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Commentary

Does going to university necessarily educate you and provide you with job skills?

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The Heritage Foundation explains why universities don’t necessarily provide students with a useful education, at least in the non-STEM areas.

Excerpt:

Guess how many top-tier universities offer a course on Lady Gaga? Four! The University of Virginia, the University of South Carolina, Wake Forest University, and Arizona State University all now offer semester-long explorations of Lady Gaga’s apparently profound influence—since 2007—on music, fashion, and the LGBT lifestyle. Yet none of these universities requires students to take a course in U.S. history before graduation. Professors and faculty at top-ranked institutions are giving preference to frivolous classes at the expense of true education.

In a new study by the National Association of Scholars, only one in 75 top universities required students to study western civilization. In 1964, more than half required students take a two-semester course that covered the history of western civilization from Greece to the modern era. The other half of universities required courses that guaranteed graduates understood the history of their society. But studying the foundations of our society no longer seems to be a priority for American universities.

It is not just studying western civilization that has been tossed out the window. There is a dearth in all general requirements. Asking “What Will They Learn,” the American Council of Trustees and Alumni has found that only 20 percent of universities require students to take a U.S. government or history class. Only 5 percent require students to take a class in economics. Many, including top liberal arts colleges, have no general education requirements. With this setup, it is increasingly unlikely that college graduates will leave their alma maters even grasping the basics.

I recommend going to university and I have the BS and MS in computer science, myself.  But if, you have a child in university, my advice is to 1) monitor every course they choose, and 2) have a career mentor meet with them periodically to make sure that what they are learning is what is actually needed in the field.

Regarding the general need for history and economics, I think this is something that it might be better for students to learn before they get to university. It’s probably safer to learn history on your own, and then just take economics. I would try to avoid any course where the teacher can teach their point of view and isolate it from reality. Stick with math, science, engineering and physics.

News

Could tougher gun control laws lower the violent crime rate?

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Let’s look at what happened after gun laws changed in Washington, D.C. and Chicago.

Excerpt:

Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down gun control laws in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Politicians predicted disaster. “More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence,” Washington’s Mayor Adrian Fenty warned the day the court made its decision.

Chicago’s Mayor Daley predicted that we would “go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun and we’ll settle it in the streets…”

The New York Times even editorialized this month about the Supreme Court’s “unwise” decision that there is a right for people “to keep guns in the home.”

But Armageddon never happened. Newly released data for Chicago shows that, as in Washington, murder and gun crime rates didn’t rise after the bans were eliminated — they plummeted. They have fallen much more than the national crime rate.

Not surprisingly, the national media have been completely silent about this news.

One can only imagine the coverage if crime rates had risen. In the first six months of this year, there were 14% fewer murders in Chicago compared to the first six months of last year – back when owning handguns was illegal. It was the largest drop in Chicago’s murder rate since the handgun ban went into effect in 1982.

Meanwhile, the other four most populous cities saw a total drop at the same time of only 6 percent.

Similarly, in the year after the 2008 “Heller” decision, the murder rate fell two-and-a-half times faster in Washington than in the rest of the country.

It also fell more than three as fast as in other cities that are close to Washington’s size. And murders in Washington have continued to fall.

If you compare the first six months of this year to the first six months of 2008, the same time immediately preceding the Supreme Court’s late June “Heller” decision, murders have now fallen by thirty-four percent.

Gun crimes also fell more than non-gun crimes.

Robberies with guns fell by 25%, while robberies without guns have fallen by eight percent. Assaults with guns fell by 37%, while assaults without guns fell by 12%.

Just as with right-to-carry laws, when law-abiding citizens have guns some criminals stop carrying theirs.

And it’s not just in big cities. MSNBC explains how legal gun ownership reduces crime.

Excerpt:

Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.

The decline in gun homicides also comes as U.S. firearm sales are skyrocketing, according to federal background checks that are required for most gun sales. After holding stable at 8.5 to 9 million checks from 1999 to 2005, the FBI reported a surge to 10 million in 2006, 11 million in 2007, nearly 13 million in 2008 and more than 14 million last year, a 55 percent increase in just four years.

In fact, just this week a pregnant woman thwarted burglars who invaded her home by pumping a shotgun to load a shell. The noise alone was enough to scare them off.

If you ever need to debate this, I recommend buying these academic studies published by the University of Chicago Press and by Harvard University Press. The former shows how crime rates dropped in the USA when Americans rescinded gun control laws, and the latter shows how crime rates rose in the UK when the British strengthened their gun control laws. Sometimes is good to have the data handy.

Want both sides? Then watch a debate on gun control

This debate is in 13 parts, featuring the two of the best proponents of legal firearm ownership – John Lott and Gary Kleck. The real sparks fly during the Q&A, so don’t miss that. (If you can’t watch the debate, then you can read this post and this post instead).

Here’s part 1, which contains the introduction.

Here are the remaining speeches:

This is everything you need to know about whether legal ownership of firearms reduce crime.

News

Gay student gets Christian campus club suspended at SUNY Buffalo

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From Christian Post.

Full text:

The State University of New York-Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo) is looking into allegations that a Christian campus group is in violation of school policy and the law by requiring its leaders to sign a faith-based statement.

This week’s investigation by a committee of the Student Association comes after sophomore Steven Jackson stepped down from a leadership position with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship over differing views on sexuality.

JoAnna Datz, president of the Student Association at SUNY Buffalo, told The Christian Post Wednesday that “the [investigative] committee has been meeting and collecting objective information, reviewing the Student Association Constitution, clubs documents, and just collecting information.”

She said there is a lot of information that the senators need to be educated on regarding what happened between Jackson and the club.

On Friday, the university’s newspaper, The Spectrum, reported on a letter sent to InterVarsity’s executive board informing the group of its suspension. It stated: “All peripheral privileges afforded to Student Association clubs are revoked for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship until further notice.”

[…]Jackson served as InterVarsity’s treasurer and is openly gay.

Datz told The Christian Post that when a club is formed at SUNY Buffalo their constitution is reviewed before they can become recognized. So originally InterVarsity’s constitution was approved. But if they made any changes since its inception, none of those have been reviewed by the SA. It wasn’t until last year, Datz said, that a rule was put in place that any changes to club constitutions must be reviewed.

The investigation committee will be looking over InterVarsity’s constitution. The campus group requires leaders to be in agreement with its doctrinal statement, purpose statement, and living a life of Christian integrity. Membership, however, is open to all.

The requirement that leaders sign a certain set of beliefs is at the heart of the controversy. Datz said this week they have also been debating the differences between membership and leadership in this particular case.

Jim Lundgren, director of Collegiate Ministries for Intervarsity, stressed to The Christian Post that the organization does not discriminate based on sexual orientation. In Jackson’s case, however, “he decided to pursue a sexually active homosexual relationship” and InterVarsity doesn’t affirm a sexually active relationship outside of marriage.

SA’s executive board is expected to make a decision this coming Sunday at their meeting.

If InterVarsity is found to be in violation of antidiscrimination policies, Datz said the senate could choose to derecognize them as a club, take away their funding or require that they change their constitution.

But now I turn to the underlying problem.

Some Christians don’t think there is a problem with that

The Biblical standard is no sex before or outside of marriage and marriage is defined as being between one man and one woman. In general, even divorce isn’t permitted. That’s what Christians believe about sex. So what happens when someone who doesn’t believe that wants to join a Christian organization in a leadership capacity?

Christians are not being mean when they exclude a person from an assembly of Christians because of a public, unrepented, sinful lifestyle.

Look at 1 Cor 5:

1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife.

2 And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this?

3 For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this.

4 So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5 hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.

 6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?

7 Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

8 Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

 9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 

10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 

11But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

 12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 

13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”

So, this might be a surprise to many of you, but there is actually a lot of support for the idea of shunning someone who claims to be a Christian, yet who openly commits to a lifestyle that opposes the Bible’s moral standards. 1 Cor 5 actuallysays that it is ok to get along with non-Christian sinners, and not OK to get along with people who claim to be Christians but who are in some serious sinful situation that they are not sorry about at all. I think it’s a great idea to be friends with people who are non-Christian, and to treat them nicely, so long as they know that we disagree with them on certain issues and they are OK with letting us do that. Everyone sins – but Christians shouldn’t sin unrepentantly and repeatedly and then try to justify it as consistent with Christianity. But non-Christians are exempt from Christian moral rules, obviously.

What annoys me is when nice “Christians” try to make me feel guilty for taking the Bible seriously on sexual morality. Just because you want to think of yourself as “nice” according to the standards of the age, and you want non-Christians to like you and ask you out with them to movies, it doesn’t mean that suddenly it has become OK to redefine the Bible to mean what you want it to mean. Those rules are there for a reason, and your job is to adapt your views and defend them. You aren’t in charge.

The problem is that Christianity has been redefined so that people in the Church now think that their job is to sing happy songs, feel good, and then go out into the world telling everyone that the Bible has nothing at all to say about right and wrong. Instead of telling people “you are free to do what you like, but doing X is not wise or moral”, now we say “whatever you want to do is fine with me, as long as you feel good”. We want to be liked by men more than we want to be liked by God.