The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 8)
Will Rogers has a great quote that I love. He noted, “Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago”(Paula McSpadden Love,The Will Rogers Book,(1972) p. 20.)
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
August 1, 2011. This act increases the debt limit by between $2.1 and $2.4 trillion, the biggest explosion of debt in American history. It allows the government to avoid spending reductions for the next two years while squandering our last best hope of averting a sovereign debt crisis.
I am opposed to this measure for the following reasons:
1. The purported cuts, even if realized, are far below the $4 trillion deficit reduction that credit rating agencies have warned is necessary to preserve the Triple-A credit rating of the United States Government.
2. It blows the lid off the House budget passed in April by more than a half-trillion dollars over ten years.
3. It makes no significant spending reductions for at least the next two years, essentially freezing spending at an unsustainable level. While the debt increase occurs this year, deficit reductions are to be spread over many years and could be reversed by future acts of Congress.
4. The spending caps are easily circumvented by declaring appropriations to be an emergency, a response to a “major disaster,” or necessary for the “Global War on Terror.”
5. The balanced budget amendment provisions are illusory because the amendment is completely undefined.
A Ronald Reagan radio address from 1975 addresses the topics of abortion and adoption. This comes from a collection of audio commentaries titled “Reagan in His Own Voice.”
I just wanted to share with you one of the finest prolife papers I have ever read, and it is by President Ronald Wilson Reagan.
I have a son named Wilson Daniel Hatcher and he is named after two of the most respected men I have ever read about : Daniel from the Old Testament and Ronald Wilson Reagan. I have studied that book of Daniel for years and have come to respect that author who was a saint who worked in two pagan governments but he never compromised. My favorite record was the album “No Compromise” by Keith Green and on the cover was a picture from the Book of Daniel.
One of the thrills of my life was getting to hear President Reagan speak in the beginning of November of 1984 at the State House Convention Center in Little Rock. Immediately after that program I was standing outside on Markham with my girlfriend Jill Sawyer (now wife of 25 years) and we were alone on a corner and President was driven by and he waved at us and we waved back.
My former pastor from Memphis, Adrian Rogers, got the opportunity to visit with President Ronald Reagan on several occasions.
Take time to read this below and comment below and let me know what you thought of his words.
EDITOR’S NOTE: While president, Ronald Reagan penned this article for The Human Life Review, unsolicited. It ran in the Review‘s Spring 1983, issue and is reprinted here with permission.
The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. Our nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy was neither voted for by our people nor enacted by our legislators — not a single state had such unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it to be national policy in 1973 is a good time for us to pause and reflect. But the consequences of this judicial decision are now obvious: since 1973, more than 15 million unborn children have had their lives snuffed out by legalized abortions. That is over ten times the number of Americans lost in all our nation’s wars.
Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court’s result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right. Shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision, Professor John Hart Ely, now Dean of Stanford Law School, wrote that the opinion “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” Nowhere do the plain words of the Constitution even hint at a “right” so sweeping as to permit abortion up to the time the child is ready to be born. Yet that is what the Court ruled.
As an act of “raw judicial power” (to use Justice White’s biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority inRoev. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court’s decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead,Roe v. Wadehas become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.
Abortion concerns not just the unborn child, it concerns every one of us. The English poet, John Donne, wrote: “. . . any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life — the unborn — without diminishing the value of all human life. We saw tragic proof of this truism last year when the Indiana courts allowed the starvation death of “Baby Doe” in Bloomington because the child had Down’s Syndrome.
Many of our fellow citizens grieve over the loss of life that has followed Roe v. Wade. Margaret Heckler, soon after being nominated to head the largest department of our government, Health and Human Services, told an audience that she believed abortion to be the greatest moral crisis facing our country today. And the revered Mother Teresa, who works in the streets of Calcutta ministering to dying people in her world-famous mission of mercy, has said that “the greatest misery of our time is the generalized abortion of children.”
Over the first two years of my Administration I have closely followed and assisted efforts in Congress to reverse the tide of abortion — efforts of Congressmen, Senators and citizens responding to an urgent moral crisis. Regrettably, I have also seen the massive efforts of those who, under the banner of “freedom of choice,” have so far blocked every effort to reverse nationwide abortion-on-demand.
Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must not lose heart. This is not the first time our country has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was not overturned in a day, or a year, or even a decade. At first, only a minority of Americans recognized and deplored the moral crisis brought about by denying the full humanity of our black brothers and sisters; but that minority persisted in their vision and finally prevailed. They did it by appealing to the hearts and minds of their countrymen, to the truth of human dignity under God. From their example, we know that respect for the sacred value of human life is too deeply engrained in the hearts of our people to remain forever suppressed. But the great majority of the American people have not yet made their voices heard, and we cannot expect them to — any more than the public voice arose against slavery — until the issue is clearly framed and presented.
What, then, is the real issue? I have often said that when we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives — the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child. Why else do we call a pregnant woman a mother?I have also said that anyone who doesn’t feel sure whether we are talking about a second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the doubt. If you don’t know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn.
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I remember when President Carter and candidate Reagan debated in 1980 and the subject of abortion came up. Reagan said that if you were on a dusty area and you found someone laying down would you bury him without knowing for sure if he is alive or not? It is the same with the case of abortion.
Let’s also remember a critical reason for this expansion was our decision to reduce taxes in 1981. I’m sure many of you know it was very difficult getting this through the Congress, although with your help we achieved it. And despite all the predictions of high inflation from our opponents, our tax cuts not only fueled our expansion, they had a benefit that surprised some people: Far from reducing the amount of money the Federal Government collected in tax revenues, over the long run, those collections actually increased due to the economic activity sparked by the tax cuts. In fact, tax revenues from 1981 to 1987 actually went up $255 billion. Of course, this meant we had enough to pay for our defense buildup and some left over to help get our deficit spending problems under control. But instead of using new revenues to cut the deficit, the Congress decided to spend even more.
In 1982, for example, TEFRA, as it was called, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, raised taxes by $131 billion over 4 years, with Congress pledging to slash spending by $3 for every dollar of increased revenue. Instead, 4 years later, taxes had gone up the expected $131 billion, but spending over this same period had risen by $244 billion. In fact, every dollar in increased revenue since 1980 had been matched by $1.25 of increased spending.
Now, 3 days ago, I called on the congressional leaders to meet with me early next week to outline our deficit reduction plans. And as we move toward a budget settlement, it’s good to remember that there’s a fundamental difference here inWashingtonon one critical issue. I’m proud that since 1913 my party has reduced taxes 10 times and increased them only once. And that’s why I hope members of the Democratic Party will follow President Kennedy’s lead of some years ago and remember that lower taxes mean higher growth.
But the simple fact is that all sides must contribute to this process if it is to succeed and if a package is to be developed that keeps taxes and spending as low as possible. This effort must also address the flipside of our twin deficit problem. I mean, here, our trade deficit, a problem that would only be worsened by protectionist legislation. So, let’s keep the stock market healthy and sound, and let’s do it by avoiding protectionist legislation and by keeping taxes and spending down so we can keep interest rates and inflation rates low.
Until next week, thanks for listening, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 12:06 p.m. from Camp David, MD.
How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)
#02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer
10 Worldview and Truth
Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION
Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR
I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act on his belief that we live in a closed system that was produced by chance with no God. Therefore, man’s only alternative is to look to chance and nonreason for our search for meaning in life and for moral guidance. Schaeffer rightly points out “With what Christ and the Bible teach, Man can have life instead of death—in having knowledge that is more than finite Man can have from himself.”
The unity and true knowledge of reality defined as starting from Man alone.
II. Shift in Modern Philosophy
A. Eighteenth century as the vital watershed.
B. Rousseau: ideas and influence.
1. Rousseau and autonomous freedom.
2. Personal freedom and social necessity clash in Rousseau.
3. Rousseau’s influence.
a) Robespierre and the ideology of the Terror.
b) Gauguin, natural freedom, and disillusionment.
C. DeSade: If nature is the absolute, cruelty equals non-cruelty.
D. Impossible tension between autonomous freedom and autonomous reasons conclusion that the universe and people are a part of the total cosmic machine.
E. Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard and their followers sought for a unity but they did not solve the problem.
1. After these men and their followers, there came an absolute break between the area of meaning and values, and the area of reason.
2. Now humanistic philosophy sees reason as always leading to pessimism; any hope of optimism lies in non-reason.
III. Existentialism and Non-Reason
A. French existentialism.
1. Total separation of reason and will: Sartre.
2. Not possible to live consistently with this position.
B. German existentialism.
1. Jaspers and the “final experience.”
2. Heidegger and angst.
C. Influence of existentialism.
1. As a formal philosophy it is declining.
2. As a generalized attitude it dominates modern thought.
IV. Forms of Popularization of Nonrational Experience
A. Drug experience.
1. Aldous Huxley and “truth inside one’s head.”
2. Influence of rock groups in spreading the drug culture; psychedelic rock.
B. Eastern religious experience: from the drug trip to the Eastern religious trip.
C. The occult as a basis for “hope” in the area of non-reason.
V. Theological Liberalism and Existentialism
A. Preparation for theological existentialism.
1. Renaissance’s attempt to “synthesize” Greek philosophers and Christianity; religious liberals’ attempt to “synthesize” Enlightenment and Christianity.
2. Religious liberals denied supernatural but accepted reason.
3. Schweitzer’s demolition of liberal aim to separate the natural from the supernatural in the New Testament.
B. Theological existentialism.
1. Intellectual failure of rationalist theology opened door to theological existentialism.
2. Barth brought the existential methodology into theology.
a) Barth’s teaching led to theologians who said that the Bible is not true in the areas of science and history, but they nevertheless look for a religious experience from it.
b) For many adherents of this theology, the Bible does not give absolutes in regard to what is right or wrong in human behavior.
3. Theological existentialism as a cul-de-sac.
a) If Bible is divorced from its teaching concerning the cosmos and history, its values can’t be applied to a historic situation in either morals or law; theological pronouncements about morals or law are arbitrary.
b) No way to explain evil or distinguish good from evil. Therefore, these theologians are in same position as Hindu philosophers (as illustrated by Kali).
c) Tillich, prayer as reflection, and the deadness of “god.”
d) Religious words used for manipulation of society.
VI. Conclusion
With what Christ and the Bible teach, Man can have life instead of death—in having knowledge that is more than finite Man can have from himself.
Questions
1. What is the difference between theologians and philosophers of the rationalist tradition and those of the existentialist tradition?
2. “If the early church had embraced an existentialist theology, it would have been absorbed into the Roman pantheon.” It didn’t. Why not?
3. “It is true that existentialist theology is foreign to biblical religion. But biblical religion was the product of a particular culture and, though useful for societies in the same cultural stream, it is no longer suitable for an age in which an entire range of world cultures requires a common religious denominator. Religious existentialism provides that, without losing the universal instinct for the holy.” Study this statement carefully. What assumptions are betrayed by it?
4. Can you isolate attitudes and tendencies in yourself, your church, and your community which reflect the “existentialist methodology” described by Dr. Schaeffer?
Key Events and Persons
Rousseau: 1712-1778
Kant: 1724-1804
Marquis de Sade: 1740-1814
The Social Contract: 1762
Hegel: 1770-1831
Kierkegaard: 1813-1855
Paul Gauguin: 1848-1903
Whence, What Whither?: 1897-1898
Albert Schweitzer: 1875-1965
Quest for the Historical Jesus: 1906
Karl Jaspers: 1883-1969
Paul Tillich: 1886-1965
Karl Barth: 1886-1968
Martin Heidegger: 1889-1976
Aldous Huxley: 1894-1963
J.P. Sartre: 1905-1980
Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper: 1967
Further Study
Unless already familiar with them, take time to listen to the Beatles’ records, as well as to discs put out by other groups at the time.
Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942).
Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954).
Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762).
J.P. Sartre, Nausea (1938).
Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (1952).
Following Rousseau, the exaggeration of the delights and the pathos of nature and experience which marks Romanticism may be sampled in, for example, Wordsworth’s poems, Casper David Friedrich’s paintings, and Schubert’s songs.
J.G. Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation (1968).
J.W. von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1962).
Why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion).
On my blog www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, I did not see any of them in the recent debt deal that Congress adopted. Now I am trying another approach. Every week from now on I will send you an email explaining different reasons why we need the Balanced Budget Amendment. It will appear on my blog on “Thirsty Thursday” because the government is always thirsty for more money to spend.
You asked for ideas to cut spending, but you voted for the 800 billion dollar stimulus that did not help the economy at all. I have included an article below that makes a very good point about the Balanced Budget Amendment and the stimulus:
Lee believes there are several key components to a balanced budget amendment which he outlines in his book, including making tax increases contingent on a two-thirds vote in Congress so that the option to increase taxes is not the default maneuver to balance a budget. He believes the amendment should require Congress spends no more than it takes in, and in fact should cap the spending at a fixed percent of GDP (the proposal submitted in the Senate caps it at 18 percent of GDP, just about the historical average). There would also be a supermajority vote required to raise the debt ceiling.
And for those who argue that stimulus packages wouldn’t have been possible under the amendment, Lee sees little difficulty responding.
“That’s exibit A for why we ought to have it,” Lee said of the Obama stimulus package.
As Washington spends the summer arguing over its spending addiction, GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has a solution to help prevent the same crisis for future generations: a balanced budget amendment.
The House made news last week when, in the heat of negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, they announced a vote on a balanced budget amendment this Wednesday. Though the Senate GOP introduced a one earlier this year, President Obama has stated emphatically otherwise, telling Americans last week during a press conference that the country does not need a balanced budget amendment.
“Yes, we do,” Lee told Townhall when asked to respond to the president, adding later when talking about simultaneously raising the debt ceiling and cutting spending, “We can’t bind what a future Congress will do. We can pass laws that will affect this year, but there will be a new Congress that takes power in January of 2013, and then another new one that will take power in January 2015. And they will make their own spending decisions then — we can’t bind them unless we amend the Constitution to do so.”
Lee points out that the American people support the idea of a balanced budget – 65 percent, according to a Sachs/Mason Dixon poll from this year – but politicians have been reluctant to wade into the debate.
“The fact that we’re in this debate, the fact that we’re sort of deadlocked, or we’ve reached a point of gridlock in the discussions, is indicative of the problem that we have,” Lee said.
In fact, Lee thinks a balanced budget amendment is so important to the future of the country that he’s written a book on it: The Freedom Agenda: Why a Balanced Budget Amendment Is Necessary to Restore Constitutional Government.
Lee even takes the argument a step beyond fiscal issues, saying a balanced budget amendment safeguards individual liberties.
““The more money it [Congress] has access to, whether it’s through borrowing or through taxation, either way, that’s going to fuel Congress’ expansion, and whenever government acts, it does so at the expanse of individual liberty,” Lee said. “We become less free every time government expands.”
Lee believes there are several key components to a balanced budget amendment which he outlines in his book, including making tax increases contingent on a two-thirds vote in Congress so that the option to increase taxes is not the default maneuver to balance a budget. He believes the amendment should require Congress spends no more than it takes in, and in fact should cap the spending at a fixed percent of GDP (the proposal submitted in the Senate caps it at 18 percent of GDP, just about the historical average). There would also be a supermajority vote required to raise the debt ceiling.
And for those who argue that stimulus packages wouldn’t have been possible under the amendment, Lee sees little difficulty responding.
“That’s exibit A for why we ought to have it,” Lee said of the Obama stimulus package.
Lee also pointed out that his balanced budget amendment includes an exception to the spending restriction in time of war – “not a blank check, but to the extent necessary.” Congress would also be able to supersede the amendment with a two-thirds vote.
“We wanted to make it difficult, but not impossible, for Congress to spend more than it had access to,” Lee said, citing as an example a massive or immediate crisis created by a national emergency or natural disaster. “What this is designed to do is to make it more difficult – to make it impossible – for Congress to just do this as a matter of course.”
Elisabeth Meinecke
Elisabeth Meinecke is Associate Editor with Townhall.com
I have made it clear from day one when I started this blog that Francis Schaeffer, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan and Adrian Rogers had been the biggest influences on my political and religious views. Today I am responding to an unfair attack on Francis Schaeffer’s book “A Christian Manifesto.”
As you can see on the bottom of the this post, currently I am in the middle of posting all ten of the episodes of “How should we then live?” which the film series that Francis Schaeffer did with his son Franky in 1976. Since then Franky has been very critical of his former views. I have had several opportunities to hear Franky speak, but I have always decided to avoid Franky because I know how hurtful it would be see someone like him misrepresent the character of such a fine man as was his father.
Ryan Lizza wrote a very bad piece in the New Yorker, and I was thrilled to read Ben Domenech’s response which dealt with a false claim by Lizza concerning Schaeffer’s view of a Christian’s proper response to our government in 1982.
In the course of this survey of influences on Bachmann’s faith–much of which relies on little more than book recommendations and offhand approving comments by the Minnesotan as a justification for listings of the worst things Lizza can find on Google about each individual–Lizza cherrypicks quotes and relies overwhelmingly on out of context arguments to attack several figures familiar to many in evangelical communities. Offering precious little new insight into the candidate or her politics, it’s readily evident the piece really isn’t about Bachmann at all. Lizza’s goal is obvious: it isn’t enough to depict these evangelical Christians as wrong about things–the media has been doing that for years, with little impact. For Lizza to write that these individuals are stupid or intolerant or anti-science isn’t anything new. So they have to be depicted as dangerous, too.
It’d be a waste of time to try and correct Lizza on these points (any more than it was to correct the New Yorker on their bizarre Da Vinci Code-like writings about the Koch brothers) or argue with him on the sheer level of ignorance within the piece. So let’s just look at one: a specific and clearly incorrect point that Lizza writes about Francis Schaeffer.
In an extensive portion of the piece, Lizza writes about Schaeffer and his L’Abri program (the only connection to Bachmann that Lizza notes is that she and her husband watched Schaeffer’s film series). My eyebrow rose when I read this line:
In 1981, three years before he died, Schaeffer published “A Christian Manifesto,” a guide for Christian activism, in which he argues for the violent overthrow of the government if Roe v. Wade isn’t reversed.
I personally don’t share many of Schaeffer’s views, or the views of the other figures Lizza writes about. But having read the Manifesto and extensive essays about it in the context of helping write a book on the decline of mainline Christianity and the rise of evangelicals, I find this depiction of Schaeffer’s position is just a vicious smear.
What Schaeffer called for were acts of civil disobedience if Roe v. Wade was not overturned. He repeatedly and specifically stressed that violence was not justified – “overreaction can too easily become the ugly horror of sheer violence”, he wrote. His four responses to Roe, as outlined in the Manifesto, were 1. supporting a human life amendment to the Constitution, 2. seeking the overturn of Roe and Doe in the courts, 3. bringing legal pressure to bear on abortion clinics and conducting peaceful protests, and 4. offering Christian alternatives, such as crisis pregnancy clinics, to urge women toward adoption or keeping the child instead. These responses may seem out of bounds to someone writing for The New Yorker, but they have been the responses of the pro-life cause–one which now represents the views of a plurality of Americans according to Gallup–for decades.
Now, I come toward the close, and that is that we must recognize something from the Scriptures, and that’s why I had that Scripture read that I had read tonight. When the government negates the law of God, it abrogates its authority. God has given certain offices to restrain chaos in this fallen world, but it does not mean that these offices are autonomous, and when a government commands that which is contrary to the Law of God, it abrogates its authority.
Throughout the whole history of the Christian Church, (and again I wish people knew their history. In A Christian Manifesto I stress what happened in the Reformation in reference to all this) at a certain point, it is not only the privilege but it is the duty of the Christian to disobey the government. Now that’s what the founding fathers did when they founded this country. That’s what the early Church did. That’s what Peter said. You heard it from the Scripture: “Should we obey man?… rather than God?” That’s what the early Christians did.
Occasionally — no, often, people say to me, “But the early Church didn’t practice civil disobedience.” Didn’t they? You don’t know your history again. When those Christians that we all talk about so much allowed themselves to be thrown into the arena, when they did that, from their view it was a religious thing. They would not worship anything except the living God. But you must recognize from the side of the Roman state, there was nothing religious about it at all — it was purely civil. The Roman Empire had disintegrated until the only unity it had was its worship of Caesar. You could be an atheist; you could worship the Zoroastrian religion… You could do anything. They didn’t care. It was a civil matter, and when those Christians stood up there and refused to worship Caesar, from the side of the state, they were rebels. They were in civil disobedience and they were thrown to the beasts. They were involved in civil disobedience, as much as your brothers and sisters in the Soviet Union are. When the Soviet Union says that, by law, they cannot tell their children, even in their home about Jesus Christ, they must disobey and they get sent off to the mental ward or to Siberia. It’s exactly the same kind of civil disobedience that’s represented in a very real way by the thing I am wearing on my lapel tonight. [Ed. – Earlier in his remarks, Schaeffer references the Solidarity pin he’s wearing – L’Abri students had sent an eight ton truck of food and supplies to Poland’s resistance.]
Every appropriate legal and political governmental means must be used. “The final bottom line”– I have invented this term in A Christian Manifesto. I hope the Christians across this country and across the world will really understand what the Bible truly teaches: The final bottom line! The early Christians, every one of the reformers (and again, I’ll say in A Christian Manifesto I go through country after country and show that there was not a single place with the possible exception of England, where the Reformation was successful, where there wasn’t civil disobedience and disobedience to the state), the people of the Reformation, the founding fathers of this country, faced and acted in the realization that if there is no place for disobeying the government, that government has been put in the place of the living God. In such a case, the government has been made a false god. If there is no place for disobeying a human government, what government has been made GOD.
Caesar, under some name, thinking of the early Church, has been put upon the final throne. The Bible’s answer is NO! Caesar is not to be put in the place of God and we as Christians, in the name of the Lordship of Christ, and all of life, must so think and act on the appropriate level. It should always be on the appropriate level. We have lots of room to move yet with our court cases, with the people we elect — all the things that we can do in this country. If, unhappily, we come to that place, the appropriate level must also include a disobedience to the state.
Schaeffer’s position takes far more from MLK’s letter from a Birmingham jail (“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”) than it does from any crazed individual bent on violent overthrow of the government. Is there really no distinction between the support of civil disobedience, legal political action, and non-violent protest–the elements of nearly every social justice movement in the history of the world–with “the violent overthrow of the government”, in Lizza’s words? Or does that distinction only vanish when the movement in question is aimed at abortion, as opposed to some other cause?
One final note: given that Lizza quotes Frank Schaeffer in the piece–who has spent much of his life urinating on his father’s grave–and who has made this false claim before, it’s possible he’s just repeating it without having read the work in question. But I’m sure Lizza wouldn’t do something so unprofessional before writing something this provocative.
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in Modern Science. A. Change in conviction from earlier modern scientists.B. From an open to a closed natural system: […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live 5-1 I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there was a unique improvement. A. […]
How Should We Then Live 4-1 I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to how to be right with […]
How Should We Then Live 3-1 I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so many problems today with this excellent episode. He noted, “Could have gone either way—with emphasis on real people living in […]
How Should We Then Live 2-1 I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard to authority and the approach to God.” […]
How Should We Then Live 1-1 Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why it fell. It fell because of inward […]
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I watched the series “God in America” on PBS and I was very disappointed with its liberal slant. I remember Francis Schaeffer saying on the 700 Club that he presented his film series “Whatever happened to the human race?” to PBS and they said no because it was about God. Then they go ahead and make a film like this below.
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 7)
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.
Hunter Opposes Latest Debt Limit Proposal, Cites U.S. Security
For Immediate Release: August 1, 2011
Washington DC—Today, U.S. Congressman Duncan Hunter voted against the latest debt limit proposal due to the likelihood that the special committee created under the plan will fail to reach an agreement and therefore “trigger” $600 billion in defense budget cuts. Hunter voted in support of the previous two debt limit proposals originating in the House—The Cut, Cap and Balance Act and Speaker Boehner’s debt limit reduction plan.
“Right now, the U.S. military is facing large equipment shortfalls and growing reset burdens while engaged in three wars,” said Congressman Hunter, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “When we should be talking about what our military needs to keep us safe and prepare for future threats, there’s a misconception that security spending is what put the country in this fiscal sinkhole and the only way out is to cut national defense.
“The future of U.S. security should not be handed over to a 12-person super panel. Its decisions or inability to reach an agreement could ultimately break our military or bring it very close to that point.
“From a historical perspective, current defense spending is at dangerously low levels. Under President Kennedy, defense spending was at nine percent of Gross Domestic Product. It was six percent under President Reagan. Today, it’s below four percent and with $400 billion in additional cuts, military readiness will continue its steady decline.
“And we cannot overlook what a $400 billion cut in defense means for jobs. It’s estimated that every billion in defense spending supports 8,000 jobs nationwide. Any sizeable cut in the defense budget would mean more lost jobs at a time when job growth is almost non-existent and a record number of Americans remain out of work.
“There’s no substitute for a strong national defense. America’s fiscal outlook is serious, but we know what’s straining the budget and it’s not defense.”
Milton Friedman was born on July 31, 1912 and he died November 16, 2006. I started posting tributes of him on July 31 and I hope to continue them until his 100th birthday.
Time flies, and with it the memory of the late economist Milton Friedman, who would have been 99 years old this year. However, we at the Mackinac Center and the Foundation for Educational Choice hope to revive Friedman’s legacy by hosting some lectures this Friday on his monetary policy. It is also the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, an issue encompassing a context for economic analysis.
Friedman’s free-market principles are vital to comprehending monetary supply during the Civil War. An entire generation of brothers hammered their plowshares into swords. As Northern factories shaped rifles and Southern farmers smelt bullets, the strain on local economies was enormous. Like a plague of locusts, the “terrible swift sword” burned through the Virginian Shenandoah Valley and across Georgia, destroying Southern crops and vegetation. Along the Western front, raiders on both sides wreaked havoc on the civilian populace. In the words of a song, “not now for songs of a nation’s wrongs, not the groans of starving labor; Let the rifle ring and the bullet sing to the clash of the flashing saber!”
The elephant in the room was big government, as usual. Both North and South inflated their money supplies, causing a rise in prices. Southern currency especially suffered a significant decrease in value due to the printing of excess Confederate money. As was apparent to Friedman, inflation is most often the fault of central banks, like those during the Civil War, that print more money than reflects actual market demand.
As a historian, I have always found Friedman’s work to be historically pertinent. His view of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an era of prosperity deserves more academic acceptance than it gets. I agree with Friedman’s impression that America during the Victorian era was a beacon to all those persecuted peoples throughout the earth who wished simply for the freedom to work hard for their existence. It was not a “gilded age” as historians want to paint it but a golden one. Friedman’s love for America’s heritage and his presumption of good will to all people, even his enemies, are his two qualities I admire most.
This Friday will be a day of both celebration and solemn reflection, as we remember Friedman’s legacy and the many thousands of lives lost during the Civil War. History often repeats itself in various forms. If we do not apply absolute principles to past events, we will be subject to repeating the same mistakes that history contains. We must remember those who are important in the history of our freedom, and reclaim our historical landmarks of liberty.
Everyone wants to know more about the budget and here is some key information with a chart from the Heritage Foundation and a video from the Cato Institute.
By rapidly lowering total federal spending, Saving the American Dream: The Heritage Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending, and Restore Prosperity would balance the budget by 2021 and keep it there permanently, without raising taxes.
REVENUE AND SPENDING AS A PERCENTAGE OF GDP
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Source: Current projections: Congressional Budget Office (Alternative Fiscal Scenario). Heritage Plan: Calculations by the Center for Data Analysis based on data provided by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. For more information, go to savingthedream.org.
The charts in this book are based primarily on data available as of March 2011 from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The charts using OMB data display the historical growth of the federal government to 2010 while the charts using CBO data display both historical and projected growth from as early as 1940 to 2084. Projections based on OMB data are taken from the White House Fiscal Year 2012 budget. The charts provide data on an annual basis except… Read More
Authors
Emily GoffResearch Assistant
Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy StudiesKathryn NixPolicy Analyst
Center for Health Policy StudiesJohn FlemingSenior Data Graphics Editor
Congressman John Fleming M.D. released the following statement today reacting to the Senate vote that effectively killed Cut, Cap, and Balance in the Democrat-controlled Senate. This bipartisan legislation that passed the House on Tuesday would cut the federal budget, cap federal spending, and require a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
“Simply put – Senate Democrats are complete failures when it comes to putting this nation back on the path to financial sanity. Today’s vote is the perfect example. House Republicans have taken a stand against out of control government spending and put forth a real plan that will solve our fiscal problems. The House ‘Gang of 234’ passed Cut, Cap, and Balance. So far, we have seen NO plan from Senate Democrats who could have made their changes and used our proposal to solve this problem. Instead they chose to put Americans further into debt. They are the black hole of government,” said Congressman Fleming.
Congressman Fleming added, “I have one question for President Obama and Senate Democrats – Where is your plan? You criticize Cut, Cap, and Balance but have no plan of your own. Where I come from you either put up or shut up. It’s your choice – either put forth a plan of your own or stop criticizing our plan.”
Dr. John Fleming is Chairman of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs and is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He is a physician and small business owner and represents the 4th Congressional District of Louisiana.
Even Eliminating Vital Defense Spending Completely Would Not Solve the Entitlement Spending Problem
The Heritage Plan Would Reverse Trajectory of Unsustainable Debt
The Daily Hatch 