State departments of transportation are now conducting seminars to help adults control a phenomenon called road rage, where drivers not only scream at anyone who gets in their way or moves too slowly, but use their cars as weapons to run those who have so offended them off the road.

While American society was never perfect, such seminars were nonexistent a generation ago.  Adults did not need to attend a seminar to learn to behave in a fashion that used to be called “polite”.

It wasn’t that people didn’t get angry or frustrated.  They did.  But they had learned that feeling a hostile emotion did not mean that a person was allowed to express that hostility.  There were standards of conduct which were considered civilized, and part of the journey to adulthood involved acquiring those standards and abiding by them.

But education changed.  And instead of acknowledging that people do occasionally feel negative emotions, and focusing on giving children the skills to control the impulses that such feelings generate, our schools attempted to “put children in touch with their feelings” in the belief that this process would somehow result in the elimination of the negative ones.

Instead of acknowledging that one may intensely dislike the person sitting next to him, and focusing on the fact that this dislike did not entitle one to ignore, belittle, insult, or assault the other, our schools tried to make the feelings of dislike disappear.  They didn’t.  And the lesson that feelings should not always translate into behavior was lost in the shuffle.

Instead of acknowledging that no one is excellent at everything, and then focusing on teaching students on how to deal constructively with the frustration and envy and anger that come when someone else gets the desired recognition, award, or promotion, our schools implemented programs that told every student that he or she was always wonderful.  So when the world didn’t recognize his “wonderfulness”, the student had no skills to deal with the negative feelings that erupted.

That generation of students has now reached adulthood.  They were never taught that they will always feel negative emotions, such as anger, frustration, resentment, impatience, and hostility.  They were never taught that they are responsible to control the behaviors that those negative emotions can generate.  And we are seeing the result of that lack of realistic education.

It used to be that we were told that we were all sinners, but that we could choose not to sin today.   So education acknowledged that negative feelings will always exist, and focused its efforts on teaching behavioral self-control.

It’s truly ridiculous that we are now spending a fortune in adult seminars to attempt to educate grown-ups to learn what elementary teachers used to call “Being Polite”.

The United States Senate passed a resolution welcoming the Pope to America.  It was a lovely gesture.

But in the debate over the language of the welcome, the conflict between the two world views battling for dominance in American culture became evident.  The original language of the resolution stated that the Pope has “spoken approvingly of the vibrance of religious faith in the United States, a faith nourished by a constitutional commitment to religious liberty that neither attempts to strip our public spaces of religious expression nor denies the ultimate source of our rights and liberties.”

The ultimate source of our rights and liberties, of course, is the Creator.  The Pope and our Founding Fathers agree on that point.

And, since the source of our rights and liberties is the Creator, the ability to recognize that reality requires that we be able to include religious expression in our public spaces.  Again, the Pope and our Founding Fathers agree.

Unfortunately, members of the current United States Senates do not agree with these premises.  In a debate that lasted for three days, the dissenters argued over the resolution’s language, and eventually succeeded in stripping the resolution of any language that recognized that there was an authority higher than the state, that a citizen’s rights flow from that higher authority, and that citizens have the right to acknowledge that higher power in the public marketplace.

In the final language of the resolution, the above sentence ended with the words “constitutional commitment to religious liberty.”  Any references to free expression or a higher power than the government were excised.  It was a stunning display of the absolute antipathy to any recognition of the fact that an individual’s rights do not flow from the state, and therefore cannot be denied.

The resolution had no force of law, it was a statement of welcome to a visiting dignitary.  The Senate routinely passes resolutions recognizing visitors to this country.   And yet, even in a resolution, the forces that seek to replace God with Government would not yield the point.

The saddest part of the exercise was that those who believed in God DID yield.  Instead of defending the fundamental underlying principle of our American system – the principle that our rights come from God and are therefore inalienable – they surrendered to be accommodating.  They meant well, but they were mistaken.

There can be no accommodation on this point.  If our rights do not flow from God, they are not inalienable.  If they are not inalienable, they can be taken from us if the “taker” has the power to do so.  And if our rights can be taken from us through force, we no longer have a democratic republic, we have tyranny.

We had tyranny once before.  Americans did not accommodate it then.  In fact, they explained why tyranny could not be accommodated in a document that began with the words, “When in the course of human events…”

In light of the Senate’s debate, would that document pass today?

Which is correct?

Perhaps Dragnet’s Joe Friday had the best approach.  When Sergeant Friday was interviewing a witness or a victim, he insisted that he be spared opinions or assumptions.  He always wanted just the facts.

So, where does one go to find the facts of what Islam teaches about how its adherents are supposed to interact with those professing other faiths?

The answer seems obvious.  The tenets of the faith of Islam are written down in a book called the Quran.  It is available in any public library, and in any bookstore.  It is available in English.

No one has to guess what Islam teaches.  Mohammed wrote it down.  The Quran addresses how Moslem men are supposed to deal with each other, with Moslem women, with children, and with unbelievers.  It details the proper relationship between Moslems and People of the Book (Christians and Jews).  It describes how a Moslem attains eternal salvation, or its opposite.  Mohammed was quite specific in his descriptions and his mandates to his followers.

The Christian Bible is widely distributed because the thinking of Christian evangelists is that the best way to learn the Christian faith is from the Holy Book.  Christ said it best.   When there is a dispute about what Christianity teaches, everyone refers to the Bible.  The interpretations don’t always match, but everyone agrees that the best source is the original one.

Yet in the public discussion over the nature of Islam, both in the public arena and in the schools, no one actually cites the words of the Quran.  The obvious question is, “Why not?”

In the Christian Bible, there are many directives on dealing with others.  Most Christians can quote several with no effort, from turning the other cheek, to loving your enemies, to doing good to those who hurt you.  In fact, there are Christian denominations who interpret the Scriptures to mean that they may not engage in any violent actions and remain faithful to the teachings of Christ.

It should be disturbing that no one claiming that Islam is a religion of peace is providing similar citations from the Quran that outline what Moslems are supposed to believe and follow.  It should be disturbing that our high schools and colleges are not having students read and analyze the Quran, so they will know, first hand, what Islam teaches.  It should be disturbing that American adults are more interested in learning about the details of the latest Hollywood scandal than in learning about the source of the beliefs of those who are espousing our destruction.

Those who follow the teachings of Mohammed know exactly what they believe.  If we are to protect our nation and our way of life for our children and our grandchildren, it’s time that we do, too.  It’s time that we learn “just the facts” about the religion and way of life called Islam.

He was a smoker and she was not.

She actively practiced her faith and he did not.

The couple didn’t discuss smoking, but did spend many hours in conversation about the importance and effect of faith, or its lack, on their future lives.  In the end, he decided that he did not want to become an active participant in a faith-filled life.  In response, she opted not to continue pursuing a permanent relationship with him.

Both of them were comfortable with their decisions, and they have remained friends.

Her friends were appalled.

They could not understand how she could have tolerated his smoking.  They told her that they could never be with someone who smoked, and that breaking up with a fellow over cigarette use was not only acceptable, but desirable.

But when she shared the fact that they had chosen not to move forward into a deeper relationship because of their different perspectives on the role of faith in their lives, her friends openly stated that she was being absolutely unreasonable, and that if she stuck to that decision, she would find herself alone – forever.

So faith is open to compromise, but smoking isn’t.

Welcome to the new morality.

There been much debate over the effect of removing God from the public marketplace.  This is the generation that has grown up in schools where God’s name could not be mentioned, and the role of Christianity in creating western civilization could not be acknowledged.  If the Church was referred to at all, it was always the villain in the story.

The textbooks were full of the Richelieu’s and devoid of the Maximilian Kolbe’s.  Those whose lives were informed by faith were presented as intolerant, regressive, and mean.

At the same time, being physically healthy and attractive was touted as the ultimate good.  And while being healthy is certainly a “good”, and there is nothing wrong with taking care of one’s appearance, the final result of defining ultimate good in physical terms instead of spiritual ones robs us of the most important part of ourselves.

Many members of the young adult generation reflect the results of that robbery.  Suicide rates among young people are alarming high; STD infection rates are rising annually; the number of teens being treated for depression is increasing; and self-destructive behavior like cutting and anorexia are becoming more prevalent.

Can these trends be linked to the diminishing role of faith in the lives of our young people?  MTV decided to find out if there was a common thread to happiness.  They conducted a survey of young people, asking them if they were happy and then asking what factors were most important in their lives.  They were stunned to learn that those who ranked faith as a major factor were twice as happy as those who didn’t.  They could offer no explanation for this surprising result.

They should have consulted St. Augustine, who discovered and wrote, nearly 1600 years ago, that our hearts were made for God, so we would only be happy when we rested in Him.  It’s not a new truth – it’s a lost one.

For the sake of our children, it’s time we find it again.

Everyone celebrates.  Many have no idea why.

The men who actually gave birth to this nation were not at a party.  They had just written, and signed, a document that meant they could be hanged if they were caught.  They had debated every single word and comma of that document for days in 90 degree heat in a closed room in Philadelphia.

Those men were explaining what beliefs were so important to them that each of them was willing to give up his property, and even his life, in their defense.  The document was a statement of those beliefs.  And those men made their statement with the British fleet sitting in a harbor less than 100 miles away, and the British army within striking distance.

The words of that statement have been called the “most potent and consequential words in American history”.  The words of that statement created an America with a unique heritage.

A heritage that rests upon an understanding of the fact that each person is endowed with inalienable rights by a Creator, and that the fundamental purpose of government is to protect those God-given rights.

That single statement recognizing endowed rights in our Declaration defined America. It created a national mindset that allowed every new settler to leave the old stereotypes and hatreds and limits behind when he came to our shores. It sent a message that in America each person was someone of worth who deserved the opportunity to succeed because he was created that way. Our greatest moments came when we fully embraced our heritage, and our darkest came when we rejected it.

Today, that heritage is being systematically eroded and slowly replaced by the same “government is almighty” philosophy that this country’s founders rebelled against. Today’s America is a country coming apart.

We are disconnecting from the fact that there is a Creator, who has authority beyond that of the government.  Without a Creator, there can be no inalienable rights. There are only privileges extended by an almighty government. Privileges for which citizens must compete, making division inevitable.

We are disconnecting from each other, dividing into economic classes, age groups, ethnicities, entitlement recipients, and special interests who are competing with each other for dominance in the hierarchy of government privileges. Privileges that the government labels as “rights”, in an ever-expanding list that now even includes things like internet access and cell phone ownership.  At the same time, the original list of inalienable rights is disappearing from the national consciousness.

So instead of a nation where rights flowed from Creator to individual, and the government was the “help” hired to protect what each of us already had, we are becoming a nation where the government decides who has what “rights” under what circumstances, including the ability to publicly recognize the Creator.

We may still have the fireworks and the concerts and the parades and the barbecues, but one wonders what we have that is worth celebrating.  Perhaps instead of the party, we should stop and remember the words that were the original American gift.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Sadly, that disconnect is a major reason for the continued progress of those who seek to redefine the basic structure of our society. They understand that they need fiscal resources to shape their new societal order.  But it’s the new social order that is their ultimate goal – the fiscal policies they advocate simply provide the means to attain that end.

And what is that end?

A redefinition of the central unit of our society.

The cornerstone unit of American society has traditionally been the family, defined as those related by blood, marriage, or adoption. This definition has been both flexible enough to allow for two-parent families, single-parent families, blended families, and extended families, and stable enough to survive the challenges of life.

Families tie their members together with bonds of love and respect and commitment.  In a traditional family, bonds are considered permanent, so members experience unconditional love and acceptance.  These bonds cross generational and ethnic lines, span time and distance, and do not recognize economic classes.  They allow for individual movement and growth while providing family members with a constant home base to which they can return for refuge, assistance, advice, and encouragement.

When a crisis occurs, family members pull together to face it.  Like the fingers on your hand, individual family members work together to become stronger than each individual member.  Each member supplies his or her individual gift, whether that is wisdom, time, or financial support, in a shared effort to deal with the situation.  Members do not measure the amount of help each provides, and do not stop their efforts at an arbitrary cut off point – they remain focused and committed until the situation has been resolved.

Families prepare their members for independence.  Children grow up knowing that they will leave their parents’ homes to start their own generation of family, and begin the cycle of life and love once again.

Families acknowledge a higher power.  They understand the worth and value of each member, from the youngest to the oldest; and they recognize that they are the custodian, not the Creator, of life.  Most families pray together, asking the Creator for His blessing and assistance, and thanking Him for answering those prayers.

If society were viewed as an old-fashioned wagon wheel, with a central hub and spokes out to the rim, families would be a bright center to the wheel.  They generate life – both biological and economic, which flows from them into the larger society.  Family members produce and consume goods and services.  They accumulate wealth, which they pass on to future generations, ensuring continued economic life.

Families feed the societies where their centrality is recognized and supported – to the benefit of both the family and the society.

In the new social order being promoted in America today, family is replaced by government as the central unit of society.

Under this structure, family would just be any group of people who come together in a supportive environment, however temporary that group may be.  The traditional family ties of blood, marriage or adoption would either be discarded or diluted to allow for any group of individuals to self-define as a family.

In this structure, individuals would be connected to the government.  Government cannot love, so it needs to create a different kind of tie.  Government ties people to it through conditions of dependence and regulation and ignorance.  People do not bond to the government, so they must be tied to it.  These conditions create that tie.

Government needs people to interact individually with the state.  So government programs and policies separate the members of a family from each other, like spreading the fingers on your hand.  Then the state can put barriers between the fingers, creating isolation and forcing each individual to work directly with the state.  Government is not compassionate, so individuals must deal with the might of the state when problems arise, even if “might” is not the most appropriate response to the problem.

Government does not acknowledge a higher power.  In a society where government is the central entity, not only does government see itself as the highest authority, it seeks to prevent citizens from recognizing a divine Creator.  Hence, in every major confrontation in our society between believers and non-believers, the “theology” of the non-believers has prevailed.

If we use our wagon wheel analogy, government is a dark center.  It produces no life.  It creates no goods or services.  It generates no wealth.  Instead, it pulls life and wealth from the larger society down the spokes of the wheel with an insatiable appetite.

In a government centered society, the government will eventually devour everything in its ever increasing reach – destroying itself and the larger society in the process.

While it’s easy to get lost in the myriad of individual issues, the real question before us is, do we want to be the center of America’s society to be the family or the government?  The answers to the issues will flow from our answer to that single, central question.

Talk to those who work with teenage girls who become pregnant and ask them the same question.  You will receive the same answer.

Now speak with school guidance counselors about the characteristics of those who drop out.  You will hear about children without fathers.

Finally, examine the statistics about children who grow up in conditions of poverty, and you will find a direct correlation between economic level and family structure, with fatherless families at the bottom of the pile.

In fact, for every problem situation involving children, a missing father is the single most common factor.

The government has developed and funded an ever-increasing number of programs to replace the father.  The programs have attempted to provide financially for families without fathers through welfare, rent subsidies, and health care.  They have created networks for children without fathers, with counselors and facilitators.  They have restructured educational and social programs to make allowances for children without fathers at home.  The research proves that all of these initiatives don’t work.  And the negative societal impact of missing fathers continues to grow.

The obvious question is, “Why?”

The answer is almost too uncomplicated to be believable.  Simply put, there is no government substitute for a Dad.

Dads don’t just provide for families and children.  Dads love them.  It doesn’t matter whether the child is a girl or a boy, the loving presence of Dad is critical.

Little boys have a hero to look up to and imitate.  Dads not only solve problems, they give horsey-back rides and play catch. A mother concentrates on kissing boo-boo’s, but a father tells them to try again.  And in trying again, the little one learns that a failure is just another step on the way to eventual success.

Adolescent boys learn that limits still apply.  They may be bigger than Mom, but they are still not as big, or as strong, as Dad.  It is much better to try to push the envelope against Dad than against the legal establishment.  Adult men often share laughing stories of how they thought they could “show Dad” when they were in their teens, only to discover that Dad “showed” them.  And so they learned that the rules still applied to them in a setting where the discipline was tempered with love.

Dads are just as important to girls.  It is Dad who first tells his daughter that there is something special about being a girl.  It is Dad who sets the standard for how she should expect to be treated by the opposite sex.  It is Dad who communicates that standard to the young men she dates.  It is Dad who combines an expectation of her excellence with an appreciation of her femininity.  And so daughters learn that women can be strong and successful and still enjoy being women.  And they learn to expect to be treated courteously and respectfully by every other man because they were treated that way by their fathers.

If we truly want to solve the problems confronting our youth, we should be concentrating on making sure they have the one thing that best meets their needs.

A Dad.

Happy Father’s Day!

Comedians pepper their routines with the double meanings that the same words can have.  English-language students often stumble over the fact that words do not mean what they appear to be saying.  In these cases, we all enjoy the mix-up.

Sometimes, the difference between words and meanings is more serious.  Marriage counseling often revolves around the fact that although the spouses are saying the same words, they are not actually meaning the same thing.   The counselor’s role is to find the misunderstanding and create real communication.

But what happens when there is such a disconnection between the words and the meanings, and there is no counselor?

That is often the case when the citizen deals with the government.   And it’s why the conversations so often end in frustration and anger.

Let’s consider taxes.

The traditional definition of “tax” is the mechanism by which the government is funded.  The funding may have come from the citizens, or from some other source.  But the word, “tax”, meant nothing more than a funding stream.

If you asked most citizens to define “taxation”, that is the definition they would give you.

But the government has a very different definition of taxation.  In the eyes of the government, taxes are the mechanism by which they can control the behavior of citizens.  The government uses taxes to redistribute wealth, to reward or punish the location of a business enterprise, to direct personal and commercial spending decisions, and to stimulate or curtail behavior.

There has never been a conversation about the radical difference in these definitions.  In fact, the government has changed the definition through a series of actions that were designed NOT to excite a challenge on the part of citizens.  And it has been successful.

Businesses choose locations based on tax incentives, instead of market analysis.  And the result is industries that relocate to new communities to get the next tax break, instead of building roots in one place.  Companies hire employees who bring 6-month tax amnesties, and fire them at the end of the period so they can hire the next batch of 6-month tax breaks, instead of investing in long-term employees.

Citizens make decisions about preparing for retirement based on tax incentive programs, changing how and where they save their money.  People buy cars, homes, and renovations based on the language of tax codes.

Through taxes, the government has also redefined how the citizens interact with the state.  We now ask for permission, through the removal of a tax or the creation of an incentive, to do the thing we wish to do.  And if we do not receive that permission, we do not act.

We are no longer sovereign citizens, we are the hired help.

In all the discussion about taxes taking place today, no one is challenging the fact that the state has changed the underlying definitions.  And unless we do, we will never get real tax reform.  Changing a rate in one of the myriad of taxes which we now pay is not changing the system.

And it’s the system that is broken.

Fixing it means starting with the correct definition of taxation, and then eliminating any tax or bureaucracy that does not adhere to that definition.

I am the mother of six wonderful kids.  Each of them has blessed my life in unique and priceless ways.  The youngest was a special gift because his life gave me a new perspective on mine – as a woman and as a mother.

The pregnancy began with a conversation with my doctor that included the words, “Nobody might survive this.”  It sounds like that kind of conversation would be the cause of a deep drama, with many discussions and decision points.

It wasn’t.

It was a challenge, but life is full of challenges.  And in living through this particular challenge, I learned that the ability to bear life is more about mothers than babies.  I always knew that Moms mattered.  This pregnancy told me why.

Every one of us wants to know that we are loved.  Not loved because we were smart enough, or pretty enough, or young enough, or wealthy enough, or anything else enough.  We each want to be loved just because we exist.  And we spend enormous amounts of time and effort trying to find the person who will love us without conditions.

But that is exactly what mothers are called to do.   A Mother is the person who loves a child whom she has not yet met.  She doesn’t know what the child will look like, or be good at, or act like.  She only knows that the child exists, and that the little one is hers.  And so she loves this tiny person, without conditions and without limits.

And that’s exactly what happened to me.  This was my child, and I loved him.  It wasn’t dramatic.  It was just real.

It used to be that everyone around Mom knew and understood this definition.  So when there was a challenge, the mother dealing with it was supported in her love.

I think that the saddest effect of abortion in our society is that it has broken that understanding and that support.  We changed the definition of mother from unconditional lover to judge.  We all suffer from that change.

Children no longer come into the world with the sure and certain knowledge that someone loved them even before she knew anything about them.  Even those who are not aborted are affected, because abortion changes the nature of the relationship between a mother and her unborn child.  A child has to be “good enough” to be born.

There was a standard that had to be met, even from a mother, to be loved.

From my perspective, I just did what mothers do.  I loved my little boy.  Sometimes love is easy, and sometimes love demands sacrifices.  Mothers don’t measure the sacrifice to see if the gain is worth the pain – they just keep loving.

And in the days before abortion, my story would have been accepted as part of the definition of being a mom.   It was simply what moms did.

Happy Mother’s Day!