Parents' rights ammendment

I have a friend who really believes that the Parents' Rights Amendment is an important thing. She has a T-shirt and everything. So I decided to check it out.

The United Nations is trying to get the United states to pass the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which is widely available online, and is basically a child's Bill of Rights. It includes things like the right to a good education, access to information, and a right to recreation. I really like the idea of a right to play.
The Parents' Rights amendment is a group that wants a new amendment added to our constitution. This amendment would guarantee the right of parents to control and direct their children, and would specifically prohibit the United states from making any treaties that would interfere with Parents' rights.
Because of the structure of United States Law, if the United states were to approve this convention, then we would have to abide by it as well. The Parents' Rights group believes that this would be a bad thing.

I read through Parentalrights.org, the site for this group and I was very disappointed. The site mentions several cases o Parental rights being taken away, but further investigation reveals that these examples are all exaggerations or outright lies. If this is a major issue, than they shoudl choose better examples for their website.

This Amendment has no chance of passing, or even being put out for a vote. It is redundant and supercillious. The 'threats' to parental rights seem to involve medical records, sex education, removing children from their parents because of religious differences, and of course homeschooling.

Why is someone putting together this mass campaign for a lost cause? Why pretend that parenting is under attack with exaggerated and inaccurate legal cases?

btw..there are legitimate parenting laws out there. I was hoping for a discussion of Pennsylvania vs. Yoder which established the precedent for allowing Amish families to remove their children form school at 14 . There is also the California law that allows 13yr old children to get birth control servcices including abortions without their parents' knowledge.

This movement is not about actually passing an amendment or opposing a UN treaty. It is meant to scare people so they will become more politically active. This is a cheap right wing trick to stir people up and make them angry so they will show up at a TEA rally. It is shameless political pandering and it is disgusting. I am not that smart, and I saw right through it.

Is this just a Left-Right Issue? a democrat/republican deal? Oh no, plenty of people on the right "fringe" oppose it as well. Including Home Ed Magazine.

We are on the same side of this issue, and probably not any other, as Home Ed Magazine is sort of crazy, as is evidenced by this "parenting tip" from their website;
under the heading "avoid preschool, mental health and other screenings whenever possible"
we find this gem of paranoia;
"Testers, school staff, public schools, schools of education, social workers, testing companies, drug companies, family and juvenile court systems, psychologists and psychiatrists, police, and prison systems benefit when children are screened, labeled, and then treated for an alleged disability, often with drugs such as Ritalin. "

That's right people. Bring your kids in for a hearing check, and the Prison officials will give them Ritalin.
And we wonder why the children of homeschooling parents have trouble blending into society.

Blooming Butterflies

we recently visited Olbrich Garden's

Blooming Butterflies exhibit. They let a bunch of butterflies loose inside the Bolz conservatory. There are butterfly identification cards, that show each of the species. Caleb was able to identify this lovely tigerwing butterfly. He was very excited to match the butterfly with the picture. Hee told everyone around us the name of the butterfly.
Everyone enjoyed the butterflies. We will come back next year!

hannah szene

I listen to the stuff you missed in history podcast, and I recently learned about Hannah Szene, Hungarian Jew who successfully emigrated to Palestine, then volunteered to parachute back into Hungary just days before the Nazis invaded and began their brutal systematic murder.

I had always thought of stories like this as a double tragedy, the needless murder of the Innocent people and the needless death of those trying in vain to rescue them. Because of this poem, I think that I better understand how a person could do such a thing. I love this poem and it is my next memorization project.

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.

Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's sake.

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

I don't eat crow- I'm a vegetarian

I am long loathed the idea that 'danger is everywhere! Everything is bad for you and will kill you give you cancer/diabetes/alzheimers/arthritis/badbreath and is probably the only cause of said disease therefore we ought to ban it to make the world a safer place and only eat special food grown by happy elves and sold at Whole foods for 10X the normal price...........Oh what do you say? all can not afford that? poor people all over the world are hungry? Americans are greedy to begin with? carbon foot-what? Never mind all that the marginal health benefits and made-up nutritional advantages are worth all that.
...Because deep down you know that you are actually better than people who have less money....

Along with this mindset is the infamous" food dye debate". Some claim that the food dyes can cause behavioral and allergy reactions in children and adults. Allergies are not nearly as widespread as is widely believed. 5% of the population has an allergy, 20% believe that they have an allergy. I am in the 20%, perhaps the 5%, as I am allergic to something in Dark colored gatorade and store-bought cupcake frosting. I suspect a preservative not listed on the label, or perhaps it is dependant on quantity, and I allergic to some dark purple dye.

SO I am off to whole foods where I will sefl righteously buy natural food coloring. and I will sneer y at the cars full of little people parked at the Nearby Copps.

Sorry for not believeing all of you people. You may still be crazy, just not about this.

denialism and the Gospel

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627606.100-living-in-denial-why-sensible-people-reject-the-truth.html?full=true#bx276061B1

so, what can I do about this??? how can I act? By denouncing false beliefs, and proclaiming the truth.
I wonder how this sort of thing relates to the gospel. I believe that all knowledge comes from Christ, that truth does not deny Christ but testifies that he lives. Truth adds to the gospel, and that God is pleased when we learn and grow and discover things.
I believe that part of our eternal progression is to learn how to learn, to achieve and study and expand our thinking. We cannot be saved in our ignorance as to spiritual or temporal matters. Though we do not all need to get PHd's to live good lives, we ought to be engaged in good causes and learning and study. The issue is to learn how to discipline our minds and enjoy learning.

The antithesis to livelong learning is willful ignorance, Cherry picking information to support a self-serving and self congratulating belief system that consists of false beliefs and has at its center a jealous prideful rage against anything that contradicts. This is where I see the creationist movement. It is false, and it cherry picks information. It is not scientific. When presented with new contradictory information, it does not change. That is why I believe that any such belief is of the devil. If we believe information that is not true, and think that it is part of the gospel, we are wrong, and any testimony we lend to such beliefs is misplaced. We are worshipping a false god of our own making.

I just need to be able to say this is a nice way so I don' get kicked out of playgroup everytime vaccinations are discussed. Here is an excerpt from a potential future conversation;

random Mom" I read on Facebook that autism and the MMR vaccine are linked. So we are opting out. its our right."
ME "actually the anti-vaccination movement is of the devil. You are worshipping a false god, a coddling beguiling self serving false god that will lead you to hell with a flaxen cord of anti-science propaganda. The Old Testament has a lot to say about people like you....Whoring after other gods..... pretty much just like Jezebel; you might as well perform some fertility rites in that grove of trees over there. You better repent quickly."

I guess my approach need some work.

Immigration and American Greed

Arizona has passed a very controversial Immigration law. Trite as it may be, I do some sociological research by reading angry statements on Facebook. Its a bit more juvenile than talk radio, but unfortunately I also get to find out which of my 'friends' espouse said beliefs/mantras/bigotry.
My thoughts on this matter are mixed; If Arizona is doing this to force action by the federal government, it is a great move. The immigration system as in currently stands is broken. the tough at the border policy allows an underclass of illegal immigrants to live and work in our country, yet not live with the same rights and protections of citizens.

I think the anger directed at 'illegal immigrants' is misdirected. These are honest people who want to work and earn money. When I stand next to a citizen of Mexico, I can not see any difference, any real reason why I should earn $10/hr while my Mexican Neighbor earns $2/hr for the same work. Am I a better person, morally superior or of a better class to deserve such benefits as social security, good schools, and the government safety net if my earnings were to fail? On the contrary, I am a stay at home Mom, I don't even work. Lots of people work harder than me, are smarter, and better people.

Furthermore the Laws as they now stand are broken. In the early 1900's they were outright bigoted. They favored light skinned western European immigrants over the darker, poorer Eastern Europeans. I say that our laws today are inefficient and convoluted. Perhaps a historian of the future will look back and call them bigoted.

How will this situation look to historians of the future? We live in this rich country, yet we get incredibly angry when people come in and work, because we are afraid they might dilute our wealth, furthermore we punish them with deportation and anti-immigration militias but the business owners who profit from their work are not a part of the national outrage. The blame lies conveniently upon those least able to defend themselves.

A well-managed guest worker program is the best solution. As proposed by Lant Pritchett in
Let Their People Come, available in its entirety here;

http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/10174

Another question is this; The Western World is rich, the developing world is poor, as economies change, or as in the case of Iceland explode, is this divide sustainable? It is not fair for us to have such excess while so much if the world has so little. I know it is more complicated than just sending food and money, that economies and cultures have to develop. How can we justify 8 cars for every 10 people, while half the world lives on less than $2.50/day.

Is there an end to our greed? When we have 20% of the world's population with 75% of the money, That 20% is unlikely to share but rather will make up all sorts of reasons why sharing would actually be bad for the lower 80%. The most common lie is that the rich have some how earned their money through work and sacrifice and that the poor by default have not worked hard and do not deserve to have money. I have observed that this lie in various forms, grows stronger as the wealth increases.

I do not have a happy solution for this situation. I am frustrated and saddened by reports from Unicef like this;
According to UNICEF, 24,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.

I think that being aware of this problem and its possible causes is one of the steps towards formulating a solution.

I need to run

Today I sacrificed my run so that my husband could pick up some stuff from the hardware store. He can not know the depth and breadth of such a sacrifice, and did not value the time as I did. He left later than he expected and returned without the stuff.
SO I gave up my morning run, and He did not get the stuff he wanted.

GRRRRR.