A Case for a Trump Landslide in 2020!

The Disappearance of Motherhood in Today’s Fascistic America

Today’s American female under age 50 seems to be devoted to   fat, butch,  bossy, “free” and busy….TOO BUSY TO BE MOTHERS.  After all she is “it” in today’s Liberal Arts college.  Marriage itself is drifting into an abyss since it no longer  encourages Godfearing, motherhood, decency, and sacrifice, yesterday’s sanctuary of the JudeoChristian concept of family.

Neighborhoods no longer have neighbors.   Households, apartments are filled with come and go refugees isolated from “neighborhood”.   Families have disappeared from neighborhoods.    Crime skyrockets among  the urban masses.

Leftist, often foul Democrats control America’s House of “Representatives”, schools, universities, television, news centers from coast to coast.   TRUTH NO LONGER SEEMS TO HAVE MEANING EXCEPT FOR JUDEO-CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES….those human creatures who are  ridiculed, hated at university and  in the nation’s public schools, banned  in general as something too yesterday to be of today’s concerns.    Teaching hate of white America and all of its yesterday’s  values seeking Truth and Freedom to stir fems  to feel they will raise  a  Braver Newer Fascist World.    Freedom is yesterday…It was so male!!!

Feminist fascism will SECURE  order with  FEELINGS of  peace and quiet!

Motherhood in America began its death throes  in the early 1960s.   Wild sex, drugs, and leftism  joined gangsters and  anti-war mobs to offer a new  cast for today’s American  schooling , college and  university  masses….a drug and racketeering one that by now has replaced learning knowledge and freedom by  seeking TRUTH.

City Mothers, poor or not,  were everywhere in our neighborhoods in the 1930s into the 1950s where I was growing up and schooled.   They were homemakers before, during, and a while after World War II.  They were leaders of the community during the week, sharing, chatting, caring with one another.   None of them worked away from their homes and  yards.   During the 1941-45 War butter, coffee, bread,  soap and Victory Garden produce were shared by the majority of sixteen home owner Mothers on our modest block.

Fathers too old to join the military worked 48 hours a week then.   My dad was a pharmacist downtown St. Paul, Mn.   Sunday was the religious day for all.   Nearly all of the city’s  stores were closed so folks could be at Church and home with family.

Naturally, sharing goods brought mothers  together.   Moms were problem solvers  at the center of our neighborhood  culture, six days per week.

Moreover, they were full time  MOTHERS, real mothers in action with children loved, repeated throughout the urban neighborhoods….until the druggie  1960s when neighborhood family life and civil order  began to collapse.

Today’s American neighborhood  world is a lonely, crippled, cold, Godless, uneducated, leftist, feminized, a  Dem world often without a real father in site.   These urbanites   hardly knows what a tree is.   They know nothing about the human struggle to be free of tyranny…..so they trust our today’s American Democrat tyrants of the George Soros world.

“Mothers” of their own children work away from home.   They send their babes away dropping them off somewhere,  while they go to work reducing their kind of “Motherhood” to evenings and weekends.

I had a home Mother until I was 13…..Most of my buddies had mothers until they went off to college or work.   Usually gals lived with their moms a bit longer.

Unless today there is home schooling, Mothers hardly exist in America anymore.   Fathers hardly exist.

 

Dem’s Atheism Hits a Set Back!

Christian Business Owners Score ‘Major Victory’ in Court Ruling Against Obamacare Mandate

Christian Business Owners Score ‘Major Victory’ Against Obamacare Mandate

by Randy DeSoto  at Western Journal        Article sent by Mark Waldeland:

The Christian Employers Alliance has won a major victory against the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate in relation to providing abortion-inducing drugs.

In an exclusive interview with The Western Journal, CEA president Jim Mischel said the May ruling by North Dakota chief federal district court Judge Daniel Hovland, which the Trump administration did not appeal by the deadline last month, establishes the right of alliance members not to provide abortifacients in their health care plans.

Mischel recounted that following the highly publicized Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision in 2014 in favor of the Christian-owned company, the Obama administration sought to limit its impact by establishing an “accommodation” rule concerning the ACA’s contraception mandate.

It was “really just a work-around around the Hobby Lobby decision,” Mischel said.

The Hobby Lobby company provided coverage for most FDA-approved birth control methods, but had religious objections to providing abortifacients.

The Department of Health and Human Services accommodation called for health insurers and not employers to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, if the business owners had sincerely held religious beliefs against providing them.

“I would say [the Obama administration] practically ignored the Hobby Lobby decision and came up with a new set of guidelines that in all purposes forced the same Christian employers to cover the abortifacient drugs that the Supreme Court said they did not have to cover,” Mischel said.

He pointed out that Hovland’s ruling in favor of the CEA provides one of the few ways Christian employers can actually be protected from providing abortion-inducing drugs and devices.

Mischel said the alliance (which he described as the first of its kind in the country) is made up of Christian business owners who collectively employ tens of thousands of people nationwide. (Liftable Media, Inc., The Western Journal’s parent company, is a CEA member).

“So it is a huge victory on behalf of Christian employers and religious freedom and really companies that want to provide high-quality health care that reflects [their] ethical values,” Mischel said.

“We want health care that reflects our principles of promoting human life, not destroying human life,” he added. “To us, that’s one of the reasons you want health care is to promote human life.”

Under current regulations, the Affordable Care Act contraception mandate imposes a tax of $100 per day for each employee whose health care coverage does not include abortifacients or $36,500 per beneficiary per year.

In his decision, Hovland placed a permanent nationwide injunction against the federal government fining CEA members, including current members and those who join in the future.

Like the Supreme Court in Hobby Lobby, the judge relied on the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

RELATED: CEO of Company That Worked with Planned Parenthood Admits To Selling ‘Intact’ Aborted Babies – Report

RFRA, which is grounded in the First Amendment, prohibits the government from “substantially burden[ing]” a person’s free exercise of religion, unless it can show the action in question serves a “compelling government interest,” and the government has implemented the “least restrictive means of furthering that compelling government interest.”

Hovland directed that any penalties, fines or assessments that had accumulated against CEA members be voided and eliminated.

Mischel said the ruling “supports the Hobby Lobby decision that religious freedom still exists in our country, will still be protected, and everyone has the right to choose the health care that supports their values.”

 

Christian Business Owners Score ‘Major Victory’ in Court Ruling Against Obamacare Mandate

The World War of My Childhood Began 80 Years Ago!

Victor Davis Hanson: Lies, betrayal and incredible surprises marked start of World War II 80 years ago

by Victor Davis Hanson  at  Fox news:

Some 80 years ago, on Aug. 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, formally known as the “Treaty of non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

The world was shocked — and terrified — by the agreement. Western democracies of the 1930s had counted on the huge resources of Communist Russia, and its hostility to the Nazis, to serve as a brake on Adolf Hitler’s Western ambitions. Great Britain and the other Western European democracies had assumed that the Nazis would never invade them as long as a hostile Soviet Union threatened the German rear.

The incompatibility between communism and Nazism was considered by all to be existential — and permanent. That mutual hatred explained why dictators Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin both despised and feared each other.

Yet all at once, such illusions vanished with signing of the pact. Just seven days later, on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. World War II had begun.

After quickly absorbing most of Eastern Europe by either coercion or alliance, Hitler was convinced that he now had a safe rear. So he turned west in spring 1940 to overrun Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and the Netherlands.

Hitler accomplished all that relatively easily, failing only to conquer Great Britain with an exhaustive bombing campaigning.

 

During all these Nazi conquests, a compliant Stalin shipped huge supplies of food and fuel for the German war effort against the West. Stalin cynically had hoped that Germany and the Western democracies would wear themselves out in a wasting war — similar to the four horrific years in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I.

Communism then easily would spread to the Atlantic amid the ruins of European capitalism. Unlike Czarist Russia in 1914, this time around the Soviets wanted to stay out of a German war. Instead, Stalin rearmed during the non-aggression pact with Hitler.

Stalin, of course, had no idea he had created a Nazi monster that would quickly devour all of Continental Europe — and turn to its rear to eye a now-isolated Soviet Union. Much less did Stalin realize that the battle-hardened German war machine would soon overrun his country in a surprise attack beginning on June 22, 1941, a little less than two years after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The non-aggression pact in a way had also ensured that a European war would soon turn into a global massacre that left roughly 65 million dead. At the time of deal, imperial Japan was fighting the Soviet Union on the Manchurian-Mongolian border. The Japanese were de facto allies of Nazi Germany. They had assumed that Stalin’s fear of an aggressive Germany meant the Soviet Union would have to worry about a two-front war against both Germany and Japan.

But now, the surprise agreement stunned the Japanese, who saw it as a German betrayal. It left them alone against the superior forces of Russia’s eastern armies.

Japan quickly withdrew from its losing Russian war. In time it signed its own non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, in April 1941 — ironically, just months before Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa,” the massive invasion of Russia.

Japan correctly concluded by the betrayal that Hitler’s Germany could not be trusted and deserved tit-for-tat duplicity. So Japan never joined Hitler’s surprise invasion of Russia. Instead, the Japanese turned their attention to the Pacific and especially the vulnerable British and American bases in Singapore, Burma, the Philippines — and Pearl Harbor.

In sum, the August 1939 non-aggression pact ensured the German attack against Great Britain and Western Europe. It also convinced Hitler that Russia was vulnerable, gullible and appeasing, and could be overrun in weeks following an invasion.

Finally, the deal ended all Japanese ideas of fighting the Soviet Union on the ground from the East in partnership with Nazi Germany invading from the West. Instead, Japan turned toward the vulnerable British and American eastern forces.

In sophisticated times, we sometimes forget that time-honored concepts like the balance of power and military deterrence — not good intentions and international peace organizations — alone keep the peace. When the pact destroyed fragile alliances and encouraged German adventurism, war was certain.

The final ironies? The Soviet double-cross of the Western democracies eventually ended up almost destroying Russia, which bore the brunt of an empowered Germany.

The redirection of Japanese war strategy to target America finally brought the United States into World War II, which ensured the destruction of Japan and Germany.

Add this all up, and in some sense World War II really started on Aug. 23, 1939, 80 years ago this summer.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/victor-davis-hanson-world-war-ii

Note from ghr:   I was 5  when the European part of  World War II broke out in 1939.

I became acutely aware of it by  the  Spring of 1942 when I began able to read the cutlines of the war photos of the  Sunday Pioneer Press rotogravure picture section of its Sunday newspapers, and  the newspaper’s  headlines  of the Pacific front that Spring.   “Battle at Midway”,  was my entry to become part of the war effort ,  playing serious war games with my neighborhood buddies thereafter until August, 1945 when it all finally came to an end.

I couldn’t read story books, both then and now, but, even then,  I could read a lot about real wars, draw maps,  read cutlines to pictures available anywhere between the 16th century Spanish invasion of Aztec Mexico  to  the Korean War.    I began collecting American state  road maps in 1942….and have about 200 of them still stashed away somewhere.

My dad was 41 years old in 1942…..too old to go overseas.   He became one of the local air raid wardens here in St. Paul….and with special helmet and vest practiced safety from air assaults twice a week from April  to September that year.   Our neighborhood house lights had to be out beginning from  dusk on to dark for an hour or two.

We also began our Victory Garden in two empty lots across the alley behind our garage.   My dad had agreed with the city to commit our family to be responsible for this national urban effort to support the war effort by providing food for  neighbors on our block.

The city would plow the fields for us….My dad signed a contract.   We were going to help the war effort.   I had two step cousins, sons of my German step grandmother, age 16 and 18 who had joined the navy shortly after Pearl Harbor, and were sent to the Pacific front.

As life moved on that April, after Mom, Dad, and I had done all of the plantings, from radishes to sweet corn, potatoes to peas and even egg plant and  okra, lettuce, and tomato plants to  kholrabi,  you name it,  we must have planted it.   They treated me as if I were an adult.

Honestly, I loved every minute of it.   I loved the exploring, the planting, the learning from and  with both my parents.   Dad, however, had to work six days a week,  pharmacist and manager of a downtown St. Paul Liggett Drug Company store.  Mom picked up a terrible  rash, so was confined to canning and the cooking world throughout the war.

I became king of the Victory Garden roost…..and in full truth, then and now, loved every moment of it.  I weeded, mulched, fertilized, watered, planted, harvested, often thinking I was helping  our war effort in a dreamy way.   (I’d dive bomb the Colorado potato beetles eating potato foliage with my right hand “Lockheed Lightening”  and bury these enemies  into dad’s last year’s grease collection from his car….which was by then stored away in the garage until the war was over.

That war made me become a high school teacher of Social Studies, History, and Russian…..until the schools began to collapse as teaching  knowledge  institutions in the 1970s.     I have worked in the plant world ever since….including this very day,  next week, next month, and next Spring, Godwilling,  at 85 years old!

Message from American Citizen, Lloyd Marcus!

We Must Say No to the 1619 Project in Schools

by  Lloyd Marcus  at  American Thinker:

 

In 1967, I was a black 18-year-old from the Baltimore ghetto who was a freshman at the prestigious Maryland Institute College of Art. Progressives are tripling-down on infecting youths with their insidiously evil lie that all American white men are racist. And yet, I was a poor black kid attending college thanks to scholarships from two white senators and white Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaefer.

A required course was, “The History of Ideas.” The first day of class, the professor passionately trashed Christianity, America, and President Abraham Lincoln. I felt like my head would explode as the professor crushed every tenet of my Christian upbringing and reasons why I loved my country.

My dad was assistant pastor of a storefront church and a Baltimore City firefighter. My mom worked as a domestic, cleaning and ironing for white people. I thought, “Surely, my professor is much more knowledgeable than my unsophisticated parents.” Yes, I was a naive idiot.

By the way, both my parents were excellent at their jobs. By their example, all five of us kids strive for excellence. “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men.” Colossians 3:23

Fast forward to today. Far too many youths are anti-American zombies infected via public education; sleeper-cells ready to attack their parents when commanded by progressives. Remember when Michelle Obama instructed students to monitor family discussions for what progressives deemed racist and discriminatory comments? Transforming our kids into stealth operatives, progressives instructed students to steal their parents’ guns and turn them over to their teacher.

The same way we have shamefully allowed progressives to infect students with the LGBTQ agenda beginning in pre-k, white students are taught to hate themselves and their country. Outrageously, innocent white students are cruelly taught that they are born racist and must feel guilty for being white. Actress Rosanna Arquette tweeted her disgust and shame for being born white and her white privilege.

Years ago, a white friend’s son came home from middle school in tears, devastated over the evil his white male ancestors did to women, Indians, and blacks. This little boy was taught that as a white male, he was bad. Today, he is an adult Communist who hates America and believes white men are the greatest source of evil in the world. This is the dire consequent of allowing progressives to have their wicked way in public education.

Why are progressives so relentless in their quest to cause our white youths to hate themselves and their country? Succinctly, progressives hate America’s Christian founding, they hate capitalism, they hate traditional principles and values, they hate all things wholesome and good. Progressives’ ideology is evil.

President Trump is a throwback to old-school Americanism. His values reflect those of a majority of Americans. This is why progressives have tremendous disdain for Trump and his millions of supporters. Fueled by their insane hatred and delusional superiority, progressives feel morally justified to physically attack anyone who dares to publicly express support for Trump and love for America. Progressives have activated their young sleeper-cells to carry out violent attacks against Trump supporters whether they be seniors, women, or children.

Incredibly, progressives believe they can block Trump’s reelection and block other pro-America candidates in the future by launching another initiative to infect white students with hatred for themselves and America.

The New York Times, working with the Pulitzer Center,  plans to introduce a new curriculum rooted in lies to be used in schools titled, “The 1619 Project.” The Times will use every area of its newspaper to sell the absurd lie that America was really founded in 1619 when slaves landed on our shore. Therefore, every American achievement is illegitimate, cruelly built on the backs of slaves. Progressives want the 1619 Project in schools to further their insidiously evil narrative that whites should hate themselves, hate America and feel compelled to pay blacks back big-time.

As a proud and grateful American who happens to be black, I find the New York Times’ 1619 Project absurd, extremely divisive, cruel, and evil.

Slavery in America ended 152 years ago. The Times, Cory Booker, and his fellow Democrat presidential candidates claiming that blacks are still suffering the effects of slavery is demonically exploitative and manipulative. Their evil lie weakens black Americans rather than empowering them.

Blacks are only 12% of the population. Therefore, progressives are ignoring the truth that white America gave a non-vetted, undeserving, and anti-American black Barack Hussein Obama two terms as leader of the free world. Progressives ignore the truth that white America made Oprah, a stout dark-complexioned black woman a billionaire, while hanging onto her every word as if it were gospel.

Brother and sister Americans, I beseech you to please do not allow the New York Times to further infect public education with their insidiously evil lie-filled 1619 project. As they say in old western movies, “Let’s head them off at the pass!”

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/08/we_must_say_no_to_the_1619_project_in_schools.html

Please, Fellow Americans, Be Aware of the Fascistic Google War Against Our American Prager U!

I missed the following note from PragerU world regarding Google’s fascistic War against conservative communications in today’s leftist “Democrat” America.   This past  Tuesday, August 27,  we 85 year olds, graduates of 1952’s St. Paul Central High Schools, met for our 14th class reunion.

In our today’s  profoundly  problematic 21st century America, one couldn’t find a more civil, civilized, well educated, polite, JudeoChristian group of  Americans to be with, even in our 82nd year of life.

That is what in our generation we were trained, programmed, educated to be, by school,  Church and Synagogue, by newsprint and radio,  by mother, barber, and baker!

Real mothers existed then.   Adults were Bible aware.   Learning goodness was vital. Movies were civil.   Actors and actresses spoke beautiful American English, governed, trained, accomplished by radio and teachers.  Despite the Depression and the War,  honesty was vital to ones soul. Truth was sought, nearly all collectively examined and taught by old maid school marms, the very, very well educated ones like the ones we had who taught us  at 1948-1952 St. Paul Central High School.  How lucky we were.

Today, fascistic Google exists selling, controlling  its pompous devotion to  leftism and arrogance.   Google is NOT alone!   It’s a virus.

To Dennis……I hate to say this,  Dennis.   I don’t think you would have had much of a need for your wonderful schooling at PragerU in 1948-1952.    You probably would have been selling knowledge at a true American University instead….

But,  our Dennis  had to go to Court last Tuesday……Please read his message below:

“Dear Friend,

PragerU will head to court tomorrow morning to fight for freedom of speech in America.

PragerU has a court date in our lawsuit against Google/YouTube scheduled for tomorrow August 27th in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The outcome of this case is critical, and it will determine whether Americans can continue to express their views freely online.

We will be sharing a live stream of the hearing on PragerU’s social media channels starting at 9:00 am PT/12:00 pm ET.  Make sure to tune in!

There is no doubt about it: Conservative values are under attack.

We are seeing an outright assault against conservatives by Big Tech. Not only are these companies using their algorithms to suppress accounts and content that present a conservative point of view, but they are also preventing millions of Americans from even seeing videos from PragerU.

Currently, over 200 of our videos are restricted by YouTube, and many others are demonetized on its platform. Even 5 of our videos on the 10 Commandments have been restricted!

Last month, Dennis Prager testified before the U.S. Senate on how Big Tech censorship is the greatest threat against free speech today. The hearing revealed how Big Tech companies have a long-running pattern of targeting conservatives.

This is why our lawsuit is so important. We are taking on the world’s two largest search engines: YouTube and Google. These two platforms control the content that billions of people see worldwide, and with that power, Google is using its platform to ban ideas and perpetuate the misinformation of the Left. We cannot — and will not — let that happen on our watch.

Can we count on your support today to help us continue to spread public awareness on this important issue? A majority of the public still trusts Google/YouTube, and with your help, we can break that trust. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today.

Freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental human rights protected by our Constitution. If conservatives are banned from having a voice online, it is only a matter of time until the freedom of speech is eliminated entirely.

We are determined to fight for as long as needed to secure this right for all. Please make a generous donation now to help PragerU fight Big Tech bias. August is our fundraising month, and we depend on support from people like you.

Won’t you stand with PragerU today and donate to help us fight Big Tech bias?

We appreciate your support,

The PragerU Team”

Will Jews Still Vote Dem, Its Fascistics NOTWITHSTANDING? Probably!!

Most Jews don’t vote for Trump because we don’t share his values

BY DAVID H. SCHANZER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR —

Trump: Voting Dem is disloyal to Jewish people, Israel

I can see from the president’s statements on Tuesday that he is very frustrated by the fact that a strong majority of Jewish Americans, like me, did not vote for him or the Republican Party in 2016 and 2018 and probably won’t in 2020 either.

Trump even went so far as saying that Jews who vote for Democrats had “a total lack of knowledge” or “great disloyalty.” Ouch.

I gather from his citation of formerly Jewish talk show host who said that “the Jewish people in Israel love him like he’s the King of Israel,” Trump can’t figure out why most Jews here at home just don’t feel the same way.

Before I help explain why we don’t, the president’s assumption that Jewish people all think the same thing because we are Jewish shows that he really doesn’t know very much about Jews.

Yes, we all tend to like lox and bagels and we talk with our hands, but that is where the commonality ends. Jews throughout history have been arch capitalists, socialists, neo-cons, neo-liberals, Marxists and every ideology in between. We have a diverse set of views about international relations. We disagree, a lot, about Israeli politics and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

And by the way, most other religious and ethnic groups in America are equally diverse and don’t really like it when others assume them to be a monolith.

For this reason, I realize I can’t speak for the 79 percent of American Jews who voted Democratic in the 2018 midterms. But I can explain why I voted that way and I think that many Jews like me did so as well

Bottom line: We don’t share the president’s values

First of all, most American Jews have a close connection to immigrants. Many of us are second, third or fourth generation immigrants. We feel strongly that refugees escaping persecution should be able to seek safety and shelter in America because throughout our history we have been persecuted and forced to flee to save our lives.

We have been on many refugee caravans. Ferdinand and Isabella evicted us from Spain, the tsars used pogroms to chase us out of Russia and we fled on boats and trains and by foot from the Nazis. We support today’s refugees because we know they could have been us.

We also support civil rights and diversity. We know what it’s like to be an oppressed minority for we “were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

We may feel very comfortable and secure in America, but we recoil when any American is targeted as “the other” — whether it be the Mexican you accuse of being a rapist or the Muslim you stereotype as being a terrorist — because so often we have been “otherized.”

The Jew with horns, the Jewish moneylender, the Jew with dual “loyalties.” We know that a frenzied mob calling for an American citizen of color to be kicked out of the country might be chanting to kick us out too one day soon. For there is one thing we know for sure: Those folks who don’t like people because they are black, brown or Muslims  don’t like Jews much either.

American Jews are deeply suspicious of any whiff of authoritarianism. We know the places we have thrived the best have been pluralistic democracies: America, Great Britain and Israel. But we also know the signs of an eroding democracy: demonizing of a free press, false claims about a rigged electoral process, the undermining of an independent judiciary, to name a few. When a charismatic leader scapegoats minorities for society’s ills and claims that “I alone can fix it,” our deeply engrained Jewish warning lights start flashing red. We have seen this play before.

Trump can order a Star of David be placed on the American flag, but I will never vote for someone with values so antithetical to mine. These values I consider essential to me as a Jew.

David Schanzer is a professor of public policy and director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University. 

 

https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/458428-most-jews-dont-vote-for-trump-because-we-dont-share-his-values

Just a Note:   The first twenty years of my life were spent in  a  Jewish minority urban community…..the only minority community  of those days in our part of the city.    An American  Jewish  community would have to be urban.  Our  Jews were urban folk.  Wealth accumulation was this minority’s cultural drive.   American Jews have never been outdoor people.   The students, despite their youth, collectively exuded  airs of confidence to superiority because they were Jewish and were pressured at home to succeed at school.   They left classes early Tuesday afternoons of the public school season  to go to Hebrew School.

I learned that from school observation and experience.

Nevertheless, such specialties  never seemed to have  been allowed public in Uncle Sam’s world in my lifetime.  They would be smeared as anti-Semitic, ergo evil, lies, unworthy of a true American no matter how truthful!

I also noted that a small  number of Jewish students in my grade school classes cheated regularly while taking  tests,  notes inked on their wrists and such, a doing which never could have occurred in my mind.    In my family grades never really mattered.   Cheating on tests would have been a horror, a grievous sin in my child life.   I was expected to be civil, polite,  honest, and do as I was told by my teachers or else!   Getting good grades was never mentioned.

I attended public elementary school from 1939-1948.    ghr

Our St. Paul Central’s Gathering for a 67th Year Class Reunion!

Student leaders of my graduation class from high school organized a reunion celebration which I shall, God willing, be attending this coming Tuesday.   We survivors  had all graduated from St. Paul Central High School, June, 1952.   So many of us have been dying recently those leaders must have decided to speed up our showings before we all disappear.

High schools “taught”  ninth grade then.  No one normal would have been stupid enough to detach puberty developing human animals from seniors in high school “to kin”  with  seventh  graders in junior high….except for typical College of Education majors of any day.  Unlike our today, teachers actually taught knowledge in public school.  They themselves, as it turned out,  were well educated, civil and JudeoChristian….especially the Christian part.

The more  knowledge I could amass, “the closer to God I would become”  was the mantra I had heard again and again the ideal why I was in school.   I was also expected to seek and discover a career for my future.

The only thing then I knew about the University of Minnesota is that it beat Nebraska 61-7 in the fall of 1945, the same autumn we began to get GIs; as teachers in 7th and 8th grades to replace the retiring demanding, encyclopedic, well educated  old maids.

I had a reading problem.  School mate, Brian Humphrey did too.  We couldn’t read novels.  My best friend, Jim Meeker could.  He was a well disciplined, A-plus, super study, rather quiet guy and good student and reader.  He could read nearly a novel per day!

I was reduced to Classic Comics….and loved the entanglements of their stories!!

A Mrs. Dagmar McClement was our basic 8th grade teacher at St. Paul’s Horace Mann Elementary School, K through 8th grade.   A  buxom bossy gal, intelligent, but NOT of the old maid well educated “religious and well learned”  old  guard type.  It was, after all, only eighth grade and consuming knowledge hadn’t arrived yet!

I had seen the  movie, “The Yearling” which was based on very popular novel of that day.  Some time well after Christmas Mrs. McClement announced  we would be having our annual  “Weekly Reader” test from the folks who publish the “Weekly Reader” an up-to-day learning weekly news piece about general knowledge the publishers and educators of the day thought necessary to read and follow beyond the school curriculum….pictures of stuff, articles of animals, maps, paragraphs of historic events, 100 items for the eye to conquer for the mind.

I had no trouble reading paragraphs, even pages, books  of history, especially where maps might be involved or newspaper articles.   But, I could, can, never read or follow a novel.

Jim Meeker and I were the best of friends from first grade on.   We played all sorts of games scholastically  oriented at his house, just the two of us…..for years!  He had a college-educated brother twelve  years older than we were, who had lots of stuff available we could work with.    I was certain he was my only real competitor.

Day of the annual Weekly Reader class test…..100 items, all short answer or multiple choice.   I had left only one question blank, and was certain I had finished the rest of the items correctly.   Jim told me he  had  left two blanks.   It turned out no one was close to us.

One of the question items was a picture of a dromedary we had to identify in writing.   Jim couldn’t name the creature so left the item blank.

I wrote in “DROMEDOR”. The answer should have been “DROMEDARY”.

Mrs. McClement didn’t like me.  I knew that.   She told the class I had misspelled the name of the animal, and therefore the answer was just as incorrect as Jim’s no answer at all.   She reminded me and the class that Jim was a better all around student and therefore had earned the book!

I was “mature” enough NOT in any way to blame Jim.   But, Dagmar was evil in my mind for the rest of the school year both in her classes and others.   I had ‘hired’ an anger about school I had NEVER before experienced, which carried me to my first class in high school,  English with Mabel Wicker the very next year.

There she was, that September….68 years old, her last year of teaching English.   Four feet ten,  90 pounds, a confident but  shadow of a woman, one wearing a red wig.

First hour, first day in her class we were to buy a pamphlet of Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”.  We had to buy all of our school books in those public school days.   I looked at its first pages.  I smelled trouble.    I knew immediately Shakespeare English might as well be Chinese.  I had, have, never been able to read a novel, even to this day…end of story!

The very next school day Miss Wicker began her Shakespeare menus….She began reading with “Enter Antonio”, who says,  “In sooth.  I know not why I am so sad:  It wearies me; you say it wearies you;  But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff  ’tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn;  …….and such a want-wit sadness makes of me, That I have much ado to know myself.”

Salarino responds;  “Your mind is tossing on the ocean;   There, where your argosies with  portly sail.  Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, Or as it were, the pageants of the sea, Do overpeer the petty traffickers,   That curtsy to them, do them reverence,  As they fly by them with their woven wings……..”

I was warned studying in high school would be a challenge.   Unbeknownst  to me,  the fact she had already read the play  to me as a member of the class made it possible for me  to understand the core of the drama itself.     I felt I was reading almost like anyone else.  I so wanted to read properly!

There were forty kids in the class….mostly boys….which I didn’t recognize until two years later when my college prep teacher at Central, Grace Cochran, cornered me regarding my bad reading ability.    “Who was your Freshman English teacher”, she asked.   She told me Miss Wicker  was the English teacher responsible for weeding  poor readers out of  the college prep line sending them to machine shop.    I admitted I hated Wm. Thackeray stuff, and by Nature couldn’t read “Vanity Fair” anyway.

She soothed me by mentioning a lot of boys were poor novel readers…..She told me to stay with my Classic Comics habit….at least I would know the Classics’  basic plots.

Miss Wicker failed me the first marking period.   She called each of  her  forty students as they were seated,  by alphabetical order to come quickly to her desk…..I, being Ray, was toward the end of the list, meaning I had to sweat  longer.   She called each of us  by her  same tone and volume.   When needed she spoke loudly so  every student in the room knew who isn’t working up to ‘snuff’.

I was quite nervous waiting for my turn.   I wasn’t used to doing homework.   “Mr. Ray!”

On her desk there sat a black ink well and a red ink well.    Each grading card was a small stiff card with the titles of  classes on the left,  with six or eight grading periods awaiting marks toward the right.   One’s grades were open for the world to see.

Our meeting was brief.   She  admired my improvements on her test scores concerning Shakespeare….However, she showed me the total absence of any and all homework I was supposed to do….

Her pen reached to the RED ink well.  Miss Wicker made as big a red “F” as she could in the space fit for the grade…..THE VERY FIRST CLASS MARKING ON MY REPORT CARD FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR for all to see!!!   My first grade at Central!

 

 

Good News Regarding Our Christian Godfearing!

This Good News for Christianity in America May Surprise You

New research summary shows Christianity holding strong in America.

Article from Stream sent by Mark Waldeland:

. . . Time for a reality check, says Stanton. In fact, the annual church closure rate in America is about 1 percent — far lower than the rate for any other organizational category. As for the exploding number of “nones,” it’s almost entirely due to changes in the way researchers ask questions. The “nones” in today’s surveys, include the same sort of people who in yesterday’s surveys listed their affiliation as the church they attended a year ago last Christmas. “This change marks a decrease only in nominal affiliation, not an increase in irreligion,” says social scientist Rodney Stark, quoted by Stanton.

 

. . . “If you look at young [evangelical] adults, eighteen to twenty-nine years old, we are at the highest reported levels since 1972 of regular church attendance among this group. That’s a pretty big deal.”Other research shows number holding steady or better. More young adults said they “pray daily” in the first decade of this century than in the 1980s or 1990s. There’s much more like this in this book’s summary of research on youth in the Church.

 

. . . Mainline, liberal Protestantism is in free fall. Or, if you want to know what Stanton really thinks, here’s his chapter title on it: “Stick a Fork In It.” Subtitle: “The Major Fail of Liberal Christianity.” It’s done. It’s over. Non-Christian “Christianity” doesn’t attract anyone. “Going to brunch would be more uplifting.”

 

https://stream.org/good-news-christianity-america-surprise/

This Good News for Christianity in America May Surprise You | The Stream Things aren’t so bad after all. It might appear to you that Christianity is on the retreat, but not everything is as it seems to be. That’s the message Glenn T. Stanton of Focus on the Family brings in The Myth of the Dying Church: How Christianity is Actually Thriving in America and the World.. Two main examples for you to be aware of: stream.org

 

The Church in Today’s Turmoil America

Was There a Way for the Church to Avoid the Culture Wars?

Facebook/Discipleship Ministry CCMV

Discipleship Ministry CCMV – a bilingual group of pro-life supporters – prays at the Amethyst Health Center for Women abortion clinic in 2014.

Was there a different course the Church in America could have taken to avoid the culture wars? A way to focus on the gospel and transcend controversial moral and political issues? Personally, I would much rather write about Torah than about Trump, about Christ than about culture, about the Holy Spirit than about homosexuality.

Is it possible that, as followers of Jesus, we could have bypassed today’s divisive social issues and simply concentrated on the gospel? Or is this making a false dichotomy between gospel and culture?

Without a doubt, our voice should be loudest and clearest when it comes to preaching Jesus as Savior and Lord. Our witness should be strongest when it comes to doing good and demonstrating our faith by our works.

But does that mean that we cannot be good witnesses while standing for justice and righteousness and equity?

Show Me The Scripture Where We’re Not Supposed to Be Helping Save Lives

Certainly, we must transcend partisan politics.

We cannot be pawns of a program or a party. We are God’s servants, with ultimate allegiance to Him, and all other allegiances must be secondary to that.

But does that mean that we remain silent when lives are being destroyed? That we simply pray when injustice takes place in front of our eyes? That we take no concrete steps to stop the concerted ideological attack against the younger generation?

To be totally candid, I have no problem dealing with controversy. I’m the son of a New York City, Jewish lawyer, and debating is in my blood. And as a Jewish follower of Jesus, I’ve known controversy since the first days of coming to faith in late 1971.

But I take no joy in being called a homophobe and bigot. I would rather be associated with Jesus than with a political position (as in, I oppose same-sex “marriage”). And I want to be known as a Bible teacher infinitely more than I want to be known as a Trump voter.

At the same time, I see no way that we, as disciples of Jesus, could have avoided — or should avoid — the culture wars.

After all, the culture wars include the slaughter of the unborn, better known as abortion.

Can anyone really give me Scripture that calls us not to get involved in the saving of innocent lives?

Can anyone give me verses from the New Testament that negate these from Proverbs? “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?’” (Proverbs 24:11–12)

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I’ve asked this question countless times, but it bears repeating: How do we look at Christians in pre-Civil War America who did nothing to oppose the institution of slavery? Worse still, how we do view those who participated in slavery, even if it was something they grew up and that was normal to them? And what about those who supported segregation as Christian leaders?

Do we say, “Well, as long as they preached Jesus, that’s what matters. No reason for them to get hands their soiled with the culture wars?”

I Could Do No Other

Again, to be totally candid, doing research for my first book on LGBT issues, A Queer Thing Happened to America, was difficult and painful. Much of the reading was dark, and it was a completely different world for me, especially when compared to writing a commentary on a book of the Bible or writing an inspirational book on revival.

But I could do no other.

Fifteen years ago, it was already clear to me that LGBT activism was the principle threat to our freedoms of conscience, speech, and religion.

Fifteen years ago, when I was first called to address these issues, it was already clear that an aggressive gay curriculum was flooding our schools.

Do we sit back idly when marriage is redefined? When male-female distinctives are being attacked? When our kids and grandkids come home from school in tears over the latest assault on their faith?

I hope all of us would agree that, if we were aware children were being sex-trafficked in our neighborhood, we would work together to combat it.

Why, then, should we shrink back from doing what is right if it means coming into conflict with the larger culture? Why, then, should we only stand for righteousness when there is societal consensus on the issue?

When the early Christians rescued abandon babies, they had to defy the authorities. But they did it because it was right, and as followers of Jesus, we are called to do what is right. And doing what is right means opposing what is wrong.

When it comes to our political involvement, I don’t plan to endorse a candidate again, having done so only once. And it’s not because of second thoughts on that candidate, Senator Ted Cruz. I’d love to see him as our president one day.

But for me, as a leader in the Body, my greatest calling is to be a voice. And the moment I endorsed Senator Cruz, people heard my voice in that context. Everything was now filtered.

Let Us Be Jesus to the Culture

Does that mean that I keep my voting habits private? One of my colleagues, born in Europe, believes that’s the wisest course of action. And I respect his views.

But our political leaders are supposed to carry out the will of the voters, which means that there is constant intersection between the culture, politics, and the gospel. And they often comment on the culture, which calls for our engagement.

Again, we must transcend partisan politics, and our focus must be on issues more than personalities and on the gospel more than culture.

But we deceive ourselves if we think that, in a country like America, we can just “stick to the gospel” without confronting the culture. Following Jesus closely will inevitably result in colliding with controversy.

Let us do our best, then, to do so with the love of God, with the truth of the gospel, and with the fullness of the Spirit.

In short, let us be Jesus to our society. We can’t go wrong with that.

 

Was There a Way for the Church to Avoid the Culture Wars?