John Marks Templeton: RIP

In today's Wall Street Journal's Outlook and Review we read his obituary:

Maximum Optimist
July 9, 2008; Page A14

On the eve of World War II, John Templeton bought stock in 104 companies selling at $1 a share or less. Only a few turned out to be worthless, while in time the rest turned large profits. Templeton went on to become one of the world's great fund managers by investing at what he called "points of maximum pessimism."

Yet Templeton, who died yesterday at age 95, was never himself a pessimist. As an investor, he always had confidence his picks would improve over the long term. Appropriately, the same "enthusiasm for progress," as he put it, also made him one of the world's great philanthropists. Life's spiritual dimensions were his abiding inspiration.

In 1972 he founded the Templeton Prize, which recognizes achievement that enriches religious experience. Templeton was unhappy that the Nobel Prize excluded faith, so he ensured the honor always had a higher cash prize (now about $1.6 million). Mother Teresa was the first recipient; others include Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Michael Novak and in recent years a distinguished roster of physicists and philosophers. A devout Presbyterian, Templeton believed "that God is vastly greater than human beings can comprehend," and sought to use his wealth to help reconcile science and religion. He thought that the one deepened the other.

To that end, he established the Templeton Foundation, which supports academic research in fields like cognitive science and evolutionary biology, as well as work related to the origin and nature of spirituality. Templeton also knew that many such modern philanthropies tend to begin with good intentions and then slide away from donor intent, so he established multiple checks to ensure that his financial legacy will stay true to his vision long after he was gone.

The Templeton Foundation now has a $1.5 billion endowment and awards some $70 million every year. He was indeed an optimistic investor for the long term.

Bernard Nathanson's Aborting America

Bernard Nathanson is a most interesting man. He probably performed more abortions than any American alive before he had a change of heart. He was at the founding, if you will. Nathanson shows how the abortion lobby (for lack of a better term) targeted the Catholic church on one hand and convinced the woman’s movement that abortion should be a central tenet of its agenda on the other. (Prior to the second edition of Betty Friedan’s book, abortion was seen as anti-women. The suffragettes, women like Sojouner Truth and Susan B. Anthony, were solidly anti-abortion. They were part of the movement that past the laws outlawing abortion, most of which were enacted during the late nineteenth century.)

Eventually Nathanson came to the conclusion that what he was doing was evil. His intellectual and moral conversion was such an amazing turnaround that it would seem to be a miraculous confirmation of the power of prayer. (For every publicized case of violence at an abortion factory, there are the unpublicized tens of thousands praying for those involved in abortion: the women, the babies, the doctors, and the nurses.) His later conversion to Catholicism is perhaps even more shocking. Any novelist would reject as unbelievable a plot in which a leading Jewish intellectual atheist, Dr. Death himself and a mastermind of the abortion industry’s propaganda strategy, recants his beliefs, starts making pro-life movies, and ultimately becomes a Roman Catholic.

If you ever get a chance to speak, do hear him. But beware, his views are dangerous to the conventional wisdom!

On ne saurait faire une omelette sans casser des oeufs.”

On ne saurait faire une omelette sans casser des oeufs.” Translation: “One can’t expect to make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

Obama Is for Change: Does That Include Changing His Record?

Say a baby is born live from an abortion. The odds are against it, but it happens. Should the hospital preserve this victim of an "unsuccessful" abortion? Most of us out of common decency would answer, "yes."

A bill was submitted in Illinois to require the dictates of decency in the situation. Senator Obama was in the Illinois legislature at the time. Obama spoke against the legislation in 2001 and 2002 and single-handedly defeated it in committee in 2003.

A citizen spoke to him a few years later about the bill after he had left the state senate. Obama told him, “I would have voted for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois had it been worded the same as the federal bill. I think that’s the position the Democrats should take.”

According my source, "There’s just one thing he forgot to mention: Obama had stopped his committee from adding the federal wording."

Actions speak louder than words.

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Bill Clinton told us that he wanted abortion to be "legal, safe, and rare." Am I too cynical to note that he did little or nothing to make abortion "rare?" Adoption was not promoted. Chastity was not praised, much less promoted. The President had no clothes.

Senator Obama is sounding much the same.

He has announced a group called Catholics for Obama. Will McGurn has analyzed the make-up of this august body and his analysis is enlightening. He finds the best way to characterize these senators, governors, and congressmen is as "NARAL Catholics." NARAL is the National Abortion Rights League. If you think of it as some idealistic group of do-gooders, read Bernard Nathanson's inside account of NARAL's cynical beginning.

Here is how McGurn describes Obama's positions: "In a speech before Planned Parenthood, he declared that the right to an abortion is at stake in this election, and vowed that he would not yield on appointing judges that would uphold Roe v. Wade.

"Mr. Obama is for using tax dollars to fund abortions, and against restrictions on partial-birth abortion. In the Illinois Senate, he voted against legislation protecting a child who was born alive despite an abortion. In sum, if you want to know what Mr. Obama's policies mean, it's this: taxpayer-funded abortion on demand."

Perhaps you think McGurn is a right wing ideologue, he does write for the Wall Street Journal, that running dog of capitalism. What does Planned Parenthood say of Obama?

Planned Parenthood is America's largest company in the abortion business. Its New England branch endorsed Senator Barak Obama, the junior senator from Illinois: Nancy Mosher, the head of the New England affiliate [of Planned Parenthood], said "approving the decision to support Obama, who supports abortion funding at taxpayer expense and without any limits, was easy."

“Senator Obama has a long and consistent record of standing up for [abortion]," Mosher continued.

The head of Planned Parenthood of New England, said her group will work with the national organization to "educate voters about John McCain’s unacceptable record in regard to" abortion.

"In 25 years in Washington, John McCain has earned a zero percent voting record from Planned Parenthood," she said. "Senator McCain has also denounced Roe v. Wade as ‘bad law.'”

How do you make legal abortion "rare?"

Encourage adoptions, reduce red tape, promote a culture of life.

Senator McCain does not wear his personal life on his sleeve to borrow a metaphor from the Bard. Is he in favor of adoption? Ask Bridget, the daughter Mother Teresa ordered his wife Cindy to adopt. She is about eighteen years old now and very much a McCain. You can read an interview that touches on her in Dadmag.

Actions speak louder than words.