Trip Dyer, one of the brightest of all our FRC interns, challenged me when I told his class I thought Winston Churchill’s life was the most documented human life ever lived. Trip thought that it was likely that the present Prince William’s life has been better recorded. He may have had a point there.

We certainly didn’t have photographs of Winston’s minutes after his birth–seven months after his parents’ marriage–on this day in 1874. But we know he was born not in his parent’s fashionable London flat. Instead, after his mother’s riding mishap that day, he came into the world early. He was born at Blenheim Palace, the ducal estate of his famous Marlborough ancestors. They were not nearly so famous then as they would become. Winston would write four great volumes on the great Duke of Marlborough, who had defeated the armies of Louis XIV and who was a central figure in England’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688-89. Many American Founders looked to that revolution as their model for our own.

Winston was intensely proud of his noble English forbears. But he was just as proud of his American antecedents. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was a beauty from New York, whose tycoon father owned the New York Times. Jennie’s ancestor was said to be Pocahontas. That American princess married an Englishman and captivated the royal court of her own day with her beauty and wit.

Winston’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a reforming politician, a Tory democrat, who was on track to become Prime Minister before he rashly challenged his party leader, Prime Minister Salisbury. Like Icarus who flew too close to the sun, Lord Randolph fell from the post of Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer–second highest in the House of Commons, never to rise again.

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Do we think it will stop with banning crosses by the side of remote highways in the Utah desert? It will not. The atheizers will not rest until they have sandblasted all the crosses in American public life and bulldozed all references to Jesus on federal property.

I thought of this yesterday when I served as an usher at the Naval Academy Chapel. A dear friend had passed away suddenly.

Standing by the elevator, I could really study the stained glass windows in the chapel. The sun streamed through, brilliantly lighting the figure of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut. The 64-year old Farragut is shown lashed to the rigging of his ship, the USS Hartford, at the Battle of Mobile Bay. Fearless as he was, he suffered from vertigo. He is known to history for one great saying; “Da-n the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Farragut’s family wanted us to know that, salty sailor that he was, he was also a man of deep faith. So the well-thumbed prayer book of Admiral Farragut is encased in this Chapel.

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The Thomas More Society reports that an Illinois judge yesterday ordered the doors of the Northern Illinois Women’s Center to remain shut pending a formal public hearing. The abortion center lost its license some months ago after failing public health inspections, the first inspections in 14 years.

Lawyers at the Society say the inspections uncovered numerous health and safety violations, including:

• Gynecological cannulas (surgical instruments inserted during abortion) stained with “brown substance”
• Shoes stored inside open box of surgical gloves
• Equipment used to sterilize medical instruments failed biological testing
• All 3 operating rooms failed to ensure a sanitary environment
• Box of opened surgical gloves stained with a dried “brown substance”
• Failure to prevent contamination of surgical equipment
• Operating rooms not staffed with a qualified Registered Nurse as required by law
• Abortion practitioners without hospital admitting privileges

Here’s hoping it won’t take 14 years to close the place for good.

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It was encouraging to read Michael Gerson’s column in The Washington Post recently on scientific advances which raise the prospect of “Putting AIDS on the road to extinction.” He is right to say, “Religious conservatives have no objections to treatment and are neither shocked nor alarmed by circumcision.”

However, he ignores two huge “elephants in the room.” The first is the role of behavior change in reducing infections. A Ugandan AIDS prevention official wrote in the Post in 2008 about his country’s success in dramatically reducing AIDS prevalence through use of the “ABC” message—“Abstain” from sex until marriage, “Be faithful” to your spouse, and “use Condoms” only if you fail at A and B. Gerson celebrates that the cost of treatment is now less than $350 per person; but Sam L. Ruteikara noted, “Our successful ABC campaign cost just 29 cents per person each year.”

Gerson noted that circumcision has reduced “the risk of transmission from women to men,” and that early treatment reduced “transmission to a heterosexual partner.” This may be encouraging for Africa, but is less so at home, where the CDC reports that “more than half (53%) of all people living with HIV” are men who have sex with men (MSM), “the only risk group in which new HIV infections have been increasing steadily.” Discouraging anal intercourse and sex with multiple partners—practices not unique to homosexual men, but more prevalent among them—are part of “the only morally acceptable strategy” to help America share in the end of AIDS.

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Bill McGurn’s piece in today’s Wall Street Journal describes how a wonderful ministry to the poor – the Morristown, New Jersey Community Soup Kitchen and Outreach Center – has now been declared a “retail” establishment by a local bureaucrat. As a result, the ministry could be hit with up to $150,000 in new annual costs. According to McGurn, this ministry “has grown into a network that links restaurants, corporate sponsors and community groups with volunteers from nearly three dozen church congregations, including this reporter’s. The result is a hot meal to anyone who comes to the door each noon, no questions asked.”  In other words, it works – no wonder local government feels threatened by it.

A significant part of the new costs will come from the city’s ban on home-cooked meals being served at the Center; as McGurn asks, “Do you feel safer and better off now that we’ve protected you from home-baked apple pie?”

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Recently, Hot Air reported that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi doesn’t understand why the U.S. Catholic bishops are against requiring insurance companies to cover contraceptives, including known abortifacients.  She belittles Catholics who object, conscientiously, to paying for or performing services that their church teaches are wrong.

Perhaps she should consider the Catholic Catechism, which says that “Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil.”  What could be more good than defending life?  And what could be more evil than to disregard it, or denigrate those who seek to uphold it.

Even though the former Speaker is Catholic, she seems to have long forgotten that Catholicism is unequivocal in support of the sanctity of human life, from conception onward.  This teaching is discussed throughout the Catechism, and there is even a section regarding the usage of abortifacients, and the Catholic Church’s stance against the use.

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Adding his voice to FRC’s own Rob Schwarzwalder, Joseph Sunde has a great response over at valuesandcapitalism.com to Rich Cizik’s recent take-down of conservative Christians. Where Cizik is contented to battle straw men, Sunde challenges him with actual ideas held by conservative evangelicals:

It’s not that we think supply side economics create strong economies and benefit everyone across the economic spectrum (including, ahem, the poor). It’s not that we think free exchange and accurate prices create opportunities for real, sustainable growth and economy recovery. It’s not that we think the modern public education system hurts the poor and minimum wage laws lead to poverty traps. And it’s most certainly not that we think most progressive social programs lead to dehumanization, dependency and economic slavery.

No. It’s because we have a fetish for fat cats and we’re brainwashed by clever marketing. Obviously

Then the money quote:

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You be the judge.

First, during Tony Perkins’ interview with Chris Matthews on the 11th, Matthews opens the segment with these words:

“Tony, I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I do trust your conscience. You’re more conservative than me on cultural and moral issues, maybe, although I’m not sure. When it comes to actual morality, I think we may be closer than you believe.”

Matthews goes on, “I want to get to Tony here because I find him fascinating, because I do trust him.”

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I recently saw a picture of an Occupy Wall Street poster that read, “The Game of Capitalism Breeds Dishonest Men.” Over the past three months, the “Occupy” movement has seemed to push a sentiment of anti-capitalism that has blocked city streets, cost local NYC businesses nearly half a million dollars, and created an atmosphere of hostility in various OWS protests across the country. It’s a bit troubling to see such a movement that seems to go against every economic principle that has directed this country.

The more and more I see my Twitter feed full of the term “#OWS” or “#OccupyDC”, I become a little more disheartened. However, I’ve recently come across a few articles that have made me feel a little bit better about my beliefs and show what economic principles this country runs on: capitalistic ones. In article on Mark Levin’s website, Gary Wolfram shows that, through the ages, capitalism seems to be the economic structure of choice. He points back to his experience as an educator. He would ask his students where they would like to be born, if they had the ability to chose. Never did students state that they would want to have grown up in North Korea, Zimbabwe, or Cuba. Time and time again, his students chose countries whose governments are based on free market principles that allow choice, competition, and growth.

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We already know who the featured speaker at the Gettysburg Address Sesquicentennial will be. Organizers of this one hundred fiftieth celebration have asked President Obama—two years ahead of 2013–to lead the list of distinguished Americans expected to commemorate President Lincoln’s immortal words, delivered November 19, 1863. Event planners must be assuming that Mr. Obama will be re-elected. It would be awkward, wouldn’t it, to have him be the lead speaker if he has been defeated for office?

Well, awkward fits. President Lincoln went up to Gettysburg by train the afternoon before the cemetery’s dedication. He tried to get some sleep that night, but revelers kept him up with their drinking and singing. The party atmosphere that prevailed in Gettysburg at that time was worse than awkward; it was ghastly. Lincoln seems not to have noted it.

Nor did he mind being asked merely to deliver “some appropriate remarks.” The President of the United States, the commander-in-chief of the greatest armies and navy this country had ever assembled, the Great Emancipator himself, was given only a secondary role in the ceremony. It reminds us of the story of Lincoln greeting an old friend from Illinois. The visitor expressed surprise that the nation’s leader should be blacking his own boots. “Whose boots should I black,” Lincoln asked humorously.

I have been to Gettysburg dozens of times. I never tire of seeing that battlefield and walking through that National Cemetery, that hallowed ground. I took scores of students there on field studies. I made a point always of having them join hands atop the monument to the 20^th Maine Regiment, the unit commanded by Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

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There’s a theme being played out on some radio talk shows: Just nominate any minimally acceptable candidate for president, so long as he (or she) is not scary, and that candidate will cruise to victory, pulling in a strong House and Senate majorities. The formidable Charles Krauthammer has been offering a variant of this notion. He says voter intensity doesn’t count. Every vote is equal in the voting booth.

As well intentioned as these intelligent callers and commentators are, they are wrong. Voter intensity is everything. It determines who shows up at those voting booths. Krauthammer and others perceived a strong conservative tide that swept away thousands of liberals in the 2010 elections. The country is moving conservative, they say.

The country is more conservative than liberal, to be sure. All polls show that about twice as many Americans count themselves conservative as liberal. But that does not assure that the GOP wins the next election.

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The United States just agree to place 2,500 Marines in Australia as a signal to the Chinese that even the Obama Administration recognizes, perhaps dimly, that something is amiss in Asia and the Pacific.  (See the informative AP story that seems to be doing some chest thumping for the Administration.)  In any case, China is in the news, and, as we know, it’s “One Child Policy” is a brutal offense to human rights whose enforcement requires the sort of intrusive police state that seems to get little attention in the American press.  That is merely one type of oppression which the Chinese people face.  The Washington Times has been running a series of articles from a new book, Bowing to Beijing: How Barack Obama is Hastening America’s Decline and Ushering A Century of Chinese Domination, by Brett Decker and William Triplett II.  If you are doing some Christmas book shopping for someone who has an interest in China, take a look at Brett Decker’s useful list of “Ten Books You Need to Read about the Chinese Threat.”

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A glittering panel was assembled this week on Washington’s EYE Street, the home of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). They had come to discuss Ronald Reagan’s career in the movies and how that influenced his political life. Before Reagan, people asked: “How can an actor be president?” After Reagan, people recognized his joke: “How can you be president if you haven’t been an actor?”

The panel was chaired by Politico’s John Harris. He led off by telling the 40-50 attendees that he graduated from high school in 1980 and cast his first presidential vote in 1984. Mr. Harris was too tactful to mention that it probably wasn’t cast for RR. That’s OK, 59% of the votes cast that year were cast for the Gipper; he carried 49 states.

The panelists included NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell, ABC News’ Sam Donaldson, former White House Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein, and, of course, former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) Dodd left the Senate in January to assume the presidency of the MPAA. I counted one likely vote for President Reagan of the five panelists. Fair and balanced.

Sen. Dodd was most charitable. He spoke of having gone to the White House early one morning for a meeting. The night before, President Reagan had “lost” the Louisville debate to challenger Walter Mondale. Fritz even got a baseball bat from his admirers in the press titled “The Louisville Slugger.” Dodd expected to find Reagan down in the mouth, or at least tired.

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According to today’s Wall Street Journal, a homosexual activist named John Becker owes Marcus Bachmann’s counseling practice $150 for failing to cancel two counseling appointments. Becker disputes this, asserting that he canceled the appointments on time and therefore owes nothing. As a result, Bachmann has told the gay rights organization “Truth Wins Out,” under whose auspices Becker secretly filmed an interview session with a Bachmann counselor in an effort to get anti-homosexual comments on tape (Becker failed; the counselor was tasteful and helpful throughout) that he will turn the bill over to a collection agency unless it is paid forthwith.

Bachmann, whose wife is running for the presidency and is therefore a target of activists who oppose his views on traditional marriage, argues that “it’s not the amount of money. For us, it’s the principle.” Imagine that: a business owner standing up for his staff and himself, using legal means to do so, and insisting that since Becker “signed a contract that stated he would pay for no-shows,” that Becker be held to account.

All I know of the case is what the Journal reports. If Becker is telling the truth – that he canceled his meetings in an appropriate time-frame – let him prove it. If he’s not, let him pay what he owes.

This is not a “petty and vindictive campaign of harassment and threats” against “Truth Wins Out,” as the group’s director, Wayne Besen, asserts. It’s about responsibility, keeping one’s word, and paying what is owed. “A promise made,” wrote the poet Robert Service, “is a debt unpaid.” Enough said.

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Dear Friends:

November is National Adoption Awareness Month, which is why FRC was proud to host Ryan Bomberger last week for his lecture, “Adoption: Be the Hope.” Ryan was himself adopted and, with his wife, has adopted two children. You can watch his moving presentation here. To learn about the pro-life, pro-adoption ministry of Ryan’s Radiance Foundation, go to www.theradiancefoundation.org.

One of the most daunting obstacles to adoption is its up-front cost, which can be as much as $40,000 per child. Although the federal adoption tax credit is very helpful, it does not cover what can be, for families of ordinary means, a great financial challenge.

It’s for that reason that the adoption ministry Lifesong (a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability) has set-up a program to help churches develop adoption funds. An adoption fund is a designated line-item in a church’s budget that helps church members pay for their adoption costs, either through a direct financial gift or low-or no-interest loan. As the beneficiaries of one such fund, my wife and I are eternally grateful for the generosity and selflessness of God’s people in helping us adopt our three children.

To learn more about adoption and related ministries, go to FRC’s www.RealCompassion.org, through which you can link to many organizations helping children at home and abroad.

Sincerely,

Rob Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice President
Family Research Council

P.S. Dr. Pat Fagan, Director of FRC’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI), has just released the second annual “Index of Belonging and Rejection.” The Index rank-orders the states and the 25 largest cities by the strength of belonging in their family, showing that less than 50 percent of American children reach adulthood having grown up in an intact married family. Click here to download the report.

Educational Freedom and Reform
Homeschooling

• “When Hippies Were the Ones Homeschooling,” Erik Hayden, The Atlantic
• “For home-school parents, classroom design is the subject du jour,” Kavita Daswani, Los Angeles Times

Legislation and Policy Proposals

• “Is the Prestige Worth It?,” Krystle Weeks, Family Research Council
• “Congrats, 2010 Grads! Your Debt Load Is the Heaviest,” Allison Linn, MSNBC
• “Wanted: 10 Million Skilled Workers,” Michael G. Morris, The Washington Times
• “Georgia schools cut Bible classes to pay bills,” Alicia Constant, WORLD Magazine
• “School Choice Programs Snowball,” Sheryl Blunt, Christianity Today
• “What Happened to Data-Driven Education Reform?,” Andrew G. Biggs, Lindsay Burke, and Jason Richwine, The Huffington Post
• “Capitalism on Campus: What Are Students Learning? What Should They Know?,” The Manhattan Institute

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The Washington Post reported Monday on Congressman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) proposed bill regarding theDistrict of Columbia. The legislation would allow D.C. to meet a long hoped-for goal of spending its tax dollars without Congress’s approval once the budget has been approved by the city council and mayor. The bill includes language that would preclude tax dollars from funding abortion in D.C., except to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest.

This provision is hardly surprising, given the language present in the existing federal Continuing Resolution and the stipulations of the Hyde Amendment which prevents federal funding of abortion through the Labor Health and Human Services bill.

What was actually surprising was the language with which the Post framed the conversation regarding potential and current D.C. law concerning taxpayer-funded abortions. Ben Pershing, the author of the blog post, writes that Rep. Issa’s bill would “prohibit D.C. from spending its own taxpayer funds to pay for abortions for low-income women” and notes that Mayor Gray’s spokesperson, Linda Wharton-Boyd, describes existing D.C. law as a “prohibition on using local dollars for abortion” [emphasis added].

Pershing is attempting to frame Rep. Issa’s bill as “big government” intrusion and D.C. local decision-making as “small government,” as though that were the larger moral argument at hand. But the fact is that this struggle is less about the origin and control of tax dollars and more about citizen rights of conscience regarding the bodily sovereignty of  the unborn. Funding for abortion must not proceed from any public treasury if the government controlling body retains any interest in protecting the consciences of its citizens.

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In Saturday’s New York Times, Columbia professor Jeffrey D. Sachs made the rather audacious claim, that “[t]he young people in Zuccotti Park and more than 1,000 cities have started America on a path to renewal.” [emphasis added]

To give Sachs and the entire Occupy movement the benefit of the doubt, we might try to view the chaos, mayhem, rape, murder, and general slovenliness as unfortunate distractions from this intended renewal.

Hypothetically, Ivy League professors, Occupyers, and conservative policy makers should be able to agree on a few points: Our great country needs renewal. We can tangibly mark American renewal or decline by measuring things like high school graduation rates and childhood poverty.

But our suggested paths towards renewal differ. Sachs calls for a vast influx of spending on education and other domestic programs. Occupiers held up a myriad of signs calling for jobs, justice, education… and weed.

But the facts seem to lead us down a different path—a path that values family stability, over government-funded programs. The FRC’s Marriage & Religion Research Institute is poised to release its Second Annual Index of Family Belonging and Rejection, this Thursday. The Index delves into the statistical details behind the bold claim that family structure actually matters to a child’s education and success.

Robert Frost once wrote about two paths in a yellow wood. Our paths towards “renewal” obviously diverge. At the moment, the path toward family stability is the one “less traveled by.” Taking it could make all the difference.

To attend Thursday’s event, please register here.

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Last week my brother and sister-in-law welcomed a new little lady. Sweet little Bella was an extra special gift and surprise because her parents, who have two young boys, were expecting another little boy but instead delivered a beautiful little girl much to their delight! Bella, of course, means beautiful in Italian. And a beauty she is.

I have always believed that a person’s name holds significance. Some people of faith even believe that God is so intimately involved in the creation of persons and their lives that He names his sons and daughters. Some parents entrusted with the life of a child prayerfully seek to “discern” the name of the precious life entrusted to them.

Sadly, this is not the case in India where disturbing gender biases haunt and hurt many women; this is played out even in naming little girls. A few weeks ago the Huffington Post ran a story about hundreds of young women who received the terribly sad name “Unwanted” at birth. It is horrifying to imagine a parent cruel enough to name a child “Unwanted.” only because the baby is a “she.”

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Rich Lowry, editor of National Review and one of the clearest thinkers writing today, has written an excellent comment about President Obama’s disparaging remarks about the American people and their “laziness” and “softness.’ More offensive than Mr. Obama’s patronization is the accusation itself: That Americans are unwilling to work, to try, to take risks. What bunk – to use the Latin phrase, “circumspice:” look around. What one sees is a nation that, in roughly 235 years, has created an economic engine unlike anything previously known in world history.

Ironically, as Lowry points out, extreme environmental activists are deterring our capacity to build and grow. These folk are essential to the very coalition upon which Mr. Obama depends for his political viability. Odd, since had the EPA existed in 1783, the restrictions it would have imposed would probably have made Connecticut the farthest reach of our continental expansion.

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