Erring Education: Gay, Green, and Garbled

I work with some of the best children in the world. I love them. Typically, the parents of these children are decent, productive citizens who possess traditional, often biblical, values. But alarmingly, a once-marginal chasm, now worse than the proverbial “generation gap,” grows with every decade. A major cause of this generational values chasm lies at the feet of an educational system that has run amiss.

The gay-lesbian agenda has relentlessly asserted itself for nearly twenty years, establishing footholds in public school and softening attitudes elsewhere. Homosexuals have asked the right to peacefully live their lives, but they aggressively promote their lifestyle, insisting that their abnormal lifestyle be accepted as normal. Tactics of intimidation once thought to be used only against gays and lesbians are used by gays and lesbians in attempts to pressure opponents into silence or acceptance.

The effect of the homosexual movement is a progression of the rights of a small minority at the expense of a recession of the first-amendment rights of the majority. The increase in on-campus gay-lesbian groups and demonstrations are symptomatic of education gone awry. More than the toleration of the gay-lesbian agenda is taught in public schools. Overwhelmingly, the propagation of the lifestyle as a part of regular society is often infused into the classroom and campus life. As in outside society, those who disagree with the homosexual agenda are viewed as intolerant and mean-spirited. Ironically, hundreds of gays and lesbians tend to demonstrate more intolerance and warlike attitudes than those they accuse of having the same faults.

Another example of education gone amiss is the issue of global warming. Supporters of a warming earth have hotly stirred many into a near frenzy for fear of an environmental Armageddon in a relatively few years. Recent revelations have substantiated the counter-claims of tens of thousands of scientists who dispute the cries of the Gore-ites. How soon will schools begin to present the opposing side to the panic-driven global warming curriculum? Perhaps about as soon as they will present intelligent design as an option to evolution.

When I was younger, a common fear was another ice age. That didn’t happen, and neither will global warming. Man is responsible to care for the earth, but he must not trump control over freedom in an exaggerated attempt to stymie a straw giant that doesn’t exist. Students speak frequently of ways to prevent global warming more often than they present ways to living moral lives and knowing the Constitution. The overemphasis on “green” has American students turning red when matched against their international counterparts in academic competition.

Garbled communications are another factor in today’s educational abyss. That which is ignorantly or intentionally framed to confuse, mislead, or skew is garbled, and therefore unfit for instruction or consumption. Nevertheless, from morals to academics, from the coercing of societal evolution to the rewriting of our nation’s history, an obvious humanistic doctrinal path has been provided for teachers and is daily preached to students.

If the trumpet gives forth an uncertain sound, the inhabitants of the city will be taken unaware by conquerors. Garbled communications, regardless of the intent of the instructor, will produce fruit consistent with the seeds planted. Students have been suffering from a restricted, enslaving educational agenda. Academic leaders who publicly champion academic freedom have cleverly crafted a curriculum designed to carve a population shaped to think one way, a recipe for certain intellectual and spiritual illness for our country.

The RNC and RINO's: NY-23 and California US Senate

We are seeing a California US Senate Republican primary battle between a true conservative, State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, and a "favored" moderate, Carly Fiorina. Chuck is continuing to build a marvelous grassroots base and has the support of Senator DeMint, Congressman McClintock, and well over half of California's GOP leadership, but there is concern over the future actions of the national GOP leadership. Carly has the support of many national Republican leaders.

NY-23 is an example of what happens when a genuine conservative runs a credible campaign but is not supported by the RNC. There could have been another conservative voice and vote in the House, but instead, the Republican candidate threw her support to an ideological foe of most registered Republicans, committing an act of betrayal and a misuse of RNC donations.

Governor Schwarzenegger ran as a Republican, and some thought the best he could do would be to restrain economic irresponsibility and veto some harmful social bills. Those actions and hopes were short lived, and he now resembles very little that is traditional Republican. He feels the GOP needs to moderate its views, and he continues to alienate party conservatives.

I am not at the forefront of a third-party movement, but I am aware of historical organizational trends: the natural tendency is to decline. The Republican National Committee is indeed risking becoming a non factor if it persists in ignoring some of its formerly held conservative principles due to a "unifying" but marginalizing pragmatism within its leadership. The current philosophy will unify only in that it will exclude those who once comprised the GOP base. For now, any money and efforts I can contribute go straight to a conservative candidate, not to the RNC and most likely a RINO.

Report on Visit to Washington, DC, September 2009

Last month I made my usual trip to Washington, DC for the annual National Legislative Conference of the American Association of Christian Schools. As a “warm-up,” I was able to attend Saturday’s 912 Rally at the Capitol with a pastor friend and his wife. The crowd was polite but passionate, calm but concerned. Those who attended were upset at the direction the current Administration is leading America.

The problems we see in our country are mere symptoms of an underlying disease. Even as “righteousness exalteth a nation,” so unrighteousness debases a nation. The once seemingly insidious seeds of corruption have now surfaced as blatant attacks on our political, philosophical, and spiritual foundations, entangling us with deserved bondage and threatening to totally remove any trace of life from a creation once graciously birthed by the Giver of all liberty.

To be sure, millions are upset about political trends, and many are fighting some of the issues we addressed at our conference and in hundreds of congressional offices. Among the topics we highlighted were the following:

• Health Care – impacts ministries as well as other business, not to mention families.
• ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) – infringes upon the religious liberties of employers and employees
• Hate Crimes – creates protected classes of “questionable” minorities but excludes religious groups; establishes legal machinery for thought crime determination.
• Universal Pre-Kindergarten – is another attempt to divorce children from parents.

Millions of citizens are indeed upset about many arrogant attempts to assault our Constitutional, Bible-based freedoms, and that dissent is encouraging. Empty would this unrest prove, however, if its basis is merely a secular conservatism. Lasting fruit will be produced only as people are awakened to their own inadequacies and sins and respond to the God who gave His Son a ransom for many, the God to Whom Washington prayed and rested in for His atonement and strength. Prayers for all Americans...

Independence Day 2009

On a day of celebration, I celebrate. John Adams would have me do so. I marvel at the miraculous victories frequenting our history books. I reverence the countless heroes who “more than self their country loved” and gave the “last full measure of devotion.” I am grateful for the liberties and luxuries I enjoy as an American. As a Christian, I especially appreciate the expansive rights guaranteed to me in the First Amendment.

But I also take time for reflection. I cannot ignore the path America has followed in the past four decades. As Jefferson reminded his contemporaries, the natural course of liberty is to decline. Our freedoms have been legislated and litigated away, and our liberties have been redefined and restricted, all justified in the name of greater freedom and equality for all.

I conclude not with a melancholy resignation to an inevitable surrender to those who blindly attack the foundations of our Nation. Rather, I renew myself in my dedication to my God and the “God of Our Fathers” and to this Country that is still worth saving. May God grant a prayerful and powerful return to the positions that made us what we are: a Republic, a “Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

The Glamor of War

In the '60's, I watched war movies on Saturday mornings and Combat! on Tuesday nights. After I watched enough during the week, I played war in my buddy's yard Saturday mornings. Bullets, grenades, bombs--then time for lunch. On the evening news, I would occasionally check the nightly Vietnam scoreboard and see that we were cleaning up on the Viet Cong and would surely wipe them out. I felt good when I went to bed, knowing we were beating the bad guys. Glamorous.

In the "old days," war wasn't depicted as graphically as in recent years. Now we can see heads and limbs severed and blood splattered on our local screens. On distant battlegrounds, military personnel can target a distant room and deploy a bomb, providing a kind of video-game gratification to a random observer. Results still devastating. Not so glamorous.

The truth is that flesh-and-blood men and women still wage war, and human beings die. The real heroes are the ones who willingly put their bodies in the way of unseen airborne projectiles or underground devices. As my Iwo Jima friend shared with me, soldiers do not view themselves as heroes; rather, they call themselves just that--soldiers who are doing their duties, knowing that their blood may "water" some foreign soil.

Today I join with General Douglas MacArthur who said, "The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war." Today I give thanks for those selfless souls "who more than self their country loved" and dutifully gave "the last full measure of devotion." Today I pray that the God of Peace would work in the hearts of men everywhere so that they might know true peace.

Be Careful What You Wish

Directional Uncertainty and National Insecurity - President Obama's National Security Speech

The following is essentially a comment I submitted after reading Karl Rove's Wall Street Journal article dealing with President Obama's "flip-flops" and governance:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124286200693341141.html

"Love is blind" comes to mind as I recall the mass swooning during Mr. Obama's rise to the Presidency. The people, wearied of war and the economic battle, chose the path of change proposed by one of the Senate's leading liberals, a relatively inexperienced politician who could give good speeches, as numbers of voters testified. The majority now have what they wished for.

The President's flip-flops are characteristic not only of liberalism, which itself is epitomized by the word "change," but also of expediency. I can accept certain deviations and adjustments to basic, generally consistent policies, but I begrudge an "about-face" in an area paramount to his campaign. Doing so reveals a directional uncertainty about the Commander-in-Chief who leads our nation and is responsible for our national security. Directional uncertainty is certainly something America cannot risk.

"Morning After" - More Disaster

President Obama’s decision to permit 17-year-olds to obtain the “morning after” pill without parental permission signals another dramatic “change” from the previous administration. (New Hampshire Union Leader 4/25/09, http://tinyurl.com/dazdxt)

Teens are going to have sex anyway, so let’s provide condoms. Teens are going to have sex, so let’s now prevent a natural result of sex from developing, after that natural result has already begun its process. We all know that the natural result, given nine months, produces a human being from the womb.

Abstinence training does no good—birth rates actually increase. False. Planned Parenthood’s own statistical source noted a decrease extending beyond the mid-point of the Bush Administration compared to statistics based on the Clinton Administration years.

What is “natural” for two human beings may be unbiblical and unconscionable to some, mainly to the conservative religious crowd. The same act or lifestyle may be untimely, unsafe, or unwise to some, totally acceptable and normal to others. Using a clean needle does not negate the effects of the drug on the human body. Similarly, using a condom or “morning after” pill does not negate the disastrous effects of free sex on the minds of individuals and the future of a nation.