College for Free Condoms

If college is indeed four years of partying as some recent books are saying, Drew University in Madison, NJ gives further proof that the college years provide for far more than just the refinement of the intellect.

At Drew, students are complaining because condoms are no longer distributed for free by the university's health office. Poor lambs. Resident assistants in the dormitories are now keepers of the condoms, and students who want condoms must go and ask for them. Such a hassle.

The fuss at Drew is not, oddly enough, over whether or not the college should dispense condoms. The issue is not even about the condoms being free. Rather, the brouhaha is over how the free condoms are being dispensed! At Drew, in the affluent suburb of Madison, parents who are spending just under $40,000 on tuition can certainly provide their young scholars with an allowance big enough to buy condoms. But money isn't the issue at all here. Values is the issue and therein lies at least some of the problem that plagues college life today.

The headline of the Star Ledger article would do all parents and students a greater service if it read, Why is a college promoting sexual activity among unmarried, still-financially dependent 18 to 22 year olds? And why do colleges provide contraceptives, abortion referrals, sex fairs, and, for that matter, co-ed dorms? If parents are suckers about anything, as some of the recent books suggest, we are suckers not to ask these questions when we make the rounds of college visits with our kids.

Alveda King and Restoring Honor Rally

Hopefully, Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. will become more of a household name now that Glenn Beck included her in his Restoring Honor Rally back on August 28th. Alveda King travels wherever Priests for Life sends her to carry her message on the "evil twins" of abortion and racism. As a Pastoral Associate for African-American Outreach of Priests for Life, King spreads the under-reported news that while blacks comprise only 12% of the general population, they have 35% of the abortions. King is one of the few in the pro-life movement to point out that a disproportionate percentage of abortion clinics are found in minority neighborhoods, supposedly to "serve" the poor. But, as King points out, "you don't serve the poor by taking their money to terminate their children."

Alveda King offends liberal, establishment blacks, or the Black Mafia as writer Lloyd Marcus calls them, because she doesn't deliver the required blacks-as-victims rhetoric. In her open letter of 2008 to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), King doesn't promote green jobs, free rides to community colleges or more government hand-outs. She talks about strengthening the black family, promoting marriage and family values. She reminds America's African-American leaders that the core mission of black civil rights groups is to ensure the equality of rights for all persons without recourse to violence or hatred. And, again, to the CBC, she addresses the issue of reparations saying,

the battle against oppression and segregation was not white versus black, but right versus wrong. There are no separate races divided by skin color. It was not whites who did this to blacks, it was Southern racists who even took us into a war where 300,000 whites gave their lives to end slavery. A political party based on abolition was formed by whites to free the slaves.

Hardly words that Maxine Waters, Al Sharpton, or, for that matter, Barack Obama, want to hear.

Alveda King offends white feminists when she says,

The abortion movement in this country was started by Margaret Sanger, the founder of an organization known today as Planned Parenthood. Ms. Sanger was quite open that she wanted "more children from the fit, less from the unfit." The unfit, she made clear, were blacks and poor whites. She had no qualms about speaking to as many as 12 Ku Klux Klan meetings. As I discuss in the new film, "Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America" (produced byLifeDynamicsInc.), she targeted blacks in her eugenics-based campaigns.

And, Alveda King speaks out in a way that liberals find intolerable. When she invokes the dream of her Uncle Martin, and asks, How can the dream survive if we murder the children? she unsettles those who have whitewashed MLK, Jr. as little more than a "man of peace," a secular, kindly figure who wanted nothing more than a big group hug for the world. Columnist Johnathan Capehart scolds Ms. King for being a political opportunist at the Beck rally and "besmirching" her uncle's legacy. And columnist Bonnie Erbe is offended because Alveda King has dared to equate the pro-life movement with the civil rights movement and abortion with racism.

Erbe writes that she "supports abortion rights but I'm not sure I would go so far as to call it a human rights issue." Really? Highly doubtful considering that the operative mantra of the pro-abortion (reproductive rights) movement, the feminist (women's rights) movement, the homosexual (gay rights) movement has been to paint their respective causes as human rights violations and to create their movements in the image of the Civil Rights movement of the 60s.

Several years ago Alveda King spoke on the Barnard College campus at the request of the Columbia University pro-life student group. King arrived on a warm fall day in October wheeling her suitcase in front of her, having just come from another lecture tour. She has no entourage, no glamour, no flash and she gives her presentation by herself. Critics like Erbe and Capehart who desperately attempt to discredit King by saying she feeds on and distorts her uncle's legacy should attend one of her talks and note that there is humility in her presentation, not braggadoccio and that her message about the black experience in America, though not what the mainstream media wants to hear, is first-hand and true. Alveda King is tireless in her efforts to spread her message and Glen Beck deserves credit for supporting her.

College or No College?

There may be a new trend in the world of higher education. It's now becoming fashionable to say that college is a farce! Here is a review of several new books that points out how college is little more than four years of partying, that college is a rip-off and that we parents are all suckers for buying into the belief that our kids need four more years of classroom learning. The reviewer doesn't give these books very high marks, and they do sound a bit slap-dash, but most parents who've been through the college admissions process with their kids don't need these books to know that the path to college comes with a high price tag, both in terms of time and money not to mention everyone's emotional well-being. At the end of the day, college isn't always the best choice for every high school teen.

The number of kids who both genuinely aspire to the life of the mind after high school and who are qualified to do so must be a very small percentage of all graduating high school seniors, but we'd never know it because college has become de rigeur, the automatic next stop-over for all kids of 18, regardless of their strengths or interests. While I do know of a handful of teens who actively orchestrated their own college search, it is largely parents, college counselors and college admissions officers who fuel the college frenzy and perpetuate the myth that college is the only and best alternative after high school.

Popular belief says that college graduates have better earning power than those without a four-year degree, but Charles Murray gives a good explanation in this short article of why a college degree may not add up to higher earning power, depending on the individual.

And for those college students who ultimately may be good college material, he offers some pithy advice.

One of the best things we could do to improve the college experience for students and faculty alike is to persuade a new generation of high school graduates that they ought to get the hell out of the educational system for a few years and thereby learn something about themselves.

CatholicVote.Org

Here is CatholicVote.Org's new ad.

More on DADT

The Obama administration's drive to repeal the law barring homosexuals from serving in the military (mis-named 'Don't Ask Don't Tell') has continued apace through the summer. As always, Family Research Council (FRC) and the Center for Military Readiness (CMR) continue to spell out the real picture. CMR reports that the CBS poll showing 75% of Americans support repeal of the law is erroneous. FRC president Tony Perkins points out that,

"The survey currently being conducted by the Department of Defense assumes the repeal of the current law and asks service personnel only their views of how to implement such a plan. The survey does not address the much more profound and pertinent question of whether or not repeal should go forward.

FRC reminds readers over and over again that the real agenda behind the repeal of the law is, ultimately, the redefinition of marriage in our culture and the normalization of same sex marriage. From its report called Mission Compromised they point out that,

radical “gay rights” advocates/activists want to use the military to advance an agenda for the full acceptance of homosexuality in society at large.

Most disappointing is when members of the military offer themselves up like so many of Lenin's useful idiots and pander to the political elites and activists who are portraying open homosexuality as yet one more right that we all have to recognize. Back in May, this statement was released by military bloggers, and the Atlantic Monthly published this interview with Blackfive's Jim Hanson in June.

Judging by what Hanson says about military bloggers as a voting bloc, their narrow focus and their supposed acceptance of homosexuality in general seems to prevent them from realizing just how they are being used to further the social goals of liberals in Congress and homosexual lobbying groups. In the interview, Hanson says,

But the dialogue is good, because most of us agree that it's a generational thing now. Because of the ubiquity of gay people in our society, the young troops don't care, its very much "don't ask, don't care." This will be a non-issue once the policy goes into place. The young troops say, "Who cares? If
you didn't notice, there are people shooting at us. We've got other concerns."

Because gays are "ubiquitous" (which they're not) in society, it follows that they should serve in the military? Don't ask, don't care? Equally illogical, Hanson has the law already repealed when it still has not been voted on. As for his labelling the Obama administration's demand for repeal of the 1993 law as good dialogue, it's difficult to see it as good let alone even dialogue when Obama is ignoring the advice of the generals and feeding soldiers a questionnaire that pre-supposes repeal of the law.

It remains to be seen what Hanson's open-minded, gay-friendly young troops will think when they wind up on the receiving end of harrassment charges because they've failed to be sensitive to gay needs, they've rebuffed the advances of a gay soldier or superior, or they've expressed discomfort or concern over the gay 'family' next door, or sharing showers and sleeping quarters with homosexuals.

How Hanson and other military bloggers don't see this is disturbing.

OrignalMetalChik Asks "Where Are The Men?"

Sarah Palin says that Obama has no cojones, but OrignalMetalChik offers an explanation as to why even our nation's leader is an unmanly men. The reason is feminism. You are not watching the wrong video as you hear OriginalMetalChik talking about the problem of illegals in Arizona. She begins there and warms to her thesis. Who is OrignalMetalChik? I don't know, but here she is.

America For Me

Only a few days late for the July 4th holiday, here is a poem not so often quoted, but one that I find appealing for celebrating what is unique to the United States. The poem was written by Henry Van Dyke,but I was introduced to it by the children's author, Jean Fritz, who writes books about Americans and American history. Fritz grew up in China as the daughter of missionaries, and her autobiography, the name of which escapes me at the moment, is a touching and poignant account of her life there. In the book, she tells how, as a young girl, she found herself reciting this poem to herself, out loud, as her ship pulled into port on one of her visits back home to the U.S. , the "blessed Land of Room Enough."



America For Me

'TIS fine to see the Old World and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues and kings
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.

So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom, beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.

I like the German fir-woods in green battalions drilled;
I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing foutains filled;
But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day
In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her sway!

I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack!
The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back.
But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free--
We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.

Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
To the blessed Land of Room Enough, beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

Henry Van Dyke