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Welfare riots

"France is a welfare state. The government controls the economy. Unions rule. Bureaucracies fight market forces so as to benefit factory workers, farmers and civil servants. Wages are high, vacations are long, and benefits are generous.

"That means French businesses cannot afford to hire people who need jobs. In the high-rise tenements on the outskirts of town where the immigrants live, the unemployment rate is around 40 percent.

"So the liberal, enlightened government gives the unemployed and the poor generous welfare payments. But the immigrants have nothing to do. The government, if well-intentioned, dehumanizes them. They lose their self-respect and their hope of improving their lives. The young people turn to drugs and crime. ...

"The tenements of the French welfare state are a breeding ground for radical Islam."

--Gene Edward Veith, writing on "Riots in the welfare state," in the Nov. 26 issue of World Magazine

Important evidence

"Even when I was an agnostic, I marveled at the hatred and energy expended on Christians by non-Christians. I could not understand the cognitive dissonance demonstrated by the so-called experts in their rabid attempts to discredit all things even nominally related to Christianity -- the nominally Jewish Anti-Defamation League's attack on the Ten Commandments being only the most ironic example of late -- as well as their ready willingness to distort and even fabricate history. ...

"As Jesus Christ declared it would, the world has hated those who followed Him from the moment it became aware of them. ... While American atheists attempt to stamp out all public and private expression of Christianity for fear of being wished a Merry Christmas at Wal-Mart, Christians are being murdered for their faith in Indonesia, Iraq, Nigeria and the Sudan, and are being imprisoned for their beliefs in Iran, China, Vietnam and Canada.

"This virulent and near-universal reaction to a religion that is more peaceful than Islam, more intellectual than Hinduism, more inclusive than Judaism and more historically beneficial to human society than Humanism makes little rational sense, and can be seen as evidence of an important element of the Christian worldview; namely, a fallen world ruled by [Satan] in opposition to the Creator."

--Vox Day, writing on "The irony of the intelligent believer," Nov. 21 in WorldNetDaily at www.worldnetdaily.com

Cruising for trouble

"A banner at Soldier Field in Chicago summarized the incident that made the Minnesota Vikings, in the words of the New York Times, 'a national joke.' It read 'Sink the Vikings But Save The Strippers.' The reference, in case you don't read the sports pages or watch ESPN, was to an Oct. 6 party/cruise on Lake Minnetonka that, to put it mildly, got out of control. ...

"[I]t's a rare thing when you read about some professional athlete getting into trouble and don't see the words 'strip club' in the same paragraph. And then, as with the Vikings, the scandal isn't over their being at a strip club or hiring a prostitute but, rather, over some ancillary offense. ...

"The message seems to be that 'it's okay to be a sexually irresponsible boor, as long you don't actually violate the penal code in the process.'"

--Roberto Rivera y Carlo, writing on "Fumbling Virtue," Oct. 27 in Boundless at www.boundless.org