Are the Crusades typical of most wars? (Hint: No.)

The school voucher program in Louisiana is a fantastic success. The high school graduation is significantly up, and the poorest are benefiting the most. So, of course, Obama’s Justice Department is suing to stop it on the ground of … diversity? Really? (Yes, really.)

Would you believe that Antarctic ice is at a 35-year record level, and that temperatures have stopped rising? And this in spite of the fact that CO2 is being added to the atmosphere at a record pace? You should. Because, y’know, it’s true.

Is religion the major cause of war? Are the Crusades just one of many examples of how religion has caused so much conflict over the course of human history? I’ve got the stats for you.

Mentioned links:

Obama Administration Ignores the Facts on Louisiana Voucher Program

Antarctica Not Melting: Ice Levels At Record High

Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high Saturday

The Myth that Religion is the #1 Cause of War

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Show transcript

Hurricane Katrina caused unimaginable devastation to the city of New Orleans and to the state of state of Louisiana itself, but it did provide an opportunity to push the reset button on some of the city’s and state’s policies. One of these resets has occurred in the area of education.

Last year, Louisiana’s legislature established a voucher program for poor kids who would otherwise be stuck in failing public schools. It received bipartisan support, and is part of a larger set of reforms statewide; that reset button. Here are some of the results:

• 
  
• Last spring, Louisiana’s graduation rate reached an all-time high, with 72.3 percent of students graduating from high school on time, up from 64.8 percent in 2005.
  
• About 85 percent of students using Louisiana’s vouchers are black. In Louisiana, where 45 percent of blacks remain in poverty, this can only be a good thing economically, both for the kids for whom many more doors open when they have a high school diploma, and for the state economy, as more workers with a better education helps deal with unemployment.
  

When he was in Louisiana this month, President Obama said these words in a speech. “Let’s give everybody a chance to get ahead, not just a few at the top, but everybody. If we do that, if we help our businesses grow, our communities thrive and our children reach a little higher, then the economy is going to grow faster. We’ll rebuild our middle class — stronger.â€

Now that sounds great, and it’s exactly what the school voucher program is doing; giving everybody a chance to get ahead. Which is why it’s rather incongruous of the President’s Department of Justice to be suing the state to essentially halt the program, on the grounds that if poor black children leave terrible schools for better ones, those failing schools become less diverse?

And here we get to the crux of the matter. To the Left, results don’t matter if they are achieved by proving liberal policies wrong; in this case, the idea that the government is the best educator of kids. Further, diversity has not been negatively impacted, and in some cases, has improved, so they’re making stuff up just to protect their orthodoxy, and hurting school children in the process.

Don’t listen to this administration’s rhetoric, watch what they do. Their politics are more important than the outcomes.

—

What if I told you that ice levels in Antarctica have reached 35-year record highs? What if I told you that the rise in the surface temperature of the earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that? And what if I told you that the lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace?

Well figure out what you would do if I told you, because I’m telling you. And I’ll tell you this as well; many climate scientists aren’t sure what to do. They’re trying to come up with explanations, but so far they’re just theories plucked out of thin air.

When the facts don’t fit the theories, scientists claim that they will rework the theories. Well, so far, we’ve seen little reworking and more digging in. And here’s another “what ifâ€; what if the media gave this as much attention as they did stories of a spot here or a point there where warming is occurring? This isn’t weather, as they love to say; this is a pause in the warming of the climate that they’re having trouble figuring out. What if people were told about this, or is liberal orthodoxy in the media having a chilling effect?

—

Sam Harris, says in his book The End of Faith that faith and religion are “the most prolific source of violence in our history.†The three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars, which chronicles some 1,763 wars that have been waged over the course of human history, begs to differ.

For those wars, the authors note the causes of each. Consider this; they categorize 123 as being religious in nature, which is an astonishingly low 6.98% of all wars. However, more than half of them, 66, were fought in the name of Islam. Take those out, and the percentage of non-Islamic religious wars is a mere 3.23%.

So the next time someone tries to use the Crusades as a way to paint religion as the primary source of all war, just ask them, “Is that the best you can do?â€

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3. Episode 19: Mitt-mentum in the Polls, Climate Change (Without the Change), and Selective Indignation Over Drone Strikes
   
4. Episode 9: US Leads in Greenhouse Gas Reduction, Voter Fraud, and Forgetting Lessons from The Great Depression