Everett Piper is a columnist I have just started reading on a regular basis. He is president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University. So he comes with a different perspective. His latest column is a shocker: ‘Who are you to judge?’ I considered quoting an excerpt, but decided it would be better if my readers just read it.
You done with Piper’s column? Good! Is Piper right to generalize? Is his anecdote extreme, or does it reflect what our children are learning? I fear he is on the money, but what is happening? What can we do about it?
Over the years I have written posts like Dismount your donkey at the summit and linked to articles like THE MYTH OF TOLERANCE. Why? Instead of teaching our children how to think logically, to build upon hard-won lessons of our forbears, our schools indoctrinate our children in the political beliefs preferred by bought and paid for politicians.
Consider what happens when we buy a car. We have money. We go to various dealerships. We find the car we both want and can afford. We pay. We take the car we want home.
Consider what happens when we educate our children. We have money. Politicians tax us and take that money. Special interests donate money to politicians. Politicians hire school administrators and teachers that teach our children what those special interests want them to learn. Our children bring home what they have been taught. We complain and complain and complain. Is complaining the solution? Why don’t we take back control of our own money and spend it on what we want?
Look at the latest news.
- Gun-Violence Protests Drew an Estimated 1 Million Students (www.wsj.com)
- Students stage nationwide walkout to protest gun violence (nypost.com)
- National School Walkout: Students protest gun violence, call for action one month after Parkland shooting (foxnews.com)
Did children organize these protests? Did school administrators encourage children to participate in these protests? Are the answers not obvious?
Do the protests even make sense? Supposedly, it is a good idea to prevent anyone under 21 from buying a gun, but why then do we want 18-year old kids to vote, and why should we allow children to rudely intimidate any politicians who disagree with them? If we cannot trust the wisdom of anyone under 21 to manage a gun, why would we let them drive a car, much less vote? Yet in the army, we don’t think it odd for young men to fire automatic weapons and drive 60-ton tanks.
Stop and think. If our government decides to take our guns away from us, won’t t people seizing our weapons include armed 18 – 21 year old men and women?
Because we have allowed our children to be indoctrinated by political activists instead of people their parents know and trust, no one is taking the time to present them the full story about the heritage of our nation. Instead of learning that the God of Abraham gives us the choice of loving Him and obeying Him, they learn that Christianity is the religion of the intolerant. They learn to tolerate every belief except the beliefs of those who founded our nation. Therefore, they intolerantly demand gun control, try to strip citizens of their right of self-defense, and then self-righteously preen over the nobility of their cause.
If these misguided children have not proven it is time for parents to take back control of the education of their children, what will?
Do we trust politicians? Then why do we trust them to educate our children?
We have elections coming up in 2018. That includes primary elections and the general elections. For the sake of your children and your neighbor’s children, make certain you participate in both. Find the candidates that support school choice and second amendment rights. Donate to their campaigns and vote for them.
I think that you don’t have a problem with indoctrination, you just have a problem with indoctrination of liberal ideals. So you need to be honest to your readers and clarify that. On the other hand, I think theres a huge difference between the purchase of a gun and the right to vote. Also the straw man argument most conservatives like you use for guns is the ability to defend yourself against the government. But with all due respect, if the government wanted to come after you, your AR-15 wouldn’t be able to do anything.
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“They want you to believe man can perfect himself, They want you to believe that if you vote for them they will perfect man. “
Nope, not what I believe. But I don’t look at it your way either. Honestly, I don’t think that this is a partisan thing, but I do agree that an optimistic verses a cynical outlook about humanity is reflected to some extent in the makeup and policies of the two political parties.
An exploration of this would be a great topic for both a theological and a political discussion if you wish to have that discussion. Because “hope” is a Christian virtue, I think we Christians should find joy in believing that some moral progress is possible in the love of Christ. On the other hand, because humility and prudence are also Christian virtues, I think that we must temper our more exuberant progressive ambitions with the knowledge that we will never actually “perfect” ourselves or the rest of this finite world. Perhaps there is nothing more utopian that an atheistic progressive Democrat, but there also may be nothing more dismally depressing than a self hating conservative Christian Republican either. Despite the stereotypes, most us Christians fall somewhere in between I think.
I like this kind of discussion as it’s often easier to find agreement and to even a disagree more amicably as long as you don’t just, as you did here, arbitrarily assign me some kind of stereotypical position that you assume is the extreme opposite of your position. I think sometimes you forget that we are both Christians, and such, share in common the most important fundamental aspects of our moral philosophy. We differ mainly on the finer points, and, quite literally for the sake of argument, make a bigger deal of our differences than they deserve or than we can actually be as certain of as we like it to seem we are.
I’d enjoy your reasonable thoughts on this if you’d like to open it up for discussion in another post.
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@tsalmon
Wrote this some years back => https://citizentom.com/2007/07/01/reviling-christian-fundamentalism/. Got a bunch of dumb ideas about Christianity. Had to repent and unload them.
Being a Christian Republican is not depressing. What could be more optimistic than the certainty your Savior is God.
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@tsalmon
I suppose I could do a post.
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See => https://citizentom.com/2018/03/25/do-you-believe-man-can-perfect-himself-revisited/
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