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Three reasons the Supreme Court’s gun rights decision is significant.

Why faith-based initiatives matter

President Bush had the right idea when he introduced his faith-based initiatives in 2001. Government bureaucrats should get out of the way and let local communities and individuals solve problems as only they know best.

Ordinary Americans, Heritage scholar Ryan Messmore writes in the Shreveport Times, “see what Washington bureaucrats can’t: That what these people need most are family, friends and support networks that know them personally.”

In a Tuesday speech, Sen. Barack Obama announced a new program he said would improve on the current faith-based initiatives.

But as Heritage’s Jennifer Marshall notes, his proposal fails to “chang[e] the character of government to allow more space for civil society solutions.” Instead, it “emphasizes government funding.”

Taking the faith out of faith-based initiatives

Another aspect of Obama’s plan would require religious groups receiving federal money not to consider religion when they hire their workers.

Heritage’s Dan Moloney explains why this is troubling:

Obama’s plan says that when a faith-based organization takes federal dollars, it could be forced to hire an atheist or else lose its federal funding. Since people make policy, by losing the ability to control its people, the group would lose its ability to preserve its faith-based character. In other words, it would strike at the heart of the faith-based initiative.

This would restore a 1960s-era rule that effectively barred religious groups from providing services at taxpayer expense. Under this rule, Moloney writes, “faith-based groups that contracted with the government to provide a general service — run a drug-rehab program or a homeless shelter, for example — had to give up their special religious character, becoming just another religiously neutral service provider.”

Until it was lifted in 1996, the ban pushed religion further from civic life and, just as importantly, marginalized service organizations that were in many cases more effective than their secular counterparts.

Liberty, the West, and the Judeo-Christian heritage

Thanks to a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the American Spectator is publishing a ten-part series of articles on the components of individual liberty as it evolved in the West and the state of individual liberty in the future – not only in the West but in the rest of the world.

The Heritage Foundation is pleased to offer for free download the fourth article in the series, by Rémi Brague, a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne and at the University of Munich. Brague examines the link between Judeo-Christian thought and the development of free institutions in Western civilizations. The article appeared in the May, 2008 issue of the American Spectator.

» Download the article in PDF format

» All articles in this series

Other Heritage work of note

Entitlements. Liberals took advantage of a budget loophole to tack a $100 billion increase in domestic spending onto legislation funding our troops in combat — and did nothing to pay for it, Heritage economist Brian Riedl reports. “Most domestic spending additions are one-time expenditures. Yet Congress dealt another blow to budgetary integrity and fiscal responsibility by creating a permanent new entitlement in this emergency war funding bill.”

Protect America. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Heritage national security expert James Carafano called for a flexible border control system that focuses on those individuals who pose the greatest risk. “By taking a targeted approach, CBP agents can focus their time and resources on those they identify as posing a risk,” he explained.

Find out more about this issue on Heritage’s NationalSecurity.org, which is featuring border security and immigration research this week.

Entrepreneurship. Despite claims of economic gloom and doom in the media and on the campaign trail, Americans are better off today than a generation ago. Heritage economist James Sherk argues that, on balance, “the quality of jobs available to Americans has increased over the past generation.” For example, he notes “the increased need for highly skilled and educated workers,” which “means expanded opportunities for upward mobility” as incomes rise.

Family and Religion. Writing on National Review Online, Dan Moloney looks at the link between the government’s misguided contraception policy and the spike in teen pregnancies at a Gloucester, Mass. high school. “It’s difficult to imagine a more counterproductive approach. These girls need more parental involvement, not less. These young girls know how to have babies, so further sex ed isn’t needed. They want to have babies, so contraception is beside the point. The problem is that they think that they are ready to have babies, and they aren’t.”

Protect America and Rule of Law. Heritage legal experts Andrew Grossman and Cully Stimson lay out a way forward for Congress after the Supreme Court’s decision to grant habeas corpus rights to detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In other news

The Iraqi government has scored a satisfactory grade on 15 of the 18 benchmarks set by the American government, according to a new report.

The Associated Press reports on a new study which finds “that 16.2 percent of Americans had tried cocaine at least once, and 42.4 percent had used marijuana.” More Americans use these drugs than do citizens of other countries, the study noted.

Britain’s government-run National Health Service is facing yet another debacle as a plan intended to improve patient access to dentistry has backfired. The number of dentists has fallen and hundreds of thousands went without dental care, the Telegraph reports. Supply and demand in dental services might be better aligned were the system based on free-enterprise principles.

The Federal Reserve has once again injected cash into the economy by auctioning off $75 billion in loans. This is the 15th such auction since December, when the central bank began a program to “rescue” the financial system.

Coming up at Heritage

To attend these or any other events at Heritage please RSVP at Heritage’s website. Or you can view these events live online. All times are Eastern.

On Tuesday, July 8 at 10:00 a.m., a panel of experts will review the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, including the overturning of the D.C. gun ban.

On Wednesday, July 16 at 11:00 a.m., Admiral Timothy J. Keating, commander of the Pacific Command, discusses the region he oversees.

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Tim Barnes, an intern at The Heritage Foundation, contributed to this report.