Entries by Admin

Reclaiming and Restoring the Pro-Life Label

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Far too many Americans have negative associations with the pro-life movement. It is not uncommon to hear opponents of abortion derided as self-righteous, hypocritical, and even misogynist. As someone who self-defines as “pro-life,” such negative associations grieve me deeply. I would much rather that people connect the term pro-life with phrases like dedicated, caring, showing the love of Jesus, and ministering to people’s needs.

Topic #11: Abortion

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Please consider the following potential leading questions for a conversation to be launched on August 29. #1: What do you project as the future of Roe vs. Wade? #2: Assuming that Roe vs. Wade will not the overturned, what reasonable steps can be taken to significantly reduce the number of abortions in our country? #3: […]

Rights, Regulations, and Human Dignity

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When we debate the issues of gun rights and gun control, I sometimes wonder if we realize how strange the argument appears from the outside. The idea that an “unrestricted right to gun ownership” must be maintained as a protection against government power sounds just a little over the top to contemporary ears, especially when America’s closest friends and allies place significant restrictions on gun ownership and so far have managed to avoid the descent into tyranny. Were the consequences of this American peculiarity to be benign, we might actually smile at this historical quirk, as we do for the British who believe they aren’t really part of Europe, or for Canadians who believe that they really won the War of 1812.

The Road to Solutions: Standing in Unity Against Gun Violence

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305 Chicagoans were murdered in the first seven months of 2012; the vast majority of them were victims of gun violence. Stories like that of 7-year old Heaven Sutton, gunned down in June by a stray bullet as she sat next to her mother at a candy stand outside their home, capture headlines. But gun violence is so commonplace in Chicago that murders rarely receive media attention. The gun-related tragedies in Chicago, where I live, are just one more reminder that gun violence has reached epidemic proportions in the United States.

A Heritage Worth Preserving

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The right to gun ownership was included among the ten freedoms made explicit in the Bill of Rights because these early Americans were sensitive to future encroachments on liberty that might necessitate acts of self-defense. The Founders knew that restricting self defense, like restricting speech, would be among the first acts of a rising tyranny.
Two-hundred years later, we face a cultural crisis that warrants reconsideration of the right to gun ownership. I’ll never forget meeting a young woman in a wheelchair at a Bible study in Denver, who I later learned was a victim of the Columbine High School massacre.

So Many Deaths; So Little Action

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The numbers on gun deaths in the United States are appalling and should be the source of distress and alarm for everyone, and surely for every Christian who believes in the sanctity of God-created human life. The mass shootings in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater and now at the Wisconsin Sikh temple attract headlines and much hand-wringing. And rightly so. But the carnage continues day in and day out. According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control in the United Sates in 2009 there were11,493 homicides with a firearm and 18,735 suicides with a firearm. This translated into an average of some 83 gun-related deaths every day These are facts that cannot be denied and ought to horrify us all. But by themselves they do not dictate—or even suggest—the public policy steps that should be taken. They define the problem; they do not define the answer.

Topic #10: Gun Control

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Please consider the following potential leading questions for a conversation to be launched on August 8: #1: Assuming that no “freedom” is without “limits,” what “reasonable limits” should be placed on the freedom to purchase guns and ammunition? #2: Why should any U. S. citizen be allowed to purchase an assault weapon? #3: What did […]

Educational Entrepreneurship

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Vouchers are a good start, but neither vouchers, nor charter schools, fellowships, nor innovative programs like Teach for America are a silver bullet. Research has demonstrated that educational entrepreneurship is the key to improvement. The one-size-fits-all pedagogies deployed by the education establishment for the last few decades are insufficient to meet the challenges and demands of a globalized economy and an increasingly diverse society

Two Fine Essays

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Even though the two essays by Amy Black and Paul Brink differ in the approaches they recommend, I somewhat surprisingly found myself largely in agreement with both of them. Both clearly recognize deep problems with our current K-12 educational system (if it can be called a system) and both sincerely seek answers rooted in a genuine concern for children and their families.