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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
![“Artim:](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/artim-20090707-saul-alinsky-liberals-america-takeover-government-leftists-tactics.jpg" ““Artim:”) Why does the Left sympathize with radical Islamic extremists? Over the July 4th weekend a story about how a recent New York City Council resolution that recommend the city’s school system shut down to commemorate two [...]
![“Artim:](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/artim-20090706-poor-working-class-liberals-big-government-spending-reduce-taxes-spread-wealth.jpg" ““Artim:”) Alan Colmes, who co-hosted with Sean Hannity on FOX’s “Hannity and Colmes,” claims that Jesus “believed the rich should give to the poor.” Obama and most of Congress seem to agree. Let’s assume that Colme [...]
As a young boy, I loved science. On standardized tests, I always scored highest in the science category. Astronomy was a favorite interest, but it didn’t take me long to realize that astronomy is a spectator sport. While the moon is near enough, there was no way that I was ever going to hop scotch through the universe. I soon turned my scientific interests to electricity, short wave radios, and Mo [...]
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 [...]
![“ArtIm:](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/artim-20090701-economy-taxes-greed-money-power.jpg" ““ArtIm:”) The Bible does not minimize the importance of economics. The Garden of Eden makes mention of gold and precious stones: “The gold of that land is good” (Genesis 2:11-12). Jesus used money as a teaching device in many of His parables. John MacArthur, pa [...]
![“ArtIm:](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/artim-20090630-conservatism-big-government-democracy-spending.jpg" ““ArtIm:”) Sociologist William Brustein went to Berlin a few years ago to tour the city. As his bus tour passed the bunker where Hitler spent his last days, the guide told how Hitler had seized power and fooled the German people. He assured the to [...]
The brick-and-mortar Christian book business is in trouble. You could see the steady decline year after year at the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) run by the Christian Booksellers Association. In fact, in 2008, Thomas Nelson, the largest Christian retailer, did not attend. This year, ICRS will meet in Denver “to significantly lower numbers—of both vendors and attendees.” Of course, muc [...]
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 [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009june23.jpg" ““Article”) Michael G. Zey of Montclair State University in New Jersey writes: “People want to believe that there is superior life in the universe, and that these aliens will be able to upgrade our own lives. This is a form of wish fulfillment.”[1] This is especially true since, as [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009june22.jpg" ““Article”) “Pop-culture fiction, not academic nonfiction, is now the cutting edge of public discourse on spirituality.”[1] For several months I have been working on an extended project that explores the relationship of pop-culture to societal norms and worldview shifts. In addition [...]
Ken Ham, who believes in a literal six-day creation that happened around 6,000 years ago, says the church opened a door for the exodus of youth, beginning in the 19th century, when it began teaching that “the age of the Earth is not an issue as long as you trust in Jesus and believe in the resurrection and the Gospel accounts.” Ham concedes that “salvation is not conditioned on what you believe ab [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009june16.jpg" ““Article”) A number of articles have been published about the demise of the church in America. Newsweek, copying the cover design of the April 12, 1966 of Time magazine’s “Is God Dead?” cover, carried an article on The Decline and Fall of Christian America in its April 13, 2009 iss [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009june09.jpg" ““Article”) For years, liberals have been telling us that screen scenes depicting gratuitous sex, sadism, nihilism, despair, violence, militant secularism, and blasphemy have little or no effect on the opinions and behavior of viewers. Those who make these claims are some of the sam [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009june08.jpg" ““Article”) I received the following portion of a longer email from someone who disagreed with me on the interpretation of the Constitution related to the relationship between the Federal government and the states. He opened his email with this statement (my response follows his com [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009june03.jpg" ““Article”) In the July 11, 1968, issue of The Village Voice, Marvin Garson, the pamphleteer of the Free Speech Movement, recounted with pride the bombings which had been the calling card of campus radicals from Berkeley and its environs: The series of successful and highly popular [...]
![“Article](“http://assets.americanvision.org/mediafiles/article-image-2009jun02.jpg" ““Article”) Paul Hill, convicted of murdering abortionist John Britton and his bodyguard in 1994, considered himself to be a twentieth-century John Brown. Brown, if you recall, was the self-appointed avenger of God who was fond of quoting Hebrews 9:22: “All things are by the law purg [...]
![“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 [...]
