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RedHatRob on BlogTalkRadio

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I will be the featured guest on the BlogTalkRadio show Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism tonight at 8:00pm Central Time (9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific).  The show is hosted by Babe Huggett and Warner Todd Huston.

We’ll be talking about BOTH of Obama’s speeches this week, starting with the one to school-children on Tuesday.

Heard a great stand-up line yesterday.

Q: Why was Obama’s address to a Joint Session on Wednesday historic?

A: It’s the first time in US history that a President has give a speech two days in a row to an audience of children!

ba-da-boom!

Thank you, thank you! I’ll be here all week. Please remember to tip your waiter.

Movies, National Politics

Greed

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Capitalism and free markets are NOT based on “greed.”

They are based on the concept of liberty and inalienable rights.

They presuppose a government established by consent of the governed to protect and guarantee those rights.

The genius of capitalism is that it realistically assesses human nature and human behavior and then by establishing free markets, voluntary exchange, market-driven pricing, and property rights it harnesses and channels greed, aka self-interest, so that all benefit.

You won’t abolish greed by abolishing capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t cause greed. It doesn’t even exacerbate it. Capitalism harnesses and tames greed and directs self-interest so that the maximum beneft accrues to everyone in the market.

Capitalism is not evil.

Michael Moore is evil, but not capitalism.

He’s also a hypocrite, since he uses capitalism and the free market for the distribution of films to acquire wealth for himself. Is Michael Moore not making, promoting, marketing and selling films based on greed? or to phrase it in a more socially acceptable fashion, self-interest? The beauty of the free-market system is that if there are enough patrons who desire to see the movies that Michael Moore makes then they will voluntarily exchange cash for movie tickets and DVDs. But only if there is liberty and a free market.

In a centrally-planned, command economy, the commissar of entertainment would decide how many and which movies should be made. And the proles would be required to attend and applaud. And Michael Moore would wind up in the gulag, if not stood up against a wall and shot.

Ironic, no?

2010 Election, National Politics

Competition

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Obama has often made the assertion that a federal-government-run “public option” is a necessary, fundamental part of healthcare reform because “competition is needed to keep the private insurance companies honest.”

If a “public option” is necessary to provide competition in what has until now been a private sector of the economy, why isn’t a private option necessary to provide competition in areas where the government has a monopoly?

Why shouldn’t we have a “private option” in primary & secondary education? Won’t real education reform require vouchers, and competition?

Why shouldn’t we have a “private option” in the government’s massive, compulsory retirement scheme known as social security? Why shouldn’t working men and women have choices about where their social security account dollars are invested?

[crickets chirping]

That’s what I thought. Neither President Obama nor the liberal pack baying for healthcare reform care a fig about competition. The “public option” is a stalking trojan horse that will enable the government to transition to a single-payer system.

But a naked proposal for a single-payer system would never get the votes for passage, so the “public option” must be employed and cloaked in a fig leaf of pretend admiration for “competition.”

Homeschooling

Priceless

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booksTextbooks and tutors after you decided to homeschool your daughter through high school: $5,000

Salary you would have received if you had continued teaching high school instead of homeschooling: $40k/year

Text message from your daughter during her first week in college: “I got extra credit cause I was the only one who recognized a line from 1984” : PRICELESS!

2010 Election, Modern History

Change.org blames Katrina on Bush’s failure to pass Global Warming Bill

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They’re not just blaming the failure of city & state authorities to evacuate folks on Bush, they’re blaming the actual hurricane itself on Bush. Here’s a quote from an email they just sent out today:

President Bush’s short-term failures compounded the suffering along the Gulf Coast in those fateful days. But his dismal failure to lead on global warming has made extreme weather events like Katrina more likely in the future.

And they’re saying we all need to rally around and make sure Obama and Co. pass a “clean energy and climate bill this year.”

We must

“. . .work tirelessly to prevent a future where disasters like Katrina become the norm. A strong clean energy bill is critical to preventing such a future, but we need our President to lead Congress where it needs to go. Tell President Obama to push Congress for bold action today.”

This is, of course, nonsense on stilts. Here are the facts:

A) Global temperatures have been cooling since 1999
B) Katrina was not caused by global warming
C) There has been a DECREASE in the severity of hurricanes over the past several years.

The global warming alarmists have by now reached a mystical level of superstition in which all the bad things in the world are the fault of global warming. And the fact of global warming is unquestioned. Their response to an examination of the data is took stick their fingers in their ears and make loud noises.

Instead of passing the foolish, pork-laden, economy-crushing, job-destroying cap & trade bill, call you congressman and senators and urge them to let it die a natural death. The bill, passed by the house, is languishing because the Senate is reluctant to take it up. Put a DNR order on the bill and instead look for ways to reduce government regulations, reduce taxes, and let the entrepreneurial spirit of American free enterprise put people back to work.

For the record, here’s the full text of the Change.org email which went out today:
changeorg-katrina

book reviews, children's books, Colonial Period, English History, Homeschooling, Modern History

Official Release: Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century

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It’s done! Finished, edited, proofed and approved. And we have copies on the shelves!

The sequel to Famous Men of the Renaissance and Reformation.

Rather than reprinting Famous Men of Modern Times (which is a bit uneven in both tone and selection), we have made the decision to complete the Famous Men biography series with four new books:

  • Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century (Queen Elizabeth to Louis XIV) – available now
  • Famous Men of the 18th Century (Isaac Newton to Robespierre) – 2010
  • Famous Men of the 19th Century (Napoleon Bonaparte to Mark Twain) – 2011
  • Famous men of the 20th Century (Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan) – 2012

The 17th century was an age of religious wars and revolutions. The French had seven civil wars of religion from 1570-1590. The German Empire had a religious civil war from 1618-1648. The English had a civil war from 1642-1649. It was also the century in which the English and French settlements were founding colonies in North America at Jamestown, Plymouth, Boston, & Quebec. But learning the wars will not convey to students what the times were like. Biographies will. Twenty-eight key individuals are profiled in chronological order:

Birth Crowned Death

1519

1547

1589

 Catherine de’ Medici
1553

1589

1610

 Henry of Navarre (Henry IV)
1533

1558

1603

 Elizabeth I
1540

1595

 Sir Francis Drake
1552

1618

 Sir Walter Raleigh
1566

1603

1625

 James I
1552

1610

 Matteo Ricci
1564

1616

 William Shakespeare
1580

1631

 John Smith
1583

1634

 Wallenstein
1594

1611

1632

 Gustavus Adolphus
1575

1635

 Samuel de Champlain
1564

1642

 Galileo
1585

1642

 Cardinal Richelieu
1600

1625

1649

 Charles I
1599

1658

 Oliver Cromwell
1590

1620

1657

 William Bradford
1588

1629

1649

 John Winthrop
1623

1662

 Blaise Pascal
1606

1669

 Rembrandt
1608

1674

 John Milton
1632

1675

 Johannes Vermeer
1630

1660

1685

 Charles II
1629

1674

1696

 Jan Sobieski
1650

1688

1702

 William of Orange (William III)
1632

1704

 John Locke
1653

1706

 Johan Pachelbel
1638

1643

1715

 Louis XIV

I am particularly pleased with how the chapters on the colonial founders turned out. John Smith (Jamestown), Samuel de Champlain (Quebec), William Bradford (Plymouth), and John Winthrop (Boston) all have incredible and fascinating stories. A simple comparison of their backgrounds and their reasons for leaving England and France will give students far more understanding about the founding of the colonies than any textbook can.

I also enjoyed greatly retelling the events of the English Civil War, the Restoration, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. These events (with a number of larger-than-life characters) were critical in shaping the political ideas of America’s Founding Fathers – whose stories I am looking forward to telling in Famous Men of the 18th Century.

I’ve also included accounts of the lives of artists (Rembrandt, Vermeer), a musician (Johan Pachelbel), and writers (Shakespeare & Milton) so that students will become acquainted with more than just the political history of the times.

The reading level is targeted on upper elementary/jr. high, but even older students and adults will find much here that gets left out of the textbook accounts.

Famous Men of the 16th & 17th Century is 28 chapters, 228 pages and retails for $17.95, directly from Greenleaf Press.

Get ’em while they’re hot off the press!

– Rob Shearer, (author and) Publisher

2010 Election, National Politics

What could be worse than the government paying for abortions?

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Answer: The government mandating that ALL healthcare insurance pay for abortions.

That is precisely what H.R.3200 (aka Obamacare) will do. After the passage of the bill, although existing policies which did not include abortion coverage might be grandfathered for a while, they would not be allowed to enroll any new subscribers. New polices may only be issued by “qualified plans.” And “qualified plans” must provide coverage for a minimum level of services as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Abortion supporters have invented a clever shell game in which some of the premiums collected by enrollees in the public choice plan will be segregated and used to pay claims from abortion providers before they ever technically become government funds. But this is but a shell game and is fooling no one.

Of far greater concerns will be the government mandates that will require ALL health insurance plans to provide coverage for abortion services. Easy, cost-free access to abortion will undoubtedly cause the abortion rate to rise dramatically.

And it will matter very little that an accounting trick will allow the government to claim that no government funds will be used to pay for abortion. The reality will be far worse. ALL Americans will be forced to pay for abortion.

ALL health insurance plans will be required to cover abortion.

Everyone will be required to purchase health insurance

Anyone who does NOT purchse a health insurance will be fined by the IRS and involuntarily enrolled in a health insurance plan.

God help us!

Is this what a majority of Americans want?

If this is NOT what you want, tell your congressman and senators now, before it is too late.

2010 Election, National Politics

Self-evident truths

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  1. All men are created equal
  2. They are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.
    Among these are:

    • Life
    • Liberty
    • the Pursuit of Happiness
  3. To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
  4. Whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

The RIGHT of the people to alter or abolish the government becomes a DUTY when a long train of abuses discloses a design to impose an absolute despotism.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Class? class? anyone? Bueller?

2010 Election, National Politics

Obamacare will make the problems worse

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Our healthcare system has a few problems.

It’s not in crisis, but there are some areas we could improve.

There are a number of people without health insurance, perhaps as many as 47 million, or 16% of the US population. It’s not clear whether that can be reduced to zero, or even if it should. Like the unemployment rate, the mobility of American workers will inevitably result in a bit of “friction” in the system.

There is some percentage of the US population which makes a conscious choice NOT to purchase healthcare. That number might be as high as 5%.

However, one of the most obnoxious elements of the healthcare bill now pending in congress has been the proposal to stigmatize, penalize, and forcibly enroll individuals who choose not to buy health insurance.

There’s been a charge that parts of the system are characterized by greed. There are for-profit healthcare providers, and for-profit health insurance companies, and they do seek to make a profit. This is not evil. The proper check on greed is competition, not government regulation.

In fact, it is impossible to eliminate greed by regulation. You can only temper, harness, channel, and control greed by creating a market in which there are incentives for efficiency. In short, the game must be structured so that greed impels competitors to seek to lower costs so they can increase their market share.

President Obama and the Democrats have set out to do just the opposite. They are about to replace a competitive market with a government-monopoly bureaucratic system.

The problems with the health care system are the result of too little competition, too much government regulation, and a structure that lets health care consumers spend other people’s money.

The solution proposed by the President will reduce competition, add government regulation, and allow health care consumers to tap and spend the resources of the federal government rather than their own.

It will make things worse, far worse, if it is adopted.

And the American people are beginning to realize it. Let us hope that Congress figures it out as well before they enact a system that would be a huge mistake that would likely wreck both our economy and the federal budget.

Uncategorized

Countering the counter-culture

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I was 14 years old during the summer of Woodstock. The highlight of my summer was six weeks at summer camp at the Baylor School campus on the banks of the Tennessee river just outside Chattanooga.

It really wasn’t until the next year that I was aware of Woodstock. But when the movie and the album were released, I was enthralled.

This “where-are-they-now” piece from NBC brought a smile to my face. The two 20-something kids who wound up on the album cover didn’t turn out to be political radicals. They got married two years later, in 1971, and 38 years later, they’re still married.

Take five minutes and watch.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Director's Blog – Rob Shearer, Francis Schaeffer Study Center, Mt. Juliet, TN