It’s Time To Get Back To Conservative Values To Avoid Mediocrity

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz thinks America is in need of some help. “We can’t be bystanders anymore,” He told Fortune magazine. “It’s a dangerous time, we are drifting toward mediocrity. We deserve a better America.”

Schultz is no slouch. His insight helped him rapidly expand Starbucks into a coffee-shop powerhouse that has almost 20,000 stores in 58 countries. In a business sense, he knows what he’s talking about.

So how is America doing? Read these few statistics about our country:

• Unemployment stands at 8.2%. The last time we saw unemployment this high before the recession was at the end of 1983. (BLS.gov)
• The labor force participation rate is at its lowest level (63.8%) in 30 years. (BLS.gov)
• Nearly 25 million adults live at home with their parents because they’re unemployed or underemployed.
• A 2008 Survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston states that the average age at which a U.S. consumer under the age of 35 first adopted a credit card is 20.8 years. The average age of credit card adoption for a consumer over the age of 65 is 40.6 years.
• As of 2010, the US Census Bureau reports that US Citizens have over $886 billion in credit card debt.
• According to a National Republican Congressional Committee report, gas prices had risen 103.79% during Obama’s Presidency through April 8. The last president to see doubled prices was Jimmy Carter.
• A National Center for Education Statistics study shows that, in current dollars, the average cost for college tuition to a 4-year institution almost doubled from 2000 to 2010.
• The U.S. National Debt is almost at $16 trillion dollars.

Schultz said, “We need real leadership from Washington and from the business community. I’ve been the ultimate beneficiary of the American dream, and that dream is now in jeopardy.”

Debt will weigh us down, and we need leadership in Washington that can see this. Can we not simply turn our heads east and look at how Europe is doing with debt on top of debt? If you think taxes and spending need to be increased to lower debt, stop reading this article – you likely won’t agree with anything on this website.

Regardless of what happens in Washington, what Americans really need to do is focus on improving themselves instead of becoming more and more reliant upon a government. The government is there to provide structure, but that in no way means we should have expectations of receiving something from them.

We’re in a hole right now, and we are “drifting towards mediocrity” as Schultz says. We have no options to do anything but focus on improving ourselves and making the best of our situation. As a country, we need to save our money, spend responsibly, and make quality decisions based on improving ourselves in the long-run – not just for the next week or month or year, but for decades. This will be difficult, but no one ever said it would be easy. If things were easy, they wouldn’t be as rewarding.

We don’t know what the world will throw at us in our lifetimes, so we have to plan with the assumption that we can’t rely on anything or anyone but ourselves and our families. It is very possible Obama could be re-elected and ObamaCare could stand; we may complain about it all day long and warn about the dangers of continuing the program, but talking about it won’t do us any good – the most we can do is vote. Outside of politics, we never know when a tsunami, earthquake, hurricane, tornado, or Iranian missile will ruin part of our country and cost billions of dollars in recovery efforts.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably conservative…if not, you can’t argue with this one point that goes beyond Republicans, Democrats, Romney, or Obama: Americans should live inside their means. Some will have to sacrifice more than others to save money, but is that not a reward worth working towards? This world isn’t completely about money, but the reality is that it costs money to do what you enjoy.

We must work harder to achieve what we want. If we aren’t successful at the end of the day, at least we can say we tried. I’d rather try and fail than expect a handout from a government that can barely run its self. Doing these simple things would be the most American thing we could do.

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Archbishop Chaput Closes Fortnight for Freedom With Amazing Homily

Archbishop Charles Chaput is one of the most respected pro-life voices within the Catholic Church and he has proved that once again with a homily to close the Fortnight for Freedom event that has the Catholic community abuzz on the Internet.

Below is the full text of the address from the Archbishop of Philadelphia, given at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.:

Paul Claudel, the French poet and diplomat of the last century, once described the Christian as “a man who knows what he is doing and where he is going in a world [that] no longer [knows] the difference between good and evil, yes and no. He is like a god standing out in a crowd of invalids . . . He alone has liberty in a world of slaves.”

Like most of the great writers of his time, Claudel was a mix of gold and clay, flaws and genius. He had a deep and brilliant Catholic faith, and when he wrote that a man “who no longer believes in God, no longer believes in anything,” he was simply reporting what he saw all around him. He spoke from a lifetime that witnessed two world wars and the rise of atheist ideologies that murdered tens of millions of innocent people using the vocabulary of science. He knew exactly where forgetting God can lead.

We Americans live in a different country, on a different continent, in a different century. And yet, in speaking of liberty, Claudel leads us to the reason we come together in worship this afternoon.

Most of us know today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew. What we should, or should not, render unto Caesar shapes much of our daily discourse as citizens. But I want to focus on the other and more important point Jesus makes in today’s Gospel reading: the things we should render unto God.

When the Pharisees and Herodians try to trap Jesus, he responds by asking for a coin. Examining it he says, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” When his enemies say “Caesar’s,” he tells them to render it to Caesar. In other words, that which bears the image of Caesar belongs to Caesar.

The key word in Christ’s answer is “image,” or in the Greek, eikon. Our modern meaning of “image” is weaker than the original Greek meaning. We tend to think of an image as something symbolic, like a painting or sketch. The Greek understanding includes that sense but goes further. In the New Testament, the “image” of something shares in the nature of the thing itself.

This has consequences for our own lives because we’re made in the image of God. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the same word, eikon, is used in Genesis when describing the creation. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” says God (Gen 1:26). The implication is clear. To be made in the image of God is more than a pious slogan. It’s a statement of fact. Every one of us shares — in a limited but real way — in the nature of God himself. When we follow Jesus Christ, we grow in conformity to that image.

HEB 1: 3 (MSG) This Son perfectly mirrors God, and is stamped with God’s nature. He holds everything together by what he says – powerful words!

Once we understand this, the impact of Christ’s response to his enemies becomes clear. Jesus isn’t being clever. He’s not offering a political commentary. He’s making a claim on every human being. He’s saying, “render unto Caesar those things that bear Caesar’s image, but more importantly, render unto God that which bears God’s image” — in other words, you and me. All of us.

And that raises some unsettling questions: What do you and I, and all of us, really render to God in our personal lives? If we claim to be disciples, then what does that actually mean in the way we speak and act?

Thinking about the relationship of Caesar and God, religious faith and secular authority, is important. It helps us sort through our different duties as Christians and citizens. But on a deeper level, Caesar is a creature of this world, and Christ’s message is uncompromising: We should give Caesar nothing of ourselves. Obviously we’re in the world. That means we have obligations of charity and justice to the people with whom we share it. Patriotism is a virtue. Love of country is an honorable thing. As Chesterton once said, if we build a wall between ourselves and the world, it makes little difference whether we describe ourselves as locked in or locked out.

But God made us for more than the world. Our real home isn’t here. The point of today’s Gospel passage is not how we might calculate a fair division of goods between Caesar and God. In reality, it all belongs to God and nothing – at least nothing permanent and important – belongs to Caesar. Why? Because just as the coin bears the stamp of Caesar’s image, we bear the stamp of God’s image in baptism. We belong to God, and only to God. >>> READ MORE

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U.N. ATT (Arms Trade Treaty) what is it?

Tags

Bill of Rights, Gun Control, UN ATT, United Nations

by Benjamin Worthen

The United Nations Arms Trade Treaty is perhaps the most misunderstood and potentially harmful stride towards the loss of second amendment rights in the United States that we as a people currently face. But there is a lot of this movement that just isn’t accurate and perhaps we are a bit premature on the topic.

Without question the UN ATT has massive potential to control our rights as law abiding Americans, but the Arms Trade Treaty needs to be understood a bit better by those who both champion it and despise it, because it’s much more complicated than it appears on the surface.

*A Note: Firstly, I must explain that the UN ATT (Arms Trade Treaty) is a non-partisan issue, and while you may often see my viewpoints as incredibly conservative (compared to the current administration), my political viewpoints are based on my interpretation of the Constitution, and individual and state liberties will always be the most important thing in my mind. Our sovereignty is dependent on the promise of freedom to the individual and their ability to align with the state that they feel most comfortable with. It is impossible for the UN or any other non American institution to understand what it means to be American and to enjoy the freedoms we do as individuals. My hope is that you understand that my inclination is to protect the individual freedoms secured by the United States constitution above all else, and it is the major reason I continue to write daily. Please look at this article whether Liberal or Conservative, with non-partisan eyes and try to understand the core issue: potential loss of freedoms. >>> READ MORE

NOTE: This is a pretty good article explaining the bill that is acing a vote soon. Clearly, the argument of Constitutionality is no longer sufficient. This article clarifies what is and what isn’t part of the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).