Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Dhimmocrats, Harken Ye!

As a follow up to my Dhimmocrats post, I wanted to share this video which sums up my sentiments fairly well. Thank you, Sen. John Corwyn!

HT: MM

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Humble Beginnings

This one is worth a read. She's on my reader and has been for some time. This couple has a good perspective.

Monday, January 29, 2007

School Bus Blues - How America Is Selling Its Future On The Way To School

My few experiences aboard a school bus were normal, if loading 40 rambunctious children on board a conveyance with no seat belts and minimal supervision can be called normal. Not so for my younger niece. She had the wonderful experience of getting high or at least lightheaded from second hand marijuana smoke in the back of her school bus not more than a year ago. The next day, a fight broke out in the same bus. She refused to ride anymore and the next year, her parents transferred her to another district. Times have clearly changed. We live in an age when companies make their margin by equipping school buses with digital video surveillance.

Buses remain popular, with hundreds of thousands of children riding long tedious hours every week. One company claims to have found the solution. Instead of acting up, staring vacantly out the window or making a feeble attempt at coping with homework, they can listen to Avril Lavigne telling them to stay in their seats, stay in school and stay listening to Bus Radio.

On the main page of their web site, Bus Radio claims to have the statistics that show students improving their behavior while on board Bus Radio equipped buses. Now, obviously, it's not from a neutral, third party study, but even if it was certifiably true, I have some objections.

While the company claims that the programming they provide does not have any objectionable content, whose standards are they going by? Obviously, it's not the parents' standards. They have no say in what is presented. It's arguably better than just flipping the radio on, because most morning shows lean heavily on racy jokes and poor taste. On the other hand, choosing the lesser of two evils is hardly a good argument, especially when you can turn it off.

Students are exposed every day to a barrage of advertisements. Ad execs know that brand recognition occurs at these ages and begins to impact their spending habits. Why wouldn't you seek to get access to them?

This brings me to what troubles me most. Kids riding school buses are captive audiences. They cannot shut out an advertisement or a song they don't like. They are forced to listen. It sounds a lot like school, but with more entertainment potential. Schools earn money off exposing Bus Radio's content to the children, day after day, month after month. In fact, they get the systems at no cost, simply because Bus Radio knows that the devices will pay for themselves in ad revenue. Schools using Bus Radio are selling their students to whoever wants to grab them at the right price. It's not shocking, but it's sad.

I'm grateful, so grateful, that I have the freedom to educate my children at home, where I have a good deal of control over the media they're exposed to. My children are learning that there are more important things out there than cans of coke, iPods and Nike shoes. They realize that consuming isn't really living. Most importantly, they're learning how to love and serve each other. That's something a bus or a school just can't reliably give them.

HT: Culture Clips

Friday, January 26, 2007

Dhimmocrats Show Their True Colors

I don't know much about Iraq, admittedly. I don't have any clue on what the difference is between the Mahdi army and Al Qaeda in Iraq. I know that Baghdad has been around for a long time and that the ancient Hebrews spent some time there as "guests of the Babylonians."

I imagine that the average senator or representative doesn't know all that much about Iraq either or even about modern combat operations. They may as well ask, "Who Cares About the Military?" But what has been grating in my mind, like nails down a chalkboard, is the political posturing and grandstanding going on inside the beltway over "that problem in Iraq." Every distinguished gentleman from Maine to California is practically jumping at the opportunity to pass a non-binding measure poking at the President's troop increase. It truly irritates me.

Don't they know that this is exactly why bin Laden thought he could attack the United States in the first place? He viewed all this political backstabbing and turncoat trickery as signs of weakness. He believed he would strike America and everyone over here would be climbing all over each other trying to assign blame and in the end, lob a few cruise missiles toward some abandonded bunker to make ourselves feel better. He made a mistake, and he's not likely to do that again. Yet what does passing a non-binding resolution do but aid the enemy? I don't care whose opinion poll you sample, that's outright stupidity. Do they think militant Muslims are watching the Flintstones over there? They watch CNN and Al Jazeera and any news of a weakening of American resolve will send willing participants to the terrorists' side.

Congratulations, Senators. You may have just cost us the war. The next time you grandstand, go apologize to a soldier's wife for your yes vote. At least you'll have been honest.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

How Freedoms Die

Most of us have seen anti-Christianism in one form or another. Watch the morning news shows and you'll probably catch a whiff of it within an hour, but it's less likely now that Katie Couric is hosting the CBS Evening News. Still, Rabbi Daniel Lapin has written a startlingly vivid warning of the new anti-Christian rhertoric that is emerging post 9/11. In fact, he states,
What is truly alarming is that there are more of these books for sale at your local large book store warning against the perils of fervent Christianity than those warning against the perils of fervent Islam.
Lapin goes on to point out that if you were to change the titles of the books to reflect Judaism, you'd be appalled and shocked. I agree. It's because it's anti-Christian that people just shrug. They're used to it. And the frog continues to feel warm but not uncomfortable.

It's not just the Christian religion that's under fire. Consider a book I recently examined titled Religious Schools v. Children's Rights, written by James G. Dwyer and published by Cornell, a respectable university press. In it, Dwyer writes,
Relying on the well-established legal and moral principle that rights appropriately protect the only a rightholder’s own self-determination and personal integrity and that no one is entitled to control The life of another person, and finding no justification for departing from that principle in the case of parent-child relationships, I reach the conclusion that parental child-rearing rights are illegitimate. The law should grant parents only a legal privilege to care for and make decisions on behalf of their children in ways that are consistent with the children’s temporal interests. Children themselves should possess whatever rights are necessary to protect their interests, and these would include a right to protection from state interference that is not, on the whole, to their benefit. [emphasis mine] [p.100]
This is a book that is under the radar for the most part but somehow finds it's way to the marketplace. It finds its adherants and with soothing logic that is based on legal opinion, persuades them that parents should not have any rights but they are subject to the state's morality under what is a privelege, not a right. Might I remind the reader that a dictator's rise to power can be entirely legal and legitimate too. Rights become privileges. Priveleges become unaffordable in light of the needs of the state. Thus perishes parenthood, at least as we know it.

All is not lost. The temperature is hot and we may be approaching the boiling point, but we can still redeem and restore the beliefs and virtues we know are God-given and worthy of defending. We have a duty to speak out in the public arena about the truths our forefathers found to be self-evident. If we fail, our freedoms will die, one court decision at a time.