Wisdom

Dinesh D'Souza's new book What's So Great About Christianity is published by Regnery.  It is the comprehensive answer to a spate of atheist books denouncing theism in general and Christianity in particular.  Mr. D'Souza has been called one of the "top young public-policy makers in the country" by Investor's Business Daily.  The New York Times Magazine named him one of America's most influential conservative thinkers.  The World Affairs Council lists him as one of the nation's 500 leading authorities on international issues.   Newsweek cited him as one of the country's most prominent Asian Americans.  A former policy analyst in the Reagan White House, D'Souza also served as John M. Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.  He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1983.  Mr. D'Souza'a books have had a major influence on public opinion and public policy.  His 1991 book Illiberal Education was the first study to publicize the phenomenon of political correctness.  The book was widely acclaimed and became a New York Times bestseller for 15 weeks.  It has been listed as one of the most influential books of the 1990's.  D'Souza's articles have appeared in virtually every major magazine and newspaper, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, New Republic, and National Review.  He has appeared on numerous television programs, including the Today Show, Nightline, The News Hour, O'Reilly Factor, Moneyline, and Hannity and Colmes.  D'Souza writes a daily blog for AOL and a weekly column for Townhall.com  D'Souza speaks at top universities, business groups, civic groups, and churches across the country.

Quotes:  The thoughts in our minds are the rudders for the things we do.  Dinesh D'Souza

             Success is defined by one's ability to tell the difference between what's right and wrong, and to strive as best as humanly possible to do what's right.  To me, success and goodness are synonymous.  Dinesh D'Souza

             America is simultaneously the most attractive and most repulsive place on the planet.  It is most loved and most hated.  Dinesh D'Souza

             Even as the cultural left accuses Bush of imperialism in invading Iraq, it deflects attention from its own cultural imperialism aimed at secularizing Muslim society and undermining its patriarchal and traditional values.  The liberal 'solution' to Islamic fundamentalism is itself a source of Islamic hostility to America.  Dinesh D'Souza

And now;
 Milton Friedman. In 1951 Friedman received the John Bates Clark Medal honoring economists under age forty for outstanding achievement.  In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for "his achievements in the field of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy."  Before that time he had served as an adviser to President Richard Nixon and was president of the American Economic Association in 1967.  After retiring from the University of Chicago in 1977, Friedman became a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.  He established himself in 1945 with Income from Independent Professional Practice, coauthored with Simon Kuznets.  His landmark 1957 work, A Theory of the Consumption Function, took on the Keynesian view that individuals and households adjust their expenditures on consumption to reflect their current income.  The blogger over at the Liberty Pen introduced me to his work and thought a few days ago and I am so impressed with him that I may include his teachings in my list of mental mentors.


Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.   Milton Friedman

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. Milton Friedman

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand. Milton Friedman

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.   Milton Friedman

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork. Milton Friedman

This one is continually attributed to a Sci-Fi writer but it actually was first articulated by the economist historian.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.  Milton Friedman

The fact that information is available does not mean you know it exists and can find it.  More importantly, having necessary information in mind does not mean you will know what to do with it.  Wisdom is that insight which empowers a person to make cognizant choices with available information for relevant conclusions which provide the best course of action.  For that to happen, one must have a reference, in navigation terms, a constant from which all else is relative.  This is what our religions provide us and the reason these men can grasp and intuit morality.

Meriam Webster's Dictionary definition of wisdom:

1 a: accumulated philosophic or scientific learning : knowledge b: ability to discern inner qualities and relationships : insight c: good sense : judgment d: generally accepted belief <challenges what has become accepted wisdom among many historians — Robert Darnton>2: a wise attitude, belief, or course of action3: the teachings of the ancient wise men

good judgment:
4 a: the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing b: an opinion or estimate so formed

discern right from wrong, good from evil

insight:
1 : the power or act of seeing into a situation : penetration 2 : the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively

NASB Updated Proverbs 1:7  The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

The Bible says that people who reject God are fools.  This is not a condemnation against the doubters and unbelievers who are reading this.  This is an indictment against my former life.  My own choices and habits were self destructive.  The patterns of behavior I'd established over the first 30 years of my life will take the rest of my life to overcome.  The sooner a person can commit his or her life to God, the sooner and the more wisdom will come to them.  The more you commit yourself to the new patterns of behavior which are given to us through the scriptures the better your mind will be.  I have had to adopt a new world view because the old one ('s) had failed me miserably and I had failed miserably in with respect to my debt to society.

All four of the men listed above are very religious.  Two are Jews and two are Christian.  Of the two Christians, one is Protestant Evangelical and one is Catholic.  All four were blessed with very stable homes where the traditions of their respective religions were practiced.  Obviously, all were tempted by the offerings of the world, but their respective traditions provided early on, the direction through these temptations.  They may have tasted the secular offerings of the world and they may have even been seduced for a time to take on a different world view, but the consequences that come with them send us running back to the long tested reasoning of the traditions which guide us unerringly if we adhere to them.  Its when we reject them that we experience the failures of man's wisdom.  (humanism, utopia on earth, spreading the wealth around, etc.,) 

The point is, whether you believe in God or not, there is very real benefit in society for each person to follow the traditions of their religions.  There are of course, exceptions.  Most notable today, is the religion of Islam.  (taqiyya-the practice of justifiable deception, sexism, war bounty, etc.,)  The secularists charge Christianity and Judaism with all the worst motives in the world,  (imperialism, fascism, genocides, racist bigotry, etc.,)  All those attacks have very little to do with actual events.  What they are about is the fact that the vast majority of people do not want to voluntarily conform to good standards of behavior, so they try to undermine the proponents (whether a person or a theology) of good behavior to either excuse or justify their own sin.

In comparison to a motivated attacker, what has the theologian to gain by promoting this world view.  That people's lives will improve well enough that they give him money and honor for guiding them to a happier, more successful life.  There is a trade, but the whole thing is entirely voluntary unlike business.  It is a charity based operation from its initial founding to this day.   On the other hand, the wisdom of America's institutions, generally founded on the wisdom of religions, have been bought with federal funding and subsidies.  They are no longer accountable to the customer, the student, but are free to think and act in any way they 'feel' they can justify.  Ergo, evolutionism, socialism, and elitist intellectualism and a radical conversion to a secular world view and a departure from the constant which gives us the ability to grasp, to discern morality.