We’ve posted Rev. Robert A. Sirico’s Oct. 30 speech delivered at the Acton Institute annual dinner in Grand Rapids, Mich. The dinner also featured a keynote address from Rev. John Nunes, president and chief executive officer of Lutheran World Relief, and remarks from Kate O’Beirne, National Review’s Washington Editor, who accepted the Acton Institute Faith & Freedom Award in honor of the late William F. Buckley, Jr.

Excerpt from Rev. Sirico’s speech:

Today we find institution after institution “in the tank” for unrestrained government intervention. One is reminded of Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s call for the left to begin a long march through the institutions of Western Civilization. The left, it seems, got the memo. How will we respond to this disheartening situation? Now is no time to retreat in disarray. Now is no time to stumble. There remains a remnant … a potent remnant who has not bowed the knee to big government. My call to you tonight is a transparent one: strengthen the soldiers of that remnant. In particular—strengthen that band of brothers gathered with you tonight, the Acton Institute.

Never in Acton’s nearly 20 year history has our message been more essential than right now. As an institution that cherishes the free and virtuous society, we are living through this thing with all of you, and we need your help to continue. Our history of integrity; the quality of our products and programs; the responsible tone with which we approach the questions at hand, all speak to the fact that this work is worthy of your investment. I humbly ask for it with the promise that we will use it well and prudently.

The fact of the matter is that too many of us have become much too comfortable and yielded to a perennial temptation, the temptation to take our liberty for granted. Those of you who have invested in the work of the Acton Institute over the years know—and especially those of you who have had a chance to see our latest media effort “The Birth of Freedom” know—we believe the time has come for a renewal of those principles that form the very foundation of civilization, the same principles that make prosperity possible and accessible to those on the margins.

Liberty is indeed, as Lord Acton said, “the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” As such it is in need of a nutritious soil in which to flourish. In this sense you and I are tillers of the soil, if you will.

Liberty is a delicate fruit. It is also an uncommon one. When one surveys human history it becomes evident how unusual, how precious is authentic liberty, as is the economic progress that is its result. These past few weeks are a vivid and sad testimony to this fact. As a delicate fruit, human liberty as well as economic stability must be tended to, lest it disintegrate. It requires constant attention, new appreciation and understanding, renewal, moral defense and integration into the whole fabric of society.

Read the entire speech here.

Is Senator Obama a closet socialist waiting for inauguration day, at which time he and a Democratic Congress will immediately pursue a massive increase in the size and power of government in our lives, accompanied by massive tax increases and massive redistribution of wealth? Or is he really a moderate pragmatist, a canny politician who when he was getting started in politics used his radical contacts from his ultra-leftwing Hyde Park community, but now is in a position to use more moderate figures to build a centrist working coalition? Which is the real Obama?

Stanley Kurtz of National Review has been investigating Obama’s political past for months now, and in a recent piece on Obama’s ties to such far left groups as Acorn and The New Party, Kurtz suggests a third alternative that I find both more nuanced and more cogent than either Obama-as-Clintonesque-pragmatist or Obama-as-Manchurian-Candidate.

Continue reading "Baby Stepping Toward the Nanny State"

A 2001 radio interview of Barack Obama surfaced yesterday in which he said that “one of the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement,” and one of the limitations of the Warren Supreme Court, was that although they won such formal rights as the right to vote and “sit at the lunch counter and order,” they “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.”

A caller to the station, WBEZ Chicago 91.5 FM, then asks if the courts are “the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place.” Obama responds that “you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally,” but a more effective approach is “the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change.”

Does the radio interview demonstrate that Obama harbors radical views? Does it suggest that the black liberation theology of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, plays a bigger role in Obama’s thinking than he claims? Should black Americans get substantial monetary payments from other Americans as repayment for slavery and racism? If these are the primary questions swirling around this radio interview in the coming days, an important question may go begging: Would reparations specifically, and wealth redistribution generally, actually help poor black Americans?

In a new Acton video short, “How not to Help the Poor,” experts on poverty fighting argue that government wealth redistribution has devastated poor communities.

One of the experts interviewed is Robert Woodson, a former Civil Rights activist and president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. “We in Washington today lead the nation in 21 separate categories of poverty expenditures,” he notes. “Explain to me why a child born in Washington D.C. has a life expectancy that’s lower than a child born anywhere in the western hemisphere second only to Haiti. We have the highest per capita expenditure on education and we’re 48th in outcomes for kids.”

Woodson does not find the answer in the history of blacks under slavery but in U.S. social policy after 1960. “The black marriage rate in 1930 to 1940 was higher than in the white community. Eighty-two percent of all black families had a man and a woman raising children. But what happened in 1960 when government intervened with the poverty programs, a major paradigm shift occurred and contributed to the decimation of the family.”

Why do such well-intended programs have such devastating consequences? And what has proven to help lift up the poor? The video short also explores these questions.

An early transcript of the Obama radio interview is available here.

Everyone seems to be going ga-ga over nationalization in the US these days, and why not? Heck, it seems to be working pretty well for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Blast from the not-so-recent past: Maxine Waters on the domestic oil industry...

“[Christian Socialist Movement] is a movement of Christians with a radical commitment to social justice, to protecting the environment and to fostering peace and reconciliation. We believe that ‘loving our neighbour’ in the fullest sense involves struggling for a fair and just society, one in which all can enjoy the ‘fullness of life’ Jesus came to announce. And we want to work to make it happen.”

The rise of the Christian neo-socialists has been quite surprising. These Marxists have been using the Sermon of the Mount and Beatitudes and “Jesus’ teaching” to smoke screen the resurgence of a Christian Socialist agenda. It’s amazing.

We see this clearly in socialist redistributionists like Barack Obama, Jim Wallis, Wendell Berry, Shane Claiborne, Tony Campolo, Ron Sider (although he’s moving more toward center), Brian McLaren, and many others I’d love to name.

At least in the U.K. leftist Christians are honest about being socialists. You will see no difference between this agenda and anything you’ll find in Jim Wallace’s neo-socialist organization Sojourners.

Here’s part of the neo-socialist Christian manifesto from the U.K.’s Christian Socialist Movement. At least these folks are honest. It should sound familiar:

Our values

We believe that Christian teaching should be reflected in laws and institutions and that the Kingdom of God finds its political expression in democratic socialist policies.

We believe that all people are created in the image of God. We all have equal worth and deserve equal opportunities to fulfil our God-given potential whilst exercising personal responsibility.

We believe in personal freedom, exercised in community with others and embracing civil, social and economic freedom.

We believe in social justice and that the institutional causes of poverty in, and between, rich and poor countries should be abolished.

We believe all people are called to common stewardship of the Earth, including its natural resources.

Objectives

Christian Socialist Movement members pledge themselves to work in prayer and through political action for the following objectives:

• A greater understanding between people of different faiths
  
  
• The unity of all Christian people
  
  
• Peace and reconciliation between nations and peoples and cultures together with worldwide nuclear and general disarmament
  
  
• Social justice, equality of opportunity and redistribution economically to close the gap between the rich and the poor, and between rich and poor nations
  
  
• A classless society based on equal worth and without discrimination
  
  
• The sustainable use of the Earth’s resources for the benefit of all people, both current and future generations
  
  
• Co-operation, including the creation of cooperative organisations
  

If you’re going to be a Wal-mart-boycotting, “fair trade” coffee-protesting, “no more income gaps between CEOs and other employees” ranting, wealth-redistributing, minimum-wage supporting, socialist you are free to do so but please don’t call it “Christian” or “consistent with Jesus’ teaching,” etc. Many of us are honest about being in tradition of Althusius, Wilberforce, Kuyper, Booker T. Washington, J. Gresham Machen, Michael Polanyi, C.S Lewis, and others and continuing to battle the socialism that keeps people in generational poverty and I think the Christian socialists should be more honest to their allegiance to their own tradition of Marx, Lenin, Keynes, FDR, etc.

We live in a country where people are free to be socialists and that’s the beauty of the whole thing but why hide behind “Christian Social Justice” lingo when it’s really socialism proof-texted from the Gospels only. Why don’t the Christian socialists in America confess it like the Marxist Christians in the U.K.?

Any thoughts on why the Wal-Mart-boycotting socialist Christians don’t just to come out and say, “We are socialists, who also love Jesus?” Why the secrecy? Any insights?

First Maxine Waters suggested that she might just want to nationalize the US oil industry; now Maurice Hinchey of New York is jumping on that bandwagon. And why wouldn’t they? It’s all the rage these days. Just look at Venezuela, which is rapidly emerging as a South American hellhole paradise after Hugo Chavez started nationalizing everything. Why should we be left behind?

It turns out that there are a number of very good reasons to avoid that particular bandwagon. Dr. Jay Richards discussed them last night on KKLA in Los Angeles on the Frank Pastore Show. Listen in and decide for yourself whether the US should nationalize the oil industry.

Why yes, yes she did:



Via Hot Air.

From the UK:

I never for a moment thought that a life could be decided by something as arbitrary as one’s address.

The often-maligned US health care system is by no means a free market for health care services; rather, it is more of a hybrid public/private system. It’s imperfect and in need of reform, to be sure. But heaven help us if that reform takes the form of a governmental takeover of the entire system. How such a “reform” would improve our flawed system is beyond me.

Continuing with my posts highlighting just how wonderful things will be here in the United States when the government finally does its job and takes over the healthcare sector of the economy, I’d like to bring your attention once again to the fabulous success story that is the Canadian health care system:

Last year, the Canadian government issued a series of reports to address the outcry over long wait times for critical tests, procedures and surgeries. Over a two year period:
• Wait times for knee replacements dropped from 440 to 307 days.
• Wait times for hip replacements dropped from 351 to 257 days.
• Wait times for cataract surgeries dropped from 311 to 183 days.
• Wait times for MRIs dropped from 120 to 105 days.
• Wait times for CT scans dropped from 81 to 62 days.
• Wait times for bypass surgeries dropped from 49 to 48 days.

Sure, you might have to wait a couple of months for that lifesaving bypass surgery. But remember: it’s free!

Don Surber thinks so, and it’s hard to argue his point when you see stories like this:

More than 400 Canadians in the full throes of a heart attack or other cardiac emergency have been sent to the United States because no hospital can provide the lifesaving care they require here.

Most of the heart patients who have been sent south since 2003 typically show up in Ontario hospitals, where they are given clot-busting drugs. If those drugs fail to open their clogged arteries, the scramble to locate angioplasty in the United States begins...

...While other provinces have sent patients out of country – British Columbia has sent 75 pregnant women or their babies to Washington State since February, 2007 – nowhere is the problem as acute as in Ontario.

At least 188 neurosurgery patients and 421 emergency cardiac patients have been sent to the United States from Ontario since the 2003-2004 fiscal year to Feb. 21 this year. Add to that 25 women with high-risk pregnancies sent south of the border in 2007.

Although Queen’s Park says it is ensuring patients receive emergency care when they need it, Progressive Conservative health critic Elizabeth Witmer says it reflects poor planning.

That is particularly the case with neurosurgery, she said, noting that four reports since 2003 have predicted a looming shortage.

“This province and the number of people going outside for care – it’s increasing in every area,” Ms. Witmer said.

“I definitely believe that it is very bad planning. ...We’re simply unable to meet the demand, but we don’t even know what the demand is.”

Read that last line again: "We’re simply unable to meet the demand, but we don’t even know what the demand is.”

Well, that’s a confidence builder.

The Canadian system is supposedly one of the main models upon which the coming American health care revolution will be based. And yet this wondrous Canadian system seems to be more and more incapable of providing relatively common medical procedures to Canadian citizens, even in Canada’s most populous province. Because the system is controlled by a bureaucracy, it doesn’t respond to market pressures (goodness knows that most of the time, bureaucracies barely respond to political pressure) and in fact can’t even figure out what the market is demanding. All of this results in the Canadian government relying on the supposedly inferior US system to provide lifesaving care in many instances. No wonder 3 out of 4 Canadians live within easy driving distance of the US border.

So what happens if we decide to go down the path toward single-payer health care in the US? You’d have to be a fool to think that we could try the same thing that the Europeans and Canadians have done and get different results. No, in the long run, we’ll experience the same sorts of inefficiencies, quality and supply problems that plague the government systems, and yes, more Canadians will die, because the safety net that currently exists for the Canadian system here in the United States will be gone.

More: Check out the video after the jump...

Continue reading "Will Socialized Health Care in the US Kill Canadians?"