Common Sense

How Did We Go from Unthinkable to Might Happen in Gay Marriage?

2013-03-24T18:24:00.001-05:00

2013-03-19T16:30:00.001-05:00

Our government can now fine you for refusing to do work that goes against your beliefs. Piece starts about 1/2 way in. The New Mexico Supreme Court has the case now, and let's hope common sense prevails.

WORLD | Today's News, Christian Views

German Family at Risk of Deportation due to Obama Administration

2013-02-23T22:56:00.001-06:00

WORLD | Today's News, Christian Views
This is my story about the Romeike family, who is in the US on temporary asylum from Germany. They were persecuted for homeschooling their children. Attorney General Eric Holder filed to deny permanent asylum, putting the family at risk of deportation.

Obamacare Mandate:::WORLD | Today's News, Christian Views

2013-02-19T17:12:00.001-06:00

WORLD | Today's News, Christian Views Here's my piece this week on the problem with the mandate requiring employers to violate their consciences to remain in business.

Freedom of Speech collision

2013-01-15T14:46:00.001-06:00

WORLD | Today's News, Christian Views

2013-01-08T17:52:00.001-06:00

WORLD | Today's News, Christian Views The best 1 1/2/ hours you'll spend this weekend.

Safe Sex is a Lie

2012-12-18T11:54:00.001-06:00

http://www.cblpi.org/senseandsexuality/activism/SNSbooklet.pdf

"The rectum is an exit, not an entrance." Were you taught this in your "safe sex" education at public school? Of course not. But according to the Centers for Disease Control, that activity places women at increased risk of HIV infection. How much more risk? 20 TIMES MORE RISKY.

Please, young women, copy and paste the above address into your browser, then print the booklet. You are far more valuable that what American culture is telling you. When I compare how women were treated 50 years ago - the era feminists decry as undermining to women - to now....we are more objectified today than ever. And we buy that objectification in the movies we pay to see, the clothes we pay to wear, the pornography we access and participate in. IT'S A LIE.

WORLD | Today's News, Christian Views

2012-12-15T11:39:00.001-06:00

Freedoms come to Michigan in two ways this week. Have a listen as to why.
WORLD | Today's News, Christian Views

WORLD | Today's News, Christian Views

2012-12-14T21:42:00.001-06:00

Hear about the Bronx Household of Faith's struggle to preserve First Freedoms - of religion, of speech, of assembly. Starts at about 5:45 into the piece.

WORLD | Today's News, Christian Views

The World and Everything In It | WORLD

2012-11-28T12:58:00.001-06:00

The World and Everything In It | WORLD
Think Christians aren't targeted for persecution? Think again. Listen to this piece, which starts at about 5 minutes and 25 seconds in.

Dennis Prager Explains How You Can Be a Good Person and Still Oppose Redefining Marriage

2012-10-30T15:37:00.001-05:00

The Dennis Prager Show

Akin for some Perspective...

2012-08-29T16:52:00.000-05:00

My piece published on World on Campus: CUT AND PASTE INTO YOUR BROWSER
http://www.worldoncampus.com/2012/08/akin_for_some_perspective

American Troops in Call Me Maybe video!

2012-08-23T18:55:00.001-05:00

Call Me Maybe? By our troops in Afghanistan. Click on the link to see the video.

THANK YOU ALL! COME HOME SAFELY! WE LOVE YOU!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/23/us_army_soldiers_in_kunar_afghanistan_cover_call_me_maybe.html

Media Bias

2012-08-06T23:30:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder if claims of mainstream media bias are true? A USC professor has the answer. Take a look at this excellent 6 minute video to learn more. Dennis Prager runs Prager University, an on-line set of mostly 5-minute courses on different subjects.

http://www.prageruniversity.com/Political-Science/Proving-Media-Bias.html

Woman as Gatekeeper

2012-08-03T14:05:00.002-05:00

Just read a book called "Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters" by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa and the late Alan S. Miller. Talk about looking at things from alternate viewpoints! His conclusions don't mean we need to alter policy, but they do illuminate some fascinating things.

Kanazawa postulates that everything can be explained by reproductive desire. Behavior can ultimately be traced back to genetic drive to get one's genes into the population.

The author states that if women weren't the gatekeepers of sexual permission, men would do little else but have sex with every woman they meet. Hence very little would get accomplished in the world, such as building things, inventing things, maintaining things, etc, because young men would rut all the live long day and night if they could.

My conclusion? If this is true, then women are obliged to step up to their biological plates. In order to make the world orderly and workable for our descendants, we ought to be striving for behavior that achieves that end. To wit, we should give up pretending we are men. Most women put children's welfare ahead of their own desires. We aren't like most men in that way, and the women's movement has done a disservice to teach such a thing. That's why so many studies have shown women are less happy now than they were in the 1950s and 1960s, the era feminists scream about.

From evolutionary psychologist Kanazawa's point of view it is nonsense to behave in a way that risks our children. So the question is, why do so many women set their price at zero in exchange for being left with children?

Mr. Potty Mouth

2012-08-02T21:22:00.002-05:00

Oh, Chicago!

So Mr. Potty Mouth Himself, Rahm Emmanuel, says Chick-fil-A's values aren't Chicago Values.

Well, thank goodness for that! I guess those good 'ol Chicago values are what got 4 of the last 5 Illinois governors nice prison terms.

I won't be traveling to my former home anytime soon, because if Chick-fil-A's values aren't Chicago values, that means I'm not welcome in Chicago. So, St. Louis will get my vacation time dollars. So long as that mayor doesn't try to trample freedom of speech.

(Thanks to my friend Greg of Chicago for connecting the dots for me.)

It's Love

2012-08-01T16:11:00.001-05:00

Support for Chick-fil-A shows love, not hate

Like thousands of other Facebook users, I posted a message of support for Chick-fil-A last week, encouraging my friends to eat at the fast-food restaurant on Aug. 1. Messages of support, and counter messages of protest, erupted on the social network after the company’s CEO confirmed his belief in traditional marriage in a recent article in the Baptist Press. Those who agreed with Dan Cathy pledged to show their support by feasting on chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. Those who disagree, vowed a boycott.

Not long after I posted my message, I had this exchange with one of my friends on Facebook:

Friend: or you could save some money and do this http://i.imgur.com/bTGTCh.jpg [The link goes to a recipe for a Chick-fil-A-style sandwich with the heading “all the taste without the hate.”]

Mary: It never occurred to me not to buy Starbucks or use my Apple computer because the CEOs are ultra-liberal. There is no hate involved.

Friend: That's interesting. What would you call supporting the oppression of a group of human beings if not hate? And what would you call making an effort to financially support a company who wants to see the denial of basic human rights to a group of people?

Mary: I doubt you are sincere in wanting my answers... Facebook is not the place for such discussions. If you ARE sincere, then I'm happy to talk to you in a way that doesn't denigrate you or me.

__________

My friend didn’t follow up with me, as I expected. So here is how I would answer the question.

What would I call making an effort to financially support Chick-fil-A? Love.

Chick-fil-A’s CEO, Dan Cathy, probably thinks brothers and sisters shouldn’t have sex with each other or get married to each other either. Is that hatred for brothers and sisters?

What we are really talking about is a different concept of how best to order society. Billions have followed the concept first written about 5,000 years ago. At that time, women had little value. Men had all the power. Then a monotheistic religion called Judaism leveled the playing field. It declared that a man and a woman had equal value and that men should restrict their sexual appetites to one woman while they raised children together. That arrangement allowed women to (slowly) gain status while the status of those in polygamous societies remained low. The same is true in modern societies where men do not restrain their sexual appetites. Consider Afghanistan, where little boys are used for the sexual entertainment of grown and married men.

Most men do not naturally want to follow the Judaic restrictions, but these rules made Western civilization possible. When the sexual desires of men were channeled, everyone else--women and children--benefited.

You believe in a different system. I don’t hate you for preferring it, but I do think you are naïve. The desires of some big city mayors to prevent businesses from operating because they follow the man-woman formula for organizing society is un-American, unconstitutional, and bad for women.

Suppose I believe that certain television programming promotes the destruction of society and denigration of women by showing sexual promiscuity and child neglect. As mayor of Los Angeles, should I forbid soap operas from being sold to the networks? Do you now see the irony in your question? The idea that politicians can shut down business because of a disagreement over how to define marriage is wrong.

You work in an industry that I see as destructive to my culture. But I cannot shut you down for thinking the way you do. You would deny the same freedom of thought to Chick-fil-A’s CEO. You would not only deny his freedom of thought, but you would forbid him from doing business. That is reminiscent of a certain government in WWII that forbade Jews from having businesses.

The way you use the word “hate” is not its dictionary meaning--extreme dislike or hostility. You mean hate as disagreement. That is dangerous ground in a nation founded on the freedoms listed in the First Amendment.

You want marriage to be based on the feelings of two people, which sounds good. Love as the basis of marriage is what we seek. But to be consistent, a mother who loves her son should be able to marry and have sex with her son. Is it hateful that our civilization has said “no” to this? It is a standard for ordering society. You call it hate, which may be a clever way to obscure the viewpoint, but your definition is still a untrue.

If everyone in the world suddenly became blind, blindness would still be an aberration. That’s because the eye is designed to see. The analogy to human sexuality is clear. You can say a form without angles is a square. That may be clever, but the truth is the form is still a circle. That’s what redefining marriage means to me – taking what it has meant for 5,000 years, and calling it “marriage equality.” But it isn’t “marriage equality,” because we will still have rules that forbid certain marriages.

The Judeo-Christian view of mankind has declined in the West. That view says that man exists to serve a higher purpose and not merely to attain personal wants. Darwin, Freud, Marx and company ushered in hedonism and narcissism. True compassion and altruism clash with the new order. Those of us who see a mother and a father as equally valuable to a child do not wish to substitute other systems, which have already failed. Heterosexuals have behaved badly, for sure. But this is an argument to bolster traditional families, not add more failed experiments.

So the answer to your question of what else but hate could it be to support Chick-fil-A is this: It is disagreement about how to order society. It is freedom to think. It is a desire for order. It is, in the end, love.

(published in a slightly different version, worldoncampus.com)

The World and Everything in It - June 30, 2012

2012-07-04T17:35:00.001-05:00

The World and Everything in It - June 30, 2012

An enjoyable 1 1/2 hour podcast of this week's news, entertainment, and history.

2012-07-01T14:06:00.001-05:00

THE JOYFUL GARDENER

I love my garden.

It loves me.

A garden doesn't love...

How can this be?

Ah, but a garden LIVES!

And that's just one letter away from LOVES.

I harvest my okra, my lettuce, and thyme.

At dinner with my family, the LOVE can shine!

Exhaustion Overtakes Me

2012-06-28T22:02:00.000-05:00

Tonight I'm exhausted. I realize it is because of the SCOTUS decision for healthcare, upholding the mandate in such a tortured way. The math doesn't add up, according to analysts, yet we go forward as though it doesn't matter. As though Greece, Spain, Italy---they have nothing to teach us. Another behemoth bureaucracy to interfere with us will be built that will be difficult to dismantle.

"The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen."

Alzheimer's Reading Room: Touched by Alzheimer's, Interview by Mary Reichard

2012-06-25T00:15:00.001-05:00

Alzheimer's Reading Room: Touched by Alzheimer's, Interview by Mary Reichard

This interview has gone all over the world. Bob DeMarco took care of his mother Dotty for several years after her Alzheimer's diagnosis. He has helped so many people cope with this illness. Give a listen, and help someone today.

The Forbidden History of Unpopular People

2012-06-24T23:15:00.001-05:00

The World and Everything in It - June 23, 2012

2012-06-23T16:23:00.001-05:00

The World and Everything in It - June 23, 2012

This show is the best in news roundup from a Christian perspective. You'll hear movie and music reviews, book reviews, what's going on with the Supreme Court, the President, the Congress - a fast-moving 1 1/2 hours to listen to once a week. (Shameless self-promotion plug: I'm on it too.)

Christian News and Views Source on the Radio!

2012-06-23T16:15:00.001-05:00

The World and Everything in It - April 21, 2012

This show is the best in news roundup from a Christian perspective. You'll hear movie and music reviews, book reviews, what's going on with the Supreme Court, the President, the Congress - a fast-moving 1 1/2 hours to listen to once a week. (Shameless self-promotion plug: I'm on it too.)

Show Them For What They Are

2012-06-22T19:12:00.002-05:00

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/22/gay-activists-make-obscene-gesture-reagan-white-ho/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

The people who disgraced themselves in the White House don't have consciences enough to feel bad about what they did.

They are interested first and foremost in their own desires. And Obama panders to them like they matter to the country's survival.