Laissez-faire At War Against Socialism

Try acting as a laissez-faire capitalist. It will get you a prison sentence for ignoring all the laws that prevent it.

On the subject of the economy, VP-Elect Biden is reported to have said, "We’re at war.” Biden told this to congressional leaders of both parties during their sit-down with Barack Obama in the Capitol, according to two sources familiar with the exchange.

Gene Healy at Cato at Liberty, writes "Libertarians and conservatives who fear that Obama’s inauguration heralds the coming of a new New Deal have new cause for discomfort, then. FDR’s embrace of the war metaphor was central to building support for the New Deal..."

I hardly think the "embrace of the war metaphor" is the heralding of the new New Deal--but it is most certainly coming, and it is going to hit American's swiftly. Obama already has asked for the $350 billion not yet spent so he has it on his first day in office. Thank that God, in whom we supposedly "trust", to have put some severe reservations about that money in the heads of even the liberal Democrats. They want it properly accounted for.

But there is no doubt it is coming. Obama has trumpeted loudly how about approximatly how much it is going to cost the taxpayer to pay for public works projects which will "pay off" quickly in the form of jobs created, in cash flow, and in such things as alternative energy, which of course the consumer will wind up paying twice for: once in the debt created by the loan, and once in the purchase of the product created.

And our children and grandchildren will pay off the loans that do not create direct profits, as a wind farm or some other means of production might. Someone will have to pay for the infrastructure rebuilding of roads and bridges, which, let's face it, really do need rebuilding.

But the Governors and the Mayors of America have been asked for their wish lists. Obama has already said many things will not be financed from this economic "stimulus" package.

But the fact that it already has a name--"stimulus package"--means the new administration won't have to give it a formal name, like the "New Deal."

Even the New Deal didn't spend as much of the GDP as a percentage, as did Eisenhower's interstate freeway system, which took 35 years to complete. When it was complete, Congress approved funding to go to work building a few more freeways, and upgrading the old ones.

"Roosevelt’s first inaugural address tends to be remembered as an attempt to calm the public, a warning against “fear itself.” The martial metaphors that appear throughout the speech make clear, though, that F.D.R. wanted fear replaced by collectivist ardor," Healy writes.

And what is it that Obama has already been saying? "The US economy will become 'dramatically worse', wrecking the dreams of a generation of Americans, if Congress does not act quickly to drive through huge fiscal stimulus plans, as fresh data showed deepening recession. He said the unemployment rate was at risk of reaching double digits and recession "could linger for years".

While very probably true, it is the rhetoric used in politics about such subjects that, Cato says, is good for nothing but "centralizing power."

How much centralization can a supposedly capitalist economy take, before it breaks down as the forces of collectivist policies clash like butting-heads against the free market ideas so well established and so taken to heart by the very people and corporations who actually make the economy profitable?

It does appear that the big corporations who are reaping billions of dollars are beginning to allow "czarism" to dictate how they operate. There will be a "car czar," for example. Of course, the CEOs and all those in the upper eschelons of the banking and mortgage systems have had to be rightly criticized for doling out hundreds of millions of that money in golden parachutes and bonuses.

But what about the bedrock of capitalism, the entrepreneur, the mom-and-pop operation, the proprietor? Will they be so willing to allow centralization to push them this way and that, when they all know for certain, knowledge gained by experience and from historical perspectives, that decentralization is responsible for profit-making and for profit-motivation.

No one can be too motivated when a czar is looking over your shoulder, and you and I know that such a czar and his/her soldiers can look over the shoulders of small businesses much easier than over the shoulders of the likes of GM and "banks that are too big to be allowed to fail."

Big business and our leaders, both left and right, including the avowed whom Socialist Obama hired who does not need Senate confirmation, are selling the small business owner and the Average Joe down the river.

I hope the Average Joe knows how to quit before he gets behind. He is already saving whatever money he can, rather than spending it. New savings accounts in banks jumped several-hundred percent over the last six months.

But the next thing you know, our New Socialist government will be taxing our savings to pay for the loans they are making because we are not spending our savings. Obama said to Katie Couric just yesterday, "Failure is not an option, not in America."

As far as his Marxist "spread the wealth" attitude goes, I think he intends to use every means at his disposal to spread the misery. He is a Constitutional Law professor, and a brilliant man. I have no doubt that America is going to see him use tricks of law we have not seen before. After all, he has not been sworn in yet, but plans to get his hands on the $350 billion one way or another. He has told Congress he will use his first veto on his first day in office--to get that money. Congress will cave, one way or another.

We should all buy gold, because our paper and coins will soon be worth nothing, comparatively. From 2000 to yesterday, the price of gold rose more than $549 from $280.10, to $829.57, or nearly 350%. Relative to the GDP deflator, the dollar only rose 19.82%.

What will the dollar be worth when Obama gets done manipulating it? The free market, left alone, tells the truth. When manipulated by government economic engineering, it always lies, relative to the free market.

We are at war, but it is the honest capitalist at war against the dishonest, and against the illegal usurping of his powers in the market place by government rules he cannot conform to without become a socialist himself.

Try acting as a laissez-faire capitalist. It will get you a prison sentence for ignoring all the laws that prevent it.

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Condensations from Here and There

President-elect Obama has said that he would promote "wind farms" as one way to create more jobs. This idea is consistent with popular wisdom about wind energy and, therefore, sounded good while Mr. Obama was in the Senate and during his Presidential campaign.

The problem for Mr. Obama now is that this popular wisdom is wrong. Contrary to reports issued by various wind energy advocates, "wind farms" provide few energy, environmental, or economic benefits and create very few jobs - far fewer than could be achieved if the money were used for other investments. Also, wind energy has adverse impacts that advocates like to ignore.

The wind industry, its lobbyists, and other wind advocates have, for more than a decade, greatly overstated the environmental, energy and economic benefits of wind energy and understated or ignored the very high true cost of electricity from wind energy as well as its adverse environmental, ecological, economic, scenic and property value impacts. With assistance from DOE and NREL (using tax dollars), the industry has misled the public, media, and government officials. They have secured federal and state policies, tax breaks and subsidies that have:

Shifted billions of dollars in tax burden and other costs from "wind farm" owners to ordinary taxpayers and electric customers, and misdirected billions in capital investment dollars to energy projects ("wind farms") that produce very little electricity - which electricity is low in value because it is intermittent, volatile, unreliable with little of it, if any, available on hot weekday afternoons in July and August when electricity is most needed and has high value.

During the last 4 years, the facts about wind energy's true costs and benefits have begun to emerge, even in the media, but they have yet to be understood by most government officials who continue to parrot wind energy advocates.

American Thinker Dec. 20, 2008

America’s health care sector is wasteful and inefficient. Americans spend twice the amount that other advanced nations spend on medical care, yet we’re not noticeably healthier. Researchers estimate that one third of U.S. medical spending produces nothing at all — that’s about $700 billion wasted per year.

The "Church of Universal Coverage" is telling us that national health insurance will stimulate economic growth.

It also doesn’t seem to square with the facts. If anything, the economy appears to grow faster when Congress rejects universal coverage.

After Congress defeated President Harry Truman’s proposal for national health insurance in 1949, the nation enjoyed four years of robust economic growth.

The defeat of the Clinton Health Security Act in 1994 was followed by six years of robust economic growth.

The largest step Congress has taken toward universal coverage was when it launched Medicare and Medicaid in 1966. Real economic growth averaged 5.7 percent in the four years prior to 1966, but only 2.7 percent in the four years that followed.

Cato at Liberty

Today’s "USA Today" tells the story of “Phyllis Smith, a 60-year-old uninsured seamstress in Yantis, Texas, [who] goes without medications for high blood pressure and diabetes because she can’t afford a visit to her doctor to get her prescriptions refilled.” The article quotes Smith:

"With the condition this world is in right now, [Barack Obama] has his hands full…. Whether I get my high-blood-pressure medicine is not going to be high on his priority list."

Sort of argues against giving some distant ruler that much control over your life, doesn’t it?

And who knows? Were those distant rulers not doing so much to make health insurance more expensive, perhaps Smith wouldn’t be uninsured.

Were they not doing so much to make routine care so expensive, perhaps Smith could afford that doctor’s visit, or have a nurse practitioner adjust her prescription.
Were they not doing so much to make prescription drugs more expensive, perhaps Smith could better afford her medications too.

Cato at Liberty

Investor’s Business Daily reports on two Congressional Budget Office reports released yesterday. Both were launched and largely completed under the tenure of then-CBO director Peter Orszag, who has since been tapped to direct President-elect Barack Obama’s Office of Management and Budget.

Before becoming Barack Obama’s budget chief, Peter Orszag gave his future boss an indirect warning Thursday that health care reform will be neither cheap nor easy.

“(The first report) shows that many of the things that Obama and Congressional Democrats think will save costs, such as preventive care and information technology, won’t really save much money,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “It also shows that covering the uninsured will cost a lot of money.”

Better preventive care and health IT would save Medicare $850 million and $22 billion, respectively, over 10 years. Over that time, Medicare is expected to cost $6.7 trillion….

“If you read between the lines, [Orszag is] saying that health care reform will be a blood bath, not quick and easy,” said Cannon.

Cannon went on to say in "USA Today" that all the forces who previously were agaisnt health care reform, forces such as National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the Service Employees International Union, and a left-leaning advocacy group, Families USA, "want to be at the table because they don’t want to be on the menu,” Cannon says of the interest groups. “Sooner or later, someone is going to be on the menu. You can’t do comprehensive reform without goring someone’s ox.”

If Obama's administration pulls off this trillion dollar socialistic debacle, it won't only be people like Phyllis Smith who lose out. The socialist health machine in Canada leaves out many people, people who must "line up" on the calendar to get basic and comprehensive care. Those who want surgery to fix such things as a previously broken nose, or limbs that work but were disfigured by such diseases as polio, may have them reclassified as "elective surgery" or "cosmetic surgery," and sent to the back of the line.

The back of the line will be the only place left when American doctors begin leaving for places that don't tell them how to do their jobs, and how much to charge. Time was when that place was America, and Canadian doctors fled here.

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Power Reserved to the People, Respectively

Eliminate Constitutional Clause and Give Power back to the People, Respectively

"The best way to limit the federal Leviathan is to have Congress and the presidency controlled by different parties," said Ilya Shapiro of the blog of the Cato Institute. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/10/24/a-plea-for-divided-government/

Wrong. That statement of Shapiro's demonstrates the similarities between the so-called conservatives and the out-and-out liberals.

The best way to limit the federal Leviathian is to stick to the origins of the Constitution. That is called "originalism," or sometimes "original intent". Wikipedia explains it this way:

"In the context of United States constitutional interpretation, originalism is a family of theories central to all of which is the proposition that the Constitution has a fixed and knowable meaning, which was established at the time of its drafting."

This does not in any way prevent it from being applied to American law in any decade or any century. The original intent can--and ought--to be applied because that was the intent of those who wrote it. They provided us with the means to change their intentions, and that means was not to ignore their intentions. That means was not to place any meaning on their words that fit our purposes. That means was to either nullify by Amendment where necessary, or alter by legislation where allowed, the intention of their words.

The answer to the question of why we, in the 21st Century ought to follow the spirit of their words is because that spirit is the spirit of Americanism. We can keep the spirit but change the words that transfigure what they saw in the 18th C. into what we see in the 21st. To ignore their intent is "rule by men", not rule by law.

Original intent theory is interpretation of the Constitution consistent with what was meant by those who drafted and ratified it.

The original meaning theory, which is closely related to textualism, is the view that reasonable persons living at the time of its adoption would have declared the ordinary meaning of the text to be. It is with this view that most originalists, such as Justices Scalia and Thomas, are associated.

Just this year the Supreme Court proved that originalism could be used effectively, when it ruled on the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The Court effectively nullified the first clause which made the Amendment appear to require a "well maintained militia" to enable the right to bear arms. The Court, after reviewing hundreds of documents from the Colonial period, decided that it was never the intention of the drafters and signers of the Constitution to limit arms to the maintanance of a militia.

By ruling in this way, the Court proved that originalism will sometimes benefit the America of the 21st Century. Had it declared that it was indeed the intent of the Colonialists to limit the right to bear arms to the militia, it still would have made the correct decision if the historical facts supported the decision. But at that point it would have been up to Congress to write a new amendment that would override the "militia clause" of the Second Amendment.

Originalism is the way the Constitution is supposed to work. If history does not support the facts of life as they exist today, as the Constitution was written, then it is within the right of the people to amend the Constitution.

Originalism, besides limiting the size and scope of the federal government, will return to the States that which is not "prohibited to" them, and which "are reserved to the States respectively"; which will subsequently return to We, the People, what is not prohibited to us and is reserved to each of us respectively. [Tenth Amendment]

What is reserved to each of us respectively is sovereignty of self, otherwise called individual sovereignty. Laissez-Fairre: the Economics of Individual Sovereignty

No one on the right or the left is going to convince me to believe that being a "citizen of the United States" is better than being a "Citizen of the Several States" of the united States. It is not better to be part of a government Leviathian than to be part of a semi-autonomous region.

This does not mean an Afghani or Iraqi style autonomous tribalism--it never did, and it will not--not so long as all the people of all the "several States" remembers that there are limits to what is achievable when home rule is brought closer to "home."

The "citizens of the United States" clause of the 14th Amendment should be struck down. That would eliminate most of the Federal power over the States. We were never intended to be citizens of the "United States". The Continental Congress did not set it up that way. They deliberately limited the size and scope of the Federal government. Since Senator John McCain wants to cut funding for all but what he or Congress or someone deems is "necessary," this is the route he should take.

Of course it would take a Libertarian who is strong as Ronald Reagan to do such a thing.

I don't think McCain is even a libertarian. But he should return as much power to the States as he can without mandating, as Reagan did, that the States pick up the Federal slack.

Picking up that slack is not downsizing--it is passing it off on the States.

Give the power back to the States, don't mandate anything except to follow the remaining and existing Federal statutes (or sue the Federal government over it, the legal way of resolving disputes,) and when we all see power returning to the People, we will not only be empowered again politically as we once were; but we will be empowered psychologically as we have not been since before the Civil War.

Note: originalintent.org is one of several organizations dedicated to "Restoring the Republic...One Citizen at a Time."

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Horvath and Revelation, Part X;Obama and Muslim Money;Ayn Rand Center

A Response to Anthony "stjohnny" Horvath

On "Road-to-Damascus" type Revelations

To read the original blog by Horvast,click on Guest Author Rev. Anthony "sntjohnny" Horvath

Note: I have been mistaken in the title to use for "sntjohnny." Here is what he wrote to me recently: "For quick reference- I am not a pastor or a reverend. I did finish the pastoral ministry degree in college which in many denominations is sufficient to receive ordination but in my denomination an additional four years on top of the bachelors degree is required- and I didn't do that. (and no complaints about it, either!)"

Introduction by Tony Horvath:

"Recently an atheist [Clark] stumbled upon my site and put [there]

a post responding to a post on my own blog on

the distinction between ‘natural’ revelation and ’special’ revelation.

The reader has all the information in the links above to follow this exchange, if they like.

"In my blog entry I indicated that many atheists won’t be convinced by anything less than their own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience. Mr. Clark responds:"

Part Two, (or is it Three?)

Atheists don’t believe such revelations as "revealed" or "natural" are possible, because the cause of them does not exist. A revealed revelation, as Horvath points out, "concerns that which is known and can only be known because God himself reveals it." A "natural" revelation is one which comes through contemplation about the nature of existence.

Any "atheist" who could possibly be looking for a revelation, revealed or natural, would be a contradiction, in terms of what his beliefs were, as concerning the lack of a god who could give such revelations versus what he expected as either an epistemic or metaphysical quality of knowledge. In other words, he either believes no god exists, in which case no quality of knowledge can be called "revelation" in the religious sense; or he believes religious-type revelations are possible, in which case he is wrong about being atheist.

By definition, an atheist knows there is no god, in the sense that all the resolutions of logic one has in one’s mind is what he “knows.” This is sometimes called “justified true belief,” as opposed to “unjustified.” The justification comes from the soundness of the argument that there are only two choices: naturalism and supernaturalism; and from the soundeness of the proposition that faith is the negation of reason.

Theists, on the other hand, 'know,' by the same standard, that God exists. Atheists 'know' he does not. Each of them has found the soundness, the justification, within his own logic that to doubt it would be to doubt his own mind. To go looking for a revelation, or even to expect that perhaps such a supernatural quality of knowledge will be imparted to him, implies that he knows nothing either way, and perhaps has no beliefs one way or the other.

You say I am engaged in an unnecessary discussion on what constitutes an atheist, that there are different kinds of atheists, including what we construe in technical terms as weak and strong atheists. You say your problem as a Christian Apologist is that these issues are largely an internal matter among atheists but each atheist insists on telling you what atheism absolutely is! "Atheism," you say, "reduces, ultimately, to each individual atheist’s perception of atheism."

My contention is that just as there cannot be such a thing as a strong chair vs. a weak chair--which would be what: anything not manufactured as a chair but which works as a chair anyway?--and just as there cannot be a thing such as a strong apple versus a weak apple......The point is, "chair", "apple", "naturalist," numismatist," and "atheist" are concepts. What is a weak concept versus a strong concept?

It is true that "naturalist" and "atheist" are concepts indicating epistemic determinations. But a definition is still a definition, and the only one that can be argued is the one that takes the idea to its logical extreme. Anything less than the extreme is less than the essence of the concept. Why debate things which are not the essence of the debate?

You say you recently had one instance where you asked an atheist if he agreed that revelations were possible if one happened to him. He answered, “You’re asking me whether if god came to visit me (like some amplified Jehovah’s Witness) and explained the whole thing, then would that change my opinion? Uh, yes."

Tony, I myself will tell you the same thing: If God came to me it would be less than rational to ascribe his identity to him. But I will also tell you that since the concept of "atheist" means denial of the supernatural realm, asking your question is like asking whether one would believe in sapient army ants if one showed up. Of course I would believe in sapient army ants if one showed up. It isn't going to happen. MORE

Check out http://sntjohnny.com/front/ and discover the wonderful world of rational Christianity. Now THAT is a "breath of fresh air." CEC

Compiled from "Act! for America"

"The article below was written by Kenneth Timmerman, President and director of the Middle East Data Project. He has authored a number of books including Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown in Iran. For his work in exposing the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear weapons program, he was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Timmerman is also a member of the Board of Advisors of our sister organization, American Congress for Truth.

"Timmerman's article reveals that [because of] foreign nationals from the Muslim world [making] illegal contributions to the Barack Obama campaign, the Federal Election Commission has compiled a list of questionable foreign contributions totaling nearly $34,000,000!"

Read Timmerman's article here.

http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/Obama_fundraising_illegal/2008/09/29/135718.html

Strong American Schools, We Hardly Knew Ye

From Cato @ Liberty; The blog of the Cato Institute.

"It was recently announced that Strong American Schools, the group founded by magnates Bill Gates and Eli Broad to put education high on the presidential-election docket, will die in March. It will, in all likelihood, expire in relative anonymity.
"The initiative’s biggest problem has been having to compete against behemoths like war and Wall Street for headlines–a struggle education couldn’t possibly win–but as I wrote back in May, the group also hasn’t offered anything new or noteworthy, a sure way to go unnoticed. Top-down, “government should do more of x” reforms just don’t fire anyone’s imagination because, well, that’s what we’ve been doing for decades and things just haven’t gotten much better.
"And so, Strong American Schools, you will be missed…but not for very long.
posted by Neal McCluskey on 10.02.08 @ 7:23 pm
Filed Under: Education and Child Policy "

The Ayn Rand Center Responds to the Financial Crisis

"Americans are now facing an historic economic crisis. What was the cause? What is the cure? How do we prevent it from happening again? While pundits and politicians blame the current housing and financialcrisis on "greedy" businessmen and lax regulators, and are frantically urging the government to expand its control over our economic lives, the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has launched a new Web pageto defend a different view--that the actual cause of the crisisis government intervention, and the only cure, laissez-faire capitalism. http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=rL8idB-SoNNA8lMh3mz0Ig..

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause." http://www.centerforinquiry.net/ CEC

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"sntjohnny" is a Rational Christian; Taxing for Green; Web Deceits

"sntjohnny" is a Rational Christian
With Whom I Can Have Dialogue

Anthony Horvath is the Executive Director of Athanatos Christian Ministries. Horvath, who calls himself sntjohnny though his name isn't John, calls his website St.Johnny.com, perhaps to differentiate himself: "Will the real St. John please stand up?"

"[B]y the very definition of God according to Christian theists, there is a great deal that could only be known if God told us." Horvath was describing "special revelation."

"Special" is contrasted with "natural revelation" whereby "natural revelation" means arguments for the existence of God, Horvath says. "Simply put, ‘natural’ revelation, or ‘natural theology,’ is what one can learn about God running exclusively on your own steam without any assistance from God. Aristotle’s Prime Mover arguments and Aquinas’s ‘Five Ways’ are such efforts." http://sntjohnny.com/front/natural-versus-revealed-religion-how-atheists-drop-the-ball/349.html

"One of the confusions here is the treatment of the Bible as revelation. It certainly is revelation. However, when it concerns God, it is, strictly speaking, revelation about revelation. So, the ’special revelation’ would be what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus. He then reveals what was revealed to him. In other words, the accounts of this incident are Paul’s revelation. Also, all that we know about Jesus is revealed to us through his disciples. [italics added]

"Atheists at this point are probably scratching their heads because from their perspective I will not have made the situation any better. What many of them are specifically looking for is their own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience."

I should say not. Atheists don't believe such revelations are possible, because the cause of them does not exist. Any person who could possibly be looking for a "revealed" revelation would be a fence-sitting agnostic. By definition, an atheist knows there is no god, in the sense that all the resolutions of logic one has in one's mind is what he "knows." This is sometimes called "justified true belief," as opposed to "unjustified." The justification comes from the soundness of the argument.

Theists "know" God exists. Atheists "know" he does not. Each of them has found the soundness, the justification, within his own logic that to doubt it would be to doubt his own mind. To go looking for a revelation implies that one knows nothing either way, and perhaps has no beliefs one way or the other.

Horvath begins his blog asserting "that atheists fail to distinguish between ‘natural revelation’ and ’special revelation’ but they are not entirely to blame. Arguments for the existence of God tend to be in the realm of ‘natural’ theology."

Yes, they do "tend to be considered theology," and therein lies the differences between theists and atheists. One thing I'm beginning to admire about sntjohnny is that he seems to have an understanding of naturalism that is better than that of many naturalists. But his understanding of naturalists themselves isn't as discerning. No naturalist who is also atheist has any justified true belief in either kind of revelation. The naturalist who believes in "natural" revelation is not an atheist. The person who believes in "revealed" revelations is not a naturalist.

Horvath is familiar with my very public differences with Austin Cline, the Deity of Atheism over at About.com. [See the Academy Blogger http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/09/threaded-with-austin-cline-saturday.html ]

I have thus publicly disagreed with Cline about the definition of atheism. I maintain that not only do atheists justifiably believe there are no gods, but also that atheists don't have the faith required to see within the "naturally revealed" world the existence of any god. Cline says an atheist merely has no belief in god, and may consider it to be true that gods exist, and have faith in other forms of supernaturalism!

Far from being skeptical, the atheist who believes there are no gods finds no reason to be skeptical since he/she finds no reason to argue with him/herself about whether he/she is correct in his/her belief.

On the other hand, the believer is the skeptic and the more devout the belief the more skeptical he/she is. That is because in order to believe in the "revealed revelations" of the Bible, the Christian must "suspend his disbelief" http://www.mediacollege.com/glossary/s/suspension-of-disbelief.html , overcoming it with reason. It was the theologian Boethius, after all, who told Christians, "Insofar as is possible, join faith to reason."

It is not in my constitution to suspend my reason only to replace it with faith, which must then be rationalized by overcoming my disbelief with sound justifications that overcome them. The theist who cannot find the sound justification to overcome his/her disbelief is a Christian with a crisis.

sntjohnny does a credible and understandable job of overcoming disbelief--for the agnostic, or the Christian with a crisis of belief. I do not believe, and he states unequivocally that he also does not believe, anything less than a "revealed" revelation would be enough to convince an atheist.

If he is right, and I agree that he is, Cline's definition of "atheist" has been knocked out of the ballpark.

I have provided my readers with a link to Horvath,aka stjohnny, in the sidebar under the heading "Interesting Reading." Horvath is a very rational Christian who comprehends that preaching to an atheist doesn't work, even if he thinks we are all waiting for our own personal revelation from a god. What he does understand is that in reason, there can be dialogue between theists and atheists, which is the only way for the two camps to talk, aside from just leaving each other alone altogether.

Are You That Certain of Yourself
That You Can Tax the Rest of Us for Your Beliefs?
"Cool Look at the Future, by Richard Rahn. How much in additional taxes are you willing to pay now in order to ensure that the Earth would not be 3 degrees warmer 100 years from now (assuming the science is even possible) - $100 or $1,000 or $10,000 or more? Should the government prevent us from selling some of our body parts to allow others to live or have better lives? The above questions and many others were the subject of learned discussion at the 60th anniversary meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) that just concluded here in Tokyo." Cato Today http://www.cato.org/recent_opeds.php

Internet Lies and Deceits
"I was intrigued to discover recently that I am a secret services mouthpiece designed to undermine the left by publishing neo-conservative views and apologies for racism. You'll not be surprised to learn that these ludicrous allegations were made on the internet. The web has become a clearing house for all sorts of nonsense ideas.

"Many of the most enthusiastic pioneers of the internet have now become seriously worried about its capacity to promulgate lies and distortions. Larry Sanger, one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, became so disillusioned that he started Citizendium as an attempt to bring more quality control to online, collaborative encyclopaedias. Just last week, the creator of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, also said that we need to find ways to control the spread of falsehoods on the web."I share their concerns, but I wonder if blaming the web is just shooting the messenger for radically upping his productivity."

Julian Baggini http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.2446993.0.Can_we_untangle_this_web_of_deceit.php

Mr. Baggini also has a link provided by the Academy Blogger under the heading "Interesting Reading."

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