Last night millions of young Super Bowl viewers were introduced to one of the most influential conservatives in modern America. And it was done with this commercial.

Rush Limbaugh is often credited with the dubious honor of bringing conservative talk radio to the masses. And it is certainly true that Rush paved the way for Hannity, O’Reilly, and other pundits by perfecting the three-hour babblefest. But the true pioneer and undisputed king of conservative radio is Paul Harvey, a man who never required three hours and 36 commercial breaks to get his message across.

Read more on So God Made Paul Harvey…

If there is one day where young and old, Republican and Democrat, black and white, the 99% and the 1%, put down their weapons and disputes, it is on Superbowl Sunday. The game, the ads, the food, and so on, turned Superbowl Sunday into a major spectacle. The spectacle has not gone unnoticed among religious leaders. In fact, as Superbowl viewership has increased to over 100 million in recent years so has the discomfort about the game and the spectacle.

Tony Wood, Pastor of Preaching & Vision at Moment Church in Tustin, CA, posted on Facebook that “Sunday will be an interesting day as millions of Americans wake, look in the mirror, and choose which God they worship more – Football or Christ.” Nashville area pastor Ray Ortlund, over at The Gospel Coalition said that 2008 was his last Superbowl because, “It has become an intensified concentration of vulgarity and ego, with enough athletics in the game and cleverness in the commercials to trick me into watching. It’s simply not what I’m living for.” A fringe group of lay-preachers calling themselves “Citizens Against Super Bowl Idolatry” is planning to protest outside the game in order to warn the American public about the “deeper implications of Super Bowl idolatry in American life … ,” according to Birmingham lawyer, James Leonard Elsman.

Perhaps these religious leaders can take a little comfort in the fact that Superbowl viewership is actually expected to drop slightly this year, according to Brad Adgate, senior VP-research for Horizon Media.
Read more on The Superbowl: The New Day of Solidarity…

In the Wall Street Journal, Cardinal Timothy Dolan explains how Catholic Schools can combat falling enrollment while keeping standards high:

I have heard from many leaders in business and finance that when a graduate from Catholic elementary and secondary schools applies for an entry-level position in their companies, the employer can be confident that the applicant will have the necessary skills to do the job. Joseph Viteritti, a professor of public policy at Hunter College in New York who specializes in education policy, recently said, “If you’re serious about education reform, you have to pay attention to what Catholic schools are doing. The fact of the matter is that they’ve been educating urban kids better than they’re being educated elsewhere.”

Read more on The Plan to Save Catholic Schools…

Since the 1970s, Black History Month has been a time to focus on some of the highlights of the black experience in America. In 2009, Jonathan Bean put together a wonderful book recounting the vital role liberty played in the American black experience. In Race and Liberty In America: The Essential Reader, Bean demonstrates that from the Declaration of Independence to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning school assignment by race, classical liberalism differs from progressive liberalism in emphasizing freedom, Christianity, the racial neutrality of the Constitution, racial solidarity, and free enterprise. Bean recalls rich history.

For example, James Forten (1776-1842), a free black who fought in the revolutionary war became a wealth sailmaker in Philadelphia reflecting on the importance of liberty in a 1813 petition to the Pennsylvania state legislature that would have deprived free blacks of basic rights. Forten was deeply concerned about maintaining the rule of law:
Read more on Celebrating Liberty During Black History Month…

Over at Fieldnotes Magazine, Matthew Kaemingk offers a good reminder that in our social solutions-seeking we needn’t be limited to thinking only in terms of market and state. By boxing ourselves in as such, Kaemingk argues, Christians risk an overly simplistic, non-Biblical view of human needs and human destiny:

Read more on Civil Society and Social Eco-System: Seeking Solutions Beyond Market and State…

The Emperor Constantine with his mother Helen, both traditionally commemorated as saints of the Church.

This month marks the 1,700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan. While much debate surrounds the relationship of Church and state in Christian Rome, even key figures like the Emperor Constantine (traditionally considered a saint by both East and West), the Edict of Milan is something that anyone who values liberty, religious liberty in particular, ought to commemorate as a monumental achievement. While a previous edict in 311 had offered some toleration to Christians, who spent almost their first 300 years having to fear for their lives any one of many local outbreaks of persecution that periodically plagued Pagan Rome, the Edict of Milan for the first time granted the Church the same status, including property rights, as other religions. It did not establish Christianity as the state religion (that would not happen until the end of the fourth century). Even then, the history, like all history, is messy. Often different emperors had widely different practical perspectives toward their role (or lack thereof) in religion. As Lord Acton has stated, liberty is the “delicate fruit of a mature civilization,” and that includes religious liberty and Christian Rome. In all cases, it was not a total separation of Church and state, but it was an achievement, a maturation if only for a time, that marked the end of centuries of martyrdom for Christians in the Roman (now Byzantine) empire. Read more on The Edict of Milan in the History of Liberty…

School Choice: Key to Improving Hispanic High School Graduation Rate
Israel Ortega, The Foundry

The problems with American education are especially pronounced among Hispanics: Latino students lag behind white peers in high school graduation rates across the country. Meanwhile, California’s Hispanic population will be the state’s largest ethnic group in 2013.

The Internet, Human Creativity, and Freedom
Taylor Barkley, Institute for Faith, Work & Economics

Read more on PowerLinks – 02.01.13…