Culture
Clips —
October 31, 2006
New Jersey Same-Sex Ruling
May Energize Conservatives
The [New
Jersey] court ruled that same sex partners must be granted the
same rights and benefits afforded opposite-sex couples under New
Jersey's civil marriage statues, but deferred to the state legislature
the decision on whether the same sex arrangement should be called
marriage. So the court essentially said that same sex partnership
walks like a duck, looks like a duck and should be granted all
the rights and benefits of a duck, but concluded it didn't have
the authority to call it a duck.
Now the
state legislature has 180 days to decide whether to call it a
duck, or to call it a goose that has the same legal standing as
a duck. It will decide whether to legalize same-sex marriage,
or whether these homosexual partnerships should exist under a
separate but equal civil union regime. ..
Conservatives
are not as dumb as liberals might think we are. You might call
a duck a goose, but we really know a duck when we see one. ..
The
New Jersey decision will shake many depressed, alienated, hostile
and apathetic conservatives out of their doldrums. It will remind
them of the damage that those to whom they're prepared to abdicate
power can really do.
Many
decisive races are very close and even a small boost in turnout
will make a difference.
Starr
Parker
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?Url
Title=jersey_same-sex_ruling_may_energize_conservatives&ns=
StarParker&dt=10/30/2006&page=2
--
What’s
Really Scary this Halloween
A survey
cited by National Public Radio in 2004 showed that 47 percent
of schools teach something dubbed “abstinence-plus.” The theory
behind this sexual school of thought is that, while abstinence
is best, some students will simply refuse to abstain, so schools
should teach kids about condoms and contraception as well. But,
at a time when technology is advancing faster than our hands can
fly across a computer keyboard, should we really be spending part
of the school day teaching kids how to put on condoms? If parents
are responsible for ensuring that their children are potty-trained
by kindergarten, shouldn’t it be up to parents to make sure their
offspring learn about the birds and the bees?
Or consider
this: A national poll reported by CBS News two years ago indicated
that Americans don’t believe in human evolution. Fifty-five percent
said God created humans in their present form, i.e., no apes were
involved in the creation of man and woman. And yet, school districts
throughout the U.S. continue to waste their precious resources
teaching children that man evolved from monkeys. It seems to me
that, if a child believes that he or she has an ancestor who’s
an ape, he or she is more likely to behave like one.
And then
there’s the biggest money-waster—the failure to teach children
the difference between right and wrong. The fancy name for the
problem is moral relativism. It’s a concept that’s preached in
the mainstream media everyday: “No one should force his or her
moral values on anyone else…That’s your truth, but not my truth…Don’t
post your Ten Commandments here.” There is a religion taught in
public schools—it’s just not the Judeo-Christian kind. It’s a
religion dedicated to the principles of the American Civil Liberties
Union and the National Education Association. God is irrelevant;
the state is divine; and everyone should take an oath of “tolerance”—meaning
an acceptance of whatever kind of deviant lifestyle is being promoted
at the moment on television.
Why not
spend some of our tax dollars teaching schoolchildren that life
really means something—that every child in the womb deserves a
chance at life? Let’s face it—if you teach a student that killing
an unborn child is acceptable, what’s to prevent that child from
growing into a teenager who thinks it’s O.K. to pick up a gun
and shoot someone? It doesn’t matter whether the weapon is a semi-automatic
or a scalpel—a killing is a killing.
In the
kind of school budget that I’m proposing, we’ve cut out money
for condom education, evolution propaganda, liberal indoctrination,
and abortion promotion. That leaves quite a bit of money left.
And we should be using that money to make schools safer and teenagers
more disciplined.
Nathan
Tabor
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/NathanTabor/2006/10/30/
whats_really_scary_this_halloween
--
The Population
Pessimists
Paul
Ehrlich published “The Population Bomb,” which opened with the
grim assertion that "the battle to feed all of humanity is
over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines -- hundreds
of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of
any crash programs embarked upon now."
But "the
Great Die-Off," as Ehrlich called it, didn't arrive in the
1970s. Nor in the 1980s. Undaunted, Ehrlich wrote in 1990 that
"starvation and epidemic disease will raise the death rates
over most of the planet" and humanity would experience the
"deaths of many hundreds of millions of people in famines."
It still hasn't happened. In fact, on the whole human beings are
better fed today (as well as better housed, better educated, and
longer-lived) than ever before. Where starvation still occurs,
it is usually the result of deliberate government policy, not
agricultural failure. In many parts of the world, the fastest-growing
nutritional problem is not hunger, but obesity. Yet the idea that
more people means more pain and penury dies hard.
At 300
million, America's population is three times what it was in 1915.
Over that span of time the quality of American life has soared.
From health and wealth to technology and transportation, from
leisure time and homeownership to life expectancy and productivity,
from clean air and water to entertainment and travel, most Americans
today enjoy conveniences and benefits that not even the Rockefellers
and the Vanderbilts could have afforded a century ago. But to
hear some experts tell it, we should be tearing our hair out in
distress.
"The
world does not need more people, and the US in my judgment does
not need more people either," grouses Charles Westoff of
Princeton's Office of Population Research. The Washington Post
quotes Dowell Myers, a demography professor at the University
of Southern California: "At 300 million, we are beginning
to be crushed under the weight of our own quality-of-life degradation."
Crushed?
We're not even mildly cramped. It might not seem that way to someone
stuck in a rush-hour traffic jam, but America is actually one
of the world's least congested nations, with a population density far lower
than that of Britain or Germany. The land area of the United States
is so vast that each American could have 7 acres to himself, and
there would still be 200 million acres left over. We are in no
danger of running out of space.
To be
sure, the United States has its problems, some of them quite serious.
But a burgeoning population isn't one of them. As Europe and Japan
age and shrink, America continues to grow and stay comparatively
youthful. That means not just more mouths to feed and more bodies
to house. It also means more brainpower and more human energy
-- more problem-solvers, more entrepreneurs, more thinkers, more
fighters, more leaders. The late Julian Simon famously called
human beings "the ultimate resource," and the United
States is blessed with more of it than any other First World nation.
"In
other words, you ain't seen nothin' yet," The Economist
predicts. "Anyone who assumed the United States is now at
the zenith of its economic or political power is making a big
mistake." As good as things are, they are about to get even
better. It's great to have you with us, No. 300,000,000. Welcome
aboard!
Jeff
Jacoby
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/JeffJacoby/2006/10/27/
the_population_pessimists
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