2001), 143.) Dolan speculates that John could have been living on a Greek island for two millennia, wandering around the world hiding his true identity disguised, or caught up into heaven like Elijah where he has been supernaturally preserved until he is needed. John 21:23 refutes this notion: “yet Jesus did not say to [Peter] that [John] would not die, but only, ‘If I want to remain until I come, what is that to you.’” [↩]
Debate: Christianity vs Secular Humanism (6 of 14)
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 22)
This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.
Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”
“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.
Washington, D.C.—Idaho First District Congressman Raúl R. Labrador today issued the following statement following the passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011.
“The debt ceiling agreement that was considered by Congress today represents a good plan to resolve the uncertainty surrounding the debt ceiling debate. It immediately cuts federal spending and implements new spending caps to prevent government expansion when our economy begins to recover. While this bill has the potential to reduce the size of our budget and the trajectory of government spending, this bill doesn’t go far enough to make the changes necessary to get us out of our fiscal mess.
“I promised my constituents that I would come to Congress to fundamentally change the way the federal government operates. While this legislation is a good first step towards that goal, it also relies on the time honored Washington tradition of delegating problems to commissions instead of solving them ourselves. It places more confidence in its Super Commission than is warranted. The legislation also lacks a rock solid commitment to passage of a balanced budget amendment, which I believe is necessary to saving our nation. With the help of the new members of Congress, the standard operating procedure in Washington has begun to change from spending recklessly to cutting spending sensibly, but there is a lot more that needs to change. ”
Milton Friedman – University of Chicago School of Economics Professor
The Daily Hatch 