Stones Cry Out

A new report from the U. S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics shows a dramatic rise in the number of students that are being educated at home. Dr. Albert Mohler provides some details from the report:

Homeschooling was the choice of families for 2.9 percent of all school-age children in the United States in 2007, involving 1.5 million students. By comparison, in 1999 only 850,000 children were homeschooled. By 2003, that number was up to 1.1 million. This report indicates significant jumps in homeschooling as compared to other educational options. In fact, the report reveals that the actual number of American children whose parents choose homeschooling for at least part of their education exceeds 3 million. According to the report, 1.5 million children are exclusively homeschooled while another 1.5 million are homeschooled for at least part of the school week.

At this point, the picture grows even more interesting. When parents were asked why they chose to homeschool their children, 36 percent cited a desire to provide children specifically religious or moral instruction. After that, 21 percent of parents pointed to concerns about the environment of schools, 17 percent cited dissatisfaction with educational quality in the schools, and 14 percent cited “other reasons.” Among those “other reasons” was a concern for more family time together.

Higher numbers of parents with college educations and greater family incomes are now homeschooling. This trend points to the fact that homeschooling is increasingly the option of first choice for many parents. This pattern is also revealed in increasing numbers of college students, primarily young women, who indicate that they desire a college education so that they will be better equipped in years ahead to be homeschooling parents.

It’s no great surprise to me that there has been such a tremendous rise in the number of families choosing to homeschool. In the nine years we’ve been homeschooling we’ve seen exponential growth among our homeschool community.

But the most crucial points in Dr. Mohler’s essay come at the end of the post:

Homeschooling is now a major force in American education, and Christian parents have been in the vanguard of this movement.  For many Christian parents, homeschooling represents the fulfillment of the biblical mandate for parents to teach their children.  These parents deserve our respect, our support, our advocacy, and our prayers.  This movement is a sign of hope on our educational horizon, and a phenomenon that can no longer be dismissed as a fringe movement.

As president of a seminary and college, I can attest to the fact that questions about the educational aptitude of homeschooled students are now settled.  These students can hold their own as compared to students from all other educational backgrounds.  One other fact speaks loudly to me concerning their education.  Most of the homeschooled students I meet at the college and graduate levels indicate an eager determination to homeschool their own children when that time comes.

Education cannot be reduced to statistics, but the trends revealed in this new report from the Department of Education deserve close attention.  In our day, education represents a clash of worldviews.  Increasingly toxic approaches to education (or what is called education) drive many schools and many school systems.  In that light, the fact that so many Christian parents are taking education into their own hands is a sign of hope.  As this new report makes clear, we should expect homeschooling to be a growth industry in years ahead.

It’s encouraging as a homeschool parent and as a Christian to see a prominent pastor and seminary president embrace the choice that thousands of families make. Homeschooling is not easy and families who make this choice often face derision and ridicule from both friends and families. Those who make the choice to educate their children at home (either full-time or part-time) should be applauded and respected for making this choice. While not everyone will agree that it is the best choice for their own family it’s important that those who don’t homeschool respect those who do and vice versa.

1. Reading suggestions for leaders. What would you suggest?
2. Tears of a geographer, noted here too. Or is this just more evidence of innumeracy?
3. Nuts noted. Nuts who don’t know the two words which are Mr Obama’s best insurance, i.e., Biden and Pelosi.
4. That’s why it took so long to catch Mr Madoff (he was being groomed).
5. Slavery.
6. Of human evils.
7. The socialism notion.
8. Still trying to spin. Remind us why (coincendentally white) non-Russian immigrants from the former Soviet Union are unable to comprehend discrimination?
9. A related (and counter) point made here.
10. St. Brenden.
11. Mr Kass in science.
12. An interesting discussion on A Secular Age.
13. In the context of advise and consent … recalling Mr Obama on Mr Roberts.
14. Covering for judges.
15. Summarizing the McArdle/ObWings abortion discussion.
16. Marriage and Tolstoy.

The claim that the current Administration and their supporters trend to ‘socialism’. My co-blogger at Stones Cry Out wonders if this is an appropriate phrase and as well if the term is being abused to the point of being meaningless. Freydrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom might be read as a clarion call not specifically warning against socialism itself but a more general tendency highlighted in Chapter 2 of Chantal Delsol’s  The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century essay which I’m in the process of blogging my way through. Many of the tendencies and hopes (for change?) that the movement which propelled Mr Obama to the White House are in fact identified by Ms Delsol in her essay (and Ms Delsol being first of all a French national, a philosopher, and writing an essay that pre-dates Mr Obama’s run to the Presidency should be noted). Utopian dreams and the totalitarian consequences is the real danger. It should also be noted that many themes in this chapter resonate well this week as the abortion ethical question returns to the surface propelled by the killing of Mr Tiller.

A recurring theme of Ms Delsol’s is that the crux of the unlearned lessons lie in the continued acceptence of the fatal flawed that lie as the basis of the 20th century utopian totalitarian projects which were so very costly in human life and dignity. While we reject specifics of those projects we accept very many of their premises and therefore lie likely (easy?) prey for finding new ways to explore life in a totalitarian dystopia.

Ms Delsol begins chapter two, which is entitled The insularity of the human species.

Totalitarianism, of whatever persuasion, emerges when we get caught up in the belief that “everything is possible.” It might be worth recalling just how difficult it was to have this idea accepted, or, for instance, to remember how reluctantly the thought of Hannah Arendt was received in France. To deny that “everything is possible,” to make the postulate of unlimited possibility the cornerstone of the errors of the twentieth century, was, it was said, to equate terror and utopia, or to liken the perversities of man’s annihilation to ideals about reshaping human nature. To do this was unthinkable as long as ideological dreams were still persuasive.

Several decades of perseverant reflection, however, finally made it possible to state openly that the idea of that “everything is possible” represents the birth of the twentieth century. This little phrase, which was to reveal itself to be so terrible, essentially means two things. “Everything is possible” is a way of determining who is human: one can then arbitrarily set a boundary here or there between humans and “subhumans” and declare a particular category to be nonhuman, which is what Nazism did. “Everything is possible” is also a way of determining what it is to be human: one can then arbitrarily decree that humans can or should live without authority, without personal secrets, without family, or without gods, which is what communism did. In fact, communism ended up adding the first consequence of “everything is possible” to the second and denied the humanity of those who made no effort to become other than they were.

The essential defense against “everything is possible” is the axiomatic ontological insistence on the irreducible dignity of the human being, which must be and remain a foundational certainty. Human dignity in this context implies two important things. First that man may not be treated as a thing. This contitutes a ontological distinction between man and the rest of nature. Second, that there is therefore an essential bond between all men.

The modern secular (and many liberal deist) thought continues the project of defining man by his attributes and denying his essential axiomatic dignity. Discoveries (and the rise of scientism … see the quote excerpted Sunday), have blurred the biological and neurological differences between man and the animal world. Medical and biological capabilities have expanded our understanding of man’s development and our ability to affect this.

The Kantian was hoped would deflect the necessity of ontological axiomatic dignity. Kant argued persuasively that man deserves respect by virtue of being endowed with moral autonomy. This results however in the tempting substitution replacing “It is not man who has dignity, but man insofar as he is autonomous. [emphasis mine]” One characteristic is not sufficient to defend man. Thus the newborn, the dying, the handicapped become less than human. As our abilities at genetic screening expand, the fine tuning of our exclusion from the ‘truly human’ can narrow.

At the beginning of the twentieth century it was felt that the rise of reason and our understanding of the physical world would do away with the need for religion. But, especially inasmuch as religion provides a framework in which to base the necessary axiomatic irreducible dignity of man the reverse is true. The necessity and place for religion, instead of being done away with, is ever more needed and required as a bastion holding a multitude of totalitarian dystopias at bay.

A final note which may connect to the currently vogue resurgence of the abortion question in the light of current events.

Prudential wisdom consists precisely in acting within shadowy areas, where bearings have a tendency to disappear. but prudence is not a form of pragmatism; it is a virtue. It may dispense with overly strict principles on the condition that its eyes remain fixed upon points of reference that lie above those principles: there is an immense difference between allowing someone to die and decreeing that all the dying who have reached a certain point are no longer persons.

Dying and fetus I’d offer might be exchanged in the above.

…(and his post has the quotes to show that many Lefty bloggers do), then Collin Brendemuehl wants to know if the Left is going to blame itself for what one of its "peace activists" did; killing a military recruiter. 

The question is simple: Where is the contrition? Where is the self-deprecating admission that maybe, just maybe, the mainstream Left might be entirely wrong? They vandalize our nation and kill people and pretend that they have nothing to do with any of it. They protect the radicals and act like nothing is wrong.

(Ok, this is what I anticipate some them to say about this crime: The murderer was a convert to Islam and did this because he hated what Bush started. Bush made him do it. Right. And Nixon made Armstrong blow up the math building at UW.)

May they pretend to set an example by acknowledging that they might actually be doing what they contrive for us.

As of right now, big blogs from the left — Think Progress, TalkLeft, Talking Points Memo (can’t link to a search result) and Daily Kos — have absolutely nothing mentioning "William Long", the man who died in this killing. 

And yet blogs on the Right are all over themselves denouncing the violence done, ironically, in the name of the pro-life movement.  I’ll state for the record here that I find the killing of Dr. George Tiller absolutely wrong, just as wrong as the millions of abortions done each year, and just as wrong as killing a military recruiter who is posing no threat to you. 

Will the big voices of Left do the same?  Or is their outrage so very selective?

Eric Scheie posting at "Classical Values" asks how do we have a legitimate conversation about socialism — do we have it, do we want it — without sounding like some conspiracy theorist.

Unfortunately (as I have pointed out in several posts), the "s" word is so fraught with problems that it might be too contaminated to use. I worry that "socialist" within five words of "Barack Obama" has become code language for belief in various popular far-right conspiracy theories. The "Obama is a secret Muslim sleeper agent born in Kenya" stuff. After all, who but a secret Muslim sleeper agent born in Kenya would want to impose socialism on the United States?

In theory, "socialism" is still a perfectly legitimate word, but I worry that it is becoming delegitimized. As it is, the responsible critics of Barack Obama’s economic programs are very, very careful not to use the word "socialist," and if they do, it is only to distance themselves from those who call Barack Obama a socialist.

An old adage is "you’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you."  Use of a particular word ought to be acceptable if it describes things accurately.  I’ve been using the word "socialism" here for a couple months, but only after describing a recent event that, in my mind, continues to push our country in that direction.  Eric has this feeling, however, that anytime someone uses the S-word, they get labeled a kook and ignored. 

Marginalizing a word is an easy way to avoid debate.  I hope this isn’t happening.

1. Acronyms and the merry band of robbers in the beltway.
2. Eugenics OK in Sweden.
3. A back and forth on abortion and Mr Tiller (follow the links for the whole thing). For what it’s worth, I think that Ms McArdles rejoinder, “My argument is that abortion, like slavery, is becoming in this country
   an issue upon which people have no reasonable political recourse. ” is correct but that the Christian response to “having no recourse” is not violence.
4. Mr Murtha’s bridge to nowhere.
5. Intelligence and the big universe.
6. Poop and a map.
7. Some movement of some of the conservative Christian blogs.
8. Against divorce.
9. Ill omens and Mr Obama’s Cairo address.
10. Conservative praise for Twilight? And of course, Pixar.
11. Wind power generation, which begs the question, will Mr Obama’s administration get serious about nuclear energy? Because if they don’t this whole “global warming” carbon thing is just a stinking crock of hooey.
12. Hmm.
13. Income discrepancy.
14. The clarion call for Asian representation on the court.

From Larry Wright:

(Click for a larger image.)  All this promise of rescuing GM and Chrysler, and yet, as of this morning, both are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

"The General Motors board of directors authorized the filing of a Chapter 11 case with regret that this path proved necessary despite the best efforts of so many," GM Chairman Kent Kresa said in a written statement. "Today marks a new beginning for General Motors. … The board is confident that this New GM can operate successfully in the intensely competitive U.S. market and around the world."

Please note 2 things:  First, a government handout failed to both avoid bankruptcy and produce an automaker that could compete.  Second, if this is what bankruptcy will do for GM, this should have been the first option.

A bankruptcy that comes post-bailout, however, creates a GM that looks something like this:

(Click for a larger image.)  As you’ll notice, the government is in the driver’s seat.

The plan is for the federal government to take a 60 percent ownership stake in the new GM. The Canadian government would take 12.5 percent, with the United Auto Workers getting a 17.5 percent share and unsecured bondholders receiving 10 percent. Existing GM shareholders are expected to be wiped out.

Emphasis mine.  There’s a word for when the government owns a controlling interest in (what was) a private company, but it’s not coming to me at the moment. 

Late last week, the news was that a Bible study in San Diego county was trying to be shut down by county officials; holding a religious assembly without a permit. 

Apparently after some notoriety, the county backed down.

Sweeping issues of religious freedom and governmental regulation are swirling around Pastor David Jones’ house in rural Bonita, attracting attention from as far away as China and New Zealand.

He says it all started with $220 in car damage.

Jones and his wife, Mary, hold a weekly Bible study at their home that sometimes attracts more than 20 people, with occasional parking issues. Once, a car belonging to a neighbor’s visitor got dinged.

David Jones paid for the damage, but he thinks the incident spurred a complaint to the county.

A code enforcement officer warned the couple in April for holding a “religious assembly” without a permit. The action became an international incident when it was reported last week on the Web site worldnetdaily.com.

The Joneses assert that the county’s action violates their rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion. Their story was picked up by conservative Web sites for days, then made it to CNN yesterday.

Barraged by hundreds of complaints, San Diego County officials backed down yesterday from their enforcement.

The whole story about this originally being just an issue with traffic control seems at odds with the initial treatment the pastor got when visited by the county.  Sounds more like a cover story to paper over a little overzealousness.

Dean Broyles, president of the Western Center for Law & Policy, a nonprofit organization in Escondido that supports religious liberty, is representing the Joneses. He said traffic issues were not raised when the code enforcement officer first visited the Joneses in response to the complaint. The warning itself does not mention traffic or parking problems.

“Even though the county is saying it’s about traffic and parking, it’s a fake issue. It’s a fabricated issue,” Broyles said.

According to Broyles, the code enforcement officer asked a series of pointed questions during her visit with the Joneses – questions such as, “Do you sing?” “Do you say ‘amen?’ ” “Do you say ‘praise the Lord?’ ”

Wallar said the county is investigating what questions were asked and in what context. She said a code enforcement officer does have to ask questions about how a place is being used to determine what land-use codes are applicable.

“Our county simply does not tolerate our employee straying outside what the appropriate questions are,” Wallar said.

Including not asking questions about the actual issue at hand?  Indeed.

Anyway, just some good news to start your week.

1. Pentecost and the holy mountain. More on Pentacost from the Fathers here.
2. Marriage and crime.
3. A point to be made regarding the rhetoric of the wacky pro-abortion contingent in the wake of Mr Tiller’s murder. Which I heard of first here, and I might add is a pretty typical response from the Christian right blogs.
4. The term economy and its theological meaning.
5. Contra the “other.”
6. Terrorism and policy and what we do “just to feel better” about ourselves, but which is materially morally worse.
7. Sober thoughts on the nomination of Ms Sotomayor.
8. Missing the point in grand style. The point isn’t that this is some sort of faked sympathy for other groups, the point is that the “mend it, don’t end it” project is clearly impossible.
9. To look out for (eagerly), Judge Dee.
10. Against using the eye of the heart in judicial matters.
11. Math and music.
12. Heh.
13. In case you’re grumpy on this Monday morning.
14. Narrative and man.
15. The churcn and the Nazi regime.
16. On Meyendorff about Palamas.
17. Wanna bet Mr Obama won’t mention Coptic Christians during his Cairo address? Some reasons why he should.
18. A little song.
19. The GM boondoggle.
20. The fall of unfaith.

A scatter shot of thought offered from an early Sunday eve.

1. Ms Althouse offers that Ms Sotomayor’s remarks are not out of the pale, but are fit as a “feel good version” into a larger and widespread racial talk in the legal academy. She offers that this, among perhaps the non-bottom feeders, might be a good opportunity for discussion racially sensitive or color blind jurisprudence. Given that race is, in my opinion, a ontological travesty. Race is a fictional entity invented for (perhaps) political reasons and enforced by stereotype. It is, on examination largely meaningless. Black, White, Hispanic are meaningless tags. There is no such thing as any of those things. There are certainly ethnic affiliations which have meaning, culturally and in forming people’s outlook. It is obvious that an urban white metrosexual yuppie far far has more in common by any cultural metric you might choose with a black gang-banger than with a recent rural Serbian immigrant, even though the first and the last are “racially” both “White.”
2. From Chantal Delsol’s second chapter of The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century: An Essay On Late Modernity, to which I will return later in the week, “… However, today’s scientism, compared with that of the nineteenth century, has become both hypocritical and worth of disavowal. In the nineteenth century, scientism rested upon the naive yet understandable belief — since it had not yet clashed with actual experience, that once the religious mentality had been swept aside, science would be able to explain everything and to alone bring happiness to humanity. The twentieth century sufficed to show that this was hardly the case. Thus, the scientism of today is founded on the mere hatred of religion and makes use of its own resentment against good faith. […] Today’s scientism, when it claims a monopoly on truth and is used to blur the boundaries of the human species, has become virtually criminal.” I’m guessing that there will be some objections to this quote. One would wonder who and why would defend scientism, for it is likely a more pressing threat to the real practice of science than any religious attack.
3. Apparently an late-abortion practitioner has been murdered. At least one on the left thinks this means, that an assault on the freedom of speech is the answer. For myself, I’m confused as to the motivation behind the murder. If, as I think it is, the pro-life position is one anchored in the axiomatic ontological necessity of the necessity of a belief that all men share dignity. How that then leads to justifying murder cannot be rational or reasonable. Keep that assault on free speech (and the right to assemble) in mind when I return to Ms Delsol’s essay.
4. In part the piece linked above connects that murder to the “empathy” argument used by the President. I wonder if “empathy” would be replaced by nous, in that particular liberal (?) legal methodology (see the Eastern Orthodox entry following the nous Wiki entry). While it might be just a little change of pace to find terminology like that flowing from progressive lips when arguing that a particular justice was qualified. As an side, it seems to me that the judicial philosophy entailed in the “empathy” argument is one which assumes and supports continuing irrelevance and immaturity on the part of the Legislature. The point is, the Judiciary is not there to fix “bad” law written by the Legislature but merely ones which are contrary to the Constitution. Depending on the judiciary to fix bad laws is a bad idea, because it enables lesser legislators to pen laws which are politically expedient and “counting” on the judiciary to overturn those laws … which they are more free to do being not as dependent on the electorate. But I digress, if you want to kill the whole “empathy” in the judiciary argument, one might frequently replace “empathy” with “eye of the soul” or “mind of the heart” or similar phrases. We might be continue with a trinitarian judicial philosophy, claiming our judges should equally weigh nous (heart), logos (reason),and spirit. That will go over swimmingly in the secular liberal world. If the right takes up that as a just judicial spirit, I’d bet the left will be clamoring for textualism or originalism post haste. See how the epomynous publius quote reads now, “Anyway, this violent act also bears quite directly on the whole “eye of the heart” debate.  What’s interesting about Obama’s comments is that the eye of the soul argument doubles as both a populist argument and a high-level theoretical assault on conservative jurisprudence.” I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to cast Mr Obama’s argument in as a trinitarian one.

1. When one is a crook.
2. A look at the catholicism of two Obama appointees, one basically lapsed the other possibly linked to liberation theology.
3. A call for sanity.
4. Mr Obama as one of three detestable men.
5. Ms Sotomayor and Princeton.
6. Men in Chicago.
7. An important book on fighting small wars.
8. Heh.
9. Some thoughts on learning Greek.
10. On the “experience” question.
11. Japan and nuclear devices.
12. Ms Sotomayor’s compelling life story, which is compelling in a way that Mr Thomas’ and Mr Alito’s were not apparently. Just as Ms Rice was neither Black nor a woman. More here.
13. The haert and God.
14. Co-induction.

Bottom feeding is not an uncommon thing to see (unintentional?) hypocrisy on exhibit on the few (good) liberal blogs I’ve found or have been recommended. I’ve previously criticized Mr. De Long for his blatantly un-collegial (anti-collegial) attitude that he displays and which is repeated here. This horrific meme, which apparently he is fond of enought to repeat. Ed Brayton, blogging here, regularly trawls for what he finds offensive or ridiculous that is on offer from the “other side” and lampoons it. Yet this is exactly the same sort of thing just given a patina of respectibility. Bottom feeding the opposition and representing that as representative of the same is just as bigoted and offensive as the behaviour which they attempt to lampoon. I will give Mr. Brayton his due. He doesn’t represent his blog as anything but what it is: a sort of National Enquirer for the libertarian/atheist reader. Mr. De Long on the other hand, represents his blog as an academic and principled blog. Yet we find him regularly engaging in bottom feeding and maintaining the pretense of the high minded intellectual. If one were to dip to Mr. De Long’s level for a moment, this would mean that if the GOP is the “stupid *and* immoral” party perhaps the Democrats are the “supercilious and immoral” party.

Mr. Niven on occasion will do the same, but here, for example, he seeks out thoughtful discourse and discusses it. The point of this enterprise is that if you want to raise the level of discourse then the way to do that is not to lower yourself to the bottom denominator but to seek out, engage, and elevate the best arguments, individuals, and ideas of the other side. It may be easier to disparage the Moore’s, the Ms Sykes, or political cartoonists similar output. However, this isn’t helpful in the least.

On blogs, in periodicals, and in books good conservative political, economic, theological, and political thought can be found quite easily, unlike it seems thoughtful progressive blogs and thought which are (for me) much harder to locate. If you want to raise the level of discourse this is the course you need to take. If you think discussion and intercourse between the sides of the aisle and between the various divisions in our society is of value, the only way to do that is to find the best of the other side and engage that. As fun as it might be, the sarcasm, humor, belittling and lampooning only serves to widen the divide and lower the tenor of the debate. It is counterproductive.

1. The future and strategy and a question.
2. Seagulls and earthquake.
3. A complaint lodged against Mr Obama’s Memorial Day speech.
4. Hail.
5. Considering atheism.
6. Differences and Europe.
7. Christopsomos, or Christ Bread.
8. Democracy and Religion.
9. How long will the lying thing stay popular?
10. Alcohol and the reasonable parent.
11. The housing bubble, not done popping?
12. On energy.
13. Two saints who changed world history remembered.
14. Memory and a passing.
15. The eagle and the bear compared.
16. It was a brilliant attack, as they say.
17. Perceptions of Obama and their consequences.

1. Considering North Korea.
2. Who is going to be sympathetic to stuff like this.
3. On Mr Chu’s white roof notion … has they guy ever noticed some places get cold?
4. Consequences of failing to hold the line and North Korea. Iran too.
5. Facebook and the bear.
6. Remember the abortion cricket race just a bit ago, gay marriage too is trending that way, “apparently”.
7. Yech.
8. Tax revenue and the future.