Where the money should have been going . . .

For those of you that approach life with a more conservative bent, here is an interesting article that questions the amount of money that has been poured into the religious right political movement. The author of the article advocates that the money should have been poured into . . . .CHRISTIAN EDUCATION!

Click here to read it!

Here's an excerpt:

How would it be, for instance, if all the money raised for all the national ministries and pro-family groups since the 1970s—millions and millions of dollars, if not billions—and all the incalculable man-hours of work, had been devoted to the establishment of a comprehensive system of Christian education, coast to coast? How would it be if, instead of pouring all that money and labor into the bottomless pit of politics as usual, we'd used it to set up Christian schools and Christian colleges, Christian scholarships, Christian tutoring and homeschooling programs—and taken tens of millions of Christian children out of anti-Christian public schools?

Those millions of Christian-educated children would be grown up by now. They'd be voting, they'd be holding public office. Think they might've elected different leaders instead of the gang of thieves, liars, tax-cheats, tinhorn socialist big shots, and snake-oil salesmen who afflict us now?

The "self-esteem" disaster . . .

These type of articles are popping up everywhere - click here to read a good one.

It began as the byproduct of the 1980s self-esteem movement, in which parents and teachers were told to reward and stroke kids pretty much constantly, supposedly to make them confident.
Dr. Ernie Swihart, an author and behavioral pediatrician at South Lake Pediatrics in Minnetonka, decried the self-esteem movement from its inception. Then, as now, he believed kids should be taught to be inwardly focused, self-sufficient creatures able to shift their own gears.

Real self-esteem -- for all of us -- comes from overcoming an obstacle-laden challenge, he believes, with hard work. Lavishing praise, he contends, is counterproductive and, if anything, makes kids needy and voracious for that other self-esteem-movement buzzword: validation.

Amen.