Category Archives: history

Economic Recession : Connecting Candidates, Trends, Values and Voting

It’s a Bad Idea to Elect Candidates to Improve the Economy

Encouraging congregants to vote on Tuesday November 4, my pastor shared some very profound insights about how to view the issues. He said that we would be electing people who will be representing our views and our futures. Those we elect will make decision that will not only affect our own lives but our community and out nation He then followed with an insight applicable to all elections for all time.

The economy is constantly changing. The boom and bust cycles will continue no matter who is in office. We should not vote for candidates based on a troubled economy because it will eventually improve anyway.

Adding to his insight, I want to point out that our economy and its free markets are not some mysterious force operating outside the realm of human behavior. The economy is human behavior. The markets are the results of nothing other than human decisions. Intentionally or unintentionally, the problems and benefits of our economy are the results of human behaviors. The boom and bust cycles of our current economy are the results of policy decisions, trade and consumption practices, errors and neglect, as well as greed and irrational fears. Barak Obama and Congressional Democrats blame Bush for their own bad policy decisions and neglect of the mortgage markets that Congress created. And, Bush’s spending didn’t happen without their approval either.

The Obama Connection?

Cliff Kincaid, Editor of the Accuracy in Media Report, wrote an article on who is behind the economic collapse. To appreciate his argument, you must read the entire article. Here, I will try to summarize some of his main evidence to illustrate my point. Kincaid research points to Democrats as the primary actors suspected of generating the current economic crisis of New Deal proportions. His research ties US Treasury Secretary Paulson, who worked for a Democratic firm, Goldman Sachs to leading Democratic Party fundraisers, and to Barak Obama. Those suspected of creating the current economic crisis for political reasons would not be complete without George Soros, who has a reputation for creating national economic crises. Other writers have produced lists of former employees of Goldman Sachs who have filled leading positions in both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Many others are being investigated, according to Kincaid.

Recession and Election Cycle Trends

If I remember correctly, the past four or five presidents were elected during an economic correction sometimes called recession. According to financial expert John Mauldin, President George W. Bush inherited an economy already in recession from Democrat Bill Clinton. Oddly enough, Americans elected Clinton as President in part to solve the recession that occurred during George HW Bush’s term in office. We voted Ronald Reagan into office because of his plans to solve the deep recession inherited from Jimmy Carter. Many Republicans voted for Democrat and Baptist Jimmy Carter because of they believed his faith was real and because of his plan to solve the recession-sized energy crisis. Like my parents, many Republicans were sorely disappointed.

Learning From the Past?

It must be questioned whether the most educated people in the world are capable of learning from the past. It is claimed that many Republicans again favor a Democrat for president. That is certainly their right. Many religious leaders have championed the cause of the Democratic Party its candidates. Again, that is their right. Yet, the Democratic Party is more socialistic, more pro-abortion, more opposed to traditional marriage than ever. Their presidential candidate does have religious credentials. However, the religious aura surrounding Barak Obama is a cloud of illusion. I think it is more of a smoke screen for the sole purpose of winning an election. Whether McCain is sincerely Christian is debatable as well. However, his VP choice at least gives us hope for a strong pro-life and pro-family influence in the Whitehouse.

I return to my original point borrowed from my pastor. Whether economic crises are the result of evil intentions or simply bad decisions, they are the product of human behaviors. They have occurred throughout our nation’s history. As now, they have always been corrected by appropriate behavior and policy decision. This corrective process is already in motion. Therefore, whoever we elect as the next president is mostly irrelevant.

Voting Decisions and Issues of Unchanging Importance

My pastor continued his political exhortation with another and even more important insight. Instead of making our voting decisions based on a continuously changing economy, we would find better representation in government if we made our decisions based on unchanging criteria. Going back to the biblical book of Genesis, he reminded us of source of our moral values, the sanctity of human life, and of human dignity. These are the most important criterion. As history teaches, the decline of morality in societies always results in that society’s end. Therefore, in this pivotal election, we will choose whether morality and the sanctity of life will be upheld and strengthened or whether morality will continue to decline.

Having done my own research, it is clear to me which candidate will defend the life of the unborn, the sanctity of traditional marriage, and the general morality our form of democracy has always required. Like the traditions of their respective parties, Democrat Barak Obama favors abortion and opposes defining marriage as one man and one woman because he supports the politics of sexual immorality. John McCain claims to be pro-life and favors overturning Roe v Wade because it was an erroneous ruling. He supports traditional marriage but believes it’s outside the power of federal government to decide on issues of marriage.

Voting Means Judgments—Of Candidate and Maybe of God

As Americans used to believe regarding disasters whether affecting national, state, and local communities, I too believe America is already experiencing God’s justice for the long official support for every form of immorality, for the brutal slaughter of millions of unborn children, for legitimizing unnatural and harmful behaviors of gays, and for many other crimes against God’s moral laws. If this assessment is correct, then this election is the most important and most pivotal of all elections in American history comparable to the election of Abraham Lincoln.

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(Note: The title of John Mauldin’s financial commentary referenced above presents the insightful and witty perspective of it gifted author; the title is “Electing the Janitor-In-Chief”. Mauldin’s work is profitable reading and can be accessed at his website www.fronlinethoughts.com)

Hometown Christmas in Xenia Returns

On Wednesday, representatives of XAMA, the Xenia Area Merchants’ Association, met with representatives of the City of Xenia and the news media to begin detailed planning for this year’s “Hometown Christmas in Xenia” event. The overwhelming success of last December’s celebration assured that this year’s will be even better. Last year families walked all over town and had a chance to take a horse and buggy ride. Carolers strolled around town, stopping on corners and popping into local cafes. Children listened to Christmas stories, made decorations and gingerbread men at local stores, and everyone had a chance to experience the familiar feelings of the Christmas season in Xenia the way it used to be.

We had music on the Towne Square and Santa arrived to turn on the lights of the Christmas Tree and listen to the Christmas wishes of all of the little ones who came. The day was chilly but fine. Snow was neatly piled along the streets, spirits were high, and many of Xenia’s “townies” got to see one another for the first time in years.

So December 11-13 will be the dates this year. On Thursday the City of Xenia will welcome Santa’s arrival at Shawnee Park. On Friday the Xenia Merchants are still working on plans for a historic walking tour of the downtown area. Also on the agenda is a possible Christmas Choir event at The Cavern. Merchants will be open late hours and featuring seasonal specials. There will be an auction of holiday wreaths to support Xenia’s Community Theater, X*ACT.

On Saturday all of Xenia’s Hometown merchants will be having a Holiday Open House with tours, snacks, crafts, music and specials. Again this year we will have horses and carriages making short tours of the city for a nominal fee. A large horse drawn wagon will also take families between destinations in town and in the Kennedy Korners area for free. Carolers and choirs are being encouraged to come to town and perform for your friends. There will be free music in the afternoon and evening at Xenia Towne Square and Santa will arrive at 5 PM to light the tree listen to some Christmas wishes and pass out some candy canes.

XAMA is searching for church choirs, barbershop quartets, acoustic musicians, carolers, and any other creative individuals to contribute their talents and enthusiasm to this project. Opportunities will be available to perform throughout the weekend. Business Sponsors are also being solicited. Last year over 30 local businesses, non-profits, banks, and individuals contributed their time and money towards the success of Hometown Christmas. The Hometown Christmas Committee has determined that a suggested a donation of $100 to Hometown Christmas per sponsor will be needed to conduct this year’s event. Sponsorship of individual events such as the carriage rides or music are also being solicited. In addition, sponsors and XAMA members will be eligible to share in steeply reduced advertising preceding the event. For information about participation or sponsorship, please contact the Xenia Merchants at xeniamerchants@sbcglobal.net or Carolyn Archer (937-620-5017) at C J’s Boutique, 72 S. Detroit Street, Xenia, Ohio 45385.

Secular Education

by Prof. Paul Eidelberg

According to one study, 97 percent of all teachers in Nazi Germany were members of the Nazi party. Many of these teachers taught the humanities, for example philosophy, literature, the fine arts. Many others taught various social sciences, such as sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology, history.

Clearly, the study and teaching of the humanities and the social sciences do not make people virtuous. We should not be surprised. For the prevailing doctrine in the humanities and the social sciences in our time is moral relativism, which holds that there are no objective standards of good and bad, right and wrong.

As for the exact sciences, such as physics and chemistry, they are more obviously “value-free” or ethically neutral. Still, how did German scientists respond to Nazism?

In Walter Moore’s Schrodinger: Life and Thought, we read: “There is no known instance in which a professor of physics or chemistry without any Jewish family ever made any open protest against Nazi activities. Even among the German intellectual elite, the scientists were conspicuously unanimous in this respect, since a few protests can be found among scholars in other fields.”

“It is true that after 1934 open opposition would have been dangerous … In the early years if Nazi power, however, opposition was not yet suicidal, and it was during 1933 and 1934 that the scientific establishment, led by Max Planck and Walter Nernst, washed its hands of the growing terror and concentrated on defending its own special privileges.”

Planck, the father of quantum physics, even sent a telegram to Hitler thanking him for his “benevolent protection of German science.” German science nonetheless suffered greatly from the expulsion of Jewish scientists from German universities and research institutes. This expulsion was welcomed by many German scientists, for it paved the way to their own personal advancement.

Science and technology can serve dictators as well as democrats. (Suffice to mention Iran’s nuclear weapons program.) Clearly, science does not make scientists or their societies decent, no more than teaching the humanities makes people humane.

Because secular education is morally free or ethically neutral, it cannot but corrupt youth. Whatever decency we experience today we owe to the influence of the Torah.

Unfortunately, the influence of the Torah in the non-Torah world is waning. The reversion to paganism is evident on American university campuses, where homosexuals feel quite at home. They and their academic defenders would have us believe that homosexuality is “progressive.” The truth is that tolerance of homosexuality is reactionary, a throwback to the paganism condemned by the Torah.

To sexual perversion add the nudity, pornography, and bloody violence purveyed by the entertainment media, which some semi-educated secular psychologists justify as providing an “escape valve” for repressed instincts.

Has it ever occurred to these educators of our youth that the nudity now commonplace in the cinema or on television is indicative of superficiality? Has it ever occurred to them that pornography, which reduces love to lust, generates vulgarity? Has it ever occurred to them that media violence undermines kindness and compassion?

Thanks very much to secular education and of course to those who profit from the commercial exploitation of sex and violence, people are more concerned about the quality of things that goes into their stomachs than the quality of things that goes into their minds — or into the minds of their children. But this is the inevitable consequence of contemporary democracy, whose supreme principle is unfettered freedom of expression.

Do not expect the high priests of democracy to reverse the logic of democracy, the religion of our times. Yesterday, Weimar Germany, a liberal democracy steeped in moral relativism spawned an unmitigated tyranny. Today, another liberal democracy steeped in moral relativism may make Barack Obama the President of the United States.

Source: Email commentary by Prof. Paul Eidelberg, president of the Foundation for Constituitional Democracy. His other writings are found at the Foundation website.

Prof. Eidelberg became professor of political science at Bar Ilan University in 1976 after writing a trilogy on America’s founding fathers: The Philosophy of the American Constitution, On the Silence of the Declaration of Independence, and a Discourse on Statesmanship. He also designed the electronic equipment for the first brain scanner at the Argonne Cancer Research Hospital.

Xenia Rail & Art Fest Aug 23

Xenia’s history and talent will be on display from 10am to 6pm Saturday August 23. In addition to its reputation as a rail town, Xenia is becoming known for it art and artists. Working railroads, trains–some large enough to ride–and artwork delight both children and the young of heart with models of Xenia’s nostalgic past. Some of the trains and artwork may be purchased as well.

Xenia’s many unique eateries and specialty stores will be open for business. So will Xenia motels, hotels, and bed-n-breakfast. for out-of-town guests.

For more information, visit the XeniaRail & Art Fest website and/or Xenia Area Merchant Association website.

Coloring Pages of Ohio (free) at Homeschooling:about.com

I just came across this family friendly post at Homeschooling @ about.com. Actually, it is a Ohio State Bird and Flower Coloring page created by Beverly Hernandez. This 8-1/2 x 11 coloring page can be downloaded to your computer and printed out. I did but I couldn’t find my crayons– bummer. Your kids will love it (maybe) and you will love the peace and quite at for a few minutes. Many more coloring pages are also available for downloading (free).

Looking over the materials available at Homeschooling @ about.com, I’m compelled to think Beverly Hernandez is simply a educational and l Continue reading

Ohio Before 1850 According to Morgan

An interesting article by the above title was posted on Harold Henderson’s genealogical blog Midwestern Microhistory. This particular Harold Henderson is probably not the same one who previously pastored the First Church of the Nazarene. The author of Midwestern Microhistory was a professional journalist turned genealogist . Although pastors could also be journalists, the liberal leaning environment of journalistic sphere would discourage most men and women of the cloth. I should have wrote most ministers of a traditional theological bent would find the modern media establishment frightfully alien.

Henderson’s posting, Ohio Before 1850 According to Morgan, is about a unique database of more than 10,000 “books, pamphlets, and broadsides printed in Ohio, from the earliest in 1796 through 1850. The creative genius of this historical collection was non-other than Richard P. Morgan of Willoughby, Ohio. The index is known as the Morgan Bibliography of Ohio Imprints, which is hosted on line by the Ohio Consortium of College Libraries and the State Library of Ohio” known as OhioLINK. Continue reading