Walter Cronkite Was a Socialist

“We ought to be increasing our taxes. We who have it ought to be paying a lot more, but should insist on efficiency in expenditure.”—Walter Cronkite When Walter Cronkite was 89, he regretted having retired as the anchorman of CBS News. He wanted to be America’s “most trusted man” again. Cronkite was a socialist. Of course, you knew that, but let’s let “Uncle Walter” tell you himself. The September [...]

The Iroquois League and the U.S. Constitution

It’s been claimed that credit should be given to the Iroquois for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and other vital instruments of liberty. The ideas expressed in these documents of liberty and representative government were not derived from Western Christianity but rather borrowed from Native American minority groups without given their due credit. “Anthropologist Thomas Riley asserts that th [...]

Swearing to Make the Pain Go Away

A new study shows that swearing might help to mute the pain of an injury. “It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain.” The researchers enlisted 64 undergraduate volunteers and had them submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word [...]

Are You Smarter than an Arizona High School Student?

To determine students’ level of basic civic knowledge, The Goldwater Institute surveyed Arizona high school students with questions drawn from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) item bank, which consists of 100 questions given to candidates for United States citizenship. You can download a copy of the citizenship bank of questions here. The longstanding practice has bee [...]

Were the Founders Deists?

July 4th brings out the historical revisionists. One of the more kooky revisionist claims is that our Founding Fathers were Deists. Deism is a philosophical belief system that claims that God exists but is not involved in the world. While God created all things and set the universe in motion, He is no longer involved in its operation. Given this definition of deism, which of the founding fathers w [...]

The First Principles of Economics

What is the first principle of economics? Some economists will claim that it’s supply and demand, while others insist that it’s scarcity or the division of labor. The first principle of economics is “thou shalt not steal.”The word economics is derived from two Greek words: oikos, meaning “house,” and nomos, meaning “law.” Combined we get “rules or laws of the house.” Economics is ethical before it [...]

The Christian America Debate Continues

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009june01.jpg" ““Article”) Every society is founded on some ultimate principle. It might be the absolutism of a single ruler, the majority-rule concept of a pure democracy where the “voice of the people is considered to be the voice of God” (vox populi, vox dei), or an oligarchy where a self-appoi [...]

Memorial Day: Sergeant York (1941)

Memorial Day commemorates American men and women who died while in the military service. It’s not a day to celebrate war. In fact, it should be a day when we reflect on the true costs and consequences of war. I can think of no better way to do this than to offer a review of the film Sergeant York (1941), a war movie that caries an antiwar message. It’s the true story of World War I Medal of Honor [...]

The Detroit of the South & the “Hit Recording Capital of the World”

“In 1921, automotive tycoon Henry Ford, accompanied by Thomas Edison, came to Muscle Shoals with a vision of transforming this area into a metropolis. ‘I will employ one million workers at Muscle Shoals and I will build a city 75 miles long at Muscle Shoals,’ stated Mr. Ford. The instant rumors of Ford’s plan hit the streets, real estate speculators began buying up land and parceling it out in 25 [...]

A Liberal's Idea of a Simplified Tax Code

President Obama is proposing a simplification of the tax code. We’ve heard this before. As it now stands, the tax code consists of 60,000 pages and 3.7 million words. If the IRS wants to get you, it can easily find a way given so many rules. So what should we expect from a modified and “simplified” tax code created by liberals? It will consist of a single sheet of paper with the [...]

The Lost History of Superman

Superman is an American cultural icon. He is probably one of the most recognized fictional characters in the world. The Superman franchise is a multi-million dollar enterprise. Everything from comic books and movies to Halloween costumes and lunch boxes and everything in between carry the image of the “Man of Steel.” He’s even been immortalized in song in Jim Croce’s &ldquo [...]

Constitutional Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics, the science and skill of interpretation, is most often applied to the Bible. But hermeneutics can be applied to any written document. For example, the Constitution is a piece of literature that requires interpretive skill to determine its meaning. I was reminded of this when I read a letter to the editor that appeared in The Wall Street Journal.[1] The writer equates the constitution [...]

The Statue of Three Lies

The battle for America is being fought on two fronts: In the courts and the universities. If these two institutions remain in the hands of liberals, reversing anti-Christian trends will take decades longer. The universities feed the law schools, the law schools corrupt the minds of impressionable law students, and the courts maintain the status quo. Our colonial founders understood that the garden [...]

Retiring the Gods from Politics

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009mar30.jpg" ““Article”) Recently I have received a number of emails from atheists. This isn’t unusual since American Vision publishes a number of books refuting common atheist arguments, and I’ve written a few articles on the subject as well. American Vision has published four books refuting thr [...]

Honoring a Dying Man's Request

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-020409.jpg" ““Article”) I was driving north on I-75 toward Knoxville in late May 2008 on my way to a speaking engagement in Morgantown, West Virginia, when I received a phone call from my office. “Gary, a man just called. He said that he was dying and that he had to talk with you.” I knew it was Ch [...]

Is Christmas About a Homeless Couple?

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-122208.jpg" ““Article”) Every Christmas season we will hear the inevitable revisionist version of the Christmas story. Jesse Jackson was the first to turn Joseph and Mary into a “homeless couple” when he claimed that Christmas “is not about Santa Claus and ‘Jingle Bells’ and [...]

Atheists Need You to be Ignorant

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-120908.jpg" ““Article”) One way to change worldview perceptions is to keep people ignorant. The public schools have done a great job in shifting worldview thinking from theism to humanism right under the noses of parents who extol the virtues of America’s government education system. Consider how t [...]

Day of Fasting and Prayer

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-120908-b.jpg" ““Article”) Efforts to erase God from America’s collective memory will have to include a number of official documents signed by some of our founding fathers, including John Hancock and James Madison. On March 16, 1776, “by order of Congress” a “day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer” [...]

No One is Neutral and Facts Don't Speak for Themselves

A story is told that during the days of the Cold War a two-car automobile race took place between the United States and the former Soviet Union. An American newspaper reporter described the result of the race this way: “American car beats out Soviet competitor.” The Russian newspaper reported the same automotive contest from a slightly different perspective: “Soviet car finishes second; American c [...]

Constitutional Hermeneutics: General Welfare

![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-102008.jpg" ““Article”) Hermeneutics, the science and skill of interpretation, is most often applied to the Bible. But hermeneutics can be applied to any written document. For example, the Constitution is a piece of literature that requires interpretive skill to determine its meaning. I was reminde [...]