I received a comment recently that despite the fact that I say this is a political & religious blog, I have way more political articles than religious ones. So in an attempt to rectify this small oversight on my part I have posted 3 religious articles in a row - back-to-back-to-back. I don't think I will ever post an equal number of each and still have this blog be what I want it to be. No apologies.
Truth and Advocates for Life Triumph!
Ken Blackwell
Thursday, August 20, 2009
An independent polling company is out with a new survey with stunning news: Family Research Council’s ad warning of President Obama’s government takeover of health care is being highly effective.
HCD Research used its MediaCurves.com website to poll Americans’ ideas about ObamaCare. FRC’s ads criticize the President’s plan for two fatal flaws: it will force Americans to pay for abortion-on-demand and it will lead to rationed health care for all Americans.
Sixty-four percent of Democrats found the ad effective. Eighty-one percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Independents agreed. These are extraordinary numbers.
The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration has been caught “by surprise” by the path of the debate on health care. They hadn’t anticipated that the Left of their party would be so adamant about holding onto a “public option” as part of the President’s plan.
The Obama Administration tries to say that no one provision in the health care takeover is a “deal breaker.” But the Obama team knows that publicly promoting free abortion could be a deal breaker, so they try to convince us that abortion is not even in the plan. Family Research Council’s Tom McClusky has shown seven reasons why abortion is in the plan and ten reasons why health care rationing is also in the plan.
What this poll shows is that federally-funded abortion is not a wedge issue, as Leftists contend, not a “distraction,” as President Obama maintains. It is vitally important. Opposition to federally-funded abortion is a bridge issue, bringing together Americans of all parties and ethnic and religious backgrounds.
It also shows that President Obama’s irrational idea that you can “reduce” the tragic toll of abortion by making abortion free is catching up with him. Americans are rightly skeptical that this makes any sense.
For thousands of years, the first rule of medicine was this: Above all, do no harm.
Killing is not healthy. Despite 36 years of liberals claiming that abortion is good for health, that it is nothing more than another medical procedure, Americans do not believe this. Even pro-choice Americans do not believe this. Here’s what reporter Sarah Kliff wrote about visiting abortionist LeRoy Carhart’s facility and witnessing an abortion:
When I returned from Omaha, friends and colleagues wanted to know if I had "done it." When I said I had, their reactions surprised me. Friends who supported legal abortion bristled slightly when I told them where I'd been and what I'd watched. Acquaintances at a party looked a bit regretful to have asked about my most recent assignment… But my experience (among an admittedly small, largely pro-choice sample set) found a general discomfort when confronted with abortion as a physical reality, not a political idea. Americans may support abortion rights, but even 40 years after Roe, we don't talk about it like other medical procedures.
President Obama is trying to make abortion “like other medical procedures.” Hillary Clinton says reproductive health care includes abortion.
But abortion is not health care. Intuitively, everyone knows that.
This feeling goes very deep with Americans. Lincoln said it best: “Nothing stamped in the divine image was sent into the world to be trod upon.” Ultra-sound technology teaches us every day that unborn children are stamped in the divine image. It is why more Americans than ever are counting themselves pro-life. And it is why the Obama health overhaul is in deep, and deepening, trouble.
ObamaCare Gets Religion
Nathan Tabor
Friday, August 21, 2009
Once the Obama Administration completed their goal of passing an enormous spending bill with the promise of stimulating our economy, they immediately set their sights on passing legislation to control the health care system throughout the nation.
The Democrats are seeking to replicate the socialized medicine systems of other industrialized nations such as Britain, Canada and Japan, but they are using the tactics of misinformation and stealth to achieve their goal.
"The mainstream news media and liberal politicians are always praising the health care systems in other countries, but they never discuss the nightmare stories emanating from these countries' medical professionals," said political strategist Mike Baker.
"I believe individuals should have the opportunity to select the health insurance policy that best meets his or her needs, which is why I am an original co-sponsor of the Health Care Choice Act. The Health Care Choice Act would enable consumers to choose and purchase affordable health insurance policies that offer a range of benefits," said Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-MI).
Hoekstra and other conservative congressmen want Americans to receive medical care, but they say they don't want the government dictating what care is given and when it is given.
Unfortunately for President Barack Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and the usual suspects on the far-left, a majority of the American people aren't buying the idea of ObamaCare, resulting in a grassroots uprising similar to the one President Bill Clinton faced in 1993 when his wife attempted a government takeover of medicine.
So Barack Obama, after exhausting his usual tactics of vilifying his opposition, decided to embark on a new project: a teleconference with religious leaders and other Americans of faith. According to estimates, more than 140,000 people participated as President Obama waxed elegant. He even threw in a few Bible verses (and took them out of context).
What President Obama did not mention to those religious participants was that he favors the killing of unborn babies and voted for partial-birth abortion. He also failed to mention that one of his main advisors, Rahm Emanuel's brother Ezekial, had made radical statements regarding abortion including the statement that a baby wasn't a human being until he or she were able to understand the concept of "tomorrow."
Whenever the subject of abortion or euthanasia is brought up regarding the far-left health care plan, President Obama and the Democrats respond that there is nothing in their health care bill regarding those procedures. However, the truth is that there is nothing in the health care bills being circulated that would prevent taxpayer money being used for abortions, and euthanasia will naturally result from the rationing of health care. If an elderly patient is denied medical treatment for cancer, for example, that is euthanasia -- you are indirectly killing a human being by withholding live saving threatment.
One Biblical reference used President Obama during his "health care sermon" was a part of the Ten Commandments that reads, "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Those who oppose a government health care system are bearing false witness, according to the man who sat in a pew listening to a pastor who said, "God damn, America" and other anti-American utterances, but did not leave that church until Americans found out about the real Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
During his religious teleconference, Obama, like Hillary Clinton before him, used the Ninth Commandment to condemn his detractors and opponents of the Democrat's idea of health care reform. Of course, no one in the media mentioned how many times Obama bore false witness against others such as when he claimed there were physicians amputating patients' arms and legs solely to make more money. Of course, no one in the news media pushed the President to provide even one example of his assertion. And President Obama did not volunteer that information, either. Can I get an Amen?
Better is One Day in Your Courts
Mike Adams
Thursday, August 20, 2009
TO: UNC-Wilmington Students
FR: Mike Adams
Welcome back! I am so glad to start another semester here at UNC by the Sea. I just got back from teaching at Summit Ministries in Manitou Springs, Colorado. I also had some time off last week, which I spent considering some new policies for the new semester. There will be several minor as well as two major changes this semester. The purpose of this email is to explain the first of the two major changes in class policy.
On my day off last week, I pulled up a chair on the front porch of the old hotel, which serves as Ground Zero for Summit Ministries. I got a cup of coffee and opened a book knowing full well that I would not finish either before being interrupted by Summit students. They love to ask questions of the various speakers they hear during the two-week program.
The first student that came by shared his conversion experience. He said that experience took place in two steps. First, he had a “heart” conversion brought about by his mother’s death. Next, he had a “head” conversion brought about by his intensive study of theology. I told him my story was similar. We talked about whether conversions just as often happen in the opposite way – “head” before “heart.” We also talked about whether one was “better” than the other in terms of enhancing one’s likelihood of maintaining a belief in God. We talked for almost an hour.
The next student came by to compare notes on some recent books he read – books by authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. We talked about the reasons why Christians often read the works of atheists and why atheists are often afraid to read the works of Christians. I argued that, historically speaking, that hasn’t always been the case. It’s just that the new generation of atheists is less confident than previous generations of atheists. It was an awesome conversation that took up another hour.
A young couple joined me later to talk about the purpose of worship and church attendance. The young woman asked whether I thought preachers should spend more time telling us what to do or what not to do. I asked her to imagine that she was married. I also asked her to imagine her husband coming home from work every day and asking her whether she had committed adultery. Then I asked her to imagine him giving her a high five when she said “no, honey.” We laughed at the imagery but she got my point. There’s more to a good marriage than following the basic rules. And there’s much more to the Christian life than just following – or trying to follow – the proscriptive commandments. After about a 30-minute conversation the couple went to see the next speaker.
Later that night, Wesley and Brianna sat down for a couple of hours to read and talk and drink coffee much later at night than we should have been drinking coffee. Wesley was reading philosophy and Bri was practicing her Spanish with an English/Spanish Bible. We had a good talk about marriage and how people can forgive a cheating spouse and stay married even though they don’t have to. I shared the story of a man who converted to Christianity – and even became a minister – after his Christian wife forgave him.
At eleven p.m. I went to the kitchen for my eleventh cup of coffee. A staffer named Ryan said he noticed I was talking to his friend Bri and asked for my impressions of her. My answer to Ryan, which took the form of a question - has implications for all of my UNC students. That’s why I’m repeating it here in an email to all of you: “Ryan, are you asking whether Bri made a good impression in relation to students at Summit Ministries or in relation to the students I teach at the secular university?”
I went on to tell Ryan that I have more (and a greater number of) intelligent conversations with Summit students in a single day than I do with my UNC students over the course of a year. I’m not telling you this because I want to be critical. I’m telling you this because I want to do something about it.
Students who attend UNC by the Sea are very different than the ones I teach at Summit. The former are not likely to have been home schooled. And relatively few attended private schools. So, as products of the public school system, they have spent little time discussing spiritual matters. Most of their teachers are fearful of offending the ACLU.
Furthermore, students at UNC by the Sea are confronted, from the first day, with a number of unconstitutional speech codes, which reinforce the notion that they are actually prohibited from discussing spiritual matters. These speech codes are most fervently supported by those who claim allegiance to the notion of a “wall of separation” between Church and State. But, in practice, these codes have established Secular Humanism as our university’s established religion.
I intend to challenge the status quo – and improve the quality of our discourse this semester – by spending significant class time discussing spiritual matters. I will not discuss my own conversion to Christianity and how it saved me from self-destructive behaviors – some of which were criminal. Instead, I will bring in a number of guest speakers.
Our first guest speaker, who is, in all likelihood, about to go to federal prison for receiving child pornography, will discuss the dangers of pornography in general. He will then discuss the role of the church in restoring those whose lives have been ruined by sexual addiction.
Next, I will invite someone from Chuck Colson’s prison ministry to talk about their work in prisons generally. I will ask the speaker to share data with the class comparing the success of religious versus secular prison rehabilitation programs.
Dr. Frank Turek will then give a lecture on legislating morality. He will also talk about natural law and the possibility of having an ordered society without acknowledging the existence of God.
By the time these three speakers are finished, at least one of you will have filed a formal complaint claiming I have created a “hostile environment.” You’ll be relying, of course, on one of our university’s illegal speech codes.
I will respond by doing something that may surprise you: I will use the same illegal speech code to claim that the speech in your complaint is hate speech, which creates a “hostile environment” for people of faith.
I am certain that a complaint will be filed because your generation is the least intellectually curious and most hyper-sensitive in the history of our nation. But because I care for my country and care for each and every one of you I have to do something about it. I must effect that change even if it requires litigation.
Have a great day. I’ll write tomorrow to explain the second major change in class policy.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Thought provoking - if I do say so myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment