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Marc Vander Maas

Posts by Marc Vander Maas:

The Scars of Ceausescu

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Nicolae Ceausescu with his wife Elena

Nicolae Ceausescu with his wife Elena

It is a good thing from time to time to step back and remember just what it is that we who believe in the free society fight for each day. I stumbled across Michael Totten’s exploration of Romania - Twenty Years After the Fall of the Tyrant. With the passage of time, it is easy to forget - at least for those of us who never directly experienced it - just how suffocating and cruel the Communist dictatorships of the 20th century were.

“Communism changed our mentality,” said Daniel Apostol, editor in chief of Romania’s Money Channel. “We are still fighting now to come back to what we were. We lost the culture of private property. We lost this sense of privacy and respecting each other’s time and respecting people as individuals, as human beings. That was the worst thing that happened to us. This is why we are struggling so much now to get back to the capitalist society, to the free market, which can run only if there is respect for private property…”

Totten details the continuing consequences of totalitarian rule in Romania, and the country’s struggle to rebuild itself. All in all, a fine reminder to all of us who experience the blessings of liberty to never take those blessings - or the systems that were built to protect and preserve them - for granted.

See also: The Architect as Totalitarian by Theodore Dalrymple

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Acton Media Alert - Kishore Jayabalan on Vatican Radio

Friday, February 26, 2010

actononairVatican Radio in Rome turned to Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Instituto Acton, for comment on a recent Italian court ruling which held three Google executives criminally responsible for a YouTube video depicting a teenager with Downs Syndrome being bullied. Vatican Radio’s short article on the matter is here; the audio is available via the audio player below.

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Acton Media Alert: Sirico on the BBC

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

actononairOn Monday, Acton Founder and President Rev. Robert A. Sirico took to the airwaves of the BBC and squared off against Oliver Kamm of the London Times in a spirited debate over the merits of Michael Moore’s latest “documentary,” Capitalism: A Love Story. Audio from the BBC3 show Nightwaves is available via the audio player below.

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A Reminder

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Children are not the property of the state:

A Christian family from Germany have been granted political asylum in the US after facing the threat of prison for home schooling their children.

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, who are evangelical Christians, were forced to flee Germany as they wished to educate their five children at home.

Home schooling is still illegal in Germany under laws introduced during the Nazi era.

The German law means that parents who choose to home school their children can face fines or even imprisonment.

Mr Romeike said: “I think it’s important for parents to have the freedom to choose the way their children can be taught”.

Mr Romeike and his wife withdrew their three oldest children from school in 2006 after they encountered problems with violence, bullying and peer pressure.

However, the decision to educate their children at home brought the family into conflict with the German authorities.

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Rev. Robert A. Sirico on Accountability in Leadership

Friday, January 8, 2010

In the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit and the ensuing controversy over the Obama Administration’s handling both of the pre-attack intelligence and the post-attack response, Neil Cavuto invited Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico on his show to discuss how President Obama might go about exercising proper leadership and accountability in his address to the nation last night. The clip from Your World with Neil Cavuto follows:

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Obama v. Jesus: WHO YA GOT?

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Greatest?

The Greatest?

I post the following excerpt of an editorial from a Danish news outlet without further comment, other than to say that I look forward to giving our PowerBlog community the opportunity to have a grand old time trying to come up with new superlatives to describe just how fantastically stupid this is:

EDITORIAL: Obama greater than Jesus

He is provocative in insisting on an outstretched hand, where others only see animosity.

His tangible results in the short time that he has been active – are few and far between. His greatest results have been created with words and speeches – words that remain in the consciousness of their audience and have long-term effects.

He comes from humble beginnings and defends the weak and vulnerable, because he can identify himself with their conditions.

And no we are not thinking of Jesus Christ, whose birthday has just been celebrated - - but rather the President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama.

For some time now, comparisons between the two have been a tool of cynical opinion that quickly became fatigued of the rapture that Obama instilled prior to and after the presidential election last year.

From the start, Obama’s critics have claimed that his supporters have idolised him as a saviour, thus attempting to dismantle the concrete hope that Obama has represented for most Americans.

The idea was naturally that the comparison between Jesus and Obama – which is something that the critics developed themselves – would be comical, blasphemous, or both.

If such a comparison were to be made, it would, of course, inevitably be to Obama’s advantage.

Please, oh please do read the rest.  It’s delightful.

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Acton Media Alert: Schmiesing on School Choice

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

actononairActon Research Fellow Dr. Kevin Schmiesing made an appearance earlier today on The Drew Mariani Show on the Relevant Radio Network. He joined guest host Wendy Wiese to discuss school choice and the history of public education in the United states.  To listen, use the audio player below.

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Global Warming Consensus Alert: Earth Doomed (URGENT UPDATE: OR NOT! UPDATE 2X: YUP, WE’RE DOOMED)

Friday, December 18, 2009

consensus_alert1Breaking news: India, China walk out of climate summit

So much for the “God moment.” Seeing as how this was our last chance and all, I think I’m going to take the afternoon off to go get my affairs in order.

Mind Boggling: How could world leaders not come to a consensus when Chin-Strap the Polar Bear and the Guardian Angels of the Climate were all in agreement?  Unity in diversity!  It was so spiritual!  The mind reels.

CONSENSUS! No, seriously, the science is settled!

LAST MINUTE MIND-BLOWINGLY AMAZING UPDATE: This new “non-binding working agreement” negotiated at the very last minute by a bunch of panicked politicians trying to save face after a complete failure of a conference is almost exactly what we needed, I bet!

DESPAIR! It looks like we’re doomed after all:

U.N. climate talks fell into crisis on Saturday after some developing nations angrily rejected a plan worked out by U.S. President Barack Obama and leaders of other major economies for fighting global warming…

…Countries including Venezuela, Sudan and Tuvalu said they opposed a deal spearheaded on Friday in Copenhagen by the United States, China, India, South Africa and Brazil at the summit. The deal would need unanimous backing to be adopted.
Opponents said the document, which sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degree Celsius rise over pre-industrial times and holds out the prospect of $100 billion (62 billion pounds) in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations, was too weak.

An acrimonious session long past midnight hit a low point when a Sudanese delegate said the plan in Africa would be like the Holocaust by causing more deadly floods, droughts, mudslides, sandstorms and rising seas.
The document “is a solution based on the same very values, in our opinion, that channelled six million people in Europe into furnaces,” said Sudan’s Lumumba Stanislaus Di-aping.

I suppose the silver lining here is that at least for once it’s not global warming skeptics being likened to genocidal killers. But that’s small comfort as we watch the agreement to save the world from imminent destruction fall to pieces. Such a shame.

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Bumped - Global Warming Consensus Alert: Climategate

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Update: Naturally, right after I post this article, new information comes out that makes Climategate look even worse.  It’s been noted in the comments that Russian scientists are now saying outright that climate data from Russian weather stations has been tampered with in order to make it appear to substantiate claims of catastrophic man-made global warming:

On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

The plot thickens!  Original post follows…

——–

consensus_alert1It’s been some time since we’ve had an update on the State of the Global Warming Consensus, and I’m happy to report that the Global Warming Consensus remains strong and unchallenged.  Well, strong and unchallenged barring that little e-mail and data leak from a few weeks ago that is really not an issue at all.  I mean, it’s not an issue at all except in the sense that it may have exposed some unethical scientific shenanigans by some of the biggest names in the pro-Anthropogenic Global Warming community, but that’s nothing to lose sleep over.  You might lose your job, but you shouldn’t lose sleep.  COPENHAGEN OR BUST!

Some background:  the Global Warming Consensus Watch/Alert series dates back to April of 2007, and from the start has been all about reminding us that the much-vaunted Scientific Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming was not nearly as untouchable as folks like Al Gore would have us believe.  The reality of the situation is slightly more nuanced than the Goracle would have us believe:  indeed, the planet has been warming over the last century, and has been since the end of the Little Ice Age.  The questions being confronted over the last few decades - and most intensely over the last couple of years - are whether the warming that has happened in the 20th century is primarily caused by human activity or is part of a larger natural process; and whether or not the warming poses significant problems for human society in the future.  (Dr. Jay Richards had a presentation on this very topic as a part of the 2008 Acton Lecture Series; you can view it here.)
(more…)

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Acton Media Alert: Jayabalan on the Dubai Debt Crisis

Monday, November 30, 2009

Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Acton’s Rome office, was asked by Vatican Radio to comment on the debt crisis in Dubai that has been causing concern in world financial markets over the last week. To listen, use the audio player below.

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