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| Talking Points - May 2009 |
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| Written by John F. McManus |
| Wednesday, 08 April 2009 07:31 |
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Talking Points by John F. McManus, President, The John Birch Society 1. When a top executive of the People's Bank of China calls for a new international currency to replace the dollar, America's leaders should pay heed. On April 5th, Zhou Xuiaochuan said it was desirable "to create an international reserve currency disconnected from individual nations." While it may seem inconceivable that the U.S. dollar's position as the world's main currency could be threatened, and called into question by upstart China, this is precisely where our own nation's leaders have taken us. China holds more U.S debt than any other nation. China, a rising economic power, sees the value of the U.S. dollar deteriorating because of severely escalating inflation. Therefore, China is looking out for her own interests. Would that U.S. leaders who are steadily adding huge new pools of red ink to America's already bloated deficits - and paying for them with overseas borrowing and freshly created currency - would begin to look out more carefully for our own nation's interests. The path down which America is being taken is filled with nothing but trouble for all Americans. 2. Already the recipients of billions in taxpayer-financed bailouts from the federal government, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plan to pay 7,600 employees bonuses totaling $210 million to keep them on the job. If these companies were not government-controlled operations, their obvious failure would have resulted in the closing of their doors. But the government not only pumped billions into each to keep them alive, some of that money will now award the very people whose poor management led to the failure. Obviously irate, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley commented, "It's hard to see any common sense in management decisions that award hundreds of millions in bonuses when their organizations lost more than $100 billion in a year." The good senator should be reminded that common sense should not be expected among those who lead government agencies. 3. China's one-child per family policy has led to a rapidly developing and rather ghastly consequence. Because a son is valued so much more than a daughter in China, criminals have resorted to stealing boys from their families in heavily populated centers and selling them to buyers in rural areas. Government authorities claim that fewer than 2,500 such abductions occur each year, but the figure is widely dismissed as too low. Distraught parents have had their small sons snatched right before their eyes and have never seen them again. The government's barbaric policy that allows only one child per family never intended such a development, but when a government substitutes its rule for God's, horrifying consequences are a customary result. 4. Notre Dame University is well-known as one of the premier Catholic institution in America. The Catholic Church, as everyone knows, is adamantly opposed to abortion. Therefore, the administration's announcement that the school's 2009 commencement speaker will be President Obama, a staunch advocate of abortion, has stirred up the school's alumni, students and faculty — even Catholic leaders unconnected to the school. Notre Dame Professor Panos Antsaklis, a teacher of electrical engineering, doesn't oppose the invitation and would like the school to be "open to other ideas." In other words, he doesn't believe that Notre Dame should uphold its Catholic identity. Someone should ask him if he expects a Hindu school to teach Lutheranism, or a Muslim school to instruct pupils in some other religion's beliefs. The problem here, present not only at Notre Dame but at numerous institutions and organizations, is that very few continue to stand firmly behind praiseworthy core beliefs. A civilization infected with such a trend will not last very long. |