Author: Caron Manley

Penna Dexter
Many times, over the past decade or so, I have muttered under my breath: “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”  The phrase of course is from Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which dishonest “tailors” provide a vain king with garments, clothes that don’t actually exist. The swindlers explain that they are weavers of fabric that would be “invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid.” Naturally, the king buys in. The townspeople timidly go along with the charade, praising the nude emperor’s outfits. One day, as the emperor’s entourage carries his fake train, a little boy calls out the truth that no one else dared admit, “…he hasn’t got anything on.”
In a recent column, The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker pointed to this year’s election as an “’Emperor’s New Clothes’ event” where voters repudiated a “regime of oppressive insanities.” He listed five of the most destructive and unpopular strictures:
First, that we are somehow obligated to grant “people who have stolen into this country” many privileges of citizenship and — contrary to our laws —  to give them “sanctuary.”
Second, “to ‘save the planet’,” we must severely limit our use of “one of the greatest reservoirs of natural energy resources on Earth.”
Third, we must believe we are a racist nation. So, Mr. Baker writes, “to right the past wrong of treating people based on the color of their skin,” we must “treat people based on the color of their skin.”
Fourth, we’re to reject the scientific concept of biological sex. Gender is a social construct, and people should be allowed to choose theirs. If deemed necessary, the state may circumvent parents to provide troubled youngsters with medical, and even surgical transitions.
And finally, certain views are “misinformation” and those who hold them are deserving of punishment.
Voters repudiated these bad ideas. Now, perhaps, we can re-clothe the emperor.

Clothing The Emperor Read More

Kerby Anderson
Should parents be held criminally liable if their child shoots others in a school or public place? That is a question being considered in Georgia. The 14-year-old shooter (who killed four people) has been indicted, but so has his 54-year-old father.
Earlier this year, a jury in Michigan convicted parents after their son killed four students and wounded six others. They were prosecuted for being negligent. They knew of their son’s mental health issues and failed to secure the family firearms.
Let’s look at this question logically and take guns out of the equation for a minute. Imagine a 4-year-old is left in a car that is running for a moment by a mother (who went to get the mail or open the garage door). He jumps into the car seat, somehow puts the car in reverse and backs over and kills four people. I think all of us would assume the parents are fully responsible for his act because of negligence.
Now change it to a 30-year-old in a car who mows down and kills four people in a moment of road rage. We wouldn’t hold the parents responsible at all. But what would we think if it was a 14-year-old doing the same thing?
In the Georgia case, there are other factors. The shooter had made previous threats and was interviewed by the police. His father bought him the gun. Other family members report the family was dysfunctional and the boy was the subject of lots of verbal abuse and suffering from significant emotional turmoil.
Those factors explain why the Georgia authorities charged the father with involuntary manslaughter, second degree murder, and cruelty to children. We will learn more as the case progresses, but this case sends a clear signal to parents that they are responsible for their child’s mental state and subsequent actions.

Parents and Shooters Read More

Penna Dexter
New data from the Gallup organization finds just under half of U.S. adults describing themselves as religious. In the same survey, 33% say they are spiritual, but not religious, and 18% are neither.
It’s increasingly apparent that we live in a post-Christian society.
Evangelist Sam Chan explains: “This is why evangelism is so scary and awkward….What worked in the age of Christendom seems ineffective in our post-Christian age.”
In his book, How to Talk About Jesus (without being THAT guy), Dr. Chan suggests listening closely to people to “hear where they’re coming from — culturally, emotionally, and existentially” and then appropriating their language to “show them that Jesus is the one they’re looking for.”
The apostle Paul did that. Acts 17:22-31 recounts his speech to the Areopagus. These were Athenian philosophers, who would gather at a hilltop called the Areopagus, or Mars Hill. This place for discussion was the marketplace of society where men traded in ideas. Like Paul, we should think about evangelism as beginning where people are, physically, and also intellectually and spiritually.
Our guide through Greece, David Sparks, emphasized that our message should be captivating, relevant to the times and to each person’s needs and mindset. Paul told the Areopagus he could see that they were “very religious.” He mentioned their altar bearing the inscription: “To the unknown god.” He proceeded to explain who this god is, that he is our creator and that “he is actually not far from each one of us.”
Pastor Sparks said Paul “used an old and frequent pattern in the Greek language”, when he proclaimed: ”In him we live and move and have our being.”
Paul’s love for people fueled his concern that they were trapped in the idolatries of the day. Today, our idols are different. We must be sensitive as we point them out.
We can follow Paul’s pattern for evangelism in a pagan society. 

Sharing The Gospel Read More

Penna Dexter
We rarely connect the dots between feminism and our current societal woes. But political commentator and activist, Matt Walsh does so on a regular basis. During a recent episode of his podcast on The Daily Wire, he described in detail a memo drafted in 1969 by Frederick Jaffe who was then a vice president of Planned Parenthood. The document, known as the Jaffe memo, was written in response to a request from the head of an influential population-control organization. Matt Walsh describes the Jaffe memo as a “step-by-step roadmap for depopulating the United States.”
Step number one — “Restructure family: Postpone or avoid marriage.” In the 60’s the median marriage age was 20 for women — now it’s 29 and rising. Matt Walsh points out that, “For women, fertility starts to decline rapidly at age 30. And that is right at the moment that many women are now getting married…a recipe for decline…intentionally concocted.”
The Jaffe memo’s step number two is: “Alter image of ideal family size.”  By 1971, Pew research showed Americans’ preferred number of children had switched from four to two.  Planned Parenthood began, in 1950, to underwrite the search for an effective oral contraceptive. In 1965, Planned Parenthood won a “right to privacy” at the U.S. Supreme Court. This resulted in the repeal of laws against the use of birth control by married couples.
Step number three was a call to “Encourage increased homosexuality.”  Mr. Walsh points out that this was an early admission that homosexuality can, in fact “be encouraged” that it “isn’t about equal rights. It’s about curbing the human population.”
Number four: “Fertility agents in the water supply.”  And number five — one of the feminists’ biggest successes: “Encourage women to work.” This brought more taxes into governments and contributed to the breakdown of the family — achieving two goals of the Left.
We are not yet at depopulation, but the birthrate has dropped below replacement level, another sad consequence of feminism.

Depopulation Memo Read More

Kerby Anderson
What is the annual cost of immigration to American taxpayers? The US House Committee on Homeland Security has calculated the cost, and we are in for significant “sticker shock.” Their new report reveals that taxpayers are losing nearly a half trillion dollars to the border crisis.
The staggering amount taxpayers lose to funding illegal aliens comes from nearly every sector of society. We pay more for healthcare, education, and housing to individuals and families here in this country illegally. We also must bear the brunt of extra costs for law enforcement.
In case you are wondering, only a small fraction of those costs is ever recouped from taxes paid by illegal aliens. The rest of those costs are what we must pay. In the past, many mayors of sanctuary cities have argued these costs are insignificant when we consider the benefits we enjoy from migrants coming to this country. You might ask the mayors of New York City and Chicago if they still feel that way.
When I discussed this latest report on my radio program, one guest suggested that the government figure was probably low. That seems likely when you add to the millions who have illegally crossed the border another 1.7 million “gotaways” who escaped federal custody. We can assume some of them are involved in drugs and human trafficking. A few might even be terrorists, who deliberately avoided capture.
A second guest also reminded us that millions of illegals harm Americans in another way. They are competing for jobs with US citizens thus keeping wages low and making it harder for some to get jobs.
Every poll I have seen shows that voters consider border security and immigration to be one of their top issues. Wait until they find out how much it costs. This will certainly be an election issue.

Cost of Immigration Read More

Penna Dexter
I’m against every big government program that is proposed. But one massive federal program really helped me.
I am a Baby Boomer. I was born during the unprecedented spike in the US birth rate that took place after World War II. The ‘baby boom’ occurred alongside an economic boom, a sustained period of economic growth and full employment.
 A big-government program played an important role.
The G.I. Bill, enacted in 1944, put higher education, job training, and home ownership within the reach of millions of World War II veterans. By 1951, nearly 8 million veterans had received educational and training benefits. My dad was one of them. He had saved during high school and worked while attending the University of Southern California.
He joined the Army after his second year of college. Two years into his service, the war ended. He was able to finish up at USC on the G.I. Bill.
The G.I. Bill made it so those millions of veterans would not flood the job market immediately after the war. And when these young people — mostly men — finished their educations, their higher wages fueled the growing economy and the prosperity of the middle class. Their knowledge and training enabled the innovation of new products, the proliferation of large corporations, and the modernization of infrastructure. Their growing families necessitated the expansion of the suburbs.
Men in my father’s orbit were upwardly mobile in an expanding economy. It’s not that we were rich. But a middle-class father’s salary could support a family. And people believed that if they worked hard they could climb the ladder of success.
Of course, this wasn’t true for everyone. Nearly one third of the country lived in poverty. President Johnson’s War on Poverty was supposed to fix this and bring about a “Great Society.” It didn’t.
What’s the difference? Family. The G.I Bill encouraged family formation and work. The War on Poverty incentivized dependence and single motherhood.
Families are divinely-inspired mini-governments.

Big Government Read More

Penna Dexter
They said the movie, Barbie, is ‘subversive.’ Woke. Promotes feminism. But I couldn’t hate it. It was too clever and beautiful. And genuinely funny. A parody of feminism, Barbie, and Mattel itself.
The opening scene takes place on a rocky beach where little girls are playing tea party with baby dolls. Barbie appears — larger than life — in her black and white striped bathing suit. Awestruck, the girls smash their baby dolls on the rocks. A jarring reminder of society’s denigration of women’s motherly role.’
Then we’re introduced to the feminist utopia that is Barbieland. The family simply doesn’t exist there. There is a pregnant Midge. “Didn’t we discontinue her?” wonders the Mattel CEO — played by Will Ferrell.
Each Barbie lives in her own house. The houses have no outer walls. The Barbies can see each other. They greet one another in the morning and affirm, love, and support one another throughout the day. Who needs a family? Who needs men? All Barbies have meaningful jobs: doctors, airline pilots, or astronauts. A Barbie is President, and the Supreme Court is all Barbies. The Kens do something called “Beach.”
Daily Mail columnist, Sarah Vine calls Barbie “a deeply anti-man movie.”
“Every male character is either an idiot, a bigot, or a sad, rather pathetic loser.”
Barbie’s purpose, as she understands it, is to help little girls grow up to run the real world.
Margot Robbie — the perfect Barbie — winks at the little girls surrounded by their broken baby dolls as if to reassure them. ‘Ladies, we’ve got this.’
When Barbie travels to the real world, she realizes she and the other Barbies have failed. “You represent everything wrong with our culture,” a teenager tells her.
Co-writer and producer Greta Gerwig’s previous movies portray men as oppressive authority figures. Her good men are disrespected or demeaned by female characters. Here, the Mattel executives are buffoonishly authoritarian. The Kens — and real-world fathers — are weak and compliant.
Behold:  feminism’s rotten fruit.

The Barbie Movie Read More