Jeff Emanuel at Redstate notes examples of how the Hollywood Left has decided that it’s cool to be patriotic again. 

Contra what many supporters would have us believe, this doesn’t demonstrate the mythic ability of Barack Obama to inspire folks to come together across the divide and sing kumbayah in harmony; rather, it shows that the take-my-ball-and-go-home-when-I’m-not-catered-to crowd (of which First Lady Michelle “For the first time I’m proud of my country” Obama is one) has decided to come back and play with the rest of us now that The Other is gone and one of “theirs” is in the Oval Office.

To the Hollywood actors, the liberal blogosphere, and my more leftward-leaning fellow Arena contributors: welcome to the party. Most of us recognize that America is America, however much hate you may harbor for its leaders, and have supported it the entire time — through Reagan, through Bush, through Clinton, through Bush again, and will continue to do so through Obama’s presidency. We won’t agree on everything — for example, I hope much of Obama’s domestic agenda fails utterly — but it won’t stop him from being “my president too,” or me from patriotically supporting my own country.

There were reports that it was suddenly cool to be an American again.  But such fair-weather patriotism isn’t patriotism at all.  It’s childishness.  The Right has been and will continue to be proud of our country, something the First Lady apparently wouldn’t understand. 

The NY Times reports that things are looking better for black families.

The number of black children being raised by two parents appears to be edging higher than at any time in a generation, at nearly 40 percent, according to newly released census data.

[…]

According to the bureau’s estimates, the number of black children living with two parents was 59 percent in 1970, falling to 42 percent in 1980, 38 percent in 1990 and 35 percent in 2004. In 2007, the latest year for which data is available, it was 40 percent.

That’s definitely good news.  Let’s look at the reasons the Times suggests for this change.

Demographers said such a trend might be partly attributable to the growing proportion of immigrants in the nation’s black population.

Oh, so some of this can be attributed to intact black families coming in to the country.  Well, that doesn’t speak to the families already here.  How about them?

It may have been driven, too, by the values of an emerging black middle class, a trend that could be jeopardized by the current economic meltdown.

So indeed black have been doing quite well during the Bush administration.  You’d never know that from watching the news and listening to rappers dis’ Dubya.  Still, very good to hear.

So then, anything else>

The Census Bureau attributed an indeterminate amount of the increase to revised definitions adopted in 2007, which identify as parents any man and woman living together, whether or not they are married or the child’s biological parents.

Ah, I see.  By simply revising the definition of "parents", the Census Bureau can manufacture some good news.  As James Taranto (who gets the hat tip for pointing out this article) notes:

And why stop there? Suppose the Census Bureau were to redefine two as meaning "one." Voilà, any child who now lives with "one" parent would have an intact family. Instantly the rate would go from 40% to nearly 100%. Wait, make that nearly 200%.

Some may object that the middle of a financial panic is not the best time to start redefining numbers, a practice that could have unintended and undesired consequences for interest rates, currency exchange rates, asset values and so forth.

So here’s a more modest idea: Why not redefine together to mean "on the same planet"? So long as at least one man and one woman live on Earth, whether or not they are married or the child’s biological parents, every child is being raised by two (or more) parents, and this will remain true at least until we begin colonizing space. Hey, it takes a village!

Next: ending tyranny in the world by redefining tyrant to mean "lame-duck president."

In the original article, Prof. Robert Sampson, a Harvard sociology professor, call it "a positive change".  Right.  Kids are living with cohabitating "parents" instead of a married couple, the numbers look better partially because of intact families coming from other countries / cultures, and all this in spite of a burgeoning black middle class.

The good news is that the statistics are up.  The bad news is that actual change in the culture is not the reason we have the good news.

In a blog post, the YouTube crew has set up some new rules for "mature content".  They’re not banning it, but they are taking steps to ensure that folks don’t stumble into what they don’t want.

As a community, we have come to count on each other to be entertained, challenged, and moved by what we watch and share on YouTube. We’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to make the collective YouTube experience even better, particularly on our most visited pages. Our goal is to help ensure that you’re viewing content that’s relevant to you, and not inadvertently coming across content that isn’t.

I just have to give the YouTube folks a big "’atta boy" for this.  Taking common sense steps to keep, not just porn (which they don’t accept anyway) but even "suggestive content" out of the limelight ought to be cheered when it happens.  If you really want to find it, you can, but if you don’t, you don’t have to sift through it.  This is especially true for kids; YouTube is a nice resource to have for many purposes, but it can be a minefield.

More like this please. 

In Florida, evidence of a growing problem with the public schools.

At least 150 Florida teachers have been disciplined in the past three years after being accused of sexual misconduct with students, an Orlando Sentinel review has found.

Some of the most severe cases resulted in arrests and criminal convictions for offenses such as secretly watching a boy change and shower, tricking elementary-school girls into touching a man’s genitals and having sex with minor students. But the Sentinel’s case-by-case review of teacher discipline records from the Florida Department of Education found that a lot of the alleged misconduct did not rise to the criminal level.

Still, parents would be alarmed.

[…]

Those 150 cases don’t include the dozens of educators who have been suspended or lost their teaching certificates since 2006 for molesting non-students, downloading porn at school, having sex in public and trying to pick up prostitutes.

There is no research to show whether this is indeed an actual trend or a case of students reporting it more often.  However, there is research, cited later in the article, that shows that students now are very reluctant to report it.

Researchers, however, say far more children are affected by sexual misconduct at school than many people may realize.

The most in-depth study to date, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education in 2004, showed that nearly 10 percent of the country’s public-school students — 4.5 million children — had received unwanted sexual attention from school employees, including teachers.

Only 11 percent of students who are sexually abused by teachers report it, said Charol Shakeshaft, an education professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who authored the 2004 study and is one of the nation’s top experts on the issue.

If only 11 percent reported it in 2004, we’d have to believe it was in the low-to-mid-single-digits in the decades prior to that.  That’s stretching things rather thin, in my opinion. 

And if only 11 percent are reporting it now, what we’re seeing, in Florida and elsewhere, could be 9 or 10 times worse that it looks. 

Homeschooling keeps looking better all the time.

They spent money on this?

Sexual content on television is strongly associated with teen pregnancy, a new study from the RAND Corporation shows.

Researchers at the nonprofit organization found that adolescents with a high level of exposure to television shows with sexual content are twice as likely to get pregnant or impregnate someone as those who saw fewer programs of this kind over a period of three years. It is the first study to demonstrate this association, RAND said.

Next week, RAND comes out with their study that gravity leads to falling.

The suggested remedy is equally obvious.

A central message from the study is that there needs to be more dialogue about sex in the media, particularly among parents and their children, said Anita Chandra, the study’s lead author and a behavioral scientist at RAND.

Although the Hollywood culture is certainly a major contributor to the oversexualization of the media (and they could do their part, but won’t, and will whine publicly and loudly if you suggest they do), parents still need to be the gatekeeper.

As my kids would say, "Thank you, Captain Obvious!"

California, Florida (two blue states) and Arizona voters rejected same-sex marriage in their states.  As Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council notes, this signals that the electorate is still generally socially conservative, and that if Obama has a mandate, it’s an economic one. 

This is especially true among Obama’s big support blocs; blacks and Hispanics.  Byron York noted at the National Review Online that these constituents supported the ban 70-30 and 51-49 respectively.  The 90+ percent of African-Americans that voted for Obama, and who rightly have celebrated the election of a black man to the White House, quite apparently think this is "Change We Can Do Without"(tm).

The limbo that those who were married under the Supreme Court decision find themselves in is of their own making.  Rather than using the legislature or respecting the will of the people expressed in the last ballot initiative, they changed the battlefield.  However, they took their initial success with irrational exuberance, and when they were met on that battlefield they were defeated, leaving them in an odd situation, and forcing the California legal system into a Gordian Knot.  Once again, the "will of the people" cry we used to hear from the Left has died down to a whimper when they have an axe to grind.

This is the 2nd and final part of my analysis of an open letter from Anne Rice. Part 1 was posted yesterday.

Abortion

Anne Rice spends most of her letter covering this issue, and she starts with an assertion that, to me, shows a lack of consideration of the history of the issue.

I want to add here that I am Pro-Life. I believe in the sanctity of the life of the unborn. Deeply respecting those who disagree with me, I feel that if we are to find a solution to the horror of abortion, it will be through the Democratic Party.

Ms. Rice does touch on these historical issues lightly later on, and I’ll hit them more in-depth then, but even looking at how the abortion issue generally falls between the parties today, I don’t see this as making sense. What I hear from Democrats are things like John Kerry with this sentiment:

I completely respect their views. I am a Catholic. And I grew up learning how to respect those views. But I disagree with them, as do many. I can’t legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn’t share that article of faith. I believe that choice is a woman’s choice. It’s between a woman, God and her doctor. That’s why I support that. I will not allow somebody to come in and change Roe v. Wade.

If one’s commitment to Christianity should be “absolute”, as Ms. Rice has said, there is a big problem with this statement, that is generally the line religious Democrats use when talking about abortion, and that is the canard about legislating one’s religious faith, or sometimes call ramming one’s religion down your throat. Civil rights are very much a moral issue, but does Sen. Kerry have the same problem with legislating that? No, he’s very willing to impose his view on KKK members, and rightly so. It’s right, it’s moral and it’s the law. Legislators all throughout our country’s history, and more so in our early history, based many of their decisions partly or mostly on their religious faith. This excuse is disingenuous.

Read the rest of this entry

The following is a repost of a blog post I wrote over a year ago (August 23rd & 24th, 2007) during the presidential primary season.  It was in response to an open letter by the author Anne Rice on her personal web site.  Ms. Rice is the author of the Vampire Lestat series of books, but, after returning to the Catholic church in 1998, stopped that project. 

I’ve searched her web site for the letter in question and cannot find a page that has it archived, although many of her other writings, going back to 1996, are on there.  It was copied and posted on other forums, including here, so you can read along at home.  (Warning: This is a link to the right-wing Free Republic web site.  If you fear cooties emanating from there, turn back now.)

I think the issues covered in this endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party nominee are still relevant now, especially how it relates to Christians, how they can and should work through the political process, how Ms. Rice believes her choice of party advances that, and where I disagree with her. 

It was originally posted in 2 parts due to its length, and so it shall be this time. 

This is one of my longer posts, possibly the longest I’ve done on the blog. What happened was, I was reading an open letter from a Christian planning on voting a particular way, and as I read further and further into it, one objection after another kept coming to my mind, and one problem after another regarding the writer’s reasons kept getting in the way. Finally, I realized I’d have to just set aside some of my typical day-to-day blogging of the link-and-quick-comment type, and go in-depth into the problems I see with the author, and Christians in general, who vote Democratic for specifically Christian reasons, and especially regarding the social issues brought up in the letter. Pull up a cup of coffee and sit back.

Anne Rice is a Catholic author. I’ll admit to not being too well-read, but as a Protestant my knowledge of Catholic authors is even more limited. Therefore, I’m not sure how much Ms. Rice’s views are mainstream Catholic, although whether or not they are really isn’t the crux of this post. I do want to discuss the views she espouses, and espouses quite well as an author. That she is a Catholic and I am a Protestant has really no bearing on my criticism of her recent public letter dated August 10. I know Protestants who would agree with her on these issues, so this is not a denominational thing. She professes Christianity, as do I, and we have very similar goals, as far as I can tell, on the topics she discusses, and yet we’re voting differently. Ms. Rice wrote a lengthy letter to her readers on her main web site (no permalink so don’t know how long it’ll stay on the front page) about why she is endorsing Hillary Clinton for President. The reasons she lists for that endorsement, to me, run completely counter to her list of important issues and goals. If she is truly concerned about those goals, I don’t follow her endorsement, nor the endorsement of other of my friends and acquaintances of any Democrat in the current group. I want to address the inconsistencies I see in this post.

Ms. Rice starts out with her Christian and Catholic creds, which I respect and am willing to accept. She talks about how, while the separation of church and state is a good idea, the voter does not have that prohibition, and in fact must consider their vote based on their religion.

Conscience requires the Christian to vote as a Christian. Commitment to Christ is by its very nature absolute.

I agree wholeheartedly. But, she also correctly notes, we have only 2 political parties in this country. (She believes, as do I, that a vote for neither Democrat or Republican, whether it’s a non-vote or a vote for a 3rd party, is essentially a vote for one of the two major ones, no matter how you slice it.) In short:

To summarize, I believe in voting, I believe in voting for one of the two major parties, and I believe my vote must reflect my Christian beliefs.

Bearing all this in mind, I want to say quietly that as of this date, I am a Democrat, and that I support Hillary Clinton for President of the United States.

And that last clause is where the disagreement begins.

Charitable Giving

The first paragraph of explanation deals with giving.

Though I deeply respect those who disagree with me, I believe, for a variety of reasons, that the Democratic Party best reflects the values I hold based on the Gospels. Those values are most intensely expressed for me in the Gospel of Matthew, but they are expressed in all the gospels. Those values involve feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, and above all, loving ones neighbors and loving ones enemies. A great deal more could be said on this subject, but I feel that this is enough.

First of all, neither the religious right nor the religious left have a lock on charitable giving. At the same time, as was noted on this post regarding a study by Arthur Brooks, conservatives outgive liberals by quite a significant amount. How does this relate to how the political parties differ in their view of the government’s role in this? Ms. Rice, I believe, falls into a trap by simplistically equating the advocacy of government charity with Jesus’ admonition to the individual to be charitable. Democrats say the government should give more, so by her reckoning thy are more in line with her Christian view. However, it has always made me wonder how when Jesus tells me, personally, to be charitable, that somehow this means that I should also use the government to force my neighbor, under penalty of jail, to be “charitable”. I put “charitable” in quotes because when there’s force involved, there’s no real act of charity. How Democrat Christians get from point A to point Z on this boggles my mind. Another statistic from Brooks’ study brings this point home; People who believe the government does not have a basic responsibility to take care of the people who can’t take care of themselves are 27 percent more likely to give to charity.

On top of this, the bureaucratic inefficiency filter that we’re all forced to funnel our “charitable” taxes through siphons money away from the needy, as does the massive fraud that goes on in a big government program that has little accountability.

Conservatives believe that forcibly taking money isn’t charity, and that it is not government’s role to rob from Peter to pay Paul, and that the way the government handles this creates dependency and causes further problems, like giving fathers a disincentive to stick around. Because of this, conservatives give more of their own money to local charities where the administrative costs are much lower. The Republican party, the current home of most conservative political ideas in this country, purports to support these goals, and while they don’t always follow those principles, they have done better at this than Democrats. An expanded role of government in the area of giving to the poor is not the best way for that to happen, and as a Christian I believe it’s not moral to force others to give when they don’t want to. Again, Jesus asks me to give; He didn’t ask me to force others to.

Ms. Rice, in ticking off a laundry list of values, seems to be falling for the framing of the issue that Democrats have put forth; welfare = caring. There are other ways to care, which can have much better results.

Part 2 tomorrow.

“Gee, I’ll vote to get some of that wealth spread to me.”  Welcome to the 21st century.

From Chuck Asay:

Shire Network News #142 has been released. The feature interview is with Douglas Murray, the Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion think tank, who joins us for a talk about the latest report from his think tank. It’s a bombshell report on the attitudes of Muslim students in the UK. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to “Consider This!” Last week, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri put out an official audiotape. Yeah, yeah, no big news there, he does this all the time, “death to the infidels”, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But wait, this time there was a first; he spoke in English. That’s right; he wanted to speak to the Pakistani people directly, but since he doesn’t do Urdu (do you?), English was a good second choice. But even in English, the words were pretty much the same. “Your President stinks and his mother dresses him funny.” “Please oh please stop cooperating with the Great Satan.” “How do you like the results of my Berlitz classes?” The usual stuff, all with nothing more than a stock photo of their man Ayman on-screen. It’s almost like AQTV is in summer reruns.

Hey, don’t laugh; it appears that they really are. ABC reported last month that the media arm of Al Qaeda distributed old videos to jihadist websites. And get this; they didn’t bill them as reruns. Instead, they were previously released material translated into Urdu. Sounds like they’re stealing some ideas from US television network executives.

And since they’re translating into Urdu, I guess it’s only a matter of time until the latest al-Zawahiri blockbuster gets the overdub treatment. Whoever does it, I hope they credit him for it. (“Overdubbing courtesy of a scared Pakistani store owner with a scimitar to his throat. We apologize for any nervous jittering in the voice. Listener discretion is advised.”)

And those poor jihadist websites! I hope they didn’t pay full price for these warmed-over videos. There’s got to be a cheap iTunes-like place for 2-month-old hate speech. I mean, even I can to a “dollar theater” for second-run movies. Well, I’m sure that they did get a break. Those Al Qaeda guys are nothing if not sensitive to the little guy.

So that’s my “This Week in Hate Speech Video”. Join me next time, when I review the DVD “Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger; Together Again for the First Time”. Consider that.

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