Posts Tagged ‘ morality ’

Is the Liberal-Progressive Welfare State a Moral Threat?

July 19, 2011
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Is the Liberal-Progressive Welfare State a Moral Threat?

By Mike Gray Dennis Prager says, “Oh, yeah!” and offers ten reasons why: 1. The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. 2. The welfare state, though often well intended, is nevertheless a Ponzi scheme. 3. Citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic. 4. The liberal welfare state makes people disdain work. 5. Nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing. 6. The bigger the government, the more the corruption. 7. The welfare state corrupts family life. 8. The welfare state inhibits the maturation of its young citizens into responsible adults. 9. . . . because almost no welfare state can afford a strong military, European countries rely on America to fight the world’s evils . . . . 10. The leftist weltanschauung sees society’s and the world’s great battle as between rich and poor rather than between good and evil. Prager elaborates on each of these points in his Townhall article “Ten Ways Progressive Policies Harm Society’s Moral Character.” You can buy Henry Hazlitt’s still-relevant economic critique, Man vs. The Welfare State, here.

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Can the State Inspire Moral Clarity and Courage?

May 8, 2010
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Can the State Inspire Moral Clarity and Courage?

Few would argue that laws reflect the nation’s values. The real debate is law’s ability to shapes those values. Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow, Peter Wehner argues not only should we not dismiss government’s ability to form the values people bring to the public square, but we should embrace the idea. Responding to James Davison Hunter’s book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity, Wehner writes, The laws of a nation embody its values and shape them, in ways that are large and small, obvious and subtle, direct and indirect, sometimes immediately and often lasting. The most obvious examples from our own history are slavery and segregation, but there are plenty of others, from welfare to education, from crime to drug use, to Supreme Court decisions like Dred Scott v. Sandford, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, and Roe v. Wade. Laws express moral beliefs and judgments. Like throwing a pebble in a pond, the waves ripple outward. They tell citizens what our society ought to value and condemn, what is worthy of our esteem and what merits our disapprobation. They both ratify and stigmatize certain behaviors. That is certainly not all that

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Jack Bauer Is Dead. . . .

March 27, 2010
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Jack Bauer Is Dead. . . .

… at least on Fox come May after the conclusion of it’s eighth “day,” otherwise known as a season. From The Hollywood Reporter: Tick, tick, tick … and done. After eight seasons, Fox’s “24” is coming to an end. The groundbreaking action drama will air its final real-time episode in May, the victim of a confluence of circumstances: a swelling budget, declining ratings and creative fatigue. BOOOOO!!!!! Apparently, due to the fact that salaries spiral upward dramatically the longer a show is on television (especially after the fifth season), Fox was paying an incredible $5 million an episode for this year’s installments. Let’s see … 5 million times 24 episode equals …. A LOT! But Jack Bauer himself, as he’s proven countless times on “24″ is hard to kill: Yet for fans of Jack Bauer, there remains hope. Studio 20th TV is developing a theatrical film that takes Bauer to Europe, and showrunner and executive producer Howard Gordon says other possibilities are being explored as well. “There are other possible iterations of Jack Bauer and his world,” Gordon said. The producers of “24″ have long begged off shifting Jack Bauer to the big screen because it would screw up the

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Woody Allen’s Big Blind Spot

November 15, 2009
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Woody Allen’s Big Blind Spot

It’s not inherently a bad thing that the characters in Woody Allen’s movies tend to be victims of their lusts, but it shows a weakness in his vision and his films, writes TAC guest contributor Shmuel Ben-Gad.

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CW’s ‘Melrose Place’ Remake Shows Promise

September 14, 2009
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CW’s ‘Melrose Place’ Remake Shows Promise

            The CW network’s new mystery-drama soap opera Melrose Place isn’t art, but it might turn out to be good entertainment.  

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‘Friday the 13th’ Sets Opening Weekend Box Office Record; Besson Film Stays Strong

February 16, 2009
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‘Friday the 13th’ Sets Opening Weekend Box Office Record; Besson Film Stays Strong

      Warner Bros’ and producer Michael Bay’s remake of the influential 1980 horror film Friday the 13th significantly outperformed expectations by setting a new opening weekend box office record for a horror movie, taking in more than $42 million to finish first among U.S. audiences this past weekend. But the best news was the continuing strength of Taken, the action thriller starring Liam Neeson, written and produced by Luc Besson, and directed by Pierre Morel.

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TNT’s ‘Leverage’ Shows Promise

December 6, 2008
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TNT’s ‘Leverage’ Shows Promise

          TNT"s new series, Leverage, starring Timothy Hutton, is a worthy entry in two classic narrative traditions—the caper story and the vigilante tale.    

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FX Series ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Tackles New Formula with Ambitions

September 11, 2008
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FX Series ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Tackles New Formula with Ambitions

The FX drama series Sons of Anarchy plays to an increasingly common formula, but does it well.

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Scientists Present Ultimate No-Fault Divorce Theory

September 4, 2008
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Scientists Present Ultimate No-Fault Divorce Theory

Study suggests tendency to unfaithfulness and divorce is genetic.  

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Unusual Moral Concerns in a Sitcom

September 20, 2007
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Unusual Moral Concerns in a Sitcom

 Back to You is an idea devised in TV programmer’s Heaven: get the star of Frasier and the co-star and only likeable character in Everybody Loves Raymond, mix them together any old way, and voila, a sitcom hit is born. We’ll have to wait and see whether audiences like Back to You, starring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as two bickering news anchors in Pittsburgh and created by the same people who made Frasier. As is inevitable with sitcoms today, the premiere episode of Back to You included numerous weary double entendres, but they passed by without doing too much damage because there were some good things going on.

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Free Will, Determinism, and Pop Culture

August 17, 2007
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Free Will, Determinism, and Pop Culture

The central moral issue of the past century was whether a traditional (in fact, millennias old) assumption behind moral thinking should prevail, or should be replaced by a newer, seemingly more compassionate thought. It is a matter over which American society is still struggling. The classical Western notion, of course, was that an individual is responsible for his or her own actions, even if outside circumstances contributed to the person’s decision to break a rule. That meant, for example, that even poverty did not excuse theft. Of course, even if personal responsibility was assumed, mercy and common sense were essential to the dispensing of true justice. Western morality and our sense of justice always recognized that sometimes, albeit rarely, an individual’s circumstances can be so compelling as to excuse rule-breaking. And of course anything not done by choice, such as killing a person in self-defense, was automatically excused. This mindset was challenged in the past century by the philosophy of determinism.

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Movies for Good Girls

June 12, 2007
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Movies for Good Girls

A new wave of movies aimed at young girls is coming, starting this Friday with the theatrical release of Nancy Drew. The director of that film, Andrew Fleming, points out that the recent preteen and teen culture presented models of behavior very different from that of the children at which they have been aimed and which most of their parents would endorse. The LA Times reports the good news that this is about to change somewhat:

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"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard

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