Canada Moves Right While We Move Left

There’s been a reversal of fortunes between Canada and America, and I’m not happy about it.

According to The Economist, Canada is doing well as America continues to struggle.

Our wiser, more cautious friends to the north avoided the housing bubble and financial collapse of 2008. They returned to robust growth in 2009 and have been growing since.

Unlike America, Canada’s debt and deficits are in good order. Canada expects to balance its budget by 2015 — whereas America’s budget comes up short every month.

Canada, like America, is blessed with natural resources, such as minerals, timber and oil. Unlike America, Canada isn’t afraid to tap its resources and sell them to other countries for a bundle.

Heck, our president just told the Canadians he doesn’t want a pipeline that would pump Canadian oil to U.S. refineries — and a lot of dough into America.

Canada’s credit rating remains at AAA — high for economic health and stability — whereas America’s was cut for the first time in history.

More unemployed Americans are fleeing north, where good-paying work is available, thanks to unemployment nearly 2 percentage points lower than ours.

Though I am happy for Canada, this turn of events is most unsettling to me.

Didn’t Canada used to suffer from big-government policies and out-of-control spending, whereas America was always the great high-growth capitalist success story?

Wasn’t it Canadian doctors who used to skate in the dark of night across frozen lakes to accept fine-paying jobs in America’s mostly private health-care system? With the advent of ObamaCare, will American doctors be skating north?

Wasn’t it Canadians avoiding their country’s high value-added taxes who used to travel to U.S. shopping malls and discount stores, where they bought up all the good stuff before Americans could get at it?

Every winter, their plundering left Americans without adequate supplies of ChapStick, beef jerky and down jackets.

With U.S. spending, deficits and debt completely out of control, how long will it be before higher taxes are imposed here? Before somebody proposes a national value-added sales tax on Americans’ every transaction?

Will Americans be traveling north to do their shopping?

Here’s what’s even nuttier: Canada, with its proud history of big-government initiatives such as health care, is now led by a pro-capitalist conservative, whereas America is led by a fellow who’s trying to turn his country into Western Europe.

As President Obama continues to “spread the wealth around,” grow government and look for ways to raise taxes to pay for it all, Canada’s prime minister believes a pro-growth approach is the best way to fund his country’s social programs.

Here’s what one of the prime minister’s spokesmen told Postmedia News:

“I think Canada’s record has always been one that we are firm believers in the markets and we know that prosperity, through capitalism in markets, is ultimately what pays for all the things that we enjoy here in Canada.”

Sheesh! I remember when U.S. presidents believed such things.

In any event, a reversal of Canadian and American fortunes appears to have occurred.

So I have a proposition for our friends up north: Hey, Canada, want to switch leaders for a while?

Isn’t our president more suited to your traditions, whereas your prime minister is more suited to ours?

We’ll give him back once he gets U.S. unemployment below 7 percent.

©2012 Tom Purcell. Tom Purcell, a freelance writer is also a humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at 800 696 7561 or email cari@cagle.com. Email Tom at Purcell@caglecartoons.com.

Related posts:

1. Both Parties Move To The Left On Immigration by Joe Guzzardi Republicans, traditionally oriented toward enforcing federal immigration…
2. Al-Jazeera Invades Canada And Threatens America The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has approved a…

Newt Gingrich Vindicated of Ethics Violations By IRS In 1999 CNN Report

Newt Gingrich was assaulted by the Democrats on frivolous ethics violation charges. To now hear Republicans repeat these frivolous charges makes me wonder about their character. Newt is right when he says Romney is lying to win this election. And millions are being spent by Wall Street Bankers and GOP DC insiders to swing the tide for Romney.

Obama Issues Global Warming Rules – Then Exempts GE-Powered Plant

Timothy Carney with The Washington Examiner reported yesterday that the Obama Administration issued draconian rules for regulating greenhouse gases from any new or expanded power plants in January.

This week, the EPA issued its first exemption to these rules.

According to Carney:

The Obama administration will spare a stalled power plant project in California from the newest federal limits on greenhouse gases and conventional air pollution, U.S. EPA says in a new court filing that marks a policy shift in the face of industry groups and Republicans accusing the agency of holding up construction of large industrial facilities.

According to a declaration by air chief Gina McCarthy, officials reviewed EPA policies and decided it was appropriate to “grandfather” projects such as the Avenal Power Center, a proposed 600-megawatt power plant in the San Joaquin Valley, so they are exempted from rules such as new air quality standards for smog-forming nitrogen dioxide (NO2).

(Gina McCarthy proudly served in Mitt Romney’s administration when he was governor of Massachusetts. She was his chief environmental advisor.)

As it turns out, this plant is being powered by GE turbines. And, low and behold, it also just happens that GE CEO Jeff Immelt is Obama’s jobs czar and buddy. If one were cynical, one might think that this plant got special treatment because of the GE-Obama connection. Hmmm.

Read more at The Washington Examiner.

Related posts:

1. Clear Information On Romney’s Views On Global Warming Recently, various media outlets have reported on Romney’s statement in…
2. Is USDA’s New Planting Map Forcing A Global Warming Agenda? USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map (Image: USDA) On Wednesday, the…

Sarah Palin Says Let’s Keep Newt Gingrich In This Race

Palin is worried about how Mitt Romney and Super PACS funded by Wall Street Bankers are trashing Newt Gingrich with significant response. So she is taking it upon herself to stand up for Newt.

How Americans Defend Themselves

Today, Cato is releasing a new study, Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens, by Clayton Cramer and David Burnett. The paper makes use of a news report-gathering project to explore in more detail how Americans use guns in self-defense.

The paper makes many excellent points, but I’ll mention just three here. First, the average person tends to imagine that these self-defense situations involve criminals getting shot. Such cases do occur, but the overwhelming number of self-defense cases involve situations where the gun is never fired.

The second point relates to the first. The average person usually does not hear about defensive gun cases because news media organizations do not consider the incidents worthy of coverage. If a burglar runs away from a break-in when he discovers that someone is at the home and is armed, it may only garner a terse mention in the paper, if it makes the newspaper at all. With no shot fired, no injuries, and no suspect in custody, newspeople typically decline coverage. The point here is not to criticize the news media’s handling of such incidents–rather it is just to remind readers that we tend to hear about criminals using guns to perpetrate crimes, but we do not hear about many self-defense cases. In this milieu, it is understandable why many people would develop negative opinions about guns.

Third, when a gun owner does shoot a rapist or is able to hold a burglar at gunpoint until the police arrive on the scene, it is very likely that more than one crime has been prevented. That’s because had the culprit not been stopped, he very likely would have targeted other people as well.

Gun control proponents stress the idea of harm reduction. They say the enactment of firearm regulations will reduce accidents and the criminal use of guns. But if policymakers are truly interested in harm reduction, they must consider the number of crimes that are thwarted by gun owners. Each year gun owners prevent a great deal of criminal mayhem–murders, rapes, batteries, and robberies. Tough Targets gathers dozens and dozens of examples of ordinary people using guns to stop criminal attacks. The defensive use of guns happens much more often than most people realize.

Read More at Cato@Liberty By Tim Lynch, Cato@Liberty

Related posts:

1. How To Defend America In The 21st Century, Part 2 by Dr. Earl Tilford Note: This article is Part II…
2. How To Defend America In The 21st Century, Part 1 by Dr. Earl Tilford In 1914, on the eve of…

The Danger That The Obama Administration Poses To America

During World War II, posters displaying the slogan “Loose lips might sink ships” reminded service members and civilians alike to avoid indiscreet discussions about secure information that could be exploited by the enemy and used against America during wartime. People understood that freedom of speech did not give them license to spill their guts because national security was vital to victory and victory was paramount to America’s survival.

But that was then. Today, we have an administration that embraces a “Loose Lips For Political Expediency” philosophy. (No, I’m not talking about Vice President Biden.) Case in point: A headline I read the other day titled “SEALs becoming [the] face of Obama’s defense strategy.” Say, what?

Until this administration drew them to the light (like a bug zapper), SEAL Team Six was, for all intents and purposes, a figment of our imaginations — the stuff little (and big) boys dream about, and a terrorist’s biggest nightmare. This group of “quiet professionals” is quite content doing their job backstage without a spotlight and would prefer to keep it that way. Nonetheless, they were mentioned yet again in the State of the Union address. Obama claimed the mission was successful ” because every member of that unit trusted each other” knowing someone was “watching your back.”

Obama was partially correct, but someone with a bit more (38 years) experience has another take as to why the operation was successful. Admiral Eric Olson, former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command and former Navy SEAL, spoke to a group at Aspen Institute last summer. Olson explained the raid was successful “because nobody talked about it.”

Oh the shock and awe one must experience after accomplishing such an extraordinary feat only to discover your commander-in-chief cannot “watch your back” because he won’t keep his lips zipped. (To the unaware: unzipped lips are worse than unzipped pants. Ask Bill Clinton.)

In the address, Obama accurately quantified getting bin Laden was apolitical and said everyone in the Situation Room was unified in purpose. He failed to mention the “Loose Lips” pact agreed upon by those in the room. (I guess he left it out because it didn’t last long.) Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said everyone agreed to “not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden.” Gates said it “all fell apart on Monday, the next day.”

What about the word “secret” does the Obama administration not get? They are now under investigation by the Inspectors General of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense (DOD) per a January 5, 2012 press release by Homeland Security Committee Chairman Representative Peter King (R-NY).

The investigation is underway because the administration purportedly granted “high level access” of information to Hollywood filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow and Sony Pictures for the making of a film about the bin Laden operation. King claims the information may put operators and their families in danger and said some “in the intelligence and special operation communities express support” for the probe.

In earlier correspondence to DOD and CIA Inspectors General, King questioned another alleged controversial decision, which by all intents and purposes blew the cover for special operators, when filmmakers were invited to attend “a meeting with special operators and Agency officers at CIA Headquarters.”

While everyone involved rejects the idea of foul play for political gain, it should be noted the film was originally scheduled to be released just three weeks before the November 2012 elections, which could have been an “October surprise” of Chicago politics proportion.

Obama himself said taking out bin Laden was not political, but actions subsequently emphasize the importance of having a person of sound character and disciplined tongue in the Oval Office. Had one of those been in charge, he’d have mostly like gained the trust of these clandestine cohorts by congratulating them in private — because they do what they do for love of the country, not for glory or praise. If they needed that kind of stuff, they’d run for president.

Susan Stamper Brown is an opinion page columnist, motivational speaker and military advocate who writes about politics, the military, the economy and culture. Reach Susan at susan @susanstamperbrown.com, her Web site www.susanstamberbrown.com and Facebook. 

Related posts:

1. Mexico Is A Clear And Present Danger To America by Kevin “Coach” Collins Left unaddressed the dangers Mexico poses…
2. Why Is The Administration Subsidizing America’s Islamic Adversaries? “Islamic jihadists remain the most serious threat against America today,…

Is Obama Right About Engineers? Or Is He Just Clueless?

During a recent video chat session, President Obama told a woman that he could not understand why her engineer husband was unemployed because “industry tells me that they don’t have enough highly skilled engineers.” However, data from the American Community Survey collected by the Census Bureau show that there are a total of 1.8 million U.S.-born individuals with engineering degrees who are either unemployed, out of the labor market, or not working as engineers. This is true for those with many different types of engineering degrees.

The 2010 American Community Survey shows:

• There are 101,000 U.S.-born individuals with an engineering degree who are unemployed.
• There are an additional 243,000 U.S.-born individuals under age 65 who have a degree in engineering but who are not in the labor market. This means they are not working nor are they looking for work, and are therefore not counted as unemployed.
• In addition to those unemployed and out of the labor force, there are an additional 1.47 million U.S.-born individuals who report they have an engineering degree and have a job, but do not work as engineers.
• President Obama specifically used the words “highly skilled.” In 2010, there were 25,000 unemployed U.S.-born individuals with engineering degrees who have a Master’s or PhD and another 68,000 with advanced degrees not in the labor force. There were also 489,000 U.S.-born individuals with graduate degrees who were working, but not as engineers.
• Relatively low pay and perhaps a strong bias on the part of some employers to hire foreign workers seems to have pushed many American engineers out their profession.
• There are many different types of engineering degrees. But unemployment, non-work, or working outside of your field is common for Americans with many different types of engineering degrees (View detailed employment figures for specific types of engineers).
• The key policy question for the United States is how many foreign engineers should be admitted in the future. Contrary to President Obama’s statement, the latest data from the Census Bureau indicate there is a very large supply of American-born engineers in the country. It would be better for the president to seek more diverse sources of information than simply relying on “industry” to determine what is going on in the U.S. labor market.

Data Source: Figures for the above analysis come from a Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the public-use file of the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS) collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Figures on degrees and employment are based on self-reporting in the survey and have been rounded to their nearest thousand. The survey asks about undergraduate degrees, so some of the individuals who have a Master’s or PhD may not have their graduate degree in engineering. Also, those who indicated that they have a “professional degree” are not included in the discussion of those with Master’s and PhDs because a large share have law degrees. The 2010 data is the most recent ACS available.

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent non-partisan research institution that examines the impact of immigration on the United States.

Related posts:

1. Peak Obama Thirty-one months after the start of the recession, last week’s…
2. Forget Amnesty — What About Unemployed Americans? By Joe Guzzardi When it comes to what Democrats call…

Wimping Out With Egyptian Junta Not An Option

While the Republican candidates for President were slapping the snot out of each other down in Florida, a much bigger story began playing out in Egypt which, amazingly has not been addressed by any of those candidates. And we’d certainly like to hear where they stand on the issue before Saturday’s Nevada Caucuses.

A young man named Sam LaHood—whose father happens to be Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood—has been, essentially, held hostage in Egypt.

His “crime”?

Well, on one level it is being from the United States and working to spread Democracy through the Arab world.  The military junta ruling Egypt doesn’t like that, but that hasn’t stopped them from taking over a BILLION dollars of our money in military aid.

You read that right.

We’re giving these clowns huge money while they hold a kid from Peoria, Illinois hostage.

You’ll notice that I said “on one level” LaHood’s “crime” is working to spread Democracy throughout the Arab world.

On another level, we suspect that his real “crime” is being the scion of one of America’s premier Lebanese Catholic families.

The LaHoods are leaders of a large contingent of Lebanese Catholics who came to America and have done extremely well for themselves.

And nothing irritates the Muslim Brotherhood more than Arabs who are Catholics or, God forbid, Jews.

We, out here in flyover country, don’t know much about diplomacy, international relations or urinating away taxpayer dollars on military aid to military juntas, but we do know this:

If we were in Secretary LaHood’s shoes, we’d head on out to Andrews Air Force Base, commandeer one of those pretty airplanes that say “United States of America” on the fuselage, and take a news crew or two to Cairo International Airport.

Then, we’d park the plane on the tarmac at high noon, with the world’s media watching, and stand in the door with arms folded and say, “Bring me my son, NOW.!”

And stay there until they do.

They will.

If, for some reason, his boss, the President, would say no to such a mission, we would resign from the cabinet and do the same thing privately.

There’s no grey area here.

A bunch of thugs who are essentially on our payroll are holding an American hostage.  It happens his father is a Cabinet Secretary which means we are in a position to really make the kind of statement which needs to be made.

If we let our “friends” get away with this, imagine what our enemies will do to American citizens with impunity.

We are in this situation because we have a President who bows to Saudi kings and can’t act decisively.

Not that it should make any difference, but Ray LaHood is the only Republican in his cabinet. I, personally, cannot believe that our President has not already suggested this course of action to Secretary LaHood.

What would the American response to this have been had our President been George W. Bush?  Or Bill Clinton—who it should be noted went on a privately financed mission to North Korea to rescue two reporters.

If LaHood were to take this course of action, he would send a message to thugs all over the world that American citizenship has its privileges, one of which is that we care about what happens when thugs hold our citizens hostage.

We would think that the mere suggestion that such an action is a possibility would end the issue.  But if what Government is supposed to do is do for its citizens is what they cannot do for themselves, than LaHood should already be making the arrangements with the full support of his boss, the President.

 Wimping out here is not an option.

Related posts:

1. The FCC Goes For The Nuclear Option As I have repeatedly warned and noted on www.ObamaChart.com, when…
2. Egyptian Foreign Minister: Obama Told Me Himself, “I Am A Muslim.” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said he had a…

The Real Problem With Romney’s Comments

Yesterday, Mitt Romney caused a stir when he made the following remarks about the poor during an interview with CNN:

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich…. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

Following this comment, CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien prodded Romney to clarify his remarks.

“We will hear from the Democrat party, the plight of the poor…. You can focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus…. The middle income Americans, they’re the folks that are really struggling right now and they need someone that can help get this economy going for them.”

The media, Democrats, and many Republicans are painting him as out-of-touch, while expressing their concern that he is apathetic to the plight of the poor. However, they are missing the point. The real outrage is not that he doesn’t want to do more for the poor; it’s that he thinks they are taken care of with the welfare state. Worse, he believes that the welfare state is, more or less, functioning properly. Fear not, ‘any minor glitches would be repaired by Mr. Fix It.

It is precisely this sentiment that makes Romney disqualified for the Republican nomination. Romney doesn’t believe that the welfare system is fundamentally flawed; that the welfare state is the consummate enemy of the poor; that unlimited welfare is what perpetuates and exacerbates poverty. He thinks it is working relatively fine, albeit in need of some minor tweaks here and there.

As Senator DeMint noted, this could have been a teachable moment – a moment for Romney to shine. He could have gone on offense by explaining how it is these very welfare programs that have failed to deracinate poverty, even though they have been in place for decades. He could have shown how the only thing that is stimulated by these programs is the dependency of the program itself. $30 billion spent on food stamps gives rise to $60 billion, which now gives rise to $80 billion. He could have defended the inherent compassion of conservative free-market policies in weaning people off these programs and creating upward mobility.

Read More at Red State

Related posts:

1. Warning To Pro-Life Voters: The Real Mitt Romney On Abortion Romney on Abortion There are a number of “Voter’s Guides”…
2. Romney ‘I’m Not Concerned With The Very Poor’ The media is all a twitter about this video clip…

Culture Issues Across The Pond

A quartet of notable fellows made headlines in England during January, each by staking out some interesting – and even eccentric – territories in the area of religion and society.

The Archbishop of York, Primate of England, is second (technically third) in command of the Church of England. His immediate earthly superior is the Archbishop of Canterbury. The ABC, of course, reports to the Queen who is technically the Head of the COE. Her son and heir, Charles, promises to restructure that royal role, preferring a more ecumenical position as the Head of all Faiths over his subjects, but I digress.

The current Archbishop of York is an unforgettable character. Dr. John Sentamu (pronounced: SEN-ta-moo) hails from a little village near Kampala, Uganda. He holds degrees in both divinity (a PhD) and the law. He became a refugee to the United Kingdom in 1974 after running afoul of and being imprisoned by the infamous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

England proved not to be quite the refuge for which he had hoped. Sentamu has recounted at least eight instances, over eight years, when he was stopped and had his car searched by police (on suspicion of being black). He can also be highly amusing, as when he refers to three of England’s most prominent sweets manufacturers as “the Chocolate Trinity.” His services and special events at York Minster (it’s a Cathedral, but “minster” means that monks once lived there) are known for their contemporary aspects. He is instantly recognizable owing to his endearing gap toothed smile and colorful cutting edge clerical wardrobe.

Sentamu regularly pronounces on a variety of social and cultural issues from the need for the Church of England to reach out to black people (i.e. not to be so white and middle class), to why the young should avoid the moral pitfalls of premarital cohabitation (ref: Prince William and his now wife Kate), to the perils of removing Fathers from the process of creating and raising children (single women having artificial insemination, etc.).

His most recent public rant was on the topic of rebranding same sex civil partnerships as “marriages.” Sentamu’s position (echoed by many) is that marriage is forever theologically defined as being between a man and a woman (or several women in succession as in the case of Henry the 8th). He sides with those who believe that this sort of engrained social context cannot be changed overnight. Sentamu’s impetus for making a policy statement on shifting the language of same sex civil unions to marriage came after Prime Minister David Cameron hinted that he might be inclined to support this controversial change of terminology.

Primate Sentamu asserts that to impose a change in the language of such relationships would be a dictatorial act which amounted to overthrowing the Bible itself. He warned the Prime Minister that he would face “a rebellion” if Church of England clergy were forced to perform same sex civil unions under the category of marriage.

A marriage reform bill comes up for UK government “consultation” (translation committee hearings) in March. Civil partnerships were legalized by an Act of Parliament in 2004 without dispute from the Church of England bishops who sit in the House of Lords. File under “pending.”

The Former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, (1991- 2004) immediate predecessor to the current ABC, Rowan Williams, was ground breaking in his fashion. For a start, he attended neither Oxford, nor Cambridge (aka the old boys club). During his tenure, he had to deal with the ordination of women controversy and the reassessment of attitudes toward homosexuality. With an ear to the ground of today’s economic trends and human displacement, Carey emerged from retirement recently to speak up against the size of Britain’s national debt (£1 trillion) which he characterized as “immoral and feckless.” He rattled more cages when he declared that too many of the upper clerical classes were living in splendor while their congregations and communities too often were dealing with the realities of unemployment and its concomitant issues.

Categorizing Britain’s welfare system as irresponsible, Carey said that the UK’s benefit structure encouraged a culture of dependency which engendered a “poverty of aspiration”… “fueling vices and impoverishing us all.” Carey specifically spoke up against five Anglican (COE) bishops who are opposed to the government’s plan up to place a cap of £26,000 a year on annual benefit payments. According to best estimates, benefit cheats and fraudsters cost UK taxpayers £ 1.66 billion per year. One British pound is currently worth $1.58, so do the math.

Sir David Attenborough is internationally recognized and honored for his naturalist and environmental documentaries. His elder brother is Richard Attenborough of movie fame (Gandhi, Jurassic Park, The Great Escape). Now 85 years old, Sir David has long maintained that he is an agnostic, but he surprised the British public recently when he said that, even though he subscribes to the theory of evolution, he had to admit the existence of God is a possibility.

The Attenborough brothers have had more than their fair share of reasons to question the existence of God. Sir David’s wife died of a brain hemorrhage in 1997 and Sir Richard’s daughter and grand daughter were washed away in the 2004 Asian tsunami.

Sir David’s reputation took a bit of a hit when it was revealed that scenes of allegedly endangered polar bears, shown in his recent TV series Frozen Planet, were shot in a zoo, not the Arctic. One wonders how he was feeling after last Sunday’s (January 29th) Times of London (among many other news sources) reported that the planet was irrefutably heading for a mini ice age rather than toward Al Gore’s apocalyptic global warming scenario. The same goes for the Church of England which invested heavily in Gore’s carbon credit scheme. The moral of this story: Choose your higher powers wisely.

Alain de Botton (Religion for Atheists) is one of Britain’s famous surviving atheists. Their ranks were sadly thinned by the death late last year, from cancer, of the brilliant Christopher (God is Not Great) Hitchens. Another top British atheist is Richard (The God Delusion) Dawkins. Dawkins and de Botton have been engaged in a bit of a spat lately after de Botton characterized Dawkins’ approach to atheism as “aggressive and destructive.” In order to take atheism in a softer direction, de Botton unveiled his plan to build a 46 meter (150 foot) temple tower to celebrate atheism. Estimated to cost £1 million – half of which has already been raised – the temple would be erected in the heart of The City of London. He reckons that there is no reason for Christians to have all those beautiful cathedrals when there is no equivalent for non believers.

The planned design of the temple incorporates a timeline of life on earth (300 million years) with a roof open to the elements. Inside the tower, every 10 centimeters, there would a marker to designate the passage of one million years. A narrow band of gold toward the end of the timeline would represent the Johnny-come-lately appearance of human life on the planet. The exterior of the tower would feature a binary code which would illustrate the sequence of the human genome.

De Botton asserts that this structure would be awe inspiring and give people a better perspective on life. Dawkins says that atheists don’t need temples or other such foolish monuments. He advocates that the money for de Botton’s temple would be better spent on teaching kids to be more rational secularists. Permits are pending. If granted permission to build, construction could begin by 2013.

As these four news stories indicate, it not unusual for public figures in Britain to take a religious stand in the public square. After his years as Prime Minister of England, Tony Blair had a much publicized conversion to the Catholic faith practiced by his wife. In addition to consulting, speaking and his duties as the official Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, Blair has also established the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. His inspiration may explain why the British cannot seem to disengage from religion, even if they are atheists.

“Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st century as political ideology was to the 20th century. In an era of globalization, there is nothing more important than getting people of different faiths and cultures to understand each other better and live in peace and mutual respect, and to give faith itself its proper place in the future.”

Somebody say Amen.

 

 

No related posts.

Next Page »