NB Columns

Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy is in hot water with the LGBT community because he committed the cardinal sin in an age of political correctness: Thou must not speak ill of anything gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transgenders wish to do.

In an interview with the Baptist Press and later on a Christian radio program, Cathy, whose father, the philanthropist Truett Cathy, founded the company, defended marriage between a man and a woman and when asked about the company's support of traditional marriage said, "Guilty as charged. We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit." Cathy believes American society is rotting (and where is evidence to the contrary?) because the country has turned away from God.

I am pumped up about Mitt Romney's speech in Israel — for both political reasons and policy ones — and believe it may represent a turning point in the campaign.

Politically — and this is important because it is critical that he win, or he won't be able to implement any policies and set America back on the road to recovery — Romney has shown again he is going to take the gloves off, deal with the issues directly and draw a stark contrast between his policies and Obama's record. The significance of this cannot be overstated. Some of the reasons John McCain lost in 2008 were his lackluster campaign, his refusal to showcase Obama's extreme liberalism and, thus, his failure to demonstrate why he would make a better president than Obama.

When you make your living in the public arena as I do and when you let your opinion be known as I do in mainstream and social media, you expect some criticism and this is as it should be, this being America where our very way of life is centered around free speech.

I don't mind the criticism and usually give as good as I get, respecting all comers, regardless of how far afield or how vehement I consider our differences to be, but lately I have been receiving a small amount of correspondence from people who resent the headway that, through the blessings of God and hard work, I have made in my life.

When a radio host asked me what I thought of the massacre in Aurora, Colo., I had to ask for clarification. I said: "What do you mean? Who could deny it's an unspeakable tragedy?"

What he was really asking me was to address it in a political context. The problem is that I don't believe there was any political context to the shooting; not everything is political.

By now the script should be familiar. A bombing or a mass shooting occurs and the media immediately look for a simple cause. Invariably, they turn to talk radio or some other conservative pit of "intolerance."

Within recent memory are tragedies like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1999 massacre at Columbine, the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings and the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tucson. Some politicians and liberal interest groups have sought to link these and other violent incidents to the far right. There have also been incidents when some conservatives have tried to blame other tragedies on "liberals" "secularists" and abortion.

Stephen Covey, the management guru who died this week, would have had a hard time selling his books in Benjamin Franklin's America, or Abe Lincoln's. His best seller "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" would have been considered a self-evident truth, one drummed into earlier Americans by schools, churches and the Puritan ethic.

Today, Covey's thoughts about how to become a success by applying principles with a proven track record seem innovative and cutting edge. His work is a rebuke to the notion that government can do it all for you.

Before taking the oath of office, Barack Obama vowed to fundamentally transform the United States. He has certainly done so. For example, Obama has:

The agendas of liberals, progressives and assorted tyrants desperately depend on the aspects of human nature they often condemn, such as acquisitiveness, profit motive, self-interestedness and greed. This crossed my mind while reading "How Departures From Economic Freedom Can Affect Freedom In General," by Dr. John Taylor, a Hoover Institution scholar. Taylor tells how former Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich was forced to take Troubled Asset Relief Program funds even though Wells Fargo did not need or want the funds. Kovacevich was threatened that if he did not accept TARP money, regulators would declare his bank capital-deficient even though Wells Fargo had a triple-A rating. At the time, October 2008, Wells Fargo was in the process of acquiring Wachovia, and to be declared capital-deficient would have killed the deal. U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke could rely on acquisitiveness, profit motive and self-interestedness to bully Wells Fargo into accepting TARP money. They also knew that Wells Fargo's competitors would go after Wachovia. If all sound banks had refused TARP money, Paulson and Bernanke's tyrannical threats would have failed.

On July 27 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, acting on behalf of the United States of America will sign an international treaty through the auspices of the United Nations that is known as the Arms Trade Treaty, which will be represented by the Obama Administration as being a way to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and criminals and would have no effect on private gun ownership in America.

First of all, have you even heard about such a treaty, do you approve of an inept, corrupt, crooked, anti-American agency like the United Nations having anything to do with gun control in America or anyplace else?