religion

Part 2 of the Economic Series examining the expansion of trade throughout the Middle Ages.

Over the past 25 years, parents and children have won many hard-fought battles for the right to choose the best schools, public or private, to meet their educational needs. A majority of states now have programs providing some degree of access to K–12 private schools.

The year that is just closing, 2015, has been full of events that continue to dominate the news, including renewed racial tensions on the streets of American cities, growing fears about terrorist attacks on the territory of the United States, and one of the most fear-focused presidential campaign seasons in living memory.

This time of the year, whether in good economic times or bad, is when Americans gather with their families and friends and enjoy a Thanksgiving meal together. It marks a remembrance of those early Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the uncharted ocean from Europe to make a new start in Plymouth, Massachusetts. What is less appreciated is that Thanksgiving also is a celebration of the birth of free enterprise in America.

It is time for a new modern book to tell Ayn Rand’s story from Atlas Shrugged and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in modern terms. There is no question that todays environmental zealotry which is the theme of a new novel Mountains Whispers, Days Without Sun fills the bill. While Rand told a potentially true story this book updates it into our own future with the built in horrors of Agenda 21.

It is with profound sorrow and disappointment that I must now speak out against Pope Francis, the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, whom observers have noted has “a green agenda.” He has become an outspoken advocate on environmental issues, saying that taking action is “essential to faith” and calling the destruction of nature a modern sin.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, managing editor of Environment and Climate News, H. Sterling Burnett talks with E. Calvin Beisner. Beisner is the founder and national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance, a volunteer network of about 60 Christian theologians, scientists, economists, and other scholars who teach or do research at various universities and colleges around North America. The Cornwall Alliance focuses on the biblical perspective on environmental and natural resource use issues. Beisner was the recipient of the 2014 Outstanding Spokesperson of Faith, Science, and Stewardship Award at The Heartland Institute’s Ninth International Conference on Climate Change, July 8th in Las Vegas.

Just two weeks after reports surfaced that Pope Francis plans to put significant pressure on global leaders to fight what he believes to be manmade, imminent global warming, the leader of the world’s largest church is receiving strong and worthy criticism from conservatives again — this time for suggesting there is a “limit” to freedom of speech in wake of the Paris attacks on magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Thought experiment: Imagine a world in 2001 in which the Cold War was still raging. Imagine a world in which Soviet Communism was still on equal global footing with the United States. Would Osama bin Laden have directed his soldiers to fly planes into the Kremlin? The question answers itself.

President Obama insists that religion, let alone Islam, has nothing to do with the terrorist threat ISIS poses to Americans and all freedom-loving people. But his secretary of state says religion, and Islam, is wholly relevant in the fight against global warming. Top. Men.

Every Christmas, schools make headlines by labeling their calendars for “holiday break,” “winter solstice,” and the like instead of “Christmas break.” The occasional Scrooge-like superintendent or teacher will inevitably punish some little six-year-old for bringing candy canes with a Bible verse to school or wanting to share the story of Jesus’ birth for a class presentation.

Mary Najarrian, principal of Saint John of San Francisco Orthodox Academy in San Francisco, joins The Heartland Institute for a podcast about how an orthodox school balances conflict and education.

Common Core moves away from classics and toward informational texts such as government documents.