When Social Security was implemented, the maximum amount any one person paid into the system was $60 per year—a total of two percent from employee and employer of a maximum $3000 per year. Today, the percentage is around 14% on $80,000+ per year. This compulsory “tax” is said to be a “contribution,” as in the “employers contribution portion of Social Security.” Try telling the Social Security Admi [...]
Michael Newdow is about to become as famous as Madelyn Murray O’Hair. For some of our younger readers, O’Hair was instrumental in getting prayer removed from public schools.[1] In a 1963 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a government sponsored prayer was unconstitutional. This has led to the banning of all things religious from public schools. The decision made O’Hair the cou [...]
Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan has told his followers that President Bush’s efforts to bring democracy to the Middle East represent “the rule of the devil.” Democracy is the “rule of the people,” and whatever the people rule is right. _Vox populi, vox dei—”_the voice of the people is the voice of god.” In Farrakhan’s case, the voice of the people is the voice of the devil—a counte [...]
Christie Todd Whitman, like so many disgruntled politicos who see their worldview being coopted by a shift in the political landscape, has written a book slamming the conservative shift in the Republican Party. She offers some advice on how to increase the Republican base in It’s My Party, Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America. She contends that the party has bee [...]
Students in public schools are often denied the right to discuss religion except in a multi-cultural way. If Christianity is discussed, it can only be studied in the context of other religious belief systems in their historical setting. But as we’ve seen, even this approach is no longer accepted in reference to Christianity. Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San [...]
Mel Gabler is not a household name, yet he had more influence in shaping recent American life than most people ever dream of. He and his wife Norma stood in the gap for over four decades, battling the tax-funded schools’ textbook Establishment. Time and time again, the Gablers inflicted enormous financial losses on textbook firms until the publishers learned to clear their textbooks in advan [...]
Arnold Schwarzenegger believes that Republicans can add to their growing majority by moving the party to the left. Here’s what he said in a recent German newspaper interview: “I would like the Republican Party to cross this line, move a little further left and place more weight on the center. This would immediately give the party 5 percent more votes without it losing anything elsewhere.” What he [...]
A number of critics of the war in Iraq have criticized the Pentagon’s “use of deception and disinformation against enemies, real or imagined, abroad.” The question is, In a time of war, should governments always tell the truth to the enemy? The architects of the D-Day invasion, for example, used deception to mislead the Nazis. Was this wrong? Is wearing camouflage, a form of deception, unethical? [...]
“World records are being smashed by men who have been taking anabolic hormones [steroids]. Some athletes see them as a new secret weapon. . . . It’s the hottest–and quietest–argument in sports today.” A 2004 editorial about Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, and breaking baseball’s cherished records with the help of a little juice, right? Wrong! This opening paragraph a [...]
The Ghost of Antonio Gramsci By Gary DeMar For a long time American Vision has been calling on Christians to understand that social change comes from the bottom up, not the top down. This does not mean that the top should be ignored. There were converts in “Caesar’s household” (Phil. 4:22). Political involvement is God-ordained and “ministerial” (Rom. 13:1, 4), not re [...]
Leftist pundits continue to raise fears about a Taliban-type Christian theocracy. The evangelical and moral vote scared the daylights out of a cabal of frenzied popping jays who have had a near monopoly on the flow of editorial comment over the last 20 years. There’s even a “theocracy watch” website for those who care about such things. Maureen Dowd, Garry Wills, Bill Moyers, and [...]
Just what we need, another prominent evangelical making it theologically easier for Christians not to get involved in the political process. Franklin Graham begins his article on “Christians must focus on God, not politics” with the obligatory acknowledgment that he has “always used whatever influence and platform [he] had to urge everyone to vote.” Then comes the inevitabl [...]
Most of us don’t remember that Arlen Specter was considering a run for the presidency in 1995.[1] Specter ran for president because he didn’t like the “exclusionary attitudes” of Christian conservatives, especially their pro-life agenda. He believed then, like he believes now, that the Republican Party is “so captive to the demands of the intolerant right that we end up re-electing a president on [...]
On Thursday, September 24, 1789, the First House of Representatives voted to recommend—in its exact wording—the First Amendment of the newly drafted Constitution to the states for ratification. The next day, Congressman Elias Boudinot from New Jersey proposed that the House and Senate jointly request of President Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for “the many signal favors of Almighty [...]
Maryland public school students are in a rude historical awakening this Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving means thanking anyone or anything except God. I suppose that thanking the devil would pass Public School muster as long as the kiddies didn’t ask about his origin since such an inquiry might lead them back to God. These public school children, who are being denied the right and historical reality of [...]
One of the more pleasurable parts of what I do at American Vision is traveling around the country and meeting people who are working out the implications of the gospel and the kingdom of God. It’s heartening to hear how the ministry of American Vision is having an impact. The most rewarding experiences I have is meeting with young people who are part of the growing Christian private, church, and h [...]
Chantal Stepney is a senior at the University of Georgia. An article she wrote appeared in the November 16, 2004, issue of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She takes issue with anti-Bush types on campus who want to flee America for a better life in Canada where they can get “free health care.” Some of her friends thought that finding a piece of land in Namibia to start a family in Afr [...]
Similar counsel was given to Michael Corleone from his father in the Godfather saga. It turned out to be very good advice. It looks like Arlen Specter is going to get the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is not as bad as it seems. Specter got the behind-closed-door message that his pro-abortion obstructionist philosophy would not be tolerated. Having a bad guy as chairman can h [...]
Those familiar with recent history will remember that one of the attack groups that got Chief Justice Roy Moore removed from office was the Southern Poverty Law Center located in Montgomery, Alabama. Richard Cohen, a lawyer for the SPLC, led the charge against Moore. After their success in getting Moore removed, the SPLC, the ACLU, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued the s [...]
Garrison Keillor, the soft-spoken, folksy host of “A Prairie Home Companion,” has shown his dark side with comments he made during a speech at Chicago’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel and during his radio monologue the Saturday after the election. According to a transcript of the show, Keillor said, “I am now the chairman of a national campaign to pass a constitutional amendment to take the rig [...]
