Far As the Curse Is Found

As my family heads back to "school" today, (when you homeschool, every day is "school"--or no day is "school," depending on how you look at it--so the days that you leave home and attend enrichment classes elsewhere become "school days" for you), I can't help but be particularly prayerful for the families of the students at Sandy Hook Elementary.  I don't know when they actually went back to school...or will go back to school...or even where "school" will be for them now...but I'm sure picking up the pieces and trying to move back into "normal" has been all but impossible for them over the holidays, and is all but impossible now, moving into the "back to school after the holidays" scene.

In the midst of all my praying and thinking and praying and talking and praying and crying over the past several weeks, I've read many interesting articles about the situation.  This one, published yesterday on Public Discourse, finds author Russ Nieli arguing that "we ignore at our own peril the problems caused by family breakdown."  It isn't really "politically correct" to discuss these things, but any honest assessment of the situation requires that we do so.

Absentee Fathers and the Newtown School Shooting

by Russell Nieli within Marriage
January 2nd, 2013 http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/01/7488/

Any honest analysis of the Newtown tragedy must address the social problems caused by divorce, absent fathers, and the burdens of single motherhood.

     Last month's massacre of twenty young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, prompted much public debate and soul-searching. The results were predictable. The left-liberal position went something like this:

There are too many guns in America, too many crazy people who should not have guns, and too few restrictions on the kinds of firearms that civilians may own. It's ridiculous to allow civilians to possess military-style assault rifles with large capacity magazines that can kill dozens of innocent human beings in minutes. We need to end our national love affair with firearms and firearm violence and should learn from the Europeans and Japanese, who severely restrict gun ownership for anyone not in the military or government police forces. We also need laws mandating that privately-owned firearms be stored securely so that criminals or unlicensed users can't get them.

Our mental health system also needs a thorough overhaul. Troubled, at-risk youth are too often left to fend for themselves because their families cannot pay for or access the professional care they need. We need to provide them this care through more outreach programs in schools and community centers that identify children and teens at high risk for self-destructive or socially destructive behavior.

     While many found this view compelling, the conservative take on the Newtown horror couldn't have differed more. It went like this:

Guns will always fall into hands that they shouldn't, no matter how extensive our gun control laws are. These laws don't prevent criminals from getting guns, but they disarm law-abiding citizens and render them helpless against deadly criminal attacks. Look at what happened in Norway. A country with very strict gun laws still saw one of the worst gun massacres of all time when the deranged Nordic supremacist Anders Breivik systematically shot and killed over five dozen helpless adolescents on an offshore island where only he possessed a firearm. Only a heavily armed Norwegian SWAT team stopped his attack. The bad guys prey on helpless victims who they know will never shoot back. Only good guys with guns can stop bad guys with guns. To protect our school children we need more armed guards--policemen and suitably trained civilians--who know how to use firearms responsibly and how to defend the helpless and defenseless against homicidal crazies.

We also need to stop the poisonous influence of violent video games and Hollywood movies on developing young minds. Teenage youth can become desensitized to violence through an addiction to games like Grand Theft Auto, Thrill Kill, Postal, and Mortal Kombat. These games reduce people's sense of empathy and increase their appetite for sadism and aggression. If we really want to tackle the problem of youth violence in America, we should critically examine the perverse messages that our media-saturated culture often sends to young people.

     Other claims and arguments were made to bolster both positions. The Supreme Court, for instance, came under attack from both sides--from the right for prohibiting prayer in public schools, from the left for interpreting the Second Amendment to include a right of private gun ownership. The two contrasting views were fleshed out in countless op-ed pieces and news broadcasts with the usual low quality we expect of such media treatment.

The Elephant in the Living Room

     Though both sides in this dispute have something sensible to say, they've missed an elephant in the room either because of willful blindness to anything politically incorrect or because of a lack of real-world experience. I speak of the problems associated with divorce, family breakup, father absence, and the enormous burdens placed on a single mom who must rear a troubled male child alone.

     Adam Lanza was not normal. He suffered from morbid shyness and an inability to connect with his student peers and anyone else--a cold, withdrawn, hollow shell of a person to his classmates, an Asperger's patient to professional psychologists. Even under the best of circumstances--with a loving, caring, two-parent family consisting of a husband and wife who complemented each other's strengths and worked together as a team--raising someone like Adam Lanza would be a real challenge.

     One can't say how he might have turned out under different circumstances, but statistics show that having divorced parents, as Lanza did, plus a father who moves out of the household, remarries, and has little contact with his son for long stretches of time, is not the ideal formula for successful childrearing. Yet what sociologists call "family structure issues" were rarely discussed in the media, not even on conservative talk radio where one might have expected them to have a preeminent place. Most Americans, it seems, have so many divorced or single-parent neighbors, friends, and relatives (if they are not themselves divorced or living as single parents) that discussing family structure is simply too painful and too sensitive to be taken up in any honest or candid manner.

     While we may never be able to explain fully what caused Lanza's murderous rampage, the best speculation to date involves, besides mental health problems and gun availability, the challenges faced by a single mom trying to raise a deeply troubled youth. A Fox News reporter gathered from the Lanzas' neighbors and others who knew the family situation that Lanza likely killed his mother because he thought that she loved the students and teachers of Sandy Hook School more than she loved him. Lanza knew that his mother planned to have him committed to conservatorship, and perceived her court petition as an effort to send him away. This enraged him to the extent that he killed first-graders who may have worked with his mother in the past year, and the school's principal and psychologist, who were his mother's good friends.

     It's hard to read such an account without feeling great sadness for someone like Nancy Lanza--a single mother with a deeply disturbed male adolescent on her hands and no man in the house to turn to for help or advice. Those who knew her said that she was at her wit's end and thought she could no longer care for her son by herself. In a saner age, when people understood the palpable harms of "broken homes" and "fatherless boys" (the terms themselves have become quaint if not archaic), the "family structure issue" would have guided reflection on the Lanza killings. But now, since any such discussion of divorce's harms, especially the harm of not having a father present in the home, would step on too many toes, we focus instead on the safer territory of gun control and our mental health system.

     A preview of the current non-discussion was provided almost fifty years ago when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his famous report The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. As Moynihan learned, however important the "family structure issue" may be to an understanding of an acute social problem, for many it strikes a raw nerve, the pain of which shuts down all serious discussion. A preoccupation with "racism" and "de-industrialization" were the equivalents in Moynihan's day of guns and the mental health system today, as topics to raise to avoid the salient but hypersensitive issue of family breakdown.

     In his book Fatherless America, David Blankenhorn writes that "across societies, married fatherhood is the single most reliable, and relied upon, prescription for socializing males. As marriage weakens, more and more men become isolated and estranged from their children and from the mother of their children. One result, in turn, is the spread of male violence." Though we can't ignore the other contributing factors to the Lanza massacre, this simple truth must be acknowledged in any honest assessment of the Newtown tragedy.

-- Russell Nieli is a lecturer in politics at Princeton University. 

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And so we pray every day for our marriage, for our children, for our home, and for our family.  Lord, protect us.  Keep us faithful to one another.  And keep us compassionate and concerned for those who are wrestling amid the pain of struggling marriages and wayward children and a world nearly breaking  under the crushing weight of sin.  May we ever remember that, "He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found"!

U.S. Faith

I found this interactive map to the results of a USA today "pew survey" regarding the religious affiliations of Americans interesting...

Just click on the link above to explore it.

Overruled!

What's For Lunch?

When did we become a nation that would stand for a government that tells you what your children may and may not eat for lunch?

I guess it was about the same time we became a nation of people who put our children in government schools even though we know that those schools consider our fundamental parental rights to be null and void while our children are there.

(Fields v. Palmdale School District, 427 F.3d 1197, 2005)  Specifically, the case centered around a lawsuit brought by parents against the use of a student questionnaire that asked what they believed to be personal and probing questions.  Their case was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,which determined that a traditional fundamental parental right "does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door."

It always seems so far away, at some other school in some other school district, but a local friend of mine recently told me of her attempt to sit in on one of her daughter's classes at the local middle school.  She was told that she would have to apply for permission, wait a couple of weeks for it to be granted, and then only visit the classroom at the date and time that they approved.  How's that for being able to get a feel for what they're saying to your child everyday?!

Maybe it is time for a Parental Rights Amendment!

Elementary Civics

Okay, so when life gets busy and heavy with "issues"--which it often does when one is raising teens!--one's ability to wax philosophical about things becomes limited.  But I simply must break into the spiritual, psychological, emotional stuff we've been enmeshed in to write briefly of my political outrage.

Not that anyone cares, mind you, but as an American citizen and as an educator, I am confused by the latest developments concerning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) on the part of President Obama and his Administration.  If I correctly understand the situation--which I admit it is possible I don't--where is the outcry?  Why are civics and history teachers around the country not up in arms at what is happening?  Are students being told?  Are adults even aware?  Do people even care?

A very basic presentation of the "separation of powers" and the "three branches of government" that I teach my children in the young elementary years should suffice for anyone over the age of ten to understand that what President Obama is advocating is not constitutional.  He claims that he and his Attorney General have "concluded" that the DOMA is "unconstitutional"--and that they will therefore cease "to defend it."    Excuse me?  Did I miss something?!

At the risk of over-simplification, let me sum up the elementary civics lesson as I thought I understood it:
The U.S. Constitution gives the Judicial Branch the exclusive task and authority for ruling on the constitutionality of any given law.  (Not that they always do a good job of doing so, but the task is squarely--and solely--on their shoulders!)  The Constitution gives the Legislative Branch the exclusive task and authority for making such laws.  And it gives the Executive Branch the exclusive task and authority for executing such laws.

So, what's up with a President who is, by decree, assuming the power to overrule the other branches of government?!  The DOMA was the law of the land, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by President Clinton.  Since when does the Executive Branch have the authority to "conclude" that it is unconstitutional?

Chuck Colson has some sobering thoughts on this issue:

"...parents are possessed of no constitutional right..."

Are you aware that in 2005, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found in Fields v. Palmdale School District “that the Meyer-Pierce right [of parents to direct the upbringing of their children] does not exist beyond the threshold of the school door.”  

Further, they declared that, "Parents...have no constitutional right...to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so."

“We conclude that the parents are possessed of no constitutional right to prevent the public schools from providing information on that subject [sexuality] to their students in any forum or manner they select” (emphasis added).

Hmmm...

If this doesn't frighten you and cause you concern, I would like to direct you to a book I recently read called You're Teaching My Child What? A Physician Exposes the Lies of Sex Education and How They Harm Your Child by Miriam Grossman, M.D.  If you are a parent, you cannot afford not to read this book.  Be prepared to be shocked and appalled.

Perhaps it is time for a Parental Rights Amendment.

This Sunday we join our Gulf Coast brethren...

...in their united cry to God for assistance in time of disaster.

I am struck by the official governmental declarations of days of prayer in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana. This is despite--indeed, perhaps in stark contrast to--the current "politically incorrect" status that public, state-endorsed prayer has come to occupy.


I am pleased and proud that these men have chosen to acknowledge the past benefit and blessings of a collective cry to God for assistance, aid, and intervention in crisis. "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).


I am also struck, and deeply humbled, but my relative lack of concern for my fellow Americans who are experiencing hardship. Sure, I know about the BP oil disaster, and have lamented with the best of them about what a tragedy it is and what damage it is doing, but have I really prayed with them, for them?


Have I really connected with--and prayed for--those suffering from the devastating floods in Nashville? I have a cousin whose newly-renovated home was overrun with several feet of water, and yet I've remained blissfully disconnected after the initial burst of compassion has worn thin.

How easy it is, in the relative comfort of our small spheres of experience, to forget the wide-scale suffering of those around the country and the world!

Oh, Lord, open my eyes to the needs of those around me, both near and far away. May I be a woman of prayer who faithfully lifts up the cares and concerns of my fellow sojourners. Broaden my perspective away from this small life, to the bigger picture of the world around me. And grant that all of us may have Your eternal perspective, and that we may dwell in the hope that is ours through Christ.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance... Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him" James 1:2-3, 12.

"This, the oldest of all American holidays..."

The following is from a newsletter I received from HEAV, but the links and information contained therein are wonderful educational resources, not just for homeschoolers, but for all of us who move toward commemorating "this, the oldest of all American holidays."

I loved reading again about the history of Thanksgiving. Schoolchildren around the country are told that the Thanksgiving holiday originated as a celebration where the Pilgrims thanked the Indians for their help during the harsh winter. This is a drastically incomplete picture of what truly transpired as both Native Americans and European Americans together thanked God for His goodness to them. May we all remember again the rich heritage of our nation's gratitude to Almighty God for His blessings and provision for us.

Following is the body of the text of their mailing, including the Editor's Note at the end:

David Barton of Wall Builders suggests a few resources to review the true history of Thanksgiving. This scholarly article, "Celebrating Thanksgiving in America,” includes primary sources about the four-century long highlights of the holiday.

Find a number of famous Thanksgiving Proclamations of historic significance listed on this page.

Read a notable Thanksgiving sermon entitled, “Blessed Is the Nation Whose God Is the Lord, and the People Whom He Hath Chosen for His Own Inheritance,” preached by the Reverand Thomas Baldwin of Boston in response to President George Washington's 1795 Thanksgiving Proclamation.

Editor's Note: Unlike modern sermons (which are commonly published or taped weekly), due to high paper and printing costs, only the most popular sermons and preachers were published during this era. Once available as pamphlets, notices appeared in local newspapers announcing the sermon details. The prices were listed, sometimes noting sale prices were less by half “for those distributing them free in the prisons and gaols.” Sermon pamphlets were collected as private devotional reading and individuals who could afford it might have selections bound together into volumes. George Washington was among those who collected them.

"Who owns your children?"

A recent news story about homeschooling from my friend Dale Hurd, a reporter with CBN News, has my blood boiling.

The reality that children are being seized from loving, exemplary parents simply because those parents have chosen to educate them at home is appalling. To hear the terrified screams and cries of little 7-year-old Dan Schultz as he is forcibly removed from his bed and home in the middle of the night is shocking... disturbing... sobering...



(I just keep hearing the voice of the little twit in Steven Crowder's video - you know, the one who can't name the Vice-President of the United States - announcing, "I don't like America. I'm from America, but I don't like America. I'm moving to London.")

This idea that to be a "progressive society" means that the State takes over the lives and education of its children - with little or no regard for parental rights - is no longer just a European idea.

Consider the words of the current United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who believes that "the more our schools truly become the centers of the community, centers of family life, the better our children can do." He envisions "pushing innovation, pushing change," where schools are open "twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours a day, six or seven days a week, twelve months a year."

Why? Because, "Our society has changed, and our schools have not really kept pace." He acknowledges - and he's right - that the days of kids coming home from school at 2:30, to a mother at home and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, are largely over. He is correct when he acknowledges that the typical American school child is currently "going home to almost no-parent families." Dad is at work. So is Mom. She has been since he was six-weeks old.

I just missed when we started calling this good. acceptable. ideal.

When did it become the government's responsibility to raise our children for us?

As you evaluate the merits of his plans for American schools (which include things like onsite provision of three meals a day, onsite provision of dental and medical care, and onsite provision of vision care and eyeglasses for students), consider his own track record of success as CEO of Chicago's public schools. Even taking into account a controversial change in testing methodology which experts have claimed "significantly inflated test scores," fewer than half of all Chicago elementary and middle school students met or exceeded state standards during his years of leadership. This means that for all the money he poured into it (an astonishing average of nearly $11,000 per pupil), fewer than one in every two Chicago students can read on grade level. Or write on grade level. Or perform math on grade level. Or demonstrate understanding of science on grade level.

His assessment of the situation? "The money I spent to open our schools longer in Chicago is arguably the best money I spent."



"This needs to be the norm, not the exception," he has said when referencing this proposed near-24-hour-a-day oversight of children, in all areas of life, by schools.

Sounds like he's following the battle plan of Adolf Hitler, who noted, "When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.'*

*From a speech given by Adolf Hitler in November 1933, quoted in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer

Mourn with those who mourn...*

I just found out about this, and I think it is very interesting. I remember George Bush's having been criticized for being slow to visit New Orleans following hurricane Katrina. I was so glad to hear about these unpublicized visits by the former first couple to the survivors of the Ft. Hood shootings. Their Texas ranch is about thirty miles from the military facility, and apparently the Bushes arranged to enter and leave the facility secretly to avoid press coverage of their time there.

*From Romans 12:11-15

"That one dude..."

Okay, so I'll admit that the third grader couldn't name the Speaker of the House, but all of the children in my household were able to successfully name both the President and Vice President of the United States.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not praising this as genius. But I am noting that they did better than 66% of the people Steven Crowder interviewed outside the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, CA.

So it seems that my 11-year old, who mistakenly called her "Peloski" instead of "Pelosi" but did, in fact, know both her first and last names without any prompting, is more knowledgeable than most Americans, 2 out of 3 of whom apparently can't even name the Vice President of the United States, let alone the Speaker of the House. I wonder how many know what the Speaker of the House is... What this position does... Where in the line of succession to the President this position falls...



Scary...

Reason for Homeschooling #328

We the People...

...in order to form a more perfect union...

Today is Constitution Day.

I have found a wonderful website for enhancing your knowledge of the Constitution.

There is even a test to ascertain your knowledge by taking a short ten-question quiz to see how much you know about both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

It certainly seems to be an important time in the history of our great nation to be familiar with the Constitution, and to be well-versed in our understanding of - and ability to dialogue intelligently about - the Constitution.

For an in-depth study of the Constitution, I'm excited about Michael Farris's Constitutional Law for Enlightened Citizens. I hope to be able to study it one day soon with my homeschool highschoolers.

(Great reason for homeschooling #254: You actually get to learn the stuff you never did back when you went through your schooling experience!)

Hilarity from Comedian Tim Hawkins

My father sent this Tim Hawkins video to my children, entitled "The Government Can." I think it is an hilarious musical satire regarding the state of government spending...



But while I was watching that video on YouTube, I found the following, which are equally funny, in my opinion....

He said some pretty great stuff...

President Obama addressed the nation's school children today. All the indignation and hoopla and protest were undeserved. He said some pretty inspirational things to the youth of America.

(You can read a transcript of the entire speech here.)

"I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year. Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

"I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

"But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world - and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities.

"Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.

"Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

"That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as...

"Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

"But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

"That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, 'I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.' These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time.

"If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

"No one’s born being good at things; you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

"Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new.

"So find an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

"So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

"Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions.... But you’ve got to do your part, too.

"So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you.

"So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

"Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America."

Law and Order

This is a Fred Thompson interview with Dr. Betsy McCaughey, a health policy expert and former Lt. Governor of New York State. She discusses with Fred Thompson Page 425 of the Health Care Bill and what it will mean to senior citizens and to the disabled. It is well worth the time it takes to listen to the complete interview (about eight minutes or so).

You can read more about it at http://www.defendyourhealthcare.us/

Interestingly, the Senate has apparently removed some of the end-of-life provisions that were in the House version of the bill. (See here.) One question I have: how do you remove something that you insisted wasn't in there in the first place?

At any rate, here's to "raising furor"!

Sounds "fishy" to me!

An official request has come from the White House, asking American citizens to send any "fishy" e-mails or Web postings on health-care reform to flag@whitehouse.gov.

This is interesting to me, since just today I was interacting with my own "fishy" email regarding some of the unbelievable components of the proposed Health Care plan.

A week or so ago, I received an email, complete with the attendant hype and drama that sometimes accompanies outlandish emails. It had obviously been sent to everyone in my friend's address book, and one of his rude friends hailing from across the aisle had felt compelled to "reply to all" and blast him in front of all of us for his dissemination of inaccurate and outlandish "Repulican b*llsh*t."

I had sighed and cringed and pressed delete, assuming that most of the incredible assertions in the email were, in fact, urban legend rubbish that makes otherwise intelligent people believe insanity. (There is plenty of that these days, you know, especially among people my parents' ages. They're just getting into the email thing, they're retired with a little too much time on their hands, and they're forwarding things around to each other daily by the dozens, I think.)

Anyway, today I received another such email, this time attributed to respected scholar and Dean of Liberty University law school, Mathew Staver. I quickly checked Snopes and other Urban Legends sites, finding nothing one way or another on this particular email and its contents. Certain I was looking at a classic case of urban legend hype, I quickly wrote the following letter to the Liberty University School of Law:

RE: Dean Staver's association with circulating email

The following is being circulated (I received it this morning in an email) and attributed to Dr. Staver. If it was not authored by him (which I suspect it may not have been), quick action to get it onto Snopes.com and some other Urban Legends sites is likely in order. (Even if he did author it - which I don't believe he did - validating it as true on these sites would also be a good idea. As it stands now, there is no way for folks to check the credibility of the claim that he authored it.)

My experience has been that well-meaning but ignorant folks get emails like this and then forward them all around and/or post them on their Blogs; rather quickly, there will be hundreds of Google entries with Dr. Staver's name in them as this document gains a web presence.

I just figured I'd make you aware of it, if you were not already.

I signed it with my name, identifying myself also as a "citizen interested in intelligent public debate."

Within the hour, I had received the following reply from Beverly Smith, Executive Assistant to the Dean:

Dean Staver is, in fact, involved with the material in this email and has agreed to its circulation. For more information, please visit www.lc.org for full text of the HR 3200 document and other information that has recently been distributed via press releases and news bulletins. Thank you for you inquiry.

I recognize that many, many people will discredit anything authored by Mat Staver as right-wing wacko craziness because of his association with Liberty University and the Jerry Falwell shadow under which it exists. However, I know of Dr. Staver as an intelligent, respected scholar, author, and legal analyst, and the fact that he has associated his name with the claims in this email gives me great pause.

That and the fact that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is scrambling in any way it can to try to gather and discredit such emails. "Methinks he doth protest too much*," I'd say!

The following is taken from a Focus on the Family CitizenLink newsletter:

Gary McCaleb, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, said the unusual request hearkens back to the Cold War.

"We have an administration in America taking a page out of a playbook that was written by the Khrushchev types in the 1950s," he said. "Why is the government asking neighbor to report on neighbor like the Russians asked their children to report on their parents?"

"There are only two reasons why the government would do this," he continued. "Either to outfox the American public, or to find a way to suppress the American public."

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, wrote a letter to President Barack Obama laying out his concerns about such a request and asking for "assurances that this program is being carried out in a manner consistent with the First Amendment and America's tradition of free speech and public discourse."

"It seems inevitable that the names, e-mail addresses, IP addresses and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported to the White House," he said.

In response, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, "Nobody is collecting names."

The administration's blog entry cited as an example of "fishy" video a clip in which the president appears to support a single-payer health-care system. The blog offered video clips of the president appearing to say that he does not.

But Cornyn pointed out that in 2003 Obama said in plain language: "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health-care plan." Cornyn said he wondered if a direct quote counted as "disinformation."

----------

*This is a variation on a quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, allowing variance for the obvious gender difference between our President and Queen Gertrude. The original quotation is, 'She doth protest too much, methinks.'

More on ObamaCare

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about the President's proposed health care plan.

To read more interesting thoughts about ObamaCare, see here or here or here...

For some interesting (sometimes disturbing, sometimes hilarious) video thoughts, check out this or this or this or this...

What's good for the goose...

...ought to be good for the gander.

Though they are getting some intelligent resistance and opposition, members of Congress appear to be near passing the Health Care Plan proposed by President Obama. The infuriating thing to me, however (besides that it will ensure that more of my tax dollars fund abortions, that the quality of health care that Americans are currently able to enjoy will be severely compromised, and that billions more dollars will be added to the deficit as a result of its passage) is that while my family and I - and you and yours - will be forced to accept this Health Care Plan, the members of Congress who are voting it into existence will not.

"Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) offered an amendment in the Ways & Means Committee that would have required Members of Congress to enroll immediately in the government-run health plan that would be established under the Democratic bill. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) offered an amendment to put his committee on the record in support of enrolling Members of Congress in the government-run plan as well. While the Wilson amendment was approved by voice vote in the Education & Labor Committee, the Heller amendment was killed in the Ways & Means Committee at the behest of Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Rangel."

This is from a web post by Republican House Leader John Boehner, where he acknowledges the "long list of common-sense changes House Republicans proposed this month while the bill was being considered by the Ways & Means, Energy & Commerce, and Education & Labor Committees. These amendments, which were designed to make the health care bill more palatable to the American people, were unceremoniously crushed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her committee chairmen with little public attention or debate."

(Apparently, by the way, union workers who helped Democrats win Congress and the White House and whose support will be key in getting a health bill signed into law may also be getting some exemption perks...)

There isn't much to be done, but since I do believe that Edmund Burke quotation which acknowledges that,"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," I wrote a letter to my Congressional Representatives:

Dear [recipient names were inserted here],

It is unbelievable to me that any members of Congress are considering voting for and approving the Health Care Plan proposed by President Obama, yet are also planning to refuse to require Congress to be covered by said health care. If you think ObamaCare is good enough for all Americans, it ought to be good enough for you. If you vote for a plan you refuse to participate in, you will verify a lack of integrity and a lack of concern for your constituents. The American people will not put up with a government that foists upon its people policies that they themselves will not endure.

Sincerely,


Of course, this last sentence isn't entirely true, since we put up with the fact that they establish their own payraises using taxpayer money, that they are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, and that they even consider themselves above a city-council imposed city-wide smoking ban in the capitol city. Note also that very few of them choose the public school system which they so graciously endorse for "all Americans," opting rather to send their own children to private schools using their hefty taxpayer-provided salaries.

Yes, I would like for all Americans to have access to affordable health care, but socialized medicine won't help anybody.

Why I Don't Do TV...

I just read John Piper's article Why I Don't Have a Television and Rarely Go to Movies, which arrived in my inbox this evening.

He is, as always, bold and direct:

... I suspect that Mark and I would not agree on the degree to which the average pastor needs to be movie-savvy in order to be relevant, and the degree to which we should expose ourselves to the world’s entertainment.

I think relevance in preaching hangs very little on watching movies, and I think that much exposure to sensuality, banality, and God-absent entertainment does more to deaden our capacities for joy in Jesus than it does to make us spiritually powerful in the lives of the living dead. Sources of spiritual power—which are what we desperately need—are not in the cinema. You will not want your biographer to write: Prick him and he bleeds movies.

If you want to be relevant, say, for prostitutes, don’t watch a movie with a lot of tumbles in a brothel. Immerse yourself in the gospel, which is tailor-made for prostitutes; then watch Jesus deal with them in the Bible; then go find a prostitute and talk to her. Listen to her, not the movie. Being entertained by sin does not increase compassion for sinners.

There are, perhaps, a few extraordinary men who can watch action-packed, suspenseful, sexually-explicit films and come away more godly. But there are not many. And I am certainly not one of them.

I have a high tolerance for violence, high tolerance for bad language, and zero tolerance for nudity. There is a reason for these differences. The violence is make-believe. They don’t really mean those bad words. But that lady is really naked, and I am really watching. And somewhere she has a brokenhearted father.

I’ll put it bluntly. The only nude female body a guy should ever lay his eyes on is his wife’s. The few exceptions include doctors, morticians, and fathers changing diapers. “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). What the eyes see really matters. “Everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). Better to gouge your eye than go to hell (verse 29).

Brothers, that is serious. Really serious. Jesus is violent about this. What we do with our eyes can damn us. One reason is that it is virtually impossible to transition from being entertained by nudity to an act of “beholding the glory of the Lord.” But this means the entire Christian life is threatened by the deadening effects of sexual titillation.

All Christ-exalting transformation comes from “beholding the glory of Christ.” “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Whatever dulls the eyes of our mind from seeing Christ powerfully and purely is destroying us. There is not one man in a thousand whose spiritual eyes are more readily moved by the beauty of Christ because he has just seen a bare breast with his buddies.

But leave sex aside (as if that were possible for fifteen minutes on TV). It’s the unremitting triviality that makes television so deadly. What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ. Television takes us almost constantly in the opposite direction, lowering, shrinking, and deadening our capacities for worshiping Christ.

One more smaller concern with TV (besides its addictive tendencies, trivialization of life, and deadening effects): It takes time. I have so many things I want to accomplish in this one short life. "Don’t waste your life" is not a catchphrase for me; it’s a cliff I walk beside every day with trembling.

TV consumes more and more time for those who get used to watching it. You start to feel like it belongs. You wonder how you could get along without it. I am jealous for my evenings. There are so many things in life I want to accomplish. I simply could not do what I do if I watched television...

Thought-provoking stuff.

Although we do love a good movie (especially as a springboard for great follow-up conversation, which is the way I like to do it), we also avoid the kinds of sexual content he refers to... and we haven't watched television for ten or fifteen years now.

I can't remember exactly when we stopped, but it was somewhere around the time that we realized (1) we were rather irresponsibly addicted (we would pass on invitations and miss opportunities for fellowship in order to stay home and watch the shows), (2) it was taking an awful lot of our time - one night turned to two, as Thursday night's line-up got split onto Tuesday as well... if you're as old as I am, you likely remember the shows... Mad About You, Friends, Seinfeld, Frasier, ER... (3) we started having kids, and really needed the sleep, (4) sitcoms went from fun, isolated, individual shows-you-could-take-or-leave on a given week, and took on all the drama and obsessive nature of daytime soap operas (which I'd had the sense to avoid like the plague since I'd realized their addictive power over me when I was in high school and my first year of college... but here I was again, spending way too much time wondering about things like whether Ross and Rachel would ever "get together"), (5) the cute, fun shows we were filling our brains with every week were turning more and more perverse as time went on (illicit sex, crass and crude humor, attempts to normalize homosexuality with likeable homosexual characters and "loving homosexual marriages"...)

I could go on, but you get the picture. I'm sure I would die at what is on television these days, if I ever actually watched it. Occasionally someone will be staying at our home, or we will be staying somewhere else, and those other folks will have made a choice to turn on some television show. It is always shocking and appalling to me what parades across the screen... obviously people have become de-sensitized to what filth is present in just about every single television show they choose to watch.

We know this makes us rather freakish in most peoples' eyes... most people watch a lot of television...

And no, we don't have a hard time staying "culturally-relevant" by knowing "what's out there," because most of the time, that's a major part of what people want to talk about... I've learned all about peoples' obsession with particular shows over the years second-hand, by overhearing about them in conversations. (This is how I found out about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire... Survivor... Lost... American Idol... Sex in the City... 24... Desperate Housewives... and the "cleaner and more wholesome" shows -not always, mind you - which folks watch, too, like What Not to Wear, or Jon and Kate Plus 8, or American Idol.)

Just the other night, my own mother spent about fifteen minutes at our dinner table discussing - in front of my daughter - the "hilarious" show she had watched the night before. I had never heard of it (of course), but she described in blow-by-blow detail the go-out-and-get-laid antics of some group of four nerdy guys... from one's going back into the house to take off his cartoon underwear in case he "got lucky" to a description of one's waking up in the arms of some fat stranger he'd just casually slept with... I sat silently and uncomfortably until, mercifully, my father called my daughter into the other room, and I was able to excuse myself to clear dishes. No disrespect meant to my mother, but she is a prime example of how desensitized we have become... I am grieved by what most folks are regularly filling their minds with.

And I happen to believe it is part of the grand political agenda... shaping public thought through nightly television shows... Hollywood films... pop culture... public education...

How about you?