Social Issues - links
WSJ - Race and the Roberts Court
Liberals were already wailing about a radical turn in Supreme Court jurisprudence, and yesterday’s decisions really brought out the sackcloth and outrage. But the end of this first full term of the John Roberts-Samuel Alito Court presented no sweeping departures, instead hewing to the incremental conservative judging that was its hallmark this year.
The most contentious opinion determined that programs engineering the racial composition of school districts in Seattle and Louisville were unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the 5-4 majority, expressed the bedrock principle in a single sentence: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” But the majority was in effect only a plurality. Anthony Kennedy concurred but wrote his own, more narrow opinion that said schools can be “race-conscious,” though race can’t be the only or controlling factor.
Jul 2, 2007 - topic(s): Citizenship, National, Racial Reconciliation, Social Issues
WSJ - Christianity Without Salvation
Christianity Without Salvation
The legacy of the “Social Gospel”—100 years later.
BY JOSEPH LOCONTE
Friday, May 11, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Within a few years of its publication in 1907, “Christianity and the Social Crisis” swept through America’s Protestant churches like a nor’easter, selling more than 50,000 copies to ministers and laypeople alike. In an age of social upheaval, Walter Rauschenbusch’s jeremiad was meant to rouse the church from its pietistic slumber. “If society continues to disintegrate and decay, the Church will be carried down with it,” he warned. “If the Church can rally such moral forces that injustice will be overcome . . . it will itself rise to higher liberty and life.”
May 11, 2007 - topic(s): Faith, Apologetics, Bible, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Social Issues, Issues
They’d Rather Switch Than Fight
There’s a bonus in all this for social conservatives. Switchers on social issues usually stay switched. Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush did so after becoming pro-lifers. All those Democratic presidential candidates in the 1980s and 1990s who switched sides on abortion from pro-life to pro-choice have stayed put. Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, says you only get to flip once on social issues. If you switch back, “you’re in no man’s land,” a politician without a political base.
Mar 5, 2007 - topic(s): Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, National, Social Issues
Defend innocent life
By Sam Brownback January 22, 2007 Each January from all corners of the nation, hundreds of thousands descend upon the nation’s capital. They come — often in freezing conditions — for a most significant march on Washington. They come for the March for Life on the anniversary of the tragic Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton that made abortion legal during all nine months of pregnancy.Jan 24, 2007 - topic(s): Family, Children, Elderly, Life, Abortion, Citizenship, National, Social Issues
CNN - What is a Christian? (T-script)
CNN
ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES
What is a Christian?; New Moral Values; Evangelicals and Israel; End of Days; Capitalist Christian; The Seekers
Aired December 14, 2006 – 23:00 ET
As expert guests, Anderson will talk to Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Jim Wallis, author of “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It” and president of Sojourners, a progressive Christian ministry, along with Dwight Hopkins, a professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Dec 15, 2006 - topic(s): Faith, Bible, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty, Social Issues
WSJ - ‘Unprotected’
Wall Street Journal – Opinion Journal
BY DANIELLE CRITTENDEN
Thursday, December 14, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
“My patients were hurting, they looked to me and what could I do?” So confesses an anonymous campus physician in the beginning of her startling memoir. Over the course of 200 pages, she tells story after story about suffering young women. If these women were ailing from eating disorders, or substance abuse, or almost any other medical or psychological problem, their university health departments would spring to their aid. “Cardiologists hound patients about fatty diets and insufficient exercise. Pediatricians encourage healthy snacks, helmets and discussion of drugs and alcohol. Everyone condemns smoking and tanning beds.”
Unfortunately, the young women described in “Unprotected” have fallen victim to one of the few personal troubles that our caring professions refuse to treat or even acknowledge: They have been made miserable by their “sexual choices.” And on that subject, few modern doctors dare express a word of judgment.
Dec 14, 2006 - topic(s): Family, Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Addictions, Substance Abuse, Living, Health, Sexual Purity, Abstinence, Homosexuality, Citizenship, Social Issues
WSJ - Freedom Man
Wall Street Journal
BY THOMAS SOWELL
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Milton Friedman was one of the very few intellectuals with both genius and common sense. He could express himself at the highest analytical levels to his fellow economists in academic publications and still write popular books such as “Capitalism and Freedom” and “Free to Choose” that could be understood by people who knew nothing about economics. Indeed, his television series, “Free to Choose,” was readily understandable even by people who don’t read books.
Dec 12, 2006 - topic(s): Family, Living, Finances, Citizenship, Hunger/Homelessness, National, Social Issues
WSJ Charitable Explanation (subscription)
Wall Street Journal
By ARTHUR C. BROOKS
November 27, 2006; Page A12
‘Tis the season to give. Our mailboxes are filling with appeals from fine organizations and worthy causes, competing for our holiday spirit and tax-deductible dollars. Millions of Americans will answer the call, donating in December as much as a third of the quarter-trillion dollars we give away each year. Per capita, Americans give more in this single month than most nations give all year long.
Before congratulating ourselves too heartily, however, note that charity is not a virtue shared by all. While 85 million American households give away money each year to nonprofit organizations, another 30 million do not. And this distinction goes beyond “formal” giving. Recent survey data reveal that people who fail to donate money to charities are only a third as likely as donors to give money to friends and strangers. Non-donors are half as likely as donors to give blood. They even are less honest: Non-donors are much less likely than donors to return change mistakenly given to them by a cashier. When it comes to charity, we are two nations.
Nov 27, 2006 - topic(s): Family, Living, Finances, Citizenship, Community Service, Hunger/Homelessness, Social Issues
WA Post: The Gospel According to Jim Wallis
Washington Post Magazine
By David Paul Kuhn
Sunday, November 26, 2006; Page W2
JIM WALLIS IS PREACHING ABOUT A BIBLE TORN APART. Wallis tells the crowd at the Seattle Pacific University chapel that when he was in seminary, a fellow student took hold of an old Bible and cut out “every single reference to the poor.”
“And when we were done, that Bible was literally in shreds. It was falling apart in my hands. It was a Bible full of holes. I would take it out to preach and say, ‘Brothers and sisters, this is our American Bible.’”
Nov 26, 2006 - topic(s): Faith, Apologetics, Bible, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Social Issues, War
Reagan’s 1986 Election
Conservatives have bounced back from electoral setbacks before.
WSJ Opinion Journal
BY JEFFREY LORD
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
As Ronald Reagan was thanking me I was both depressed and embarrassed.
It was November, 1986. After a solid two years of effort, the Congressional elections in the sixth year of the Reagan presidency had gone badly.
The 1980 Reagan landslide over Jimmy Carter had produced twelve new Republican Senate seats, giving the GOP a Senate majority for the first time since 1954. It made the Senate a critical ally for Reagan as he set about rebuilding the nation’s military, getting forward-looking young conservatives onto the federal bench and passing the landmark tax cuts needed to revitalize an almost crippled economy. The House was more problematical. A bastion of liberal Democrats with a mindset still stuck somewhere between1935 and 1965 on economics. Its more outspoken members loved reliving their glory days opposing the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon.
Oct 17, 2006 - topic(s): Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Legislation, National, Social Issues, Issues