Pornography and Exploitation

Pornography is the new frontier to explore and exploit in the name of liberation. It is the invention of totally deprived minds. Based on the dehumanization of women and the ridicule of the family, it represents the total absence of equality between men and women.

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.112

Sex-Soaked Culture

We live in a sex-soaked culture. Things that were unthinkable a few years ago [writing in 1990] are now welcomed entertainment. We call it the sexual revolution, but a more accurate name would be the sexual holocaust.

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.112

Freedom of Speech

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

George Orwell

Life

Think more of the life that is than of the life that was.

Anonymous

Problems for Children of Divorce

Divorce emotionally scars every child. Outside of the death of a parent, divorce is the most painful experience a child will ever have to face.  . . .  Because divorce is something parents choose to do, it is increasingly difficult for a child to comprehend. ...

Stress is another result of divorce on children’s lives. The added stress of worry and an intense fear of failure in relationships with friends often follows children into adulthood. Girls from divorced homes in the thirteen to seventeen age group exhibit much lower self-esteem and are far more sexually active than girls who come from two-parent homes. Boys carry deep unmet longings for their fathers. Perhaps the two strongest stress-related feelings are rejection and depression. It takes many years for these feelings to be healed. Children of divorce often grow up with an extreme fear of marriage because they know, first hand, the agony and scars they have been left with.

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.104, 105

The Result of Broken Families

A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future—that community asks for and gets chaos, crime, violence, unrest, disorder . . .  that is not only to be expected; it is very near to inevitable.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Family and Nation, pg.9

Forgiving Relationships

If we are going to have any healthy, growing relationships in this world, then we must put those two magical words, “I’m sorry,” into our vocabulary and use them often. With these two words comes forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the ointment of love that brings healing to our marriages and to other relationships. Without it, relationships wither and die. It requires humility to ask for forgiveness, and it takes love to forgive. But it is the only pathway to restoration for the broken relationships we all encounter.

God doesn’t ask us to ignore the hurt or wrong done to us. He simply asks us to forgive one another. Forgiveness means giving up our right, something today’s culture tenaciously holds on to. Forgiveness means giving up our right to be right. And perhaps most difficult, it means giving up our right to our self. …

The essence of forgiveness is the willingness to let go of hurts and resentments. It is the willingness to show compassion and mercy. This is possible because we were shown the ultimate mercy, complete eternal forgiveness, at the Cross.

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.87,88

Marriage Stability

Marriage is built on something far more stable than the first flash of romantic love. It is built upon the solid foundation of our wedding vows and the commitment we made to one another before God. Because of that, the radiant flame of romance becomes a soft glowing ember that can burn steadily throughout a lifetime. But embers would die if we didn’t continue putting additional logs of love, honor, respect, kindness, and sacrifice on the fire.

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.68

Are We Really Liberated?

In this “liberated” twentieth century [and worse in the 21st], where both parents work, the average family life is filled with stress and unmet needs. We are no longer our own bosses. We are controlled by our jobs, and the child-care center. We may have that big new house; we may have designer clothes; glamorous vacations; money in the bank. In fact we may have everything, except the one thing money can never buy—time together.

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.61

Child Care?

It has been estimated that less than 15 percent of all working mothers are happy with the form of child care they have. They are desperately seeking a warm, loving, motherly type of person to care for their babies. They discover that most women who fit this description are home with their own children. (A woman is really looking for someone like herself.)

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.56-57

The Call of Parents

Our call is to bring up children in a home where two parents love and care for one another, and where we treat each other with kindness, forgiveness, and love. The significance of this call stems from the eternal truth that God established the family, and he is the one who issues the call. He calls us daily to give, “courageous action and suffering love.” If the family is going to survive we must take this call seriously. 

There are several practical ways to respond to our high calling. One that must remain a top priority is to make sure we always keep the romance alive and growing in our marriage relationship. We must take time for giving and making love. If we do not love our partner as much as we would like to, we can ask God to put a greater love in our heart for him or her. … Along with keeping romance alive, and love growing, comes the equal necessity of having fun together as a family. …

The crowning touch of this call is learning the importance of become thankful people within our families. I believe an ungrateful attitude is responsible for much unhappiness in today’s homes. … Have we forgotten what it means to feel thankful toward each other today? Do we understand how important it is to genuinely appreciate one another and to treat each family member with gentle kindness and a thankful heart?

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.42-43

Marriage Shares History

We used to fall in love and get married; now we sleep together, live together, and if things work out right, we draw up a marriage contract. Surely, these kind of marriages are found wanting. Such relationships can easily be severed with a simple handshake or a carefree good-bye.

God’s creative marriage offers so much more. It is the sharing of history together…his story and your story. This shared history unites us as few things in life can. No marriage contract, or live-in relationship, will ever equal the joy of shared history that springs from a lifetime commitment to each other.

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.32-33

Our Society Is Doomed

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you seen that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Man vs Woman

God took woman, nor from Adam’s head to be above him, nor his feet to be below him, but from his side that she might stand next to him.

Matthew Henry (1662-1714)

Marriage Fact

A marriage is not a joining of two worlds, but an abandoning of two worlds in order that one new one might be formed.

Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage, pg.91

Why Read?

Reading without thinking is nothing. For a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.

Louis L’Amour.

Wall of Shame?

I wonder if an invisible wall of shame is being built around this nation in the name of liberation. Have we fallen for a counterfeit freedom that is locking us into a prison of hopeless depravity? Are we becoming a people ruled by the ever-changing winds of general consensus in which each person does what is right in his or her own eyes?

In this liberated age have we forgotten that freedom by itself is never free—is never enough? It must always be accompanied by responsibility. No society in history ever survived when its rights became separated from its responsibilities. Has our nation’s newly acquired lifestyle enticed us into a perverted sense of freedom so that now we are held fast in a prison of liberation?

Hope MacDonald, The Flip Side of Liberation: A Call to Traditional Values, pg.14

Consequences of Actions

There’s a story told of a father whose son repeatedly caused trouble and chaos in the family. After each painful incident, he would come to his father, say, “I’m sorry, Dad,” and his father would forgive him. But the boy seemed cavalier about his sins. He acted as if he felt entitled to forgiveness, as if all one has to do is say, “I’m sorry,” and the incident is over as if it never happened. The young man seemed to have no awareness of the suffering his sin and rebellion caused his mother and father.

So the father said to the son, “Let’s go out to the garage. I want to show you something.” In the garage, the father took a hammer and nail, and he pounded the nail into the garage wall. Then he handed the hammer to his son and said, “Now, son, I want you to pull out the nail”

The son shrugged, used the claw end of the hammer, and pulled out the nail.

The father said, “That’s like forgiveness, isn’t it? When you do something wrong, it’s like pounding in a nail. Forgiveness is when you pull the nail out again.”

“Yeah,” the son said. “I can see that.”

“Fine,” said the father. “Now, I want you to take that hammer and pull out the nail hole.”

The startled young man said, “But I can’t make the hole go away!” And then his father’s meaning became clear. Forgiveness can erase the offense, but it cannot erase the consequences. Sin and folly always produce consequences that do not go away, even by forgiveness.

Ray C. Stedman, For Such A Time As This: Secrets of Strategic Living from the Book of Esther, pg.55-56.

Lend a Hand

I am only one,

But still I am one.

I cannot do everything,

But still I can do something;

And because I cannot do everything

I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909)

Monogamy vs Polygamy

Monogamous marriage…fosters savings and economic output, and it reduces competition among men for women, thus reducing the pool of low-status, risk-oriented, unmarried men. And that, in turn, lowers multiple types of crime, abuse, and household conflict, enabling children to enjoy paternal attention and exhibit notably lower stress levels than in households displaying all manner of outsiders.

Monogamy also leads to greater equality. More men and women have the opportunity to meet, marry, save, and invest for the long term, instead of competing (and spending resources) for others’ available attention. This is why monogamous marriage systems preceded the emergence of democratic institutions and the rise of notions like human rights and equality between the sexes. … Monogamy, after all, is disciplined—by definition.

Mark Regnerus, “Polyamory: Complicated New Identity or Primarily About Sex?”

Children

A child is a parent’s heart walking around outside his body.

Forgiveness

Choosing to forgive shows more strength than choosing to hold a grudge. It’s a way of modeling God’s love and imparting to others the same grace that we receive from Him when we make mistakes. Forgiveness is the first step toward healing and reconciliation. … Forgiveness opens the door for change, for correction, for a better tomorrow, and a brighter future. This is the blessing of forgiveness that we receive from God—a clean slate and a chance to start again. True forgiveness also requires forgetting the past. Dwelling on the past makes it impossible to move forward.  Ask God to help you forgive, forget, and love graciously…

Leslie J. Barner, Encouragement for the Broken-Hearted Parent, pg.10

“Entitlements” are Bankrupting the USA

The thing that’s unleashed the federal leviathan the most since our founding is the concept of entitlements. In 1933, the modern entitlement state was born in the form of the federal government’s first and most expensive income transfer program: Social Security. In the 1960s, LJB launched the Great Society, creating a whole new menu of entitlement programs, chief among them Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Once created, these redistribution programs were virtually impossible to restrain.

Glenn Beck, Arguing With Idiots, pg.208

The Nanny State’s Control Over Children

Most Nanny State laws aimed at protecting our children do a lousy job of it. We had children who can’t play tag or dodgeball for fear they might get hurt. We have teachers who can’t correct with red ink because it might hurt kids’ feelings. We have soda machines stocked with water because soda might make kids fat. We have spanking bans, playgrounds without slides or swings, and a whole host of other laws eager to protect our children. So our kids are much safer now, right?

Psychologists have been telling us that our over-protected, over-coddled children are unprepared to deal with realities of life because they’ve never experienced them. They are more prone to feeling angry and confused when faced with problems because they’ve never failed.  They’re technically “safer” from bruises and scrapes than any generation in history, but they’re also more likely to be anxious and unhappy.

It seems as though we love our kids so much that we’re protecting them to death. Remember: Bad things happen all the time—and we learn from them….or at least we would if we were allowed to.

Glenn Beck, Arguing With Idiots, pg.164-165

Illegal Immigrants Cost Taxpayers Dearly

Don’t be fooled by those who say that illegal aliens contribute billions to our economy and take little from it.  They’re wrong.  Many work off books, earn low wages, pay little to no taxes, send millions of dollars in remittances to their home country, and use social services at a higher rate than American citizens.  The truth is that, yes, illegal aliens are important to our economy—but only if you’re talking about the destruction of it.

Illegal immigrants tend to be less skilled and less educated than those who got off the ships at Ellis Island. While new immigrants used to earn just 14 percent less than native-born Americans, that gap had widened to an average of 34 percent less by 1998.

Before the New Deal, if you came to America and couldn’t make it, you went home.  Now, our growing welfare state is feeding off those who fall short of the eduction and skills necessary to achieve the American Dream. Illegal immigrants are 50 percent more likely to use welfare than citizens. They get free education, Medicaid, cash assistance for kids (WIC), and sometimes food stamps.  While children of illegal immigrants make up only six percent of the population, they account for almost 12 percent of our nation’s poor.

Glenn Beck, Arguing With Idiots, pg.138-139

The Fraud of Ethanol Fuel

Corn ethanol is 30 percent less efficient than gasoline and far less efficient than its sugar-based ethanol cousin. Translation: It takes more energy to make corn ethanol that other fuels. Looking at it another way, one hectare (2.471 acres) of sugarcane yields 7,500 liters of ethanol, while the same acreage of corn yields about half as much fuel.

But forget hectares and efficiency, the worst thing about corn-based ethanol is that it’s not even clean. A recent [as of 2009]University of Minnesota study found that corn ethanol is actually worse for the environment than regular gas.

So corn ethanol is not only inefficient and expensive, but it also makes the problem we’re trying to solve even worse.  Genius! I can see why Washington threw $3 billion at it in 2007, an amount that represented 76 percent of all renewable-energy tax credits.

Glenn Beck, Arguing With Idiots, pg.100

Unions

Unions may have been founded with a grand purpose but most are now big, bloated, self-serving bureaucracies with huge budgets and largely left-wing agendas fueled more by politics than a sense of duty to their members.  …

We’ve gone from a world where labor unions sacrificed for the right of all American workers to collect a fair wage to a world where Big Labor sacrifices their workers in exchange for more power and influence.

These days, unions have become powerful political machines that work against individual rights in favor of special interests. They look down on fundamental American ideals like competition, capitalism, and freedom of choice and instead embrace monopolies and bureaucracy—the very things they once fought against.  …

The truth is that most unions are no longer worker-rights groups, they’re political action committees. They don’t work to enact changes in their own companies or industries as much as they work to enact changes in laws that will help them claim more power and influence—something that’s about as far away from their original mission as you can possibly get.  …

Unions invest far more heavily in controlling school boards and stocking state houses and city councils with friendly supporters than they do in actual education. And that is where a government-union partnership is at its most destructive.

Glenn Beck, Arguing With Idiots, pg.75, 113, 116, 129