Evangelist Mike Azinger
Vienna, WV
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Pretending To Love Our Children
By Mike Azinger
“If I know [my children] are going to be someplace—either a hotel or a house—it gives me a sense of security. There’s always a chance that alcohol will be involved at that age. Let’s face it, you and I know it happens. I think these children chose to be responsible and, unfortunately, they got in trouble for it.” —Patrick McNeill, who rented three $199 rooms on New Years’ Eve in Harrison, NY for his son and his friends. Six years earlier, in 1997, McNeil’s older son became intoxicated in a bar and drown in the East River. —Excerpt from The Death of the Grown-Up by Diana West
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Amidst the incessant chatter in American society over the concern for “the children”, the famous quote from Hamlet about the phoniness of inordinate objection comes to mind: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
When it comes to our love and concern for “the children” that’s what methinks—we protest too much. We give the impression that we love our children and that it is our supreme goal in life to protect them, physically and emotionally, by going to whatever measure necessary to prove it— measures like bicycle helmets, car seats, time-outs, not keeping score, healthful school lunches, drug education, sex education, fire safety, ad nauseum warnings about drunk driving and safe sex; safe drinking water, lead paint, asbestos, self-esteem, ADD, and ADHD, and on and on and on.
Have you seen the silly ubiquitous picture in your local newspaper of the local high school kid walking or driving a golf cart wearing “beer goggles” barely able to stand up, giddy with vertigo? Beer goggles—if you haven’t been keeping up on the latest PC fads in American high schools—are worn like ski goggles and give the sensation of driving intoxicated, causing you to stagger when walking or to swerve when driving. High schools take time from not teaching American history to put these students through these “goggle” drills with everyone, including the students, pretending the drill is worthwhile, productive, and actually effective. On the edges of the newspaper photo you will see the token non-judgmental deputy sheriff smiling on and the token school teacher doing the same, as if drunk driving is cute and not to be taken seriously. Drunkenness and drunk driving are not actual transgressions in our PC world, you see, they are simply unsafe. In our culture being unsafe is the transgression because calling drunkenness a transgression would infer a moral law. Morals and moral courage are all but gone, and as a result we no longer have the courage to call things wrong anymore—so we turn them into silly games.
We have a society of parental “protest-too-muchers” because we have a society of adults who are still children (the average video gamester in America is age thirty, and 25% of American men ages eighteen to thirty still live at home), who are, it seems, wholly incapable of instilling right and wrong in their kids; of saying no to their kids; of going against the grain of what other parents allow (“Susie’s mom is letting her go!”), and, who—here’s the real killer— often themselves engage in the immoral and boorish behavior with their kids. As one author said—our parents need parents!
We cluck on and on about our children’s safety, and we display our phony angst to show how much we care—that we are virtuous because we care. Virtue has travelled from the heart to the stomach—from actions to feelings; from the rock of absolutes to the shifting sand of values. We are “protesting” loudly and conspicuously from the rooftops about the safety of our children because we know how cruelly we actually do, in reality, treat our children. We don’t love our children in America; we just pretend to; and as long as we all shut-up about it, no one will be the wiser.
No one, except the children.
If a society really loves its children, won’t that society have a lot of children (seen any big families lately?), won’t it spend time with its children, dote on its children, teach discipline to its children, sacrifice for its children, and make sure that its children are loved? And won’t a society with genuine love for its children care more for the soul of its children than even for its safety? Or for its health? But we have failed in all of these, and worse, instead of fixing our failures, we replace them with faux-gestures of love like bicycle helmets and $1,000 birthday parties and then dip them into the sewers of our cruelty. We are so used to these cruelties, however, that we hardly think they are cruel at all. But they are cruel indeed.
Every year in America, we kill millions of babies before they are even born—before they can even grow into being children. Abortion, in fact, culminated to its logical conclusion in Maryland this past month when a woman went into a local hospital bleeding from her uterus. She had just given birth, but there was no baby. The police went to her house, found a dead baby, and ended up digging up several more graves in her yard where babies she had given birth to in the past were buried. Now, watch this: Because it is not illegal in the state of Maryland for a woman to kill her unborn baby (it is her choice to kill or let live—she is the god of her universe!), the woman walked out of the hospital a free woman. Now, really watch this: The murderer mother and her boyfriend are suing the city.
I would say that is cruelty.
If a child makes it out of his mother’s womb alive, he then has a good chance of being neglected by his parents by being sent to a day-care center or a baby-sitter where he will be watched all day (watched but not necessarily loved and nurtured) by a woman who can never love him the way his natural parents would.
Paul said in Ephesians not to walk “as other Gentiles walk…who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” Even mothers, the last bastion of gentleness, mercy, and moral hope in a society are “being past feeling.”
I would say that is a cruelty.
After abortion and day-care, the child then runs a 50/50 chance of having his world destroyed by parents who decide that life is more convenient for them to break up rather than remain as husband and wife. I didn’t say more convenient for the child (who, rest assured, is never asked!) I said for “them”—the parents. Someone said a thousand deaths is a statistic: a single death is a tragedy. Likewise, a 50% divorce rate is a statistic; little Mary’s or little Billy’s world being dashed to pieces by whirlwind of divorce is a tragedy.
I would say that is a cruelty.
There are many more methods of cruelty we Americans have concocted: we leave our kids by themselves after school, we send them to schools where they are in danger—body and soul; we teach them in school that God is a myth and evolution is fact and that right and wrong do not exist; we no longer spank our kids depriving them of the crucial lesson that wrong choices bring painful consequences; we teach them that drugs are harmful, that unprotected sex is harmful and that getting drunk is harmful: but we never teach them that these behaviors are wrong, that they are a sin against a holy God, that fornication and drunkenness and drugs that destroy the mind are sins that God judges in the severest terms, and that, yes, their bodies are in desperate danger when committing these sins, but 10 times more—100 times more!— their souls are in eternal danger! Not telling our children (and young people) these truths is the epitome of cruelty.
The high school girl in the newspaper photo was having great fun driving her golf cart around with beer goggles on. The nonjudgmental teacher next to her was smiling too—not genuinely—but smiling like she knew she was supposed to in this warped scenario. But like most adults overseeing children today, she is not a mentor like she is supposed to be; she is, in fact, cruel. She will never tell her students that there is right and wrong and that drunkenness—among other things—is not cute but a sin against a holy God. Telling the truth is real love; beer-goggles-love is pretend.
Postmodern America—like a camp meeting preacher—shouts from the hilltops the false doctrine of safety over virtue; it shouts it loud enough to drown out any and all competing voices. The moral relativists and atheists have been shouting it so loud and so long that they have convinced themselves it’s true.
Methinks we better start shouting back; for the children’s sake.
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Bauer on Presidential Candidates
Take Heart
Yesterday, I had the honor of chairing a two-and-a-half hour meeting of 60
pro-family, pro-life leaders as we continued the process of reviewing the
records of the various Republican presidential candidates. I wish that
every values voter could have been in the room to hear the discussion. I
think you would have been encouraged by what you heard.
We were all acutely aware that this is a very emotional time, when people
are helping various candidates and have strong views on strategy. It would
not have taken much for the meeting to spin out of control. Knowing that
anger and disunity could destroy us, we began the meeting in prayer. And
we ended on our knees in prayer!
In fact, the one vote we had was a unanimous vote to ask the president and
congressional leaders to declare a day of prayer on Thanksgiving for the
nation to remember that God is the author of our liberty and our only sure
protector.
The months ahead will continue to be challenging. Values voters are still
sorting out their options. As I am sure you know, Mitt Romney and Mike
Huckabee did very well in the straw poll conducted by Family Research
Council Action. In my poll last week, Fred Thompson was in first place “by
a mile,” and a new CBS poll shows that he is now the first choice of
“weekly church attendees.”
The field is winnowing out, but it still appears that three candidates are
vying for the votes of men and women of faith. The weeks ahead will be
exciting, and, hopefully, the final result will be the defeat of Hillary
Clinton!
Bauer on Hillary Fundraising “Discrepencies” and his in-house Pres. Poll
“Oops, I Did It Again”
No, this isn’t about Britney Spears. Fresh off one Chinese fundraising
scandal involving Norman Hsu and the Paw family, today’s Los Angeles Times
carries a scathing report on what could likely become another major scandal
for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
During 2004, Senator John Kerry raised $24,000 from the poorest Chinatown
neighborhoods in New York City. Yet, according to the Los Angeles Times
report, Hillary hauled in “a whopping $380,000” from “a single fundraiser
in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty.” The money came from
dozens of individuals who identified their occupations as “dishwasher,”
“waiter” or “chef.”
The Los Angeles Times examined 150 records and here’s what it discovered:
“One-third of those donors could not be found using property, telephone or
business records. Most have not registered to vote, according to public
records. …Of 74 residents of New York’s Chinatown, …that the Times
called or visited, only 24 could be reached for comment.”
Further into the report, the Times describes a visit to 44 Henry Street in
the hope of interviewing Shu Fang Li, who reportedly gave $1,000 to
Hillary’s campaign:
“A tenet living in the apartment listed as Li’s address said through a
translator that she had not heard of him, although she had lived there for
the last 10 years. …Census figures for 2000 show the median family income
for the area was less than $21,000. About 45% of the population was living
below the poverty line, more than double the city average.”
So, how did Hillary get the cash? The Los Angeles Times notes, “Clinton
has enlisted the aid of Chinese neighborhood associations… The
organizations, at least one of which is a descendant of Chinatown criminal
enterprises that engaged in gambling and human trafficking, exert enormous
influence over immigrants. …In some cases, donors said they felt
pressured to give.”
Others, however, said they gave hoping that if Clinton becomes president,
“she will move quickly to reunite families and help illegal residents move
toward citizenship.”
Those of you who think that having Hillary Clinton in the White House for
four years will somehow help our cause or energize our movement are totally
missing what a new, more powerful Left will do if liberal Democrats control
both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. One of the first things at the top of
Hillary’s agenda will be a massive amnesty bill that will radically change
the voting patterns of this country and alter our political landscape
forever.
Values Voters Vet The Field
The 2007 Washington Briefing got underway today with speeches from most of
the Republican presidential candidates. The values voters who came to
Washington, D.C. heard remarks this morning from Sam Brownback, Tom
Tancredo, John McCain, Fred Thompson.
This afternoon, speakers included Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul, along with
former Senator Rick Santorum and former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Tonight,
Phyllis Schlafly, Governor Mitt Romney and I will address the audience.
Tomorrow, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Governor Mike Huckabee will speak, along
with Judge Robert Bork and Bill Bennett. And tomorrow night, we will cap
off the event with a gala dinner honoring Dr. James Dobson for his decades
of leadership in the pro-family movement.
For those of you not able to attend the Briefing in person, C-Span is
providing live coverage of much of the event, so please tune in!
The Votes Are In…
Yesterday, I asked for your feedback as to which candidate you supported
for the Republican presidential nomination. Hundreds of CWF supporters
responded and our staff has been frantically counting the votes this
morning. Here are the top five:
5th Place – Rudy Giuliani 4%
4th Place – Undecided 6%
3rd Place – Mitt Romney 12%
2nd Place – Mike Huckabee 27%
1st Place – Fred Thompson 45%
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Philadelphia punishes Boy Scouts for ‘discriminating’ against homosexuals
Family of Woman Who Died at Massachusetts Abortion Center Speaks Out
Justice Antonin Scalia Reconfirms: No Right to Abortion in Constitution
Washington Capitol Welcomes Back Baby Jesus
Planned Parenthood Charged with Violating Kansas Abortion Laws
Christian authors strive to dispel ‘myth’ of feminism
Michigan Voters Get to Decide Nativity Case
Bauer blasts Rice for comments re: establishment of Palestinian state
Mom Awarded $85,000 for Daughters’ Exposure to Motel Porn
‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ banished by California
Ohio House No Longer Censors Prayers