Monday, June 30, 2014

"Hate Crime" Violates Equal Protection

The whole concept of hate crimes is flawed, because it sets up special classes of victims afforded a higher level of government protection than others victimized by similar crimes.  That violates the concept of equal protection.  It politicizes criminal prosecutions.

Robert Knight.  Cited by Janet L. Folger in "The Criminalization of Christianity," p.125

Sunday, June 29, 2014

ADHD Is Fake

ADHD, as it is now commonly known, was determined to be a mental illness by a vote of the American Psychiatric Association members at their annual meeting in 1987, and the new definition was then added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  Children (and increasingly adults) who exhibit behaviors such as inattention, distractibility, trouble in following directions, a tendency to lose things, and difficulty awaiting their turn to speak or participate in activities are now seen as victims of ADHD.  In the past, these behaviors were labeled as achievement-ability discrepancies, poor impulse control, or perhaps simply unruly classroom behavior, but they are now redefined as a type of mental illness requiring treatment rather than self-control.

Relieved to find that their children’s behavioral problems are the result of a neurobiological disorder rather than a failure of discipline, large numbers of parents have willingly allowed their children to be diagnosed and medicated — with no scientific confirmation of the origins of ADHD, and even less information about the side effects of the medication.  A report by the National Institute of Mental Health in 1998 admits that “after years of clinical research and experience with ADHD, our knowledge about the cause or causes of ADHD remain largely speculative.”  Even the NIMH cautions that “further research is necessary to establish ADHD as a brain disorder.”

Yet despite the lack of compelling scientific evidence about ADHD, there continues to be a significant increase in the diagnosis of children as suffering from this “mental illness.


Anne Hendershott, The Politics of Deviance, p. 50-51

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Don't Tolerate Pollution of "Moral Air"

Finally, [those promoting the homosexual agenda] impose long-lasting moral costs on us by establishing an immoral climate for our children.  After all, we all have to breathe the same moral air.  And just as we shouldn’t tolerate people polluting the physical air we must breathe, why should we tolerate pollution of the moral air that helps form the character of our children?


Dr. Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, Legislating Morality, p.148

Friday, June 27, 2014

Learning Math Should Be An Emotional Experience?

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards adopted in 1989 proclaim that the first mission of math instruction is to make the discipline emotionally appealing to children:  "Affective dimensions of learning," the NCTM declares in its math standards statement, "play a significant role in and must influence curriculum and instruction."  Thus, the NCTM directs that teachers should concentrate less on "rote memorization of rules" and "tedious pencil and paper computations," and more on "discussion of mathematics, writing about mathematics," and "exploration of chance."  What about teaching children the rudiments of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division?  The NCTM standards contend that calculators render "computational proficiency" outmoded, even that "further efforts toward mastering computational skills are counterproductive."  The aim of math instruction, they claim, is to get children to "think mathematically."

Dana Mack, The Assault on Parenthood: How Our Culture Undermines the Family, p.117

[No wonder that for the past couple decades our young people have such poor math skills!]

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Intellectuals Controlling the Language

Words which have acquired particular connotations over the years from the experiences of millions of people in successive generations now have those connotations systematically stripped away by a relatively small number of contemporary intellectuals, who simply substitute different words for the same things until the new words replace the old in the media.  Thus “bums” has been replaced by “the homeless,” “swamps” by “wetlands,” and “prostitutes” by “sex workers,” for example.

All things that generations of people have learned from experience about bums, swamps, and prostitutes are in effect erased by substitution of new words, cleansed of those connotations.  Swamps, for example, are often unsightly, slimy, and smelly places, where mosquitoes breed and spread diseases.  Sometimes swamps are also places where dangerous creatures like snakes or alligators lurk.  But “wetlands” are spoken of in hushed and reverential tones, as one might speak of shrines.


Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.217

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

"Don't Force Your Values Down Our Throats"

Often, as I speak on these issues across the country, someone in the audience hurls this tired old corker:  “The religious Right is trying to force its values down our throats.”  I have a standard response which I enjoy offering.  I inform my listeners that the secular Left has introduced sexual indoctrination and condom distribution to eleven-year-old public school students.  It has made the enjoyment of tobacco the moral equivalent to child molestation.  It has dramatically increased illegitimacy in America.  It has created an entertainment ethos that brings smut and vulgarity into our living rooms.  Take an honest look at the values that the secular Left has already succeeded in forcing down the throats of religious Americans.  How can anyone honestly confront the changes that have been inflicted by the secular Left and worry about the changes that the religious Right might force down our throats?

I contend that the values concerned Christians desire for America are not really changes, but simply the return to an earlier and legitimate status.  If you fling an invader out of your land, back over the border he illegally crossed in the first place, you are not guilty of aggression.  It is called self-defense.  You are worried that the religious Right might succeed in forcing their values onto us?  I am worried they might fail, for they are our values too.  Or at least they ought to be.


Rabbi Daniel Lapin, America's Real War, p.35

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Good Character Angers

When people live a noticeably higher moral lifestyle, it often angers those who do not; such behavior casts them in a negative light.


Alvin J. Schmidt, Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization, p. 27

Monday, June 23, 2014

Brain Dysfunction?

When character flaws become brain dysfunction, the inclination to hold people responsible for their disruptive behavior diminishes.

Anne Hendershott, The Politics of Deviance, p.49

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Protect Your Mind

Today's most influential worldviews are born in the universities, but they touch all of us through the books we read, the music we listen to, and the movies we watch.  Ideas penetrate our minds most deeply when communicated through the imaginative language of image, story, and symbol.  It is crucial for Christians to learn how to "read" that language and to identify worldviews transmitted through cultural forms.

Nancy Pearcey, "Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning,"  p.11

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Media Silence On Dangers of Homosexuality

Despite an abundance of statistical data being published on virtually every conceivable comparison among groups, no data on the average lifespan of homosexuals compared to the national average, the cost of AIDS to the taxpayers compared to the cost of other diseases, much less a comparison of the incidence of child molestation among heterosexual and homosexual men, is likely to find its way through the filters of the intelligentsia to reach the public, even though there is a well-known national organization openly promoting homosexual relations between men and boys.  Conceivably, data on such matters might lay to rest some concerns about homosexuality expressed in some quarters, but few among the intelligentsia seem prepared to risk what the data might show if not filtered out.  In this, as in many other cases, it is too much for some to gamble the fate of a vision on a roll of the dice, which is what empirical verification amounts to for those dedicated to a vision.

This is especially true for reporters who are themselves homosexual - and there are enough such reporters to have a National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.  One homosexual reporter, who has worked for the Detroit News and the New York Times, knew about the role of public bathhouses frequented by gay men in spreading AIDS, but decided not to write about it because “I was hesitant to do a story that would give comfort to our enemies.”  Nor is this attitude peculiar to homosexual reporters.  Journalists hired under a "diversity" rationale as representatives of blacks, Hispanics or women have the same conflict between reporting news and filtering news for the benefit of the group they were hired to represent....

In short, the first loyalty of many journalists is not to their readers or television audiences who seek information from them, but to protecting the image and interests of the groups they represent under a "diversity" hiring rationale.  Such journalists are also under peer pressure to filter the news, rather than report the facts straight.


Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.199

Friday, June 20, 2014

Victimhood in the Courts

Courtroom depictions of human beings as the mere products of their biology or environment help reshape how we view ourselves.  Even if such portrayals ultimately fail to secure acquittals, they contribute to a new cultural understanding of humans as victims of their biology and environment, rather than as morally accountable agents who are responsible for their choices.

John G. West, "Darwin Day in America: How our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science," p. 78

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Self-Esteem Nonsense

There is no evidence that high self-esteem itself reliably causes anything -- and, indeed, lots of people with little of it have achieved a great deal in one context or another. . . . By contrast, many people with high self-esteem are happy just being rich, beautiful, or socially connected.  Some other people whose high self-esteem has been noted are inner-city drug dealers, who generally feel quite good about themselves; after all, they have succeeded in making a lot of money in a hostile and competitive environment.

A 1989 study of mathematical skills compared students in eight different countries.  American students ranked lowest in mathematical competence, and Korean students ranked highest.  But the researchers also asked students to rate how good they were at mathematics.  The Americans ranked highest in self-judged mathematical ability, while the Koreans ranked lowest.  Mathematical self-esteem had an inverse relation to mathematical accomplishment! . . . The self-esteem theory predicts that only those who feel good about themselves will do well -- which is supposedly why all students need self-esteem -- but feeling good about yourself may simply make you overconfident, narcissistic, and unable to work hard.


Paul C. Vitz, "Psychology As Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship," p.17

Monday, June 16, 2014

Science Cannot Explain Human Behavior

By claiming to offer a "scientific explanation" for human behavior, psychology invaded the realm of soul, spirit, morals, and religion.  It thus posed a greater challenge to belief in God and the gospel than had physics or chemistry, which proposed no explanation for the universe or man's existence.  Many of this century's greatest scientists have issued grave warnings against trying to mix science and religion.  Einstein said, ". . . scientific theory has nothing to do with religion."  Nobel laureate Erwin Schroedinger added, "[Science] knows nothing of . . .  good or bad, God and eternity."  Pretending to know what it couldn't, psychology offered a religious science of the mind and claimed to present new evidence for God's existence: the harmony of psychology and Scripture.  The truth is that the two are irreconcilable.

Dave Hunt, "How Close Are We? Compelling Evidence for the Soon Return of Christ," p. 17

Sunday, June 15, 2014

The Facts About American Slavery

Politically correct media and school textbooks give the impression that slavery has primarily been a sin committed by white people who enslaved blacks.  The fact that only about 25 percent of the Americans in the South had slaves before the Civil War is commonly not mentioned, nor is the fact that (according to the United States census of 1830), for example, 407 black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, alone owned black slaves.

Alvin J. Schmidt, Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization, p. 273

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Freedom Is Not Free

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.


Ronald Reagan, Annual Meeting of the 30 March 1961 Phoenix Chamber of Commerce.

Friday, June 13, 2014

Media Bias For Homosexuality

No factual information that could reflect negatively on homosexuals is likely to find its way through either media or academic filters, but anything that shows gays as victims can get massive coverage.  A search by journalist William McGowan found more than 3,000 media stories about a gay man in Wyoming who was beaten unconscious by thugs and left to die, but fewer than 50 media stories about a teenage boy who was captured and repeatedly raped for hours by two homosexual men, who likewise left him to die.  McGowan’s search indicated that the second story was not mentioned at all in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times, nor was it broadcast on CBS, NBC, ABC, or CNN.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.199

Thursday, June 12, 2014

BLACKS vs. NIGGERS

Within the African-American populace, BLACKS and NIGGERS will forever be oppositional segments.  BLACKS are the cream of the crop, upwardly mobile, productive, taxpaying, law-abiding, assets to society who characteristically don’t subscribe to the NIGGER subculture.  Whereas NIGGERS are the dysfunctional, counterproductive, non-contributing, law-breaking, liabilities to society, who personify the negative stereotypes that plague the entire African-American community.

Taleeb Starkes, The Un-Civil War:  Blacks vs Niggers,  p.41

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

A Problem With Public Education - Bad Philosophy

It is only in the context of a philosophy of education that aims at intellectual leveling as a method of egalitarian socialization that we can understand some of the recent educational developments that anger parents: the “mainstreaming” of mentally and emotionally handicapped children in regular classrooms; the gradual abolition of ability tracking, academic acceleration, and enrichment programs for the gifted; the push for cooperative projects and “team” learning that increasingly replace individual work; the proliferation of therapeutic “life skills” and “human relations” courses that focus on “self-esteem,” on “feelings,” and on group psychodynamics; the vanishing of high culture — especially of literary classics and serious music — from the classroom; the dwindling of academic work to less than half the time children spend in school; and finally the appearance of outcome-based education — a method of instruction that ties the pace of the brightest children to their slowest peers.  All of these reflect the ascendancy of an educational philosophy of “inclusion” in which a far higher priority is placed on making children conform — on homogenizing them culturally, intellectually, and emotionally — than on helping them learn.


Dana Mack, “The Assault On Parenthood: How Our Culture Undermines the Family,” p.112-113.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

A Nation Cannot Survive Treason Within

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious.  But it cannot survive treason from within.  An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.  But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.  For the traitor appears not a traitor;  he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.  He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.  A murderer is less to fear.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)
Cited by David Kupelian in, How Evil Works, p.23-24

Monday, June 9, 2014

There Is No Such Thing as "Transgender"

Regardless of the question of whether he has had his genitals amputated, Cox is not a woman, but an effigy of a woman. Sex is biological reality, and it is not subordinate to subjective impressions, no matter how intense those impressions are held, or how painful they make facing the biological facts of life. No hormone injection or surgical mutilation is sufficient to change that.


Kevin Williamson, National Review

Saturday, June 7, 2014

The Harm of Busybodies

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.  They don’t mean to do harm - but the harm does not interest them.  Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.  

T.S. Eliot “The Cocktail Party
cited by Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society p.184

Friday, June 6, 2014

Homosexuality Implies Nonexistence of Humanity

But considered on the whole, in terms of its consequences, it [homosexual sex] implies the nonexistence of humanity. The homosexual couple is not engaged in the act of human procreation. Their activity is not haunted by the possibility of human offspring. It does not imply the reification of their responsibility for the future of humanity as such. The pleasurable satisfaction it involves does not draw individuals away from their particular selves toward a concrete physical union (in the child they conceive) that represents the perpetuation of their being as a whole, their human being. Their ecstasy is more like the highest pitch given off by a guitar string just before the turn of the tuning peg that causes it to break.


Alan Keyes, Homosexual 'rights': suicide for humanity?  at RenewAmerica  6/2/14

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Ebonics Demonstrates Ignorance

Since the NIGGER subculture has consistently demonstrated the inability to grasp the fundamentals of English, Ebonics manifested to supplement their handicap.  But here’s the truth…their assumed speech impediment is actually an embraced and encouraged attribute of their subculture.  During his 2004 Ghettoesburg address, Bill Cosby highlighted this aspect of the NIGGER subculture, and correctly surmised: “It’s standing on the corner.  It can’t speak English.  It doesn’t want to speak English.  I can’t even talk the way these people talk. ‘Why you ain’t where you is go, ra.’ I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.  Then I heard the father talk.  This is all in the house.  You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house an switched to English.  Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads.  You can’t land a plane with ‘why you ain’t…’  You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.  There is no Bible that has that kind of language.  Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this?  Well, they know they’re not, they’re just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you’re just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.”  Naturally, Dr. Cosby was vilified for telling the truth.


Taleeb Starkes, The Un-Civil War:  Blacks vs Niggers, p.40

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Real Love Abstains From Homosexual Sex

If you truly love someone, will you do something that will seriously hurt or kill that person?  Having homosexual sex with someone does just that.  It's been documented to cause disease and death at an extremely early age.  With the consequences so severe, if a man really "loved" another man, he wouldn't engage in homosexual acts with him.  Sex isn't the only way you can demonstrate your love for someone.  Men may demonstrate their love for another without having sex.

Dr. Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, Legislating Morality, p.147

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

A Society of Pill Poppers

Because of diagnostic inflation, an excessive proportion of people have come to rely on antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety agents, sleeping pills, and pain meds.  We are becoming a society of pill poppers.  One out of every five U.S. adults uses at least one drug for a psychiatric problem; 11 percent of all adults took an antidepressant in 2010; nearly 4 percent of our children are on a stimulant and 4 percent of our teenagers are taking an antidepressant; 25 percent of nursing home residents are given antipsychotics. ...
Loose diagnosis is causing a national drug overdose of medication.  Six percent of our people are addicted to prescription drugs, and there are now more emergency room visits and deaths due to legal prescription drugs than to illegal street drugs.


Allen Frances, M.D, "Saving Normal," pp.xiv-xv

Monday, June 2, 2014

The Left's Sacrifice of Prisoners

It has often been said that intellectuals on the left are “soft on criminals” but, even here, the question is whether those people accused of crime or convicted and in prison are the real objects of intellectuals’ concern or are incidental props in a larger picture - and expendable like others who are used as props.  For example, one of the horrific experiences of many men in prison is being gang-raped by other male prisoners.  Yet any attempt to reduce the incidence of such lasting traumatic experiences by building more prisons, so that each prisoner could be housed alone in a single cell, is bitterly opposed by the same people who are vehement in defense of prisoners’ “rights.”  Those rights matter as a means of condemning “society” but so does the opposition to the building of more prisons.  When the actual well-being of prisoners conflicts with the symbolic issue of preventing more prisons from being built, prisoners become just another sacrifice on the altar of a vision.


Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.183

Sunday, June 1, 2014

What Kind of Life Do You Lead?

People pay for what they have allowed themselves to become.  And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.


James Baldwin.  Cited by Taleeb Starkes, The Un-Civil War:  Blacks vs Niggers, p.41