Donate to Japanese Relief Efforts

Posted March 13, 2011, 6:47 p.m.

As you are surely aware, Japan was struck by a very powerful earthquake off its eastern coast near the city of Sendai on Friday. The quake, measuring a whopping 9.0 magnitude, is among the five strongest ever recorded. It spawned a devastating tsunami up to thirty feet high that further decimated areas of northern Japan less than ten minutes after the quake.

Already, more than 1,500 are confirmed dead and thousands are missing. The death toll is expected to rise. In the aftermath of the quake and tsunami, at least two nuclear reactors at Japanese power plants went into partial meltdown, and at least some radioactive material has escaped from one of them. It is unknown at this time how serious the nuclear accident is, or will become.

As I did after the Haitian earthquake just over a year ago, I call on my readers to donate to quake relief efforts. Personally, I recommend donating to Catholic Relief Services (which will distribute funds through its partner, Caritas Japan) or the American Red Cross. Both are trustworthy organizations that will quickly and efficiently distribute your donations to the people who need it most.

Thank you for your support and generosity. God bless you.

Donate to
Catholic Relief Services

Donate to
the American Red Cross

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.

My discovery of the divine has been a pilgrimage of reason and not of faith.

I made a misstatement and I stand by all my misstatements.

The young are generally full of revolt, and are often pretty revolting about it.

Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society. If one were to project the democratic way of life in the form of a musical score, its major theme would be the harmony of dissonance.

When a man has lived in a dark cave for years, his eyes cannot stand the light of the sun; so the man who refuses to repent turns against mercy.

By . . . false politeness, sincerity is sacrificed, and truth violated . . .

I know a man who has such a passion for proving that he will have no personal existence after death that he falls back on the position that he has no personal existence now.

All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible . . . to everyone. It should be open.

In practice, self-described ‘purists’ are often ill informed about what actually constitutes good usage.

We may have equality of opportunity, but if the only opportunity is to be equal, it is not opportunity.

I’d have no desire to penalize a man because he’s worth only fifteen dollars a week. But I’ll be damned if I can see why a man worth forty must be penalized—and penalized in favor of the one who’s less competent.

Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided.

Democratic governments may become violent and even cruel at certain periods of extreme effervescence or of great danger: but these crises will be rare and brief.

I love justice, not for its consequences for bodily gain, but for itself, for the moral truth and loveliness thereof.

A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy . . . , but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.

Appearance too often takes the place of reality—the stamp of the coin is there, and the glitter of the gold, but, after all, it is but a worthless wash.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

The two greatest institutions ever devised for lifting people out of poverty and enabling them to live in dignity are the market economy and the institution of marriage. These institutions will stand together, or they will fall together.

Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth!