News 'n' Views Online

Grow up!

People have begun to take notice of the effects that treating kids and teens like eternal babies is having on our society. More and more people whose date of birth would lead us to expect a certain level of maturity from them are simply refusing to "act their age." One is tempted to shout "Just grow up!"

An article in London's Telegraph by Michael Bywater titled "We’re all big babies" deals with this issue. In a humorous manner, he compares modern society with his grandfather’s world. Notice this excerpt:

My grandfather was born in 1888 and he didn’t have a lifestyle. He didn’t need one: he had a life.

He had a hat and a car and a wife and two sons and a housekeeper and a maid and a nanny for the children, and the housekeeper had a dog and the dog had a canker and lived in a kennel.

My grandfather read Charles Dickens mostly. Sometimes they went on holiday. His house was furnished with furniture.

There were some exotic things in it, brought back from exotic places. The most exotic things were African carvings and Benares brassware. The African carving had been brought back from a war, possibly the Boer one.

The brassware was brought back from Benares by my grand-father’s friend Dr Chand, who lived next door but was a Brahmin from Benares.

Dr Chand didn’t have a lifestyle either. Nobody had a lifestyle then, because there was nobody to tell them to, and anyway they were too busy having lives.

They were grown-ups. They went about their business. In my grandfather’s case, it was seeing patients and making them better, where possible. In Dr Chand’s case, it was the same, because he was a doctor too.

I suspect that my grandfather’s life was real in a sense that my father’s life hasn’t quite been, and my life is not at all.

The crucial difference is my grandfather’s lack of self-consciousness, and that self-consciousness is a hallmark of the perpetual, infantilised adolescents we have all become, monsters of introspection hovering twitchily on the edge of self-obsession, occasionally aware that the life that exists only to be examined is barely manageable; barely, indeed, a life.

It is a preparation for a life. The consistently introspective life of the Big Baby is as much a simulacrum as life on Big Brother.

To keep the simulacrum going we need help. And we need that help because that help is available.

It’s the old paradox. We need distraction from our fragmented and solitary lives because the distractions available to us have rendered our lives fragmented and solitary.

And we need lifestyle advice from magazines and websites and newspaper supplements and health advisers and personal trainers precisely because we are being nagged about our lifestyle all the time by magazines and websites and newspaper supplements and health advisers and personal trainers…

If one of the markers of adulthood is autonomy, then one of the preconditions of autonomy is being left alone.

My grandfather wasn’t nagged. Once he turned 21, he was a man, and a grown-up, and nobody battered him round the clock with opportunities he was missing, miseries he didn’t know he had, aspirations ditto, inadequacies doubly so.

Nobody told him about being good in bed, grooming tips, what his car said about him, what he should have to eat, how much he should drink, what his house said about him, how Benares brassware was so over, where he should go on holiday, what this season’s must-have product would be, how his suits should look.

He knew some of these things, and didn’t care about the others because nobody was drawing them to his attention. He knew what his suits should look like: trousers, waistcoat, jacket, all made out of the same material.

He knew about grooming: you shaved. He knew what he should eat: breakfast, lunch, dinner. He probably had no idea that good-in-bed even existed, or that furniture did anything except furnish, or that where he went on holiday was of any significance, or that his car said anything about him at all, except ‘Oh, here comes Dr Bywater, I recognise his car.’

But the Big Babies have no such autonomy, and are harangued to death; nor have they learned the adult trick of simply ignoring the fishwife-and-huckster voices. Instead, Baby tries to comply.

At the end of his rather lenghtyl article, Bywater offers a section on "How to be an adult." I’ve included it here for your enjoyment:

Don’t be affronted Being affronted (or offended, or complaining about ‘inappropriateness’) is no response for a grown-up. Only children believe the world should conform to their own view of it: a sort of magical thinking that can only lead to warfare, terrorism, unmanageable short-term debt and the Blair/Bush alliance

Mistrust anything catchy, whether it’s the Axis of Evil, advertising slogans, or blatant branding (‘New Labour’). Catchiness exists to prevent thought and to disguise motive. Grown-ups can think for themselves

Ignore celebrities, except when they are doing what they are celebrated for doing: acting, playing football et cetera. Skill does not confer moral, political or intellectual discrimination. (Except in the case of writers. Writers know everything and can lecture you with impunity.) If a celebrity is not celebrated for doing anything but being a celebrity, smile politely but pay no notice

We should not assume that market forces will decide wisely. The market is rigged by manipulation and infantilisation

Consider our own motivations. We may rail about being treated like children, ordered about, kept from the truth, nannied and exploited… but are we complicit in it? Could the reward actually be infantilisation itself?

Autonomy is the primary marker of being grown up. Babies, children and adolescents don’t have any. We don’t want to be in their boat

Suspect administration Its purpose is to free the organisation to do what it’s meant to do: but the triumph of the administrators - the lawyers, the accountants, the professional managers – means that too many organisations now believe that what they are meant to do is administer themselves. This is a profoundly infantile attitude

Do not love yourself unconditionally. Such love is for babies and comes from their mothers. Ignore fashion, particularly in clothes. You don’t want to look like a teenager for ever

Never do business with a company offering ‘solutions’ as in ‘ergonomic furniture solutions which minimise the postural strain associated with sitting’ (chairs) and ‘Post Office mailing solutions’ (brown paper). The word suggests we have a problem, but since we are grown-ups, that is for us to decide

Denounce relativism at every turn. Shouting ‘not fair’ is childish. Demanding respect without earning it is childish. Don’t fear seriousness. Babies aren’t allowed to be serious

Watch our language. Is there really much difference between a six-year-old in a fright-wig and his father’s waders shouting ‘I'm the Mighty Wurgle-Burgle-Urgley-Goo’ and an ostensible grown-up demanding to be called ‘Tony Blair’s Respect Tsar’?

Hide Grown-ups are not required to be perpetually accountable, while the instincts of government and big business, both of which are, almost by their nature, great infantilisers, are to keep an eye on everyone all the time

Eat it up There is nothing more babyish than having dietary requirements

Never vote for, do business with or be pleasant to anyone who uses the words ‘ordinary people’

Stem Cell Research or Merely a Pro-Abortion Agenda?

Amongst all the controversy generated by Rush Limbaugh’s justified criticism of actor Michael J. Fox’s support of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR), the mainstream media (MSM) are obviously, intentionally turning the focus away from the real issue. The real issue is that adult stem cell research (ASCR) has produced many positive effects and that it can be done without killing a human being (as opposed to ESCR).

If Michael J. Fox and the MSM are really serious about cures for Parkinson’s Disease and other illnesses, why don’t they campaign for and seek to fund more ASCR? According to FOXNews.com (no relationship to the actor . . .), "since 2001, according to federal records, his [M.J. Fox’s] Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research has raised an astonishing $80 million for research." Why doesn’t he funnel some of those millions into research that has proven itself by providing concrete results? The only conclusion to which one is forced to come is that the unstated agenda of M.J. Fox (and countless other members of the Rich & Famous Club), of the MSM, and of liberals in general in regards to stem cell research really doesn’t have as much to do with research as with abortion. The Right to Choose (to Kill Babies) must be protected at all costs.

For those who may not be aware of all the good that has come through ASCR, The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics has an astonishing fact sheet on its web site. It is downloadable as a score chart with adult stem cells leading embryonic stem cells 72-0. Here are the diseases being helped by ASCR:

CANCERS:

Brain Cancer, Retinoblastoma, Ovarian Cancer, Skin Cancer: Merkel Cell Carcinoma, Testicular Cancer, Tumors Abdominal Organs Lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Acute Myelogenous Leukemia, Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia, Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia, Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia, Cancer of the Lymph Nodes: Angioimmunoblastic Lymphadenopathy, Multiple Myeloma, Myelodysplasia, Breast Cancer, Neuroblastoma, Renal Cell Carcinoma, Various Solid Tumors, Soft Tissue Sarcoma, Ewing’s Sarcoma, Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia, Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis, Poems Syndrome, Myelofibrosis

AUTO-IMMUNE DISEASES:

Systemic Lupus, Sjogren’s Syndrome, Myasthenia, Autoimmune Cytopenia, Scleromyxedema, Scleroderma, Crohn’s Disease, Behcet’s Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Juvenile Arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, Polychondritis, Systemic Vasculitis, Alopecia Universalis, Buerger’s Disease

CARDIOVASCULAR:

Acute Heart Damage, Chronic Coronary Artery Disease

OCULAR:

Corneal regeneration

IMMUNODEFICIENCIES:

Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Syndrome, X-Linked Lymphoproliferative Syndrome, X-Linked Hyper Immunoglobulin M Syndrome

NEURAL DEGENERATIVE DISEASES AND INJURIES:

Parkinson’s Disease, Spinal Cord Injury, Stroke Damage

ANEMIAS AND OTHER BLOOD CONDITIONS:

Sickle Cell Anemia, Sideroblastic Anemia, Aplastic Anemia, Red Cell Aplasia, Amegakaryocytic Thrombocytopenia, Thalassemia, Primary Amyloidosis, Diamond Blackfan Anemia, Fanconi’s Anemia, Chronic Epstein-Barr Infection

WOUNDS AND INJURIES:

Limb Gangrene, Surface Wound Healing, Jawbone Replacement, Skull Bone Repair

OTHER METABOLIC DISORDERS:

Hurler’s Syndrome, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Krabbe Leukodystrophy, Osteopetrosis, Cerebral X-Linked Adrenoleukodystrophy

LIVER DISEASE:

Chronic Liver Failure, Liver Cirrhosis

BLADDER DISEASE:

End-Stage Bladder Disease

Democrats in Power

Many Americans are justifiably angry with the Republican Congressional leadership. The Republican elite seems to have lost its way and could pay dearly for its lack of direction 2 weeks from today. Democrats seem set to take over the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate.

What would the agenda of a Democrat Congress be? The Republican Study Committee offers an abridged list of some of the legislation that has actually been introduced in the House of Representatives by Democrats. Read on and laugh, weep . . . and be alarmed:

• Justice for the Unprotected against Sexually Transmitted Infections among the Confined and Exposed Act (JUSTICE) Act (Lee, D-CA)—H.R. 6083. Requires community organizations to be allowed to distribute sexual barrier protection devices (e.g. condoms) in federal prisons. Also prohibits a federal prison from taking adverse action against a prisoner who possesses or uses a sexual barrier protection device.
• Crack-Cocaine Equitable Sentencing Act (Rangel, D-NY)—H.R. 2456. Eliminates the mandatory minimum sentence for crack-cocaine convictions.
• Tupac Shakur Records Release Act of 2006 (McKinney, D-GA)—H.R. 4968. Enshrines copies of government records concerning rapper Tupac Shakur in a specially created collection at the National Archives.
• Antibullying Campaign Act (Nadler, D-NY)—H.R. 3787. Creates a new federal grant program aimed at reducing bullying in public schools "based on any distinguishing characteristic of an individual."
• To provide for coverage under the Medicare and Medicaid Programs of incontinence undergarments (Frank, D-MA)—H.R. 1052. Makes adult diapers a covered item under Medicare and Medicaid.
• Gas Stamp Act (McDermott, D-WA)—H.R. 3712. Creates billions of dollars in gas stamps each year for people to get free gas, to be distributed to those already eligible for food stamps.
• States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana Act (Frank, D-MA)—H.R. 2087. Allows physicians in states with medical marijuana laws to prescribe marijuana without violating federal law.
• Ex-Offenders Voting Rights Act (Rangel, D-NY)—H.R. 663. Allows those convicts who are just out of prison to vote.
• Department of Peace and Nonviolence Act (Kucinich, D-OH)—H.R. 3760. Establishes a U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence, as well as a Peace Day. The department would promote "human rights," international conflict prevention, nonviolent intervention, structured mediation, and peaceful conflict resolution.
• National Health Insurance Act (Dingell, D-MI)—H.R. 15. Institutes a new 5% value-added tax on property and services and creates a board to oversee payment to any individual for medical services not covered by Medicare.
• Freedom of Choice Act (Nadler, D-NY)—H.R. 5151. Creates a right to unrestricted pre-viability abortions, and late terms abortions for the life and health of the mother.
• End the War in Iraq Act (McGovern, D-MA)—H.R. 4232. Defunds the War in Iraq, forcing immediate troop withdrawal.
• Public Interest Lawyer Assistance Relief Act (Andrews, D-NJ)—H.R. 1753. Forgives the law school debt for attorneys working for a tax-exempt organization or the government.
• A Living Wage, Jobs for All Act (Lee, D-CA)—H.R. 1050. Builds on and strengthens FDR’s "Economic Bill of Rights," creating rights to "decent" jobs, income for individuals unable to work, a "decent" living for farmers, freedom from monopolies, "decent" housing, "adequate" health care, Social Security, education, work training, collective bargaining, a safe working environment, information on trends in pollution sources and products and processes that affect the well-being of workers throughout the world, voting, and personal security. The bill also requires the Attorney General to create a registry of all corporations convicted of violating state or federal law.
• Social Security Forever Act (Wexler, D-FL)—H.R. 2472. Imposes a new income tax on workers, employers, and self-employed businessmen to fund Social Security.
• Health Security for All Americans Act (Baldwin, D-WI)—H.R. 2133. Requires states to create programs to ensure universal health coverage, and allows states to force employers to pay for health insurance for their employees.
• Universal National Service Act (Rangel, D-NY)—H.R. 4752. Makes it an obligation of every U.S. citizen, and every other person residing in the U.S., between the ages of 18 and 42, to perform a two-year period of national service, either as a member of an active or reserve component of the armed forces or in a civilian capacity that promotes national defense.
• Living American Wage Act (Green, D-TX)—H.R. 5731. Mandates that the federal minimum wage be equal to or greater than 112% of the federal poverty threshold beginning in 2007, and states that the minimum wage should be revised every four years.
• Media Ownership Reform Act (Hinchey, D-NY)—H.R. 3302. Restricts ownership of radio and television stations, forcing some owners to divest their holdings, and regulates broadcast content.
• Universal Education Act (Kind, D-WI)—H.R. 3930. Creates a Universal Education Corporation that provides taxpayer dollars to foreign countries that enter into education reform agreements with the U.S.
• Medicare for All Act (Dingell, D-MI)—H.R. 4683. Increases taxes on workers and employers to offer to all citizens, and other individuals legally present in the U.S., Medicare benefits equivalent to the health care plans federal employees receive.
• Menu Education and Labeling Act (DeLauro, D-CT)—H.R. 5563. Regulates what certain restaurants must print on their menus.
• Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States regarding the right of all citizens of the United States to a public education of equal high quality (Jackson, D-IL)—H.J.Res. 29. Creates a constitutional right to equal public education.
• Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States regarding the right of citizens of the United States to health care of equal high quality (Jackson, D-IL)—H.J.Res. 30. Creates a constitutional right to equal health care.
• Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting the right to decent, safe, sanitary, and affordable housing (Jackson, D-IL)—H.J.Res. 32 and Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting the right to a home (Rangel, D-NY)—H.J.Res 40. Creates a constitutional right to housing.
• Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting the right to full employment and balanced growth (Jackson, D-IL)—H.J.Res. 35. Creates a constitutional right to full employment.

Married or Just "Shacking Up"?

As Christians, we know that God places marriage at the top of human relationships. From Genesis (the marriage of Adam and Eve) to Revelation (the wedding of the Lamb) the Bible shares examples of marriages (both good and bad) and teaches us principles on how to have a successful one.

At WorldNetDaily, Dennis Prager has an interesting article titled "5 reasons not to shack up." I don’t know whether or not Prager is a Christian, but his article offers some common sense points in support of marriage. Here it is:

I have always believed that there is no comparing living together with marriage. There are enormous differences between being a "husband" or a "wife" and being a "partner," a "friend" or a "significant other"; between a legal commitment and a voluntary association; between standing before family and community to publicly announce one’s commitment to another person on the one hand and simply living together on the other.

But attending the weddings of two of my three children this past summer made the differences far clearer and far more significant.

First, no matter what you think when living together, your relationship with your significant other changes the moment you marry. You have now made a commitment to each other as husband and wife in front of almost everyone significant in your life. You now see each other in a different and more serious light.

Second, words matter. They deeply affect us and others. Living with your "boyfriend" is not the same as living with your "husband." And living with your "girlfriend" or any other title you give her is not the same as making a home with your "wife." Likewise, when you introduce that person as your wife or husband to people, you are making a far more important statement of that person’s role in your life than you are with any other title.

Third, legality matters. Being legally bound to and responsible for another person matters. It is an announcement to him/her and to yourself that you take this relationship with the utmost seriousness. No words of affection or promises of commitment, no matter how sincere, can match the seriousness of legal commitment.

Fourth, to better appreciate just how important marriage is to the vast majority of people in your life, consider this: There is no event, no occasion, no moment in your life when so many of the people who matter to you will convene in one place as they will at your wedding. Not the birth of any of your children, not any milestone birthday you may celebrate, not your child’s bar mitzvah or confirmation. The only other time so many of those you care about and who care about you will gather in one place is at your funeral. But by then, unless you die young, nearly all those you love who are older than you will have already died.

So this is it. Your wedding will be the greatest gathering of loved ones in your life. There is a reason. It is the biggest moment of your life. No such event will ever happen if you do not have a wedding.

Fifth, only with marriage will your man’s or your woman’s family ever become your family. The two weddings transformed the woman in my son’s life into my daughter-in-law and transformed the man in my daughter’s life into my son-in-law. And I was instantly transformed from the father of their boyfriend or girlfriend into their father-in-law. This was the most dramatic new realization for me. I was now related to my children’s partners. Their siblings and parents became family. Nothing comparable happens when two people live together without getting married.

Many women callers to my radio show have told me that the man in their life sees no reason to marry. "It’s only a piece of paper," these men (and now some women) argue.

There are two answers to this argument.

One is that if in fact "it is only a piece of paper," what exactly is he so afraid of? Why does he fear a mere piece of paper? Either he is lying to himself and to his woman or lying only to her because he knows this piece of paper is far more than "only a piece of paper."

The other response is all that is written above. Getting married means I am now your wife, not your live-in; I am now your husband, not your significant other. It means that we get to have a wedding where, before virtually every person alive who means anything to us, we commit ourselves to each other. It means that we have decided to bring all these people we love into our lives. It means we have legal obligations to one another. It means my family becomes yours and yours becomes mine.

Thank God my children, ages 30 and 23, decided to marry. Their partners are now my daughter-in-law and son-in-law. They are therefore now mine to love, not merely two people whom my children love.

When you realize all that is attainable by marrying and unattainable by living together without marrying, you have to wonder why anyone would voluntarily choose not to marry the person he or she wishes to live with forever.

Unless, of course, one of you really isn’t planning on forever.