In his bestseller, Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer declares, “The Permanent Political Class has no sense of urgency to change because, for them, business is good.”
Schweizer, who is interviewed in the latest issue of Religion & Liberty, appeared today on the Mike Huckabee radio show to talk congressional insider trading. Schweizer told Huckabee that “Big government creates big profits for people that are in power.”
Read more on Peter Schweizer Talks Congressional Insider Trading…
Former governor, pastor, and presidential candidate (and current radio host) Mike Huckabee has been a primary driving force in turning today, August 1, into an ad hoc appreciation day for the fast food company Chick-fil-A.
Huckabee’s activism in support of the “Eat Mor Chikin” establishments was occasioned by criticism leveled against the company’s support for traditional “family values,” including promotion of traditional marriage. Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy said, “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit.” That, apparently, was enough to galvanize many opponents of “the biblical definition of the family unit” and the rights of a company to be supportive of such. These opponents include, notably, a Chicago alderman and the mayor of Boston.
In addition to Huckabee’s response, others have argued that there should not be a religious, or even political, test of sorts for determining our partners in free exchange. Jonathan Merritt, a Southern Baptist pastor and author, wrote a piece for The Atlantic, “In Defense of Eating a Chick-fil-A,” in which he writes, “in a society that desperately needs healthy public dialogue, we must resist creating a culture where consumers sort through all their purchases (fast food and otherwise) for an underlying politics not even expressed in the nature of the product itself.” Likewise Branson Parler, a professor at Kuyper College here in Grand Rapids, contends that “Christians need to disconnect the cultural goods and services provided by numerous institutions (including Chick-fil-A) from the gods of politicization and partisanship.”
Read more on Chick-fil-A and Free Exchange…
Earlier this week the Detroit News reported (HT: Pew Forum) that supporters of Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and Republican candidate for this election’s presidential nomination, would be meeting with representatives of John McCain in the key swing state of Michigan. Among the “battleground” states, Obama holds his largest lead in the polls here in Michigan (RCP average of +3.2).
Last week presidential candidate John McCain distanced himself from economic adviser Phil Gramm, after Gramm’s comments that America had become a “nation of whiners” and that the current concerns over a lagging economy amounted to a “mental recession” rather than any real phenomena.
Two new Acton commentaries this week:
In “Religious Liberty and Anti-Discrimination Laws,” Joseph Kosten looks at recent controversies in Colorado and Missouri involving Roman Catholic institutions.
Without the liberty to decide who represents its views and who disperses its message to the public, a religious institution or organization lays bare its most vulnerable aspect and welcomes destruction from within. Separation of church and state does not mean that religious institutions may not function within a state, nor does it mean that they can not decide who they hire.
Michael Miller and Jay Richards examine the economic proposals of Gov. Mike Huckabee in “The Missing Link: Religion and Economic Freedom.”
Read more on Acton on Religious Liberty and Huckabee’s Economics…
Related to John’s post about “natural” capitalism (and as I previously promised in the context of the “new” evangelicalism), I’d like to point to this summary of the contemporary situation from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, speaking of a left/right political divide:
It’s fun to watch as layers are gradually peeled away from the conventional wisdom to reveal that the CW is, well, wrong. Old CW: Evangelicals are marching in lockstep behind Mike Huckabee; Emerging CW: Evangelicals are just as fragmented in their opinions at this point in the nominating process as anyone else.
Read more on Huck and the Evangelicals: A Match Made in Heaven?…
RELEVANT magazine has conducted a reader survey and has a special section on young religious voter attitudes towards politics. A summary bite from RELEVANT founder and publisher Cameron Strang:
Young Christians simply don’t seem to feel a connection to the traditional religious right. Many differ strongly on domestic policy issues, namely issues that affect the poor, and are dissatisfied with America’s foreign policy and war.
Why listen to the new Radio Free Acton podcast? Because you’ll have the opportunity to hear news analysis before old media gets around to reporting it.
Here’s a case in point. In the inaugural January 11 edition of Radio Free Acton, I say the following:
Iowa and New Hampshire represent less than 1.5% of the U.S. population, but the way many pundits talk, these two small states apparently possess some obscure Constitutional right to choose the short list of presidential candidates for the rest of us.
Read more on Do Iowa and New Hampshire Choose the Short List?…
