Chapter 12 is titled To The Thanatoriums, an allusion the Walker Percy’s terrific book Thanatos.
Nathanson explains the reason for the acrimonious debate continuing still over abortion: It was decided by the courts and not through the public opinion in a public vote. Judges were legislating from the bench,
Like Dred Scott, Roe v. Wade…attempted to remove the abortion decision from politics and thus effectively radicalized the debate, discouraging compromise, political half-measures, or even edifying discussion. In particular it denied to pro-life forces the ordinary tools of politics…They were left with only two options, one largely illusory.
Politically, they could pursue a constitutional amendment banning abortion…But…in the absence of a national moral consensus on the issue, it is simply too large a step to be the first step. An America capable of passing a pro-life amendment would not need one; an America that needs one cannot possibly pass it. Emphasis mine. p. 178
Nathanson suggests another, [A]lternative that seemed open to pro-lifers was to wage a war of conscience, to educate, advocate, and nonviolently protest the horror until the nation was moved to reconsider. Meanwhile, if the protesters, advocates, educators, and pamphleteers could not move the nation at least they might save individual mothers and children from the monster. p. 178
“Resistance to the injustice [of abortion] may take many forms. Henry David Thoreau wrote the following in his monumental treatise “Civil Disobedience”:
The epochal change in public policy began as an intellectual revolution. This is not as obvious as it sounds. On the practical importance of their ideas, economists disagree. As is well-known, Keynes was very sanguine: “the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.”7 Alfred Marshall, his Economics teacher, on the other hand, was convinced that economists should preach unpopular truths:
Students of social sciences must fear popular approval, evil is with them when all men speak well of them…. It is almost impossible for a student to be a true patriot and to have the reputation of being one at the same time.8
This was also Hayek’s view, when he stressed that the economist “must not look for public approval or sympathy for his efforts”9 Finally, George J. Stigler was convinced that the practical relevance of the Economics profession’s intellectual output was minimal: “economists are subject to the coercion of the ruling ideologies of their times.”10
I tend to disagree with Stigler on this point.11 There is no doubt in my mind that “the Great U-turn” of our times has been initiated by a legendary revolution in economic thinking. From the perspective of the ideological confrontation, I am convinced that — thanks to the work of the great liberal scholars of this century — we live in one of the happiest times in the contemporary history of mankind. It seems to me that never before has the case for freedom been more thoroughly analyzed and better understood. Also, more people are aware of the importance of freedom on a theoretical level today than at any other time in the past 50 or 100 years.12
The “British Disease”
In the 1970s, Britain’s economy was in a sorry state: Many people were regularly referring to the “British disease.” This was not an exaggeration: “during the nineteenth century and the first three fifths of the twentieth century the United Kingdom remained ahead [in terms of output per head] of nearly all the main European countries.”13 “Since 1960, however, an absolute gap emerged…[and] by 1973 most European Economic Community countries were 30 to 40 per cent ahead of Britain.”14
Productivity was much lower than in continental Europe: According to studies by international corporations, at the end of the 1970s net output per head was over 50 percent higher in German and French plants than in corresponding plants in the United Kingdom.15 To top this all, Britain experienced rampant inflation — from 1972 to 1977, while the OECD price level rose by 60 percent, the British level rose by 120 percent — and high unemployment — by 1977, the British unemployment rate was 7 percent, or 2.5 percent above the OECD average.
This appalling record seemed paradoxical to the late Mancur Olson: “Britain has had more giants of economic thought than any other country,” and “[m]ost of the great early economists, and certainly men like David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, were classical liberals.” Their work had a definite impact on British public opinion: “classical liberalism was more popular in 19th-century Britain than…in most countries of continental Europe.” And yet, “Britain has suffered from the `British disease’ of slow growth.” He concluded: “[W]e need something besides the level of economic understanding to explain economic performance.”16
It seems to me that Olson makes a mistake in lumping together the British economic thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries with those of the 20th. First of all, while it is hard to dispute British supremacy in economic thought in the 18th and 19th centuries, I very much doubt that the same can be said of British economists in the 20th century. There have been notable exceptions, no doubt, but it seems to me that, compared to the previous centuries, the 20th century has been one of mediocrity as far as British economic thinkers are concerned.
Nor am I impressed by John Maynard Keynes — whom Olson quotes as evidence that British supremacy in economic theory continued in the 20th century — because his influence, in my view, has been disastrous. Britain and the world would have definitely been better off had Keynes devoted his tremendous intellectual powers to some other subject.
Finally, the majority of the Economics profession in Britain after Keynes’ death in 1946 has been notable for its mediocrity and its contempt for the free market: Let’s not forget the manifesto of 364 British economists against Mrs. Thatcher’s policies. Contrary to what Olson thought, the “British disease” was another example of the power of ideas, of wrong ideas: The anti-capitalistic consensus among British economists has undoubtedly contributed to Britain’s decline.17 In particular, let us see why Britain’s stagflation in the 1970s and her relative economic decline did not take place despite the influence of John Maynard Keynes, but because of it.
Keynesianism
Following Keynes’ teaching, British economists were convinced that inflation was the unavoidable price of economic growth and a cure for unemployment.18 They also believed that it was possible to reduce interest rates through monetary expansion and that the economy could be “fine tuned” in the short term, thus avoiding the ups and downs of the economic cycle. Furthermore, inflation was not considered a monetary phenomenon but the result of excessive increases in wages due to what Samuel Brittan calls “union pushfulness,” so that in order to combat inflation, one had to resort to wage and price controls, and come to terms with the unions, while at the same time pursuing expansionary monetary and fiscal policies to stimulate demand.
All of this sounds absurd today, and it certainly is, but it was the general Keynesian consensus at that time, shared by the Labour Party and to some extent also by the Tories. Everybody seemed to agree to the same Keynesian concoction: easy money, high taxation, deficit spending, and wage and price controls (incomes policy, as it was called in England).
Needless to add, all of these views have succumbed to the empirical evidence and the theoretical analyses of the last 30 years. The heroes of the counter-revolution are the great liberal thinkers I mentioned before: Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, etc. We now know that there is no evidence that economic growth inevitably involves price inflation.19 The idea that one can reduce unemployment through inflation is thoroughly discredited. Only an accelerating inflation could keep unemployment below its “natural rate,” but even that unappetizing possibility is dubious.20
Finally, as for the desirability of wage and price controls, we now know that the remedy was not only ineffective but also positively harmful.21 A side effect of these policies was that of making the problem of the excessive power of labor unions much worse. Britain in the 1970s confirmed the wisdom of Henry Simons who, in a famous 1944 article,22 had denounced the danger of labor unions:
labor monopolies…once established…enjoy an access to violence which is unparalleled in other monopolies…. Unions may deal with scabs in ways which make even Rockefeller’s early methods seem polite and legitimate. They have little to fear…from Congress or the courts.23
It may be argued that Simons, writing in the U.S. in the 1940s, was slightly too pessimistic. His analysis, however, describes perfectly the U.K. of the 1970s. Keynesianism had convinced the overwhelming majority of politicians of both parties that there was no alternative to a policy aimed at appeasing the unions, while at the same time following an expansionary demand policy, through easy money and budget deficits. Wrong ideas resulted in stagflation — slow growth, unemployment, and inflation — and a rapid growth of the size of government.
Ideas and Interests: The Case of Britain
To put it bluntly, by the 1970s Britain was a basket case. Many economists agree that the excessive power of labor unions was responsible for the sorry state of Britain’s economy.24 For example, according to Samuel Brittan:
[M]any of the particular perversities of British economic policy stem from the belief that inflation must be fought by regulation of specific pay settlements. To create a climate in which the unions will tolerate such intervention has been the object of much government activity. This has involved price controls, high marginal tax rates, and a special sensitivity to union leaders’ views on many aspects of policy. The post-1972 period of especially perverse intervention began, not with a change of government, but with the conversion of the Heath Conservative government to pay and price controls.25
Brittan is referring to the disastrous economic policies uniformly pursued by Conservative and Labour governments in Britain during the 1970s.26 In particular, the Conservative government to which Brittan is referring started with admirable intentions. In the Conservative manifesto for the 1970 election, one reads:
[W]e reject the detailed intervention of socialism, which usurps the function of management, and seeks to dictate prices and earnings in industry…. Our aim is to identify and remove obstacles that prevent effective competition and restrict initiative.27
These admirable intentions were not followed by equally commendable policies. In fact,
[T]he Conservative government of 1970-74 was the most corporatist of the post-war years. Its economic policies ended in disaster and the Conservative party lost two elections in succession. Not surprisingly, Mr. Heath lost the leadership of the party….28
According to Brittan, the excessive power of organized labor also influenced the tax code, with devastating consequences:
For most of the postwar period the real trouble has been…not average tax rates but the very high marginal rates of tax, both at the top and at the bottom of the income scale. The top marginal rates are not only higher than in other industrial countries, but reached at a much lower level of income. These are entirely political taxes. The revenue collected at the top is trivial in statistical terms; and the real effect is certainly to lower revenue…. As important…is the diversion of scarce energy and talent into trying to convert income into capital, or into benefits in kind not taxable at these rates.29
MCKENZIE: Ah, well, that’s not on our agenda actually. (Laughter)
VOICE OFF SCREEN: Why not?
MCKENZIE: I boldly repeat the question, though, the expectation having been __ having been raised in the public mind, can you reverse this process where government is expected to produce the happy result?
LEKACHMAN: Oh, no way. And it would be very foolish of the public which is on the whole more sensible than academic, to come to this conclusion. They look around them, what do they see? They see a whole collection of visible hands attached to EXXON, other large corporations. These are not small, independent competitors jostling with each other for the patronage of the public. These are large organizations, with substantial influence on their markets. Government’s interference, clumsy as it often is, is an almost unavoidable response to the very visible manipulations of large organizations.
FRIEDMAN: If there again, you’re an academic, we’re talking about fact in history. Now the history is that the growth of government has not been as a result of the things you’re pointing out. It isn’t the large corporations. It isn’t the large unions. It isn’t the technological development that has produced the major growth of government. The major growth of government in our time has come in the redistributive area. It’s come in the area of designing programs which take from some people and give to others. We’re not going to go into those here, because we discuss those in our next two programs which deal with exactly the question of whether the government intervention that was stimulated by The Great Depression has been a success or a failure. But to your point, the grounds that you give for greater government intervention have almost nothing whatsoever to do with the actual factual growth of government. Now at the end of the war, immediately after World War II, it was thought that government was going to get involved, especially in Britain, in France, in central economic planning on a large scale.
JAY: Partly because of the war experience, too, when government was very much involved.
FRIEDMAN: Partly.
MCKENZIE: In Germany and Japan as well.
FRIEDMAN: Germany and Japan as well, it was a war. It created a myth just as the, as The Great Depression created myth.
MCKENZIE: Or rather reinforced the myth of government responsibility.
FRIEDMAN: Yes, but it created a different myth. This is a subject we don’t discuss much in the film. We’ve discussed it in a book that we’re bringing out with the same title to go along with it but __ but the great, but the great myth that was created by the war, was the myth that government was inefficient. And it was.
MCKENZIE: We won the war.
FRIEDMAN: For wartime purposes in, at least in Britain and the United States. It wasn’t so inefficient in Germany and the losing countries. But why is that a myth? It was a myth because it is one thing for government to plan and to control an economy for a single overriding objective. One solitary objective __ win the war. It’s a very different thing for government to control the economy for the many numerous tastes of all us, of a very large number of people in a complex world. And I __ you ask the question of whether people’s opinions can be changed.
MCKENZIE: Yes.
FRIEDMAN: I can’t change their opinions. You can’t change their opinions, but experience is changing their opinions. Is there anybody, anywhere now who believes that government is an efficient way to run an industrial enterprise?
JAY: I think your question, can you get the genie back into the bottle, is a very important one. It is undoubtedly true that in democratic countries there will be a public urge expressed through the political process, for something to be done about anything that seems to be wrong. The one thing that inhibits that is the belief that it can’t be done. There is not politically expressed desire for the government to do something about the weather because it is widely believed that the government does not control the weather. It was widely believed under the gold standard and pre-Keynes that there was nothing the government could do about the kind of economic traits I call in depressions that we had before that time. Since then it is very widely believed, Milton may believe, I may believe wrongly, but nonetheless, it’s very widely believed that is now a manageable thing, and therefore the demand is expressed that unemployment should not rise too high, inflation should not rise too high, and so forth.
MCKENZIE: That we keep a war on want or a war on poverty.
JAY: If you believe, as Milton does, and on this issue I agree with him, that in fact government cannot handle this issue, and you want to get that genie back into the bottle, you can’t simply do it by authorities, or pundits, or academics, or others saying, “Here is a new rule. The government will do nothing. It will not intervene; it will not perform, but will just be a simple monetary rule.” You’ve got politically to persuade people that this is part of a system which they can understand, which will, in fact, deliver for them the minimal economic objectives that they have, which are basically high employment __ high employment and stability of prices, and one of two other things. Now in order to do that you’ve got to describe a political economic system which will in fact deliver that result. And they will not believe, and in my opinion they will rightfully not believe, that simply going back to where we were, or where we imagined that we were in 1930 or 1870, by withdrawing the government form the game and doing nothing else, will produce that result. And they’re right not to believe it.
TEMIN: The kind of pristine view that you appear to be putting up of no government isn’t really a consistent view because if you __
FRIEDMAN: I’m not putting up a view of no government. I’m putting up a view of a limited government. Limited __
TEMIN: Just how do you, how do you impose the limit?
FRIEDMAN: Note __ note that today the budget of HEW is one-and-a-half times the whole defense budget. That is not where the major growth of government has come. Whether we spend too little of too much on the military is very a arguable issue which I’m not competent to discuss.
TEMIN: Okay.
FRIEDMAN: But it is not the cutting edge of the dispute that we’re engaged in. That cutting edge is on all these other functions which government has increasingly taken on its shoulders.
TEMIN: Yes, but the question __
VON HOFFMAN: How do you get from here to there?
FRIEDMAN: By persuading people to do it, and by doing it gradually. You do not get it overnight. CAB was a very, very persuasive element on __ on getting rid of one branch of regulation. The failure of government to produce the full employment and the stable prices that was promised is another. You know what is __ who are we kidding? Is there anybody around any more who really believes that government knows how to prevent by its present methods inflation or unemployment? We’ve had increasing inflation. We’ve had increasing unemployment. Not only in the United States __
VON HOFFMAN: Well we __ we know that this government doesn’t __
VOICE OFF SCREEN: Wait, wait.
LEKACHMAN: It seems to me that we’re talking about at least four kinds of government intervention of different popularity among the public. One is redistributive __ via the Social Security System and so on __ and lots of that is popular. Welfare is unpopular, but Social Security is quite popular. Medicare has a mixed reputation, Medicaid a bad reputation. The redistributive system is a mixed bag from the public’s standpoint. Another kind of intervention deals with unemployment; a third kind deals with prices; and a fourth kind deals with regulation. Now, again, there is a cry about regulation which itself breaks down, it seems to me, into two parts: Partly a safety kind of thing, partly an economic kind of thing. I doubt that the public is prepared, for example, to eliminate the Food and Drug Administration.
FRIEDMAN: Take the way of trying to smooth out the business cycle.
LEKACHMAN: All right, now wait on that. I think that the record of doing this, in its clumsy way, Republicans, Democrats, assorted administrations in England and elsewhere, between 1945 and 1973 was quite good. Average unemployment during this considerable span of years was lower than had been probably in any previous spell of modern economic history. Inflation was not a persistent problem in this. Now I would say, putting the claim at a very modest one, that Keynesian intervention, if we use that as a label,
If you insist, I shall concede that the significance of the Samaritan lies in his ethnicity. It’s not a very impressive parable to begin with, though when I was taught it first in Sunday school, it was held up as an example of universal charity (with the added implication, not strange to us for some reason, that pious people are no more likely to behave with love and compassion than are others). Incidentally, what do we know about the ethnicity of the man who fell among thieves, or of the tribal character of those thieves if it comes to that? Surely you should be able to pronounce with authority on those details, too?
I agree that the origins of the cosmos are obscure—mysterious, if you like—to both of us. It’s still you who makes the mystery, though, by insisting that very recent developments on this tiny speck of a planet on the edge of a galaxy are what impart significance to the entire “Big Bang” or divine first cause. To ask what caused either is to invite, as you are aware, an infinite regression of questions about what caused either of those causes. In my book I cite the great [Pierre-Simon, Marquis de] LaPlace, who opened the modern era by saying that accounts of the cosmos and its workings were now complete, or incomplete, on their own terms. They did not require a “god.”
Belief in a deity has been optional ever since. Believe it if you choose, but be aware that it raises more questions than it answers (actually it doesn’t answer any important questions) and is thus highly vulnerable to Ockham’s trusty edge. Deists used to agree with you about a Creator but were not religious in that the assumption of such an entity did not license the further assumption that he or she desired to intervene in human affairs, let alone the assumption that the torture and death of a single individual in a backward part of the Middle East was the solution that we had been awaiting for tens of thousands of years of brutish Homo sapiens existence.
Apply something of the same reasoning to the origins of morality. I say that our “innate” predisposition to both good and wicked behavior is precisely what one would expect to find of a recently-evolved species that is (as we now know from the study of DNA) half a chromosome away from chimpanzees. By the way, do not take that as a denigration of humankind. Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on. As Darwin put it:
Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or nearly as well-developed, as in man.
We can now observe this to be the case. But animal and human “altruism” is contradicted by the way in which species are also designed to fight with, kill, dominate, and even consume each other. Humans are capable of even greater cruelty because only they have the imagination to inflict it. I do not think that this indicts the Creator who made them this way, because I long ago dispensed with the assumption that there is any such entity. Thus, it is you and not I who are left with the questions about God’s coexistence with evil. See where your talent for needless complexity has left you.
The fluctuations between social and anti-social conduct are fairly consistent across time and space: some societies have licensed cannibalism but they tend to die out, and others have licensed human sacrifice and infanticide (usually under the influence of some priesthood). But I answer your question by making the pragmatic observation that, if we surrendered to our lower instincts all the time, there would be no language in which to write this argument between us and no society in which we could find an audience. The struggle to assert what is positive in our human capacity—I don’t mind Lincoln’s metaphor of our “better angels” if you promise not to take it too
literally—is arduous enough. If I take myself, I find that I can derive pleasure from giving blood for free and also from contemplating the deaths of my clerical-fascist enemies in the ranks of Al Qaeda and even from the misfortunes of others who do not threaten me. I am sure you could give parallel examples of your own. But telling us that we are created sick and then ordered to be well is no help in clarifying this problem. And telling us that the solution to it only became available some two thousand years ago, according to some highly discrepant and selfcontradictory accounts, cannot strike me as anything but absurd. What on earth is proven— except your own vulnerability to making tautologous statements—by the claim that “Jesus Christ is good for the world because he came as the life of the world”? You cannot possibly “know” this. Nor can you present any evidence for it. And its corollary—that without Jesus we are abandoned to wickedness in all its forms—has the horrible implication that worthy actions are pointless unless accompanied by your own rather ill-grounded faith. As I say, believe it if it helps you. But do not insult the millions of people who have done the right thing without requiring any such supernatural authority. And do not tell me that I must be in love with death if I dissent from your view. That’s too much. Your Christianity, in case you have not noticed, has actually made you a less compassionate and thoughtful person than, without its exorbitant presumptions, you would otherwise be.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Dali and his surrealist friends provide the funniest scene of Woody Allen’s latest film “Midnight in Paris.” Here are links to what I have written about these gentlemen before:
Every year people get out and celebrate New Years Eve and they toast the arrival of the new year at MIDNIGHT and I am sure that a lot of babies are born about nine months later. That reminds me of one of my favorite Woody Allen movies MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. I know that you are a big Woody Allen fan so I wanted to discuss with you this movie.
Woody Allen believes that we live in a cold, violent and meaningless universe and it seems that his main character (Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson) in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS shares that view. Pender’s meeting with the Surrealists (Man Ray, Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel) is by far the best scene in the movie because they are ones who can understand his predicament concerning the absurdity of life UNDER THE SUN (as Solomon used to phrase it.) If we are here as a result of chance then what lasting purpose can be found? The Surrealists truly grasped the problem and it seems that Gil does too realize the full weight of the predicament.
In the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS the main character Gil Pender gives his book to Gertrude Stein and she commented to him:
Gil Pender realizes that it is difficult to come up with a meaning for life. At one point he tells Adriana concerning their mutual love of Paris:
You know, I sometimes think,”How’s anyone gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony or a sculpture that can compete with a great city?”You can’t, ’cause, like,you look around, every…every street, every boulevard is its own special art form.And when you think that in the cold,violent, meaningless universe,that Paris exists, these lights…I mean, come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune,but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafe’s, people drinking, and singing…I mean, for all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.-
This admiration of the city of Paris does not change Pender’s view that the universe brought to us by Darwinian chance plus time must be ultimately meaningless.
Let’s see what King Solomon had to say about that. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 9:11-13 “I have seen something else UNDER THE SUN: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.”
WHY IS SOLOMON CAUGHT IN DESPAIR IN THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES? Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘UNDER THE SUN.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.” THIS IS EXACT POINT SCHAEFFER SAYS SECULAR ARTISTS ARE PAINTING FROM TODAY BECAUSE THEY BELIEVED ARE A RESULT OF MINDLESS CHANCE.
By the way, the final chapter of Ecclesiastes finishes with Solomon emphasizing that serving God is the only proper response of man. Solomon LOOKS ABOVE THE SUN AND BRINGS GOD BACK INTO THE PICTURE in the final chapter of the book in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, “ Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
WITHOUT GOD IN THE PICTURE WHERE DOES MODERN MAN TURN AND THE ANSWER IS YOU BRING CHANCE INTO YOUR ARTWORK!!! The SURREALISTS were the same men who started the “Dada Movement” and Francis Schaeffer noted concerning that movement:
Dada was started in Zurich and came along in modern art. Dada means nothing. The word “Dada” means rocking horse, but it was chosen by chance. The whole concept of Dada is everything means nothing. [In this materialistic mindset Chance and Time have determined the past, and they will determine the future according to Solomon in life UNDER THE SUN]… Dada carried to its logical conclusion the notion of all having come about by chance; the result was the final absurdity of everything, including humanity.
(Surrealists: Man Ray, Jean Arp, Yves Tanguy, André Breton; Tristan Tzara, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst and Rene Clevel, 1930.)
_________
Art attack … (l-r) tycoon Hefner, a Matisse and Lennon
Lennon picture: REX
___________
Henri Matisse, 1913, photograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn.jpg
__________
Estate of Daniel M. Stein
Henri Matisse (center) and Hans Purrmann (right) dining with Michael, Sarah, and Allan Stein at their apartment at 58 rue Madame, Paris, circa 1908. The paintings in the background, all by Matisse, are The Young Sailor I (far left); Pink Onions and Male Nude(left column); Fruit Trees in Blossom, Woman in a Kimono, Nude Reclining Woman, andNude before a Screen (center column);Madame Matisse in the Olive Grove, a sketch for Le Bonheur de Vivre, and Madame Matisse (The Green Line) (right column).
Notre-Dame Cathedral attracts 13 million visitors each year.
The first 4 minutes of the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen does the best job of capturing the sights of Paris. I have 40 posts concerning the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen. Below are the links to all of the posts.
President Obama’s stunning appointments of Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and of three more bureaucrats to the National Labor Relations Board has been described by many observers as a serious blow to the Constitution and the separation of powers.
One reason so many Americans entrusted Barack Obama with the presidency was his pledge to correct the prior administration’s tendency to push unilateral executive power beyond constitutional and customary limits.
Yet last week’s recess appointments of Richard Cordray as the first chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three new members to the President’s National Labor Relations Board—taken together with other aggressive and probably unconstitutional executive actions—suggest that this president lacks a proper respect for constitutional checks and balances.
The Obama administration has offered no considered legal defense for the recess appointments. It even appears that it got no opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel in advance of the action—a sure sign the administration understood it was on shaky legal ground.
It is hard to imagine a plausible constitutional basis for the appointments. The president has power to make recess appointments only when the Senate is in recess. Several years ago—under the leadership of Harry Reid and with the vote of then-Sen. Obama—the Senate adopted a practice of holding pro forma sessions every three days during its holidays with the expressed purpose of preventing President George W. Bush from making recess appointments during intrasession adjournments. This administration must think the rules made to hamstring President Bush do not apply to President Obama. But an essential bedrock of any functioning democratic republic is that the same rules apply regardless of who holds office.
It does not matter, constitutionally, that congressional Republicans have abused their authority by refusing to confirm qualified nominees—just as congressional Democrats did in the previous administration. Governance in a divided system is by nature frustrating. But the president cannot use unconstitutional means to combat political shenanigans. If the filibuster is a problem, the Senate majority has power to eliminate or weaken it, by an amendment to Senate Rule 22. They just need to be aware that the same rules will apply to them if and when they return to minority status and wish to use the filibuster to obstruct Republican appointments and policies.
AFP/Getty ImagesPresident Obama alongside Richard Cordray, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Jan. 4.
Moreover, in this case, two of the recess appointees to the National Labor Relations Board had just been nominated and sent to the Senate on Dec. 15—two days before the holiday. So it is simply not true that they were victims of Republican obstructionism, even if that mattered.
Some of the administration’s supporters have tried to argue that the pro forma sessions are a sham and thus that the Senate has been in recess since Dec. 17. Aside from the fact that these sessions are not, in fact, a sham—the Senate enacted the payroll tax holiday extension, President Obama’s leading legislative priority, on Dec. 23 during one of those pro forma sessions—the plain language of the Constitution precludes any such conclusion.
Article I, Section 5, Clause 4 requires the concurrence of the other house to any adjournment of more than three days. The Senate did not request, and the House did not agree to, any such adjournment. This means that the Senate was not in adjournment according to the Constitution (let alone in “recess,” which requires a longer break).
Others have argued that the president can make recess appointments during any adjournment, however brief, including the three days between pro forma sessions. That cannot be right, because it would allow the president free rein to avoid senatorial advice and consent, which is a major structural feature of the Constitution. He could, for example, make an appointment overnight, or during a lunch break. In a brief in the Supreme Court in 2004, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe dismissed as “absurd” any suggestion that a period of “a fortnight, or a weekend, or overnight” is a “recess” for purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause.
This is not the first time this administration has asserted unilateral executive power beyond past presidential practice and the seeming letter of the Constitution. Its slender justification for going to war in Libya without a congressional declaration persuaded almost no one, and its evasion of the reporting requirements of the War Powers Resolution—over the legal objections of Justice Department lawyers—was even more brazen. According to the administration, not only was our involvement in Libya not a “war” for constitutional purposes; it did not even amount to “hostilities” that trigger a reporting requirement and a 60-day deadline for congressional authorization.
Indeed, the Obama administration has admitted to a strategy of governing by executive order when it cannot prevail through proper legislative channels. Rather than work with Congress to get reasonable changes to President Bush’s No Child Left Behind education law, it has used an aggressive interpretation of its waiver authority to substitute the president’s favored policies for the law passed by Congress. When the president’s preferred cap-and-trade legislation to limit carbon emissions failed in Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would proceed by regulation instead. And when Congress refused to enact “card check” legislation doing away with secret ballots in union elections, the president’s National Labor Relations Board announced plans to impose the change by administrative fiat—one of the reasons Senate Republicans have tried to block appointments.
The English philosopher John Locke, who so influenced our Founding Fathers, wrote that a “good prince” is more dangerous than a bad one because the people are less vigilant to protect against the aggrandizement of power when they perceive the ruler as beneficent.
I fear many Democrats are falling into this trap. They like President Obama and his policies, and they are willing to look the other way when it comes to constitutional niceties. The problem is that checks and balances are important, precedents created by one administration will be exploited by the next, and not all princes are good.
Mr. McConnell, a former federal judge, is a professor of law and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
It’s official: Everyone on the planet has an opinion on Tim Tebow. By now we’ve heard from everyone from Rick Perry to Bill Maher to the folks at Saturday Night Live. And of course those opinions result in even more opinions, so much so that Tim Tebow the human being is almost irrelevant next to Tim Tebow the idea. What Tebow represents can be almost anything to anyone, but the person we’re all talking about has faded away.
And that brings us to the atheist community.
They are certainly in the minority on Tim Tebow. In a recent nationwide poll, 43 percent of those who knew of Tebow said they believed divine intervention was at least partly responsible for his success. Atheists, obviously, disagree. They also dislike how Tebow is using his fame to promote Christianity. No surprise there.
But what is surprising is that one leading atheist makes an argument against Tebow that also serves as a roundabout defense of Tebow. And to illustrate that point, we begin with the president of American Atheists, Dave Silverman, Tebowing:
Silverman, 45, has added a clever twist to the fad. He is genuflecting like Tebow does when he prays, but he’s also mimicking Rodin’s The Thinker. This is a nod to the atheist or humanistic belief that it is man — not a higher power — who is purely in control of his fate. Silverman is Tebowing to his fellow man.
“The universe has a trillion stars,” he says. “Ninety five percent of it is dark matter. It’s hubris to think the Creator of all that wants the Broncos to win a football game.”
(Another atheist, Blair Scott, says if God wants Tebow to win, the quarterback would have a higher completion percentage. Scott, ironically, is a Saints fan.)
So Silverman calls Tebow a “victim” because of the quarterback’s belief that “he’s not doing it — God is doing it through him.” Therefore, according to Silverman, Tebow is “brainwashing himself.”
According to this line of reasoning, however, Tebow deserves more credit, not less. Silverman argues that the religious talk from and around Tebow is not only taking away from the performance of his Denver Broncos teammates, but also the quarterback’s own ability. From this perspective, the way Tebow has won games this season — through miraculous and seemingly predestined comebacks; what Chicago Bears general manager Jerry Angelo called “some divine intervention associated with what’s taking place” — undermines the true worth of Tebow the person.
He has a point. Tebow’s uniqueness is not in how frequently and openly he prays. Many athletes do that. And many quarterbacks lead amazing comebacks that strain reason and understanding. (Seen Matt Stafford this season?)
What Tebow does, better than just about any other quarterback, is approach danger. Embrace danger. Plenty of quarterbacks accept imminent danger, like Tom Brady waiting until the last possible moment to throw before getting decked. Plenty of quarterbacks deftly avoid danger, like Michael Vick.
Tebow seeks it. He plows right into the line, like a fullback, and he seems to cherish the role. In fact, he seems to miss doing it more. His rushes were unstoppable at Florida — so much so that his jump pass was a revelation because everyone in the stadium expected him to barrel into the end zone instead of leaping and tossing the ball to Aaron Hernandez or some other wide-open Gator.
The word “throwback” is used too often, but Tebow stands out in an era where quarterbacks are not to be touched and skill players are treated like china dolls. Some people shout that Tebow is beloved for his race, or for his religion, or even for his looks. Maybe so. But all those God-given — or DNA-given, depending on your perspective — factors can overshadow something he’s done on his own: train himself physically and mentally to seek and withstand some of the most terrifying physical contact known to man, the NFL gang-tackle.
ThePostGame brings you the most interesting sports stories on the web.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to read them first!
This is not to say other quarterbacks aren’t tough. Every NFL quarterback is tough. But the way Tebow plays is a special brand of tough, because he could easily shy away from brutality based on his name, his reputation, his income, or his position. Tebow does none of that.
Instead, Tebow displays that most human of attributes, the one at the core of pro football’s enduring appeal. Courage.
Is his courage bolstered by his faith? Probably so. Tebow would likely say the credit for his style of play goes to God, just like everything else. Fair enough.
But there is something distinctly human about a man’s willingness to risk pain. It’s been admirable as long as we’ve walked the Earth, really. Americans love football the most for the bravery and physicality of the players, and Tebow represents this well — even without a single mention of Jesus.
So although the atheists’ disdain for Tebow’s religiosity can be off-putting and offensive to people of faith, there’s something to their larger argument. When Marion Barber fumbles or when Matt Prater hits a long field goal, we all wonder (or joke or scoff) about divine intervention. Even Ravens defender Terrell Suggs ripped Tebow for needing God to bail him out. Is Jesus involved in the Broncos’ playoff run? That’s not for this site to discuss. But is Tebow involved in this improbable season-long journey? Absolutely. And that’s one thing everyone — Rick Perry and Bill Maher, believers and non-believers alike — can agree on. You don’t have to believe in God to believe in Tim Tebow.
Very interesting article below: The NFL bans eye-black messagers. Tebow’s numbers did the preaching on Sunday. (Lynn Sladky/AP) You ever feel like there’s too much Tim Tebow news? Neither do I. Here’s a roundup of some of the most interesting Timbits from the aftermath of the Denver Broncos 29-23 overtime victory over the Pittsburgh […]
For Barrett Jones is a Tim Tebow type of person and I am glad that people like Jones and Tebow are not ashamed of their Savior Jesus Christ. They don’t try to live two lives, one in church and one that is different in the lockerroom. Barrett Jones is the 2011 Outland Trophy winner […]
He did it again. Tebow does it again. It is simply amazing. With all the odds against him he comes through. I guess that will ruin Bill Maher’s jokes for the week. Can Tebow rally the team for another unlikely victory? The Steelers were 8 point favorites and I am sure the Patriots will be […]
Bill O’Reilly Interviews Jehmu Greene About Pro-Life Super Bowl Ad about Tim Tebow I got these quotes from someone off the internet that lives in England. The funny thing is the video is put to music and the song they picked won a grammy for an Arkansas band that lives in Little Rock. Here is […]
Arkansas Times Blogger who goes by the name “Elwood” remarked (The New Year line | Arkansas Blog ): I tuned in late to the KC v Denver Bronco game, just the last few minutes to see CBS giving adequate coverage to Tebow on his knees at his team’s bench in deep prayer. He seemed so isolated. Other […]
Tebow attacked by Bill Maher: Even in defeat, Tim Tebow creates controversy — this time in Tinseltown. HBO’s Bill Maher created a firestorm over the Christmas weekend with a scathing reaction to Tebow’s subpar performance in Buffalo. Shortly after Tebow threw four interceptions in the Broncos’ lopsided defeat to the Bills, Maher turned to […]
I really enjoyed this article and wanted to share it with you. Why We Love Tim Tebow posted by Linda Mintle | 7:33am Wednesday December 14, 2011 Yesterday I was asked to do a TV interview on Tim Tebow. This time the focus was positive. Tebow is very polarizing. People either love or hate him […]
Tim Tebow seems to win at everything he tries. The Good Book: Tim Tebow A No. 1 Author Monday, December 26, 2011 12:45 pm Written by: Ben Maller Sports experts go crazy debating whether Tim Tebow can win NFL games, but there’s no question he can win over readers. Tebow’s Christian life story, “Through My […]
I enjoyed this article below: 10 Reasons for Tim Tebow Hate posted by Linda Mintle | 7:25am Tuesday December 6, 2011 I walked in to a radio station focused on doing an interview totally unrelated to football and the producer starts ranting about how much he hates Tim Tebow. This was a day after Tebow […]
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.
Marco Rubio is one of your fellow citizens and he noted:
A balanced budget amendment would be a necessary step in reversing Washington’s tax-borrow-spend mantra. It would force Congress to balance its budget each year – not allow it to pass our problems on to the next generation any longer.
The Balanced Budget Amendment is the only thing I can think of that would force Washington to cut spending. We have only a handful of balanced budgets in the last 60 years, so obviously what we are doing is not working. We are passing along this debt to the next generation.
Thank you for this opportunity to share my ideas with you.
In my two short months in office, it has become clear to me that the spending problem in Washington is far worse than many of us feared. For years, politicians have blindly poured more and more borrowed money into ineffective government programs, leaving us with trillion dollar deficits and a crippling debt burden that threatens prosperity and economic growth.
In the Florida House of Representatives, where a balanced budget is a requirement, we had to make the tough choices to cut spending where necessary because it was required by state law. By no means was this an easy process, but it was our duty as elected officials to be accountable to our constituents and to future generations of Floridians. In Washington, a balanced budget amendment is not just a fiscally-responsible proposal, it’s a necessary step to curb politicians’ decades-long penchant for overspending.
Several senators have proposed balanced budget amendments that ensure Congress will not spend a penny more than we take in, while setting a high hurdle for future tax hikes. I am a co-sponsor of two balanced budget amendments, since it is clear that these measures would go a long way to reversing the spending gusher we’ve seen from Washington in recent years.
During my Senate campaign, while surrounded by the employees of Jacksonville’s Meridian Technologies, I proposed 12 simple ways to cut spending in Washington. That company, founded 13 years ago, has grown into a 200-employee, high-tech business, and the ideas I proposed would help ensure that similar companies have the opportunity to start or expand just like Meridian did.
To be clear, our unsustainable debt and deficits are threatening companies like Meridian and impeding job creation. In addition to proposing a balanced budget amendment, I recommended canceling unspent “stimulus” funds, banning all earmarks and returning discretionary spending to 2008 levels.
Fortunately, some of my ideas have found their way to the Senate chamber. The first bill I co-sponsored in the Senate was to repeal ObamaCare, the costly overhaul of our nation’s health care system that destroys jobs and impedes our economic recovery. Democratic leaders in the Senate have expressed their willingness to ban earmarks for two years after the Senate Republican conference adopted a moratorium. I have also co-sponsored the REINS Act, a common-sense measure that would increase accountability and transparency in our outdated and burdensome regulatory process. These bills, along with a balanced budget amendment, would help get our country back on a sustainable path and provide certainty to job creators.
While Republicans are proposing a variety of ideas to rein in Washington’s out-of-control spending, unfortunately, President Obama’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year proposes to spend $46 trillion, and even in its best year, the deficit would remain above $600 billion. Worst of all, the President’s budget completely avoids addressing the biggest drivers of our long-term debt – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Rather than tackle these tough, serious issues, President Obama is proposing a litany of tax hikes on small businesses and entrepreneurs, to the tune of more than $1.6 trillion. These tax increases destroy jobs, make us less competitive internationally and hurt our efforts to grow the economy and get our fiscal house in order.
A balanced budget amendment would be a necessary step in reversing Washington’s tax-borrow-spend mantra. It would force Congress to balance its budget each year – not allow it to pass our problems on to the next generation any longer.
Marco Rubio
Marco Rubio, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Florida and former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.
“Jane Roe” or Roe v Wade is now a prolife Christian. She’s recently has done a commercial about it.
_______________________________
I have often wondered why we got to this point in our country’s life and we allow abortion. The answer is found in the words of Schaffer.
Philosopher and Theologian, Francis A. Schaeffer has argued, “If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is absolute.” Francis Schaeffer, How Shall We Then Live? (Old Tappan NJ: Fleming H Revell Company, 1976), p. 224.
Below is a clip from the film series “How Then Shall We Live?”
Silent Scream, The Hand of God is “semi-autobiographical…for the study of…the…demise of one system of morality…and the painful acquisition of another more coherent, more reliable [morality]…[with] the backdrop …of abortion. p. 3.
“We live in an age of fulsome nihilism; an age of death; an age in which, as author Walker Percy (a fellow physician, a pathologist who specializes in autopsying Western civilization) argued, “compassion leads to the gas chamber,” or the abortion clinic, or the euthanist’s office.” p. 4.
“I worked hard to make abortion legal, affordable, and available on demand. In 1968, I was one of the three founders of the National Abortion Rights Action League. I ran the largest abortion clinic …and oversaw tens of thousands of abortions. I have performed thousands myself.” p. 5.
“The Hippocratic Oath states the following,
I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner, I will not give to a woman a pessary [a device inserted in the vagina, thought erroneously to initiate an abortion] to produce an abortion.
The oath is unambiguous on these matters.” p. 48.
“The World Medical Association meeting at Geneva, in 1948, in the aftermath of the revelations of the Nazi medical experiments, revised the oath marginally to include the pledge, “I will retain the utmost respect for Human Life from conception.”…in 1964 restated the theme : “The health of my patient will be my first consideration.” p.50. The unborn baby in an abortion procedure is not considered a patient.
The Daily Hatch 