Prison Reform

January 26, 2012 1 Comment

English: Concertina razor wire at a prison

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WallBuilders had Jack Cowley on to discuss reducing recidivism amongst our prison population. Faith-based prisons in Alabama have reduced recidivism from somewhere around 80% down to less than 10% recidivism. The faith-based prison program is a part of Alpha USA involves local churches and members in a restitution and reconciliation process. These prisons are not set up based on simply doing your time. The prison population is somewhere around 60% non-violent offenders. If those nonviolent offenders would work better in these faith-based style systems, we would save a large amount of money in our prison system. A greater savings which is somewhat intangible would actually occur in the reduction of the children of prisoners following in their father’s footsteps going to prison. There’s a very high percentage of children of inmates who end up on welfare and also in prison. It contributes to the epidemic of fatherless children.

On BreakPoint this week, they discussed HOPE: Hawaii Opportunity Probation Enforcement. This is another new approach to enforcing nonviolent offenses by drug users that actually works. The crux of the program is that prisoners on probation are randomly drug tested. If they test positively they are immediately taken into custody for a few days. Typically when an inmate on probation tests positively they get several chances before the system catches up with any real consequence, giving the appearance of being able to break their probation with impunity. HOPE’s quick response time builds in a air of seriousness to the crime and encouraged the users to get clean and stay clean.

The program saves money to the tune of three dollars saved for every one dollars spent for regular enforcement. HOPE has also demonstrated a reduction in repeat offenses, therefore, reducing prison populations.

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Getting the Bible Back into the Classroom

January 20, 2012 1 Comment

KJV BibleThe WallBuilders Live! broadcast this Thursday, 1/19/2012 highlighted the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS)program. This is a curriculum that teaches the Bible as a historical and literary text. The program draws connections with the Constitution, presidential inaugural addresses, the conflict in the Middle East, and a host of literary allusions and idioms that originate from the Bible. There is an electronic version which provides wider access to students. The classes already are in place in nearly 600 school districts, over 2,000 schools, and over 500,000 students have been through the class in the last 15 years. NCBCPS has a package for presenting to your local school board to get this for credit class into your high school or junior high. You can request a package on their website.

Some people might wonder if this is illegal in light of the wrong-headed Supreme Court opinion of 1963. NCBCPS deals with the legal question on the website. The fact is that within that opinion Supreme Court Justice Clark supported the use of the Bible as a literary and historical source:

“It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literacy and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”

School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203,225 (1963)


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What is Civilization?

January 14, 2012 1 Comment

English: Newly enfranchised women voting in th...

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I recently heard a presentation by Rabbi Daniel Lapin on WallBuilders Live! He spoke to the question of “What is Civilization?” Lapin asserts that the world today is engaged in a epic struggle between civilization and barbarism. Lapin claims that there is only one civilization. The society built upon the precepts in the Bible. People and society are prone to that third law of thermodynamics otherwise known as entropy. We tend to on our own go toward barbarism as a default state. Only with the civilizing influence of the Biblical principles will we rise from that barbaric inclination.

Some of the defining characteristics of civilization include: respectful treatment of women, private property rights, and sanitation practices. Only in civilized society do women have any place of respect. In barbaric society men relate to women as either hermaphrodites or callous womanizers. In civilized society we find the concept that we can purchase the rights to a particular area of land. In barbaric society we believe that we are simply advanced animals. Animals really have no sense of the ownership of property. Animals only protect their own territory but do not claim it has their own. Communism, socialism and other similar materialistic, humanistic, philosophies denying the place of private property. You can spot marks of civilization by how people deal with waste and filth. In civilization sewage is disposed of safely and properly if you visit an Occupy Wall Street encampment you will quickly see whether you are dealing with civilized people or barbarians.

If you tell legislators they can resolve all teenage problems by painting a blue spot on the left ear of all teenagers, they would implement that policy in short order. However, if you tell legislators you can eliminate virtually all teenage problems by having a strong Bible-based education, they will refuse. They would rather have the problem than that solution. In barbarism there is a primal pleasure that comes with destruction. Many who are in the Occupy Wall Street movement are participating in that wrong minded pleasure. As teachers we want to be part of building up young people and civilized society. According to Lapin (and I tend to agree) the only way to accomplish that end is with Biblically based teaching.

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Growing up Global vs. American Exceptionalism

December 30, 2011 4 Comments

English: Composite image of the Earth at night...

View of Earth's lights at night

I’m all for being respectful of and interested in other cultures. Some of my closest friends are from different cultural backgrounds. Unfortunately it is becoming increasingly popular among today’s educators to attempt to cast our lives on the planet as being more meaningful as global citizens rather than American citizens. This practice once again unmoors people from the historical context of real life and attempts to build a fantasy world that has never worked and will never work on this side of heaven.

If you forget where you come from you don’t know who you are. If teachers do not teach the role that America has played in history in the last century (or rather focus on America’s mistakes rather than her successes see my post on poststructuralism), it is no wonder that students blindly accept notions that:

  • America should become like Europe and the rest of the world
  • America should bend over backwards to somehow make up for our place in the world power structure
  • We as Americans should subject our futures and our economic well-being to severe risk because of pseudoscientific environmental doomsday nonsense

Rather than teachers guiding their students to be global citizens, we should instead be teaching children what has made America great… What has made America strong… Why America has been the refuge of choice for millions of people over the last two centuries. We should not teach children that America needs to become like the rest of the world. That is a huge mistake on the part of many politicians and teachers today.

The documentary Agenda: The Grinding Down of America shines some telling light on this discussion. I recommend obtaining a copy and watching it at your earliest convenience. Agenda explains how teaching our children socialist concepts has been weakening America for the last several decades and threatens to destroy her from the inside out.

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The Great Recovery

December 17, 2011 Leave a comment

If you are a teacher in California these days, you might be having to live a little leaner these days. My wife and I have been using Dave Ramsey’s financial materials for a few years now. He has a method for handling finances in a practical methodical way. If you are needing help managing your income and expenses I highly recommend Dave Ramsey’s program.

I received an article from Dave Ramsey’s The Great Recovery movement entitled What Should You Expect from your Candidates? I appreciate Dave’s usual no-nonsense approach to politics. He emphasizes the fact that I have a lot more to do with what happens in my personal finances than Washington does. I need to vote and participate in our political process to get the best available leaders in office. But if I am waiting around expecting Washington or Sacramento to fix my financial situation, I’m going to be waiting a long time. And their solution will never work as well as something I could have come up with on my own. The thing that will fix my financial situation best is my own paying attention, learning, working hard, living on a budget, etc.

A quick summary of the characteristics includes the following:

  • Integrity
  • Cuts wasteful spending
  • Common sense
  • A good steward of money
  • Someone who listens
  • Strong leadership ability
  • Quick problem solving

If you’d like to read the article in its entirety click on this link What Should You Expect from your Candidates? You can also follow the link to learn more about The Great Recovery: a national recovery program that is guaranteed to be successful because it doesn’t depend on Washington. The Great Recovery appeals up the chain of command from Washington to fix our national financial problem. The Great Recovery appeals to We The People.

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Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7

December 7, 2011 Leave a comment

Posters like Allen Saalberg's strengthened Ame...

If we forget where we have come from we won’t know who we are. Pearl Harbor Day unfortunately is an important day in our history. WallBuilders Broadcast. It has fallen into obscurity in the last 70 years. This is another example of our left leaning media and higher education establishment pointing Americans away from our true history.

December 7, 1941 was very much like September 11, 2001. The United States was attacked without warning by a foreign adversary. Both heinous attacks provoked us to openly enter a war. The attack on Pearl Harbor day provoked our entrance into and justification for our actions in World War II. The attack was committed by the military forces of Japan against our military forces in Hawaii. The terrorist attacks of September 11 were committed by terrorists against civilians. While our war on terror (in fact, no war, ever) has resulted in some collateral damage against civilian people and sites, our overall war effort has been our official military forces against the rather unofficial insurgent, terrorist forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other terrorist-friendly places.

A couple of historical notes that might be of interest today:
September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City: V...

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The Barbary Coast war in the Marine Corps hymn we hear the words from the halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli. The Shores of Tripoli referred to our first war after our war for Independence. North African Muslims were attacking American ships at sea, taking Americans hostage, and then charging ransom for American citizens to be returned, usually in very poor condition from their treatment. In other words that war in the early 1800s was a war on terrorism. Here is a link to the WallBuilders Live! presentation that discusses this point. It has been packaged for sale since I first heard it back in 2007.

Just as the liberal media distractors have pulled our attention and favor away from our war on terror, liberal edu-crats have all but silenced the education of our young people on World War II. Watch this video where Ray Comfort asks young adults questions about Hitler. Many of them seem to have no idea who he was and what brutality he led in Europe during World War II.

Let us not forget our heroes, our fallen, or our past on Pearl Harbor Day.

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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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