Choosing the Right College

If you are a student trying to decide which colleges to apply to, you might find it useful to take a look at a book called Choosing the Right College, published by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Delaware, known as ISI. It provides in-depth research on 140 Ivy League institutions, state universities, liberal arts colleges, Christian and ex-Christian schools, military academies, and small schools devoted to the Great Books.

Purpose of feminism

An online video claims that Feminism Was Created To Destabilize Society. It was some sort of Rockefeller/CIA plot. The purpose was to get a lot more women into the workforce in order to increase the tax base, and to break down the nuclear family so that kids will see the state as the family, and be more easily brainwashed by the schools. This purpose shows the feminist movement to be evil, not benign.

The conspiracy theory seems a little far-fetched, but the causation theory is not. Any time there is a large social movement, the important thing is to look at the results of the movement, not the motivation of the leaders. If the movement benefits certain economic interests or political ideologies, then those interests and ideologies will be working to support the movement. There are ideologies that work to break down the nuclear family, and if feminism assists in that goal, so much the better. That's the way some people see it, anyway.

The burden of proof was on them

AP reports:

In her interview, White said she decided to come forward after seeing Cain attack his other accusers in an appearance on television.

"It bothered me that they were being demonized, sort of, and being treated as if they were automatically lying, and the burden of proof was on them," she said. "I felt bad for them."

The other accusers made claims of inappropriate behavior in the 1990s against the National Restaurant Association, and demanded thousands of dollars in exchange for their silence.

Yes, the burden of proof is on the accuser. Feeling bad for the accuser does not validate the claim, and does not justify making additional claims. White sounds as if she just wants to support the idea of bringing down prominent politicians with frivolous accusations.

The comic is from today's Non Sequitur.

Court Looks at Debtors' Prison

Debtors’ prison used to be a fact of life in England and in our country during the colonial period. Supposedly, the United States phased out debtors’ prison along with slavery in the mid-19th century. Well, slavery is indeed gone, but debtors’ prison is back with a vengeance in the form of sending fathers to jail over small child support disputes. This type of imprisonment is based on “civil contempt.” That means someone can be sent directly to jail by a judge without the constitutional safeguards given to criminal defendants.

The Chilly World of the Campus Male

Warren Farrell writes:

Males are keenly aware that when they go to college they are entering a hostile environment. Freshman orientation alone has had a distinctively anti-male cast for years: heavy emphasis on date rape, stalking, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual harassment amount to an unmistakable message that males are patriarchal oppressors and potential sex criminals. The lesson is quickly taught: only women are vulnerable, and men are the cause of their vulnerability. At one elite university, at least, the first thing a female freshman gets from the administration is a whistle to blow in the event that a rape-minded male accosts her. The freshman male is likely to acquire a new feeling about himself: he is the designated potential perpetrator until proven innocent.

This message will be reinforced by a barrage of gender courses, the attitudes of a good many faculty, and on many campuses, what Charlotte Allen calls “the scorched-earth war against fraternities.” The anti-fraternity movement is ostensibly about wantonness and excess (binge-drinking, hazing, date rape), but in reality it’s about erasing the best-known male refuge from the suffocating political correctness on campus and its theory of the evil male.

The only males likely to escape this pressure are gays, African-Americans, the transgendered, or the harmlessly hetero—docile guys who agree with the standard campus view that males are dangerous. The campus environment is so hostile toward men that it doesn’t allow hostility toward men to be considered a “hostile environment.” Only established grievance groups get to detect hostile environments.

Professors in engineering and the hard sciences don’t speak out much about the politics of male-female issues. What we hear emanates strongly from departments of women’s and “gender” studies and is adapted by psychology; social work; sociology; anthropology; literature; schools of education; and the seminaries. At the prestigious universities, most of these departments are now 80% to 95% female.

Farrell has written several excellent books on the changing nature of men and women in our society.

Feminists Target Boys' High School Sports

In 1972, Congress passed a law called The Education Amendments, now commonly referred to as Title IX. It prohibits sex discrimination in colleges and schools. The purpose was to assure that women have access to all education opportunities.

The Candy Cane Case

If you haven't yet realized that powerful groups in the United States are working hard to ban Christianity from every part of school and public life, let me tell you about the latest outrage.

Feeling guilt about power windows

NPR radio reports:

"When we talk about 55 mpg, we had that technology, criminy, 20 years ago," says Margaret Wooldridge, who is also a professor at the University of Michigan in the department of mechanical engineering. She says there's a but — in this case, the car driver.

"Like, when was the last time you actually took your hand and rolled down a window?" she asks. "But now there's an expectation that every vehicle, even if it's an entry-level vehicle, will have that kind of creature comfort [power windows]."

Wooldridge says we expect our cars to heat faster in winter, to cool faster in summer, have seat warmers and plugs for two cellphones, maybe a DVD player, and — of course — have a radio.

"I personally owned a vehicle that had over 45 mpg fuel economy when I was in college," Wooldridge says. "And it had a manual transmission, manual windows; it was a great car, [it] lasted forever. It was lightweight, kind of chilly to heat in the winter and all that good stuff."

Wooldridge says all those extras can reduce the fuel economy by up to 50 percent — and that it's a fat chance people are going to give up plugging in their cellphones or running the air conditioner or cranking NPR.

Only NPR would do a story on cars by finding a female professor who says that car mileage has been cut in half by power windows, cellphones, and radios.

Air conditioning can cut your mileage a little bit. The other stuff is negligible. What does this woman do -- drive with her finger on the window up-down switch all the time?

NPR sells liberal guilt. You are supposed listen to NPR in your car, feel guilty about modern comforts and electronic conveniences, feel bad that you might have contributed to climate change, and make a pledge to support more socialist radio.

Court Bans Jesus from Public Prayer

In a stunning ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit prohibited a city council from allowing mention of Jesus during its invocations. The Court interpreted the First Amendment as requiring censorship of references to Jesus in prayers allowed by public officials. The invocation at the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina had ended with the unremarkable phrase, "For we do make this prayer in Your Son Jesus' name, Amen." The invocation also referenced "the Cross of Calvary," the "Virgin Birth," and the "Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ." In ruling against the County Board, the appellate court complained that nearly 80% of the invocations referred to "Jesus," "Jesus Christ," "Christ," or "Savior." The Court further criticized the County Board because most of the prayers ended with a reference to Jesus, using phrases such as "In the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior."

Smaller Classes Are Not Better

When the subject comes up of cutting the budget for public schools, we hear whining and moaning about the indignities schools are supposedly forced to endure because of the economic downturn. One of these key themes is what they call the "class-size crisis." Teachers like smaller classes; that's understandable. The advantages include fewer papers to grade, fewer students to manage, and fewer parents to deal with. The teachers unions like smaller classes, too. Smaller classes mean more teachers, and more union dues. Every new member in California enables the teachers union to pocket $600 a year in dues. And parents like smaller classes because they believe that their children will benefit from more individual attention. Everyone agrees that smaller classes are better; right?

Anti-theocracy hysteria

The leftist-atheist-evolutionist blogs are constantly complaining about how America is supposedly becoming a theocracy. Jerry Coyne writes Republicans insane; want to establish theocracy, and Richard Dawkins endorses a new book with Sean Faircloth discusses his new book Attack of the Theocrats.

Faircloth says that he was inspired to write the book because some people objected to Pres. Barack Obama giving a commencement address at Notre Dame, because of a minister who advocated requiring parental permission for a minor girl to get an abortion, and because many state legislatures open with a prayer. As his most horrifying example of a theocratic law, he complains that some states have religious exemptions that allow church child day-care centers to be less regulated than commercial ones.

Coyne complains that at a recent Iowa campaign event, Cain talked about "people of faith and strong faith", Perry about our "Judeo-Christian founding fathers", Bachmann saying that "The 10 Commandments were the foundation for our law", Santorum saying that "our civil laws have to comport with the higher law", and Gingrich speculating on how Congress might undo Roe v Wade.

Theocracy means "government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided". I don't see any American politician who advocates theocracy. Eagle Forum is a strong support of our U.S. Constitution, and is firmly against any change to any other type of government. Those who think that we are becoming a theocracy are the deranged ones.

College Is a Bad Reason to Go Into Debt

College students are now facing increasing evidence that college is a bad financial investment that will saddle students with debt they can never escape. Pro-college ads are seductive: "College graduates can make a million dollars more in their lifetimes than those who don't go to college." The truth is that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 17 million college-educated Americans are now working jobs for which they are overqualified. Hundreds of thousands of college graduates are working as waiters, secretaries, receptionists, laborers, or janitors. Those are all respectable occupations, but they are not jobs that will enable them to repay their five- or even six-digit college loans.

Another stem cell failure

The UK BBC reports:

The world's first official trial using human embryonic stem cells in patients has been halted.

Geron, based in California, made the sudden announcement that it was halting further work in this field. ...

Josephine Quintavalle from the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: "At long last after 10 years of unremitting hype, reality has caught up with embryonic stem cell claims. If Geron is abandoning this project it is because it is simply not working, despite the millions of dollars and hot air that has been invested in the promotion of this research."

That leaves only one company doing an embryonic stem cell trial, and it has only treated two patients:

In July, a team at the UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute in Los Angeles that performed two delicate 30-minute procedures in which they carefully infused 50,000 retinal pigmented epithelial cells made from embryonic stem cells into one eye of two patients in the hopes cells would replace those ravaged by two incurable eye ailments. The only results from that trial released so far indicate that no safety problems have arisen.

Embryonic stem cells have been hyped as the greatest medical breakthru in decades, and billions of dollars of taxpayer money has been diverted for research. Liberals touted it as the proof that modern science requires us to redefine human life. But not one person has been successfully treated, and there is very little hope of any commercial therapies in the near future.

College May Be Dangerous for Men

College is a dangerous place for men. They are not only a minority but they are victimized by discriminatory and unconstitutional anti-male rules. In another striking proof that the Obama Administration is totally manipulated by feminists, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights sent out a 19-page Dear Colleague Letter to colleges and universities that should make men fear attending college at all. The letter adopts the feminist theory that in all sexual controversies or accusations, the man is guilty unless he proves himself innocent.

Nader interviews Buchanan

C-SPAN2 just broadcast this interview:

After Words: Patrick Buchanan, "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?" hosted by Ralph Nader

Pat Buchanan argues that America is disintegrating because of three factors: its loss of the Christian faith; moral and social collapse because of that loss; and the death of those who ran the nation for much of its heyday. He discusses his claims with Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate.

Nader's main point was that Buchanan was overemphasizing ethnic conflict, and understating corporate evils. Near the end, he asked:

Nader: You say, "religion, race, culture, and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse." Would you add corporatism to that?

Buchanan: They're only four, Ralph.

Early in the show, Nader argued:

Nader: What we've seen in America, you see a decline. I see a decline this way. Parental authority is being sidestepped by corporations selling to kids junk food, violent programs, sadistic stuff ... And they don't have any patriotism. ...

They have devastated the family. They have separated children from their parents. We have a lot of documentation. How does this mix in the book? ...

Buchanan: I agree with almost everything you've said. They have no values. Look, when you put pornography on the internet for children and all the rest of it, whether it is Hollywood or the rest of it, you're right, they are corrupt human beings that do that. I'm against that. You and I were opposed to NAFTA and GATT ...

Eagle Forum filed an amicus brief to explain how selling violent video games to minors undermines parental authority.

Children's rights, and the culture of secrecy

Lynette Burrows wrote this 1999 essay:

How to control adults by means of 'children's rights'.

When you think about it, the fashionable crusade of 'children's rights' is bound to be anti-family. It is a movement which declares itself to be more interested in the welfare of children than are ordinary parents. It seeks rights and laws for children that neither they, nor their parents, want. It promises to give children legal sanctions against their parents and, in so doing, pits the interests of children against their parents. The inescapable implication is that children are not in safe hands with their own parents and that a whole movement has had to be called into being in order to protect them. It is an innocent-sounding piece of subliminal, anti-family propaganda, advertising the fact that parents are, at best, inadequate and, at worst, hostile to the needs of their children.

Analysing the 'loaded' message of the title 'children's rights' one can see it attempts to pack the punch of an appeal to both parental feeling and the nobility of action implied by the word 'rights'. It is utterly bogus! A 'right is classically defined as 'the freedom to act without interference, according to one's conscience.' It means nothing unless the individual has the capacity to act upon their 'right' and children, by nature of their immaturity and inexperience, do not have that capacity. So they have people who act for them, in the form of the people who created them and who love them more than anyone else. Those people, the adult parents, have a freedom to act according to their conscience, and within the law, with their children and it is that freedom that the children's rights activists seek to remove.

One can clearly map their intentions by what they have achieved so far and what they are signalling they want to do in the future. I don't know anything about the American scene but, in Great Britain, and several European countries, among their achievements has been securing the right of the state to allow under-age children to be given contraceptives and abortions without their parents' knowledge or consent.

The web site has articles about the evils of children's rights in Sweden and other European countries, including this 1997 UK story:

The Sunday Telegraph highlights today yet another case in which a mother has been threatened with losing her baby to local authority care. The mother had not shown any sign at all of harming her child, for her baby has not yet been born.

The local authority, however, is convinced that there is a possibility that she might harm the child.

To most people, it will seem grotesquely unjust that any child could be removed on such a basis. Northumberland County Council is, however, far from unusual in acting in this way. The courts have endorsed the removal of hundreds of children from their natural parents on the basis that there is a possibility that they might "abuse their child emotionally".

Some of those forcible adoptions are appalling acts of injustice. How can such things happen in Britain? The answer is simple: the courts that enforce the taking away of children from parents on local authority say-so operate in secret. It is illegal to reveal their proceedings, or even their judgments.

Yesterday's front page NY Times explains the harm from illegal family court secrecy in New York:

Today, the culture of secrecy has hardly budged. Leah A. Hill, a Fordham Law School professor who has written about and practiced in New York Family Courts, said the courts were largely as unaccountable today as they had ever been, even though they can hold a central place in the lives of poor New Yorkers.

“There hasn’t really been a public discourse about what goes on in Family Court, and part of the reason is that it is a closed institution,” Professor Hill said.

The article explain how reporters have been locked out of court hearings that were supposed to be open to the public.

Wal-Mart Lawsuit Limits Class Action Suits

"Class action" lawsuits are tools for trial attorneys to get enormous legal fees by suing on behalf of thousands of people who never hired the lawyers or approved the lawsuit. When one person is overcharged $10 by a large company, he can recover only $10 in a lawsuit. But if an attorney can sue in a class action on behalf of a million people who were overcharged $10 each, then he might recover $10 million in damages and take a large fraction as his legal fee. Often class actions are brought by liberal attorneys who plow some of their profits into campaigns for liberal politicians, such as Obama for president.

Destroying the Family: Swedish Style

Eric Brodin gave a 1985 Eagle Forum speech, saying:

Some years ago a British journalist returned from Sweden saying: - I have seen the Future and it doesn't work. Despite many evidences of the truth of that observation many Americans - especially those in sociology and related disciplines - help maintain belief in the myth that Sweden's Welfare State is still a model for us and others to emulate.

The family has become the target because it is the solidifying and most effective element for perpetuating those traditional values that often are the only defence posts against the totalitarianizition of our society. ...

In Sweden they have included a veritable barrage of legislation in which internal relations within the family and the role of the family within the society and vis-à-vis the government has undergone a radical change. Some of these plans are the following:

(1) Subject the child to compulsory educational programs in sex education, socialisation, and religion which are consciously and with ideological bias intended to counteract the child's values derived from parents within the family. ...

(13) In Sweden the state now arrogates to itself the power to be the primary protector of the child. ...

A new study has an update on trends in Sweden:

Sweden's female university students are enjoying twice as many partners but using fewer condoms than their counterparts of 10 years ago, worrying research has found.

At the same time, the number of female students copping to having an STD had doubled, according to the research from Uppsala University, the local.se reports. The findings come from a survey carried out every five years among female students using the Uni's health service.

The latest figures – culled from 2009 – show that female students had typically had 11 partners, more than double the number their counterparts of 1999 had.

Meanwhile, the proportion who insisted on a new partner using a condom had deflated from 60 per cent to 49 per cent.

Unsurprisingly, the local.se report continues, almost a third of the students surveyed had contracted a sexually transmitted disease, double the rate among their counterparts a decade earlier.

Sweden has done the world a great service by doing a massive social experiment on family breakdown. As that 1985 lecture said, all we have to do is to learn from their mistakes.

Government Should Not Be Picking Economic Winners

Government's entry into the field of trying to control climate by regulations, taxes and handouts is a convenient cover not only for deliberately lowering our U.S. standard of living, but also for imposing socialism on America. So, most of the $800 billion Obama Stimulus money was dedicated to REPLACING America's dependable energy sources of coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear WITH less efficient, less dependable and more expensive green energies such as wind and solar.

Mandated reporting of suspicion

Education Week reports about the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal:

The sex abuse scandal at Penn State University, which this month led to the firing of storied football coach Joe Paterno and other prominent university officials who did not report the alleged crimes to law enforcement, raises fresh questions about the legal and moral responsibilities of K-12 personnel who are more likely to be in a position to detect physical or sexual abuse of a child.

Experts say most states have clear laws requiring K-12 teachers and other school employees to swiftly and directly report suspicions of abuse to police or child-protection authorities, but there are complex reasons why these so-called “mandatory reporters” may fail to take action.
“I think one of the major impediments to people reporting their suspicions is that they think they have to have more evidence that abuse is occurring,” said Robert J. Shoop, the director of the Cargill Center for Ethical Leadership at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan. and the author of several books on sex abuse and sexual misconduct. “But that’s not the case with these laws. If you think abuse could be happening, that’s when you call the professionals.”

The “mandatory reporting” laws in most states spell out that anyone employed in schools is personally responsible for notifying police or child-protection service agencies if they suspect child abuse, according to a recent review of state laws by the Associated Press. Failure to report abuse suspicions have led to teachers being fired, losing their licenses, or being convicted of a crime, although enforcement actions against school personnel are relatively rare.

Traditional British and American law does not require citizens to report crimes that they witness. We are not a nation of snitches. If your neighbor is illegally smoking dope, you do not have to say a word.

Most people are happy reporting a crime against a child, because the child is usually unable to speak up for himself. But the mandatory reporting laws go way beyond that. They require reporting suspicions.

There was a case several years ago of a hospital that noticed some unusual bruises in a child, and the physician did not know what to make of it. He notified the hospital managers, and they called in an expert from the local university. They told the parents that they were getting a second opinion, and the university expert said that there was no sign of abuse. The physician was later prosecuted and convicted for failing to report his suspicions. The mere fact that he consulted an expert was the proof that he had suspicions.

According to the grand jury report, Penn State learned about accusation against Sandusky in 1998. University official arranged for a confrontation, pressured him into admitting inappropriate behavior, and turned the case over to the police. When the DA decided that there was insufficient evidence of a crime, the university fired him anyway.

Penn State officials have been charged with a crime for not reporting a similar allegation against Sandusky in 2002. The entire case hinges on the memory and credibility of McQueary, but now he has changed his story and says that he reported it to the police. There is no physical or other hard evidence of abuse. According to Sandusky, the child involved will testify that McQueary is lying about what he claimed to have seen.

Meanwhile, the legal, financial, spiritual, and emotional toll of false accusations is enormous. Families are unjustly busted up every day from overzealous CPS workers. The blog Legally Kidnapped has news everyday of the damages causes by CPS.

The mandatory reporting law is a direct attack on the autonomy of the American family. Many parents have practices that provoke the disapproval of others. All it takes is one anonymous call to CPS, and a govt social worker will knock on the door and threaten to put the kids in foster care. There is no due process. The upshot is that know-nothing social workers are redefining how American children are to be reared, and this is a change for the worse.

And it is only going to get worse, as the Democrats want to expand the mandatory reporting. The LA Times reports:

Outrage over the Penn State child sex-abuse scandal has led to calls for federal legislation that would require anyone witnessing child abuse to report it to law enforcement or a child protection agency.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) announced plans Wednesday to introduce the Child Protection Act, which would compel states to enact child-abuse reporting laws or risk losing some federal aid. States would set the penalties for people who fail to report abuse.

A similar bill, the Speak Up to Protect Every Abused Kid Act, was introduced Wednesday by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). ...

Thirty-two states do not require all adults to report suspected child abuse or neglect, according to Casey's office. Instead, many states have in place a requirement that people with regular contact with children, such as healthcare providers and teachers, must report child abuse. ...

A Penn State assistant football coach who, according to a grand jury report, saw Sandusky raping a boy in the football team’s showers has been widely criticized for not reporting the incident directly to police. He did report it to the university. In an email obtained by the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, the assistant coach, Mike McQueary, said that he did discuss the incident with police and stopped the assault.

I would not be surprised if this Penn State witch-hunt concludes by the state paying millions of dollars in bogus lawsuits, and no one found guilty of anything. Plus a horrible new anti-family law.

Climate Propaganda Leads to Global Governance

Before George Bush the First left the White House, he attended the 1992 United Nations meeting in Rio de Janeiro, signed the UN Climate Change Treaty, and got the Senate to ratify it. It's now available for Obama to use to help him "fundamentally transform the United States."

Marxist goals to undermine the family

Bill Wood, of Charlotte, North Carolina, gave this testimony (mirrored here) about Antonio Gramsci, a leading 20th century Marxist:

In 1926, an Italian communist named Antonio Gramsci ended up in Mussolini’s prison after a return from Russia. While there, he wrote his “prison notebooks” and they laid out a plan for destroying Western faith and culture. His plans included ways to undermine and discourage Westerners through the intentional collapse of the existing social structure from within.

Gramsci advocated not only Marxist class warfare, which was economically focused, but also social and cultural warfare at the same time. His theories and the “slow march through the culture” (or institutions) which he envisioned to destroy the West are enshrined in current American social policy. His theories surrounding “hegemony” and a “counter-hegemony” were designed to destroy Western social structure and overthrow the “West” from within.

Hegemony, as defined by Gramsci is that widely accepted system of values, morals, ethics, and social structure which holds a society together and creates a cohesive people. Western social structures holding society together (i.e. “the hegemony”) include: authority, morality, sexual restraint, monogamous marriage, personal responsibility, patriotism, national unity, community, tradition, heredity, education, conservatism, language, Christianity, law, and truth. His theory called for media and communications to slowly co-opt the people with the “counter-hegemony” propaganda message.

"... Hegemony operates culturally and ideologically through the institutions of civil society which characterises mature liberal-democratic, capitalist societies. These institutions include education, the family, the church, the mass media, popular culture, etc." [ii]

Through a systematic attack of these institutions he termed the “slow march through the culture,” Gramsci theorized that once these institutions were sufficiently damaged the people would insist on an end to the madness allowing totalitarian control of the Western world. A similar form of these theories was tried before America by the National Socialists (Nazis) headed by Hitler.

Many of the Gramscian Marxist Communist ideals have been implemented in government, education, and law. In practice, women have become the vehicle deceived and used in this quest to tear down and destroy Western culture. This has been done by enlisting their help in ripping apart marriage and the traditional family. ...

Careful study and review shows that Gramscian Marxist Communism encompasses today’s “feminist” movement. [iv] Feminism’s goals are to use women to undermine and destroy the culture by abandoning marriage and by not carrying on the critical task of “transmitting the culture” to the next generation. Today’s feminists use women to advance the destruction of women, children, and families while convincing them they are somehow a “victim” of the patriarchal structure. And the patriarchal structure is nothing but Orwellian NewSpeak for the social structures and institutions that have kept Western civilization together long before the social decay we see today.

America’s socialists and communists make no pretenses about their goals to promote the destruction of a cohesive society by advancing a welfare state and the complete breakdown of the family. Socialists have openly adopted the “counter hegemony” taught by Gramsci which is designed to destroy Western culture.

Karl Marx himself said in the Communist Manifesto that he wanted to abolish the family.

Stealth Tactics of Radical Islamists

Every Saturday from 11:00 am central time until noon, I host a one-hour radio talk show called Eagle Forum Live. I interview a guest and then invite questions and comments from listeners. In September, I aired a program that many people found particularly interesting, and it is now archived on my website, eagleforum.org.

Asian women now reject marriage

The Economist magazine
reports:

Conservatives in the West are fond of saying that the traditional family is the bedrock of society. That view is held even more widely in Asia. The family is the focus of Confucian ethics, which holds that a basic moral principle, xiushen (self-improvement), can be pursued only within the confines of the family. In an interview in 1994 Lee Kuan Yew, a former prime minister of Singapore, argued that after thousands of years of dynastic upheaval, the family is the only institution left to sustain Chinese culture. It embodies a set of virtues—“learning and scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain”—which, he said, underpins Asia’s economic success. He feared that the collapse of the family, if it ever happened, would be the main threat to Singapore’s success.

The article comes with this
editorial:

Marriage rates are falling partly because people are postponing getting hitched. Marriage ages have risen all over the world, but the increase is particularly marked in Asia. People there now marry even later than they do in the West. The mean age of marriage in the richest places—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong—has risen sharply in the past few decades, to reach 29-30 for women and 31-33 for men.

A lot of Asians are not marrying later. They are not marrying at all. Almost a third of Japanese women in their early 30s are unmarried; probably half of those will always be. Over one-fifth of Taiwanese women in their late 30s are single; most will never marry. In some places, rates of non-marriage are especially striking: in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married; in Tokyo, 21%; among university graduates of that age in Singapore, 27%. ...

Asian governments have long taken the view that the superiority of their family life was one of their big advantages over the West. That confidence is no longer warranted. They need to wake up to the huge social changes happening in their countries and think about how to cope with the consequences.

The American family is dying, and the disease is spreading to the Far East.

Interview: Burt Folsom, Jr. — FDR Goes to War

Franklin Roosevelt is hailed by many as a great wartime leader. But a respected historian reveals a president who was reckless with both America's economy and defense.

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 11-12-11



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Kill the Law of the Sea Treaty -- Again

One of the first things Ronald Reagan did when he entered the White House in 1981 was to reject the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which had been laboriously negotiated by our State Department and made ready for the President's signature. Reagan said, No way. He clearly saw that the Treaty was a bad deal for the United States. LOST would interfere with U.S. sovereignty and with our Navy's duty to keep the high seas open.

Colleges Want Students to Major in Diversity

There's been a lot of news coverage about California's budget crisis. In particular, California's state universities are crying that their appropriations of state funds have been "cut to the bone."

USA flag banned in school

A student can display a Mexican flag, but not an American flag. UCLA law prof. Volokh writes:

Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District (N.D. Cal.), decided the day before yesterday, upholds a California high school’s decision to forbid students from wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. ...

Yet while the judge might have been right in his decision, the situation in the school seems very bad. When we’re at the point that students can’t safely display the American flag in an American school, because of a fear that other students will attack them for it — on May 5 or on any other day — and the school feels unable to prevent such attacks (by punishing the threateners and the attackers, and by teaching students tolerance for other students’ speech), something is badly wrong.

Reagan Was Not a Free Trader

The people who support free trade are forever invoking the name of Ronald Reagan and claiming he was a free trader. But the men who worked with him on trade issues say that is not true. For example, Ambassador Robert Lighthizer, who served as Reagan's Deputy U.S. Trade Representative with the rank of Ambassador, said flatly that Reagan "was not a free trader." Another Reagan appointee in his Commerce Department, Gil Kaplan, said that Reagan and his Commerce Secretary, Malcolm Baldridge, "cared a great deal about protecting and building up U.S. manufacturing and taking steps necessary to make sure trade did not hurt the U.S. jobs base." These Reagan appointees said that Reagan took key trade actions to protect U.S. manufacturing and jobs, and they are betting that Reagan would do the same today to combat China's currency manipulation, illegal subsidies, nd other unfair trade practices. These Reagan appointees believe that conservative principles are certainly consistent with tough trade action about China.

Personhood voted down

The Mississippi personhood amendment was just voted down. It said:

Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Mississippi: SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of the state of Mississippi is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for implementation.

The Nevada Personhood Amendment may be on the ballot next year, and reads:

The People of the State of Nevada do enact as follows:
RESOLVED, That a new section designated Section 23 to be added to Article 1 of the Constitution of the State of Nevada to read as follows: "In the great state of Nevada, the term 'person' applies to every human being."

Eagle Forum has opposed personhood amendments in the past.

These amendments would have no bearing on abortion or on Roe v Wade. They are just silly word games. Under the opinion of the US Supreme Court, abortion is a constitutional right regardless of whether the fetus is called a person under state law.

Interview: Marcello Pera — Can Democracy Survive Without Christianity?

Secular liberals insist that America is better off without religion. But a European leader warns that democracy can't survive without Christian foundations.

Book: Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians: The Religious Roots of Free Societies

Listen to Eagle Forum Live Radio Program aired on 11-05-11



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

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Questions to Ask Presidential Candidates

When will Republican presidential and senatorial candidates address any of the many problems caused by China? Their silence is deafening, and the media are complicit in the silence by failing to ask serious questions about China in several presidential debates. Here are some questions we would like to hear Republican presidential candidates answer.

Phyllis Schlafly decries “Race to the Top” grant process, assesses presidential field, looks back fondly at Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan

Patrick B. McGuigan
Published: 31-Oct-2011

Conservative leader Phyllis Schlafly came to Oklahoma last week to give a contemporary assessment of the national policy scene in which she has been a significant “player” for more than 50 years. 

In an interview with CapitolBeatOK, Schlafly decried federal involvement in public education, assessed the 2012 Republican presidential field, defended the Electoral College and gave a short list of conservative leaders she has long admired.

Schlafly said Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin was mistaken in sending a “Race to the Top” grant submission to the U.S. Department of Education. Schlafly said, “It's a bribe, pure and simple." It's a bribe to do what the federal government wants you to do. 

“Remember that the federal government didn't get involved in education funding until Ike, President [Dwight David] Eisenhower. The amount of money has gone from zero to a total of $2 trillion over the years. And yet, it hasn't helped the public schools. The federal involvement has been a total failure. In essence, we have lost all of that money.

China Sells Us a Trojan Horse

Yesterday, we were talking about the threat from Chinese counterfeit microchips that the Pentagon buys and puts into our planes and military equipment. The fact that the Chinese are deliberately selling us counterfeit chips is really not news to those in the know. It has been known for so many years that it has acquired a nickname: “hardware Trojans,” taken from the ancient Greek myth about how the Greeks defeated Troy with a Trojan horse, a wooden horse that secretly contained Greek troops.

Incentives for marriage matter

Phyllis's column attacked tax proposals that do not have a benefit for married couples, and Jennifer Lata wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper attacking it:

All political commentary aside, the assertion that the institution of marriage will be impacted by a flat tax, or any change to the tax benefits of married filing jointly, is beyond belief. ... Any couple that marries for the sole purpose of a better tax status will have more to worry about than their income tax rate.

This letter demonstrates a simple error. One of the most basic principle of economics is that people respond to incentives. If you make something cheaper, people will do it more. If more expensive, people will do it less.

If a grocery store raises the price of its apples, it will sell less. This is true even tho some people are insensitive to the price of apples. If you go to the store determine to buy an apple, then a few cents will probably not alter your decision. But it will affect others.

The tax code is filled with incentives of various sorts. We have home mortgage deductions to give people incentives to buy homes and to borrow against them. More people have mortgages as a result.

Reducing the incentives for marriage will reduce marriages. It is not the case that everyone gets married anyway. About 40% of American births are to unwed moms.

If anyone discovers an incentive that does not affect people, that would be economic news.

China Sells Us Counterfeit Chips

It’s a problem for U.S. retailers when Communist China makes fake designer handbags and illegal copies of our music CDs, but it’s a much bigger problem when the fakes are chips installed in our military weapons. The American people are starting to discover that counterfeit computer components bought from the Chinese are used in our war planes, ships, and communication networks. These tiny electronic circuits used in computers can cause breakdowns or malfunctions. Fake microchips have been causing military equipment malfunctions since 2005. Four counterfeit chips were discovered in the flight computer of one of our F-15 fighter jets at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. While it is difficult to determine if fake chips caused particular plane or helicopter crashes, we know that we are having field failures in almost every weapon system. Informed military observers believe that at least 15% of the spare and replacement chips the Pentagon buys are counterfeits.

Radical Feminism and the “Occupy Movement”

A blogger discovers and feminists are trying to take over the Occupy Wall Street movement, and writes:

The feminist first goal was to destroy the family unit, they rallied against clearly defined gender roles and any type of structure or organization the traditional family provided. They wanted to be free and independent while still and integral part of a family unit who’s primary existence was based upon interdependency and clearly defined roles and duties.

All across America the family unit began to collapse, fathers were thrown out of the house, single-motherhood became beatified and glorified by society and liberal politicians became their cheerleaders.

Generations of fatherless children, homeless families and poverty were created and are ripping at the fabric of our society today. The whole daycare industry, with all of its tragic outcomes sprung up.

And, naturally, any form of religion was seen as an “oppressor” and disparaged as well as any form of housework. It was no longer cool to be a homemaker or believe in God or go to church.

Why college kids major in humanities

The NY Times reports:

Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)

Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree. That increases to as much as 60 percent when pre-medical students, who typically have the strongest SAT scores and high school science preparation, are included, according to new data from the University of California at Los Angeles. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors. ...

The latest research also suggests that there could be more subtle problems at work, like the proliferation of grade inflation in the humanities and social sciences, which provides another incentive for students to leave STEM majors. It is no surprise that grades are lower in math and science, where the answers are clear-cut and there are no bonus points for flair. ...

Ben Ost, a doctoral student at Cornell, found in a similar study that STEM students are both “pulled away” by high grades in their courses in other fields and “pushed out” by lower grades in their majors.

MATTHEW MONIZ bailed out of engineering at Notre Dame in the fall of his sophomore year. ...
So Mr. Moniz, a 21-year-old who likes poetry and had enjoyed introductory psychology, switched to a double major in psychology and English, where the classes are “a lot more discussion based.”

Here, STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Math.

War with collectivists

Rush Limbaugh said yesterday:

I guess there are a large number of people on our side, folks, who are never going to understand or never going to accept that we are in a war with collectivists and other assorted parasites who want to destroy the US economy as currently built -- and if you show any kind of weakness, they come back at you in greater numbers.

He was complaining about Republicans who threw Herman Cain under the bus.

Supreme Court Will Decide ObamaCare

The U.S. Supreme Court accepts for review and consideration only about 1% of the cases brought to its attention. 99 out of every 100 cases brought on petition to the U.S Supreme Court are rejected without comment. Moreover, many of the cases accepted by the High Court for review are obscure to most of the public, such as an arcane bankruptcy issue. The Supreme Court has not decided a major issue in high-profile areas such as abortion in more than five years. Ever since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as ObamaCare, was enacted in March 2010, there has been much speculation about if and when the U.S. Supreme Court might review that law. It's now clear that the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether ObamaCare is constitutional.

Korean Agreement Is a Jobs Killer

Some people of both political parties are constantly pushing Congress to approve free-trade agreements which are really job killers. They promise to increase U.S. exports, but they don't tell us that these agreements will produce many times more imports, especially after U.S. companies set up their plants in foreign countries.

Polygamy legalized in Libya

American foreign policy has supported revolution in Arab countries, with the implicit assumption that the population will have great human rights once a dictator is imposed. But these revolutionaries are nothing like George Washington, and they are eager to impose Islamic law on everyone. In particular, they are against marriage as we know it. The NY Times reports:

In announcing the success of the Libyan revolution and calling for a new, more pious nation, the head of the interim government, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, also seemed to clear the way for unrestricted polygamy in a Muslim country where it has been limited and rare for decades.

It looked like a sizable step backward for women at a moment when much here — institutions, laws, social relations — is still in play after the end of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s 42 years of authoritarian rule.

In his speech, Mr. Abdel-Jalil declared that a Qaddafi-era law that placed restrictions on multiple marriages, which is a tenet of Islamic law, or Shariah, would be done away with. The law, which stated that a first wife had to give permission before others were added, for instance, had kept polygamy rare here.

“This law is contrary to Shariah and must be stopped,” Mr. Abdel-Jalil told the crowd, vowing that the new government would adhere more faithfully to Shariah. The next day he reiterated the point to reporters at a news conference: “Shariah allows polygamy,” he said. Mr. Abdel-Jalil is known for his piety.

Known for his piety?! By wanting multiple wives!

American policy is not just to destroy marriage in the USA. It is destroying marriage all
over the world. Even Rick Perry is soft on marriage policy.

Foreigners Are Not "The Best and the Brightest"

The globalists have been promoting the peculiar notion that we should import foreign students, award them advanced college degrees, and then give them a green card so they can legally remain in the United States and get good engineering jobs. It's a ridiculous idea that our great country of 300 million people must look to other countries for smart graduate students with advanced degrees.

Resistance is futile

The most popular villains on the Star Trek TV shows of around 1990 were the Borg. They were a fictional pseudo-race of cybernetic organisms.

The goal of the Borg is assimilation. That means destroying individualism by merging everyone into a collective consciousness. Before taking over, they say, "You will be assimilated" and "Resistance is futile."

The Borg seem like a parody of modern efforts to create social dependency, such as It Takes a Village, and to break down individualism, such as by promoting empathy.

Steven Yates wrote a 1997 essay on how the Borg is a metaphor for collectivism:

Star Trek nevertheless presents perhaps the most disturbing example of full-fledged collectivism currently available. This depiction occurs in four episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG), the paperback novel Vendetta, and the movie Star Trek: First Contact, released last November. These all feature encounters between the Enterprise and a race known as the Borg, the deadliest foe yet faced by the Federation.

The Borg are a race of cyborgs, the product of a technology that hardwires artificial intelligence directly into the brain and central nervous system. Immediately after birth, Borg infants receive neural implants, which provide physical nourishment as well as information from a network connecting all the Borg brains and nervous systems with the rest of their technology. The Borg grow completely dependent on the implants, with every Borg brain in contact with every other Borg brain at all times. They share a group mind—a kind of organic Internet accessed with thoughts instead of computers.

Thus, their vast spaceships automatically go where the group mind wills, and if damaged, the craft repair themselves. There is no hierarchy or chain of command in any normal sense. Significantly, this group mind was eventually labeled the Borg Collective. The Borg have numerical designations instead of names and a repulsive physical appearance. Surgically implanted mechanical devices often replace their eyes and limbs. Individual Borg have extreme difficulty initiating action or even reacting to immediate surroundings without a cue from the group mind that can see through their eyes and communicate through their implants. ...

The Borg conform well to the notion that collectivism is essentially parasitic. The Borg subsist by assimilating other cultures, adding new technologies to their own. The Borg are the ultimate users, ...

Collectivism usually means an economic system that puts the group ahead of the individual. But that would not be enough to be an evil force on Star Trek. On the show, the good guys are economically collectivist anyway, and no one has any money.

The Borg are much worse than that. They destroy the human spirit. Today's Borg wannabes are brainwashing your kids at every opportunity. Their main enemies are family and religion. Without those ties and loyalties, your kids will be assimilated.

Schlafly rallies Eagle Forum to support conservative goals, oppose President Obama's re-election

Bunny Chambers, George Faught
and Phyllis Schlafly

Patrick B. McGuigan
Published: 31-Oct-2011

Eagle Forum of Oklahoma honored Phyllis Schlafly, an Illinois grandmother, mother and political activist who has been one of the most influential conservatives of the past 60 years, advanced favored policy goals and ideas at a dinner in the Gaylord Center at Oklahoma Christian University last weekend.


Schlafly delivered a passionate speech encouraging women and men in the crowd to get involved (or remain involved) in local, state and national politics. She assailed the policy record of President Barack Obama, asking the audience to assure the president does not earn a second term in the 2012 presidential election. She described as misguided efforts to pursue federal education grants that will tie the hands of state officials.

Eagle awards were presented to two members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, both Republicans, by Schlafly and state Eagle Forum chairman Bunny Chambers.

State Rep. Sue Tibbs of Tulsa was honored for defending American and Oklahoma law through legislation intended to prevent resort to foreign law in state courts. State Rep. George Faught of Muskogee was recognized for working to ban embryonic stem cell research in Oklahoma.

Other legislators attending the event included state Reps. Paul Wesselhoft and Sally Kern, both Oklahoma City Republicans. Kern is also an Eagle Forum board member, along with fellow event participants attendees Chambers, Susie Dake and Sandra Leaver.

Beverly Young and Joan Naylor, veterans with Chambers and Schlafly of the fight to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the 1970s, were also recognized for their work. Other guests included Tony Lauinger of Oklahomans for Life, Stuart Jolly of Americans for Prosperity, Paul Sublett of the Bott Radio Network, and Tom and Kay Hill, co-founders of Character First.

U.S. Citizenship Should Not Be For Sale

Outsourcing is not the only way we are losing American jobs to Communist China. The Chinese have figured out how to capture jobs inside the U.S. by using our EB-5 visas; that stands for employment-based, fifth priority. Most Americans have never heard of that visa, but the Chinese are now planning to use it to build and run a casino near the Baltimore airport. Boasting 4,750 slot machines, this $440 million casino will be one of the largest in the country. The promoters went to Shanghai and made a sales pitch to rich Chinese to invest $500,000 each in this Maryland casino. The sweetest part of the deal is that the investor's entire family will be rewarded with a set of U.S. green cards valid for life, a system called "investment immigration." EB-5 visas were created to promote investment in depressed areas, but Maryland is NOT depressed.