No, this is not a news report about government control of education.
Lauren Chooljian reports at The Daily Caller:
Despite Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s consistent calls for increased teacher salaries, a new study says that most public school teachers aren’t actually being underpaid.
The new research from The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute suggests a majority of public school teachers are making more than they likely would in the private sector.
And so are all those Western bodies with heads still attached. Meanwhile, at FoxNation, this:
The Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights confirmed that it is investigating allegations that Catholic University violated the human rights of Muslim students by not allowing them to form a Muslim student group and by not providing them rooms without Christian symbols for their daily prayers.
The investigation alleges that Muslim students “must perform their prayers surrounded by symbols of Catholicism -- e.g., a wooden crucifix, paintings of Jesus, pictures of priests and theologians which many Muslim students find inappropriate.”
Rivendell Sanctuary, where Nancy and I are on the faculty, is featured in an overview article titled "Christian Have College Choices," published at OneNewsNow.
OneNewsNow is a division of the American Family Association.
If parents and financial supporters of Messiah College get wind of this, there may be Heaven to pay:
On the surface it may seem odd that a self-professed Christian school would be hostile to the presentation of conservative ideas, but that’s nothing unusual for Messiah.
Students and alum tell us that teachers there preach “social justice” (read: socialism) as though it were gospel, which is why when the president of the College Republicans told us on Saturday evening that [Prof. James] LaGrand wanted their forum canceled, we believed him.
Tomorrow in our Theology class at Rivendell Sanctuary we shall have a Socratic circle that discusses "Why I Am Not a Christian," a lecture by famed atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell.
In stark contrast to the cults of politics, "faith," and "settled science" so evident on today's campus, in Hollywood, around politics, and in the formerly mainstream media, free-thinkers who embrace the Judeo-Christian worldview because it is empirically verifiable, logically consistent, answers the basic philosophic questions, and is existentially viable relish the opportunity to test various truth-claims in the marketplace of ideas.
Some may prefer to cling to their false ideolgies, inhumane politics, materialistic economics, and family-destroying social agendas. Others would rather seek truth. And then on the basis of what is discovered, help build a better world.
And so tomorrow we shall ask ourselves and Bertrand Russell a few honest questions. It's called the free exhange of ideas. You may recall that, once upon a time in America, a lot of colleges did that.
Kathleen Gilbert reports at LifeSiteNews:
The Texas school where a teen was punished for saying homosexuality was wrong has apologized and stated the boy “has the right to express an opinion in a manner consistent with law and policy.”
The Fort Worth Independent School District has issued a letter fully vindicating high school freshman Dakota Ary, who was given in-school suspension for telling another student that he believes homosexuality is wrong because of his Christian faith.
The school should also apologize for hatefully discriminating against the Creator and his verifiable norms for human sexuality and healthy families.
Bravo to student Dakota Ary and Liberty Council for standing up to the homosexual propaganda machine.
Former Minnesota governor Al Quie visited our class at Rivendell Sanctuary last Wednesday, September 20. His granddaughter Savannah Quie is one of our students.
Mr. Quie held office from 1979 to 1983, and when Savannah introduced him to the class, she was beaming as she described him as a man of great integrity.
He told us that he bought several copies of Nancy's book Total Truth and gave it to members of his family.
We were also joined in class Thursday and Friday by Katrina and Michelle Brittain, who are respectively the sister and mother of Justin Brittain.
Several of us enjoyed discussion over lunch with Katrina and Mrs. Brittain, and last night they jumped right in to a refreshing time of volleyball in the gym.
Whether from local Minneapolis environs (Al Quie) or flying in from the Southwest (Katrina and Michelle Brittain, New Mexico), Nancy and I think it's terrific that family members of our students take such an interest in their education, which occurs on so many levels, at Rivendell Sanctuary.
AP reports:
The annual "See You at the Pole" event is scheduled for Wednesday at schools across the nation -- and while students are the main focus, one national organizer says parents should be involved. . . .
The event, which takes place every year on the fourth Wednesday in September, annually draws somewhere between one and two million students, all of them gathering around the school's flagpole to pray for the nation, for each other, and for their school.
Christine Dhanagom reports at LifeSiteNews:
A Catholic University in Pennsylvania has cancelled a scheduled appearance by prominent feminist journalist Ellen Goodman after the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) drew attention to the conflict between Goodman’s work and Catholic Church teaching on key issues.
The Catholic watchdog group reported in a blog entry that Goodman was scheduled to speak October 12th at St. Francis University in Loretto on the topic of civility in public discourse. The lecture was part of the school’s annual Furlong Lecture Series.
The blog entry detailed the history of Goodman’s outspoken support for abortion, including opposing conscience rights for pharmacists who choose not to dispense abortifacient “emergency” birth control.
Kathleen Gilbert reports at LifeSiteNews:
A Christian high school student was punished by his school this week for saying he believes “being a homosexual is wrong.”
Dakota Ary, 14, says his statement was part of a one-on-one conversation about religions in Germany with a friend sitting behind him during a language class, according to a local Fox News report.
“I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling,” said Ary. “He told me he was going to write me an infraction and send me to the office.”
In case you didn't know, there now exists something called The Centre for Unintelligent Design.
Apparently, some 88 seconds ago, or several thousands of seconds ago, or millions or billions of seconds ago, the Centre for Unintelligent Design did not exist. And then, on the 89th second (or other such temporal numerical value), some aspect of time, space, and matter burped, and Lo & Behold, into being came the Centre for Unintelligent Design.
This contingent universe being what it is (or is not), you had better read all about this newish (or is it oldish, or do the words "new" or "old" -- without or without "ish" -- have meaning in a contingent universe?) website as soon as possible.
With each click of the tick-tock the Centre for Unintelligent Design may well uncreate itself back into the meaningless self-caused (or non-self-caused) nonexistence from which it emerged, lived, breathed, and for a while expressed its arbitrary being in a universe that couldn't care less.
One last thing: Did the website for The Centre of Unintelligent Design have a website designer? Just wondering.
Meanwhile, that's it folks. Now go watch some soccer.
David Cortman of the Alliance Defense Fund writes:
At different locales around the country, in places as diverse as Detroit, Mich., Lawrenceville, Ga., and Camdenton, Mo., the ACLU is sending letters and filing lawsuits seeking to disallow government school usage of certain Internet filters.
They claim their campaign is designed to end the blocking of “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender” activist group sites, but in reality it will allow school children to access to pornographic websites.
It's a straightforward principle, Moms and Dads: Don't allow ACLU bullies and their minions to impose inside schools what you would not allow outside of them.
This is your country, is it not? You -- and not the state -- are the proper God-given stewards of the education of your children are you not?
Therefore: Resist, fight, protect, and overcome.
Kick these well-heeled merchants of slime out. Get them out of the lives of your kids and keep their dirty paws off our laws. Reclaim your future, your children's future, and your country's future.
Let's make schools safe places for kids. Safe places for learning. And an uncomfortable place to be if you are a kid-targeting ACLU bully.
"The Alliance Defense Fund is helping defend a Missouri school district in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several homosexual activist groups against the district's use of Internet filters," reports Bob Kellogg at OneNewsNow.
"The ACLU and Yale Law School are pushing the 'Don't Filter Me!' campaign to give public school students access to Internet porn," Kellogg continues.
"They claim that because the filters block students from accessing sexually explicit material, including sites operated by homosexual activist groups, they are concerned about censorship and bullying. But David Cortman of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) thinks the groups have a different agenda."
According to Cortman, "It's simply reprehensible that the ACLU and Yale Law School are more concerned about faring their own agenda that exposes children to harm than they are about protecting those children. . . . Certainly, removing porn filters does nothing to end bullying."
In fact, if you want to end bullying in schools, a terrific place to start is by ousting power-hungry homosexualist bullies and power-hungry ACLU bullies, who are the biggest bullies on the block and who are on an unending absolutist crusade to impose their private "values" and perverted practices, under the camouflage of "rights," upon everyone in the land.
Eighteen-months after my report exposing Wheaton College’s promotion of social justice in its Education Department, the college has revised the department’s conceptual framework. New Wheaton College President Philip Ryken also has removed the college’s official response to my report that had been posted to Wheaton’s website.
As you may recall, my piece revealed that Wheaton’s earlier conceptual framework relied heavily on far Left radicals like Bill Ayers, Paulo Freire, and Richard Rorty. It also included excerpts from my interview with the chair of Wheaton’s Education Department where she refers to Ayers as “enlightening” and claims Marxism is “not necessarily” unbiblical. The report aired in February 2010 on the former Sandy Rios Show on the Salem Broadcasting Network.
"If you thought that something as innocuous as putting up 3,000 American flags on school grounds to pay tribute to those murdered on September 11 couldn’t be controversial, you haven’t been to Marietta College," writes Jason Mattera at Human Events.
Are schools now "safe" for homosexualism safe for your kids? Perhaps not.
Consider the following in a report at LifeSiteNews.com:
“We want educators to teach future generations of children to accept queer sexuality. In fact, our very future depends on it. Recruiting children? You bet we are.”
It seems that guys in cars and raincoats not longer have to offer candy to children to entice them to enter in. Why bother with all of that when you can offer a "safe" "education"?
Why? For spiritual, moral, intellectual, and financial reasons -- so counsels UNC Professor of Criminology Mike Adams.
Or parents could consider a place called Rivendell Sanctuary.
Rivendell Sanctuary has just ordered a shipment of Nancy's great book (if I may say so!) Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity for our semester of Socratic-style studies on critical thinking, theology, and philosophy, beginning August 18.
We offer many additional readings as well, but it's terrific to be able to make the kind of content available in foundational works such as Total Truth to students brave enough to think for themselves and to walk wisely in this world.
Here's the press release (noticed also at Breitbart.com) announcing our decision to join the faculty of Rivendell.
"A homosexual advocacy group is getting taxpayer money to increase the percentage of schools that set up 'safe spaces' for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth," reports CNSNews.com.
This means radicals on a mission from San Francisco will be using your money to target your children or grandchildren for indoctrination into a factually and ethically challenged "life" that discriminates against the Creator and his liberating norms for family life and human sexuality.
This is not about "equality." That's a buzz-word employed by marketers and deviance-pimps to push their position. You're supposed the hear it and stop thinking and caring -- immediately, if not sooner.
Instead, this is about eviscerating American exceptionalism as a nation of limited government so that human liberty in community with the Creator, who is the source of unalienable human rights, can find expression in all walks of life.
You can read about it in a little thing called the Declaration of Independence. Still legal in some states and some schools.
Do you love your neighbor? Do you care about education? Should schools be a "safe space" for the advance of American exceptionalism and constitutional government? Then defund the propagandists and get them of our schools and away from our kids.
Fear of Critical Thinking? "A study from the Discovery Institute shows that a leading textbook publisher is failing to comply with the new science standards in Texas," reports Bob Kellogg at OneNewsNow.
Nancy and I have joined the faculty of Rivendell Sanctuary, a "new kind of college" based in Bloomington, MN, and now are now on scene to prepare for August classes.
Nancy and Michael have already been here since mid-June. I drove up from the D.C. area last Saturday after taking a couple of weeks to tie up remodeling loose-ends (to prepare our home for renting) and completing transition requirements so our property management company can handle things in Northern Virginia.
We loved updating our home and are now thrilled to be here in sunny Minnesota. Please drop by and see us at Rivdendell Sanctuary!
Nancy is speaking Friday, May 27, at the 27th annual North Carolinians for Home Education conference at the Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem. More than 7,000 people are expected to attend this conference.
At 9:00 a.m. Nancy is scheduled to speak on "Equipping Homeschoolers to Recognize, Resist, and Overcome Secular Worldviews."
At 2:00 p.m. she will speak on "Teaching Christian Worldview Across the Curriculum."
And at 3:30 p.m. Nancy will discuss "Responding Creatively to the Challenge of Feminism."
Here is a schedule of the conference. For more information about North Carolinians for Home Education, please visit their website.
CNSNews.com reports: "Next year on Earth Day, the Obama administration plans to announce which U.S. schools have been selected as 'Green Ribbon Schools,' a designation that will 'honor' schools for 'creating healthy and sustainable learning environments' and for 'teaching environmental literacy'."
"A Southeast Texas teacher has been put on leave pending an investigation into an allegation that he made a racially insensitive comment to a Muslim student referencing the death of Osama bin Laden." More at The Blaze.
A conservative military watchdog says the United States Military Academy was right to deny a former cadet readmission to the school because she is a homosexual.
Katherine Miller left West Point in August, halfway through her stint at the Academy, saying she could no longer lie about her sexuality. So when she recently applied to rejoin, officials at the U.S. Military Academy rejected her application.
They explained that the repeal of the policy that bars homosexuals from legal military service, which was accomplished by the 111th lame-duck Congress, has not yet gone into effect -- and will not do so until 60 days after the president and senior defense advisers certify that it will not hurt the troops' ability to fight.
Nancy Pearcey is speaking tomorrow, Saturday, April 30, at an educational conference in Manassas, Va.
Here is a schedule of the event, which is organized by Classical Conversations and will be held at Manassas Baptist Church (Sudley Road).
Nancy is scheduled to speak at 10:15 am and at 1:45 pm. You can also join her for a book-signing at 5:00 pm -- so be sure to bring copies of Saving Leonardo and her other books, as well.
This review of Nancy's book Total Truth appears on the Classical Conversations website. And here is an interview with Nancy.
For more information, download a flyer here. To pre-register, please go here.
"Public school teachers in Tennessee could lose their tenure or their jobs for discussing homosexuality with their students under a new bill," reports Fox News.
This bill appears to be a good start. Of course teachers should not impose upon students false and pretended social norms that so deeply violate our humanity, our bodies, our male-female diversity, and our life in community with the Creator (see the Declaration of Independence).
On the other hand, of course teachers ought to be able to discuss homosexuality. Living in community with one's neighbor is greatly helped by factually and ethically cautioning others against behaviors and choices that invite personal, social, and civil breakdown.
The way of America is that of the reality-oriented Creator, not of la-la-land San Francisco. Bravo to Tennessee for even considering encouraging teachers to help liberate students from homosexualist oppression.
Male and female created in the image of God. Viva la difference!
David Freddoso writes at Beltway Examiner:
Today's Wall Street Journal examines the "Iowa homeschoolers vote" noting that Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and Herman Cain attended the annual lobby day for the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators yesterday.
Speaking of homeschooling, we The Pearceys have homeschooled our sons.
And Nancy in May has the honor of keynoting a North Carolina homeschooling conference expecting some 9,000 in attendence at the Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem.
Nancy's new book, Saving Leonardo, was taught to homeschoolers prior to publication. Saving Leonardo issues a challenge to liberate culture from its secular captivity.
We've seen that secular captivity at work in education and politics today, and it is not pretty.
So when potential candidates for U.S. President court the homeschool vote in places like Iowa, this is a highly positive sign indeed -- for our culture, our politics, our education, and our children.
For understanding that "Homeschoolers can make a difference," "Well done!" to the Iowa Network of Christian Home Educators. Here's their website.
Students who join us at Rivendell Sanctuary will experience learning abroad in Florence, Rome, and Venice. For photos and details, go here.
"Florida public school teachers would lose job security but could make more money if their students do well on standardized tests under a trailblazing bill that went to Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday after a party-line vote in the Republican-controlled state House," reports AP.
"Arne Duncan, the U.S. secretary of education and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, would not say where the U.S. Constitution authorizes the federal government to be involved in primary and secondary education," reports Christopher Goins at CNSNews.com.
"Provost Thomas Burns of Belmont University in Nashville has announced in a statement that the evangelical Christian school has given official approval to its first homosexual student organization," reports LifeSiteNews.com.
If someone bumps into Mr. Burns on campus or via email (thomas.burns@belmont.edu), you might ask: Why on earth would a putatively Christian school embrace a secular, divisive, false, and fragmenting ideology that discriminates against the Creator and the Creator's norms for human sexuality and family life?
This fund helps individuals become "students of honor" at Rivendell Sanctuary, where Nancy and I recently came aboard as faculty tutors (press release).
To learn more about the "Take Back Education Scholarship Fund," go to this website.
"The Idaho legislature has approved a bill that would phase out tenure for new teachers and limit their collective-bargaining rights, marking a victory for lawmakers seeking union reforms in state capitals across the country," reports FoxNews.com.
"A Christian educator is applauding a national survey that shows more than 900 biology teachers in public high schools are teaching creationism, which is thriving in the classroom," reports OneNewsNow.
"The New York Times recently brought attention to a survey published in an issue of Science magazine that shows only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendation of the National Research Council to only teach evolution," reports the news outlet.
"We really encourage teachers to teach multiple theories: evolution, creationism, intelligent design," says Finn Laursen, executive director of Christian Educators Association International.
"In other words," says Laursen, "just teach the science and let higher level of thinking speak for itself. . . . We know as followers of the biblical truth that if we just study science, it will point back to the Creator. And we even know the Creator's name."
Related
Christianity Is a Science-Starter, Not a Science-Stopper
Dawkins: Nazi Eugenics "May Not Be Bad"?
Darwinian Meltdown Reaches England
"On Full Display in Wisconsin," says FrontPage Magazine.
We Ride to Rivendell: Here's the webpage.
They're discussing Saving Leonardo at the Providence Presbyterian Church in Sugar Land, Texas.
"In January the class begins a new discussion on Secularism and Christian Worldview with Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning by Nancy Pearcey. Copies are available from Pastor McCall," says the church website.
"An astronomer argues that his Christian faith and his peers' belief that he is an evolution skeptic kept him from getting a prestigious job as the director of a new student observatory at the University of Kentucky," AP reports.
"Martin Gaskell quickly rose to the top of a list of applicants being considered by the university's search committee," says the news service.
"One member said he was 'breathtakingly above the other applicants.' Others openly worried his Christian faith could conflict with his duties as a scientist, calling him 'something close to a creationist' and 'potentially evangelical'."
Related
Christianity Is a Science-Starter, Not a Science-Stopper
Robert Stacy McCain writes at American Spectator:
A gunman who opened fire during a Florida school board meeting before apparently committing suicide left a "testament" on his Facebook page that blamed the "wealthy" for his crime.
Clay Duke, 56, pulled a pistol during a Tuesday school board meeting in Panama City, Fla., and fired several shots, according to press accounts. A security officer for the school system shot and wounded Duke, who then fatally shot himself, police told reporters.
Before pulling the gun, Duke used a can of red spray-paint to make the letter "V" inside a circle on a wall of the meeting room. This was evidently a reference to the 2006 movie V for Vendetta, in which a character uses terrorist tactics to fight an oppressive government.
Adam Shaw writes at American Thinker:
London's descent into anarchy over a rise in university tuition fees shows just how deeply the entire leftist enterprise relies on their takeover of the university system. . . . The passion behind the riots (which included not just students, but whole squads of angry leftists) is explained not only by the usual left-wing angst, but also by the fact that the rise in tuition strikes will radically reform the main left-wing recruitment center and training ground -- the university. (emphasis added)
In a column titled, "Should Secularism Be Taught in Public Schools?" Nancy rejects the "dictates of political correctness" and argues that "no 'ism' should be privileged" in the public schools.
And that includes secularism, which is "radically dehumanizing" and undercuts the "worldview that inspired the American Founders, who maintained that human rights are 'endowed' by the Creator."
Far better, she writes, if students are encouraged to think through and examine for themselves the truth-claims of the competing "isms" we face in society today. Nancy explains how to proceed:
Every system of thought, to be taken seriously, must address the same fundamental questions: What is ultimate reality? What is human nature? What is the basis for morality? And so on. Using the neutral term worldview creates a level playing field that allows for objective contrast and comparison.
"Open debate encourages students to become genuinely critical thinkers," Nancy concludes. "Only free minds can create free societies."
For more on why and how secularism ought to be resisted, please see Nancy's new book, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning.
Related
Superman vs. Zombies in the Classroom
How Secular Elites Disempower "Values Voter" America
The Adversary President: Obama vs. America
Secular Straightjacket: "The recent court rulings against students Jennifer Keeton in Georgia and Julea Ward in Michigan reveal the power amassed by the cabal of radicals in academia who have pushed the gay agenda into education," writes Mary Grabar at American Thinker.
Related
Augusta State University: Change Your Beliefs or No Degree
Faggot Easy to Defend -- Surprising Help From Secular America
Rosie O'Donnell's Oppressive Coat
From FoxNews.com:
The Oregon teacher who declared his mission to "dismantle and demolish" the Tea Party movement resigned before getting the ax, a school spokeswoman told FoxNews.com. . . .
Conestoga Middle School media lab teacher Jason Levin became national news back in April when he announced his intention to bring down the Tea Party on his "Crash the Tea Party” website and in media interviews.
The now-ex Conestoga Middle School media lab teacher said in April that he would seek to embarrass Tea Partiers by attending their rallies dressed as Adolf Hitler, carrying signs bearing racist, sexist and anti-gay epithets and acting as offensively as possible -- anything short of throwing punches.
The anything-but-neutral secularist worldview incarnates itself in many ways and in many locales -- for example, in the now-known-around-the-world attempt to force graduate student Jennifer Keeton of Augusta State University to drop her Christian convictions regarding homosexuality if she hopes to complete her graduate degree in counseling.
Keeton is suing, as is her right, and here Laura Ingraham interviews Keeton's lawyer, David French, on the O'Reilly Factor.
Nancy's new book, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning, does a great service in illuminating the inhumanity and disintegration produced -- quite naturally, out of an inner necessity -- by secularism out in the culture.
This includes the secularized academic culture, as it seeks to impose its closed-down agenda on the likes of Jennifer Keeton, not just at Augusta State, and not just in regard to homosexuality, but wherever secularist doctrine takes root and wherever secularist dogma is expected to be obeyed.
Related
Augusta State University: Change Your Beliefs or No Degree
Faggot Easy to Defend -- Surprising Help From Secular America
Rosie O'Donnell's Oppressive Coat
Writing at Lezgetreal, Bridgitte P. LaVictoire condemns graduate student Jennifer Keeton of Augusta State University for "lacking objectivity on homosexuality."
Meanwhile, The Daily Caller offers this quote from Alliance Defense Fund lawyer David French: "They made a cascading series of presumptions about the kind of a counselor she would be and have consequently . . . tried to force her to change her beliefs . . . . It’s symbolic of an educational system that has lost its way."
Related
Augusta State University: Change Your Beliefs or No Degree
Faggot Easy to Defend -- Surprising Help From Secular America
Rosie O'Donnell's Oppressive Coat
Published at Speakupmovement.org:
Today, the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom filed a lawsuit against officials at Augusta State University on behalf of counseling student Jennifer Keeton. Jennifer’s counseling professors have told her she must change her Christian beliefs to graduate, told her that she cannot share her faith with students even outside of class, and have imposed impossibly vague speech codes on her in an effort to implement a comprehensive program of thought reform.
You can read Jennifer’s Complaint and her Preliminary Injunction Motion to learn more. Or, you can watch her tell her story. (Click here)
A press statement from the Alliance Defense Fund states:
Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund filed suit against Augusta State University Wednesday on behalf of a counseling student told that her Christian beliefs are unethical and incompatible with the prevailing views of the counseling profession.
The student, Jennifer Keeton, has been told to stop sharing her beliefs with others and that she must change her beliefs in order to graduate from the counseling program.
Update: Perhaps I should add that, as a graduate of Augusta State University, this lawsuit is of particular concern to me.
As one pro-ban Democrat put it: "Patriotism is a very personal thing for all of us, but I do not think it is in the school committee’s best interest to mandate that any of our employees recite the Pledge." More at Newsmax.
"A Baptist minister who toured the country to talk about his conversion from Islam to Christianity is no longer the dean of Liberty University's theological seminary following allegations he fabricated or embellished facts about his past, the school said Friday," according to OneNewsNow.
"The university founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell said that a board of trustees committee concluded Ergun Caner made contradictory statements. Although it didn't find evidence that he was not a Muslim who converted as a teenager, it did discover problems with dates, names and places he says he lived, a statement said," reports OneNewsNow. "Caner will remain on the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary faculty, but won't be dean when his term expires on June 30."
Comment: It is crucial to do the Lord work in the Lord's way, which among other things means truthfulness in resumes, publishing (claims to book or column "authorship," for example), PR, marketing, fundraising, etc., is vital. Anything less is hypocrisy, makes Christianity a laughingstock, reveals a cynicism at the heart of some ministries and big names, does untold harm to unsuspecting people, suggests a church captured by secularism, and takes God's name in vain.
Related
Francis Schaeffer, the Religous Right, Cultural Decline, and Aping the World
Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinct Approach
David Limbaugh: "It's Not About Me" -- Wink, Wink
In such a school, Dawkins says he "would never want to indoctrinate children in atheism. . . . Instead, children should be taught to ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded. If children understand that beliefs should be substantiated with evidence, as opposed to tradition, authority, revelation or faith, they will automatically work out for themselves that they are atheists."
For someone who despises Christianity, Dawkins seems to know nothing of its emphasis on freedom of thought, critique, the demand for evidence, the appropriateness of questioning, and the call for commitment of the whole person based on evidence and rational analysis vis-a-vis the real world we know in our daily experience.
For more on the liberating epistemological perspective of the Judeo-Christian worldview, please see "Christmas Spirit in the Dirt."
Related
Atheist Goes Back to Court
True Scandal: 78% of Americans "Believe" in the Resurrection
Obama Team Claims Right to Ban Books, Speech
"Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's press for considering international law as 'the context' for interpreting U.S. law has incited worries her appointment could pave the way for world treaties that threaten both parental rights and homeschooling in the United States, reports WorldNetDaily.
From "Climate Alarmists on the Run" at the Washington Times:
Former Vice President Al Gore was at his peak when the film An Inconvenient Truth made its initial Hollywood splash. Faith in man-made global warming had never been more widespread, with liberal academics and media subjecting to ridicule any who dared question the "settled science." Only a fool could deny that elevated carbon-dioxide levels had melted ice caps and stranded polar bears on rapidly diminishing ice floes.
How the tables have turned in a short time. On May 20, Oxford Union, the prestigious 187-year-old English debating society, formally considered the question of whether it was more important to focus on growing the economy or solving global warming.
Climate realism won the day, 135 to 110. It's no wonder, considering how the purportedly scientific arguments advanced in support of the scaremongering conclusions have fallen apart since the Climategate scandal invited verification of the left's previously unexamined claims.
Peter Winn reports at CNSNews.com:
Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama’s choice to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, is best known for moving Harvard Law School away from the 100-year old "case-law method" of legal study.
But in the process, critics say, she moved the nation’s premier law school away from requiring the study of constitutional law towards the study of the laws of foreign nations and international law.
Extremist "Educator" Suzan Hebson Strikes Again: "The school official who nixed an Illinois girls high school basketball team trip to Arizona once supported a controversial program that required students to attend a 'freshman advisory' class where" so-called "gay upperclassmen shared stories of their high school experience with new students," reports Fox News.
Here is a Facebook page calling for the firing of Hebson, who is the District 113 assistant superintendent in Highland Park, IL.
The Facebook page supplies the contact information below and asks concerned citizens to "keep the comments civil . . . please!"
District 113 Superintendent
George Fornero
District 113 Asst. Superintendent
Suzan Hebson
433 Vine Avenue
Highland Park, IL 60035-2099
(224) 765-2000
shebson@dist113.org
As this interchange available at YouTube reveals, the answer a Hamas-supporting UC San Diego student eventually gives a couple of days ago is more ominous than a mere "No."
There is more on this "confused, chilling cold-blooded woman" at The Anchoress at First Things.
Hat tip: Reader of The Pearcey Report
"It has taken the keen eye of a Queensland University of Technology physicist to spot a 99-year-old mistake in the Oxford English Dictionary," reports Marissa Calligeros in the Brisbane Times.
Bob Unruh reports at WorldNetDaily:
Lawmakers in Michigan are preparing to call on the carpet leaders of taxpayer-supported universities across the state after top officials at Eastern Michigan University expelled from a counseling program a Christian student who refused to argue in support of the homosexual lifestyle.
As WND reported, trouble began for master's-program student Julea Ward when she refused to accept a client whose issue concerned a homosexual relationship.
Here is graduate student Julea Ward on YouTube.
Let's see how the formerly mainstream media "reports" on this strong, black woman who stands in the center of the enduring defining mainstream of American thought and practice.
Ron Meyer writes at Human Events:
As a college student, I constantly hear about how college is supposed to be trial place for new ideas. New ideas like communism. A student government experiment at Principia College has produced some humorous and rather predictable results.
Last year, my student government decided they were going to try this new idea called "Go-Bikes." Basically, the school would have community bikes where any student could take these labeled bikes wherever they needed to around campus. In theory, it looked like it would make student life much easier.
As a corrective to the formerly mainstream media comes this report from LifeSiteNews:
In the last several weeks such a quantity of ink has been spilled in newspapers across the globe about the priestly sex abuse scandals, that a casual reader might be forgiven for thinking that Catholic priests are the worst and most common perpetrators of child sex abuse.
But according to Charol Shakeshaft, the researcher of a little-remembered 2004 study prepared for the U.S. Department of Education, "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."
After effectively disappearing from the radar, Shakeshaft’s study is now being revisited by commentators seeking to restore a sense of proportion to the mainstream coverage of the Church scandal.
"A conservative activist is asking a Christian college in Pennsylvania whether it supports the 'sexual identity therapy' of one of its professors who is unwilling to discourage some of his clients from remaining in the homosexual lifestyle," reports Jim Brown at OneNewsNow.
"Dr. Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College was once a spokesperson for the ex-'gay' group PFOX (Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays) and produced a documentary titled I Do Exist, which highlighted the testimonies of former homosexuals who chose to leave that lifestyle," reports OneNewsNow.
To ask the professor a question, please use the following email address, which is made available on Dr. Throckmorton's Grove City College webpage: EWThrockmorton@gcc.edu.
Richard G. Jewell (rgjewell@gcc.edu) is president of Grove City College. William P. Anderson (wpanderson@gcc.edu) is provost and vice president for academic affairs. For additional contact information on Grove City College, please see this page.
"A ruling by a federal judge in Delaware could be a step in the right direction toward protecting school boards across the country that wish to open meetings with Christian prayer," reports OneNewsNow.
"The U.S. Congress is allowed to open its sessions with prayer, and according to Judge Joseph Farnan, the Indian River School Board in Delaware is closer to a legislative body than a school, so it should be allowed to open its meetings in the same manner."
But why erect a wall around the schools?
This judge seems not to realize that the "unalienable rights" of the Declaration do not end at the school door.
Not just school board members, but also teachers, students, principals, and other human beings are "created equal" and are "endowed" by our Creator with "certain unalienable rights," among them "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
This false wall of separation between prayer and school -- between who we are as humans and how we learn as humans -- smacks of secular hubris.
Instead, the 1st Amendment prevents Congress from passing any "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" or "abridging the freedom of speech."
Congress, and the federal establishment generally, needs to get back to the rules of freedom as set forth in our Founding documents.
Of course prayer in schools is constitutional. Free-thinking Americans set free by the Creator bow to no human king, to no judicial elite, nor to an overweening Congress. Nor to the privations of secular philosophy. It's all part of keeping a republic.
Radio talk show host Sandy Rios writes:
Imagine the dismay of many to learn that, in an effort to educate its students, Wheaton has moved to the left, so much so that in a survey by the Wheaton Record, 60 percent of its faculty voted for President Barack Obama, the most pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda, spiritually confused president the nation has ever elected.
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"A student says a Dallas public community-college teacher compared crosses to swastikas while explaining a school ban on religious items made in ceramics classes," reports Chelsea Schilling at WorldNetDaily.
"Liberty Legal Institute sent a Dec. 15 demand letter on behalf of Joe Mitchell, a retired General Motors employee, Dallas resident and student, to Eastfield College in the Dallas County Community College District," Schilling reports. "The complaint accuses the school of an 'unconstitutional attack on religious expression in the classroom'."
WND reports that the attack, according to the complaint, was launched by ceramics department chairman James Watral, who was filling in for the "regular ceramics instructor on the first day of a spring 2009 class."
According to the demand letter, "As Mr. Watral was giving students a tour of the pottery department, he took them to a shelving area where ceramics pieces are stored prior to being fired in the kiln. Mr. Watral then pointed to a cross and stated in front of the entire class with contempt: 'I don't like that.'"
WND notes that "concerned individuals may contact professor James Watral by e-mail or by calling (972) 860-7656. Interim college President Jean Conway can be reached by calling (972) 860-7001." Here is the website of Eastfield College.
Clear and Present Danger: "A new report is raising alarms that the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, a homosexual advocacy organization founded by Kevin Jennings, now head of the U.S. Office of Safe Schools for the Obama administration, is recommending XXX-rated sex writings for children as young as preschoolers," reports WorldNetDaily.
Big Hollywood Exposes Big Control: Who needs re-education camps when you have "schools" that allow junk like this inside their doors?
Parents with an ounce of self-respect -- not to mention love for their kids or love for learning -- will come down very hard on this tyranny.
And seek alternatives, because a child's mind really is a terrible thing to waste.
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From the National Education Association: Saul Alinsky an "inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer!" (emphasis in original)
Hat tip: American Thinker
Troy Silva writes at American Thinker:
Kevin Jennings is Safe School Czar not by some vetting breakdown.
He was an official in the Obama Campaign as it Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual fund-raising co-chair. For twenty years until 2008, Jennings succeeded on a massive scale at pro-homosexual propagandizing of school children.
His adeptness and accomplishment at semantic deception are extraordinary.
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From Breitbart TV: "Kids are being aggressively recruited to become heterosexuals in this country."
According to an editor's note at Breitbart, this "uncovered" audio is from "the speech Kevin Jennings gave at a GLSEN event in Iowa in 2000."
GLSEN refers to the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (see its support for the "Safe Schools Improvement Act").
The animosity of the Obama administration for the societal norms and content of the Declaration and the Constitution -- and the Judeo-Christian worldview upon which these documents rest philosophically -- continues to reveal itself in all the pastel colors of the liberal, secularist, homosexualist rainbow.
Free-thinking human beings who question authority, group think, and the creation of pseudo-rights on the basis of marketing campaigns (e.g., homosexual "rights"), to be imposed by neo-pagan secular elites, rebel.
Kevin Jennings needs to step down, the federal goverment needs to get out of the thoughtcamp business (public "schools"), and any U.S. president worthy of that Constitutional office needs to reform government on the basis of the Constitution (as written), or resign.
Otherwise, as Americans, we revolt.
Otherwise, as human beings endowed by our Creator with "certain unalienable rights," we revolt.
America lives in a dangerous world growing more dangerous with every passing day. We cannot afford sickness within the body politic.
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Friday night highschool football in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, took a backseat to a battle of another sort in the bleachers and on the sidelines.
Since 9-11 the Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe Warrior's cheerleaders have been using scripture verses on the banners that the football team bursts through at the beginning of each game. However, that tradition has been banned by school authorities who fear a hefty lawsuit if they allow the practice to continue. Officials nixed the banners after receiving a complaint from one individual who claims she was offended by the verses. (cheerleaders perform for local news video)
In a surprising turn of events, community members have showed their overwhelming support for the cheerleaders who have since become media celebrities. A local youth pastor, Brad Scott, started a facebook page in their support and organized a rally at a local Chick-fil-a. That rally had to be moved when more than 1,100 supporters showed up. Now in another overwhelming show of support, members of the community showed up to Friday nights football game to cheer the cheerleaders.
Here's the high school website.
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"A transcript from a 1997 speech shows Office of Safe Schools chief Kevin Jennings in the U.S. Department of Education expressed his admiration for Harry Hay, one of the nation's first homosexual activists who launched the Mattachine Society in 1948, founded the Radical Faeries and was a longtime advocate for the North American Man-Boy Love Association, NAMBLA," reports WorldNetDaily.
"A new documentary detailing the history of the United States from the first colony in Virginia through the Civil War focuses on the beliefs of the nation’s founders and the written documents that grant each citizen freedom of religion and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," reports Penny Starr at CNSNews.com.
"The film, Rediscovering God in America II: Our Heritage, is not a commentary on the Founding Fathers’ theology or lack thereof. It is an oral history using in the founders’ own words to describe how God played a role in America becoming a nation of religious liberty and tolerance."
Read the rest of "New Documentary Examines God's Place in America's Heritage, as Told by the Founding Fathers."
Joshua Rhett Miller reports at Fox News:
A song about President Obama that was performed by a group of young New Jersey students and has led to charges of indoctrination was videotaped and posted on the Internet without authorization, a district official told parents.
"The performance and the videotaping at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, N.J., have sparked a review by school officials, according to a letter to parents from Christopher Manno, Burlington Township's superintendent of schools.
"We are carefully evaluating what occurred and will implement any additional needed procedures to prevent children's images in school from being publicly posted without permission," Manno wrote on Friday. "We will also provide reasonable direction and guidelines so that classroom activities will not give the appearance of promoting a particular political perspective."
Is this an example of one fox videotaped in the hen house -- and other foxes complaining about the videotape?
About the only thing missing from the video were images of the glorious Obama walking among the children and patting them on their heads.
Didn't that glorious leader of Iraq -- what, Saddam Hussein -- do that sort of thing? Ah, don't worry. He was just a guy from the neighborhood.
If parents and neighbors are skeptical, good. That's precisley what they are expected to be as free and independent thinkers created in the image of the God who endows each of us with "certain unalienable rights."
By the way, one more thing is missing in the video: Education.
Read the whole story.
"A recent British report calls for the government takeover of home schooling," reports OneNewsNow.
"The report was released in June 2009 by Graham Badman, who was commissioned to conduct the report by the Children's Secretary of Britain -- England's version of the U.S. Department of Education. Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), says the report is bad news for Britain."
Read the story from OneNewsNow.
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"Today's colleges can make MSNBC seem fair and balanced and give the term 'clinical depression' a sunny and joyful flavor," writes Matt Spivey at American Thinker.
"It's no wonder so many prominent liberal intellectuals are angry, begrudging, and gloomy. They imbibe four to ten years of it during their college studies. And their brethren in the media give them a consistent platform for their gloom."
"A Belleville West High School student was beaten aboard a bus on the way to school Monday, and a police spokesman said the beating could be racially motivated," reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
"Two black juvenile suspects are in custody after they allegedly beat a white student on a bus heading to Belleville West, police and school officials said," according to the Belleville News-Democrat.
"We don't tolerate it," said Bob Dahm, the principal of Belleville West. Concerned parents can contact Mr. Dahm at this email address: bdahm@bths201.org (available on the school website).
Here is raw video. See also "Click to Play" at the top right-hand corner of this page.
Hat tip: Drudge Report
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David Welch, founder of the U.S. Pastor Council, says there's far more at work today in Obama's talk to kids in schools than a simple speech to kids in schools.
Below is the complete text of remarks President Obama is slated to deliver tomorrow to the schoolchildren of America. Released by the White House.
Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event
Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009
The President: Hello everyone -- how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday -- at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. 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.
I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.
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. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
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.
Maybe you could be a good writer -- maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper -- but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor -- maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine -- but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.
And no matter what you want to do with your life -- I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that -- if you quit on school -- you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.
So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.
But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life -- what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home -- that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer -- hundreds of extra hours -- to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.
And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.
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 doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.
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.
And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.
It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.
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. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. 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.
Hat tip: Fox News
"President Barack Obama's plans for a televised back-to-school address to students next week are drawing fire from some conservatives, who say he's just trying to indoctrinate them to his political beliefs," writes Nia-Malika Henderson at Politico.
Yesterday on Facebook I wrote:
An event like Obama's presumptive, disrespectful in-your-face "these kids are my kids" speech to the public schools (all for a good cause, of course) may well sufficiently raise the consciousness of parents to begin a mass exodus out of the gov't school thoughtcamps.
Educational authority resides in parents, not in the State. No cause is good enough to sell our souls, forfeit our obligations, or give our kids away to any president, state, or other pretender of the gods.
As the Declaration of Independence makes clear, the American experiment in liberty is about independence under God, not dependence on presidents, Washington regimes, or federally controlled thoughtcamps otherwise known as schools.
"On the 46th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington, Education Secretary Arne Duncan declined to say whether King’s view that just laws are based on God's law should be taught in public schools," reports CNSNews.com.
"In his famous 'Letter from Birmingham Jail,' King expressed his classical belief, based on the teachings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas as well as the Founding Fathers, that a just law is a law that comports with the law of God and an unjust law is a law that does not comport with the law of God."
Comment: The real factor prohibiting the teaching about the Creator in the public schools is an imposed secularism, not the U.S. Constitution.
The real threat to liberty in America comes not from teaching about our true Creator, upon whom the American republic is founded.
No, the real threat derives from a secular state, which seeks to impose an alien, false, and inhumane ideology upon American life and thought.
In that un-American, unconstitutional and anti-Declarational world, Martin Luther King and his "Letter From Birmingham" will forever be at the back of the bus.
Far better for free-thinking Americans to act upon our "unalienable rights" -- endowed not by some privatized, abstract religiousity, "faith," or "value," but by a living, factual, and rationally knowable Creator who is a public figure.
Far better to show secularist tryanny the door at the next bus stop.
Let freedom ride. Up front.
"The founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association says home schooling in Sweden will soon be banned altogether, with a few minor exceptions," reports OneNewsNow.
"Mike Farris says that Sweden will ban all home schooling except for children with medical exemptions and foreign workers with the appropriate work visas."
Comment: If the state is supreme, the people must obey.
But as the American Founders realized -- and acted upon -- that's a big "if."
A free people, aware of their dignity as created in the image of a knowable and verifiable God, and thereby endowed with "certain unalienable rights," rightly and properly resist.
These rights are not mere "values," but facts imbedded holistically in human existence by a Creator who is anything but indifferent.
So it matters little whether we are talking about secular and inhumane idolatry abroad -- or here at home in the U.S.
"Love thy neighbor" simply will not be domesticated, bought off, or scared away.
A mind is a terrible thing to enslave.
"A woman teacher at a top private school for girls has been arrested over allegations that she sexually assaulted a pupil during an 'inappropriate' relationship," reports the UK Times.
WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah offers a lesson in U.S. government and political freedom to "constitutional scholar" Barack Hussein Obama.
From FoxNation: "Open Minds" and "Fair-Minded Words"? You be the judge. Click here to view the entire speech at RealClearPolitics.
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In an email to columnist Holly Robichaud, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin writes:
My favorite grandpa, Clem James Sheeran, was Catholic. Irish to the core, his favorite place (other than church) was Notre Dame.
I can’t imagine what he would think as the university recognizes someone who contradicts the core values of the Catholic faith by promoting an anti-life agenda. As we learned today, our nation is more pro-life than ever before; it is a very important time to strengthen the message that every baby is created for good purpose and has the potential to make this world a better place.”
"While Palin understands this battle is about a fundamental value," comments Robichaud, "Obama supporters trivialize it by suggesting it is about opening a dialogue with people of opposing views. Despite their belittling, this outrage is well deserved. By bestowing the degree on President Pro-Choice, a message is conveyed that he is a role model, someone deserving of recognition in the eyes of the university. Jenkins even said he is an inspiring leader."
Well said. But note also that Obama is in conflict not just with a question of "value," even a fundamental one. For this man stands on the wrong side of fact, science, evidence, the Constitution, the Declaration, and the Founding Vision of the United States of America. Most of all, the president of the United States stands against the knowable, verifiable, and factual Creator, upon whom and from whom all human rights that have any adequate foundation are based.
The president's ideological alienation from the good, the true, the beautiful, and the humane is complete and total. No amount of oratory or dialogue or enablement from a lapdog, secularist press can cover up the stench of this cult of barbarism divorced from humanity and reason. By the measurement of the American experiment in liberty, his is an extremism rooted in inauthentic faith.
What remains is for albeit imperfect people of good will to listen -- as did our Founders -- to their Creator instead of to this mere mortal and his pretended wisdom but all-too-real vanity. What remains is to insist on human freedom and dignity under God in effective and principled resistance to overcome a kind of state control and cool barbarism that European dictators and totalitarians and orators from days not that long ago could only have dreamed of.
That kind of resistance would be progress. That would be humane. That is the way of dignity.
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American Fascism: Obama and Mussolini
Go ahead. Make Nice. But Notre Dame party-spoiler Joseph Farah of WND chooses not to play by Obama's pathetic, inhumane, and bloody rules:
If I were presiding over a public policy that called for the murder of unborn babies for any reason or no reason at all, that provided mandatory public funding of those procedures both domestically and in foreign countries, that required doctors and nurses to perform abortions even if they were conscientiously opposed, that permitted experimentations on living human embryos, that promoted even partial-birth abortions outside the womb and that called for the extermination of infants who somehow defied all the odds and managed to survive efforts to kill them before birth, I guess I would want to frame the debate in such a way as to diminish the hideous monstrousness of my morally indefensible position.
He doesn't really want people who recognize what abortion is to approach the debate with "open hearts." He wants us to harden our hearts.
More on "The Blowback of Notre Dame," by Joseph Farah at WND . . .
Related
Obama OKs Killing Unborn in Notre Dame Speech
Episcopalian High Priestess: "Abortion Is a Blessing!"
What About Obama, Mussolini, and the Unmentionable Herr Hitler?
The Evil Religious Presidents Do
How to Argue Like a Fascist
American Fascism: Obama and Mussolini
From Warner Todd Huston at RedState:
A new propaganda video created by an extreme environmental activist is making its way into America’s classrooms and The New York Times loves the whole idea. Enviro obsessive Annie Leonard, Greenpeace member and activist, has created a 20 minute video filled with anti-capitalist, anti-American propaganda to encourage kids to eschew “stuff,” calling the presentation “The Story of Stuff.”
More here.
Related:
Czech Prez: What Climate Activists Really Want
Two college students in California prayed for a sick professor, with her consent. No question about it, says the College of Alameda: They should be kicked out.
The Discovery Institute, where Pearcey Report editor at large Nancy Pearcey is a fellow of the Center for Science and Culture, announces an advance in educational and scientific freedom:
Austin, TX -- Today [March 27], the Texas Board of Education chose science over dogma and adopted science standards improving on the old "strengths and weaknesses" language by requiring students to “critique” and examine “all sides of scientific evidence.” In addition, the Board -- for the first time -- specifically required high school students to “analyze and evaluate” the evidence for major evolutionary concepts such as common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations.
The new science standards mark a significant victory for scientists and educators in favor of teaching the scientific evidence for and against evolution.
“Texas now has the most progressive science standards on evolution in the entire nation,” said Dr. John West, Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute. “Contrary to the claims of the evolution lobby, absolutely nothing the Board did promotes ‘creationism’ or religion in the classroom. Groups that assert otherwise are lying, plain and simple. Like the boy who cried ‘Wolf,’ the Darwin only lobby always screams ‘creationism!’ anytime educators or policymakers try to ensure a fair presentation of the scientific evidence both for and against evolution. Let’s be absolutely clear: Under the new standards, students will be expected to analyze and evaluate the scientific evidence for evolution, not religion. Period.”
Regarding teaching creationism or religion in the public school classroom, a couple of points are worth noting.
First, this is a terrific win for academic freedom, but it should be remarked that nothing in the Declaration of Independence or U.S. Constitution forbids teaching creationism or religion in the classroom. Entrenched secularist dogma on this matter is less than convincing.
In fact, progress in the American experiment in liberty advances from the fixed point of a knowable and objectively existing Creator who endows humanity with unalienable rights. The Constitution is a legal contract designed to protect those rights so that what Mark Levin in Liberty and Tyranny calls a "civil society" might come to actuality, which is what happened in the course of human events that we call the American Revolution.
The 1st Amendment forbids Congress from sticking its Federal Nose into our business, educational or otherwise -- something those who embrace a secularist tryanny over the minds of free human beings seem to disapprove. The 1st Amendment does not forbid Texicans or the rest of us from exercising our freedom and our sovereignity in education.
Here's the 1st Amendment in its entirety:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. [emphasis added]
The question therefore is not whether creationism or religion can be taught in the classroom. Of course they can. The real question is this: What's the evidence? If the evidence for or against a particular theory of origins is scientific, then present the case for and against, let the students think for themselves, and let them make up their own minds. Even in biology class.
The second point is that the Creator acknowledged in the Declaration, and against whom Congress is prohibited from passing laws against, is not a matter of "religious" belief or "faith" in the poor sense of the word bandied about inside and outside of secularist circles today.
The more rigorous, concrete, humane, and Biblical concept of faith has to do with the commitment of the whole person to that which is rationally, empirically, and existentially knowable as true. It is a worldview commitment rooted in truth about God, man, and the cosmos -- that same worldview, by the way, which provided the critical intellectual mass needed to launch modern science in the first place.
This wholistic approach has nothing to do with subjectivist "values," privatized "faith," emotional crutches, blind believism, or other characteristics swimming about in congressional waters, "religious" meetings, secular baptisms, and marketing strategies of the ACLU.
The wonder and dignity of humanity male and female created in the image of a knowable God who endows each of us with unalienable rights cannot be squeezed into such limiting, dehumanizing, and regressive nonsense. It's time we all broke free of those chains. Bravo, Texas!
"The outrage over Notre Dame inviting President Obama as commencement speaker has not abated," reports OneNewsNow.
"Last week, pro-lifers strongly voiced their anger about a pro-abortion president being invited to speak at a prominent Catholic university, which supposedly upholds church doctrines such as the sanctity of life. But they also are objecting to the school's plan to give Obama an honorary Doctor of Law degree. Notre Dame has been flooded with complaints, but university President John Jenkins will not be deterred."
Says Notre Dame graduate Eric Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League:
If Jenkins won't do the right thing and disinvite Barack Obama, then we are absolutely going to have no choice but to go out and rain on Barack Obama's parade on May 17 in South Bend, Indiana. . . . We are already working with pro-life leaders around the country, especially throughout the Midwest, to put on the mother of all protests.
In his language and policy moves, this man Barack Obama is a rogue official occupying the office of the President of the United States.
Why rogue? Because, for example, he is in violation of the Declaration of Independence, which is the Foundational Vision Statement of the United States of America and which acknowledges that every single human being is endowed by our Creator with "certain unalienable rights," including the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Well, dead preborn American citizens are deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And no American politican ought to serve who favors the liquidation of the preborn in aborcentration centers that mar and bleed the land.
One would think that governing according to the Vision Statement of the United States is not above the paygrade of the president of the United States.
One would think that respecting unalienable rights endowed by the Creator upon alive but preborn American citizens is not above the paygrade of the President of the United States.
One would think that elementary scientific and inclusive facts of biological life regarding the humanity of unborn human beings created in the image of God is not above the paygrade of the President of the United States.
What kind of man is this? Let us hope not, but is Barack Obama too much of a political ideologue to care about the facts, the Declaration, the Constitution, and that liberating vision of life that American heroes have bled and died for on battlefields across history and across the world, both within and without the borders of our homeland?
No only should Barack Obama be disinivited from Notre Dame, the American people should rise up and disinvite him from the presidency. His pro-abortion, anti-life policies are an embarrassment to civilized humanity under the Declaration, under the Constitution, and under God. Yes he was elected, but he now imposes tyranny. He now wars against the American experiment in liberty under God.
Americans must take every opportunity to disinvite not just him, but his alien, anti-American, inhumane, and anti-Creator coup against the foundational Mission and Vision Statement of this land. We can yet still enjoy the "blessings of liberty," but this will require a return to the Creator to whom our Founders looked and from whom those blessings derive. It will require casting off the chains of the Federal Empire and its new Emperor on the Potomac.
No only should pro-life Americans "rain" on Obama's parade, they ought to thunder and lightning upon it, with a few cats and dogs thrown in for good measure. May the "mother of all protests" at Notre Dame have many children.
The Obama "Alinskys" are thrashing the Notre Dame "Girly Girls," and here's a bit of color analysis by George Neumayr:
The Catholic Church in America has bred her own destroyers, graduating from doctrinally corrupt catechetical programs, schools and colleges two generations of pro-abortion politicians. Barack Obama, in his effortless Alinskyite style, has exploited this phenomenon to the hilt, seeking out Catholics such as Joe Biden and Kathleen Sebelius to serve as his agents of destruction.
The controversy this week at Notre Dame is one more snapshot of this self-implosion. Here we have the American bishops' most prominent university planning to confer an honorary degree upon Obama even as he accelerates the destruction of its moral teachings.
Coach Alinsky surely must be beaming in his grave. "Were Saul Alinsky alive today," notes Neumayr, "he would have to smile at the ease of it all. Obama can not only thwart the Church at every crucial turn and still retain the Catholic vote; he can even expect over the next few years prizes and pats on the back from Catholic colleges for doing so."
See also: "Notre Dame Should Disinvite Obama."
"Opposition is mounting to the University of Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama to be a commencement speaker in May," reports OneNewsNow.
This is a sign of spiritual health. Inviting him to speak and conferring a degree upon him is a sign of spiritual weakness. Worldview confusion. Sellout.
By his language and actions, Obama inhabits a post-Catholic, post-Protestant, post-Christian, post-Declaration, post-Constitution, post-American, post-humane universe. Other than that, no problem.
Notre Dame would do well to disinvite the President with extreme unction. Just as the great and free people of the United States of America should show him and his Statist, Washington-centric worldview the door at the first opportunity. Exit stage left. Now, April 15, and forevermore.
If asked to serve humanity in such a fashion, I'll be happy to stand in for the President at Notre Dame to explain the matter in further detail. You don't even have to confer a degree.
They believe it, that settles it. Think "peer pressure."
STATEMENT BY IOWA FACULTY ON HF 183:
THE EVOLUTION ACADEMIC FREEDOM ACTWe, the undersigned members of institutions of higher learning in Iowa, urge our legislators to reject passage of "The Evolution Academic Freedom Act" (HF 183) introduced by Rod Roberts (R-Carroll). The language of this bill comes primarily from the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which has conducted lobbying efforts and political activism against the teaching of evolution since 1994.
Evolution is as established a scientific theory as any other theory in science. It is misleading to claim that there is any controversy or dissent within the vast majority of the scientific community regarding the scientific validity of evolutionary theory. Since there is no real dissent within the scientific community, then "academic freedom" for alternative theories is simply a mechanism to introduce religious or non-scientific doctrines into our science curriculum.
Similar efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution in schools repeatedly have been found to be unconstitutional, something witnessed most recently in Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005) in Pennsylvania.
We, therefore, urge our legislators to recognize HF183 as part of a long history of creationist assaults on science education, and reject passage of this bill.
It is therefore the intent of the general assembly that this Act be construed to expressly protect the affirmative right and freedom of every instructor at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary level to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution in connection with teaching any prescribed curriculum regarding chemical or biological evolution. (italics added)
On the other hand . . .
Toronto girl overcomes discouragement from teachers, disqualification by judges.
Here's her winning presentation.
