Tag Archives: Tolerance

Mentoring

Tad Hopp accumulates six figures of college debt, wants taxpayer bailout

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Brain vs Heart, from: theawkwardyeti.com
Brain vs Heart, from: theawkwardyeti.com

Here’s an interesting editorial from a “Christian” left blog. (H/T Acton Institute via Lindsay)

The author, Tad Hopp is graduating a PCUSA seminary – an extremely liberal, left-wing denomination.

He writes:

I graduated college in 2007.

[…] I majored in English, not exactly what most people consider a ‘marketable’ or ‘practical’ degree…

[…]I went to a somewhat expensive private school…

[…]I did what many students in their last year of high school do: I went to the school where I felt I was being called…

[…]I do not regret my four years at my undergraduate institution one bit.

[….]When I graduated college, I owed nearly $50,000 in student loan debt and was unemployed for almost six months before I finally found a low-paying office job.

[…]“Can’t find a job? Well, you should have majored in something more ‘practical’, like economics or business or medicine.” Yeah, that would be great…if those were the subjects where my skills and passions lie. They’re not.

[…]I felt called to go to seminary.

[…]I will graduate seminary with close to six figures worth of student loan debt.

Let’s take stock of what he’s said so far:

  • he studied English, a language that he already spoke, which has one of the lowest employment rates
  • he was warned by people who knew something about earning and saving money not to study English
  • he went to a school he couldn’t afford to go to, and he graduated with $50,000 in debt
  • he went to seminary, another subject that doesn’t pay, and added another $50,000 or so of debt
  • he says that he doesn’t have to study subjects that lead to a career because he isn’t “passionate” about them
  • he “followed his heart” by going to the school that he had mystical, emotional, intuitions about = “calling”

My advice to Tad at this point would be for him to take the Bible seriously when it says this:

2 Thessalonians 3:10:

10 For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.

And 1 Timothy 5:8:

8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Now, for a Bible-believing Christian, these are inerrant and cannot be denied. But we have to go outside the Bible and learn how the world really works in order to figure out how to achieve those stated goals. Why should anyone hire us? What is working really about?

But even before looking at economics, Tad needs to push away all his friends who tell him to “follow his heart” and stick close by his friends who understand economics, who have jobs already, who have savings already, and so on. Don’t look for advice from dreamers, you look to advice from doers – people who can read the times, run the numbers and who have demonstrated the ability to create plans that work to achieve results that please God. When it comes to planning about the future, look at the past accomplishments. Weaving a happy narrative sounds nice, but judge future predictions based on past performance.

I would recommend that Tad read an economist like Thomas Sowell, especially on work, prices, etc., and realize that work means providing value to others. It then follows that he is obligated by the Bible to NOT “follow his heart”, but to instead do something that offers value to his fellow man. Prices are a way of determining what is most valued by your fellow man. And we know what careers have the highest starting salaries and mid-career salaries:

Starting and Mid-Career salaries by profession (click for larger image)
Starting and Mid-Career salaries by profession (click for larger image)

(Source)

Keep in mind that you also have to check to see what the unemployment rate for these fields is, but I think they are all very much in demand, hence the salaries.

I don’t mind if a woman studies English and seminary, but Tad is a man – he has the Biblical obligation to be the primary provider, as we saw in the verses above.

More Tad:

Is the PCUSA doing anything to address this crisis?

[…]What has our government done to address this issue?

[…]I, like so many in my generation, voted for Obama…

[…]It seems to me that we’ve bought into the lie that student loan debt is brought on by the individual person…

[…]You know what I think might stimulate the economy? Automatically cancelling every single outstanding student loan!

[…]If we can spend $640 billion dollars on defense spending, why can’t we find the money to better support public education?

It’s important to understand that an English degree and a seminary degree do not prepare a person to make statements on economics and government. Tad has never studied these things, has no experience in them. He cannot state what the impact of his suggestions would be to all groups, i.e. – he cannot answer “and then what happens?” for every impacted group. Thinking economically is a valuable skill, but as Tad’s personal life shows, it’s not an area he is really knowledgeable about. But he wants to shift money from defense spending (which he knows nothing about) so that he can have a personal bailout. I personally doubt that taxpayers would be better served by paying for his English degree and liberal seminary degree than they would be if a peace-loving democracy could project power abroad to deter aggression from countries like North Korea, Iran, Russia, China and Syria.

Here is the solution to Tad’s problems:

  • we need to put Tad to work in a minimum wage job and confiscate his entire salary, until his loans are paid off.
  • we need to put Tad on a watch list such that he is never allowed to borrow money from anyone ever again.
  • once Tad’s loans are paid off, he should be taxed on his future earnings at the top tax rate for the rest of his life. The money we tax from him can fund education – that’s what he said he wanted.
  • Tad and his household should all be barred from collecting any money for unemployment, welfare or other social programs.

That’s the only bailout Tad should get. It would actually be in his best interest that he encounter real life as quickly as possible, because the longer he waits, the harder it’s going to be for him to recover to independence. He needs to stop his crazy retreat from adult responsibilities, and start working and saving now. I would say that at this point, marriage and parenting is out of the question for him (in another post, he comes out as gay, so that also complicates things). And he can thank the politics of the secular left for marriage and family being less affordable now, thanks to laws like Obamacare, which raised the cost of health care by thousands of dollars. I found it interesting that he actually did work at some point but he mocked the job as a “dead-end job” – as if it was beneath him.

I know some of you will be thinking, “but God called him things and so of course God is going to bail him out with $100,000 for his student loans”. But the thing is, God doesn’t usually work like that. First, I don’t accept that he is a Christian at all. Second, just because you have feelings that your plan will work, that isn’t a calling. The truth is that you certainly can assess the feasibility of things that you feel “called” to do, and if the plan looks crazy, then don’t do it. If you find yourself at odds with wise, practical people when explaining your calling to them, then you’re probably doing it wrong.

News

Public school punishes student for punching bully

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According Wikipedia, “Huntington Beach High School (HBHS) is a public high school in Huntington Beach, California. Built in 1906, it is part of the Huntington Beach Union High School District. HBHS is a California Distinguished School. Huntington Beach High School is also the home of the Academy for the Performing Arts.”

Consider this article from the UK Daily Mail.

It says:

A California teenager has been hailed as a hero after he rushed to help a blind classmate being beaten up by a bully.

Shocking footage of the attack, filmed by a bystander, shows the ‘visually impaired’ student being repeatedly hit round the head during lunch break at Huntington Beach High School, California on Wednesday.

The assault only ends when the high school intervenes by knocking the bully to the ground with a single punch.

A California teenager has been hailed as a hero after he rushed to help a blind classmate being beaten up by a bully.

Shocking footage of the attack, filmed by a bystander, shows the ‘visually impaired’ student being repeatedly hit round the head during lunch break at Huntington Beach High School, California on Wednesday.

The assault only ends when the high school intervenes by knocking the bully to the ground with a single punch.

Now why is this happening? Why is it that the use of force to resolve conflicts between good and evil are frowned upon in public schools?

I think there are two reasons. One, schools tend to frown on objective morality, and try to teach kids that everyone constructs their own moral view is as valid as anyone else’s. In practice this means that might makes right, since there is no objective morality to appeal to in a relativistic system. The school doesn’t want to step in and take a side here, because they don’t believe that anyone is right or wrong. Second, there is a war against boys in the public schools. Teachers and administrators teach that the natural inclinations of boys to punish evil with force are bad. And they escalate that from the stomp-the-bully level to the anti-police level to the anti-war level. There is no good use of force ever, ever, ever, if you ask these teachers and administrators.

Why is there this emphasis on compassion over moral standards, and this war against male nature in the schools?

ABC News reports that there is a huge disparity between the numbers of male and female teachers.

Excerpt:

For the past 20 years, the numbers of male teachers in elementary and middle school grades have stagnated at about 16 to 18 percent, according to MenTeach, an organization whose mission is to increase the number of males working with young children.

There were no statistics for grades K-3, but in 2011, the most recent year for which there are data, only slightly more than 2 percent of kindergarten and preschool teachers were male.

“The gap and discrepancy between girls’ performance and boys’ performance is growing ever more marked,” said Massachusetts psychologist Michael Thompson, co-author of the groundbreaking 2000 book “Raising Cain,” which argues that society shortchanges boys.

“There are lots of explanations for it,” he said. “One is the nature of the elementary classroom. It’s more feminized and it does turn boys off, perhaps because they are in trouble more or because the teaching style is more geared to girls’ brains.

Some students go through public schools and never see a male teacher.

Men and women are different when it comes to moral judgments, and the use of force against evil, either in self-defense or in war. Men are traditionally more likely to see the use of force against evil as morally praiseworthy. Since there are few male teachers in the schools, naturally this sort of broad condemnation of all violence and all war as wrong is much more accepted – and taught to children. Either in the classroom, or through suspensions and other punishments. And the suspensions and other punishments are for things as small as drawing anything military, or chewing your sandwich into the shape of a gun, or… punching a bully who is attacking a blind kid.

When we as a nation wonder why people walk past others in distress instead of doing something, we should not underestimate the messages that children receive in public schools. The moral courage to oppose evil is beaten out of children in public schools, because they are being taught by those who see no moral value to self-defense against evil or any kind of use of force against evil. My advice is to not send your kids to public schools, especially boys.

An excellent resource to read about discrimination against boys and traditional boy behaviors is “The War Against Boys”, 2nd edition, by moderate feminist Christina Hoff Sommers.

News

Mulcair and Trudeau want convicted Canadian terrorists to retain citizenship

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Prime Minister Stephen Harper

This is from the National Post, one of Canada’s two national newspapers.

Excerpt:

The government used its new power to revoke the citizenship of convicted terrorists for the first time on Friday against the imprisoned ringleader of the 2006 al-Qaida-inspired plot to detonate truck bombs in downtown Toronto.

Zakaria Amara was notified in a letter sent to the Quebec penitentiary where is he serving a life sentence that he is no longer a Canadian. He still holds citizenship in Jordan and could be deported there following his release from prison.

[…]Legislation that came into force in May, over the opposition of the NDP and Liberals, allows the government to revoke the citizenship of Canadians who have been convicted of terrorism offences — provided they hold citizenship in a second country.

The law also applies to dual citizens convicted of treason and spying for foreign governments, as well as members of armed groups at war against Canada. A little more than half-a-dozen Canadians have been notified so far that the government was considering revoking their citizenship.

Now, you would think that a law like this would be common sense, but in Canada, you’d be wrong. Two-thirds of the electorate are pro-terrorism in Canada, owing largely to mass immigration from Muslim countries, and and an education system that is anti-Western civilization in a suicidal way. And the leaders of the two socialist opposition parties reflect that suicidal view.

More:

NDP leader Tom Mulcair has said he would scrap the citizenship revocation law, and on Friday Liberal leader Justin Trudeau repeated his pledge to repeal it. “The bill creates second-class citizens,” he said. “No elected official should ever have the exclusive power to revoke Canadian citizenship. Under a Liberal government there will be no two-tiered citizenship. A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.”

Let’s find out exactly who we are talking about here:

Amara emerged in 2005 as one of two leaders of a terrorist group that trained on a rural property north of the city and, inspired by al-Qaida, began planning attacks they thought would convince Canada to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.

Amara led a faction that was acquiring the components for large truck bombs that were to be detonated during the morning rush hour outside the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service office beside the CN Tower. An Ontario military base was also to be attacked.

Justice Bruce Durno called the plot “spine chilling” and said “the potential for loss of life existed on a scale never before seen in Canada. It was almost unthinkable without the suggestion that metal chips would be put in the bombs. Had the plan been implemented it would have changed the lives of many, if not all Canadians forever.”

Under the liberal governments of the 1980s and 1990s, Canada experienced mass immigration from countries that had no understanding of nor allegiance to Western democratic ideals. This was desired in order to build a majority that would support bigger government, higher taxes, and more dependency. No effort was made to teach incoming immigrants to value democracy and Judeo-Christian values as the source of Canadian success. There were several terrorist attack in Canada during Harper’s 8 year run. If Canada elects leftists, these will continue. Only now, government will not have the tools they need to protect the public from their past immigration laxity. Be warned, Canadians.