Interview: Jim Payne — Six Political Illusions

81% of Americans are dissatisfied with government, yet many of them keep looking to government to solve their problems. Our guest says he can explain this contradiction.

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 10-29-11



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First in Print: How to create more intact families

Mike McManus

By Mike McManus

 “Taxpayers are spending a trillion dollars a year to subsidize non-marriage — 75 percent federal and   25 percent by states — which goes to the single mom,” Phyllis Schlafly asserted at the launching of a new Center for Marriage Policy.  She noted Ronald Reagan once said, `If you subsidize something, you will get more of it.’” 

America has subsidized cohabitation. Result: it soared 17-fold from 430,000 in 1960 to 7.5 million last year. Subsequently marriage rates have plunged in half. Further, 41 percent of U.S. births are out of wedlock (mostly to cohabiting couples) vs. only two percent unwed births in Japan.

How can America create more intact families?   

There are two major answers, and the Center for Marriage Policy is unique in America in pursuing both options.

First, America’s churches can be helped to do a better job.  They marry 86 percent of Americans, but not well.  Protestant divorce rates are actually higher than the unchurched.

Decline of weddings

Henry G. Brinton writes an op-ed in USA Today:

As a pastor, the trends that interest me most involve the sharp decline of marriage in the USA and the rise in non-clergy-officiated weddings.

These are the changes that matter, rather than the modern substitution of cupcakes for a wedding cake. The dropping number of marriages and changing face of officiants will shape the lives of American couples — and their children — for decades to come. These shifts merit some thought as we wrap up this year's wedding season, which runs May through October and typically covers 70% of all ceremonies.

Fifty years ago, about three-quarters of American adults 18 and older were married. Today, about half are. Nearly 40% of respondents to a Pew Research Center survey last year said marriage is becoming obsolete. If you think this is just demographic background noise with no real consequence, think again. This shift ultimately will harm kids because children in married family households are far less likely to live in poverty than those in single-parent households. ...

Who ties your knot A recent survey by TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com revealed that almost one in three of their website users who married last year chose a family member or friend to officiate at their ceremony. Since many Americans are not currently part of a religious congregation, it's not surprising that acquaintances are filling in the gaps. This certainly fits my experience over 25 years in the ministry.

You might think that it does not matter who officiates the wedding, but the civil concept of marriage is rapidly diverging from the religious concept. The civil marriage is becoming just a license to file joint tax returns, with no obligations or benefits beyond that. The major religions are sticking to the traditional meaning of marriage.

Phyllis Schlafly at Values Voter Summit 2011 Gala Honoring Ed Meese

Saving the Bill of Rights

Frank Miniter believes the Bill of Rights is under attack. His book, called Saving the Bill of Rights, Exposes the Left's Campaign to Destroy American Exceptionalism. He describes how our liberties expressly identified in the Bill of Rights are being ignored or eroded by leftist politicians, activist judges, and special-interest groups. Liberals pretend to be champions of individual liberties, but Frank Miniter explains that this is not so. The liberals are actually chipping away at the foundational freedoms that make America exceptional.

Rise of therapism

Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Patel wrote a brilliant 2005 book, titled One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance.

The book concludes:

The American Creed that has sustained the nation is now under powerful assault by the apostles of therapism. The fateful question is: Will Americans actively defend the traditional creed of stoicism and the ideology of achievement or will they continue to allow the nation to slide into therapeutic self-absorption and moral debility? Our very future depends on our answer.

They did not coin the word therapism, but I could only find it in one obscure dictionary:

therapism n. a culture or ideal of mental therapy, empathy, or sharing of feelings, especially as a cure.

The book defines it as:

Therapism valorizes openness, emotional self-absorption and the sharing of feelings. It encompasses several additional assumptions: that vulnerability, rather than strength, characterizes the American psyche; and that a diffident, anguished, and emotionally apprehensive public requires a vast array therapists, self-esteem educators, grief counselors, workshoppers, healers, and traumatologists to lead it through the trials of evertyday life. Children, more than any group, are targeted for the therapeutic improvement. We round reject these assumptions.

The book thoroughly documents the rise of therapism, the harm it is doing, and why it should be rejected.

While this book may sound extreme, I believe that it does not go far enough. Therapism is a direct attack on the American family. Those American ideals of determination, engenuity, courage, endurance, heroism, acheivement, and success are learned in the nuclear family. From the days of the 13 colonies to the settling of the West, America has been about building something great, with autonomous patriarchal families being the basic units of our society.

Now an army of psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, social workers, teachers, and others are out to destroy that. They say that parents are not competent to solve their problems and rear their kids, and they want to destroy parental authority and give shrinks authority over child-rearing.

Where family autonomy was once admired, it is now despised by the American left. Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren is campaigning contending that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody." She also supports the Occupy Wall Street protests, saying "I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do."

Feminists especially hate the self-made man. They want everyone dependent on public health insurance, food stamps, public schools, counselors, and social workers. They want their husbands to get counseling in order to de-masculinize them. They often claim to have an intellectual position, but it is really an ideological attack on traditional American values.

No Play Time for Kindergartners

Even though most teachers and parents believe that recess is vitally important to students' development, especially boys, many schools do not set aside time for recess, even in elementary school. Over the past decade, many schools have decreased or eliminated recess time. In August, kindergarten teachers in Wichita, Kansas received an email informing them that the new school schedule would allow only one 20-minute recess and it would be only at lunchtime. Students will devote three hours to reading and language, and one and a half hours to math. Kindergarten teachers are allowed five of what are called "brain breaks" which can total up to 15 minutes per day, but these "brain brakes" can last only 2 to 5 minutes each. They are nowhere near as helpful to kids as outdoor recess. Five- and six-year-old kindergartners will get a maximum of 35 minutes of recess in their seven-hour school day.

The Gender Gap Is Good For Babies

The White House Council on Women and Girls issued a report called “Women in America.” In proudly commenting about this report, Obama repeated one of the favorite feminist complaints: that “women still earn on average only about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns.” Well, so what? The American people believe, and federal law requires, NOT “equal pay” (that’s a Communist notion) but “equal pay for equal work.” And women, on average, are not doing work equal to the men.

The Gender Gap Disadvantages Men

Using a well-known expression: Yes, Virginia, there is a gender gap. However, the gender gap doesn't disadvantage women; it punishes men. The biggest losers in the Obama economy are men rather than women, a fact that is bad for men, for families, for the federal deficit problems, and for the health of the U.S. economy. Men have lost twice as many jobs as women. The 9% unemployment figure is not a good measure of the problem. The most important factor is that 20% of American men (one in five) are not in the workforce. Those 20% are not all included in the unemployment figure. Some have just dropped out of the count and are no longer looking for a job, and some are drawing disability.

The Crisis of the European Union

A former president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, gave a very important lecture to Hillsdale College friends when they were visiting in Germany during a cruise in the Baltic Sea. Klaus described how the European Union was formed because the elites of Western countries believed that the integration of the European countries and the strengthening of supranational institutions would be a positive movement. In the 1950s, they tried to remove all kinds of barriers at the borders of individual countries in order to enable the free movement of goods, services, people and ideas all across the European continent.

Explaining judicial supremacy

Harvard Law student Joel Alicea writes in National Review:

The most dramatic challenge to the Supreme Court’s authority as the ultimate constitutional interpreter has come from former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who gave a speech at the Value Voters Summit earlier this month asserting that the constitutional judgments of the president and Congress are entitled to as much respect as those of the Court. Mr. Gingrich promised that, as president, he would challenge the Court’s role as the final arbiter of constitutional meaning — he would even ignore a Court decision if he strongly believed that the Court’s judgment on an important issue was contrary to the true meaning of the Constitution.

Mr. Gingrich’s speech has caused a great deal of consternation among those accustomed to thinking of the Court as having the final word on the Constitution’s meaning, a doctrine known as judicial supremacy.

He goes on to explain what is wrong with judicial supremacy, and with yesterday's NY Times attack on the Republican candidates, also criticized here.

This is all crystal clear to a law student who has to actually read the US Constitution and the history of court cases. He has not yet been brainwashed by those Harvard professors who need judicial supremacy in order to achieve social goals that could not be achieved by democratic means.

The Constitution defines our system of government. None of the three branches is superior to the others. The courts are restricted to deciding cases and controversies, not to dictate policy. The President and other officers take an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to uphold the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution. If a court opinion is in conflict with the Constitution, then the duty of the President and the Congress is to be faithful to the Constitution, not the court opinion.

The law schools taught all of this until 1958, when the US Supreme Court declared that it had supremacy over the over branches. Gingrich is objecting to that 1958 opinion, as it is contrary to the Constitution, and to the way American law was understood for most of its history.

Attacks on judicial supremacy are very upsetting to liberals:

The New York Times, happy to beg the question, declared that the Supreme Court’s own decision in 1803’s Marbury v. Madison “gave the Supreme Court the last word in interpreting the Constitution.” Think Progress’s Ian Millhiser was absolutely apoplectic; the upshot of his screed is that Mr. Gingrich’s argument is “obviously not a view that’s compatible with the rule of law. It deserves nothing more than scorn.”

Such reactions are to be expected. The idea of judicial supremacy is so entrenched in the popular mind that Nancy Pelosi once described a decision of the Supreme Court as being “almost as if God has spoken.” This explains why, when Rep. Michele Bachmann declared that the health-care-reform statute is unconstitutional at a GOP debate in August, Calvin Woodward of the Huffington Post was quick to point out what he saw as the obvious “fact” that “nothing is unconstitutional until courts declare it to be so.”

Because the proponents of judicial supremacy argue for it so vehemently, it takes some explanation to see how thoroughly wrong the idea is. See here for where Phyllis Schlafly wrote a whole book on the subject about 5 years ago, and where Gingrich has a recent position paper making the same explanations.

The United Nations Is Nothing to Celebrate

The United Nations officially began on October 24, 1945, and the globalists would like us to celebrate that anniversary. I think we should celebrate it by teaching the younger generation all the things that are wrong and dangerous about the UN. The UN was supposed to be an agency that kept world peace, but since the UN was started in San Francisco in 1945, the world has fought nearly 150 wars causing over 100 million casualties: 25 in Asia, 13 in Eastern Europe, 23 in the Middle East, 25 in Latin America, and 50 in Africa. The UN spends $20 billion annually and has never been independently audited.

Live from the Marriage Policy Conference — Social and Economic Results of Marriage Absence

Social problems caused by non-marriage cost taxpayers almost a trillion dollars last year. We'll talk with experts about how we can reverse the trend.

The Center for Marriage Policy

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 10-22-11



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Republicans criticize judiciary

The NY Times reports:

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidates are issuing biting and sustained attacks on the federal courts and the role they play in American life, reflecting and stoking skepticism among conservatives about the judiciary.

Michele Bachmann wants some types of cases to be off limits to the federal judiciary.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas favors term limits for Supreme Court justices. Representatives Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Ron Paul of Texas say they would forbid the court from deciding cases concerning same-sex marriage. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania want to abolish the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, calling it a “rogue” court that is “consistently radical.”

Criticism of “activist judges” and of particular Supreme Court decisions has long been a staple of political campaigns. But the new attacks, coming from most of the Republican candidates, are raising broader questions about how the legal system might be reshaped if one of them is elected to the White House next year.

Yes, Republicans should be in favor of limiting courts to their constitutional authority.

In his book, Mr. Perry also discussed allowing Congress to override Supreme Court decisions by a two-thirds vote. This too would require a constitutional amendment, assuming that the power of judicial review established in Marbury v. Madison in 1803 continues to be accepted.

But the Marbury decision, which gave the Supreme Court the last word in interpreting the Constitution, has its critics. Mr. Gingrich, for instance, told the Values Voter Summit in October that “judicial supremacy is factually wrong, it is morally wrong and it is an affront to the American system of self-government.”

No, Gingrich did not attack the 1803 Marbury decision. As noted below, he attacked the 1958 decision where the US Supreme Court first announced its judicial supremacy opinion.

Mr. Gingrich, joined by Mrs. Bachmann and Mr. Paul, has called for limiting the federal courts’ ability to hear certain kinds of cases. Whether that would be constitutional is hard to assess.

“The question of the extent of Congress’s power to control the jurisdiction of the federal courts is one of the most contested and unsettled in constitutional law,” said Vicki C. Jackson, a law professor at Harvard.

Unsettled? Congress has done it many times, and the Supreme Court has respected those limits.

Listen to Dana Loesch and Phyllis Schlafly discuss Socialism

Dana Loesch and Phyllis Schlafly discuss Socialism on The Dana Show. October, 20, 2011.

How Einstein Ruined Physics

Roger Schlafly, a mathematician who was awarded his Ph.D. by the University of California at Berkeley, takes on one of our country's sacred cows when he attacks Albert Einstein. Time Magazine proclaimed Einstein the greatest man of the 20th century, and he is universally admired. But Roger Schlafly debunks Einstein's inflated reputation in a new book entitled How Einstein Ruined Physics. This book is a fascinating discussion of the history of relativity, and of famous experiments in motion, symmetry, and revolution in science. Schlafly explains the ten crucial ideas of relativity and proves that Einstein was behind the curve on all of them. Einstein did not discover relativity. Papers explaining relativity had been published by distinguished scientists years earlier.

Stimulus Money Spent to Promote Sensitivity

With the slew of necessary budget cuts, you would think that schools would be spending money only on necessities. But recently the school board in Omaha, Nebraska voted to spend $130,000 of federal stimulus money to buy and distribute 8,000 copies of a book called The Cultural Proficiency Journey: Moving Beyond Ethical Barriers Toward Profound School Change. The book comes with a worksheet for teachers to score their own cultural sensitivity. The highest score on this worksheet goes to teachers who believe that "white privilege" exists in America and that a person's race defines social and economic status. The book will be used in conjunction with a study guide produced by the school district. Study groups will meet each quarter to discuss the material.

Plans to Ditch the Electoral College

A major attack has been launched against our Constitution by those who want to "fundamentally transform" the United States by getting rid of the Electoral College. They want to change our form of government without amending the Constitution in the proper way. This plan involves stealing votes on a massive scale.

Diagnosing a toddler with ADHD

There are self-appointed experts who want to take over authority for child-rearing, and a crucial part of their plan is to convince parents that their normal child is actually suffering from some sort of disorder that must be treated by an expert.

Slate reports:

The American Academy of Pediatrics on Sunday issued new guidelines that urge parents and doctors to be on the lookout for signs of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children as young as 4. Previous guidelines set the minimum age at six. Preschoolers aren’t particularly focused in general—so how could you tell if one had ADHD?

He would fidget, interrupt, and not play well with others. ADHD is two disorders combined into one. Some children suffer from the “predominantly inattentive” form of the disease, which means they can’t focus on schoolwork, don’t follow basic instructions, and lose things all the time. Four-year-olds, however, are more likely to be diagnosed with the “predominantly hyperactive, impulsive” variety. These kids are extra squirmy, and act “as if driven by a motor.” They also climb things at inappropriate times and answer questions before the interrogator is finished asking. They’re lousy play dates, because they have trouble sharing and waiting their turn. The disorder can present a safety risk -— young children with ADHD sometimes bolt out into traffic.

Parents will notice that virtually all 4-year-olds exhibit some of these symptoms.

Yes, a 4-year-old might bolt out into traffic. It is not a disorder. You have to watch a 4-year-old near a busy street until he learns.

There is no objective test for ADHD or ADD. There is no blood test, genetic marker, brain scan, or anything like that. There is no agreed-upon definition of ADHD. All they have is questionnaires asking the parents whether the kid talks too much, and similar matters. It has already been shown that many kids get diagnosed with ADHD just because they are a little younger than their classmates.

And there are drugs like ritalin, which are not given to 4-year-olds to improve their behavior.

The goal of these experts to zero in on younger and younger kids, label them as mentally ill, and subject them to drug and other therapy. According to a recent study:

The National Comorbidity Survey–Adolescent Supplement NCS-A is a nationally representative face-to-face survey of 10,123 adolescents aged 13 to 18 years in the continental United States. ...

Anxiety disorders were the most common condition (31.9%), followed by behavior disorders (19.1%), mood disorders (14.3%), and substance use disorders (11.4%), with approximately 40% of participants with one class of disorder also meeting criteria for another class of lifetime disorder. The overall prevalence of disorders with severe impairment and/or distress was 22.2% (11.2% with mood disorders, 8.3% with anxiety disorders, and 9.6% behavior disorders). The median age of onset for disorder classes was earliest for anxiety (6 years), followed by 11 years for behavior, 13 years for mood, and 15 years for substance use disorders.

Conclusions
These findings provide the first prevalence data on a broad range of mental disorders in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents. Approximately one in every four to five youth in the U.S. meets criteria for a mental disorder with severe impairment across their lifetime.

So this is claiming that 25% of kids have an incurable mental illness that will require therapy for the rest of their lives. And some of them can no be diagnosed as young as 4 years old, just because their moms check a box on a form that they talk too much.

The NY Times reports on the latest pediatrician recommendations:

Video screen time provides no educational benefits for children under age 2 and leaves less room for activities that do, like interacting with other people and playing, the group said.

The recommendation, announced at the group’s annual convention in Boston, is less stringent than its first such warning, in 1999, which called on parents of young children to all but ban television watching for children under 2 and to fill out a “media history” for doctor’s office visits. But it also makes clear that there is no such thing as an educational program for such young children, and that leaving the TV on as background noise, as many households do, distracts both children and adults. ...

Unlike school-age children, infants and toddlers “just have no idea what’s going on” no matter how well done a video is, Dr. Troseth said.

This is directly contrary to the studies cited in their pdf statement, where it says that toddlers younger than 2 watched 1-2 hours of TV per day, and they do in fact learn from video programs. These pediatrician opinions and recommendations are worthless.

President of Eagle Forum visits campus

Oklahoma Christian University welcomes Phyllis Schlafly to campus this evening, to share with students, faculty, staff and community members.

Phyllis Schlafly is known for many things. Not only is she an author, but she is also an attorney licensed in three states and an expert on the U.S. Constitution.

Schlafly was named one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century by the Ladies’ Home Journal, has devoted her entire life to preserving the United States Constitution and is a published author of 20 books on a variety of subjects ranging from family to feminism.

“I think it’s pretty incredible, all of the things she’s done in her life,” Calee Freeman, sophomore, said. “I can’t even imagine balancing half of the career-related things she has accomplished, let alone successfully raising a family while doing so.”

Schlafly to Newsmax: Obama Moving Country to Socialism 'As Fast As He Can'

America is in the middle of the most dangerous presidency the country has ever seen, conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly warns in a wide-ranging, exclusive Newsmax.TV interview to mark the first 1,000 days of Barack Obama administration.

"He is taking us into socialism just as rapidly as he possibly can,” she said. “He campaigned on the idea of fundamentally transforming the United States and he is doing that.   Read more

Can Women Balance Career and Motherhood?

The trouble with many younger women is that they've been falsely taught by feminism to plan their life career in the workplace without any space or time for marriage, husband or children. They have a total lack of understanding of how demanding a new baby is, and also of how a baby can change its mother's attitude in regard to how she really wants to spend her time. When Mother Nature asserts herself and babies appear, the women who have been misled by feminist ideology expect their employer to assume the costs of the priorities and interruptions that once were easily absorbed by the lifestyle of husband-provider and fulltime homemaker.

Phyllis Schlafly At The Smart Girl Politics Summit

Further Reading: Feminism

Interview: Mark Steyn — After America

The decline of America into European socialism is both sad and serious, but guest Mark Steyn still manages to leave us laughing. He'll also offer a bit of serious advice.

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 10-15-11

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Counterfeit China Phyllis Schlafly

Further Reading: Jobs / Economy / Trade

Many States Pass Education Reform Legislation

In the elections of 2011, many state legislatures flipped from Democratic to Republican majorities, and this change in party control, along with many states running out of money, set the stage for passage of education reform legislation. Here are some samples of these new laws.

Ladies rejecting marriage

Kate Bolick has long essay in the current The Atlantic magazine about ladies rejecting marriage:

In 2001, when I was 28, I broke up with my boyfriend. Allan and I had been together for three years, and there was no good reason to end things. He was (and remains) an exceptional person, intelligent, good-looking, loyal, kind. My friends, many of whom were married or in marriage-track relationships, were bewildered. I was bewildered. To account for my behavior, all I had were two intangible yet undeniable convictions: something was missing; I wasn’t ready to settle down. ... Had I made the biggest mistake of my life? ...

For thousands of years, marriage had been a primarily economic and political contract between two people, negotiated and policed by their families, church, and community. ...

Foremost among the reasons for all these changes in family structure are the gains of the women’s movement. ...

Even more momentously, we no longer need husbands to have children, nor do we have to have children if we don’t want to. For those who want their own biological child, and haven’t found the right man, now is a good time to be alive. Biological parenthood in a nuclear family need not be the be-all and end-all of womanhood—and in fact it increasingly is not. Today 40 percent of children are born to single mothers. ...

No one has been hurt more by the arrival of the post-industrial economy than the stubbornly large pool of men without higher education. An analysis by Michael Greenstone, an economist at MIT, reveals that, after accounting for inflation, male median wages have fallen by 32 percent since their peak in 1973, once you account for the men who have stopped working altogether. The Great Recession accelerated this imbalance. Nearly three-quarters of the 7.5 million jobs lost in the depths of the recession were lost by men, making 2010 the first time in American history that women made up the majority of the workforce. ...

The early 1990s witnessed the dawn of “hookup culture” at universities, as colleges stopped acting in loco parentis, and undergraduates, heady with freedom, started throwing themselves into a frenzy of one-night stands. Depending on whom you ask, this has either liberated young women from being ashamed of their sexual urges, or forced them into a promiscuity they didn’t ask for. Young men, apparently, couldn’t be happier. ...

I definitely noticed an increase in my own contentment when I began to develop and pay more attention to friendships with women who, like me, have never been married. Their worldviews feel relaxingly familiar, and give me the space to sort through my own ambivalence. That’s an abstract benefit.

Because women have achieve their feminist goals, they no longer see men or marriage as essential for a fulfilling life. Or at least that is what she says at age 38 and still uncertain about whether she wants children.

Ronald Reagan's Private Speech Notes

It was a Eureka Moment when the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California was getting a housecleaning in 2010 and someone came across a cardboard box inscribed on the side with the handwritten words "R.R.'s desk." When they opened the box, a great treasure was discovered: years of Ronald Reagan's own speech notes, handwritten on 4x6 cards. These notes have now been organized and published under the title The Notes: Ronald Reagan's Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom. These were the speech notes that enabled Reagan to add bits of wisdom, historic quotations, jokes, one-liners, and political aphorisms in his speeches.

Margaret Thatcher -- a True Heroine

Today is the birthday of one of the most remarkable and successful women in modern history: Margaret Thatcher. She was born on October 13, 1925. She was the first and so far the only woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Her influence on England is comparable to that of Queen Victoria or of Queen Elizabeth the First. Margaret Thatcher certainly was not a feminist. She proudly announced that she owed nothing to the feminist movement.

Our Debt Is Caused by the Welfare Society

Welfare-state spending is a major cause of our national debt, and it is also morally costly because it chases fathers out of the homes. We used to have a society n which the cost of babies was paid by husband providers. But the Welfare State subsidizes single moms, so we get more illegitimate babies every year, and the taxpayers are forced to assume the costs.

The pro-family ideology

Did you know that being pro-family is considered to be a controversial ideology?

Wikipedia defines:

Familialism is an ideology that promotes the family of the Western tradition as an institution. Familialism views the nuclear family of one father, one mother, and their child or children as the central and primary social unit of human ordering and the principal unit of a functioning society and civilization. This unit is also the basis of a multi-generational extended family, which is embedded in socially as well as genetically inter-related communities, nations, etc., and ultimately in the whole human family past, present and future. Familialism advocates Western "family values" and usually opposes other social forms and models that are alternative to such family values (i.e. single-parent, polygamy, LGBT parenting, etc.). A typical trait of familialism is the insistence that "normality" resides in the patriarchal nuclear family.

Familialism is usually considered conservative or reactionary by its critics who argue that it is limited, outmoded and unproductive in modern Western society. As a social construct imposed on non-Western cultures, it has been criticized as being destructive. Its prevalence in psychoanalysis has been criticized, and its antagonistic relationship with LGBT culture has been noted.

There are then three sections of criticism, where it is argued that familialism is a counterproductive relic of the 1950s. There is no indication that anyone believes it to be a good thing.

Conservatives usually consider the merits of the nuclear family to be self-evident. There are hundreds of studies on society's ills, and they are always found to be associated to family breakdowns or single-parent families. Conservatives are probably not even aware that academic scholars hold the American nuclear family in such contempt.

Wikipedia also defines this related ideology:

Complementarianism is a theological view held by some in Christianity and other world religions, such as Islam, that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, religious leadership, and elsewhere.

Really? Is that just a theological view that a few Christians and Moslems have? It seems to me that every civilization has been dominated by citizens who believe that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities. And that includes societies that are not religious, such as Japan.

Oh, How America Has Changed

USA Today published one of its colorful front pages detailing how America has not only grown dramatically in population over the last two decades, but has radically changed ethnically, geographically, and culturally. The most costly of the many changes is the fact that having children has become increasingly detached from marriage. Illegitimate births for all Americans have risen from 26% in 1990 to 41% today "and could be headed higher." Among Hispanics, illegitimacy is 53%, among blacks it's 73%, and among whites it has risen to a shocking 29%. This extraordinary change is the primary reason that government budgets, both federal and state, are so bloated. Without fathers to provide for these millions of children, their mothers turn to Big Brother Government.

Interview: Marybeth Hicks — How The Left Created a Generation of Socialists

Has the radical Left successfully indoctrinated the next generation of Americans into socialism? Polls tell us that the answer is yes, but it's not too late to turn the tide.

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 10-08-11

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Bringing the courts back under the constitution

Newt Gingrich just gave this speech:

Now, I wanted to come today to talk about a historic crisis that only indirectly relates to the president. You know, Abraham Lincoln said, if you debate somebody who does not agree that two plus two equals four, you probably can't win the argument because facts make no difference. And I want to start with that example.

Imagine that by a 5-to-4 vote the Supreme Court decided that two plus two equals five. Under the current theory which the Warren court promulgated in 1958, the only effective recourse would be either, A, to get a future Supreme Court to reverse them, or B, to pass a constitutional amendment declaring that two plus two equals four.

Now I want you to think about the absurdity of this. I mean, do any of you seriously believe that five appointed lawyers decided two plus two equals five, that the rest of us would promptly change our school textbooks, change our accounting systems? I mean, some people may. That could well explain Obama's budgeting system.

But -- (laughter) -- but obviously this is absurd. It can't possibly be true that the Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution a very elaborate, complex process of amending the Constitution and said, however, that if the Supreme Court is split 4-to-4 between liberals and conservatives, and Justice Kennedy gets up in the morning, he becomes a one-person Constitutional Convention. If he gets up and he feels conservative that day, it must be a conservative Constitution. If he gets up and he feels liberal that day, it must be a -- this is an absurdity foisted on us in 1958 by a historic lie. There is no judicial supremacy. It does not exist in the American Constitution. (Cheers, applause.)

Let me be clear. Judicial supremacy is factually wrong, it is morally wrong, and it is an affront to the American system of self-government. (Cheers, applause.)

He sounds as if he just read The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges — and How to Stop It, by Phyllis Schlafly, as you can order here.

For the opposite view, California Governor Jerry Brown just vetoed a bill with this statement:

This measure would overturn a California Supreme Court decision that held that police officers can lawfully search the cell phones of people who they arrest. Courts are better suited to resolve the complex and case specific issues relating to constitutional search-and-seizures protections.

No, the governor should not be letting the courts decide the state policy on cell phone searches. That is just the sort of judicial supremacy that Gingrich rightfully denounces.

Smart Meters

Christopher Columbus Deserves a Holiday

Today is the day we observe Columbus Day, although his real day is October 12. Since 1971, Columbus Day has been observed on the second Monday in October because Americans like holidays on Mondays so we can enjoy three-day weekends. I'm glad we have an official holiday to commemorate Christopher Columbus. Americans have celebrated Columbus's arrival in the New World ever since the colonial period, and it's been a federal holiday since 1937.

Half of Americans are dependent on benefits

The London Dail Mail reports:

Almost half of the U.S. population now lives in a household where at least one member receives government benefits, new Census data has revealed.

Analysis during the first quarter of 2010 found that a worrying 48.5 per cent of people lived in households that were dependent on state handouts.

The figure is considerably higher than in the third quarter of 2008, at the height of the recession, when it stood at 44.4 per cent. ...

The Census found that 14.5 per cent of people in the U.S. shared a home with a person on Medicare, and 16 per cent lived with someone on Social Security.

But it was means-tested programmes that accounted for the most highly utilised, with 34.2 per cent of the population receiving support from food stamps, subsidised housing and healthcare support from Medicaid.

Compare that with 15.1 per cent of Americans who were below the federal poverty line - $22,000 a year for a family of four.

This is a threat to the autonomy of the American family. Americans have long believed that families should be economically self-sufficient, and not dependent on govt handouts. Americans used to be too proud to accept food stamps, if they did not need them. Now, dependence on welfare programs is wided accepted, and integrated into American culture.

Cloning fouls my vote for initiative

Written by: Bill Crawford

You ever "step in it?" My wife thinks that's my favorite thing to do, kind of like my daughter and granddaughter's propensity to step in every puddle they see.

Well, I'm about to "step in it" more than usual.

I believe that marriage is a holy event between a man and a woman. Likewise, I believe that life begins at conception, a wonderful blessing arising out of matrimony. Using the slogans we like to use these days that makes me pro-marriage and pro-life.

Ad protests Toronto schools

The K-12 schools have taught sex education for a long time, but now they teach sexual identity and orientation, including role-playing exercises.

Parents have no say about this, as the Toronto Equity Inclusive Curriculum says:

Should Schools Send Notes Or Permission Slips Home Before Starting any Classroom Work On LGBTQ Issues? No.

Can A Parent Have Their Child Accommodated Out Of Human Rights Education Based On Religious Grounds? No.

Can Teachers Seek Accommodation From Teaching Materials That May Contradict Their Religious Beliefs? No. The TDSB is part of the secular public education system.

Can Schools/Teachers Choose Not To Address Controversial Issues For Fear Of Negative Parent Response?
No. Teachers are obligated to address all equity issues (issues regarding historically disadvantaged groups). Any omissions that maintain a non-inclusive curriculum and pedagogy are considered to foster a poisoned environment under Section 4.2 of the TDSB Human Rights Policy.

A typcial activity of the Toronto Curriculum (pdf) is the following way to celebrate Valentine's Day:

LGBTQ-Positive Pink Hearts Day
A less time-consuming alternative to the Kissing Booth. Students cut out pink hearts and write LGBTQ-positive messages on them, such as: That’s So Gay is SO Yesterday, I Support LGBTQ Students, Love Knows No Boundaries. Students and staff sign the hearts and the hearts are then displayed in a central gathering place and/or display case in the school. In exchange for the support, cinnamon hearts and chocolate are provided.

There is also "facilitated discussion on whether being LGBTQ is a choice". What is that? It would not be so bad if scientific evidence were being presented in an objective way, but there is no such consensus on whether being LGBTQ is a choice. Facilitated discussion is just a euphemism for teachers brainwashing students with ideological views.

The Institute for Canadian Values bought an ad complaining about this, and a newspaper published it, but then the paper apologized:

Where the ad exceeded the bounds of civil discourse was in its tone and manipulative use of a picture of a young girl; in the suggestion that such teaching “corrupts” children, with everything that such a charge implies; and in its singling out of groups of people with whose sexuality the group disagrees.

The fact that we will not be publishing this ad again represents a recognition on our part that publishing it in the first place was a mistake. The National Post would like to apologize unreservedly to anyone who was offended by it. We will be taking steps to ensure that in future our procedures for vetting the content of advertising will be strictly adhered to.

But the ad merely objects to a mandatory child indoctrination program. Just read it for yourself, and it will only make you glad that your kids are not in the Toronto schools.

Candidates Should Be Talking About China

The media are absorbed with the race for the Republican presidential nomination and predicting who will win. But why are they omitting discussion of the elephant in the room--I mean China? When Donald Trump briefly considered running for President, his straight talk about China helped him rise to the top of the Republican field. So, why aren't the media interrogators asking other candidates any questions about China?

Raising a child doesn't take a village

New University of Michigan research shows:

It doesn't take a village to raise a child after all, according to University of Michigan research.

"In the African villages that I study in Mali, children fare as well in nuclear families as they do in extended families," said U-M researcher Beverly Strassmann, professor of anthropology and faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "There's a naïve belief that villages raise children communally, when in reality children are raised by their own families and their survival depends critically on the survival of their mothers." ...

In the 1,700 Dogon children she followed, Strassmann found that children were over four times more likely to die by age 5 if their mothers were dead. ...

In her study of the Dogon, Strassmann found that children's risk of death is higher in polygynous than in monogamous families. This reflects the hazard of living with unrelated females whose own children are competing with the children of co-wives for limited resources.

Hillary Clinton was credited with writing a book titled, It Takes a Village, which was supposed an African proverb. But even in African villages, kids do better in a nuclear family than getting care by extended family or others in the village.

Communist China Is a U.S. Jobs Killer

Communist China is a killer of U.S. jobs, not only from U.S. outsourcing but also by taking thousands of construction jobs right here in the U.S.A. China will soon finish rebuilding the great San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge damaged in the 1989 earthquake. A Chinese company built the construction machinery and the bridge segments in China and is now installing them in California, using 3,000 imported Chinese workers who are paid only $12 a day, working 7 a.m. till 11 p.m., seven days a week.

Communist China Is a U.S. Jobs Killer

Communist China is a killer of U.S. jobs, not only from U.S. outsourcing but also by taking thousands of construction jobs right here in the U.S.A. China will soon finish rebuilding the great San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge damaged in the 1989 earthquake. A Chinese company built the construction machinery and the bridge segments in China and is now installing them in California, using 3,000 imported Chinese workers who are paid only $12 a day, working 7 a.m. till 11 p.m., seven days a week.

The fertility gap

Here is more evidence that we are headed towards an idiocracy:

You hear about the "haves" versus the "have-nots," but not so much about the "have-one-or-nones" versus the "have-a-fews." This, though, is how you might characterize the stark and growing fertility class divide in the United States. Two new studies bring the contrasting reproductive profiles of rich and poor women into sharp relief. One, from the Guttmacher Institute, shows that the rates of unplanned pregnancies and births among poor women now dwarf the fertility rates of wealthier women, and finds that the gap between the two groups has widened significantly over the past five years. The other, by the Center for Work-Life Policy, documents rates of childlessness among corporate professional women that are higher than the childlessness rates of some European countries experiencing fertility crises. ...

Childlessness has increased across most demographic groups but is still highest among professionals.  Indeed, according to an analysis of census data conducted by the Pew Research Center, about one quarter of all women with bachelor's degrees and higher in the United States wind up childless.

The welfare queens, drug addicts, and illegal aliens seem to have no trouble having as many babies as they want, while the rich women do not want the trouble until it is too late. This is all a result of the incentives that our society has created.

The Year of the Bible Remembered

Powerful groups in the United States are trying to turn us into a completely secular nation and banish all reference to God and prayer from any public place or event. Those are the people who file lawsuits against the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, against Ten Commandments monuments in courthouses and parks, and against students who want to reference their faith at graduation ceremonies. Those secularists are trying to make us believe that any public reference to religion happened only in the olden days, and now we need to get rid of those references.

Interview: J.R. Dunn — Death by Liberalism

Did you know that more Americans have been killed by liberal government policies than by all the wars of the last century combined? Our guest will give us the facts.

Book: Death by Liberalism: The Fatal Outcome of Well-Meaning Liberal Policies

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 10-01-11

Listen every Saturday (11-Noon CST): Bott Radio Network

Archived Eagle Forum Live Radio Programs

WallBuilders LIVE! "Why do Our Enemies Need Our Money?"

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Why do Our Enemies Need Our Money?

Guest: Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum

Topics: * David and Rick answer a question about Biblical taxes. * A letter from the American Academy of Pediatrics is addressed. * Interview with Phyllis Schlafly- The UN receives about a third of its money from the US, yet they are diverting the money to things that are not in our best interest, or the best interest of the world, for that matter. * David and Rick answer a question on socialist programs / entitlements.

Source: http://www.wallbuilderslive.com/Historic.asp?cdate=76982

Debt Ceiling Up, S&P Rating Down

Do you remember how we were threatened that if the Republican House of Representatives didn't raise the U.S. debt ceiling, the stock market would crash and Standard & Poor's would punish us by downgrading our credit rating? Well, the Republicans did what Wall Street, President Obama and the media demanded. Then the stock market nose-dived anyway and S&P reduced our financial rating for the first time in history from Triple-A to second-place. The problem isn't the debt ceiling but out-of-control spending, and the bipartisan deal made it worse. It increased the government's borrowing limit by nearly a trillion dollars but cut less than $2 trillion in spending over the next ten years, which hardly makes a dent in the problem.