Hear the Republican Candidates Speak up on Life and Family issues

December 3, 2011 Leave a comment

Just a quick post to spread the word on this unique look at some of the leading conservative presidential candidates. I have been a bit turned off by some of the debates I’ve seen with the Republican candidates. There are some important issues that I’m not really hearing about. I have a feeling the people organizing these debates don’t really want the candidates to have a chance to speak out on pro-life, pro-family issues. Well, someone arranged for an event that dealt directly with these issues. It was the Thanksgiving Family Forum held in Des Moines, Iowa on November 19. If you did not get a chance to see it you can click on the link provided below.

I would like to address the issue of allegations against Hermann Kane that have come up this past month. If there is a factual basis for these allegations, they are an issue to consider in his candidacy. We cannot separate private morality from public integrity. To think we could do so would be foolhardy. At the same time, if it comes down to it, because of his overall more conservative stance, I would rather have a Herman Kane in office than another four years with Barack Obama. Obama has been driving our blessed nation toward the precipice of socialism since he came into office. This has to end.

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Teachers as Culture Warriors

December 2, 2011 Leave a comment

Rebecca Hegalin spoke recently on FamilyTalk about becoming a culture warrior. Our culture is pushing against parents and families to uproot their influence in children’s lives. Mandatory preschool and daycare, full day kinder, no parent opt out for various social programs at school. All of these are examples of the Nanny State encroaching on responsibilities of the family. As Daniel Lapin would say the zookeeper taking over the care of the baby animals in the zoo. This encroachment impacts students in significant ways. As the family has been eroded away in our nation, children come to school more commonly in a state of crisis because they have no secure family environment.

Wall Builders had an episode with John Stonestreet of Summit Ministries and the Colson Center. They discussed the concept of Christians moving toward the tipping points in our culture in order to multiply our impact. Entertainment, journalism, politics, and education are all positions that wield extra leverage in our culture. As teachers we have a significant impact on our students. The left knows this and has been targeting schools from primary up through graduate courses with their ideology. Currently, it is not generally acceptable to be openly Christian in the classroom. In fact, there are reports of teachers being relieved of their duties and even sued because of their commitment to openly living our their faith. Thankfully there are a phalanx of conservative Christian legal firms that will take on clients whose 1st Amendment rights are being violated in this way. Please see my Resources page for a listing of some legal organizations that help in these situations.

We need Christians who are both willing to speak up and take a stand for what is right as well as push back when there are attempts at repression. Unfortunately, it is intimidating (at least for me) to be what seems to be a lone conservative voice in a sea of liberal leaning media, policies, and colleagues. I’m afraid of professional or social backlash myself. How about you, dear reader? Do you have concerns about taking a stand for moral causes or for Christian representation in this environment?

Mrs. Hagelin is the author of two books: Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That’s Gone Stark Raving Mad and 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family.

John Stonestreet publishes (among other things) a one minute radio/podcast minute called The Point Radio. He addresses current issues from a Christian worldview.

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Tipping Points

November 18, 2011 1 Comment

Chuck Colson in his Breakpoint Commentary discussed the idea of Tipping Points in culture. Just a few activists have pushed our culture to the brink of legalizing same-sex marriage and managed to define the debate in large part by a favorable portrayal of homosexual characters in media.

WallBuilders discussed this concept recently with Colson teammate John Stonestreet of Summit Ministries. They made the point that a minority can move the majority opinion if they act on the leverage points of culture. Summit Ministries provide classes for youth and adults on Christian worldview training. Doing the Right Thing is a DVD series for Christian worldview training.

If we Christians will get more active and exert influence at the leverage points of culture, we will move our culture back in the direction of godliness, morality, and eventually prosperity. For us as
teachers we are already at one of the leverage points of culture. Unfortunately most of us do not take a distinctly Christian stand there (myself included). If we are not courageous and begin to do so, we will continue to lose the culture war.

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Marginalizing Christians in Education

November 13, 2011 Leave a comment

gavel

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There is an effort to marginalize and eliminate the Christian voice from education and the public square. Liberal groups, though they tout a message of tolerance, are actually quite intolerant of Christians expressing or following their beliefs and ethics in the public square.

If you have felt concerned about getting sued or attacked for your beliefs as a Christian, you might be interested in knowing about a story which transpired recently in Florida. A high school history teacher expressed his view that the legalization of so-called same-sex marriage was wrong on his Facebook page. A complaint was filed by someone (not one of his students) and the teacher was put on administrative leave. The school district and principal was contacted by Matt Staver’s Liberty Counsel. They Informed the superintendent that it was legally clear that teachers do not lose their 1st amendment rights when they take their teaching jobs. The teacher was reinstated with no further punitive action. Click here to hear the WallBuilders episode on this event.

If you as a teacher have felt like your Christian views and practices are unwelcome in the public school setting, you could benefit from the support and encouragement of Christian Educators Association International (CEAI). This association’s goal is to support and encourage Christian teachers in the public school setting. They have conference opportunities to meet and connect with other teachers. They know that many teachers got into public education as an opportunity to be missionaries there. There is a training event coming up in the Los Angeles area in the spring. This month they had an article in their magazine Teachers of Vision. It explains some of the misperceptions and misinformation regarding expressions of faith (especially the Christian faith) of teachers in the classroom. I’ll try to add more information on these CEAI activities in later posts.

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Collective Bargaining needs Balance

October 29, 2011 2 Comments

Map of USA with Ohio highlighted

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The Ohio state teachers union wants the California teachers union to support them. There is a move in Ohio like the one in Wisconsin to reduce collective-bargaining rights. We’ve been asked to make phone calls to support the Ohio teachers union. I myself was disgusted by the childish behavior of the Wisconsin unions and liberal politicians in regard to these collective-bargaining votes back in the spring.

There comes a time in getting on a budget that requires sacrifice. When a family is trying to clean up their financial mess, they have to choose some areas to cut back their lifestyle. When a government is trying to clean up their financial mess, they have to choose some spending areas to cut back on. Those Wisconsin protesters did not seem to understand this and basically raised a big stink and cost their state time and money instead.

Collective bargaining has a place in balancing the needs of individual workers with the needs of the organization. Unfortunately some of the contractual obligations organizations have become entrapped by are no longer viable. Refusing to back off on these is ruins what Steven Covey called the production capacity of an organization. Basically killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

In recent years and in the coming months and years more of us in education are going to be called on to make some sacrifice because of the poor financial state of our nation and/or state. When that time comes for me, I don’t plan to whine, protest, or complain. I will do what must be done. I don’t plan to call anyone in Ohio to encourage them to do otherwise. I suspect there are many other teachers who did not agree with the unruly protests last spring in Wisconsin. I would be interested in your take on it.

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Spiral of Silence

October 7, 2011 2 Comments

Derogation

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Chuck Colson on his Breakpoint podcast recently discussed the spiral of silence. In a book by the same name, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann explained that groups often marginalize themselves by failing to make their voice heard in the public arena. The spiral of silence is the phenomenon that media elites and opinion leaders have taken advantage of to push their ideas of morality. They broadcast, publish, and display them before our eyes as though they are already accepted into the broad culture. Since people do not like to go against the grain, we silently allow these ideas to push into our culture. For instance, take the opinion that homosexual relationships being legitimate. That people acting out homosexually should be allowed to be in the military. That people engaging in a homosexual relationship should be allowed to “marry”. That the possible homosexual actions of historical figures should be pointed out and taught to school children. As these ideas are pushed by our “friends” in the media, education, and government, over time the culture moves in the direction that they want it to go.

The way to get control of this problem is to get our views back into the public forum. To put our point of view out there so people can see it, hear it, read it, and have an opportunity to agree with it. Only if the message is available can people realize that there are other ways…  some way… a better way to live than what is being pushed by the popular media. If we our silent, however, we are doomed to become ever more marginalized until we have basically no voice at all.

So make your voice heard. Talk to friends and associates about your conservative views. Start a blog or podcast; or comment on other people’s blogs or podcasts. Many people are looking for a way of thinking and living that works.

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American Exceptionalism

September 30, 2011 Leave a comment

Map of the British invasion of New Haven, Conn...

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WallBuilders Live! aired a three part recording of Tim Barton this week speaking to Patriot Academy on American Exceptionalism. What makes America great… or rather, what made America great? “If we forget what we’ve done, we won’t know who we are.” – Ronald Reagan.

Tim makes the point that this war was not just fought because of taxation without representation. That is a modern deconstructivist, revisionist fallacy. The Founders had deep convictions about their splitting from England. If you look at the Declaration of Independence (Click here), of the 27 abuses listed as reasons to assert our independence from England, 8 were judicial abuses, 8 were legislative abuses, 9 were military abuses, and only 2 were economic abuses. However, if you ask anyone why we had the revolution, most people know the answer to be taxation without representation. We have forgotten where we came from.

Tim colorfully weaves stories throughout his explanation of what made America great. He tells several stories of American heroes from the Revolution that we never hear nowadays. For example, Elizabeth Lewis, wife of Francis Lewis, signer of the Declaration, stood at the door of her home while being fired on by cannon. She was thrown into a British POW camp, and fed bread and water once a day, became malnourished, and died shortly after her release. Do you suppose she stood up before cannon fire because her family was being taxed without representation? No. There was a deeper conviction than this. If we actually read the Declaration,we understand better.

Mr. Barton related stories like Naphtali Daggett, pastor and pro tempore president of Yale, who went out to meet the British with 100 other men to hold them off and give the towns people a chance to evacuate New Haven, CT. The 100 man set up along a hillside to hold back the British, but Naphtali Daggett climbed a hill way ahead of them and began sniping the British troops. The 100 men were driven back and the British advanced. Daggett was left alone in his position. The British commanding officer journaled that he had heard shots ring out every few minutes, and he was going to ignore them, except that one of his men was getting taken out with each shot. They went back and found this old man shooting at them. They captured Daggett but when the commanding officer saw that it was just a one old man by himself he offered to let them go free if he would promise not to shoot at them anymore. Naphtali Daggett said there was nothing more likely than that he would keep on shooting the soldiers. That answer cost him his life. This is just one example of a story of sacrifice and courage from our War for Independence.

If you would like to hear more of these stories and a more complete explanation of American exceptionalism, please listen to Tim Barton’s presentation on WallBuilders Live!

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Principles behind our American Government

September 22, 2011 Leave a comment

WallBuilders had Frank Miniter as a guest this week. They discussed rebuilding our weakened Bill of Rights which had a lot of good ideas. However, David Barton and Rick Green opened the show with a discussion of American Exceptionalism  and the basic principles upon which America was built. I appreciated their explanation and pass them on here.

American Exceptionalism – a set of ideas and philosophy that produce institutions and policies which lead to unprecedented levels of stability and prosperity. Six principles upon which our American system was built: 1. There is a divine creator. 2. That creator gives individuals certain unalienable rights. These are not rights to groups. They are not collective rights. They are individual rights, endowed by the creator not by the government. 3. Government exists to protect these rights.   4. There are moral absolutes that govern our lives known as the laws of nature and of nature’s God.  5. Below the moral law is the social compact which makes up our body of non-moral laws such as the speed limit, building codes, and so forth. 6. If a system of government doesn’t do it’s job you can abolish it and form a new one.

It is not hard to believe that these are the principles upon which our Declaration of Independence was formed. The language closely parallels what we find there. Unfortunately we have been fed the lie so long that our founders were atheists, agnostics, and deists that we are slow to believe our nation had such God-centered founding principles. Please listen to WallBuilders to get a new insights on our founding (which are actually an older, better historically supported perspective).

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The American Trinity

September 14, 2011 Leave a comment

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On FamilyTalk with Ryan and James Dobson I got to hear Dennis Prager addressing a University of Denver crowd explaining the American Trinity: e pluribus unum, liberty, and in God we trust. Without all three of these principles, American society would cease to be American society. I’ll attempt to give a short summary here.
E pluribus unum: out of many one. The American ideal is that we can welcome people from a wide variety of backgrounds who want to adopt our founding principles and way of life. Here in America, people groups are assimilated faster than in any other country. Here in America although we have a wide variety of cultural backgrounds we can find unity in adopting and adhering to a common value system and a common set of laws. The left would prefer that we see and relate to the culture as a large mass of distinct, conflicted cultural groups. However, this is not the American ideal for e pluribus unum.
Liberty: we run into a problem with liberty and equality. Equality is a supposedly primary value for the left. Equality means everyone gets treated the same. Not that we all have the same opportunity. Equality in the paradigm of the left means that everyone must be treated the same and if they’re not that is unfair. This excludes any opportunity for people to use hard work and initiative to change their level of prosperity and influence.
In God we trust: it is naïve and a product of several decades of deconstructionist teaching that many have come to believe that America was founded as a secular nation. The fact is that our foundation was religious and on a Christian foundation. For more information on that you might want to read Original Intent by David Barton. For more on the concept of deconstructionism please see my post on the Five Historical Traps of the Left.
There is a culture war going on between the left and right in America. The left wants to divide America into multi cultural groups and divorce it from its religious heritage and therefore its values base. Most from the right embrace our religious heritage and values. We embrace the truth that all men are created equal: all men regardless of race, color, creed are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.

If you would like to hear Dennis Prager’s speech please follow this link the the FamilyTalk Broadcast Archive.

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Avoiding the Historical Traps of the Left

September 5, 2011 3 Comments

First page of Constitution of the United States

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Avoiding the Historical Traps of the Left – summarized from WallBuildersLive!

WallBuilders is one of my favorite organizations for informing, encouraging, and equipping Christian conservatives to take back the land.  I encourage you to check out their half hour show available in some areas on the radio and online.

“David Barton gives a presentation on avoiding the historic traps of the left. Listen as he presents facts about our nation that you were never taught. What is it about our history that the left doesn’t want us to know? Our nation has Christian roots. When we understand that, we will understand where we come from and where we are going.”

Below is my brief summary of the traps. For a detailed and enjoyable explanation of each one, go listen to the archive of the series of six shows starting August 23, 2011.

1. Poststructuralism – to believe that only groups not individuals give meaning to the whole. This trap makes us consider people not as individuals but as members of groups. They consider everyone on the merits of their group membership. This is coupled with the belief that the Bill of Rights protects the rights of the minority from the rights of the majority not the rights of individuals from an overreaching government.

2. Modernism. Modernism is to use a modern context to interpret any events whether fairly recent or in the distant past. For example, Thomas Jefferson attended church in the Capitol building during his presidency. He even ordered the Marine Corps band to play foe the worship services. Some would look at this through a modern lens and say he misunderstood the Constitution, but it is more likely to say that he understood it, but we’ve grown to misunderstand it now.

3. Academic collectivism. This trap happens when a series or set of academics agree amongst themselves and reference each other’s works to back up their assertions. They rarely, never, or selectively go back to historical documents for fact-finding. Instead they simply cite one another’s work to support their theories. This tends to get away from anything based on history and ends up allowing them to support the agenda of their choosing.

4. Minimalism is the practice of focusing on a tiny subset of what was happening at a time in the past as though that is all that was happening. An example would include saying that we separated from England because of taxation without representation. This is one of the reasons but it is one of 27 reasons. Unfortunately that is probably the only reason most schoolchildren could give today.

5. Deconstructionism a steady stream of negative designed to tear down the positive image in the mind of the people. When the historians and press only focus on negative aspects of the founding era and from founding fathers lives, people are not aware of the positive things and the Christian religious nature of many of their beliefs and actions. It changes our attitude toward our country and its founding.

Again, this was simply my brief summary of the traps. For a detailed and enjoyable explanation of each one, go to the archive of the series of six shows starting August 23, 2011 and listen for yourself.

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