During my recent interview with author Jane Hampton Cook, I asked her how she thought history would view President Bush. One of the interesting things she mentioned was how the President was more concerned with doing what he felt was right then what was popular or politically expedient and as a result history will likely look more favorably on his presidency than the press does now. I tend to agree with this view.
It’s even more refreshing when members of the mainstream media begin to understand this dynamic. This article (from Great Britain, no less) nails it perfectly and at the same time calls liberals and Europeans on the carpet for their deranged hatred of the President (hat tip: Instapundit):
This is a man who has the courage of his convictions.
Let’s not forget how Europe does wars.
Usually we wait and wait until the enemy starts attacking, then we let them win a bit, then we fight until we are tired, then we just call the US to come over to clean our mess. That is what happened in WWI, WWII, and the Balkans.
Bush is just showing us what a bunch of dangerous ditherers we are and we hate him for it. Naturally.
And the Olympics. Bush said right from the beginning that he’s going to the opening ceremony because he saw the whole boycott thing as silly and counterproductive.
Compare that with Sarkozy who has changed his mind twice so far and to Gordon Brown who, well… err.
Not much leadership from Europe here, as usual, just doublespeak. Once again, it is to Bush that we look for leadership.
Bush may not have the slickness of his predecessor, but he is a man you can trust and who prefers to tell it like it is.
This is refreshing, and very scary for us who are used to our politicians always talking grandly about principles and hiding behind political mumbo-speak.
The fact is you guys hate Mr Bush because he is not a hypocrite and you are used to hypocrites as your leaders. We hate what we don’t understand.
Yes, yes, all you bleeding heart liberals are cringing out there. I can just hear you. But the fact is, Mr Bush has had to take some very tough decisions and the world needs people who can not only talk but also act tough and admit mistakes.
When we think about the American Revolution, we tend to think about the war itself. But as John Adams once wrote, “The American Revolution was a change in the hearts and minds of the people.” As Jane Hampton Cook shows in her excellent book Battlefields and Blessings: Stories of Faith and Courage from the Revolutionary War, the change of hearts and minds took place over a period of 25 years before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. There is also no doubt that the Revolution would not have occurred if people of faith hadn’t been leading the way.
The answer lies in the concluding paragraphs of this column by Joel Belz on recent proposals to extend federal education oversight into preschool and daycare programs from the current issue of World Magazine (subscription required):
I’ve said before in this space, and it needs to be said during just about every presidential campaign, that there is something much more potentially terrifying than to watch the government continue to fail in its efforts to prop up education in this country. Much worse than such a continuing failure would be to watch the government succeed.
Shaping the minds and the value system of our children is simply not the proper function of government—almost certainly not at any level, but especially at the distant federal level. (Emphasis added)
If your child’s school chooses never to mention what Jesus calls “the first and great commandment of life”—to love the Lord our God with all we have—all the rest of that school’s education will be as hollow as it is shallow. And even worse will be the effort, so often attempted (and sincerely so), to address some expression of the second great commandment—”loving your neighbor as yourself”—without having dealt seriously with the first one. The first provides both skeleton and heart for the second; the second is impossible without the first.
Society needs to understand, and so do evangelical Christians, that the real problem with state education today (and even with much private education) has nothing to do with teachers’ salaries or funding levels or phonics or curriculum or how many months of the year or hours of the day children go to school. All those things have their significance and are worth discussing at the right time.
But the right time for that is always after settling what education is really about. Until educators get that straight, they’re not going to get anywhere with “education reform.” And they have no business talking about stretching the federal government’s reach into preschool and daycare—where the best they will ever do is to compound their present clumsiness.
This week I’ve had the privilege to preview a new series that will debut on the Discovery Channel on Sunday, June 8th entitled When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions(click here to read my review). The six part series traces the first fifty years of NASA’s missions to explore outer space.
While watching the series I was struck by how we no longer consider the exploration of space as something that is important for our country to invest in. It does not seem to hold the same interest for us as a nation as it did when I was a kid growing up in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Perhaps that is because we don’t have bold leadership any longer in Washington.
On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space by piloting his Mercury spacecraft on a twenty minute sub-orbital flight. A little less than three weeks later, President John F. Kennedy declares before a joint session of Congress that the United States will land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. At the time, many in the space program thought Kennedy was crazy to make such a suggestion. But as audacious as his boast may have been, he inspired thousands of individuals associated with the program to work harder to ensure that his goal was met.
President Kennedy said it best in another famous speech that he made about why we must explore space:
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
We need a leader who is willing to challenge us to do hard things.
I’m not a fan of Barack Obama and certainly don’t intend to vote for him in November. But I can’t help admire him for what he has been able to achieve: to rise from political obscurity to becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to (quite possibly) the next President of the United States in just a little over a year. That is a remarkable achievement for any candidate. Yet I keep getting the feeling that despite all that the Senator has achieved, he is not ready to be President. Read the rest of this entry
2008 is shaping up to be an odd election season. For the first time in recent memory, both parties’ nominees for President will have secured their nominations without winning an overwhelming majority of their respective parties’ votes. Both Barack Obama and John McCain will have a lot of work ahead of them to unite their parties. But they also share another similarity: both of them may need to select a running mate more conservative than they are in order to win the election.
Yesterday was a big news day with two unrelated events occurring that will each have an impact on this fall’s elections. While on the surface the two may seem unrelated both spell trouble for Democrats.
President Bush, speaking at The Knesset in Israel, used the opportunity to launch an unmerited attack against Senator Barack Obama. At least, that’s what Senator Obama, aided and abetted by the left-leaning media, would like voters to believe. Here’s the paragraph that got Democrats’ collective undies in a bunch from the transcript of the speech: Read the rest of this entry
“Of course we care about the world. Of course we care about everything happening in society, including politics, but we better get our own house in order because what we see in the cultural collapse of America around us today and in the Western world is exactly on our doorstep,” argued Colson, who was a top aide to former President Richard Nixon before being jailed for the Watergate scandal.
Colson believes the root of the church’s problem is that Christians don’t know what they believe in.
“I think that is at the heart of the problem of the church – we replaced truth with therapy,” he said.
“Most people are basically ignorant,” he said referring to believers’ lack of knowledge on their own religion.
It’s time for churches to return to the Bible, examining it, understanding what it says and how each of us need to apply it. As Colson remarked at the conclusion of his speech:
“We cannot defend our faith nor can we live it if we don’t know what it is,” Colson concluded.
The Boston Red Sox held their first home game yesterday at Fenway Park with a ceremony honoring the 2007 World Champions. Among those in attendance were many legendary Boston sports figures and one who had up until now been considered something less than a hero: Bill Buckner. (Hat tip: WorldMagBlog)
The year was 1986. Game Six of the World Series against the New York Mets. It’s still considered one of the classic World Series games ever played. In the bottom of the 10th inning at Shea Stadium the Red Sox lead the series three games to two and were ahead 5-3. The Mets managed to score a run and had the two on with two out when Mookie Wilson came to bat. A wild pitch scored the tying run. Then Wilson hit a ground ball down the first base line towards Buckner. The ball rolled between Buckner’s legs and allowed the winning run to score. The Mets would then go on to win the Series in Game 7 the next day.
For years Buckner was blamed for losing the Series. But yesterday Boston fans displayed their forgiveness by honoring Buckner with a four minute standing ovation yesterday before the game. Buckner told the New York Times that returning to Fenway was not easy:
“It was hard for me to do,” a teary-eyed Buckner said about returning to Fenway.
When the Red Sox first invited Buckner, he said he figured he would decline. But he said he prayed about it and decided to accept. Two titles in the past four years for Boston have lessened the sting of what happened in 1986.
“I really had to forgive, not the fans of Boston per se, but I’d have to say in my heart I had to forgive the media for what they put my family through,” Buckner said.
Hats off to Bill Buckner and the Boston Red Sox fans for giving us a wonderful picture of what forgiveness looks like.
Comments Off on Book Review: Hand That Rocks The Cradle by Nathaniel Bluedorn
Our family loves to read. Since my kids were young I have read aloud to them as well as encouraged them to read independently. When we travel, we always pass the time listening to our favorite audiobooks. So it’s safe to say that books are an integral part of our family life.
This is exactly why we were so excited to get the brand new book Hand That Rocks The Cradle: 400 Classic Books for Children by Nathaniel Bluedorn. In this slender volume is a concise reference of the best books to read together as a family or for your children to read independently. Each entry includes a brief summary of the book, the time period in which the story takes place, geographic setting of the story, publication date, and the reading level. There is also a topical index in the back that makes it easier to identify books on various subjects. In addition, the book has been cleverly shaped to make it an easy reference tool to carry to the bookstore or library when looking for new books.
Most of the selections listed tend to be older books. Mr. Bluedorn states in the introduction that his family is more conservative and so the selections tend to reflect their preferences. However, he has also included a few more recent books that may come as a surprise to a few readers.
When the book first arrived in our mailbox, my youngest daughter, who is 10 years old, immediately started going through to see what books she had read were included on the list. On her very next trip to the library she started checking out books that she had seen listed in this book.
These days finding suitable books to either read to children or to let them read on their own has increasingly become a challenge. With this book, Mr. Bluedorn (and his parents, too) have done a tremendous service to families everywhere. Homeschool families will also particularly benefit from this book as it will make selecting appropriate books to incorporate in their curriculum a much easier task. I highly recommend Hand That Rocks The Cradle as it is one of the best resources I’ve discovered in quite a while.
These are tough times to be a Democrat. After months of battling through primaries and caucuses, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are practically deadlocked in the race for their party’s presidential nomination. Even though several states are still slated to hold their primaries they aren’t going to ultimately decide who the nominee will be. That decision will be made by 796 “superdelegates” who are party officials who will ultimately select the nominee. Never before has the Democratic party had to rely on these unelected delegates to decide a nomination. This was the year the Democrats were supposed to win back the White House. Now, it looks like the party may implode before they can select a nominee.
To make matters worse, Senator John McCain has already wrapped up the Republican nomination which means he can focus on the general election and raise a boatload of campaign cash.
The question now facing Democrats in how to bring their nomination process to a peaceful end. Unfortunately for them, no one has a good solution.
The reason government courts are cracking down on private instruction has more to do with suppressing alternative education than improving educational standards. The rationale is quite simple, though rarely, if ever, stated. If one wants to control the future ebbs and flows of a country, one must have command over future generations. This is done by seizing parental and educational power, legislating preferred educational materials, and limiting private educational options. It is so simple any socialist can understand it. As Josef Stalin once stated: “Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”
Comments Off on Survey: Traditional Media Is “Out of Touch”
A new Zogby survey released today shows that two-thirds of respondents are dissatisfied with traditional media outlets:
Two thirds of Americans – 67% – believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.
The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.
Meanwhile, the online survey documented the shift away from traditional sources of news, such as newspapers and TV, to the Internet – most dramatically among so-called digital natives – people under 30 years old.
It’s also no surprise that Republicans and Independents are more likely to be dissatisfied with traditional media:
Republicans (79%) and political independents (75%) are most likely to feel disenchanted with conventional journalism, but the online survey found 50% of Democrats also expressed similar concerns. Those who identify themselves as “very conservative” were among the most dissatisfied, with 89% who view traditional journalism as out of touch.
Traditional media outlets have never adjusted to the proliferation of news outlets and the competitive forces that are now at work. Unless they can make substantial changes, they are unlikely to survive much longer.
With John McCain’s victory tonight in Wisconsin, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee will undoubtedly receive a renewed barrage of questions about when he’s going to drop out of the presidential race. After all, he’s trailing McCain by almost 600 delegates. Senator McCain needs to win only about 200 of the remaining delegates in order to get to the magic number of 1,191.
I don’t think Huckabee will drop out. He’s said many times that until Senator McCain reaches the magic number he’s not going to drop out.
To quote Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
It’s highly unlikely that Huckabee could win enough delegates to deny McCain winning the nomination. But that doesn’t mean that he should give up, either.
In fact, Mike Huckabee strikes me as a person who finishes what he starts. Anyone who commits to losing over 100 pounds has to have a firm sense of dedication not only to achieve that goal but to continue to do the things day by day that allow him to keep the weight off.
Mike Huckabee won’t win the Republican nomination this year. But he will have shown something far greater: the strength of character to finish what he started.
