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I’ve heard the ads from the “Yes on 26″ crew with the slogan “don’t be deceived” by the “lies” of Planned Parenthood and others who have come out against the Personhood-USA-inspired amendment to the Mississippi State Constitution that would recognize a person as any “human being from the moment of fertilization.” Yes on 26 claims that many are trying to deceive you when they claim the amendment change will result in the deaths of women who could have had abortions to forgo risky pregnancy or saying that it could lead to the end of oral contraceptives in Mississippi.

I made some banners for this:

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First of all, since I know sex-ed is nearly nonexistent in Mississippi, a fertilized egg is also called an embryo.  Most people do not consider the mere fertilization of an egg to even constitute pregnancy, since the egg must before pregnancy can begin. Many birth control pills, along with stopping ovulation, stop, as a fail-safe, the implantation of a fertilized egg by altering the uterine wall (or, in other words, leaving the egg with no where to go). In ectopic pregnancies, which puts the mother’s life at risk, the fertilized egg implants somewhere it isn’t meant to and can cause rupturing.

When the “Yes on 26″ crowd say that people are trying to “deceive” you when they tell you that birth control is at stake, they are ignorant at best and lying at worst. If a fertilized egg is a person, then items which could very likely kill said persons would not stay legal very long. Many people who are anti-abortion are unaware that the fringe groups of the anti-abortion crowd (I’m being kind by saying this is a “fringe group,” as this constitutes many people) are also against all forms of birth control.

So don’t be fooled. If you’re in Mississippi, vote NO on 26. If you’re not in Mississippi and know someone who is, tell them about it.

Yesterday, I took screenshots of commenters on the Fox News facebook story concerning the terrorist attacks in Oslo, Norway.

The first set comes at a time before commenters knew who was responsible for the attacks. The second set carry a change of tone (and number) after the terrorist was revealed to be a right-wing radical.

Before:

After:

Notice the change of tone, and even the way some commenters justified the attacks as being “against socialists” or blamed the victims for being easy targets.

I hear and see a lot of people asking, “Where is the Muslim outrage over terrorism?”

My question: Where is the outrage over the indiscriminate killing and harming of innocents?

First a clarification on Peace and Force:

Peace is the result of Reason. Peace is not brought through war unless the survivors are too tired or too few to continue.

Force cannot bring Peace. Not real peace. Not lasting peace. Peace is a decision. It requires courage, understanding, vigilance, and love.

Who shows such courage today?

There are groups who should stand against fear, intolerance, bigotry, and greed so far as they disrupt Peace, rather than embracing and acting upon those irrational and inhumane concepts.

Christians, with a doctrine based on the Prince of Peace.

All breeds of non-theists, religious minorities who depend on religious freedom in the U.S.

Americans together, with a country founded on the ideals of equality, tolerance, and liberty. Leaders throughout our times have warned of unreasonable fears:

“This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will
prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only
thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified
terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

But when they are told to fear, who steps up? What can be gained by the insanity of starting a violent war to stop violence?

Who takes the rational view?

My idea isn’t new. It isn’t my own. It’s been echoed for generations, but I hear it getting louder, even if the resistance seems high. Whether by sheer tiredness or by communication that shows just how gruesome our wars are and just how human our “enemies” appear, the tides are turning against our nation’s imperialistic tunes. We need to harness this energy and turn war into the distant,  regrettable nightmare–a door we choose to shut and never open again.

My idea is against the philosophy that one can stop bloodshed by creating bloodshed.

It’s against the idea that violence can bring Peace or anything but more violence.

It is against the mere utterance that good should be nonchalantly discarded with evil–only leaving shadows of innocent men, women, and children left etched into foreign walls.

Some will be unconvinced that a human race could ever achieve peace. This is like people claiming no one will ever break the silence: Peace is an idea that multiplies when it receives support.

A place for our Christian majority to look for answers on whether or not our current wars are just is their own religious text.

Romans 12, for instance:

¹⁷Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.
¹⁸If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at PEACE with everyone.
¹⁹Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

On the contrary:

²⁰“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.
²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

I have been told more than once that I should not quote the Bible “to attack Christians politically.” The truth is that I’m incapable of making the Bible counter so deeply the war the religious right stands for–I did not write it. I also do  not fault the Bible for its advice here.

However, I am concerned when people of any belief, who claim to be informed citizens acting on reason, glorify unreasonable actions based on fear.

Like by invoking hate to stop people believed to hate (like you can hate someone so much they begin to love you.)

Like by supporting the bombings entire cities to rid the world of radicals of particular faiths (like you can rid the world of bombing and shooting incidents by bombing and shooting.)

Violence and fear lead to more violence and fear. Fighting terror with terror leads to more terror.

So often, I see the following graph presented as evidence that the United States has a poor system of healthcare:

Whatever your stance is on universal health coverage, we can typically look at individuals and determine whether the person is living a lifestyle that is healthy enough to sustain a long life. In the healthcare debate, however, it’s rarely mentioned that our “healthcare” problems in this country may start at home. Along with lower life expectancy than other nations, the United States also has significantly higher rates of obesity.

A new graph from the Washington Post gives an interactive snapshot of life expectancy by location within the United States.

The CDC has a similar map showing the percentage of obese individuals by location in the United States:

The graphs could almost be used interchangeably, and, since obesity is medically known to cause a range of life-shortening health problems from diabetes to strokes, it seems reasonable that our life expectancy is currently being held down not because we have a poor healthcare system but because we have unhealthy lifestyles.

Because life expectancy is a complicated issue that takes into account not only our great medical advances (and access to them), but also a range of cultural norms such as diet, stress, and the amount of physical activity. If we’re going to be honest in our debates on universal healthcare, we should not use misleading graphs to claim a causation between privatized healthcare and lower life expectancy.

Let’s pretend that you were taking a video of your friend or family on a sidewalk.

Suddenly, you hear gun shots and screams at the bank across the street, and a man runs for the door.

Should you record him as he exits? Wouldn’t it help bring him to justice if he’s recorded?

Apparently, that all depends on whether or not the bank robber is a police officer.

Three states (Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland) prosecute citizens who record police officers. Don’t live there? Don’t think you’re off the hook.

But surely, you say, those laws aren’t actually enforced!

Tell that to the teens at a crashed underage drinking party in Galesburg, Illinois. Along with charges of underage drinking, some teens were slapped with additional felony eavesdropping charges for using their cellphones to film to police raid on the party.

He [Galesburg Police Captain Rodney Riggs] said not only was recording police without their consent illegal, it was annoying (KWQC-TV6 News).

In states where the law doesn’t stop people from videotaping officers, it appears many of America’s finest are taking it upon themselves to stop the documentation of traffic stops, arrests, and misconduct.

This 17-year-old was told he had no right to film a police officer in North Dakota after being unlawfully arrested. He claims to have been handcuffed and left alone for an hour without his parents being notified.

Although we can honestly say that our police officers in the United States, as a whole and as a majority, do a fine job and are honest, reputable citizens, law enforcement is not a field devoid of corruption. No field is. In San Francisco, for instance recordings have helped show individuals with no respect for the law performing improper searches and seizures–or, as the lay-person might call it, theft (SFBGuardian).

Filming on-duty officers is a liability for those who are dishonest, but such recordings can remind police that dishonesty and lawbreaking will put their careers at risk. Depending on the event, some officers may have more to lose upon being caught.

Police brutality and excessive force charges, for instance, are more serious than theft. In Miami,  CNN reports that witnesses to a police shootout were intimidated with guns into handing over their footage.

“When he noticed me recording, one of the officers jumped in the truck, put a pistol to my head,” he said. “My phone was smashed – he stepped on it, handcuffed me.”

…

“They took everyone’s phones and smashed them…”

(CNN)

If that is true, the public should be outraged, not only at the behavior and disrespect for our laws and freedoms, but also at the double standard.

YOU may be wiretapped in private, but police officers may not be in public. A police cruiser may record YOU as you are pulled over, but you may not make your own video. Cameras posted by intersections may record and/or photograph you, but you may not record or photograph law enforcement officials.

How can this really be acceptable in a free society? That public servants cannot be held accountable to the public and that the public, who have a duty to monitor public servants, cannot collect evidence of crime?

Cases of Cam-Toters Prosecuted (2010 repost):
“A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler’s license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison” (HuffPost Chicago).

“Hyde used his recording to file a harassment complaint against the police. After doing so, he was criminally charged.”

“On March 5, 24-year-old Anthony John Graber III’s motorcycle was pulled over for speeding and faced criminal charges for a video he recorded on his helmet-mounted camera during the traffic stop.” The court threw out wiretapping charges despite being in a two-party surveillance state.

His video:

Despite the fact that he was wearing the large, noticeable camera ON HIS HELMET, he was charged after uploading the video to YouTube.

Gizmodo also reports, luckily, that the right to film in public is being upheld in some states.
http://gizmodo.com/5553765/are-cameras-the-new-guns

So Remember:

Don’t be confused this Memorial Day.

Patriotism is not shouting, “God Bless America!” into an insipid mass of red, white, and blue.

Patriotism is not slapping a yellow ribbon on the back of your vehicle and never considering the systematic atrocities of war that we send our youth to barter their humanity for.

The men who founded this nation tied its fate to liberty and diplomacy.

“I love peace, and am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.”
-Thomas Jefferson

We’ve strayed from our principles of liberty and peace, and we’re failing for it. We are losing our freedoms to fear.

“The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.”
Albert Camus

So on Memorial Day, remember the soldiers who needlessly live and die far from home and loved ones in an unjust aggressive war–one that started before other options were fully considered. Remember the soldier who fought for rights that the War on Terrorism and its leaders have dismantled.

Patriotism is striking a match to show a nation traveling down a dark road that less dangerous paths exist. It’s sharing that flame with others to light the way.

“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
Albert Einstein

We must not tell lies, and we must not let lies become facts.

We live in a world that is almost entirely connected through technology, yet it seems that people still do not know or care to know about the happenings in their own back yards, much less halfway around the globe or even just south of our border.

Liberals and conservatives both have their own ideas of what public education should encompass, and both have their own ideas of why it’s failing and what the solution is.

Most importantly, both liberals and conservatives are contributing to failure due to their cultural views. Here is a short list of both:

Liberals:
-Softcore on personal responsibility (children not allowed to fail, belief that children are products of their world and must be motivated/entertained to learn…)
-Student misbehavior is not sufficiently addressed or punished
-State mandated compulsory education
-”Studies” for “effective teaching” put into law and changed on a regular basis
-Micromanaging teachers and politicizing education, creating unnecessary bureaucracy and eliminating teacher power in the classroom
-Throwing money at the problem but rarely putting it in the right place

Conservatives
-Cultural aversion to public schools/education and distrust in education system/teachers
-Blaming teachers for every failure at the school level
-Supporting big-government education reform that is contrary to conservative ideals
-Authoritarian discipline and learning models the stifle dissent and creativity
-Outcomes-based education with high-stakes testing as the end-all for determining learning quality
-Superficially dealing consequences schools and teachers without addressing root problems of student failure

What I want to address here is an essential problem for of American education and how the ideals of the two shades of the American political spectrum either ignore or worsen the issue.
It can be narrowed into two key issues: the system and the culture, and each has influenced the other. This could be called a chicken/egg argument, but I will argue that the system strayed first.

The system first failed by sending the wrong message about what education is and implanted this value into our culture. Children were once disciplined. They did not learn things because they “wanted to” but because it was their job to learn and because they were held to high expectations for learning these things.

The reality this group denies is that studying is work. Studying is hard work. It is a skill in and of itself–the most important skill–and it must be learned and practiced.

In the early grades, children should be instilled with a basic foundation of knowledge from which to build: geography, numbers, arithmetic, vocabulary, history, general science, grammar, etc. The BASICS. These things are best learned through rote memorization, perhaps combined with competition with classmates. This requires discipline in learning–the ability to study and learn on one’s own.

Foundational knowledge (arithmetic, grammar, etc.) is not fun to learn–some of subjects can be interesting, but they’re no XBOX360 or any other modern-day fun that competes with learning. These things are necessary to know. A student cannot be expected to achieve the thought process necessary to complete algebra without the discipline to learn formulas and without having a foundational knowledge of what multiplication is.

While the importance of fundamental knowledge can be explained to a 6-year-old, to some extent, a small child cannot be expected to fully grasp the importance of this. They have to trust that some things are just necessary to know–like how to read or add. A teacher cannot force a child to learn this essential knowledge, a child must be disciplined to do so, and this discipline must occur at home and at school.

However, the system began teaching children at a young age that learning should always be fun and interesting rather than teaching that the fruits of education are fun and interesting. This created a situation where children grew into adults who raised more children to believe that all worthwhile learning will be fun and interesting. (Bad move, liberals).

Progressive education in the 40′s.

And, so, we’re now left with the culture that reinforces the idea that all learning should be fun. Teachers should be entertainers, bending to the every whim of students. Teachers must address different “learning styles” rather than empowering students to develop their own learning style and become disciplined within it. In this view, if a student fails to learn, it is the teacher, not the student or the parent, who has failed. We have reinforced this liberal idea through public policy, with a full backing of conservatives who love personal responsibility but hate teachers and the secularization of public education, and continue to radicalize this trend.

So the conservative culture chimes in.

We have begun to send the message that learning is not important or socially worthwhile and that just going to school makes you educated, whether effort is put forth or not.

Once this happens, we get large groups of people who stop learning at an early age, when they could no longer keep up with curriculum because time was not spent learning to learn efficiently. For many minority and economically disadvantaged students, this happens when they are as young as 10, and a couple of years later for white students.

We get a timeless division of educated v. not–and the Nots are winning. The Nots do not just include religious people who are against science and liberal arts. The Nots now include people who never learned and thus wanted to find a way to disparage the educated community to fill their own inadequacies (think of Dr. Seuss’s Sneetches).

GEEK, NERD, BOOKWORM, BOOKISH, SMARTY PANTS, DORK, INTELLECTUAL, and other four-letter words are thrown at children fairly early in life. These further discourage many from learning.

They make education a war, concerned that “intellectual elites” might gain power (See: Will “intellectual” label hurt Obama? http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/10/zelizer.intellectual/ ).

What is the problem of knowing things? How can conservatives look down on intellectualism and academia while screaming that their schools are failing–do they not understand the message they are sending to our kids–that it’s cooler and more acceptable to be stupid and follow than to learn and think and lead?

We need higher standards for our future. We need them to start at home and follow through into every kindergarten classroom in the nation if we have any hopes to reverse this.

After gaining national attention for mispredicting Judgment Day 2011, Harold Camping may want to consider tossing his name into the hat of Republican presidential candidates for the 2012 run.

True to conservative philosophy, Camping has managed to stick to his story no matter what the facts say. He could certainly give Newt Gingrich a run for his money: Camping has proven to have more faith than most candidates, and that’s important for Republicans this election season.

Unlike some candidates, his name isn’t completely muddied. Sure. People could bring up that he was wrong about the end of the world, but at least his name isn’t Santorum (Google it).

And who better to work to self-fulfill Biblical end times prophecies than a crazy-street-style doomsayer? Plus, even if he loses, he can just pretend Jesus is coming (again).

So, come on, Camping! We look forward to your debates with Newt, Cain, and Santorum!

Why is dispensing information regarding homosexuality targeted as something worthy of legislation making this an action resulting in a misdemeanor? In Tennessee, the answer is that it simply does not fit with the narrative–the narrative being that homosexuality is a “choice” and that homosexuality will go away if no one talks about it.

When met with reality, however, we know that homosexuality is not a choice and no one outside of religious influences is arguing that it is (APA).

What we know about homosexuality is that most people are aware of their sexual orientation by adolescence–years earlier than the age at which students would be legally allowed to be exposed to the idea of homosexuality in the classroom. Until such a time, they are ostracized as the minority and made to read literature only concerning the attraction to the opposite sex. The legislation effectively bans any gay love story on par with straight love stories studied in classrooms.

If a student knows that he or she is homosexual, how is this child being served by lies of silence that either ignore the fact that homosexuals exist or claim that his or her sexual orientation is so evil that it cannot even be mentioned in the classroom?

What message does it send to heterosexual students that homosexuals are so controversial that a teacher could be thrown in jail for 30 days for saying the wrong thing concerning the topic? Does this result in bullying? Does this result in further bigotry toward diversity?

Time and again, Tennessee is shown through rates of teen pregnancy (58 per 1,000 in 2006) and STDs that their approaches to sex education are harmful.

Tennessee proves again that religiously-minded lawmakers are trying to construct a fairytale world of Christian ethics, even when all of the facts tell them that they are wrong and that they are hurting people.

The crusade against Sarah Palin truly shows the hypocrisy of the left and of the feminist movement.

As feminists, they should be supportive of any woman’s rise to power, especially someone with the potential success that Palin could have.

It seems the left cannot leave her alone. The left’s godless atheists are now coming down on Sarah Palin simply because she repeated the tired and tried truth that the United States Constitution is based on the Holy Word of God.

Clearly, the problem is not with Sarah Palin but with a strong Republican female leader who will not back down from small-government, women’s-rights issues such as having the government tell a woman whether or not she can have a medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy.

Note her accomplishments:

• Scholarship on Russian relations
• Benevolently stepping down as governor so taxpayer money wouldn’t go to fund her corruption defense
• Showing that women, too, can shoot guns from helicopters
• Allowing women to pay for their rape kits rather than become a helpless burden on taxpayers
• Revolutionary ideas on reducing the rate of teen pregnancy

Yes, with all of her knowledge, skills, and sound political ideals, it seems as though the left is merely showing misogyny when they belittle Palin or denounce her as “unqualified” (because she is pretty).

Before closing this rant, I want to make sure you see a very special clip. Below, when you press play, you’ll see the foresight of Sarah Palin, as she and Glenn Beck explain the threat of “radical, revolutionary crazy people in the White House and surrounding this system.”

She tried to wave some red flags to save the nation and was “perplexed” that the people heard those warnings and “still chose that route” [to vote for Obama instead of McCain/Palin].