I hear the advertisements for auto insurance and their free quotes. I have had a auto insurance policy for several years, but the policy was changed over from the actual start date of 1959 to only an effective date. So my policy is better than any quote I have checked. Geico for one is advertising to establish most folks money but are about $300 more than my policy.
They are not alone; Progressive with all those TV ads with that lady are $700 a year more than my insurance cost. So how can they advertise like they do? AARP is the same with their quote for my policy I pay $717.22 yearly. ARP wanted $250 more. All quotes from other companies are from memory as I did not recheck each company as I started this article. But no company beat my cost.
On my policy I have $250 deductible for about $100 yearly which was much more with other quotes. I just am tired of the advertisements claiming to establish us money then get a quote several hundred dollars higher. I have in the last 3 years gotten quotes from 9 companies with ads to put me money. None were able to advance end. For my money Status Farm can’t be beat. How often do you see a State Farm ad? No wild claims, no loud commercials impartial simple ads. My car a 2003 Cavalier 4dr. Compare mine and your policies.
All costs are for 6 months of coverage.. Liability bodily injury is 50,000- 100,000 for each accident at a cost of $112.88. Property Damage for each accident is 50,000. No Fault cost $43.48, Medical Payments Limit of Liability-coverage-C” for each person is $20,000, and “Comprehensive” cost is $51.54. Collision Coverage is a $250 deductible at a cost of $77.00. Emergency road service cost $1.60. “Non stacking uninsured motor vehicle” cost $38.25, for each person $25,000 and for each accident $50,000 for a cost $3.55. Total Premium for 1 vehicle includes discounts at a cost of $358.61. Vehicle 1: discounts accident free, multicar, vehicle safety, antilock brakes, and antitheft.
I realize all states are different; this policy is for Florida, zip 32421. All State Insurance comes closer than any company I have checked, but composed more than I pay. With the ads on the TV and in print one would contemplate that they would beat your insurance provider. I would be hard pressed to find a better price than I have for comparable coverage. I would be curious if you check your policy to mine and what you salvage. If you do check send me a message please this is something I’m serious about as it’s on my mind every six months.
Filed under Automobile Insurance Quotes by on Feb 17th, 2011. Comment. 
The advertisement sounded so tempting. All you had to do is be a member of Allstate Auto Insurance, and you will have accident forgiveness and if you don’t have an accident, you will get 5% off your next six month premium. Wow, I had just switched to Allstate and now they were advertising something that I could actually use – a discount for being a safe driver. I’m actually looking forward to my six month’s anniversary so I can see a reduction in rates.
Hmm…well, I finally received the paperwork on the new idea, the advertising campaign that is supposed to compose Allstate better than all the other Auto Insurance companies! Turns out in order to get the accident forgiveness part “Gold Protection Program” they charge you an additional $50 per 6 months, and if you do cause an accident, after joining they will deduct $100 off your deductable – After 4 years, you won’t have a deductable! You probably won’t have the same car either. Oh, and you’ll be out about $500 extra…so you do actually pay for the deductable, unprejudiced before you have the accident.
The other program is called the Platinum Protection Program. With this one, you find the same above benefits, plus receive a Safe Driving Bonus of 5% off your next renewal premium….sounds valid? The catch is that your premium increases by $100 or more (depending on your contract). Sound to me that the only one who benefits is Allstate – at least for the first few years. They charge me $100 extra for the new program, and then at the next premium, charge me $50 extra. (reducing it by 5% or so…actually the glowing print says “Up to 5%), so you may not actually receive the whole discount.
Assuming that my driving remains the same, no accidents, I get to be charged an additional $50 a month to possibly reduce a deductable that I may not ever need.
So the next time you see a commercial with the man with the assuring voice telling you how great Allstate is and how much money you’ll save with their new “Your Choice Auto Insurance’ – read between the lines. The insurance companies are really only out for themselves, it is an illusion that they are there for you.
Filed under Automobile Insurance Quotes by on Jan 21st, 2011. Comment.
The unprincipled and, indeed, anti-principled nature of the fanatic can be described as a manifestation of obstruction by peripherals, which I have defined in a prior treatise as a situation occurring “whenever a judgment on an issue far from the foundational truths in a philosophical hierarchy is held rigidly and carried to its full implications in a manner conflicting with the fundamentals of the same hierarchy.”
The principled man, the diametrical opposite of the fanatic, is capable of distinguishing between the fundamental and the peripheral; the former occupies a far greater fraction of his devotion, and he constantly seeks to derive the latter in terms of the former, not hesitating to alter his derivations if the fundamentals should so dictate.
The fanatic, however, is an embodiment of what Ayn Rand called the “concrete-bound mentality.” He is incapable of the high degree of abstract thinking required to comprehensively grasp a conceptual hierarchy and what lies at the foundation of that hierarchy. To him, all concepts are created equal, and are treated as such, in the best of cases. In the worst, and most typical of them, the peripherals are reinforced by more of the fanatic’s fervor than are the fundamentals, since the peripherals are more concrete in their manifestations.
For example, when a “closed-system” Objectivist is maneuvered to admit that “abortion rights” are at odds with her own selfish interest, she is prepared to renounce self-interest, a fundamental of the Objectivist ethics, in favor of a dogmatic adherence to the “right” of any woman to destroy a fetus.
In the abortion issue, the state will either legitimize abortion or forbid it. People will either have abortions or not; both outcomes are outwardly perceptible to the most constricted minds. Yet, when the invisible yet all-determining roots of the issue are dug at, concepts such as self-interest, futuristic certainty, natural rights, political liberty — the fanatic is confounded.
These are abstractions that his limited mind cannot reach directly; he can only pretend to fathom them through clichés (such as “the right of a woman to her own body,” or the phrase “pro-choice”), name-calling (such as “fascist,” “statist,” or “interventionist,” aimed at those who oppose “abortion rights”) and the endless second-hand repetition of thoughts borrowed from someone else (Leonard Peikoff’s “potential is not actual” creed). This is all too reminiscent of the “duckspeak” described by George Orwell as characteristic of the Oceanian Party orthodoxy in 1984, which I analyze in “Orwell’s Warning: Newspeak:”
“Such a label is perceived to be the ideal of rhetorical expression in Oceania. The orator is required to spill out collectivist blather without the involvement of any voluntary trouble or mental processes, similar to the automatic and thoughtless quacking of a duck, in order to be referred to as a ‘doubleplusgood duckspeaker’.”
As I noted in “Abortion versus Selfishness: Obstruction by Peripherals,” Ayn Rand’s stance on abortion is an infinitesimally small portion of the original Objectivist corpus; her only explicit written mention of it was in a tangential paragraph on the 1973 essay: “Censorship, Local and Express.”
Yet, to the fanatic, every peripheral, by its very smallness and concrete-boundedness, becomes as or more necessary to defend unconditionally than a fundamental and far richer concept. Thus, critiques of abortion have been received with rabid backlashes by the “mainstream, conventional” Objectivist movement (trace that the word, “stale,” needs not apply only to the general society; it defines any typical paradigm in the context of any movement or set of ideas). For example, Lindsay Perigo, owner of the SoloHQ forum, chastised me as “a pseudo-objectivist conservative rationalist” and called my action an “abuse of SoloHQ’s tolerance and hospitality” when I had merely posted a witty anti-abortion remark by Ronald Reagan in SoloHQ’s Quote Gallery.
This censure was delivered in absolute evasion of my manifold prior contributions to SoloHQ that did meet Mr. Perigo’s agreement and affirmed beyond doubt our mutual adherence to the same fundamental principles of Objectivism, yet Perigo adamantly refused to apologize for applying such an unwarranted designate to me. Mr. Perigo’s willingness to hurl names at and sour relations with a fellow thinker over a disagreement extremely minor to the Objectivist philosophy, reveals a partly fanatical disposition, an adherence to a peripheral mindset comprising the established orthodoxy at all cost, and a lack of hesitation to, in an out-of-context manner and without thorough prior deliberation, crudely chastise the peripheral dissenter as an “unbeliever.” (What else does the term, “pseudo-Objectivist,” imply? )
Filed under Automobile Insurance Quotes by on Jan 21st, 2011. Comment.
In the aftermath of World War II, the former colonial powers finally lost their last vestiges of power on the global stage. Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan were plot about the task of rebuilding, leaving a significant power vacuum which two new rising powers were more than happy to fill. The shaky alliance between the United States and Russia was no longer a necessity, and the two superpowers began moving to spread their rival spheres of influence to the newly independent former colonies.
The United States and the Soviet Union would become both the antithesis and the reflection of one another, each looming on the other’s horizon, an unseen hand hovering over a button that would bring the world as they knew it to a abominable end. In the United States, the “Soviet Menace” shaped American society like no other force that had come before it. Conformity, traditional values, and civil duty were the cornerstones of mainstream society.
Women left the factories, replaced by men returning from the war, and returned to the home to fulfill a more traditional female role. Congress, eager to justify its extensive defense budget, employed propaganda promoting civil duty and creating an atmosphere of apprehension. Joseph McCarthy waged his war against communists in the state department, while all over the country professional “black-lists” swelled with the named of suspected communists. Automobiles began to dominate the landscape, bringing with them not only increased mobility, but a new sense of freedom which would spark the development of a distinct and recognizable youth culture. In the south, the first rumblings of the Civil Rights movement were unprejudiced beginning, and in the north, rock and roll was creeping onto the airways. Revolutionary writers like Jack Kerouac and JD Salinger butted heads with conservative social mores, setting the tone for the tumultuous Sixties and Seventies.
Current ideas were scorned and thought to be uncertain and subversive. In 1951, a reporter from the Madison [Wisconsin] Capital-Times attended the downtown Independence Day festivities to attempt to persuade attendees to sign a petition composed of quotes from the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. The reporter approached approximately one hundred people, but received only one signature. Those who declined did so “on the grounds that the ideas in the petition were communist, un-American, or in some other way subversive.” (Canipe, 2003, p. 311)
It was also during this time that the United States saw a revival of religiosity. This discussion will explore why that revival occurred, and what effect it had on American Society, focusing on the time from Truman’s election in 1948 to Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, which special regard to
1. Civil Religion
2. Mainstream Religion
By considering these two sides of the religious coin, one may be able to gain a clearer portray of that time in America’s history.
Civil Religion
Civil Religion is the use of religious symbols and traditions by a secular government. In the United States, this refers to phrases such as “In God We Trust” and “One Nation, Under God”, Christmas trees in the White House, and prayer at the beginning of each session of Congress.
“Under God”
In modern years, the phrase “One Nation, Under God”, has come under fire as a violation of the First Amendment. However, the Supreme Court, in the2005 Myers v Loudoun case, determined that “ceremonial deism” was allowable as it lacks reference to a single religion or belief.
In his 2003 article, Lee Canipe outlined the origins of the phrase “Under God” in the American Cold War period. According to Canipe, the Pledge of Allegiance first appeared in 1892, as an “oath of allegiance” reading “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”, written by Francis Bellamy. In 1923, the phrase “my flag” was replaced with “the Flag of the United States”, and in 1924, “America” was added to “the United States”. These moves were to foster loyalty in immigrants to the states. In 1945, Congress made the “Pledge” the official pledge of allegiance. (p. 310)
In 1953, Representative Louis Rabault (D-Mich) introduced a bill to Congress to insert the phrase “under god” into the pledge. The idea had been submitted to Congress a few months before, with the backing of the Knights of Columbus, by Edmund Radwan (R – NY), but that resolution went unnoticed. Rabault’s resolution would also go largely unnoticed. No action was taken on the resolution until a year later, when a Presbyterian pastor from New York threw his aid behind the idea of adding ‘under god’ to the pledge. George M. Docherty, in his Lincoln Day sermon, claimed that “without ‘under god’ … the Pledge of Allegiance could legitimately be the pledge of any republic, even that of the Soviet Union”. (p. 314-316).
In Congress, there existed little to no opposition to the proposal. To oppose it would be to appear anti-American and soft on communism, a political disastrous combination. (p. 318), only one Representative voiced any qualms about the addition of the phrase. Rep. Kenneth Keating (NY) questioned whether adding words would compromise a “work of American literature”. Keating represented the district in which the original author’s son lived. Bellamy’s concerns were not, however, with the grunt of the addition. (p. 318-319) In June 1954, both Houses of Congress passed the resolution, and on Flag Day, 1954, it was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. (p. 219).
The addition of the phrase “Under God” was a reflection of the sentiments of the era. According to historian Ronald Oakley, many Americans “equated Christianity with Americanism and saw the world locking in a life-and-death struggle between godless Communism and Christian democracy”. Belief in a religion was synonymous with belief in America and American values, regardless of what that religion may be. President Eisenhower was a strong supporter of this plan. During his 1952 campaign, he stated “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith”, adding “and I don’t care what it is.” (p. 313)
Theology
The God of American Civil religion was not necessarily the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, or of any religious tradition at all. There were no theological requirements for this God, only a vague adherence to moral values. When asked what these values entailed, Eisenhower replied “Honesty, decency, fairness, service… that sort of thing.” A quote from J. Edgar Hoover in the February of 1953 provides the best reflection of the shallow theology of American civil religion: “Since Communists are anti-God, encourage your children to go to church.”
Mainstream Religion
A 1954 Gallup poll found that 79 percent of Americans were church-goers and 96 percent believed in God (Canipe, p. 312), compared with a 2006 CBS news poll that found that only 82% of Americans believe in God. Church attendance was seen as a form of social conformity, and non-conformity was seen as un-American and pro-communist. Atheism, especially, was synonymous with communism (Mart, 2004, p. 111).
Judeo-Christian Tradition
Most Americans during this period (9 out of 10 surveyed in 1954) were of a Christian faith, and in 1952, Eleanor Roosevelt observed “It seems to me… we are a Protestant country.” (Mart, 2004, p. 110). There existed a belief that only Christianity could provide the right backbone well-known to ensure a safe and stable America, and thus world (p. 111). However, during this time there was a growing focus on the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, perhaps in response to Soviet oppression of Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia. Before the Cold War, anti-Semitist attitudes held sway over the American military and culture. With the onset of the Cold War, America developed an acceptance of its Jewish community, albeit within the blanket of the Judeo-Christian tradition (p. 109).
The development of the Judeo-Christian tradition developed from the idea of a “Protestant-Catholic-Jew” triad as a path to assimilation in American society (Herberg, 1960, p. 87). Reinhold Niebuhr described this process:
The religious community allows the new Americans to rid themselves of their foreignness and yet at the same time to preserve contact with the European culture of their past. But they do not feel these religious communities to be European, for to be Protestant, Catholic, or Jew [sic] is very definitely a piece of the American way of life. (Neibuhr, 1955)
Prior to the beginning of the Cold War, there were strong anti-Semitic feelings in the U.S., especially after World War I, when Jews were associated with the revolution in Russia. Laws were passed in the United States that favored Christians, immigration policy was structured to keep out Jews along with other ‘undesirables’ (primarily from Eastern Europe), and there were cases of employment ads specifying that applicants be “Christian-Only”. One poll at the end of the 1930s found that sixty percent of respondents had a negative view of Jews (Mart, 2004, p. 114).
Following World War II, there was a push for assimilation and cooperation between the Judaism and Christianity to fight the Red Menace. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and subsequent writings on them reinforced theological connections between the two religions. (Mart, 2004, p. 116), while the birth of the unusual situation of Israel forged a bond, actual or imagined, between the American people and the Israeli people based on the perception of Arabs as being in the same vein of evil as the Soviets. As well, the creation of a site of Israel was key to certain Christian beliefs about the end of the world as predicted in the Book of Revelations. While other factors played into the American succor of Israel, not least of which was the pursuit of an ally in the oil-rich but volatile Middle East, religion certainly factored more heavily in the hearts and minds of the American people (p. 117).
Rise of Evangelism
After the end of the war in 1945, the United States saw an increase in the funding of religious charities, which in turn bolstered the budding evangelical movement. Neo-evangelicals like Billy Graham and Carl Henry led a new movement which embraced theological orthodoxy and rejected liberal social gospel. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), founded in 1956, backed legislative campaigns, founded the National Religious Broadcasters, and trained Christians for government positions (Schafer, 2007, pp. 22-24). Most importantly, according to A.R. Schafer:
In the half century after the end of World War II, white evangelical Protestants sought and attained a measure of sociocultural legitimacy, theological authority, internal unity, and political influence that they had not experienced since the nineteenth century. They moved away from cultural isolation, social withdrawal and political marginality to become a significant political and cultural force in American society. (Schafer, 2007, p. 24)
Protestant-Catholic Tensions
Interestingly, during this period, anti-Catholic literature gained influence in America, as evidenced by the presence of Paul Blanshard’s American Freedom and Catholic Power, a book critical of the Catholic Hierarchy and its power in the United States, on the New York Times Best Seller list for seven months. The author called for candid discussion of the matter of Catholic influence in government, writing:
…. The policy of mutual silence about religious differences is a reasonable policy in matter of private faith; but when it comes to matter of political, medical, and educational principle, silence may be directly contrary to public welfare. When a church enters the arena of controversial social policy and attempts to control the judgment of its own people (and of other people) on foreign affairs, social hygiene, public education and modern science, it must be reckoned with as an organ of political and cultural power. (Massa, 2002, pp. 320-321)
In response to Blanshard’s arguments, Catholic theologian and political theorist John C. Murray published his “Paul Blanshard and the New Nativism”, which would become the “most compelling intelligent response to Protestant and secular fears of a Catholic breach of Thomas Jefferson’s ‘wall of separation between church and state.’” (p. 321) Muray asserted that Blanshard’s main argument was that Catholics were un-American, and by association, anti-American, and that his beliefs were based on warped naturalist fears, disguised as democratic values.
The tensions between Catholic and Protestants during this era, Mark Massa postulates, were not based on theological differences, but political influences and historical interactions with democratic regimes (p. 322-323).
Conclusion
Religion in America in the years following the end of World War II until the beginning of the Vietnam War was multifaceted and pervasive. The rise of civil religion, the decline of anti-Semitism and the development of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the resurgence of Evangelicalism, and the ongoing tensions between Catholics and Protestants the complex development of religion during this tumultuous period in American history.
Resources
Canipe, L. (2003). Under God and Anti-Communist: How the Pledge of Allegiance got Religion in Wintry War America. Journal of Church and State, 305-323.
Herberg, W. (1960). Protestant-Catholic-Jews: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. New York: Double Day.
Mart, M. (2004). The “Christianization” of Israel and Jews in 1950s America. Religion in American Culture, 14 (01), 109-146.
Massa, M. (2002). Catholic-Protestant Tensions in Post-War America. Harvard Theological Review, 95 (03), 319-339.
Neibuhr, R. (1955). America’s Three Melting Pots. NYTBR, p. 6.
Schafer, A. R. (2007). The Cold War State and the Resurgance of Evangelicalism: A Study of the Public Funding of Religion Since 1945. Radical History Review, 19-42.
Filed under Automobile Insurance Quotes by on Dec 18th, 2010. Comment.
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Filed under Automobile Insurance Quotes by on Nov 8th, 2010. Comment.
