Scrolling around...December 6, 2012

Albert Mohler: How Did This Happen? The Family Crisis as a Theological Crisis
...The family is indeed in crisis. A recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that fully 40 percent of all babies born in the United States in 2011 were born to unmarried mothers. Divorce rates are catastrophic and unprecedented numbers of American adults are never marrying, creating a new non-marital underclass that passes on disastrous consequences that will harm generations to come. In some American neighborhoods, children and teenagers have never even been to a wedding, since marriage has simply ceased to exist as an expectation. Even when parents are married and live in the same house with their children, many of those children are actually raised by the mass media, with older children and teenagers often living in a digital world that is quite disconnected from their parents...

The No Good, Very Bad Outlook for the Working-Class American Man
...In effect, the economy is telling less-educated men: Get lost. And they are doing just that. Consider Chart 4. It shows men’s participation in the workforce, by level of education. Forty years ago, virtually all men with at least a high school degree held jobs. Most high school dropouts worked, too. Most men, regardless of education, could make a decent living, and holding a job was the unquestioned norm. Any man who didn’t work for years at a stretch was known as a bum.

Since then, men have been steadily withdrawing from the workforce—but, again, not uniformly. Ninety percent of college-educated men are still working. But a fifth of men with only a high school degree weren’t working in 2008, before the recession struck; today, a fourth of them don’t hold a job. Among men who didn’t finish high school, a third aren’t working. As a result of these trends, America today is pockmarked with neighborhoods where nonwork is the male norm...

When Soviet-style propaganda comes to America, it will be published by the California Federation of Teachers and narrated by Ed Asner
A video published recently by the California Federation of Teachers and narrated by avowed-socialist Ed Asner gained attention because it showed “rich people” pissing on “poor people.”...
Update: Calif. union deletes video of rich urinating on poor Oopsies. Evidently the California Federation of Teachers realized it wasn’t such a bright idea to demonstrate “economic inequality” by having animated one-percenters urinate on poor people. After significant backlash, the union appears to have quietly cut the repulsive scene from the propaganda video narrated by far Left Hollyweirdo Ed Asner. The original video is now listed as private on YouTube.

Mother found guilty of beating son to death for failing to learn the Koran

'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistleblower
The FBI records the emails of nearly all US citizens, including members of congress, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. In an interview with RT, he warned that the government can use this information against anyone.

Binney, one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in the history of the National Security Agency, resigned in 2001. He claimed he no longer wanted to be associated with alleged violations of the Constitution, such as how the FBI engages in widespread and pervasive surveillance through powerful devices called 'Naris.'

This year, Binney received the Callaway award, an annual prize that recognizes those who champion constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives...
Highest court in Mass. lets police search cellphones without warrants
 

Dave Brubeck Dead at 91

The great American jazzman Dave Brubeck has died a day short of his ninety-second birthday. Many may not know that Brubeck was a Catholic convert who actually composed a Mass even before he became a Catholic. The Mass had been commissioned by Ed Murray, editor of Our Sunday Visitor. From PBS, here is the story of that Mass and a bit about his conversion...

 

“That’s a Family!”

…is the title of a propaganda video being shown in some public elementary schools. It bills itself as a general exploration of the many varieties of what a family can consist of – you know, cross-racial couples, adoption and guardianship, families that speak Spanish at home. And of course it goes without saying that gay couples are families too, and anyone who doubts that is on par with people who doubt that cross-racial couples are families...

Admit It, We're a Decadent People
If you have not yet read Ross Douthat's column about how we need more babies, you really should. In Douthatian fashion, it dealt with how policies might encourage family formation and then ended on this note:

Beneath these policy debates, though, lie cultural forces that no legislator can really hope to change. The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place.
Such decadence need not be permanent, but neither can it be undone by political willpower alone. It can only be reversed by the slow accumulation of individual choices, which is how all social and cultural recoveries are ultimately made...

Planned Parenthood and the Government v. Religious Liberty and Women’s Wellbeing
An unprecedented campaign against religious liberty, characterized by a formidable alliance between the White House and Planned Parenthood, bolstered by money, power, and market branding, is threatening women’s well-being. The first in a three-part series. Part II Part III