Archive for the ‘Morality/Values’ Category
What is a “fair share?”
“We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non work.” ~ Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize economist Was Friedman forecasting today’s reality? In one tax year reported in the Statistical Abstract of the United States, millionaires earned 100 times as much as people earning $30,000, but paid 300 times as much tax. The top 20% […]
The Welfare State
“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” ~ George Bernard Shaw Shouldn’t those advocating the United States continue its ever-expanding welfare state look more closely at what is happening in Europe under the staggering weight of its “cradle to grave” welfare mentality? Though it sounds charitable […]
Roe v. Wade – Did we get what we wanted?
Recently, parents successfully sued for “wrongful birth” because their child was born with Down syndrome, claiming if it had been accurately diagnosed early in the pregnancy, they would have chosen abortion. With Roe v. Wade, did well-meaning people start us down an unintended path to a child being worthy of birth only if the parents […]
Mediocre and entitled
“There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.” Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924), American writer November 2007, KMGH television Denver Colorado – “To end complaints about the sometimes fierce competition among overachieving high school students, the Boulder (Colorado) Valley School District […]
Avoiding consequences
“Right is right, even if everyone
is against it; and wrong is wrong,
even if everyone is for it.”
– William Penn, 1644-1718
founder of Pennsylvania
A state religion?
Understanding the founding fathers’ fears of government offers insight into the meaning of their words in the United States Constitution. Many of their demanded freedoms were born from the British trail of William Penn who challenged the sovereignty of the Church of England, the state religion. On its steps, he dared to gather and preach […]
Going home
For several months, I have been spending some time working in an emergency department in a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska; a few weeks ago taking a day off and driving 210 miles to the small town where I was born a little over 60 years ago, Holdrege, Nebraska. It was 52 years ago that we […]
Spoiled, dependent, entitled, indentured, enslaved
Are spoiled children born that way? According to British writer Roald Dahl, “Some children are spoiled and it is not their fault, it is their parents.” Spoiled children have parents who give them everything they want instead of teaching them to earn what they want, instead of teaching them responsibility and independence. Quite simply, parents […]
“Things”
In the movie “Parenthood,” the family’s grandmother offered advice to her son who was distraught; he quit his job and his wife was pregnant. Of life she said, “You know, it was just so interesting to me that the roller coaster could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited and so thrilled […]
Rape-rape?
Whoopi Goldberg said of producer Roman Polanski and his rape conviction of the 13-year-old girl he drugged and sodomized, “It wasn’t rape-rape. It was something else but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.” Have our values so deteriorated that we no longer recognize rape? Polanski is a free man, living in Europe where the cultures […]
Subject or citizen?
“Oh posterity, you will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope that you will make a good use of it.” – John Adams, second U.S. president American statesman Dean Alfange, born in Istanbul in 1899, reflected the values of an American citizen when he wrote, “I do not choose […]
Gratitude is a burden
“Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.” Tacitus, 56 AD – 120 AD, Roman historian Does this sound a bit too much like today, suggesting we may have progressed little this past 2,000 years? Is gratitude still a burden? Is revenge still […]
Forgetting the evil
“I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear.” – Hans Frank, Nazi governor of Poland Last week I apologized to a Jewish friend for again forgetting the evil, the third year in a row I promised myself I would not forget. I am exactly what evil wants, what evil needs to succeed; […]
Well-intentioned missionaries or criminals?
This is the question Haitian courts will answer to determine the fate of the jailed Idaho missionaries who tried to take children out of Haiti illegally. When arrested, the missionaries initially claimed they were trying to “rescue” orphaned children from the disaster caused by the earthquakes. But, the changing story makes it difficult to decide […]
Christmases past
December 26th my wife and I celebrate our 28th anniversary. The year we married I was a single father with a three-year-old son, whom my wife later adopted. And, this year is the first Christmas it will be just the two of us. After cutting down our 28th Christmas tree, we reminisced about some special […]
What is public and what is private?
Does the public have a right to know everything? Does freedom of the press have any limits? Is anything private? Is everything fair game? How might Tiger Woods answer these questions? “Yes, no, no, yes.” Moreover, these questions have little to do with any claimed right to privacy, and all to do with the Constitution. […]
The entitled generation
Last week I watched a news report on a new type of life crisis. Well, sort of. A young reporter discussed the many difficulties facing the 25-year-olds as they finish college. Wait a minute? Why are 25-year-olds just finishing college? Did they take a few years off along the way? How did they do that? […]
Values and common sense
Do you ever wonder about our lost values, our disappearing common sense? Where is our foundation, our cornerstone, showing us the values that are America? Our foundation is crumbling and a cornerstone is hard to find. And we have fewer anchors to look to for help understanding what we are, and what we should aspire […]
Our children, violence, and murder
What is happening to our children? Children with guns murdering children. Does this support the need for gun control, as advanced by the media and the politically correct, both with a fanciful capacity to not allow facts to interfere with their opinions? But if the data shows guns are not the cause of violence, […]
Claiming racism be racist
Four police officers and two men; one black, a noted Harvard professor, and one Jewish, a famous singer –each with a recent police encounter. Returning from a trip, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates found his front door jammed. He tried to force it open and then he and his chauffeur got in through the back […]