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Articles Posted by newheart

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  • Freeper Opinions Desired (We all know you have one.)

    06/16/2013 6:54:20 AM PDT · by newheart · 140 replies
    Source disclosed only on a need to know basis. | June 16, 2013 | newheart
    Big Brother, The All-Seeing Eye of Sauron, The Panopticon, The Observers, The Watchers, The Surveillance State, The NSA. Whatever name we use to refer to it there is a fundamental urge to assume that being spied on is bad. (I agree.) However, in every discussion of the problem there is always someone who will pop up with an off-the-cuff remark that goes something like this,"If you have nothing to hide, who cares?" or "I'm not doing anything wrong, so what difference does is make?" On the surface that sounds reasonable, right? Those who are not guilty have nothing to hide,...
  • Why I became a conservative

    06/02/2013 1:03:51 PM PDT · by newheart · 30 replies
    The New Criterion, Vol 21, No. 6 ^ | February 2003 | Roger Scruton
    I was brought up at a time when half the English people voted Conservative at national elections and almost all English intellectuals regarded the term "conservative" as a term of abuse. To be a conservative, I was told, was to be on the side of age against youth, the past against the future, authority against innovation, the "structures" against spontaneity and life. It was enough to understand this, to recognize that one had no choice, as a free-thinking intellectual, save to reject conservatism. The choice remaining was between reform and revolution. Do we improve society bit by bit, or do...
  • A Boy's Life with Unisex Scouts

    04/23/2013 10:00:06 AM PDT · by newheart · 39 replies
    Public Discourse ^ | April 23rd, 2013 | Anthony Esolen
    The Boy Scouts are en route to holding that there is nothing to being a boy, and nothing to the boy’s becoming a man; they might as well be the Unisex Scouts, as they are in Canada, where the scouting movement has collapsed.
  • The Curley Effect: Using Redistributive Politics to Shape a Left-Wing Electorate

    04/08/2013 1:30:27 PM PDT · by newheart · 5 replies
    n a famous 2002 article in the Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, Harvard scholars Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer named the so-called “Curley Effect” after its prototype, James Michael Curley, who served four (non-consecutive) terms as mayor of Boston between 1914 and 1950. This phenomenon, the authors explain, is the strategy of “increasing the relative size of one’s political base through distortionary, wealth-reducing policies.” Forbes magazine puts it this way: “A politician or a political party can achieve long-term dominance by tipping the balance of votes in their direction through the implementation of policies that strangle and stifle economic...
  • The "Science" of Same-Sex Marriage

    03/24/2013 1:04:54 PM PDT · by newheart · 11 replies
    The Weekly Standard Online ^ | April 1, 2013 (?) | Andrew Ferguson
    The list of amici contains several names that will be familiar to anyone whose has had the bad habit of following American politics. Beyond their political coloration, which in many instances seems quite changeable, they do present a typical Washington motley: underemployed lobbyists, society hostesses, TV gasbags, defenestrated politicians, and political hangers-on, most of them draping themselves in the phony-baloney job titles that only our preposterous political culture can pretend to endow with authority (“adviser,” “consultant,” “commentator,” “advocate”). In other cases there are references to real jobs—former special assistants, speechwriters, undersecretaries—that the amici once held and abandoned several administrations ago,...
  • D.C. Has a Prayer [Interview with Eric Metaxas]

    01/06/2013 6:47:32 AM PST · by newheart · 2 replies
    National Review Online ^ | Jan. 5, 2013 | Kathryn Lopez
    When Eric Metaxas spoke last year at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., he used the opportunity to challenge his listeners. In his new book No Pressure, Mr. President: Real Faith in a Time of Crisis, he makes his remarks available to a broader audience and recounts the journey of a writer trying to be a Christian witness. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: The e-book version of your book is titled “Jesus Hates Dead Religion.” How can you claim to know what Jesus hates? ERIC METAXAS: The Bible says that God hates what is evil. According to my sources, Jesus is...
  • A Modest Proposal on Gun Control. (With apologies to legal gun owners in Chicago.)

    12/27/2012 10:07:31 AM PST · by newheart · 19 replies
    12/27/2012 | newheart
    This is the age of science, after all. Reason has finally liberated us from the tyranny of superstition. We no are no longer forced to cling bitterly to guns and religion. It is the golden age of rationality. Even the President, that paragon of Spockian logic himself, has told us, through his Secretary of re-Education, Arne Duncan, "Reasonable people should be able to agree on these restrictions…" (Translation: Opposition to gun control is irrational.) So let's be reasonable. Let's be rational. In fact, let's be completely scientific. Let's conduct an experiment. As we all know, scientific inquiry is completely devoid...
  • Five ways the mainstream media tipped the scales in favor of Obama

    11/07/2012 9:38:16 AM PST · by newheart · 7 replies
    FoxNews.com ^ | November 7, 2012 | Rich Noyes
    Fox News and other media outlets have projected that President Obama has been reelected to a second term. If, in celebrating his victory Obama wanted to give credit where credit is due, he might want to think about calling some of America's top journalists, since their favorable approach almost certainly made the difference between victory and defeat. Reviewing the 2012 presidential campaign, here are five ways the media elite tipped the public relations scales in favor of the liberal Obama and against the conservative challenger Mitt Romney:
  • How would C.S. Lewis vote in this election?

    11/05/2012 1:53:07 PM PST · by newheart · 26 replies
    11/5/2012 | newheart
    Somehow, I almost always find my way back to C.S. Lewis when trying to understand the big issues—and some of the small ones as well. A friend of mine once said she thought Lewis could be added to the canon of scripture in another thousand years. Her view of scripture wasn't all that high, but if there were any modern writer I would include, he is the one, though I have no doubt he would be appalled. Here are a couple of quotes of his that I think summarize what is at stake in this election. (From God in the...
  • The Real Differences Between Mormons and Orthodox Christians

    10/18/2012 1:07:42 PM PDT · by newheart · 50 replies
    Christianity Today Online ^ | 10/12/2012 | Gerald R. McDermott
    A survey this summer by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 60 percent of voters who know of Romney's Mormonism are comfortable with his religion. Another 21 percent said it doesn't matter. But the Pew survey also found that, along with atheists and agnostics, white evangelicals and black Protestants are the most uncomfortable with his religion. The vast majority of those who are already Republican will vote for Romney anyway, but only 21 percent of those who are uncomfortable with his Mormonism will back him strongly. Some may choose not to...
  • Martha Raddatz and the faux objectivity of journalists

    10/12/2012 8:46:21 AM PDT · by newheart · 12 replies
    snip... ...she's long em embedded in the DC culture that equates its own ideological desires with neutral facts. As a result, he entire discussion on entitlement programs proceeded within this narrow, highly ideological dubious framework. ...That is what this faux journalistic neutrality, whether by design or otherwise, always achieves. It glorifies highly ideological claims that benefit a narrow elite class (the one that happens to own the largest media outlets which employ these journalists) by allowing that ideology to masquerade as journalistic fact.
  • THE LION KING RISES: (Original) Dark Knight Rises Trailer Parody

    07/30/2012 11:18:55 AM PDT · by newheart · 2 replies
    YouTube ^ | December 30, 2011 | moviemaestroten
    The soundtrack of the Dark Knight Rises full trailer over visuals from the Lion King.
  • Left-Hearted, Right-Minded

    05/23/2012 6:52:21 AM PDT · by newheart · 8 replies
    Front Page Magazine ^ | 5-23-2012 | Jamie Glazov
    FP: David Cohen, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Let’s begin with you telling us how it is exactly that you became a conservative without abandoning your liberal ideals. How can it be that conservative policies can be the best way to achieve liberal ideals? Cohen: When I was a liberal, I wanted America to live up to its billing as the Land of Opportunity, with no one being held back because of race, ethnicity, religion or gender. I believed that America’s diversity was its strength. I was concerned about poverty; I wanted poor people to have a genuine shot at realizing...
  • Matthews to sexually-assaulted JFK intern: Shut up

    02/21/2012 7:00:07 AM PST · by newheart · 51 replies
    Daily Caller ^ | 2.21.12 | Michelle Fields
    MSNBC host Chris Matthews told The Daily Caller that he would still consider John F. Kennedy a hero and still would have written his new book “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero” if his daughter had been one-time White House intern Mimi Alford. Alford recently wrote “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath” about an affair she says started when she was 19 years old. In the book she claims Kennedy took her virginity and then asked her to perform oral sex on his aides. TheDC caught up with Matthews on Monday at Ford’s Theatre...
  • Mitt, Mormonism and Baggage. The Real Problem

    02/14/2012 4:17:33 PM PST · by newheart · 36 replies
    Free Republic Vanity Press | Feb 14, 2012 | newheart
    As I see it there are two questions related to Mormonism that are relevant to the primary process right now. Neither of them have to do with the theological issues of whether Mormons are Christians, or whether Mormonism is a cult, an offshoot denomination of Christianity, or a faith revealed by space aliens intended to take humanity to its next evolutionary step. Those are reasonable and important questions (except maybe for that last one), but not what the primary voters should be concerned with first and foremost. And while the answers to those questions can inform an individual's choice to...
  • Sarah at CPAC: Streaming Here Now! Comments Welcome.

    02/11/2012 1:53:02 PM PST · by newheart · 41 replies
    Mediaite ^ | 2/11/2012 | Live Stream
    http://www.mediaite.com/online/watch-cpac-2012-live-streaming-here/
  • Why Last Saturday's Political Conclave of Evangelical Leaders Was Dangerous

    01/18/2012 6:37:30 PM PST · by newheart · 17 replies
    Christianity Today Online ^ | 1/18/2012 | David Neff
    The 150 evangelical leaders who met behind closed doors on January 14 to anoint a Republican candidate for President were wise not to have invited me. I believe that Christians have an urgent duty to engage the social, economic, and moral threats to a healthy society. That requires a wide variety of political action. However, one thing it doesn't call for is playing kingmaker and powerbroker.
  • The Cure for Election Madness: How to be political without losing your soul.

    01/09/2012 11:03:29 AM PST · by newheart · 7 replies
    Christianity Today ^ | January 6, 2012 | Amy E. Black
    Mark DeMoss, concerned about the increasingly harsh tone of public discourse, launched the Civility Project in January 2009. The Republican businessman and political adviser enlisted Democratic lobbyist and former Clinton aide Lanny Davis to help him. Together the two friends wrote to all 100 United States Senators, all 435 members of the House of Representatives, and all 50 state governors, asking each to sign a pledge promising, "I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior. I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them. I will stand against incivility when I see it." How...
  • Memo to the Occupy protesters: here are ten things we evil capitalists really think (Daniel Hannan)

    11/26/2011 8:06:59 AM PST · by newheart · 7 replies
    The Telegraph ^ | 11/26/2011 | Daniel Hannan
    Chatting to some Occupy protesters this morning, I was struck by how wide of the mark were the beliefs they attributed to me as a Right-winger. In the interests of deeper understanding, here are ten things which – trust me – most of the Tory scum I hang around with think. Obviously, I don’t expect to turn my Leftie readers in a single post; still, they might get a clearer idea of what we actually believe.
  • Newt Gingrich. How the "smartest man in the room" may become the most electable.

    11/23/2011 3:58:59 PM PST · by newheart · 60 replies
    The Old Brain of Newheart | November 23, 2011 | Newheart
    Early in the campaign I pretty much wrote Gingrich off. But I am giving him a very long second look and to my own surprise it is due in large part to electability. That may seem odd to the "I like Newt, but he has too much baggage to win," crowd (even more odd to the "I can never forgive him for sitting on a couch with Queen Nancy," crowd), so here is my reasoning: Why was Barack Obama elected in 2008? Yes, it was partly pent-up white guilt as the electorate attempted to assuage their collective conscience for all...