Faded Memories Are Leading to a Rejection of Free Markets
Monday, July 25, 2016 By Joe Carter After almost a hundred years of seeing the effects of socialism and other government interventions in the market, American attitudes began to change in the 1980s and 1990s. The benefits of deregulation and privatization began to seem obvious and more people began to embrace free enterprise. But as Daniel Yergin notes1, there is now a shift away from markets due partially to “fading memories of the old order—or no memories at all.” Voters under 30 were either very small or not yet born when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989. They have no memory of communism—what it meant in terms of poverty, thwarted opportunity and political repression. Closer to home, few Americans recall the likes of the now-defunct Civil Aeronautics Board, which not only set the price of an airline ticket but regulated the size of the in-flight sandwiches. What millennials do know is what happened in 2008—and for many it serves as an indictment of the market system. Read more . . . 1 2Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy2Father Sirico argues that a free economy actually promotes charity, selflessness, and kindness, and why free-market capitalism is not only the best way to ensure individual success and national prosperity but is also the surest route to a moral and socially-just society. Visit the official website at www.defendingthefreemarket.com3 Related posts:
SOURCE: Acton Institute
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Gramsci: An early founder of Safe Schools, BRR and the more frightening programs yet to emerge...26/7/2016 If you are wondering how it came to be that Australia's government Education departments have become so fully infiltrated by Marxists that they are now able to arrogantly spend millions of taxpayer dollars rolling out such radical social engineering indoctrination programs like the deceptively named "Safe Schools" and "Building Respectful Relationships" programs, wonder no longer. While we have been asleep on the wall the enemy our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers had to go overseas to fight last century, have snuck in and succeeded in capturing our institutions, and not just education departments, but also the universities and the media and many major corporations like QANTAS, ANZ, Disney, Apple, Hilton. The victory banners they march under have changed design and colour, becoming more colourful, but they are just as deceptive and have equally authoritarian ambitions.
The following excerpts from this Samuel Gregg article is well worth reading as is the entire article at the link below. "As a matter of principle, Marxists aren’t troubled by scruples. They will kill, steal, lie, railroad the innocent — whatever it takes to advance the Revolution. Marx himself never shied away from what his program entailed. “When our turn comes,” he wrote in 1849, “we shall not make excuses for the terror.” The actions of his apostles, ranging from Lenin to Stalin, Che Guevara, Mao, and Pol Pot, to the Castro brothers, prove just how “principled” Marxists are willing to be, even if it means gulags, “reeducation” camps, or simple murder. In the long-term, however, it may well be that the most effective of Marxists was an Italian philosopher, journalist and Communist official who spent the last 11 years of his life in Mussolini’s prisons. Unlike some other Communists of his generation, Antonio Gramsci had no blood on his hands. He signed no execution orders. He was even considered somewhat of a heretic by more mainstream Marxists of his time. Gramsci’s ideas, however, help explain why so many of the West’s cultural institutions today are rotten with leftist ideas and rhetoric. Gramsci insisted that Marxists had underestimated the importance of culture-forming institutions such as the media, universities, and churches in deciding whether the Left or the Right would gain control (or to use his favorite word, “hegemony”). Marching through the Institutions. Gramsci thought that all these cultural institutions weren’t neutral, but in fact were serving as a vast propaganda machine on behalf of capitalism. Until leftists came to dominate them, they would never be able to convince enough people to support their revolution. This part of his thesis was like manna from heaven for many left-wing Western intellectuals. Instead of joining a factory collective or making bombs in basements, a leftist professor could help free society from capitalist exploitation by penning essays in his office or teaching students. In this scenario, the revolutionary force shifts away from the proletariat toward middle-class intellectuals. Today, entire humanities and social science departments (not to mention journalism schools) in Western European, North American and Latin American universities are slaves to the search for hidden oppressors. In practical terms, the Gramscian strategy also means that the left plays hard-ball when it comes to the internal workings of numerous institutions. It doesn’t matter, for example, how good the journalism of a devout Christian or a religious Jew might be. Nor is it important that a political conservative or free market advocate has conducted cutting-edge research in his academic field or produced a superb film. Such people must be marginalized because of their faith and/or politics, lest they threaten the left’s “hegemony” over the means of “cultural production.” Truth is no longer important, for truth is just a ruling class construct. What matters is the pursuance and maintenance of power, so that millions of media-consumers and thousands of university students can continue being enlightened about the hidden structures of privilege. The worst part of Gramsci’s legacy is that it has effectively transcended its Marxist origins. His outlook is now blankly taken for granted by millions of teachers, writers, even churchmen, who have no idea that they are committed to cultural Marxism. So while the socialist paradises constructed by Lenin, Stalin and likeminded people imploded over 25 years ago, the Gramscian mindset is alive and flourishing at your local university and in more than a few liberal churches and synagogues. The vast structures of cynicism which Gramsci’s ideas have built, which honeycomb Western society today, will prove much tougher to dismantle than the crude cement blocks of the old Berlin Wall." To read the full article read on -->> The below excerpts from Nick Cater's article in The Australian today highlights the danger facing Australia from not just one but two totalitarian forces (Islam and the Rainbow movement) who seek to silence all opposition as they advance and attempt their takeover of our once young and free, but now very sleepy and blind, Australia.
"The determination to deny their opponents a platform, the merciless attacks on character, the insistence that their enemies not only apologise but do so grovellingly like some shaven-headed dissident at a show trial suggest the Left, once again, is flirting with totalitarianism. There is one important detail about the early fascists that the Left intelligentsia have been inclined to overlook: the early fascists were metropolitan sophisticates rather like today’s intelligentsia — artists, writers, academics and dreamers convinced of their own superior wisdom. The resemblance between totalitarianism and modern-day political correctness is hardly surprising. As Tony Judt wrote in his expansive volume on the history of Europe from 1945, a monopoly of authority requires a monopoly of knowledge, the assurance that the official “truth” on any given topic would not be challenged or, if it were, that the challenge should be suppressed with exemplary force. It is no coincidence that the intelligentsia, which champions political correctness today, once championed the Soviet Union where the state sought to control not just what people said but what they thought. It aspired to set the limits not only on Dimitri Shostakovich performances but also his compositions. Stalin, if he could, would have cracked down on Shostakovich not just for the music he conducted but the music going on in his head." Nick Cater in The Australian newspaper 26th July 2016 Fascism Is Real
From Jeffrey A Tucker: "Without the term fascism as an authentic descriptor, we have a problem. We have no accurate way to identify what is in fact the most politically successful movement of the 20th century. It is a movement that still exists today, because the conditions that gave rise to it are unchanged. The whole burden of one of the most famous pro-freedom books of the century — Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom — was to warn that fascism was a more immediate and pressing danger to the developed world than Russian-style socialism. And this is for a reason: Hayek said that “brown” fascism did not represent a polar opposite of “red” socialism. In the interwar period, it was common to see both intellectuals and politicians move fluidly from one to the other. “The rise of Fascism and Nazism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period,” wrote Hayek, “but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.” FEE From Miranda Devine in the Daily Telegraph: July 24 2016
"THE story of Cheltenham Girls High School is a textbook example of the subterfuge involved in the controversial Safe Schools Coalition and how far education authorities and governments will go to preserve and conceal a program that subverts parents rights and values. It is worth forensically examining how a school and a minister attempted to discredit a true story last week, how some media outlets gullibly accepted official denials, and how a group of courageous parents and teachers defied the cover-up anonymously to voice their concerns. The fear felt by the whistleblowers, and the secrecy and euphemisms employed to disguise the true nature of the Safe Schools agenda really is of Orwellian proportions. And the ultimate irony is that the principal of CGHS, Susan Bridge stood up at an assembly on Thursday to declare the school was being “bullied” by the media. It all began last week with our story of how teachers at the all-girls school in northwest Sydney were asked in a staff meeting to stop referring to students as “girls”, ladies” and “women”, but to use “gender-neutral” language instead. The story was based on detailed accounts from insiders who attended the meeting, but asked not to be identified. More than half the meeting, which was held at the end of last term, after school hours, was spent specifically addressing the planned implementation of the Safe Schools program. Read on -->> Pokemon Go at the Holocaust Museum
Have We Finally Amused Ourselves to Death? By: John Stonestreet|Published: July 19, 2016 6:00 AM The good news is people are leaving their screens inside to go outside. The bad news? When they’re outside, they’re still staring at screens. Listen Now | Download In 1985, social critic named Neal Postman, in the introduction to his book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” compared two famous dystopian visions: “1984” by George Orwell and “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. He noted that though many people thought their visions similar, Huxley and Orwell had very different theories about how people would lose their freedoms. Orwell thought it would be Big Brother—the all-watching, all-powerful state. Now certainly, in the age of the NSA and TSA, it sounds like he may have been on to something. But Postman thought Huxley was the one who got it right. Here’s how he put it: What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, because there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture... As Huxley remarked in“Brave New World Revisited,” the civil libertarians and rationalists ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions. In “1984,” people are controlled by inflicting pain. In“Brave New World,” they were controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared what we love will ruin us. “My book,” Postman then concluded, “is about the possibility that Huxley was right, not Orwell.” And perhaps nothing has so vindicated Postman’s take on American culture like Pokemon Go, a game in which users capture, battle, and train mythical creatures. Already it has more users than Tindr and even Twitter! The upside—this game takes users outdoors to look for Pokemon, around cities and towns, even fields, using their phones' GPS and camera. The downside—though outdoors, users are still staring at screens, oblivious to the world in which they’re searching, not to mention to other people. As you might imagine, there have been casualties. This weekend, hundreds of gamers snarled traffic heading into Central Park, when a particularly elusive Pokemon was spotted there. Last week, two men fell off a cliff near San Diego playing the game. Others have been stabbed, robbed, beaten up and shot at by those taking advantage of unaware users. As a San Diego Sheriff’s Department spokesperson said, “People need to realize this is just a game. It’s not worth your life. No game is worth your life.” Neil Postman’s warning in “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” however, went further than that. He warned we were becoming a silly culture, addicted to distraction, without the ability to prefer the good, the true, and the beautiful to the trivial, the meaningless, and the titillating. Such a culture, he thought, would be easily taken captive by the inability to discern what’s truly important. And in perhaps the ultimate indictment on our culture, the Arlington National Cemetery and the Holocaust Museum issued appeals last week that users not search for Pokemon at these hallowed sites of remembrance. The fact that it even needed to be said only affirms Postman’s prophecy. Look, games are fun, and Pokemon Go is pretty cool. So if your kids are playing, don’t panic. But if they’re addicted to perpetual distraction, it’s time to intervene. Our friends at Axis.org can help. They have a marvelous tool for parents of teens called the Culture Translator to get you up to speed on this game and all kinds of other things. Come to BreakPoint.org, click on this commentary, and I’ll link you to it. Further Reading and Information from BreakPoint.org: Pokemon Go at the Holocaust Museum: Have We Finally Amused Ourselves to Death? Find out more about Neil Postman's prescient observations on our amusement-centered society by getting his book "Amusing Ourselves to Death", available at the online bookstore. Available at the online bookstoreAmusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Neil Postman | Penguin Books | December 2005 Screens and Teens: Connecting with Our Kids in a Wireless World Kathy Koch | Moody Publishers | March 2015 #Struggles Craig Groeschel | Zondervan Publishers | October 2015 Other Resources2 California men fall off edge of ocean bluff while playing 'Pokemon Go' Veronica Rocha | LA Times | July 14, 2016 Pokemon Go players unwelcome at Arlington, Holocaust museum Sara Ashley O'Brien | CNN.com | July 13, 2016 The Culture Translator Website SOURCE The Marxist Worldview
This podcast presents a lecture by Dr. Jeff Myers on the Marxist worldview. Listen as he sketches the history and influence of Karl Marx, from The Communist Manifesto to Bernie Sanders, all the while contrasting Marx’s view with a Christian worldview. Listen now → Here's what else we thought was worthwhile at SummitMinistries.org this week: 1. Justin Brierly hosted an insightful conversation between Vanessa James, an ex-Christian, and Holly Ordway, an ex-atheist, on Unbelievable. 2. Stephen Witmer wrote a brilliant article connecting a biblical view of sexuality and creation care at The Gospel Coalition. 3. J. Warner Wallace blogged about how "Jesus is a myth, just like President Kennedy," a creative response to an old challenge to Christian belief. 4. Joel McDurmon shared a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche that highlights inconsistency in Richard Dawkins' arguments at The American Vision. 5. Sean McDowell wrote about six different ways you could make a career in apologetics. A recent survey of 2000 unchurched people reveals much about the inborn "spiritual DNA" inside each human being. It has revealed that people, although being naturally impacted by the negative wrap that "religion" (often very deserved)gets in the media, basically don't mind talking about religion and spiritual issues, and in fact want to do so and are often open to and even waiting for Christians to make the first move.
The survey revealed that 70 percent agree “there is an ultimate purpose and plan for every person’s life,” and 57 percent say that finding “their deeper purpose” is “a major priority.” People are looking for answers and are open to their Christian friends prodding and invitations. This is a very interesting survey and worth further reading at: BreakPoint.org The results lead to an important question: "Where does our innate desire for purpose and meaning come from?" Could it be a product of accidental Darwinian evolution, which suggests we and everything in the universe just appeared out of an explosion of "nothing" which resulted in everything? I think it makes more sense that we have been intentionally designed with an inbuilt "spiritual" aspect which causes us to be restless and seek our higher purpose. Read more about this, and the solution to our restlessness at the following Christianity page which invites you to seek answers and provides some suggestions to the big questions we innately long to have answered. Further Resources on this subject: Search the word "purpose" in the Bible to see God has a lot to say about the topic. Your Unchurched Friends Want to Know About Your Faith Bob Smietana | Christianity Today | June 28, 2016 God? Meaning of life? Many Americans don’t seek them in church Cathy Lynn Grossman | religionnews.com | June 28, 2016 Research: Unchurched will talk about faith, not interested in going to church Lifeway.com survey results | June 28, 2016 Entrusted Website Valiant for Truth
"The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits." (Daniel 11:32) "The Lord is a man of war, Jehovah is his name." Those who enlist under His banner shall have a Commander who will train them for the conflict and give them both vigor and valor. The times of which Daniel wrote were of the very worst kind, and then it was promised that the people of God would come out in their best colors: they would be strong and stout to confront the powerful adversary. Oh, that we may know our God: His power, His faithfulness, His immutable love, and so may be ready to risk everything in His behalf. He is One whose character excites our enthusiasm and makes us willing to live and to die for Him. Oh, that we may know our God by familiar fellowship with Him; for then we shall become like Him and shall be prepared to stand up for truth and righteousness. He who comes forth fresh from beholding the face of God will never fear the face of man. If we dwell with Him, we shall catch the heroic spirit, and to us a world of enemies will be but as the drop of a bucket. A countless array of men, or even of devils, will seem as little to us as the nations are to God, and He counts them only as grasshoppers. Oh, to be valiant for truth in this day of falsehood. Charles Spurgeon Craig Manners
9th July 2016 Everyone has a worldview i.e. how they view and understand the world. For example, did the world just appear out of nothing and suddenly produce well designed things, order, intelligent beings and a perfect environment for sustaining life, from a "big bang?" "Nothing" accidently exploding into "everything"? An explosion creating everything instead of destroying? Like setting off an explosion in a desert and finding a skyscraper suddenly appearing after the dust settled. Or is there a "Designer?" Did God create everything as per the creation account in Genesis, the first book of the Bible? A person's worldview affects how they view human beings. Much hinges on this. Are we moral beings for one? Do we have an innate dignity worthy of respect? Or is there no such thing as morality, is that just a human construct, and therefore is it really "dog eat dog," "survival of the fittest or strongest?" If so there is nothing wrong with euthanizing your frail and sick parents to get their money, for example, or there was nothing wrong with anything Hitler did. The Genesis account of human history makes it very clear that we are moral beings, as does I would argue observational science, observing the reality of human interaction, not to mention common sense and human history. According to this account human beings are made in the image of God. God's moral character is a part of human character. As God is not neutral toward human behavior, because of His moral character, neither are humans neutral to fellow humans behaving badly. We know for instance that it is "wrong" to euthanize our parents at a whim to get their money, and we know that what Hitler did was "wrong." But how do we know this? Is there a "moral compass" built in to us? If so, who built it? If morality is a reality, what are the consequences of a society increasingly becoming compromised, by embracing as moral something which is immoral? Making laws which promote, protect and teach immoral acts as being normal and moral? Insisting and forcing citizens to stop saying that immoral acts are immoral? Introducing schools programs to "educate" children to believe that immoral acts are now moral? If human beings really are moral beings, if there really is a moral foundation upon which good society is built, what happens when the government and/or culture undermines that foundation, when it weakens the moral fibre of its citizens? Just as a little yeast spreads throughout the dough, a small crack in the foundations has the potential to topple the whole building. Surely increasingly rampant immorality, will lead to a complete validation of and increasingly widespread practice of more immoral and corrupt behavior. What impact will this have for our society? Will it be good or will it be bad? Or is there no such thing as good or bad? There is much at stake when humans who subscribe to the worldview that there is no God, no morality, that human beings are morally unaccountable and autonomous and can do whatever they can get away with, that there is no truth, no right or wrong, good or bad, start to forcefully impose what is immoral upon their fellow humans and demand that they call it moral. If the reality of morality is not respected it will not be long before our once young and free Australia is overrun by chaotic forces which will do to our society what explosives really do to things, destroy them, not create them better than they were. If you are interested in learning more about our world there is an interesting event coming up in Melbourne on 21-23rd July 2016 with Prof. Stuart Burgess, one of the world's leading design engineers in space, robotic and drone technology. For details click here. By Craig Manners
So called "unrestrained" freedom is a form of slavery. True freedom requires virtue and there is no virtue in unrestrained immorality, or in harming other human beings, no matter how young or how old, or in making it easy for drug dealers or dealers in porn or other sexual forms of enslavement to enslave our nation's children, the weak or the poor. In June 1978, speaking at Harvard University, Soviet freedom fighter and winner of a Nobel Prize in literature, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, not only argued against the worldview which had enslaved his own country through Communism, but he prophetically assessed a major flaw and deception in the prevailing worldview being embraced by the West. He said that a “destructive and irresponsible freedom had been granted boundless space.” This is even more so today. The West has exchanged belief in unchanging truth, and a proper understanding of true freedom, for basically an anything goes version of freedom, which in reality is slavery calling itself freedom. It is a ruthless, deceptive, legalism, restraining true freedom and enslaving those who thought they were fighting for freedom. It is "an affront to the Aboriginal People of Australia to suggest another definition of marriage." - Statement from 70 Aboriginal leaders opposing the proposed undermining of human foundations. Do these original inhabitants have a place in "modern" Australia? Why would anyone think it is somehow modern, good, colourful and happy to offend Australia's original inhabitants by forcefully imposing radical immorality on them? Are our original inhabitants homophobic, bigots, haters, dinosaurs and intolerant? Our original inhabitants deserve respect, honour and recognition, not more cultural steamrolling.
From Warwick Marsh & David Rowsome
As we have previously shared, the new Senate voting laws have made it much more difficult for the smaller Christian and conservative parties to win a seat. It is therefore critical that you vote for at least 6 parties above the line to really make your vote count for Christian values. If you decide instead to vote below the line, then number at least 12 candidates below the line including those from Christian-values-based parties. But if you want to ensure that those parties or candidates that are not Christian-values-based, like the Sex Party or the Greens, are put last, then you should number either ALL the boxes above the line or ALL the boxes below line. Please use these resources wisely. Print them off and give them out at church. Tell your friends and cross-reference this information with the Australian Christian Lobby and FamilyVoice Australia. Distribute the electronic Christian Values Checklist PDFs through your networks to help Christian people make an informed and wise decision. If you want others to stay informed with updates like these on the Federal election share this update and encourage them to sign the Canberra Declaration today. Together we can make a difference. Yours for Christian-values-based Government |
Craig MannersWhile much of what is written in this Blog may currently appear to be counter-cultural, given our post-truth culture, it is in no way counter-human beings. I am always for people no matter what they think, do, or may have done in their past. Where I put forward ideas or debate against certain ideology, behaviour, ideas, movements, politics, I remain very much on the side of the human beings even though I may be opposed to their worldview, behaviour and politics. Such opposition is generally out of concern for the ultimate consequences of such behaviour or ideas, especially for children. |