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“Family dinner” and “family friendly” are not popular in your typical daily word search, but on Google Insight the interest is high and rising. The following article explains why. ~C.A. Davidson
What your children really want for dinner is you
Kristine Frederickson
In the book “Farewell to Manzanar,” a woman describes her time as a 7-year-old Japanese American in an internment camp during World War II.
“Before Manzanar, mealtime had always been the center of our family scene. In camp, and afterward, I would often recall with deep yearning the old, round, wooden table in our dining room in Ocean Park, the biggest piece of furniture we owned, large enough to seat 12 or 13 of us at once.
The family was knit together, her parents side by side, her father overseeing the meal, and she and her sister bonding in simple childlike ways.
Then she described, “now, in the mess halls (at Manzanar). . .we stopped eating as a family. Mama tried to hold us together for awhile, but it was hopeless. . .My older brothers and sisters. . .began eating with their friends. I confess I enjoyed this part of it at the time. We all did.”
Abandoning this simple practice, however, changed behavior in the camp so much that two years after the Japanese were interned, sociologists called in to study camp life issued an edict, “that families must start eating together again.” However, it was impossible to enforce this edict. As she explained, “Not much could really be done. It was too late. My own family, after three years of mess hall living, collapsed as an integral unit. Whatever dignity or feeling of filial strength we may have known before December 1941 was lost, and we did not recover it until many years after the war, not until after Papa died and we began to come together, trying to fill the vacuum his passing left in our lives.”
Eating dinner together as a family seems such a simple and often insignificant thing. We know it is not. We have been instructed by church leaders many times to do times. Janette Hales Beckham said, “We sometimes fail to see the sacred nature of our seemingly routine daily tasks. Fundamentals of daily living—scripture reading, prayer, family home evening, the conversation at dinner—these provide the experiences that make faith a reality.”
Dallin H. Oaks said, “The number of those who report that their ‘whole family usually eats dinner together’ has declined 33 percent. This is most concerning because the time a family spends together ‘eating meals at home (is) the strongest predictor of children’s academic achievement and psychological adjustment.’(Anderson and Doherty, “Family Relations”). Family mealtimes have also been shown to be a strong bulwark against children’s smoking, drinking, or using drugs.(Nancy Gibbs, “The Magic of the Family Meal”, Time, June 12, 2006, 51-52) There is inspired advice to parents: what your children really want for dinner is you.”
It is clear by the results from the first two presidential primaries — first in Iowa and then last week in New Hampshire — that Ron Paul has a strong and dedicated following. And it’s also clear that a large portion of Paul’s following is made up of young adults, many of whom are eager to see the former Libertarian Party presidential candidate (1988) become the Republican challenger to President Obama later this year.
The longtime congressman from Texas makes a strong case for cutting the bloated U.S. federal deficit — and many Republicans agree with his take on eliminating government waste. However, there are some issues … and one in particular … where I think Paul’s views are wrongheaded and outside of most Americans’ level of tolerance.
Consider this statement from a good friend of mine who has expressed his concern about the recent jump in popularity for the Ron Paul for President campaign: “Since one of my sons died from a drug overdose, I am concerned about [Ron Paul's] position of wanting to make illicit drugs more readily available through legalization.”
Congressman Paul believes states have the right to legalize the sale of drugs — all types of drugs, even heroine. The 76-year-old candidate justifies his position by stating that the prohibition of alcohol didn’t work in the 1920s. But what he fails to mention is that once prohibition was repealed, per capita consumption increased threefold, increasing the incidences of health issues, welfare, and traffic-related deaths related to alcoholism.
Libertarians like Paul use this same logic to defend their stance of legalizing marijuana. Again, they fail to cite that there is already a history of legalization of recreational pot in the state of Alaska in the late 1980s. Several years later, Alaskan legislators decided to reverse the law — after watching teenage use of marijuana in the state practically triple overnight when adult consumption was legalized.
The human brain isn’t fully developed until age 25. Research now tells us that marijuana use (during youth) can permanently alter the brain and even elevate the risk of schizophrenia, paranoia, and depression.
Candidate Paul continues to imply that it would be okay with him if states legalize all forms of drugs, remarking that the “war on drugs” just hasn’t worked. He routinely says “that it wasn’t illegal in the 19th Century.” In making that observation, he ignores the fact that societies often don’t discover the dangers of certain vices until they observe the damage inflicted.
Roger Morgan from the Coalition for a Drug Free California argues: “The war on drugs hasn’t failed entirely, as the level of drug use was actually held in check for two decades until the Obama administration allowed the proliferation of ‘medical pot.’ If the war on drugs had a failing, it is because 90 percent of our resources have been spent trying to interdict support … while only 1 percent was spent on prevention.”
Morgan’s argument makes sense. As a former Southern California media representative for MarijuanaHarmsFamilies.com, I can sadly say that an alarmingly large number of public school administrators continue to ignore the problem of teen drug use. As citizens we need to encourage our schools to regularly address this issue. As parents we need to consistently talk to our students about the harm that drug use poses.
And as concerned citizens and voters, we need to openly reject drug-legalization advocates like Ron Paul.
Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of Mozart’s death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.
Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate. His influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that “posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years.”[3]
His father Leopold (1719–1787) was from Augsburg. He was deputy Kapellmeister to the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg, a minor composer, and an experienced teacher. In the year of Mozart’s birth, his father published a violin textbook, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, which achieved success.
When Nannerl was seven, she began keyboard lessons with her father; and her three-year-old brother would look on, evidently fascinated. Years later, after his death, she reminisced:
He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was always striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good. [...] In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier. [...] He could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time. [...] At the age of five, he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down.[5]
Biographer Maynard Solomon[6] notes that, while Leopold was a devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Wolfgang was keen to make progress beyond what he was being taught. His first ink-spattered composition and his precocious efforts with the violin were on his own initiative and came as a great surprise to Leopold.[7] Leopold eventually gave up composing when his son’s outstanding musical talents became evident.[8] He was Wolfgang’s only teacher in his earliest years and taught his children languages and academic subjects as well as music.[6]
1791
Mozart’s last year was, until his final illness struck, a time of great productivity—and by some accounts a time of personal recovery.[58] He composed a great deal, including some of his most admired works: the opera The Magic Flute, the final piano concerto (K. 595 in B-flat), the Clarinet Concerto K. 622, the last in his great series of string quintets (K. 614 in E-flat), the motet Ave verum corpus K. 618, and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.
Mozart’s financial situation, a source of extreme anxiety in 1790, finally began to improve. Although the evidence is inconclusive,[59] it appears that wealthy patrons in Hungary and Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart in return for the occasional composition. He probably also benefited from the sale of dance music written in his role as Imperial chamber composer.[59] Mozart no longer borrowed large sums from Puchberg, and made a start on paying off his debts.[59]
He experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some of his works, notably The Magic Flute (performed many times in the short period between its premiere and Mozart’s death)[60] and the Little Masonic Cantata K. 623, premiered on 15 November 1791.[61]
Mozart usually worked long and hard, finishing compositions at a tremendous pace as deadlines approached. He often made sketches and drafts; unlike Beethoven’s these are mostly not preserved, as Constanze sought to destroy them after his death.[70] (See: Mozart’s compositional method.) He was raised a Roman Catholic and remained a member of the Church throughout his life. (See Mozart and Roman Catholicism.)
“So while we are called to raise awareness of the inherent value of every human life, we also mourn for the more than 50 million aborted U.S. citizens. That’s an entire generation of innocence.” ~Virginia Cline, Heartbeat International
Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday — and this year commemorates 39 years of legalized abortion that has seen the equivalent of an entire generation wiped out.
The day was first set aside by a presidential proclamation issued by Ronald Reagan in 1983. Virginia Cline of Heartbeat International tells OneNewsNow the purpose of the observance is to reaffirm Americans’ commitment to the dignity of every human being and the sanctity of human life.
“So while we are called to raise awareness of the inherent value of every human life, we also mourn for the more than 50 million aborted U.S. citizens. That’s an entire generation of innocence,” she notes.
Cline goes on to point out that no woman aborts a child because abortion is legal — but because she believes she has no other choice.
“But every day in the Heartbeat pregnancy centers we hear from women who have been devastated by the lasting physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of abortion,” she shares. “Women deserve a safe haven of compassion where their physical, emotional, and spiritual health is protected and their dignity is restored.”
Heartbeat International, which was founded in 1971, is a Christ-centered non-profit association of pregnancy help centers, medical clinics, maternity homes, non-profit adoption agencies, and abortion recovery programs in 50 countries.
For those who benefit from Heartbeat International, every day is Sanctity of Human Life Day.
RUSH: I had mentioned to a caller that everybody working their own self-interest is how everybody helps everybody else out — and sure as shooting, I go to the e-mail, and blistering attacks from people, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! That’s the problem with you rich people, you’re so selfish! All you do is care about yourself and somehow you think that’s gonna bring everybody else along! Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” (sigh) It’s amazing to me how woefully inept our economics education has been in this country. Let me define how that happens. Let me explain to you how that happens.
Adam Smith wrote about this. Adam Smith had a book called The Wealth of Nations. It was published in 1776, by the way. That year might remind some of you people of something: 1776. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote the following: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher or the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” When you go to the grocery store, say you go to the meat counter and there’s a guy behind the meat counter and you order, do you think that the guy is there to help you, purely and simply? I mean, in doing his job, yeah. You order something, and he provides it for you.
But what’s he doing? He’s trying to feed his family. He’s looking out for himself. He’s selling you something, hoping you buy it, because that helps him. He’s looking out for himself. At the same time, accommodating you. So in just that one example: The butcher looking out for himself, he doesn’t… See, the left wants you to believe that the guy selling meat should sell it to you at no cost so that he doesn’t profit from what he’s selling or the guy selling the TV set and the dishwasher, whatever, should sell it at no cost. Because if the guy makes a profit on it, then you have been screwed, and he’s using you and taking advantage of you and ripping you off! When the truth is he’s not giving you a dishwasher to be nice to you. He’s not selling you a TV set to be nice to you!
His job isn’t to make sure you’ve got a television set. His job is to make sure he’s got one. His job is to make sure his family has food. Everybody benefits in the bargain. I’m not saying the guy behind the counter is selfish. What I’m saying is, him looking out for himself benefits everybody he comes in contact with. It’s undeniable, and there must be a profit in the route, otherwise there’s not gonna be a guy behind the counter. There won’t be any reason for him to be there. How does he go home and feed his family if he sells you whatever it is you’re buying at the same price it cost him? (New Castrati impression) “But, Mr. Limbaugh, it’s inherently unfair that something should cost me more than it costs somebody else.” Well, then why don’t you go down the street and try to find it at a cheaper price?
Maybe there’s some other butcher selling your filet mignon at a cheaper price. Maybe he’s trying to attract more customers with a cheaper price than your butcher, and maybe this guy with the lower price is selling even more filet mignon to more people and more people are benefiting from the lower price! “It’s still a profit, Mr. Limbaugh, and that’s obscene and it’s unfair and it’s outrageous,” and this is what we’re up against, folks. These are the people and that’s the kind of thinking that Barack Obama — our president — is inspiring, this New Castrati character of mine. They’re real, they’re out there. They’re on the Occupy Wall Street march. They’re in America’s classrooms.
Hello, some of them might even be your stupid kids (uh, your kids) until you get hold of ‘em and get ‘em straightened out. That’s why there’s a difference in “selfishness” and “self-interest,” but everybody looking out for themselves — not in a selfish way, but in a self-interest way — benefits everybody else. The guy behind the counter selling a television set, he’s gotta make sure there’s a lot of them there to handle the demand. He’s gotta make an investment in having a stockroom full of the things that people might want. He’s gotta take a risk in how many to buy and what kind, based on the best evidence he has of what people are gonna want and what they’re willing to pay. This is so common sense, I can’t believe I’m having to explain it!
But we have to every day, because the Mr. Castratis, the New Castratis are everywhere, and the education system is putting them out at geometric portions. They’re pumping ‘em out, pumping ‘em out illiterate people — economically illiterate people on purpose and by design — by the millions each and every year. In the same book, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith also wrote that the butcher or any producer, quote, “intends only his own gain, and he is in this — as in many other cases — led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. And by pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectively than when he intends to promote it.”
In other words, the butcher may not have the slightest idea what’s happening. The butcher selling you a cut of beef may not have the slightest idea what he’s actually doing, but we are all part of an intricate web where we all prosper and benefit from the self-interest of others, not the selfishness. The Wealth of Nations was also an argument against government control. England at the time had chartered monopolies back in 1776. The king decided what companies would do what. That’s what Obama wants! Folks, this country was fought for independence from people like Barack Obama, if you must know it, in straight between-the-eyes terms. Barack Obama, if he gets where he wants to go, will become the equivalent of King George from whom our ancestors fled to found this country.
Daniel Webster (January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852) was a leading American statesman and senator from Massachusetts during the period leading up to the Civil War. He first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests. Webster’s increasingly nationalistic views, and his effectiveness as a speaker, made him one of the most famous orators and influential Whig leaders of the Second Party System. He was one of the nation’s most prominent conservatives, leading opposition to Democrat Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. He was a spokesman for modernization, banking and industry, but not for the common people who composed the base of his enemies in Jacksonian Democracy. “He was a thoroughgoing elitist, and he reveled in it,” says biographer Remini.[2] During his 40 years in national politics, Webster served in the House of Representatives for 10 years (representing New Hampshire), in the Senate for 19 years (representing Massachusetts), and was appointed the Secretary of State under three presidents.
Webster took part in several key U.S. Supreme Court cases which established important constitutional precedents that bolstered the authority of the federal government. As Secretary of State, he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which established the definitive eastern border between the United States and Canada. Chiefly recognized for his Senate tenure, Webster was a key figure in the institution’s “Golden days”. Webster was considered the Northern member of a trio known as the “Great Triumvirate“, with his colleagues Henry Clay from the West (Kentucky) and John C. Calhoun from the South. His “Reply to Hayne” in 1830 was regarded as “the most eloquent speech ever delivered in Congress.”[3]
As with his fellow Whig Henry Clay, Webster wanted to see the Union preserved and civil war averted. They both worked for compromises to stave off the sectionalism that threatened war between the North and the South. Webster tried and failed three times to become President of the United States. In 1957, a Senate Committee selected Webster as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators with Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Robert La Follette, and Robert Taft.[4]
Daniel Webster was born on January 18, 1782, to Ebenezer and Abigail Webster (née Eastman) in West Salisbury, New Hampshire, the present-day city of Franklin. He and his nine siblings grew up on their parents’ farm, a small parcel of land granted to his father. His ancestors were among the early settlers of Salisbury.
Webster attended Phillips Exeter Academy, a preparatory school in Exeter, New Hampshire, before attending Dartmouth College. After he graduated from Dartmouth (Phi Beta Kappa), Webster was apprenticed to the lawyer Thomas W. Thompson in Salisbury. When his older brother Ezekiel’s studies required Webster’s support, the young man resigned from the law office and worked as a schoolteacher — as young men often did then, when public education consisted largely of subsidies to local schoolmasters. In 1802 Webster began as the headmaster of the Fryeburg Academy, Maine, where he served for one year.[5] When Ezekiel’s education could no longer be sustained, Webster returned to his apprenticeship.
In 1804 he left New Hampshire and got a position in Boston under the prominent attorney Christopher Gore. Clerking for Gore — who was involved in international, national, and state politics — Webster learned about many legal and political subjects and met numerous New England politicians.[6] In 1805 Webster was accepted into the bar.
He returned to New Hampshire to set up a practice in Boscawen, in part to be near his ailing father. Webster became increasingly interested in politics; raised by an ardently Federalist father and taught by a predominantly Federalist-leaning faculty at Dartmouth, Webster, like many New Englanders, supported Federalism. He began to speak locally in support of Federalist causes and candidates.[7] After his father’s death in 1806, Webster handed over his practice to his older brother Ezekiel, who had by this time been admitted to the bar.
Webster moved to the larger town of Portsmouth in 1807, and opened a practice.[8] During this time the Napoleonic Wars began to affect Americans, as Britain began to impress American sailors into their Navy. President Thomas Jefferson retaliated with the Embargo Act of 1807, stopping all trade to both Britain and France. As New England relied on commerce with the two nations, the region strongly opposed Jefferson’s attempt at “peaceable coercion.” Webster wrote an anonymous pamphlet attacking it.[9]
Eventually the trouble with England escalated into the War of 1812. That same year, Daniel Webster gave an address to the Washington Benevolent Society, a speech that proved critical to his career. The speech condemned the war and the violation of New England’s shipping rights that preceded it, but it also strongly denounced the extremism of those more radical among the unhappy New Englanders who were beginning to call for the region’s secession from the Union.
The Washington speech was widely circulated and read throughout New Hampshire, and it led to Webster’s 1812 selection to the Rockingham Convention, an assembly that sought to declare formally the state’s grievances with President James Madison and the federal government. He was a member of the drafting committee and was chosen to compose the Rockingham Memorial to be sent to Madison. The report included much of the same tone and opinions held in the Washington Society address, except that, uncharacteristically for its chief architect, it alluded to the threat of secession saying, “If a separation of the states shall ever take place, it will be, on some occasion, when one portion of the country undertakes to control, to regulate, and to sacrifice the interest of another.”[8]
Webster’s efforts for New England Federalism, shipping interests, and war opposition resulted in his election to the House of Representatives in 1812, where he served two terms ending March 1817. He was an outspoken critic of the Madison administration and its wartime policies, denouncing its efforts at financing the war through paper money and (in “one of [his] most eloquent efforts”)[10] opposing Secretary of WarJames Monroe‘s conscription proposal.[10] Notable in his second term was his support of the reestablishment of a stable specie-based national bank; but he opposed the tariff of 1816 (which sought to protect the nation’s manufacturing interests) and House Speaker Henry Clay’s American System.
This opposition was in accordance with his professed beliefs and those of most of his constituents, including free trade, that the tariff’s “great object was to raise revenue, not to foster manufacture,” and that it was against “the true spirit of the Constitution” to give “excessive bounties or encouragements to one [industry] over another.”[11][12]
After his second term, Webster did not seek a third, choosing his law practice instead. In an attempt to secure greater financial success for himself and his family (he had married Grace Fletcher in 1808, with whom he had four children), he moved his practice from Portsmouth to Boston.
Constitutional lawyer
“This, sir, is my case. It is the case not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in our land… Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do so you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after another, all those greater lights of science which for more than a century have thrown their radiance over our land. It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!”
Daniel Webster (Dartmouth College v. Woodward) Senate
When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic… not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as “What is all this worth?” nor those other words of delusion and folly, “Liberty first and Union afterwards”; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,— Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!
The Compromise of 1850 was the Congressional effort led by Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas to compromise the sectional disputes that seemed to be headed toward civil war. On March 7, 1850, Webster gave one of his most famous speeches, characterizing himself “not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man but as an American…” In it he gave his support to the compromise, which included the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 that required federal officials to recapture and return runaway slaves.
Webster was bitterly attacked by abolitionists in New England who felt betrayed by his compromises. The Rev. Theodore Parker complained, “No living man has done so much to debauch the conscience of the nation.” Horace Mann described him as being “a fallen star! Lucifer descending from Heaven!” James Russell Lowell called Webster “the most meanly and foolishly treacherous man I ever heard of.”[26] Webster never recovered the loss of popularity he suffered in the aftermath of the Seventh of March speech.
Daniel Webster (July 17, 1850 address to the Senate)
I shall stand by the Union…with absolute disregard of personal consequences. What are personal consequences…in comparison with the good or evil which may befall a great country in a crisis like this?…Let the consequences be what they will…. No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and constitution of his country.
Along the way your heart will learn
How good from evil to discern.
In this modern age of moral relativism, sometimes we feel like we are in a wilderness of semantics. Long ago Isaiah defined “semantics” for us when he said:
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)
This noisy world can be very confusing. How do we help our children create order out of this chaos? We need a strong moral compass.(Developing moral compass. See Epic Stories for Character Education, by C.A.Davidson)
How do we navigate a straight course and not get lost in today’s wilderness of confusion? First, let’s define the directions we might take. If one course leads to the confusion and chaos of moral relativism, at the opposite end of moral relativism are principles, or “moral absolutes”. There are lots of meanings for “absolute”, but when we’re talking about morals, it simply means, “opposites”. For example, the following are opposites: good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, freedom and slavery, love and hate, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, etc. You can think of a lot more. Try it!
Every day you experience another set of opposites: choices and consequences. Your ability to choose, that you were born with, is called your moral agency. Every choice has inescapable consequences. Choosing right has certain consequences, and choosing wrong has other consequences.
Look in the Glossary to find the meanings of good and evil, right and wrong.
What is Good?
What is Evil?
What is Right?
What is Wrong?
Choose the Right
Choose the right when the choice is placed before you.
In the right the Holy Spirit guides;
And its light is forever shining o’er you,
When in the right your heart confides.
Choose the right! Let no spirit of digression
Overcome you in the evil hour. There’s the right and the wrong to ev’ry question;
Be safe through inspiration’s pow’r.
Choose the right! There is peace in righteous doing. Choose the right! There’s safety for the soul.
Choose the right in all labors you’re pursuing;
Let God and heaven be your goal.
Choose the right! Let wisdom mark the way before.
In its light, choose the right! And God will bless you ever more.
Despite his great contributions to early American society, Rush may be more famous today as the man who, in 1812, helped reconcile the friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams by encouraging the two former Presidents to resume writing to each other.[4][5]
Rush was born to John and Susanna Harvey Rush on January 4, 1746 (December 24, 1745 O.S.). The family which included seven children lived on a plantation in the Township of Byberry in Philadelphia County, which was then about 14 miles outside Philadelphia (the township was incorporated into Philadelphia in 1854 and now remains one of its neighborhoods). Rush’s father died when he was five, leaving his mother to care for the large family, At the age of eight, he was sent to live with an aunt and uncle, to receive a proper education.[6] He attended an academy at Nottingham, run by the Rev. Samuel Finley, which would later become West Nottingham Academy.
In 1760, at age 15, he completed the five-year program earning him a Bachelor of Arts degree at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and then studied medicine under Dr. John Redman in Philadelphia. Redman encouraged him to further his studies at the University of Edinburgh, where he earned a medical degree. While in the United Kingdom practicing medicine, he learned French, Italian, and Spanish. Returning to the Colonies in 1769 (age 24), Rush opened a medical practice in Philadelphia and became Professor of Chemistry at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania).
He published the first American textbook on chemistry, several volumes on medical student education, and wrote influential patriotic essays. He was active in the Sons of Liberty and was elected to attend the provincial conference to send delegates to the Continental Congress. He was consulted by Thomas Paine on the writing of the profoundly influential pro-independence pamphlet Common Sense. He was appointed to represent Pennsylvania at the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence.
In 1777 he became surgeon-general of the middle department of the Continental Army. Conflicts with the Army Medical service, specifically with Dr. William Shippen, Jr., led to Rush’s resignation in 1778.
Rush felt that the United States was the work of God:[7] “I do not believe that the Constitution was the offspring of inspiration, but I am as perfectly satisfied that the Union of the United States in its form and adoption is as much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament”.
In 1798, after the adoption of the Constitution, he declared: “The only foundation for…a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”[8]
Campaign against General Washington
Rush suggested the removal of General George Washington early in the American Revolutionary War. When Rush was serving as Surgeon General he sent an unsigned letter which quoted General Thomas Conway saying that if not for God’s grace this war would have been lost by Washington and his weak counselors. When this letter was given to Washington it was assumed that Rush was part of a secret plot nicknamed the Conway Cabal to replace Washington with Horatio Gates as commander-in-chief.
Rush’s complaints against Washington’s army included statements that there was “bad bread, no order, universal disgust.” He also told John Adams that officers referred to Gates‘ army as “a well-regulated family”, but called the forces directly under Washington “an unformed mob.” He went on to contrast Gates, at the “pinnacle of military glory”, to Washington, who had been “outgeneraled and twice beaten.”[2] Though Rush was implicated in a conspiracy, “it may be safely claimed that conspiracy and intrigue would have been wholly out of character. If he was opinionated and impetuous, he was also incorruptible.” [9] Rush later expressed regret for his actions against Washington. In a letter to John Adams in 1812, Rush wrote, “He [Washington] was the highly favored instrument whose patriotism and name contributed greatly to the establishment of the independence of the United States.” (Note: Horatio Gates later left the army in disgrace
because he ran out on his troops. [Jeff Shara]) ~C.A.Davidson
Abolitionism
In 1766 when Rush set out for his studies in Edinburgh, he was outraged by the sight of 100 slave ships in Liverpool harbor.[11] As a prominent Presbyterian doctor and professor of chemistry in Philadelphia, he provided a bold and respected voice against the slave trade that could not be ignored.
The highlight of his involvement in abolishing slavery might be the pamphlet he wrote that appeared in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York in 1773 entitled “An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-Keeping.” In this first of his many attacks on the social evils of his day, he not only assailed the slave trade, but the entire institution of slavery. Dr. Rush argued scientifically that Negroes were not by nature intellectually or morally inferior. Any apparent evidence to the contrary was only the perverted expression of slavery, which “is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it.”[citation needed]
“In 1792 Dr Benjamin Rush, one of the ‘Founding Fathers’ of the USA, presented a paper before the American Philosophical Society which argued that the ‘color’ and ‘figure’ of blacks were derived from a form of leprosy. He was convinced that with proper treatment, blacks could be cured (i.e. become white) and eventually… assimilated into the general population” He thought that their skin color and hair difference meant they were diseased.(Omi & Winant 1986: 148). Omi, M. and H. Winant (1986). Racial formation in the United States : from the 1960s to the 1980s. New York ; London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Despite his public condemnations of slavery, Dr. Rush purchased a slave named William Grubber in 1776. To the consternation of many, Dr. Rush still owned Grubber when he joined the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1784.[12]
Mental health
Rush is considered the “Father of American Psychiatry”, publishing the first textbook on the subject in the United States, Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812).[17] He undertook to classify different forms of mental illness and to theorize as to their causes and possible cures. Rush believed (incorrectly) that many mental illnesses were caused by disruptions of the blood circulation, and treated them with devices meant to improve circulation to the brain such as a restraining chair and a centrifugal spinning board.[18] After seeing mental patients in appalling conditions in the Pennsylvania Hospital, Rush led a successful campaign in 1792 for the state to build a separate mental ward where the patients could be kept in more humane conditions.[19]
While Dr Rush was uncertain what to do for the mentally ill, he knew that chains and dungeons (the practice of the time) were not the answer. He took patients from that drudgery and placed them in a “normal” hospital setting.[citation needed] This alone resulted in a number of patients recovering sufficiently to return to society.[citation needed] For this reason his approach is officially referred to as the Moral Therapy.
Rush is sometimes considered a pioneer of occupational therapy particularly as it pertains to the institutionalized.[20] In Diseases of the Mind Rush wrote:
“It has been remarked, that the maniacs of the male sex in all hospitals, who assist in cutting wood, making fires, and digging in a garden, and the females who are employed in washing, ironing, and scrubbing floors, often recover, while persons, whose rank exempts them from performing such services, languish away their lives within the walls of the hospital”.
Furthermore, Rush was one of the first people to describe Savant Syndrome. In 1789 he described the abilities of Thomas Fuller, a lightning calculator. His observation would later be described in other individuals by notable scientists like John Langdon Down.[21]
Rush pioneered the therapeutic approach to addiction.[22][23] Prior to his work, drunkenness was viewed as being sinful and a matter of choice. Rush believed that the alcoholic loses control over himself and identified the properties of alcohol, rather than the alcoholic’s choice, as the causal agent. He developed the conception of alcoholism as a form of medical disease and proposed that alcoholics should be weaned from their addiction via less potent substances.[24]
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province, part of South Africa) to Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857–1896), an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel, née Suffield (1870–1904). The couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked. Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel, who was born on 17 February 1894.[18]
As a child, Tolkien was bitten by a large baboon spider in the garden, an event which some think would have later echoes in his stories, although Tolkien admitted no actual memory of the event and no special hatred of spiders as an adult. In another incident, a family house-boy, who thought Tolkien a beautiful child, took the baby to his kraal to show him off, returning him the next morning.[19]
When he was three, Tolkien went to England with his mother and brother on what was intended to be a lengthy family visit. His father, however, died in South Africa of rheumatic fever before he could join them.[20] This left the family without an income, and so Tolkien’s mother took him to live with her parents in Kings Heath,[21] Birmingham. Soon after, in 1896, they moved to Sarehole (now in Hall Green), then a Worcestershire village, later annexed to Birmingham.[22] He enjoyed exploring Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog and the Clent, Lickey and Malvern Hills, which would later inspire scenes in his books, along with Worcestershire towns and villages such as Bromsgrove, Alcester, and Alvechurch and places such as his aunt Jane’s farm of Bag End, the name of which would be used in his fiction.[23]
Mabel Tolkien herself taught her two sons, and Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil.[24] She taught him a great deal of botany and awakened in him the enjoyment of the look and feel of plants. Young Tolkien liked to draw landscapes and trees, but his favourite lessons were those concerning languages, and his mother taught him the rudiments of Latin very early.[25] He could read by the age of four and could write fluently soon afterwards. His mother allowed him to read many books. He disliked Treasure Island and The Pied Piper and thought Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was “amusing but disturbing”. He liked stories about “Red Indians” and the fantasy works by George MacDonald.[26] In addition, the “Fairy Books” of Andrew Lang were particularly important to him and their influence is apparent in some of his later writings.[27]
Tolkien attended King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and later St. Philip’s School, before winning a Foundation Scholarship and returning to King Edward’s School. While a pupil at King Edward’s School, he was one of a party of cadets from the school’s Officers Training Corps who helped “line the route” for the coronation parade of King George V, being posted just outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.[29]
Mabel Tolkien was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1900 despite vehement protests by her Baptist family,[30] who then stopped all financial assistance to her. In 1904, when Tolkien was 12, she died of acute diabetes at Fern Cottage in Rednal, which she was then renting. Mabel Tolkien was then about 34 years of age, about as old as a person with diabetes mellitus type 1 could live with no treatment—insulin would not be discovered until two decades later. Nine years after his mother’s death, Tolkien wrote, “My own dear mother was a martyr indeed, and it is not to everybody that God grants so easy a way to his great gifts as he did to Hilary and myself, giving us a mother who killed herself with labour and trouble to ensure us keeping the faith.”[31]
At the age of 16, Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt, who was three years older, when he and his brother Hilary moved into the boarding house in which she lived. According to Humphrey Carpenter:
Edith and Ronald took to frequenting Birmingham teashops, especially one which had a balcony overlooking the pavement. There they would sit and throw sugarlumps into the hats of passers-by, moving to the next table when the sugar bowl was empty. … With two people of their personalities and in their position, romance was bound to flourish. Both were orphans in need of affection, and they found that they could give it to each other. During the summer of 1909, they decided that they were in love.[39]
His guardian, Father Francis Morgan, viewing Edith as a distraction from Tolkien’s school work and horrified that his young charge was seriously involved with a Protestant girl, prohibited him from meeting, talking to, or even corresponding with her until he was 21. He obeyed this prohibition to the letter,[40] with one notable early exception which made Father Morgan threaten to cut short his University career if he did not stop.[41]
On the evening of his twenty-first birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith a declaration of his love and asked her to marry him. Edith replied saying that she had already agreed to marry another man, but that she had done so because she had believed Tolkien had forgotten her. The two met up and beneath a railway viaduct renewed their love; Edith returned her engagement ring and announced that she was marrying Tolkien instead.[42] Following their engagement Edith reluctantly announced that she was converting to Catholicism at Tolkien’s insistence. Her landlord, a staunch Protestant, was infuriated and evicted her as soon as she was able to find other lodgings.[43] Edith and Ronald were formally engaged in Birmingham, in January 1913, and married at Warwick, England, at Saint Mary Immaculate Catholic Church on 22 March 1916.[44]
Family
The Tolkiens had four children: John Francis Reuel Tolkien (17 November 1917 – 22 January 2003), Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien (22 October 1920 – 27 February 1984), Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (born 21 November 1924) and Priscilla Mary Anne Reuel Tolkien (born 18 June 1929). Tolkien was very devoted to his children and sent them illustrated letters from Father Christmas when they were young. Each year more characters were added, such as the Polar Bear (Father Christmas’s helper), the Snow Man (his gardener), Ilbereth the elf (his secretary), and various other, minor characters. The major characters would relate tales of Father Christmas’s battles against goblins who rode on bats and the various pranks committed by the Polar Bear.[72]
Religion
Tolkien’s devout Catholic faith was a significant factor in the conversion of C. S. Lewis from atheism to Christianity, although Tolkien was dismayed that Lewis chose to join the Church of England.[90]
In the last years of his life, Tolkien became greatly disappointed by some of the liturgical reforms and changes implemented after the Second Vatican Council,[91] as his grandson Simon Tolkien recalls:
I vividly remember going to church with him in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and it was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My grandfather obviously didn’t agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but my grandfather was oblivious. He simply had to do what he believed to be right.[92]
Tolkien was contemptuous of Joseph Stalin. During World War II, Tolkien referred to Stalin as “that bloodthirsty old murderer.”[95] Tolkien also expressed hope that the United States would overthrow both Stalin and the CPSU after Hitler’s defeat.[citation needed]
However, in 1961, Tolkien sharply criticized a Swedish commentator who suggested that The Lord of the Rings was an anti-communistparable and identified the Dark Lord with Stalin. Tolkien retorted,
“I utterly repudiate any such ‘reading’, which angers me. The situation was conceived long before the Russian revolution. Such allegory is entirely foreign to my thought.
Opposition to Nazism
Tolkien vocally opposed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party prior to the Second World War. In 1938, the publishing house Rütten & Loening Verlag was preparing to release The Hobbit in Nazi Germany. To Tolkien’s outrage, he was asked beforehand whether he was of Aryan origin. In a letter to his British publisher Stanley Unwin, he condemned Nazi “race-doctrine” as “wholly pernicious and unscientific”. He added that he had many Jewish friends and was considering, “letting a German translation go hang”.[101] He provided two letters to Rütten & Loening and instructed Unwin to send whichever he preferred. The more tactful letter was sent and was lost during the later bombing of Germany. In the unsent letter, Tolkien makes the point that “Aryan” is a linguistic term, denoting speakers of Indo-Iranian languages. He continued,
But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.[102]
In a 1941 letter to his son Michael, he expressed his resentment at the distortion of Germanic history in “Nordicism”:
You have to understand the good in things, to detect the real evil. But no one ever calls on me to ‘broadcast’ or do a postscript. Yet I suppose I know better than most what is the truth about this ‘Nordic’ nonsense. Anyway, I have in this war a burning private grudge… against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler … Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. Nowhere, incidentally, was it nobler than in England, nor more early sanctified and Christianized.[103]
In 1968, he objected to a description of Middle-earth as “Nordic“, a term he said he disliked because of its association with racialist theories.[104]
Catholicism
Catholic theology and imagery played a part in fashioning Tolkien’s creative imagination, suffused as it was by his deeply religious spirit.[123][133] Tolkien acknowledged this himself:
The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.[134]
Specifically, Paul H. Kocher argues that Tolkien describes evil in the orthodox Christian way as the absence of good. He cites many examples in The Lord of the Rings, such as Sauron’s “Lidless Eye”: “the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.” Kocher sees Tolkien’s source as Thomas Aquinas, “whom it is reasonable to suppose that Tolkien, as a medievalist and a Catholic, knows well”.[135]Tom Shippey makes the same point, but, instead of referring to Aquinas, says Tolkien was very familiar with Alfred the Great‘s Anglo-Saxon translation of Boethius‘ Consolation of Philosophy, known as the Lays of Boethius. Shippey contends that this Christian view of evil is most clearly stated by Boethius: “evil is nothing.” He says Tolkien used the corollary that evil cannot create as the basis of Frodo‘s remark, “the Shadow … can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own,” and related remarks by Treebeard and Elrond.[136] He goes on to argue that in The Lord of the Rings evil does sometimes seem to be an independent force, more than merely the absence of good (though not independent to the point of the Manichaean heresy), and suggests that Alfred’s additions to his translation of Boethius may have inspired that view.[137]
Another interesting argument is Stratford Caldecott’s theological view on the Ring and what it represents. “The Ring of Power exemplifies the dark magic of the corrupted will, the assertion of self in disobedience to God. It appears to give freedom, but its true function is to enslave the wearer to the Fallen Angel. It corrodes the human will of the wearer, rendering him increasingly “thin” and unreal; indeed, its gift of invisibility symbolizes this ability to destroy all natural human relationships and identity. You could say the Ring is sin itself: tempting and seemingly harmless to begin with, increasingly hard to give up and corrupting in the long run.”
In the twenty plus years that I have worked as a conservative activist, I’ve spoken on almost 200 university campuses.
Usually these are talks to campus Republican and conservative groups.
Over time I have observed changes in attitude among many young Republicans and I believe the shifts in attitude I see help explain the rise of Ron Paul.
When I first started lecturing early in the 1990’s, leading heroes of Republican youth were Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley, Jr.
Individual freedom, respect for constitutional limitations on government, and traditional values was the message. There was a sense of purpose. America as a “shining city on a hill,” quoted so often by Reagan, taken from the Puritan pilgrim John Winthrop, captured the picture.
Now, increasing numbers of my campus hosts ask that I not talk about “values.” Leave out the stuff about marriage, family, and abortion, please, and just talk about the economy.
The materialism and moral relativism that created our left wing culture is now infecting our youth on the right. Young Republicans may be pushing back on government, but too often now their motivation is like their left wing contemporaries. A sense of entitlement and an interest in claiming rights with little interest in corresponding personal responsibilities.
David Yepsen, who directs the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, recently described Ron Paul’s success as a “resurgence of the libertarian and isolationist wings of the Republican Party,” resulting from “hard times and unpopular wars.”
But overlooked is the important role of youth.
Of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents that support Paul, 67 percent are under 34, compared to 37 percent of Romney’s and 20 percent of Gingrich’s support.
This youthful surge has helped Paul’s very successful fundraising, heavily driven by small contributions on the internet. Compared to Republicans who have raised the most funds, 48 percent of Paul’s is from small donors, compared to 10 percent of Romney’s and 4 percent of Rick Perry’s.
And youth have been critical in Paul’s on the ground organization. I watched this play out when Paul won the straw poll at the Values Voters Summit in Washington where I spoke last October.
Busloads of youthful Paul supporters arrived only to hear his speech and to pay and register so that they could vote. They put him over the top.
They have little interest in a Reagan-like “shining city on a hill” message, or talk about a threatening “evil empire” abroad.
To the contrary, they are excited by the “leave me alone” candidate who thinks the rest of the world is not our business. Apparently they share Paul’s indifference to the looming threat of a nuclear Iran or the almost complete absence of the freedom they think is so important in most Islamic nations.
Chicago Sun Times columnist Steve Huntley reports one estimate of over 200,000 persecuted Coptic Christians leaving Egypt by year end. He reports a dramatic drop in the presence of Christians throughout the Middle East (the Christian population of Bethlehem is now a third of what it was 35 years ago).
The only exception is Israel, where the Christian population has more than quadrupled since 1948. But Ron Paul sees no distinction between Israel and its neighbors nor does he think Americans should care.
Self centered materialism that leads our youth to support such indifference to global realities is also driving collapse of the American family.
Census Bureau statistics show that today 20 percent of America’s population between ages 18 and 29 is married. This compared to 59 percent fifty years ago.
In his farewell speech, Reagan issued a warning to the nation.
“…are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?”
I doubt that Ron Paul’s vision of America is what Reagan had in mind.
“Family dinner” and “family friendly” are not popular in your typical daily word search, but on Google Insight the interest is high and rising. The following article explains why. ~C.A. Davidson
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