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That is an issue, but as a practical matter I have worked with Catholic Relief Services overseas and found them to be essentially secular in their approach, and never conditioned on acceptance of their religious beliefs. I cannot say the same of other religious groups I have encountered in the field.
The reality is that very few individuals are willing to contribute money towards esoteric causes (like scientific research) where the return may be years or even decades down the line. That's where government can be useful, because they're willing to take the long view and take risks in the name of bettering the lives of their citizens. While there are occasionally hugely altruistic people (e.g. Andrew Carnegie and his Carnegie libraries, Bill Gates and his work with diseases and building infrastructure in Africa) who devote massive resources towards a cause or two, even they don't have the resources at their disposal to work on the scale that the US government is capable of. And even if they did, their existence at any given time is not guaranteed.
I don't know that it's fair to criticize the people who set these institutions up half a century ago or more for not anticipating the prospect of someone coming in looking to burn the system to the ground.
One of these "practically secular" Catholic enterprises (I forget which one) took a case all the way to the Supreme Court (and won thanks to the theocratic Roberts court) on a claim that some regulatory law didn't apply to them because they were operated by a religion. They need to pick a lane, either they are essentially secular, but are governed by a religion, or the are essentially religious. If the the latter, then no government funds for you church org.
I know, and I pretty much agree with you, but my experience is all foreign and on that basis I don't see a need for the abrupt axing of USAID over it. I think Musk realized it too. He's a slash and burn expert--that's how he runs his companies--and I think that when he realized he had been called in to carry out an ideological agenda rather than just to save money he bailed.
The problem is that the current edition of government is fully captured (all three branches) by people in ideological agreement with each other. This means that the restraints placed on the various branches of government are largely irrelevant. I don't know how you deal with that without fundamentally changing the way our government works.
Correct - when universities receive grants from the government, in most cases, those grants are actually given to researchers working at the institution. The university itself generally takes a cut of the grant money to support the ancillary operations around the researcher/research group, but the grant itself goes to the researcher to fund their work.
Your idea if truth is based on the source without greater investigation? The idea that corn ethanol gas and biofuels starve others is well documented. Here it is from the ny times
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Perhaps - but effecting that level of change requires the cooperation of the government. Which isn't happening.
Revolt against what? The government is chaos, amateurs doing improv. Squabbling . infighting, erratic, rapidly changing and sometimes contradictory policies. They're putting on a show about how Trump wants to be an autocrat, but he doesn't even seem to be a competent autocrat. And what do we get? Nothing, No fancy uniforms, not even an armband, just a stupid red hat. Came across a brass band today on YouTube, sharp uniforms, good musicians, the band of the Guardia di Finanza , Italy's equivalent to ICE. ICE doesn't have a band, that would be too much fun.
Christians still do. Christians still give more than any other group. So I dont know what you are talking about.
An un-bloated budget, transferring benefits of the have nots to unnecessary, unneeded tax cuts for the people who have everything materially, and often very little spiritually.
And that is one reason why environmentalist and progressives want solar and wind energy to replace the need for ethanol. But let's face it, with ethanol some corn is diverted away from the food supply but the air is cleaner and our planet is in less peril. With your solution, using fossil fuels, a higher percentage of corn may be diverted for food, but climate change will cause famines and hardships. Droughts and famine will mean that there is less corn for everything. Less corn for food. Less corn for ethanol. Not to mention the other dangers to our planet.
Why would you await that. You said you are a former Christian. The Bible is just a book to you.
I think USAID hosed itself with its leftist politics. If it would have stuck with just giving food to the hungry they wouldnt have been defunded.
