Monthly Archives: January 2012

Bain Capital record of Romney is excellent

January 12, 2012 – 10:22 am

Here is an excellent article:

You can blame Mitt, but not for Bain
By: Steven Rattner
January 12, 2012 12:02 AM EST
I’m all in favor of piling on Mitt Romney for any number of reasons: his come lately embrace of hard right conservatism, his periodic malapropisms (“I like being able to fire people”) and above all, the nonchalance with which he displays a dazzling shortage of principles by incessantly flip-flopping on issues, sometimes the same day.

But these latest salvos being fired at his service as the founder and head of Bain Capital go too far. Having spent nearly three decades on Wall Street, when it comes to Bain Capital, I feel equipped — some might say too equipped — to parse fact from fiction. (Full disclosure: In the post-Romney era, I worked with Bain Capital on several projects.)

Most important, Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of Gordon Gekko-like, fire-breathing corporate raider that slashed and burned companies, immolating jobs wherever they appear in its path

Wall Street has its share of the vulture capitalists that Texas Gov. Rick Perry enjoyed mocking in South Carolina earlier this week. But Romney was almost the furthest thing from Larry the Liquidator.

Instead, with modest exceptions (keep reading to learn more about these), Bain Capital was a thoroughly respectable – nay, eminent – investment manager that successfully discharged its responsibility of earning high returns for its investors by deploying capital in companies privately rather than by buying shares in the public market. (Hence the name, private equity.)

Over Bain Capital’s 27 years, its private investments generally fell into two buckets. The firm, particularly in its early years, made dozens of venture capital investments — taking stakes of a few million dollars or less in young companies, in hopes that they would grow and prosper. A good example: Its investment of $2.5 million in Staples in 1986.

As the years clicked along, Bain’s emphasis shifted toward what was then known as leveraged buyouts, and is now called private equity. Typically, those investments are larger, made in more developed companies and heavily financed with debt. In 1998, for example, Bain invested $189 million in the pizza chain Domino’s, from which it reportedly reaped a fivefold return.

Overall, Bain Capital’s record was extraordinary, among the best in the business. According to a Bain placement document, through the end of 1999 (effectively, when Romney left), the firm had achieved annual returns of 88 percent per year.

That is not only wildly more than the single digit returns most investors achieve by buying stocks or bonds, it is far higher than those of typical private equity or venture capital firms.

Of course, a number of its early stage investments failed. That is the nature of venture capital — an industry not unlike baseball in that a .300 batting average can be excellent performance. But who can quarrel with an investment firm trying to nurture and finance young companies?

 

The story of the private equity business is somewhat more complicated. Almost by definition, a private equity investment is made with the hope of improving the profitability of the “portfolio company,” as it is known in the parlance. Often, this means replacing management or reducing unnecessary headcount – firing people.

While no one likes seeing jobs disappear, eliminating unnecessary overhead and even entire divisions if they cannot be made sufficiently profitable is at the heart of a successful economy — the process Joseph Schumpeter famously described as “creative destruction.” How strange for conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Perry to be questioning the core of free market economics.

I have no idea whether Bain Capital created 100,000 net new jobs, and I think Romney was silly to even engage in that debate. What we know for certain is that Bain Capital more than fulfilled its responsibility to a gaggle of investors, who were mostly foundations, endowments, pension funds and the like.

So what are the question marks (promised above) around the story of Romney and Bain Capital? First, it’s fair game to question the amounts of debt that are sometimes used in leveraged buyouts. While higher debt usually means higher returns — because debt is cheaper than equity, thanks in part to its tax deductibility — it also means higher risk of bankruptcy.

Bain had less than its share of bankruptcies, but it had a few – it appears four – that are particularly troubling. In all those cases, when the portfolio companies initially showed signs of promise, Bain took advantage of their progress to borrow more money, which it took out as a dividend. Later, the fortunes of each company turned down, ultimately into insolvency.

When Bain “releveraged” those companies and took the cash out, the investment managers of course had no idea that the companies would later falter. But with the benefit of hindsight, taking a more conservative approach and refraining from squeezing these dividends out of the companies would certainly have been more prudent.

Let’s be sure to keep these few problem children in perspective. During the Romney years, Bain made 77 significant investments —and a number of smaller ones. It made billions for worthy investors and, yes, doubtless created some incalculable number of net new jobs for the U.S. economy.

That’s the story of Bain Capital. It’s certainly fair game for any candidate’s opponents to dig into his record. But in Romney’s case, focusing on questions about his principles — and his currently staunchly conservative principles — could be more productive than trying to rewrite the firm’s history.

Steven Rattner, who served as counselor to the Treasury secretary and lead auto adviser in the Obama administration, was previously managing principal of Quadrangle Group, a private equity firm. (@SteveRattner)
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

RC Sproul and Ben Stein discuss evolution

January 12, 2012 – 8:23 am

A very interesting discussion of Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled” and the issue of evolution.

 

Review by Movie Guide:

Content:

(BBB, CC, L, V) Very strong Judeo-Christian worldview with positive proof of God and refutation of Darwinism and atheism and the false philosophies of our age, with positive references to God and Jesus Christ, but more theistic from a Jewish perspective, making a clear link between National Socialism (Nazi), Communism and Darwinism; one “h” word and two references to butt; documentary footage of violence at the Berlin Wall, Nazi violence, concentration camps, piled up bodies, discussions of violence, movie vignettes with slapping, other minor violence, and recreating old 1950s educational instructional movies; no sex; no nudity; no drinking; no smoking; and, nothing else objectionable but the whole movie is eliciting cries of outrage from the pseudo-scientific Darwinian community.

 

Summary:

In the brilliant documentary EXPELLED, actor and pundit Ben Stein takes on the Darwinian scientists who have become oppressive totalitarians. EXPELLED wry, funny, well-crafted documentary that is also heart-rending, convincing and transformational.

 

Review:

EXPELLED is a wry, funny, well-crafted documentary. The juxtaposition of popular music, dramatic vignettes, documentary footage, and Ben Stein’s quest for truth is often laugh-out-loud funny. At the same time, it is heart-rending, convincing and transformational. Like any documentary, however, there are a few moments when the tension relaxes, but most of the movie, and especially the last third of the movie, is captivating because Ben Stein takes on the atheist Richard Dawkins.

Ben Stein starts out talking about the fact that the United States was built on freedom. He quotes the Founding Fathers and juxtaposes the freedom of the United States with the Communist Berlin Wall in Germany.

Carefully, Stein makes the case that the academic community has become as oppressive of freedom as that same community oppressed freedom in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He interviews Prof. Richard Sternberg who lost his long-term job at the Smithsonian Institute because he dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with two or three references to Intelligent Design. The article did not endorse Intelligent Design, but the very mention of Intelligent Design brings severe repression from the pseudo-scientific academic community. He then talks to Dr. Caroline Crocker who lost her professorship at George Mason for having one reference to ID.

One by one, Stein introduces us to prestigious scientists at major universities who were expelled because they dared to mention Intelligent Design and open up the academic discussion to non-Darwinian viewpoints. He moves from there to questioning the institutions and the administrators who expelled these academics. The administrators squirm under his interrogation but eventually admit that the academic community has no room for freedom and intellectual inquiry.

Then, he visits France and Germany and shows the Darwinian roots of fascism, taking the audience through the famous mental institution of Germany where hundreds of infirm and mentally ill people were cruelly murdered. What is more frightening is his guide who says she cannot judge the doctor, who headed the institution that disposed of the infirm and the outcasts, and she seems to side with the Darwinian fascists. Ben even takes on Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood and the other proponents of eugenics who wanted to rid the world of the races that they thought were inferior.

Stein interviews scientists who say their Darwinian education converted them from Christianity to atheism. Several of them note that death is the end, there is no free will, life has no meaning, and none of them can explain the origin of life.

Finally, the famous self-promoter Prof. Richard Dawkins, when cornered in an interview, says life may have originated from aliens seeding the planet. Of course, everyone watching this interview realizes that the teleological argument should lead him to ask where did that alien life originate.

EXPELLED then takes us to discussion of the complex life of the cell. The Dawkins interview at the end presents an incredible villainous attack on the good, the true and the beautiful while at the same time showing that the smug Dawkins has no idea what he’s saying and is unable to answer the most basic questions.

This movie has leaked out into the atheist community and created a vicious outcry. Rather than expelling the movie, the professors and freedom of thought, it is clear that the successors of Darwinism, Hitler’s National Socialism and Communism would like to torture anyone who dares question, as real scientists should, the existing order of the academic community.

Atheists and Darwinists should make sure that people of faith and values and agnostics do not see this movie. It is so well crafted that it will completely expose the naked inconsistencies of the Darwinists. It will equip every person of faith and values with common sense to refute the arguments of the academic overlords. Atheists might want to go out of their way to stop this movie by buying up theaters and perhaps even buying out the distributorship itself because this movie will do more to undermine them and bring down the wall of the academic gulag. Perhaps, they should see it so they can figure out how to come up with viable arguments instead of the ones Ben Stein demolishes with such wry humor and careful questioning.

Ben by the way is not arguing for a particular point of view. He is arguing for academic freedom and rational scientific inquiry.

 

In Brief:

In the brilliant documentary EXPELLED, actor and pundit Ben Stein takes on the Darwinian scientists who have become oppressive totalitarians. One by one, Stein introduces us to prestigious scientists at major universities who were expelled because they dared to mention Intelligent Design and open up the academic discussion to non-Darwinian viewpoints. He moves from there to questioning the institutions and administrators who fired them unfairly. Then he visits France and Germany and shows the Darwinian roots of totalitarian fascism and Communism. Stein also discusses the complex life of the cell. Finally, he questions Darwinist Richard Dawkins, who comes across as a smug pseudo-scientist who can’t answer basic questions and doesn’t know what he’s saying.

EXPELLED is a wry, funny, well-crafted documentary. The juxtaposition of popular music, dramatic vignettes, documentary footage, and Ben Stein’s quest for truth is often laugh-out-loud funny. At the same time, it is heart-rending, convincing and transformational. Like any documentary, however, there are very few moments where the tension relaxes, but the last third of the movie is extraordinarily captivating because of Ben’s expose of the atheist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins points are easily refuted by rational scientific inquiry.

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Carl Sagan versus RC Sproul

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Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution)jh68

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Atheists confronted: How I confronted Carl Sagan the year before he died jh47

In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]

 

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

Margaret Thatcher (Part 2)

January 12, 2012 – 8:04 am

Margaret Thatcher (Part 2)

Margaret Thatcher is one of my heroes and I have a three part series on her I am posting. “What We Can Learn from Margaret Thatcher,”By Sir Rhodes Boyson and Antonio Martino, Heritage Foundation, November 24, 1999, is an excellent article and here is a portion of it below:

Foreign Policy

Few politicians in history have the opportunity or ability to shine in domestic and foreign policy. Margaret did both. She was patriotic and had no compunction in unfurling that flag. Her patriotism was instinctive and struck a chord with the British people. They saw her as a powerful leader who stood up for Britain.

She didn’t pretend to be a diplomatist, and actually said of herself, “I know nothing about diplomacy, but I just know and believe I want certain things for Britain.” These were increased respect for Britain as a leading power, limitations on European pretensions, and a close alliance with the U.S.

This latter was the most important and productive, and was cemented by the mutual attraction and meeting of minds of President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher on most issues. It enabled her to fight a war 8,000 miles away in the Falklands. She had the backing of the British people, but she needed American help. It was given, and she never forgot this. Neither did she forget European procrastination and obstructiveness. Later, she was to use her prestige to nudge President Bush into the Gulf War.

Britain remained America’s strongest ally. She stood with America against terrorism in the Libyan crisis. Most important, she stood with President Reagan on the Strategic Defense Initiative but ensured that what was good for America did not undermine NATO, nor undermine the nuclear deterrent necessary for the rest of the West. It proved to be the final piece in the jigsaw that saw the end of the Evil Empire and the collapse of Russian Communism. The Iron Lady had played her part, and the chemistry that had worked with Reagan similarly worked with Gorbachev.

The repercussions of the changes that were pursued by the action of these three people were immense. The world was made a different place. As Margaret Thatcher herself said after leaving office, “The US and Britain have together been the greatest alliance in the defence of liberty and justice that the world has ever known.”

Margaret Thatcher’s part in the fall of Russian Communism bridged her American and European policies. She wanted the Eastern European countries free and absorbed into the European Community. This would dilute French and German dominance of Europe and make more likely a community of independent national states. From 1980 to 1988, she visited Eastern Europe as often as she could — Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Poland. She was popular and was seen as the champion of the values they wanted — national determination, liberty, and the free market. She raised British prestige and gave the people of Eastern Europe hope.

The European Community

Her dealings with the European Community were a different matter. There was no meeting of minds with her European partners. The protectionist, bureaucratic structure was contrary to British tradition. The Foreign Office and the majority of her Cabinets were pro-Europe and believed in consensus. Margaret Thatcher didn’t, and in British interests managed to have the Common Agricultural Budget reduced and in 1980 handbagged the Commission into agreeing to a rebate for our contributions.

The price she paid was high. The economic recession in the late 1980s persuaded her into the single market. She saw it as beneficial for commerce and the extension of free trade. Her continental partners saw it not only as economic but political: the move to a single European state.

All three parties and the British public have moved their stance on Europe since 1970, when we first joined the Community. The present Conservative position of wanting to keep Sterling and against political integration fits the mood of the majority of the British people. The party should shout this loudly from the rooftops. It is a potential election winner. Europe however, was Margaret Thatcher’s nemesis. Perhaps it is fitting she was in Paris when her fate as Prime Minister was sealed.

A Remarkable Legacy

Margaret Thatcher was a conviction politician and left a remarkable legacy. Beware Mr. Blair: There is no third way. He has benefited from the sound economy he inherited. He also has the precious legacy of an electorate well-versed in monetarism during the 18 years of Conservative government. He has pledged to continue the fiscal policies for two years. They are now up, and the pressure is mounting within factions of his party for him to spend.

Significantly, the crude banners of a pressure group demonstrating outside the Labour Party conference last week read: “Stuff the market, tax the rich.” His continuation of the privatization policy is compromised by government private partnership. His rhetoric to keep the trade unions at arm’s length is already undermined by his actions. Privileges have already been introduced via the back door of the socialist-led European Community laws.

We should all remember that the three most successful Conservative leaders who won three successive elections were Lord Liverpool (early 19th century), Lord Salisbury (late 19th century), and Margaret Thatcher. They were all right-wing. They did not seek the center. When Margaret Thatcher was given the Winston Churchill Award by the U.S., the citation read: “Like Churchill she is known for her courage, conviction, determination and willpower. Like Churchill she thrives on adversity.” They were both loved and hated but left their mark.

— Sir Rhodes Boyson was one of the architects of the Thatcherite Revolution and served in several senior posts in the Thatcher government. He delivered these remarks at a meeting of The Heritage Foundation’s Windsor Society in Sea Island, Georgia, on October 3-6, 1999.

ECONOMIC LESSONS
Antonio Martino

What role did leadership play in making the last two decades of this century so radically different from the first eight decades? I shall argue that Margaret Thatcher’s and Ronald Reagan’s leadership has translated the revolution in economic thinking into actual policy changes.1 Also, by bringing those ideas out of the ivory tower and into the political arena, they have contributed in shifting the focus of political debate in a direction more favorable to a free society. If today’s political discourse is so radically different from what it has been for the greatest part of this century, this is certainly due to the intellectual giants that have prepared the revolution — Friedman, Hayek, Buchanan, Stigler, to name just a few — but also to a great extent to two world leaders — Reagan and Thatcher — who have allowed those ideas to be implemented and, by so doing, to be known to the masses.

An Epochal Change

It is gratifying to look back at the political climate which has prevailed for most of this century and compare it to the present one. The century that is coming to its end has been the century of the State, a century of dictators, the century of Hitler and Stalin, as well as the century of arbitrary government and of unprecedented intrusion of politics into our daily lives. It has produced the largest increase in the size of government in the history of mankind.2 Just to mention a single, but very significant, indicator: In 1900, the ratio of government spending to GDP in Italy was 10 percent; in the 1950s, 30 percent; and it is now roughly 60 percent. Similar considerations apply to most countries.

For the greatest part of the 20th century, the prevailing intellectual climate has been in favor of socialism in one form or another. The future of freedom, of a society based on voluntary cooperation, free markets, and the rule of law, appeared uncertain, to say the least.3 Many people had become convinced of the “inevitability of Socialism.”4 There is no need to insist on this point. We all remember how gloomy the political scenario was for freedom fighters until recently.

In the course of the 1970s, things started to change.5 Gradually, pessimism subsided and a new mood started to take hold. More and more people were expressing dissatisfaction with the old socialist prescriptions and indicating a preference for market mechanisms. Socialists of the old school became fewer and fewer. As a result, believers in a free society began to hope for the future of a liberal order.

A notable precursor of the change and a conspicuous exception to the then prevailing climate of pessimism was Arthur Seldon, co-founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. In a letter to The Times on August 6, 1980, he went as far as to predict: “China will go capitalist. Soviet Russia will not survive the century. Labour as we know it will never rule again. socialism is an irrelevance.” At that time, this view was regarded as preposterous, an eccentric example of English witticism. Ten years later, it seemed prophetic if not obvious.

What brought about this radical change? Why has political rhetoric, and at times even actual policy, changed so much?

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Margaret Thatcher (Part 2)

Margaret Thatcher (Part 2) Margaret Thatcher is one of my heroes and I have a three part series on her I am posting. “What We Can Learn from Margaret Thatcher,”By Sir Rhodes Boyson and Antonio Martino, Heritage Foundation, November 24, 1999, is an excellent article and here is a portion of it below: Foreign Policy […]

Margaret Thatcher (Part 1)

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

“Tim Tebow’s Fire” by John Parr

January 12, 2012 – 7:03 am

With almost 300,000 hits on youtube:

Uploaded by on Jan 9, 2012

John Parr has updated his 1985 #1 hit “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” to honor Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. Download song at http://www.johnparramerica.com. Lyrics here: http://bit.ly/xHZqvW.

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Bill Maher is the one who brought Hitler into this.

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

Christopher Hitchens’ debate with Douglas Wilson (Part 10)

January 12, 2012 – 12:59 am

Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson Debate at Westminster Theological Seminary, Part 10 of 12

Douglas Wilson

You refer to the faithful “creating a mystery where none exists.” May I get you to agree that the question “Why is there something here rather than nothing at all?” does not fall into that category? If you and I were standing on a little thought-experiment balcony watching either the moment when the cosmic boilers blew, giving us the Big Bang, or watching the first glorious creational response to God’s fiat lux, can we agree that at that moment Ockham’s razor would be of absolutely no use to either of us?

If Jesus had told a story about a black man stopping to help a beat-up white guy in Mississippi in the 1950’s, and you retold the story later with the merciful one now suitably white, I think it would be appropriate for me to point out the inversion, and that the story had been significantly changed and weakened. And when I said that the Good Samaritan fulfilled an ancient law, I did not say that obedience to this law was dormant during the intervening time. Of course it was not.

But neither was disobedience dormant, and Jesus was confronting a particular form of institutionalized disobedience—religious hypocrisy.

On the question of morality, you say that you are “simply reluctant” to say that if religious faith falls, then the undergirding decency must fall also. But your behavior goes far beyond a mere “reluctance to concede.” Your book and your installments in this debate thus far are filled with fierce denunciations of various manifestations of immorality. You are playing Savonarola here, and I simply want to know the basis of your florid denunciations. You preach like some hot gospeler—with a floppy leather-bound book and all. I know the book is not the Bible and so all I want to know is what book it is, and why it has anything to do with me. Why should anyone listen to your jeremiads against weirdbeards in the Middle East or fundamentalist Baptists from Virginia like Falwell? On your terms, you are just a random collection of protoplasm, noisier than most, but no more authoritative than any—which is to say, not at all.

You say that I need to admit that a “good person can be born” who can’t get his mind around what I am saying about Jesus. But my initial claim has been far more modest. I am simply saying that a good person needs to be able, at a minimum, to define what goodness is and tell us what the basis for it is. Your handwaving—”ordinary morality  is innate”—does not even begin to meet the standard.

There are three insurmountable problems for you here. The first is that innate is not a synonym for authoritative. Why does anyone have to obey any particular prompting from within? And which internal prompting is in charge of sorting out all the other competing promptings? Why?

Second, the tangled skein of innate and conflicting moralities found within the billions of humans alive today also has to be sorted out and systematized. Why do you get to do it and then come around and tell us how we must behave? Who died and left you king? And third, according to you, this innate morality of ours is found in a creature (mankind) that is a distant blood cousin of various bacteria, aquatic mammals, and colorful birds in the jungle. Your entire worldview has evolution as a key foundation stone, and evolution means nothing if not change. You believe that virtually every species has morphed out of another one. And when we change, as we must, all our innate morality changes with us, right? We have distant cousins where the mothers ate their young. Was that innate for them? Did they evolve out of it because it was evil for them to be doing that?

Now this is how all this relates to the assigned topic of our debate. We are asking if Christianity is good for the world. As a Christian discussing this with an atheist, I have sought to show in the first place that atheism has nothing whatever to say about this topic—one way or the other. If Christianity is bad for the world, atheists can’t consistently point this out, having no fixed way of

defining “bad.” If Christianity is good for the world, atheists should not be asked about it either because they have no way of defining “good.” Think of it as spiking your guns—so that I can talk about Jesus. And I want to do that because he is good for the world.

Jesus Christ is good for the world because he came as the life of the world. You point out, rightly, that loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is impossible for us, completely out of our reach.

But you take this inability as a state of nature (which the commandment offends), while the Christian takes it as a state of death (which life offers to transform). Our complete inability to do what is right does not erase our obligation to do what is right. This is why the Bible describes the unbeliever as a slave to sin or one who is in a state of death. The point of each illustration is the utter and complete inability to do right. We were dead in our  transgressions and sins, the apostle Paul tells us. So the death and resurrection of Christ are not presented by the gospel as medicine for everyone in the hospital, but rather as resurrection life in a cemetery.

The way of the world is to abide in an ongoing state of death—when it comes to selfishness, grasping, treachery, lust, hypocrisy, pride, and insolence, we consistently run a surplus. But in the death of Jesus that way of death was gloriously put to death. This is why Jesus said that when he was lifted up on the cross, he would draw all men to himself. In the kindness of God, the Cross is an object of inexorable fascination to us. When men and women look to him in his death, they come to life in his resurrection. And that is good for the world.

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Christopher Hitchens – Against Abortion Uploaded by BritishNeoCon on Dec 2, 2010 An issue Christopher doesn’t seem to have addressed much in his life. He doesn’t explicitly say that he is against abortion in this segment, but that he does believe that the ‘unborn child’ is a real concept. ___________________________ I was suprised when I […]

Christopher Hitchens discusses Ron Paul in 3-2-11 inteview

Max Brantley in the Arkansas Times Blog reports that Ron Paul is leading in Iowa. Maybe it is time to take a closer look at his views. In the above clip you will see Chistopher Hitchens discuss Ron Paul’s views. In the clip below you will find Ron Paul’s latest commercial. Below is a short […]

Evangelicals react to Christopher Hitchens’ death plus video clips of Hitchens debate (part 3)

DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 07 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death:   Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust   DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 08 Author and […]

Evangelicals react to Christopher Hitchens’ death plus video clips of Hitchens debate (part 2)

DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 04 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 05 Author and speaker Christopher […]

Evangelicals react to Christopher Hitchens’ death plus video clips of Hitchens debate (part 1)

DEBATE William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens Does God Exist 01 Below are some reactions of evangelical leaders to the news of Christopher Hitchens’ death: Christian leaders react to Hitchens’ death Posted on Dec 16, 2011 | by Michael Foust Author and speaker Christopher Hitchens, a leader of an aggressive form of atheism that eventually […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events | Comments (0)

Margaret Thatcher (Part 1)

January 11, 2012 – 3:57 pm

Margaret Thatcher (Part 1)

Margaret Thatcher is one of my heroes and I have a three part series on her I am posting. “What We Can Learn from Margaret Thatcher,”By Sir Rhodes Boyson and Antonio Martino, Heritage Foundation, November 24, 1999, is an excellent article and here is a portion of it below:

Margaret Thatcher has her place in world as well as British history. Her very name is used to denote a way of thinking: Thatcherism. She herself was not an original thinker, and on her resignation the editor of the Daily Telegraph described Thatcherism as a powerful collection of beliefs about the capacities of human beings in a political society. The ideas were not new but were put into operation by a very remarkable woman. It was the happy coincidence of the right person, in the right place, at the right time.

When she became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, Britain was on the brink of disaster, threatened by total collapse. The weak Labour government with a small majority presided over a bankrupt economy in hock to the IMF and threatened from within by a challenge to law and order itself. When she was forced from power in 1990, she left a sound economy and a confident and well-ordered society. The lessons are writ large.

The achievement was remarkable, starting with the fact of being the only woman Prime Minister in British history — something America has yet to emulate. She enjoyed 11 and a half years in office, longer than any other 20th century politician (in fact, the longest since Lord Liverpool in the 19th century). She won three successive general elections, two of them being landslide majorities, and lost none. The secret of her success lies in a combination of qualities, which both saw her into leadership and were the essence of her period in power:

  • Courage to see an opportunity and take it.
  • Decisiveness in times of crisis.
  • Clear beliefs held with an evangelical zeal. During the 1979 election, she ridiculed the Socialist Prime Minister Callaghan saying, “The Old Testament prophets did not say `Brothers, I want a consensus.’ They said, `This is my faith; this is what I passionately believe; if you believe it too, then come with me.'” Her crusading qualities were embedded in her Methodist background, which gave a moral purpose to all she did.
  • Physical strength. She needed little sleep and would certainly have been killed by the IRA bomb in Brighton if she had not been working on her conference speech at 2:00 a.m.
  • Intellectual capacity. She entered Oxford at 17 reading chemistry.

She was a slight, pretty, feminine woman in a man’s world. She turned what could have been a disadvantage into a useful weapon, and she had luck.

Domestic Policy

Monetarism underpinned all Margaret Thatcher’s policies. The beliefs were clear and are still what a free country needs to prosper. The aims were clear: to reduce the power of government, to reduce taxation and thereby promote private enterprise and individual rights, to give incentives to businessmen and encourage competition. Margaret Thatcher believed that these aims would produce economic and fiscal benefits for the people and enable her to use the political process to further the free society in all its aspects.

The economic lessons of these beliefs are going to be dealt with by Antonio Martino. In this he is fortunate, for monetarism and the free market are what most excited Margaret Thatcher. Suffice for me to say that what Thatcher pledged in her manifestos was delivered. She used simple imagery that everyone could understand. She was the grocer’s daughter, the housekeeper of the nation who would balance the budget and the nation would only spend what it could afford.

It was only after 1987 when Chancellor Lawson shadowed the deutsche mark and Britain entered the ERM that the Conservatives learnt you cannot buck the market. The price was failure in 1997. But it is important to remember that at no point did the public lose faith in the free market which Margaret Thatcher did so much to encourage. The opposition have adopted this policy, and the last election was fought partly on the basis of who could best implement that policy — a key part of Thatcher’s legacy.

The monetary reforms of Margaret Thatcher were paralleled by moves to curb the power of the trade unions in Britain. Just as the Conservative Party already had taken up free market ideas in its manifesto for the 1970 election, so the intention to work with the trade unions was not entirely new. The Labour Party under Harold Wilson had introduced legislation “in place of strife,” and when it failed, the floodgates of intransigence were opened.

Callaghan (himself a trade unionist) had tried to build a social contract between the Labour government and the trade unions. When consensus patently failed, in the winter of discontent of 1979, it left the field open for Margaret Thatcher. The time was ripe, but she made the difference. She had a will of iron and stood firm against a barrage of strikes and intimidation, until between 1982 and 1988 the unions were brought step by step within the law. After the final confrontation with the steel and coal industries, the proper balance between employer and workforce was restored. Men no longer had to join a trade union, and this, combined with the program of privatizing nationalized industries, resulted in a reduction of union membership from 13 million in 1979 to 8 million in 1996.

The defeat of the trade unions, together with privatization, represented one of Margaret Thatcher’s greatest successes. The effect was to bring large sections of the working class within the Conservative fold. She had extended to them what had been regarded as middle-class ideals and had, through privatization, created popular capitalism and the beginnings of a shareholding democracy.

When Margaret Thatcher took office, there were 3 million private shareholders; when she left, there were almost 11 and a half million. The tabloid newspapers latched onto this and joined their broadsheet cousins in publishing alongside the racing columns share market information and news. The popularity of privatization increased as each industry was floated on the stock exchange. When the gas industry was launched, the shares were oversubscribed by 500 percent.

Working people were given a further stake in society by the sale of locally subsidized housing, in which many of them lived. They were sold to tenants at knockdown prices, and between 1979 and 1989 owner occupation increased from 55 to 63 percent. Despite the setback of the recession of the early 1990s, the ambition of most of the electorate remained to own their own home.

As Margaret Thatcher drew the wider electorate into her beliefs, it should be remembered that she had originally had to fight all the way within her own party. Unlike an American President, who takes with him his whole machine, Margaret Thatcher was an outsider who inherited a Cabinet and party machine, both of which were consensual in attitude. This applied even more so to the civil service, which for 15 of the previous 19 years had been under socialist direction.

She used similar tactics to turn round all three to her way of thinking. She bypassed them until she had the members she wanted. She used subcommittees instead of full Cabinet to ensure her policies. She used outside think tanks: the Institute of Economic Affairs, which had given her the early tutelage in monetarism, and the Centre for Policy Studies, founded by her guru, Sir Keith Joseph. Like Heritage in America, they created the intellectual ideas for she and her followers to implement. She brought in outside advisers: academics like Alan Walters and Terry Burns and successful businessmen like Sir John Hoskins (computer magnate), Derek Rayner (M&S), and Sir Robin Ibbs.

The need to cut bureaucracy and public spending was tackled from the outset, and between 1979 and 1987 the number of civil servants was reduced by 22.5 percent (732,000 to 567,000). The truly radical changes were introduced between 1987 to 1990, inspired by Sir Robin Ibbs. Only a small core of advisers was to be retained to run government machinery, and most civil servants would work for new executive agencies, attached to ministries. Precise targets were to be set and held to. Although the reforms were properly effected after Margaret Thatcher had left office, she had changed the culture of the machinery of government.

It was more difficult to bring about cost cutting and reform in local government and the welfare services of health, social security, and education. The welfare needs were seen by the electorate as free and of right. It is difficult to take a bone away from a dog, and the early years of her premiership were taken up by more pressing matters.

Cost-cutting measures were undertaken in all the services, but despite cash limits being imposed, overall spending rose. (For example, in health, from 1980 to 1987 it increased by 60 percent). In education, my voucher scheme was turned down by
Cabinet, and only minor changes were introduced.

In local government, cost cutting had perverse repercussions. The spendthrift city authorities controlled by the extreme left were rate-capped and the worst of them all, the Greater London Council, abolished. Unfortunately, it allowed Councillors to blame government for shortfall in services and increased centralized control, which reduced freedom.

Margaret Thatcher’s populist instinct had made her more cautious in these areas, but after the election success of 1987, when she saw her monetary policies threatened by runaway costs, she introduced dramatic reform in all these areas. Again they were not properly implemented until she had been forced from office.

The changes that had been undertaken were to prove part of her undoing. The poll tax, which was an individual tax which replaced a property tax, was so unpopular it had to be withdrawn. The health and social security changes frightened the electorate and led to the debacle of 1997. In education, the setting up of grant-maintained schools to bring power and responsibility to individual schools as against the local authority was overturned by the present government.

There is a lesson in all this: Always tackle the controversial or unpopular measures at the beginning of an administration. Margaret Thatcher thought she was doing this after her great election success in 1987. She could not have foreseen she would have been forced out of office in three years. It was not that the ideas were wrong; the think tanks had provided mechanisms to introduce market principles. In these areas, however, only a few politicians had been willing to preach their virtues. Their time is yet to come, the message must still be reiterated.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

Does the movie “Iron Lady” do Margaret Thatcher justice?

January 11, 2012 – 3:46 pm

Unfortunately Hollywood has their own agenda many times. Great article from the Heritage Foundation.

Morning Bell: The Real ‘Iron Lady’

Theodore Bromund

January 11, 2012 at 9:24 am

Streep referred to the challenge of portraying Lady Thatcher as “daunting and exciting,” and as requiring “as much zeal, fervour and attention to detail as the real Lady Thatcher possesses.” Her performance has already been widely praised by critics, but for those who respect Lady Thatcher, not all the omens are positive.

In an interview with The New York Times, Streep compared Lady Thatcher to King Lear and commented that what interested her about the role “was the part of someone who does monstrous things maybe, or misguided things. Where do they come from?” That doesn’t sound good.

Conservatives are used to unfair treatment from Hollywood–in fact, we’ve come to expect it–but we’ll withhold judgment on the film until we’ve actually seen it. Dr. Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, former foreign policy researcher to Lady Thatcher, and a regular commentator on films for Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, will review The Iron Lady for The Foundry next week.

But whether the film is good, bad, indifferent, or just misguided, you don’t have to rely on Hollywood for your history. The real Lady Thatcher, patron of The Heritage Foundation, has a record that stands on its own, and she would want–she would demand–nothing more than to be judged by her own deeds and words.

That’s why, throughout this week and next, we will highlight some of Lady Thatcher’s greatest speeches, from her 1983 reminder to Britain’s Conservative Party that “there is no such thing as public money” to her staunch support for the sovereign, democratic nation-state in 1988 to her eulogy in 2004 for her friend, the late President Ronald Reagan.

If you want more, it’s easy to find. The Margaret Thatcher Foundation offers free online access to thousands of historical documents–speeches, official government documents, commentary, and much more–covering Lady Thatcher’s entire career, including more than 8,000 statements by Lady Thatcher herself.

Any conservative, any friend of liberty, indeed anyone with an interest in the history of the 20th century will find much here to treasure. If The Iron Lady does less than justice to the reality of Lady Thatcher’s life, it won’t be because her record is hidden. On the contrary: it’s there for all to read.

We at Heritage are honored to have a close association not only with Lady Thatcher but with many of her friends and advisers. Dr. Robin Harris, Lady Thatcher’s biographer and her main policy adviser, is a senior visiting fellow at Heritage. For him, her outstanding achievement was rejecting the belief that the job of the British government was to manage Britain’s continued decline in an orderly way. That is a lesson that President Obama, with his new-look defense strategy that sacrifices capabilities in pursuit of another ‘peace dividend,’ should take to heart.

No blog could adequately summarize Lady Thatcher’s achievements, from her rise as one of Britain’s first female MPs to Number 10 Downing Street, from her decisive rejection of socialism to her victory in the Falklands War, from her firm comradeship with the United States to her steadily deepening concerns about the anti-democratic, supranational impulse behind the European Union. Like the life of one of her heroes, Winston Churchill, her career was unlikely, remarkable, and a mirror of the larger course of the West.

Similarly, no one who reads her speeches, or the official documents that are now steadily being released can fail to recognize her intelligence, her determination, and her incredible appetite for hard work and her desire to get onto the next challenge. But what is most inspiring in Lady Thatcher’s life and work is her willingness to make hard choices and to be clear about the value of making them. It wasn’t easy to reject the pervasive declinism of Britain in the 1970s. It required strength of mind and character to believe that Britain could and would do better.

Today, when politicians cut the defense budget, they promise it will make us stronger. When they borrow money to waste on make-work green-energy schemes, they say it will make us richer. When they impose new regulations, they tell us it is all about making us more free. Lady Thatcher believed in freedom, she faced the need for choices squarely, and she made them. Her opponents hated her for it, but their remedies were just more of the same, more of what had been tried past the point of destruction in Britain and around the world. They were condemned not just by Lady Thatcher’s stinging words but by the fact that they were failures.

We at The Heritage Foundation are honored to have Lady Margaret Thatcher as our patron. The verdict of Hollywood, whatever it may be, is passing. There will always be only one real Iron Lady.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Ronald Reagan | Comments (0)

Red Tails: What is the actual history?

January 11, 2012 – 12:36 pm

I love to learn through movies the history of our nation. Take a look at this article.

The Tuskegee Airmen Heritage - History & Legacy

Origins

Prior to the Tuskegee Airmen, no U.S. military pilots had been black. However, a series of legislative moves by the United States Congress in 1941 forced the Army Air Corps to form an all-black combat unit, much to the War Department’s chagrin. In an effort to eliminate the unit before it could begin, the War Department set up a system to accept only those with a level of flight experience or higher education that they expected would be hard to fill. This policy backfired when the Air Corps received numerous applications from men who qualified even under these restriction

s.

The U.S. Army Air Corps had established the Psychological Research Unit 1 at Maxwell Army Air Field, Alabama, and other units around the country for aviation cadet training, which included the identification, selection, education, and training of pilots, navigators and bombardiers Psychologists employed in these research studies and training programs used some of the first standardized tests to quantify IQ, dexterity and leadership qualities in order to select and train the right personnel for the right role (bombardier, pilot, navigator). The Air Corps determined that the same existing programs would be used for all units, including all-black units. At Tuskegee, this effort would continue with the selection and training of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Training

On March 19th, 1941, the 99th Pursuit Squadron (Pursuit being the pre-World War II descriptive for “Fighter”) was activated at Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois. Over 250 enlisted men were trained at Chanute in aircraft ground support trades. This small number of enlisted men was to become the core of other black squadrons forming at Tuskegee and Maxwell fields in Alabama.

In June 1941, the Tuskegee program officially began with formation of the 99th Fighter Squadron at the Tuskegee Institute, a highly regarded university founded by Booker T. Washington in Tuskegee, Alabama. The unit consisted of an entire service arm, including ground crew. After basic training at Moton Field, they were moved to the nearby Tuskegee Army Air Field about 16 km (ten miles) to the west for conversion training onto operational types. The Airmen were placed under the command of Capt. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., one of the few African American West Point graduates. His father Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. was the first black general in the U.S. Army.

During its training, the 99th Fighter Squadron was commanded by white and Puerto Rican officers, beginning with Capt. George “Spanky” Roberts. By 1942, however, it was Col. Frederick Kimble who oversaw operations at the Tuskegee airfield. Kimble maintained segregation on the field in deference to local customs; a policy the airmen resented. Later that year, the Air Corps replaced Kimble with Maj. Noel Parrish. Parrish, counter to the prevalent racism of the day, was fair and open-minded, and petitioned Washington to allow the Tuskegee Airmen to serve in combat.

In response, a hearing was convened before the House Armed Services Committee to determine whether the Tuskegee Airmen “experiment” should be allowed to continue. The committee accused the Airmen of being incompetent —- based on the fact that they had not seen any combat in the entire time the “experiment” had been underway. To bolster the recommendation to scrap the project, a member of the committee commissioned and then submitted into evidence a “scientific” report by the University of Texas which purported to prove that Negroes were of low intelligence and incapable of handling complex situations (such as air combat). The majority of the Committee, however, decided in the Airmen’s favor, and the 99th Pursuit Squadron soon joined two new squadrons out of Tuskegee to form the all-black 332nd Fighter Group.

 

Combat

The 99th was ready for combat duty during some of the Allies’ earliest actions in the North African

Campaign, and was transported to Cassablaca, Morocco, on the USS Mariposa From there, they traveled by train to Oujda near Fes and made their way to Tunis to operate against the Luftwaffe. The flyers and ground crew were largely isolated by racial segregation practices, and left with little guidance from battle-experienced pilots. Operating directly under the 12th Air Force and the XII Air Support Command, the 99th FS and the Tuskegee Airmen were bounced around between three groups, the 33rd FG, 324th FG, and 79th FG. The 99th’s first combat mission was to attack the small but strategic volcanic island of Pantellaria in the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and Tunisia in preparation for the Allied Invasion of Sicily in July 1943 The 99th moved to Sicily while attached to the 33rd Fighter Group, whose commander, Col. William W. Momye, fully involved the squadron, and the 99th received a Distinguished Unit Citation for its performance in Sicily.

The Tuskegee Airmen were initially equipped with P-40 Warhawks briefly with P-39 Aircobras (March 1944), later with P-47 Thunderbolts (June-July 1944), and finally with the airplane that they would become most identified with, the P-51 Mustang (July 1944).

On January 27th and 28th 1944 German Fw190 fighter-bombers raided Anzio where the Allies had conducted amphibious landings on January 22nd. Attached to the 79th Fighter Group, eleven of the 99th Fighter Squadron’s pilots shot down enemy fighters, including Capt. Charles B. Hall, who shot down two, bringing his aerial victory total to three. The eight fighter squadrons defending Anzio together shot down a total of 32 German aircraft, and the 99th had the highest score among them with 13.

The squadron won its second Distinguished Unit Citation on May 12-14, 1944, while attached to the 324th Fighter Group, attacking German positions on Monastery Hill (Monte Cassino), attacking infantry massing on the hill for a counterattack, and bombing a nearby strong point to force the surrender of the German garrison to Moroccan Goumiers.

By this point, more graduates were ready for combat, and the all-black 332nd Fighter Group had been sent overseas with three fighter squadrons: the 100th, 301st and 302nd Under the command of Col. Benjamin O. Davis, the squadrons were moved to mainland Italy, where the 99th FS, assigned to the group on May 1st, joining them on June 5th The Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group escorted bombing raids into Austria, Hungary, Poland and Germany.

Flying escort for heavy bombers, the 332nd racked up an impressive combat record. Reportedly, the Luftwaffe awarded the Airmen the nickname, “Schwarze Vogelmenschen,” or “Black Birdmen.” The Allies called the Airmen “Redtails” or “Redtail Angels,” because of the distinctive crimson paint on the vertical stabilizers of the unit’s aircraft. Although bomber groups would request Redtail escort when possible, few bomber crew members knew at the time that the Redtails were black.

A B-25 bomb group, the 477th Bombardment Group, was forming in the U.S. but completed its training too late to see action. The 99th Fighter Squadron after its return to the United States became part of the 477th, redesignated the 477th Composite Group.

By the end of the war, the Tuskegee Airmen were credited with 109 Luftwaffe a

ircraft shot down, a patrol boat run aground by machine-gun fire, and destruction of numerous fuel dumps, trucks and trains. The squadrons of the 332nd FG flew more than 15,000 sorties on 1,500 missions. The unit received recognition through official channels and was awarded a Distinguished Unit Citation for a mission flown March 24th, 1945, escorting B-17s to bomb the Daimler-Benz tank factory at Berlin, Germany, an action in which its pilots destroyed three Me-262 jets in aerial combat. The 99th Fighter Squadron in addition received two DUCs, the second after its assignment to the 332nd FG. The Tuskegee Airmen were awarded several Silver Stars, 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 14 Bronze Stars and 744 Air Medals

In all, 992 pilots were trained in Tuskegee from 1940 to 1946; about 445 deployed overseas, and 150 Airmen lost their lives in training or combat.

 

Postwar

Far from failing as originally expected, a combination of pre-war experience and the personal drive of those accepted for training had resulted in some of the best pilots in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Nevertheless, the Tuskegee Airmen continued to have to fight racism. Their combat record did much to quiet those directly involved with the group (notably bomber crews who often requested them for escort), but other units were less than interested and continued to harass the Airmen.

All of these events appear to have simply stiffened the Airmen’s resolve to fight for their own rights in the US. After the war, the Tuskegee Airmen once again found themselves isolated. In 1949 the 332nd entered the yearly gunnery competition and won. After segregation in the military was ended in 1948 by President Harry S. Truman with Executive Order 9981, the Tuskegee Airmen now found themselves in high demand throughout the newly formed United States Air Force.

Many of the surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen annually participate in the Tuskegee Airmen Convention, which is hosted by Tuskegee Airmen, Inc,

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

A man of pro-life convictions: Bernard Nathanson (part 1)

January 11, 2012 – 12:19 pm

This is such a great video series “The Silent Scream.” I have never seen it until now and I wish I had seen it 30 years ago.  Take a look at the video clip below.

I wanted to pass along a portion of the excellent article “Bernard Nathanson: A Life Transformed by the Truth about Abortion.” (Feb 11, 2011)

LifeNews.com Note: Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and previously served on the United States Commission on Civil Rights. This article previously appeared in Public Discourse:

In the mid-1960s, with the sexual revolution roaring after Alfred Kinsey’s fraudulent but influential “scientific” studies of sex and sexuality in America, Hugh Hefner’s aggressive campaign to legitimize pornography and, perhaps above all, the wide distribution of the anovulant birth control pill, Nathanson became a leader in the movement to overturn laws prohibiting abortion. He co-founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), which later became the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and is now NARAL Pro-Choice America. Its goal was to remove the cultural stigma on abortion, eliminate all meaningful legal restraints on it, and make it as widely available as possible across the nation and, indeed, the globe.

To achieve these goals, Nathanson would later reveal, he and fellow abortion crusaders pursued dubious and in some cases straightforwardly dishonest strategies.

First, they promoted the idea that abortion is a medical issue, not a moral one. This required persuading people of the rather obvious falsehood that a normal pregnancy is a natural and healthy condition if the mother wants her baby, and a disease if she does not. The point of medicine, to maintain and restore health, had to be recast as giving health care consumers what they happen to want; and the Hippocratic Oath’s explicit prohibition of abortion had to be removed. In the end, Nathanson and his collaborators succeeded in selling this propaganda to a small but extraordinarily powerful group of men: in the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade,seven Supreme Court justices led by Harry Blackmun, former counsel to the American Medical Association, invalidated virtually all state laws providing meaningful protection for unborn children on the ground that abortion is a “private choice” to be made by women and their doctors.

Second, Nathanson and his friends lied–relentlessly and spectacularly–about the number of women who died each year from illegal abortions. Their pitch to voters, lawmakers, and judges was that women are going to seek abortion in roughly equal numbers whether it is lawful or not. The only effect of outlawing it, they claimed, is to limit pregnant women to unqualified and often uncaring practitioners, “back alley butchers.” So, Nathanson and others insisted, laws against abortion are worse than futile: they do not save fetal lives; they only cost women’s lives.

Now some women did die from unlawful abortions, though factors other than legalization, especially the development of antibiotics such as penicillin, are mainly responsible for reducing the rate and number of maternal deaths. And of course, the number of unborn babies whose lives were taken shot up dramatically after Nathanson and his colleagues achieved their goals; and they achieved them, in part, by claiming that the number of illegal abortions was more than ten times higher than it actually was.

Third, the early advocates of abortion deliberately exploited anti-Catholic animus among liberal elites and (in those days) many ordinary Protestants to depict opposition to abortion as a “religious dogma” that the Catholic hierarchy sought to impose on others in violation of their freedom and the separation of church and state. Nathanson and his friends recognized that their movement needed an enemy–a widely suspected institution that they could make the public face of their opposition; a minority, but one large and potent enough for its detractors to fear.

Despite the undeniable historical fact that prohibitions of abortion were rooted in English common law and reinforced and expanded by statutes enacted across the United States by overwhelmingly Protestant majorities in the 19th century, Nathanson and other abortion movement leaders decided that the Catholic Church was perfect for the role of freedom-smothering oppressor. Its male priesthood and authority structure would make it easy for them to depict the Church’s opposition to abortion as misogyny, for which concern to protect unborn babies was a mere pretext. The Church’s real motive, they insisted, was to restrict women’s freedom in order to hold them in positions of subservience.

Fourth, the abortion movement sought to appeal to conservatives and liberals alike by promoting feticide as a way of fighting poverty. Why are so many people poor? It’s because they have more children than they can afford to care for. What’s the solution? Abortion. Why do we have to spend so much money on welfare? It’s because poor, mainly minority, women are burdening the taxpayer with too many babies. The solution? Abortion. Initially, Nathanson himself believed that legal abortion and its public funding would reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing and poverty, though (as he later admitted) he continued to promote this falsehood after the sheer weight of evidence forced him to disbelieve it.

______________________________

Nathanson later in his life became a pro-life advocate.In 1985, Nathanson employed the new fetal imaging technology to produce a documentary film, “The Silent Scream,” which energized the pro-life movement and threw the pro-choice side onto the defensive by showing in graphic detail the killing of a twelve-week-old fetus in a suction abortion. Nathanson used the footage to describe the facts of fetal development and to make the case for the humanity and dignity of the child in the womb. At one point, viewers see the child draw back from the surgical instrument and open his mouth: “This,” Nathanson says in the narration, “is the silent scream of a child threatened imminently with extinction.”  

Publicity for “The Silent Scream” was provided by no less a figure than President Ronald Reagan, who showed the film in the White House and touted it in speeches.  

The Silent Scream part 2


By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Prolife | Comments (0)

Robert Jeffress interviewed by Bill Maher

January 11, 2012 – 12:14 pm

Dr. Robert Jeffress a Featured Guest on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” (10/14/11)

Uploaded by on Oct 15, 2011

Dr. Robert Jeffress was a featured guest on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday night, October 14. The pastor talked with the controversial political satirist about the Protestant Reformation; being saved by faith, not works; Mormonism and why he’d vote for Mitt Romney instead of Barack Obama; the power of prayer; and the killing of terrorist Osama Bin Laden.

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Here is an interesting article:

jeffress.maher.screenshot

On Friday night's episode of Real Time, host Bill Maher commenced the show with an interview with Robert Jeffress, the infamous Rick Perry-supporting Baptist pastor who made headlines last week at the Values Voters Summit by calling Mormonism a "cult."

Jeffress said, “…Mormonism has never been a part of historical Christianity. It’s never been considered by that… They have their own set of doctrines, they have their own book of revelation, they came 1800 years after the church. I think Mormons are good, moral people but they’re not part of Christianity”

Historians have traced the beginning of the Baptist sect, of which Jeffress is a minister, to 1609.

Maher, a well-known atheist who starred in the documentary film Religulous, naturally agreed.

But, it was Jeffress’ comments on the Catholic Church and other doctrine that could rankle some more. Jeffress said, “We’re not saved by our good works, we’re saved by our faith alone” and,”there are some problems with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

Jeffress also stated that the parts of the Bible attributed to the Apostle Paul were just as important as the words of Jesus and that Karl Rove “has been after him with a meat cleaver” since he made controversial statements at the Values Voters Summit.

Watch the full interview below, originally uploaded by Mediaite on October 14, 2011.

Roxanne Cooper is the publisher of Raw Story. She has 20+ years experience in media management, marketing, and advertising and has held positions with AlterNet, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, LA Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Stars & Stripes. From 2004-2008, Roxanne published the popular political blog Rox Populi. She lives in San Francisco and you can follow her on Twitter at @AlterRox.
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)