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Bob Robinson at Vanguard Church has a great post that points to how the heavy-weights of USAmerican Church History have spoken definitively on how our forefathers were definitely not overwhelmingly of a Christian belief system. 

There were exceptions, particularly members of the Anglican Church who were of evangelical convictions, but the majority of the founding fathers were not of orthodox Christian beliefs and so this lie needs to be stopped.

I would rather argue that Christianity in the US is in very much need of revival and I think the likely source will be in our willingness to learn from the vibrant Christianity that is growing in the 2/3rds world, where 3/4s of the sincere Christians likely live today. 

dlw

Kudos as Bart Campolo, I have just learned that there is a movement called The Invisible Children dedicated to end a brutal civil war in N. Uganda, where children are being hunted down to fight. 

Apparently, they first made a documentary film titled The Invisible Children and now have an organization committed to  ending the war. 

They have a big event scheduled for this Saturday night at 130 cities throughout the US, including Minneapolis. They are going to march like the children are made to march and then sleep outside(perhaps of Military locations) in solidarity with the invisible children. 

 If asked why they are doing what they are doing they will say: Read more

My friend Matt has a wonderfully written post where he satirizes how a talking head, Natan Sharansky, has described GWB as the dissident president. 

Here’s a snippet… Read more

via Scott Jones, from a different perspective than mine.

dlw

BIG Bill to Be Introduced in the U.S. Congress
Congressman Bob Filner (Democrat from San Diego, California) will introduce a bill in the U.S. Congress in late April 2006, entitled, “A Tax Cut For the Rest of Us.” The preamble of the bill reads, “To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide a basic income guarantee in the form of a refundable tax credit for taxpayers who do not itemize deductions.

The Bill would transform the standard income tax deduction into a standard tax credit of $2000 per adult and $1000 per child. For the first time, it would give a “refundable tax credit” to everyone who filed an income tax return, even if the person had no private income. Read more

I am becoming more and more convinced that we need more sermons on Selfishness, with particular application to our consumption of our limited God-given resources, such as oil and natural gas.  We are giving too much money to tyranny on account of our hyper-individualism and the consequences of such sin is death. 

Sadly, it seems our leaders are following the blind with a short term focus on lowering gas and oil prices.  If this continues we will all fall into a pit!

 dlw

This post by Scott Jones is definitely skewed, but I thought it was worth passing along.

He also writes about the Equality Ride and I think helps me to understand some of the good that has come from them bringing up the issue at Christian universities in the US. 

I’ve read some of the responses to Bethel’s civil dialogue with the Equality Riders.  It strikes me like it will be a watershed event that will tilt many who are adamant about the issue away from Bethel, while encouraging more support from more irenic Christians. 

I think it’s tragic that issues like this loom so large for US Christians.  It seems that they so often easily cause far more heat than light due to linguistic confusion and the mixing of issues that ought to be dealt with separately and harm the witness of Christianity as a result. 

dlw

Kudos a Josh Marshall for this.  It seems the internet may become more profit-driven with major carriers able to exert significant influence over smaller carriers. 

dlw

ps, one of the owners of TWeb, Cirisme explains what’s going on here and here.  The bottom line is that the telephone companies are trying to gouge almost everybody else and it seems will get away with it unless the news spreads…

dlw

A Swedish Christian friend wrote me not long ago and complained a little about the high taxes they have there.  I wrote back to him the following.

If I wanted to counter the high taxes, I’d make reference to the Catholic Social Thought principle of subsidiarity.  
 
and I’d also make a big diff between reducing income and wealth inequality, with the former being a virtue that can easily be overdone and the latter best done gradually thru estate taxes and effective antitrust laws, with the influence of moneyed interests on ongoing legislation mitigated thru increased transparency and wider political participation. 

This is old hat, but I’d like it enshrined in our nat’l constitution that the marginal income tax rate needs to be flat as a means of constraining class conflict(with a one or two year exceptions allowed in case of emergency or war.) and keep it probably around 30 percent(with all exemptions removed), with alternative progressive taxes making up the difference.  I’d like modest income guarantees made to adult citizens(with a somewhat lower amount for children) as a form of insurance and a more effective way to reduce poverty and its associated ills and a reward for good citizenship as the transfer would be used to defray the cost of imprisonment if someone broke the law. 

This could be coupled with other changes in the rules, like what I described in the last post, to make it easier to envision a better future for the United States. 

We’ll see…

dlw

I’d like to make the state gov’t unicameral and with a cross between a representative and a majority rule system. We really don’t need two chambers at the state level.  In MN, we could divide up the state into 5 or 6 regions and have representational elections in each region.  So for each region, a party would get the number of representatives that is quasi-proportional* to the percentage of the vote they won. This would keep elections local, but make them not winner-takes-all contests and give third parties a better chance of getting some representation. When elections are not winner-takes-all contests major party candidates are more likely to discuss the issues, instead of smearing each other and when third parties have a decent chance of getting a toe-hold onto power then the main party candidates will need to take on more of their issues. 

I’d also like to see a state-wide flat tax where all adult citizens would also receive a 500-1,000 dollar transfer so long as they vote in state and nat’l elections. If this were coupled with having biannual state legislative elections, it would go even further to keep legislators more responsive to the people. Read more

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