Charlotte Jones Anderson looks and carries herself like a runway model, but almost every day she goes toe-to-toe and nose-t0-nose with corporate America as the Dallas Cowboys’ executive vice president and chief brand officer.
Anderson came home Monday to speak to the Little Rock Touchdown Club luncheon in front of a crowd that required extra tables be set up.
It was obvious from start to finish she is proud of her roots that run deep into Arkansas, and the two assistants she brought with her, Meredith Counce of Fayetteville and Holly Hilburn of Little Rock, were just a little of the proof.
Anderson was the first female speaker in the almost 11-year history of the LRTDC, and she knocked it out of the park, which was no surprise.
At least 100 of those who attended were females, including a ninth-grade teacher and now principal at Little Rock Central, Nancy Roussseau, but it would take the rest of this column to list all the friends and admirers who showed up to support Anderson.
Before addressing the group, she took a few minutes to explain how concerned NFL owners are about domestic violence and the way the Ray Rice findings were handled, and she’s close enough to her dad Jerry Jones to know how deep that concern is.
There are 32 NFL teams and dozens upon dozens of executives, but Jones is one of three female NFL executives. But it was easy to see she transcends the world of male and female. She is just a smart, sharp businessman who more than holds her own in the world of professional football.
She told the story of how her dad lured her away — temporarily — from a job in Washington D.C. to help stop the bleeding after he bought the Dallas Cowboys in 1989.
The Cowboys were losing $1 million a month at the time.
Anderson came in, looked at the books and worked to move training camp from California to Texas for 11 years, a move that saved hundreds of thousands of dollars before the Cowboys settled on alternating it between San Antonio and Oxnard, Calif.
She took on other efforts that were losing money, and when she had them all fixed she told her dad she was going back to D.C.
Jones, always the uncanny businessman, asked her to stay.
She explained she knew nothing about the business of professional football, and his answer, “Neither do I, but I need people around me I can trust,” brought her to Dallas permanently.
Anderson immediately started updating and upgrading the Cowboys brand, and, yes, she is over the cheerleaders. But that is just one of numerous duties, and when Dallas made the NFC Championship Game in 1993, it was her idea to have a pep rally to send the team off to San Francisco.
It was free on a first-come, first-served basis. They sold out of food and beverages halfway through the pep rally.
The Cowboys went on to beat the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl that year and the next and then won it again in 1996 against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“Those were glorious years,” Anderson said and then added with a laugh, “and too long ago.”
Jones turned to Anderson for help in improving the Cowboys’ off-field image and she wasted no time getting meetings with the presidents of Frito Lay, NBC Sports Programming and the NFL. She convinced everyone to donate $15 million of advertising air time for a halftime show at the Cowboys annual Thanksgiving game to kick off the Salvation Army’s red bucket program.
In 2010 she became chairman of the Salvation Army’s advisory board, the first woman to hold that position, and Monday she was the first woman to speak at the LRTDC and she looked like Jane and played like Tarzan.
Sports on 09/23/2014
Print Headline: Savvy Anderson graces Jerry’s Cowboys
___________ Today downtown at the Little Rock Touchdown Club Mike Singletary is speaking. Mike Singletary: Christ Means Everything – CBN.com SPORTS Mike Singletary: ‘Christ Means Everything’ By Shawn BrownThe 700 Club CBN.com – Mike Singletary spent 12 seasons as a key member of the celebrated Chicago Bears defense of the 1980s. This NFL Hall of […]
________ Little Rock Touchdown Club – September 2, 2014 Published on Sep 3, 2014 ESPN’s Mark May addresses the Touchdown Club _______________ Mark May was asked about the toughest players that he played against and he said they both were NFL Hall of Famers and he got to play them in college too and they […]
LRTDC scores big with who’s who of speakers Share on facebookShare on twitterMore Sharing Services1 By Wally Hall This article was published August 7, 2014 at 3:26 a.m. PHOTO BY RICK MCFARLAND David Bazzel, president of the Little Rock Touchdown Club, announces the club’s lineup of speakers Wednesday in the lobby of the Simmons Tower […]
Rex Nelson impersonates Houston Nutt at LRTC 08 27 12 Published on Oct 2, 2012 Little Rock Touchdown Club has Rex Nelson do the stats for the games played that week. Rex does a lot of impersonations of different people but I like his Houston Nutt the best. Video by Popeye Video – Mrpopeyevideo […]
Mitch Mustain I really enjoyed hearing Mitch speak at the Little Rock Touchdown Club on 10-14-13 and he did a great job. I really liked the story he told about always dreaming about playing for the Razorbacks when he grew up and constantly listening to Paul call the games on the Razorback Radio Network. Paul […]
2005 Springdale Bulldogs Arkansas State Champs I thought that Mitch Mustain did a great job at the Little Rock Touchdown Club the other day and he came across as humble. He was part of one of the most talented Arkansas teams ever assembled. I give Houston Nutt credit for bringing together players like Peyton Hillis, […]
2010: Notre Dame vs. USC Below in this article you will see that Mitch Mustain did not say it was wrong to pull him. I am glad that he did not say that because we were winning with him but it was because we had the best two running backs that ever played together. He […]
USC QB #16 Mitch Mustain Highlights 2010 I remember thinking that Arkansas’ best victory in 2006 was over the ranked Tennessee Vols in Fayetteville. It was a very exciting game and Arkansas held on at the end and won. Mitch Mustain actually did not play in that game. That was the first game that he […]
Notre Dame USC 2010 Football Highlights Mitch said that he went to USC because he thought that they were great at developing NFL quarterbacks and he did not like the direction the hogs offensive was headed. He had been promised that the offensive would become more open but that did not happen and that is […]
Mitch Mustain – Fighting Back From a Fumble I was very pleased with Mitch Mustain’s talk at the Little Rock Touchdown Club on 10-14-13. There was a time for questions and someone asked the question that I wanted answered: “What do you think of Lane Kiffin?” Mitch said that some coaches are excellent at knowing […]
By Joey Magidson on July 18, 2014@https://twitter.com/JoeyMagidsonIt’s gotten to be a bit of a running joke in the cinema world that every other year Woody Allenputs out a “lesser” work. That’s not completely untrue, but I’m pleased to say that this year Allen’s “off year” outing is pretty solid in and of itself. Beautiful looking and a fun vehicle for Colin Firthto be a bit on a silly side, Magic in the Moonlight isn’t an awards contender by any stretch, but it’s an enjoyable way to spend about 100 minutes in a movie theater. Firth gets to spar with Emma Stone in a way that consistently entertains throughout, while Allen never lets things get too ridiculous or too serious. It’s hardly his headiest material and once again there are recycled elements to this work, but whole thing just goes down really easily. Yes, I’ve never fond a movie of Allen’s that I haven’t at least found to be decent, but I know the difference betweenManhattan and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. This film isn’t the former by any stretch but it’s also miles away from the latter as well. It’s a cute little flick that won’t be an awards contender but should appeal to Allen’s legion of fans. Magic in the Moonlight isn’t a masterpiece at all (and calling it “minor Allen” probably is an accurate description), but it’s very easy to recommend to you all. On a hot summer day, it’s a pleasure to watch…
We begin by meeting our protagonist Stanley Crawford (Firth) in action. It’s 1928 and he’s a famous English magician who performs under heavy makeup as Wei Ling-soo in packed houses across Europe. He also is known for debunking the supernatural (including the Vatican, he says early on). When an old friend and fellow prestidigitator Howard (Simon McBurney) visits him backstage and requests his help on a particularly tricky case, the snooty Stanley jumps at the chance. Howard says he’s been watching the work of purported spirit medium Sophie Baker (Stone) and can’t figure out how she’s doing it. She and her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) have ingratiated themselves into a wealthy family’s life, particularly the son Brice (Hamish Linklater), who’s in love with her. Stanley thinks it’s all nonsense, so he agrees to go visit. Under a different name, he arrives and has the same problem…he can’t figure it out. Could Sophie be legit? More importantly, he’s falling in love with her, so is his judgment clouded? As his values are challenged, things get amusingly messy. The plot here is fairly simple, but the main pleasure is in just seeing everyone display solid chemistry with each other and have fun.
It’s far too rare that Colin Firth gets to truly let loose with comedy like he does here, and it’s a pleasure to see. He doesn’t try to imitate Allen, but it’s definitely an Allen type character. Firth is having a great time, reveling in the character’s snark and misanthropic nature, not afraid to really go for it. He consistently made me laugh. Emma Stone gets the muse treatment from Allen here, as it’s clear he’s got her in mind for future projects. She seems a touch out of place in the period elements, but she’s still very charming here and spits out Allen’s dialogue terrifically. Her chemistry with Firth especially is rather sparkling. Stone will be in Allen’s next outing, so I can’t wait to see here there. They’re the only two to really write home about, though Jacki Weaver is very solid as Brice’s mother, but she’s underused. The aforementioned Hamish Linklater is decent but unmemorable, except for trying to do Allen’s stammer at times, for no reason that I can ascertain. Simon McBurney is likewise unmemorable, while Marcia Gay Harden is outright wasted. The supporting cast also includes Eileen Atkins and more, but Firth and Stone are who fares the best here, by far.
Allen is seeking to recapture the magic (no pun intended) to some degree that he bottled withMidnight in Paris, and while he’s not able to go that far, he does once again have Darius Khondji as his cinematographer, so the film looks fantastic. Allen’s direction and writing are the same as usual (decidedly old fashion and either charming or hokey, depending on who you are), though the visuals are definitely better than average. This really does strike me as the sort of idea Allen literally pulls out of his drawer of aborted ideas that he showed off in his PBS documentary a year or so ago, but he makes it work. Apparently he was originally setting it on Long Island in the Hamptons as opposed to France, and that location change perhaps has made all the difference for him. The ending is more or less what you’d expect, but for a bit in the third act Allen does pull a bit of a surprise in how the handles the whole “do we need to be logical in our lives or is there a place for magic?” question.
Without question, Magic in the Moonlight is a bit of a forgettable Allen effort, but it’s still a good movie and well worth seeing. It’s basically recommendation worthy on its own for Firth and Stone, but the cinematography is another excellent selling point as well. For an Allen flick people were expecting nothing from, this definitely exceeds expectations. If you want a nice bit of summer counter programming, this film is a safe bet. Magic in the Moonlight sets out to endear itself to you, and in that regard the work is definitely a success.
When he’s not obsessing over new Oscar predictions on a weekly basis, Joey is seeing between 200 and 300 movies a year. He views the best in order to properly analyze the awards race/season each year, but he also watches the worst for reasons he mostly sums up as “so you all don’t have to”. In his spare time, you can usually find him complaining about the Jets or the Mets. Still, he lives and dies by film. Joey’s a voting member of the Internet Film Critics Association as well. Today the IFCA, tomorrow the world!
MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT – Official Trailer (2014) [HD] Emma Stone, Colin Firth
Published on May 21, 2014
Release Date: July 25, 2014 (limited)
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Director: Woody Allen
Screenwriter: Woody Allen
Starring: Emma Stone, Colin Firth, Marcia Gay Harden, Hamish Linklater, Simon McBurney, Eileen Atkins, Jacki Weaver, Erica Leerhsen, Catherine McCormack, Paul Ritter, Jeremy Shamos
Genre: Comedy, Drama
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for a brief suggestive comment, and smoking throughout)
Plot Summary:
“Magic in the Moonlight” is a romantic comedy about an Englishman brought in to help unmask a possible swindle. Personal and professional complications ensue. The film is set in the south of France in the 1920s against a backdrop of wealthy mansions, the Cфte d’Azur, jazz joints and fashionable spots for the wealthy of the Jazz Age.
I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of […]
_____________________________ Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 3 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 3 of 3: ‘Is Woody Allen A Romantic Or A Realist?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras.http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/antons@mail.ubc.ca ______________ I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 2 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 2 of 3: ‘What Does The Movie Tell Us About Ourselves?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras. http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/antons@mail.ubc.ca______________ I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 1 of 3: ‘What Does Judah Believe?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras.http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/antons@mail.ubc.ca I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues […]
____________________________ Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 3 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 3 of 3: ‘Is Woody Allen A Romantic Or A Realist?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras.http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/antons@mail.ubc.ca ______________ I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times […]
________________________ Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 2 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 2 of 3: ‘What Does The Movie Tell Us About Ourselves?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras. http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/antons@mail.ubc.ca _________________- _____________________________ Discussing Woody Allen’s movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and various other subjects […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 1 of 3: ‘What Does Judah Believe?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras.http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/antons@mail.ubc.ca________________________ I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and […]
Woody Allen Show 3 Woody Allen Show 4 Woody Allen Interview- “Take The Money And Run” (Merv Griffin Show 1969) Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham pt.1 – Featured Video – Woody Allen entrevista a Billy Graham 2
_________________________ (If you want to check out other posts I have done about about Steve Jobs:Some say Steve Jobs was an atheist , Steve Jobs and Adoption , What is the eternal impact of Steve Jobs’ life? ,Steve Jobs versus President Obama: Who created more jobs? ,Steve Jobs’ view of death and what the Bible has to say about it ,8 things you might not know about […]
I have written about Woody Allen and the meaning of life several times before. King Solomon took a long look at this issue in the Book of Ecclesiastes and so did Kerry Livgren in his song “Dust in the Wind” for the rock band Kansas in 1978. He later put his faith in Christ. Love […]
I have written about Woody Allen and the meaning of life several times before. King Solomon took a long look at this issue in the Book of Ecclesiastes and so did Kerry Livgren in his song “Dust in the Wind” for the rock band Kansas in 1978. He later put his faith in Christ. […]
__________ Review of Woody Allen’s latest movie MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT (Part 1) Emma Stone stars in the new Woody Allen movie ‘Magic in the Moonlight’ – here’s the trailer Emma Stone and Colin Firth star in ‘Magic in the Moonlight,’ which is directed by Woody Allen. Emma Stone recently starred in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man […]
I have written about Woody Allen and the meaning of life several times before. King Solomon took a long look at this issue in the Book of Ecclesiastes and so did Kerry Livgren in his song “Dust in the Wind” for the rock band Kansas in 1978. He later put his faith in Christ. […]
A Documentary on Woody Allen and the meaning of life I have written about Woody Allen and the meaning of life several times before. King Solomon took a long look at this issue in the Book of Ecclesiastes and so did Kerry Livgren in his song “Dust in the Wind” for the rock band Kansas […]
I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of his own secular view. […]
The late Milton Friedman discusses economics and otherwise with Charlie Rose.
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Milton Friedman: Life and ideas – Part 01
Milton Friedman: Life and ideas
A brief biography of Milton Friedman
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Stossel – “Free to Choose” (Milton Friedman) 1/6
6-10-10. pt.1 of 6. Stossel discusses Milton Friedman’s 1980 book, “Free to Choose”, which was smuggled in and read widely in Eastern Europe during the Cold War by many countries under Soviet rule. Read and admired the world over by the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, this book served as the inspiration for many of the Soviet sattellite countries’ economies once they achieved freedom after the fall of the Soviet Union.
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I first saw Thomas Sowell on the show FREE TO CHOOSE on the debate team that Milton Friedman chose. I suggest checking out these episodes of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market. Below he is the subject of a fine article that shows how our government is wasting so much money on the welfare trap. We should stop trapping people in welfare and let the free market offer them a chance to do better. Obviously what we are doing now is not working. The best way to destroy the welfare trap is to put in Milton Friedman’s negative income tax. Of course, all welfare programs should be eliminated at the same time.
Political cartoonists like Michael Ramirez and Chuck Asay are effective because they convey so much with images.
But we need more than clever cartoons if we’re going to educate the general population about how government harms the economy and undermines freedom.
He just turned 83, and let’s hope he has another 20 years of columns to write
And that’s why Thomas Sowell is so invaluable. He’s one of the nation’s top economic thinkers, but he also writes for mass audiences and his columns are masterful combinations of logic and persuasion.
His latest column about poverty is a good example. In this first excerpt, he succinctly explains that official poverty is not the same as destitution.
“Poverty” once had some concrete meaning — not enough food to eat or not enough clothing or shelter to protect you from the elements, for example. Today it means whatever the government bureaucrats, who set up the statistical criteria, choose to make it mean. And they have every incentive to define poverty in a way that includes enough people to justify welfare state spending. Most Americans with incomes below the official poverty level have air-conditioning, television, own a motor vehicle and, far from being hungry, are more likely than other Americans to be overweight. But an arbitrary definition of words and numbers gives them access to the taxpayers’ money.
He then makes a very important point about economic incentives.
Even when they have the potential to become productive members of society, the loss of welfare state benefits if they try to do so is an implicit “tax” on what they would earn that often exceeds the explicit tax on a millionaire. If increasing your income by $10,000 would cause you to lose $15,000 in government benefits, would you do it? In short, the political left’s welfare state makes poverty more comfortable, while penalizing attempts to rise out of poverty.
Since columnists are limited to about 800 words, Sowell doesn’t have leeway to give details, but his explanation of how the government traps people in poverty is the rhetorical version of this amazing chart.
He concludes with some powerful observation about who really benefits from the welfare state.
…the left’s agenda is a disservice to [the poor], as well as to society. …The agenda of the left — promoting envy and a sense of grievance, while making loud demands for “rights” to what other people have produced — is a pattern that has been widespread in countries around the world. This agenda has seldom lifted the poor out of poverty. But it has lifted the left to positions of power and self-aggrandizement, while they promote policies with socially counterproductive results.
Related posts:Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” film transcripts and videos here on http://www.thedailyhatch.org
I have many posts on my blog that include both the transcript and videos of Milton Friedman’s film series “Free to Choose” and here are the episodes that I have posted.
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__________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
Here are the posts and you can find the links in order below this.
The Power of the Market from 1990
The Failure of Socialism from 1990
The Anatomy of a Crisis from 1980
What is wrong with our schools? from 1980
Created Equal from 1980
From Cradle to Grave from 1980
The Power of the Market 1980
Debate on Inflation from 1980
Milton Friedman is the short one!!!
Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 5-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 4-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 3-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
TEMIN: We don’t think the big capital arose before the government did? VON HOFFMAN: Listen, what are we doing here? I mean __ defending big government is like defending death and taxes. When was the last time you met anybody that was in favor of big government? FRIEDMAN: Today, today I met Bob Lekachman, I […]
The Welfare State in USA has slowed the progress of the poor!!!! Robert Rector noted, “Johnson’s aim was to make poor families self-sufficient — able to rise above poverty through their own earnings without dependence on welfare. The exact opposite happened. For a decade-and-a-half before the War on Poverty began, self-sufficiency in America improved dramatically. For the past 45 years, though, there has been no improvement at all.”
We know the welfare state is good news for people inside government. Lots of bureaucrats are required, after all, to oversee a plethora of redistribution programs.
Walter Williams refers to these paper pushers as poverty pimps, and there’s even a ranking showing which states have the greatest number of these folks who profit by creating dependency.
But does anybody else benefit from welfare programs?
Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation explains in the Washington Times that the War on Poverty certainly hasn’t been a success for taxpayers or poor people. Instead, it’s created a costly web of dependency.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. …Since then, the taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s war. Adjusted for inflation, that’s three times the cost of all military wars since the American Revolution. Last year, government spent $943 billion providing cash, food, housing and medical care to poor and low-income Americans. …More than 100 million people, or one third of Americans, received some type of welfare aid, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient.
Here are some of the unpleasant details.
The U.S. Census Bureau has just released its annual poverty report. The report claims that in 2013, 14.5 percent of Americans were poor. Remarkably, that’s almost the same poverty rate as in 1967, three years after the War on Poverty started. How can that be? …When Johnson launched the War on Poverty, he wanted to give the poor a “hand up, not a hand out.” He stated that his war would shrink welfare rolls and turn the poor from “tax-eaters” into “taxpayers.” Johnson’s aim was to make poor families self-sufficient — able to rise above poverty through their own earnings without dependence on welfare. The exact opposite happened. For a decade-and-a-half before the War on Poverty began, self-sufficiency in America improved dramatically. For the past 45 years, though, there has been no improvement at all.
The final two sentences of that excerpt are the most important words in Robert’s column.
We were making lots of progress in the fight against poverty in the 1950s. That’s because we relied on the private economy and self sufficiency, as seen on the right side of this Chuck Asay cartoon..
But once politicians decided government was responsible for fighting poverty, progress ceased.
Why did progress stop? Because, as Robert explains, the welfare state creates a dependency trap and enables self-destructive behavior.
The culprit is, in part, the welfare system itself, which discourages work and penalizes marriage. …The welfare state is self-perpetuating. By undermining the social norms necessary for self-reliance, welfare creates a need for even greater assistance in the future. President Obama plans to spend $13 trillion over the next decade on welfare programs that will discourage work, penalize marriage and undermine self-sufficiency.
By the way, being “poor” in America rarely means material deprivation.
Most Americans who live in “poverty” have much higher living standards that people elsewhere in the world.
The actual living conditions of households labeled as poor by Census are surprising to most people. According to the government’s own surveys, 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning; nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television; half have a personal computer; 40 percent have a wide-screen HDTV. Three-quarters own a car or truck; nearly a third has two or more vehicles. Ninety-six percent of poor parents state that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food. …As a group, poor children are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children, and in most cases is well above recommended norms. …the average poor American has more living space than the typical nonpoor individual living in Sweden, France, Germany or the United Kingdom.
For more information on how best to help the poor, watch this video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.
Free Markets, Not Redistribution, Is Best Way to Reduce Poverty
Uploaded on Oct 3, 2011
The so-called War on Poverty has failed. Making government bigger and creating more federal redistribution programs has been bad news for taxpayers. But the welfare state also has been a disaster for the less fortunate, creating a flypaper effect that makes it difficult for people to lead independent and self-reliant lives. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video shows how the poverty rate was falling after World War II — but then stagnated once the federal government got involved. http://www.freedomandprosperity.org
P.P.P.S. Thomas Sowell has wise thoughts on how the welfare state hurts the less fortunate.
P.P.P.P.S. Some libertarians have suggested a “basic income” to replace the dozens of inefficient and failed welfare programs in Washington. For what it’s worth, I think there’s a better alternative.
________ Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has noted, “I’m all in favor of bringing federal government spending back down to about 18 percent of GDP, which is where it was when Bill Clinton left office.” The Rise (and Upcoming Fall) of the Welfare State in the Western World November 12, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I […]
The Flat Tax: How it Works and Why it is Good for America Uploaded by afq2007 on Mar 29, 2010 This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video shows how the flat tax would benefit families and businesses, and also explains how this simple and fair system would boost economic growth and eliminate the special-interest […]
__________ President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Tom Selleck, Dudley Moore, Lucille Ball at a Tribute to Bob Hope’s 80th birthday at the Kennedy Center. 5/20/83. __________________________ Dan Mitchell is very good at giving speeches and making it very simple to understand economic policy and how it affects a nation. Mitchell also talks about slowing the growth […]
You want a suggestion on how to cut the government then start at HUD. I would prefer to eliminate all of it. Here are Dan Mitchell’s thoughts below: Sequestration’s Impact on HUD: Just 358 More Days and Mission Accomplished March 12, 2013 by Dan Mitchell As part of my “Question of the Week” series, I had […]
Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has some great videos and I have posted lots of them on my blog. I like to go to Dan’s blog too. Take a look at some of them below and then the links to my blog. It’s Simple to Balance The Budget Without Higher Taxes Uploaded by afq2007 […]
In this episode “How to Stay Free” Friedman makes the statement “What we need is widespread public recognition that the central government should be limited to its basic functions: defending the nation against foreign enemies, preserving order at home, and mediating our disputes. We must come to recognize that voluntary cooperation through the market and in other ways is a far better way to solve our problems than turning them over to the government.”
In this episode Milton Friedman makes the point, “There was no widespread public demand for Social Security programs… it had to be sold to the American people primarily by the group of reformers, intellectuals, new dealers, the people associated with FDR. The Social Security is one of the most misleading programs. It has been sold as an insurance program. It’s not an insurance program. It’s a program which combines a bad tax, a flat tax on wages up to a maximum with a very inequitable and uneven system of giving benefits under which some people get much, some people get little.”
Pt 5
Lawrence E. Spivak: I know, I believe, I say I know, I think I know, but I’ll say I believe that you felt, you blame the government for the Great Depression of 1929 through 1933 and of course, you had to blame FDR for all he did, but most people feel that he saved this free economy of ours.
Friedman: Given the catastrophe of the Great Depression, there is no doubt in my mind that emergency government measures were necessary. The government had made a mess. Not FDR’s government, it was the government that preceded him. Although it was mainly the Federal Reserve System which really wasn’t subject to election. But once FDR came in he did two very different kinds of things.
Lawrence E. Spivak: Well, had the government made a mess by what it did or but by what it didn’t do.
Friedman: By what it did. By it’s monetary policies which forced and produced a sharp decline in the total quantity of money. It was a mismanagement of the monetary apparatus. If there had been no federal reserve system, in my opinion, there would not have been a Great Depression at that time. But given that the depression had occurred, and it was a catastrophe of almost unimaginable kind, I do not fault at all, indeed on the contrary I commend Roosevelt for some of emergency measures he took. They obviously weren’t of the best, but they were emergency measures and you had an emergency you had to deal with. And the emergency measure such as relief programs, even the WPA which was a make work program, these served a very important function. He also served a very important function by giving people confidence in themselves. His great speech about the only thing we have to fear is fear itself was certainly a very important element in restoring confidence to the public at large. But he went much beyond that, he also started to change, under public pressure, the kind of government system we had. If you go beyond the emergency measures to the, what he regarded as reform measures, things like NRA and AAA, which were declared unconstitutional, but then from there on to the Social Security system, to the …
Lawrence E. Spivak: Take the Social Security System for a minute. The people wanted that, they wanted that protection. They were frightened, they wanted welfare.
Friedman: Not at all.
Lawrence E. Spivak: When you said pressure, who, pressure from whom?
Friedman: Pressure from people who were expressing what they thought the public ought to have. There was no widespread public demand for Social Security programs. The demands…….
Lawrence E. Spivak: No demand for welfare with 13 million people …….
Friedman: There was a demand for welfare and assistance I was separating out the emergency measures from the permanent measures. Social Security in the first 10 years of its existence, helped almost no one. It only took in money. Very few people qualified for benefits. It wasn’t an emergency measure. It was a long term measure. And it had to be sold to the American people primarily by the group of reformers, intellectuals, new dealers, the people associated with FDR. The Social Security is one of the most misleading programs. It has been sold as an insurance program. It’s not an insurance program. It’s a program which combines a bad tax, a flat tax on wages up to a maximum with a very inequitable and uneven system of giving benefits under which some people get much, some people get little. So that Social Security….
Lawrence E. Spivak: Would you now abolish Social Security?
Friedman: I would not go back on any of the commitments that the government has made. But I would certainly reform Social Security in a way that would end in its ultimate elimination.
Lawrence E. Spivak: If you’re not afraid then of the free market under any circumstances, where cooperation which you find necessary which you believe all to come, fails to come, where competition becomes so fierce and becomes very frequently corrupt and where, all where it becomes stupid. Take for example what’s happening in today’s market, the conglomerates. Which have been seizing up all sorts of, we happen to live in a hotel that’s run by a conglomerate. Why should ITT, for example, run a hotel and how are you going to stop that.
Friedman: Well in the first place, once again,
Lawrence E. Spivak: Without government, without…..
Friedman: Once again, it’s government measures that have promoted the conglomerates. The only major reason we have conglomerates is because they are a very effective way to get around a whole batch of tax legislation. Let me ask a different question. Who is more effected by government regulations, by government controls?
Lawrence E Spivak: I thought I was supposed to ask the questions. But I was warned that you might turn these on me.
Friedman: Well tell me, whose more effected the big fellow who can deal with it or that have a separated department to handle the red tape, or the poor fellow?
Lawrence E. Spivak: The big fellow can always take care of himself under any system.
Friedman: Right, and therefore he’ll want a system which gives the big fellow the least advantage. And the system under which he can get government to help him out, gives him the most advantage, not the least. You say am I afraid of greed, of lack of cooperation. Of course. But we always have to compare the real with the real. What are the real alternatives? And if we look at the record of history, if we go back to the 19th century which everybody always points to as the era of the robber baron who strode around the land and ground the poor under his heel, what do we find? The greatest outpouring of voluntary charitable activity in the history of the world. This University, this University of Chicago is an example. It was founded by contributions by John D. Rockefeller and other people. The colleges and universities throughout the Midwest. If you go back and ask when was the Red Cross founded, when was the Salvation Army founded, when were the Boy Scouts founded, you’ll discover all of that came during the 19th century in the era of unregulated rapacious capitalism.
Lawrence E. Spivak: I’d like to go back for a minute to the question of conglomerates. Granted that what you say that the government policies concentration on central government if you will, or whatever you want to call it, are responsible for the growth of conglomerates. What would we, what should we do about them now? Government try to undue them? Or should anybody try to undue them?
Friedman: No.
Lawrence E. Spivak: Or should you just let them fail?
Friedman: You should let them fail, of course. I am strongly opposed to government bailing any of them out. You should let them fail. The best things you can do in my opinion, are first to have complete free trade so you can have conglomerates in other countries compete with conglomerates in this country. We may have only two or three automobile companies, but there’s Toyota, there’s Volkswagen, competition from abroad is effective. But in the second place…
Lawrence E. Spivak: When do you say complete free trade you mean all over the world?
Friedman: No sir. I mean the U.S. all by itself unilaterally should eliminate all trade barriers. We would be better off if all the countries did the same.
Lawrence E. Spivak: What do you think would happen if we just did it though?
Friedman: I think we’d be very much better off and a lot others would then follow our example. That’s what happened in the 19th Century when Great Britain in 1846 completed removed, unilaterally, all trade barriers so that…..
Lawrence E. Spivak: You don’t think this country would be flooded with goods of all kinds from all over the world, maybe cheaper in that we wouldn’t have great unemployment in this country?
Friedman: What would the people who sold us goods do with their money? They’d get dollars, what would they do with the dollars? Eat them. If they want to send us goods and take dollars in return, we’re delighted to have them. No. That’s not a problem as long as you have a free exchange rate. Because we cannot export without importing, we cannot import without exporting. You would not have a reduction in employment, what you’d have would be a different pattern of employment. You’d have more employment in export industries and less employment in those industries that compete with import. But go back to conglomerates, Larry for a moment. I just want to ask a very different kind of a question. Conglomerates are not very attractive, I would much rather have a lot of small enterprises. But there’s all the difference in the world between a private conglomerate and a government conglomerate. In general, the government conglomerate can get money from you without your agreeing to give it to him. You and I pay for Amtrak and for the postal deficit whether we use the services of Amtrak or the postal deficit or not. I don’t pay your conglomerate unless I rent one of their apartments. I get something for my money. So bad as private conglomerates are, they’re less bad than one of the alternatives.
___________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, […]
George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees together. And we told them to be at the bank at their place at 8:00 a.m. and just act as if nothing was happening, just have a smile on their face, if they could, and me too. And we have four savings windows and we […]
Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1 FREE TO CHOOSE: Anatomy of Crisis Friedman Delancy Street in New York’s lower east side, hardly one of the city’s best known sites, yet what happened in this street nearly 50 years ago continues to effect all of us today. […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 3 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: If it […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 2 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Groups of concerned parents and teachers decided to do something about it. They used private funds to take over empty stores and they […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 1 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America’s public schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other […]
Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are […]
Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Liberals like President Obama (and John Brummett) want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present. This is a seven part series. […]
I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 3 OF 7 Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside […]
I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […]
Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7) Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave Abstract: Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people’s welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act […]
_________________________ Pt3 Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]
Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […]
“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Paul once told the Romans that he was not ashamed of the gospel. Abraham was willing to leave his country, his family, and their pagan gods behind in order to follow a God he did not know to a place he did not know. Today, Christians are told to leave their faith where it belongs – in a church building. Don’t bring it into science, academia, business, politics, economics, education, etc. We are told that our faith should not affect these areas, and yet those who cling to atheism and Darwinism are not told to leave their presuppositions at the door concerning the same things. Why should we, as Paul was, be unashamed of the gospel? Why would Abraham (and for that matter Moses and especially Daniel) not be ashamed to follow God in a culture that did not know Him? What does it mean to not be ashamed of the gospel?
The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre accurately diagnosed man’s problem of meaning when he stated, “No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.” Sartre and Albert Camus come to the conclusion that life is absurd and meaningless, and if there is no infinite reference point then they are certainly correct. Friedrich Nietzsche came to a similar conclusion. Of course, none of these men could live consistently with their position. Despite his presupposition that life is meaningless, Sartre signed the Algerian Manifesto which condemned the war in Algeria. As a result, he lost many followers because by condemning the war as wrong, he was asserting that there are set morals – morality is not meaningless. Nietzsche lived the most consistently with his position. His life ended in an insane asylum. The Christian agrees with Sartre’s diagnosis of meaning: a finite point (man) has no meaning without an infinite reference point (God). Sartre and others conclude that there is no such infinite reference point, so life (the universe, morality, etc.) is meaningless. But man cannot live as if this is so. The Christian agrees with the problem, but the Biblical position is that there is an infinite reference point with gives meaning to all of life. Why be ashamed of this position?
I am thankful for a conversation I had with two dear friends over coffee this week. We were discussing epistemology (how we know what we know) in the context of Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein. These men had ideas of universal language being the ultimate solution to the problem of knowledge – how can we know with certainty. Essentially, their conclusion was that a universal language could give meaning, purpose, and a basis for knowledge. But their conclusion had no solid base. In order for there to be communication there must a communicator. Logos anyone? Jesus Christ is the Word. The universe came into being through the spoken word of God. Here again, the Christian position gives satisfying answers to philosophical problems. What is there to be ashamed of?
The apostle Paul was an educated man who constantly reasoned with Greek thinkers, Jewish rabbis, and both Jewish and Gentile laymen. He writes the Romans and he tells them, “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Francis Schaeffer explains, “No wonder Paul says, ‘I’m not ashamed of the gospel intellectually because it is going to have the answers that men need. I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation in every single area; it has answers and meaning for both now and eternity.’ The gospel is great…[it] is a universal message that is fitting for all men and for their total need” (from Death in the City). I have yet to read a book that portrays this truth more clearly than Richard Wurmbrand’s Tortured for Christ. Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor, recounts his experience in the Underground Church under harsh Communist rule. That church was unashamed! Why? Because they understood that the Russians had a need that could be satisfied only in Christ. They preached and spread the gospel with boldness in the most clever of ways. I have not read Jerry Trousdale’s book, Miraculous Movements, but I suspect its message is similar. He discusses the wild spread of Christianity among extreme sections of Islam. What explanation is there for this? For one, the Christian message applies to all men in all cultures at all times.
Abraham leaves everything familiar to follow a God he did not yet know. Was his faith blind? No. The gods of Abraham’s family had never communicated. They had never spoken, much less given a promise. Abraham did not yet know God, but God had clearly communicated to him and Abraham placed his faith in something solid – the God who clearly existed and communicated. This is the foundational presupposition of the Christian faith and we need not be ashamed of it!
Christians today must not accept the lie that the message of the Bible belongs only in the “religious” box and does not apply to other disciplines and areas of life. The truth is that men must live as though Christianity were true, even if they do not believe that it is. Sartre could talk all he wanted about meaninglessness, but he clearly could not cling to that position when he condemned an unjust war. He had to live as though Christianity were true. As Christians, let’s not be bullied into thinking that the gospel message does not apply to all men in all areas of life. It does. The gospel can withstand academic and intellectual scrutiny. It can withstand and even thrive in the face of extreme persecution. All men need to hear the gospel message. We need not be ashamed.
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
It is not possible to know where the pro-life evangelicals are coming from unless you look at the work of the person who inspired them the most. That person was Francis Schaeffer. I do care about economic issues but the pro-life issue is the most important to me. Several years ago Adrian Rogers (past president of […]
I got this off a Christian blog spot. This person makes some good points and quotes my favorite Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer too. Prostitution, Chaos, and Christian Art The newest theatrical release of Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel “Les Miserables” was released on Christmas, but many Christians are refusing to see the movie. The reason simple — […]
Francis Schaeffer was truly a great man and I enjoyed reading his books. A theologian #2: Rev. Francis Schaeffer Duriez, Colin. Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008. Pp. 240. Francis Schaeffer is one of the great evangelical theologians of our modern day. I was already familiar with some of his books and his […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ___________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views […]
The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story Pt.1 – Today’s Christian Videos The Francis and Edith Schaeffer Story – Part 3 of 3 Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Picture of Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith from the […]
THE MARK OF A CHRISTIAN – CLASS 1 – Introduction Published on Mar 7, 2012 This is the introductory class on “The Mark Of A Christian” by Francis Schaeffer. The class was originally taught at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Overland Park, KS by Dan Guinn from FrancisSchaefferStudies.org as part of the adult Sunday School hour […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views concerning […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views concerning abortion, […]
Pamela Susan Courson (December 22, 1946 – April 25, 1974) was the long-term companion of Jim Morrison, singer of The Doors. After the deaths of Morrison and Courson, her parents petitioned an out-of-state court to declare that the couple had a common-law marriage.
Courson was born in Weed, California. She was described as a reclusive young girl from a family that did not mix with the neighbors very much. She did well in school until junior high, when records show that her family was contacted about truancy. Courson hated high school, attending Orange High School, and her grades declined when she was sixteen. That spring, she left for Los Angeles, where she and a friend got an apartment. Rumor has it that Neil Young wrote the song “Cinnamon Girl” about her, as well as “The Needle and the Damage Done“, but both have been denied.[1]
In his 1998 memoir, Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors, former keyboardist Ray Manzarek stated that Courson and Morrison met at a nightclub called London Fog on the Sunset Strip in 1965, while she was an art student at Los Angeles City College. Courson’s relationship with Morrison was tumultuous with loud arguments and repeated infidelities by both partners.
Courson briefly operated Themis, a fashion boutique that Morrison bought for her.[2] Her death certificate lists her occupation as “women’s apparel”.[citation needed]
Deaths of Morrison and Courson
On July 3, 1971, Courson found Morrison dead in the bathtub of their apartment in Paris, France. The official coroner‘s report listed his cause of death as heart failure, although no autopsy was performed. Questions persist over the actual cause of death. Under Morrison’s will, which stated that he was “an unmarried person”, Courson inherited his entire fortune. Lawsuits against the estate would tie up her quest for inheritance for the next two years. Courson did not remain in contact with the remaining Doors members after she received her share of Morrison’s royalties.
After Morrison’s death, Courson became a recluse in Los Angeles, using heroin and showing signs of mental instability. In his follow-up book to the seminal Jim Morrison biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive, Jerry Hopkins mentions that Courson might have prostituted herself after Morrison’s death, probably to keep up with the costly lifestyle she was used to, and was apparently pimped by a former Doors chauffeur. Doors historian Danny Sugerman became friendly with her in Los Angeles after Morrison’s death. Many years later he wrote in Wonderland Avenue that Courson’s heroin addiction progressed to the point that when she smuggled her drugs in her car she hid them in different-colored balloons.[3] She planned to swallow them if an officer pulled her over, and to “shit them out” upon returning home.[4]
On April 25, 1974, Courson died of a heroin overdose on the living room couch at the Los Angeles apartment she shared with two male friends. A neighbor said she had talked about looking forward to seeing Morrison again soon. Her parents intended that she be buried next to Morrison at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, and they listed this location as the place of burial on her death certificate, but due to legal complications with transporting the body to France, her remains were buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California, under the name Pamela Susan Morrison. Several months after her death, her parents, Columbus and Peny Courson, inherited Morrison’s fortune. Morrison’s parents later contested their executorship of the estate.
Estate controversy
In his will, made in Los Angeles County on February 12, 1969, Morrison left his entire estate to Courson, also naming her co-executor with his attorney, Max Fink.
When Courson died, a battle ensued between Morrison’s and Courson’s parents over who had legal claim to Morrison’s estate. On his death, his property became Courson’s; on her death, her property passed to her next heirs at law, her parents. Morrison’s parents contested the will under which Courson and subsequently her parents had inherited their son’s property.
To bolster their positions, Courson’s parents presented an unsigned document that they claimed Pam Courson had acquired in Colorado, apparently an application for a declaration that she and Morrison had contracted a common-law marriage under the laws of that state. The ability to contract a common-law marriage was abolished in California in 1896, but the state’s conflict of laws rules provided for recognition of common-law marriages lawfully contracted in foreign jurisdictions. Colorado was one of the 11 U.S. jurisdictions that still recognized common-law marriage. As long as a common-law marriage was lawfully contracted under Colorado law, it was recognized as a marriage under California law. However, neither Morrison nor Courson had signed the document, nor was there any proof that either of the deceased had even been aware of the document’s existence. Neither Morrison nor Courson was ever a resident of Colorado.
Whatever the circumstances of the unsigned document, the court case, and the controversy surrounding it, the California probate court decided that Courson and Morrison had a common-law marriage under the laws of Colorado. The effect of the court ruling was to close probate of Morrison’s and Courson’s estates and to reinforce the Courson family’s hold on the inheritance.
I have written about 66 heroes of mine in the House of Representatives that voted “no” on your debt ceiling increase request in 2011. I believe we must have representatives that will vote to restore our freedom and that means voting to cut spending and lower taxes like the Patriots of long ago wanted. Today the Tea Party represented my views the most closely. Lord knows I have written a lot about that in the past. . I have praised over and over and over the 66 House Republicans that voted no on that before. If they did not raise the debt ceiling then we would have a balanced budget instantly. I agree that the Tea Party has made a difference and I have personally posted 49 posts on my blog on different Tea Party heroes of mine.
THIS BRINGS ME TO ONE OF MY BIGGEST ECONOMIC HEROES AND IT IS THE LATE MILTON FRIEDMAN. Friedman had such revolutionary policies such as eliminating welfare and instituting the negative income tax and putting in school vouchers.
The problem in Washington is not lack of revenue but our lack of spending restraint. This video below makes that point.
We got to put in school choice because the current underperforming schools are built on the backs of our nation’s most vulnerable children.
Should there be a separation of school and profit? Many opponents of education reform seem to think so.
Case in point, ablog postat theWashington Postyesterday decried “outside forces that want to make big profits on the backs of our nation’s most vulnerable children.” Setting aside that the vast majority of private schools are nonprofit, the author apparently misses the fact that parentschooseto send their kids to these schools. (Does it make sense to complain that other businesses are profiting “on the backs” of their paying customers?) In order to persuade parents to switch to private schools, they must offer parents something that the free-to-attend government schools do not. Even when a school choice program covers the full cost of private school tuition, the parents would merely be financially indifferent. To motivate parents to choose something other than the default government school option, private schools still must offer something better.
Moreover, it is absurd to think that profit—in the sense of financial gain—is limited only to the for-profit sector. Do teachers, principals, and other school staff from janitors to bus drivers “profit” from their salaries or wages? What of the profits made by the corporations that publish the textbooks that students read? Or construct school buildings? Or manufacture desks, whiteboards, pens, pencils, and playgrounds? Whether government- or privately-run, nearly every adult involved in the formal education process is earning a “profit” short of the parents who volunteer to chaperone the high school dance.
Those who denounce “profits” in education simply don’t understand the role of profits in a market. Perhaps they are confused because in the government-run education system with which they are familiar, there is little connection between financial gain and meeting the needs of students. In a competitive market, by contrast, profits (and, just as importantly, losses) provide valuable information. As explained in Herbert Walberg and Joseph Bast’s excellent book, Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America’s Schools(which is celebrating its10thanniversary):
In a capitalist economy, profits are the reward earned by firms that maximize the quality of services and goods, minimize overhead and bureaucracy, motivate their workers to achieve high and consistent levels of productivity, and avoid unnecessary expenditures. Successful firms sell better, cheaper, or betterandcheaper products and services than do other firms. Customers notice, and business gradually shifts from inefficient to efficient firms. […]
Low-performing government schools don’t gradually lose customers and face the threat of closure, the way an inefficiently run business does. As a result, there is little urgency for reform. Their assets do not move from the control of those who have misused them into the hands of others who could do a better job. (Pages 98-9)
In our existing education system, only the financially well-off can afford to live in the expensive districts with high-performing government schools or to pay for private schooling. Without school choice programs, low-income families are locked out of these markets. Instead, their only option is the local, assigned, government school. If I blogged for WaPo, I might say that theseunderperforming schoolsare built on “the backs of our nation’s most vulnerable children.”
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
The Machine: The Truth Behind Teachers Unions Published on Sep 4, 2012 by ReasonTV America’s public education system is failing. We’re spending more money on education but not getting better results for our children. That’s because the machine that runs the K-12 education system isn’t designed to produce better schools. It’s designed to produce more […]
Public schools need more competition and vouchers is the answer. Related posts: Powerful Evidence for School Choice April 22, 2013 by Dan Mitchell I expressed pessimism a few days ago about the possibility of replacing the corrupt internal revenue code with a flat tax. Either now or in the future. But that’s an exception to my […]
John Brummett in his article, “A new civil rights struggle in Little Rock?” Arkansas News Burea, August 25, 2011, asserted the main role vouchers should have is “providing new models for regular public schools to emulate, not about replacing regular public schools.” The Heritage Foundation cares nothing about saving the public schools. If the public […]
Milton Friedman on School Vouchers _______________ Just the facts Mam. APRIL 18, 2013 5:17PM School Choice Works By JASON BEDRICK SHARE The evidence is in: school choice works. Yesterday, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice released their third edition of their report “A Win-Win Solution: The Empirical Evidence on School Choice.” The report provides a literature […]
Milton Friedman – Public Schools / Voucher System Published on May 9, 2012 by BasicEconomics The Machine: The Truth Behind Teachers Unions Published on Sep 4, 2012 by ReasonTV America’s public education system is failing. We’re spending more money on education but not getting better results for our children. That’s because the machine that runs […]
(This letter was mailed before Oct 25, 2012.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on […]
The Machine: The Truth Behind Teachers Unions Published on Sep 4, 2012 by ReasonTV America’s public education system is failing. We’re spending more money on education but not getting better results for our children. That’s because the machine that runs the K-12 education system isn’t designed to produce better schools. It’s designed to produce more […]
Everywhere school vouchers have been tried they have been met with great success. Why do you think President Obama got rid of them in Washington D.C.? It was a political disaster for him because the school unions had always opposed them and their success made Obama’s allies look bad. In 1980 when I first sat […]
Milton Friedman – Public Schools / Voucher System (Q&A) Part 2 Published on May 7, 2012 by BasicEconomics __________ Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times Blog is always critical of the voucher system but has he taken a closer look at what has been going on in the public schools the last few decades with […]
Everywhere school vouchers have been tried they have been met with great success. Why do you think President Obama got rid of them in Washington D.C.? It was a political disaster for him because the school unions had always opposed them and their success made Obama’s allies look bad. In 1980 when I first sat […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord.
King Solomon’s Proverbs on “Strange Women”and the example of Samson Part 3
The wisdom of Solomon is there for those who want it.
Samson had something in common with the strange woman in Proverbs and it was that they both were raised by Godly parents who taught them the truth from the scriptures but they both forsaketh that guide from their youth and forgot the covenant they had with God.
2:16To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words;
2:17Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God.
Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: and as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him,
Samson was raised by the Godly teachers Zorah and Eshtaol but like he acted like the Simpleton in the Book of Proverbs and did not obey the teaching of his youth.
5:12And say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof;5:13And have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!
The birth of Samson was a miracle and his parents had prayed for him many times before he was even born. Furthermore, an angel visited his parents several times before he was born and his parents knew the Lord had a special plan for him.
5:21For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and he pondereth all his goings.
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Judges 13
The Birth of Samson
13 The Israelites sinned against the Lord again, and he let the Philistines rule them for forty years.
2 At that time there was a man named Manoah from the town of Zorah. He was a member of the tribe of Dan. His wife had never been able to have children. 3 The Lord‘s angel appeared to her and said, “You have never been able to have children, but you will soon be pregnant and have a son. 4 Be sure not to drink any wine or beer, or eat any forbidden food; 5 and after your son is born, you must never cut his hair, because from the day of his birth he will be dedicated to God as a nazirite.[a] He will begin the work of rescuing Israel from the Philistines.”
6 Then the woman went and told her husband, “A man of God has come to me, and he looked as frightening as the angel[b] of God. I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name. 7 But he did tell me that I would become pregnant and have a son. He told me not to drink any wine or beer, or eat any forbidden food, because the boy is to be dedicated to God as a nazirite as long as he lives.”
8 Then Manoah prayed to the Lord, “Please, Lord, let the man of God that you sent come back to us and tell us what we must do with the boy when he is born.”
9 God did what Manoah asked, and his angel came back to the woman while she was sitting in the field. Her husband Manoah was not with her, 10 so she ran at once and told him, “Look! The man who came to me the other day has appeared to me again.”
11 Manoah got up and followed his wife. He went to the man and asked, “Are you the man who talked to my wife?”
“Yes,” he answered.
12 Then Manoah said, “Now then, when your words come true, what must the boy do? What kind of a life must he lead?”
13 The Lord‘s angel answered, “Your wife must be sure to do everything that I have told her. 14 She must not eat anything that comes from the grapevine; she must not drink any wine or beer, or eat any forbidden food. She must do everything that I have told her.”
15-16 Not knowing that it was the Lord‘s angel, Manoah said to him, “Please do not go yet. Let us cook a young goat for you.”
But the angel said, “If I do stay, I will not eat your food. But if you want to prepare it, burn it as an offering to the Lord.”
17 Manoah replied, “Tell us your name, so that we can honor you when your words come true.”
18 The angel asked, “Why do you want to know my name? It is a name of wonder.”[c]
19 So Manoah took a young goat and some grain, and offered them on the rock altar to the Lord who works wonders.[d]20-21While the flames were going up from the altar, Manoah and his wife saw the Lord‘s angel go up toward heaven in the flames. Manoah realized then that the man had been the Lord‘s angel, and he and his wife threw themselves face downward on the ground. They never saw the angel again.
22 Manoah said to his wife, “We are sure to die, because we have seen God!”
23 But his wife answered, “If the Lord had wanted to kill us, he would not have accepted our offerings; he would not have shown us all this or told us such things at this time.”
24 The woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson. The child grew and the Lord blessed him.25 And the Lord‘s power began to strengthen him while he was between Zorah and Eshtaol in the Camp of Dan.
THREE FINAL QUESTIONS:
1. What kind of parents did Samson have?
2. Is it a miracle that any of us are born and do we have a special purpose on this earth?
3. What commitment did Samson make from his youth?
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]
Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. _______________________ Tom Brady ESPN Interview Tom Brady has famous wife earned over 76 million dollars last year. However, has Brady found lasting satifaction in his life? It does not […]
Adrian Rogers: How to Be a Child of a Happy Mother Published on Nov 13, 2012 Series: Fortifying Your Family (To read along turn on the annotations.) Adrian Rogers looks at the 5th commandment and the relationship of motherhood in the commandment to honor your father and mother, because the faith that doesn’t begin at home, […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]
Adrian Rogers – How to Cultivate a Marriage Another great article from Adrian Rogers. Are fathers necessary? “Artificial insemination is the ideal method of producing a pregnancy, and a lesbian partner should have the same parenting rights accorded historically to biological fathers.” Quoted from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, summer of 1995. […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. To Download this video copy the URL to http://www.vixy.net ________________ Obviously from the video clip above, Tom Brady has realized that even though he has won many Super Bowls […]
Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION
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Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR
Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?)
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro)
Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1)
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of Truth & History (part 2)
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The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views concerning abortion, infanticide, and youth euthanasia, and it gave me a good understanding of those issues.
________________
Death in the City, The God Who Is There, He Is There and He is Not Silent: many of us
remember the spiritual and intellectual excitement that came with reading those books
and seeing how clearly the Bible alone has a consistent world and life view. Truth,
absolute Truth, rooted in the person and character of God, was what we needed. We
discovered that God’s “divine power has given us everything we need for the life and
godliness” including intellectually-satisfying answers to basic questions of life.
Our starting point is the holy and righteous Creator of the Universe, the gracious God
who became Man in the Person of Jesus Christ and redeemed us from our sins, giving us
assurance of eternal life. With that came the promise of significance and meaning in life.
We are all significant, meaningful people because we were created in the very image of
God Himself. It was Francis and Edith Schaeffer who pointed these things out in such a
clear and intellectually honest fashion to my generation. It was he, too, who spoke
forcefully of the inadequacy of an orthodox, Biblical theology, without also a Biblical
life-style, one which exhibited the compassion and servant-hood of our Lord. Show us the
power of the Living God in our lives, he challenged a generation of young people, and
their teachers as well.
It is time for a reminder of those Biblical truths and it is time to introduce a new
generation to those great truths. We must echo Psalm 33:11: “The plans of the Lord stand
firm forever, the purposes of His heart through all generations.” A Flow to History
History is linear; it is not cyclical. There is a flow to history that shows a continuity from
before the beginning when God the Trinity communicated and planned the creation of
man in His image, giving man a true volition. God, in effect, told Adam and Eve:
“Believe Me and stand in your place as a creature, not as one who is autonomous. Believe
Me and love Me as a creature to his Creator, and all will be well. This is the place for
which I have made you.
Created in the Image of God, but Fallen
But Adam and Eve rebelled against their Creator, opening the door to the catastrophe of
human history: a broken relationship with God, with each other in human society, and
within themselves. The effects of the Fall on human history were enormous but they did
not change the continuity of history which is rooted in eternity past and continues through
both advents of Christ into eternity future when the original creation will be restored to
God’s original design. God created immortal human beings. “Watch a man as he dies.
Five minutes later he still exists. There is no such thing as stopping the existence of man.
He still goes on. By the Fall man has not lost his being as a human being. He has not lost
those things which he intrinsically is as a man. He has not become an animal or a
machine. I live in a personal world, and God is dealing with me not for a few short years
but forever. And I can make different value judgments as I look at the world because I
understand that reality does not exist only between birth and death. A personal God is
acting in a true history that goes on forever.” Man qua man in human history reflects the
image of God in the way he was made and in the way he acts. Inevitably human beings
fulfill the cultural mandate to subdue and have dominion over God’s creation even if all
the while professing themselves to be autonomous and independent of God. The human
predicament is a moral problem; it is not metaphysical.
Not everything that happens in the world is “natural”… Everything in history
is not equally “normal”. Because of the abnormality brought about by man,
not everything which occurs in history should be there. Thus, not all that
history brings forth is right just because it happens, and not all personal drives
and motives are equally good. It is possible for Christians to speak of things
as absolutely wrong, for they are not original in human society, but are
derived from the Fall. They are in that sense ‘abnormal’. We can stand against
what is wrong and cruel without standing against God, for He did not make
the world as it now is. God is Sovereign
History is one. There has been but one history: that which has actually happened as
opposed to what might have happened or what could have happened. Contingency,
though, is no problem in the Biblical system of thought and historical explanation. The
modalities of life are in the hands of the sovereign God who does all things after the
counsel of His own will. The First Cause is always the Sovereign Creator God of the
Universe and no man can stay His hand or say, “What doest thou?” Nevertheless within
the limitations of God’s sovereign decrees, plans, and purposes, human beings have the
incredible ability “to affect the external form of the universe”. Whether we plant a flower,
write a book, build a city, or destroy a civilization, man in the image of God has created
and built, alleviated suffering or brutalized his contemporaries. But he is always limited
and controlled by the sovereign God who controls the fullness of time and the historical
context wherein man acts. “If”, Jesus said, “the mighty works” done in Capernaum had
been done in Sodom, the Sodomites would have repented and “it would have remained to
Jesus’ day.” One Reality
In both history and life there is but “one reality”. The “supernatural” and the “natural” are
both part of what is. They are not separate realms. The unseen invisible spiritual world is
here in human time/space history. When Elisha was surrounded by Syrian troops, God
opened the eyes of his servant so that he could see what was already there: “the mountain
was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha”. That was why Elisha had told
his servant, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with
them.” (II Kings 6:15-17) The New Testament echoes that passage with almost identical
words: “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is
He who is in you than he who is in the world.” (I John 4:4)
When Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, they were not
in another realm but on the very same mountain that Jesus and the disciples climbed in
Palestine. Jesus was glorified in a shining light in this world. When they came down from
the mount, time has passed: it was “the next day” (Luke 9:37). There is no platonic view
of reality and time stopping in a different realm, but simply the sequence of events within
a single reality. Dividing “’realms” into spiritual and natural categories does not separate
them into two realities. There is but one reality, that which actually exists and exists
coterminously.
After Jesus was glorified and appeared on this earth for forty days, his disciples touched
him, saw him, ate with him. When Jesus ascended, “it was at an hour of the day, on a day
of the calendar. There was a moment when His feet left the Mount of Olives.” And there
will be a day in the history of the world when He returns to stand at the identical
geographical location.
The apostle Paul saw the risen Lord on the Damascus Road. It was at midday in the desert
and the light of Christ’s glory was so brilliant that Paul was physically blinded by it. Not
only so; he heard a voice speaking to him in the Hebrew tongue.
Jesus appeared…. speaking in a normal language, using normal words and
normal grammar, to a man named Saul. With this, there is a complete denial
of the twentieth-century projection of these things into a religiously ‘other’
world. Here we are in the realm of space, time, history, normal
communication, and normal language. Open System
In a word, the Biblical philosophy of history is an “open system” in which the
supernatural is just as much a part of reality as the “natural phenomenon” of everyday
life. It is simply not a closed, naturalistic system. This was a point Schaeffer made again
and again. Perspective Point of History
The perspective point of history is the incarnation and work of Christ in this world. Even
before the foundation of the world the direction of history was towards the coming of
Christ in His first advent. The victory Jesus brought over sin, death, and hell has given
meaning and purpose to life and history ever since. It is still our perspective point while
we await His second advent, when the original creation will be restored in a new creation
in eternity future.
History to modern man is absurd, Schaeffer concluded, because he has no perspective
point and no absolutes by which to judge history. His starting point is wrong and that has
thrown off all his calculations. He starts with puny, finite, flawed, limited man and every
extension from himself leads only down a blind alley. He looks at the form of the
universe: it is “obviously not just a handful of pebbles thrown out there”. Where did it
come from? Why does it have form – and such a beautiful, spectacularly complex form?
If one begins with an impersonal universe, there is no explanation of the existence of
personality and man himself gets lost in the assumption of the eternality of matter.
“Give up creation and space-time historic reality and all that is left is uncreatedness. It is
not that something does not exist, but that it just stands there, autonomous to itself,
without solutions and without answers… Modern man’s [despair] rests primarily upon his
losing the reality of the createdness of all things except the personal God who always has
been.” All of these things, of course, have enormous significance for the study of history:
how can we study “human” history without knowing who man is or where he came from
or what his essential nature is.
Schaeffer, of course, found in the Bible and in traditional Biblical theology the
explanation for the historical “problem of evil” in the world. In the Biblical system
Schaeffer found that man and woman were created flawless without moral impediment
but with genuine volition which could say “no” to God as well as “yes”. When they did
just that, sin entered the world and death by sin and so the evils of history passed upon
all. Judgment of God
And with sin came the judgment of God. In his forceful exposition of Romans chapter
one Schaeffer commented that man became foolish in his reasonings. “He has accepted a
position that is intellectually foolish not only with regard to what the Bible says, but also
to what exits—the universe and its form and the nature of man. In turning away from God
and the truth which He has given, man has thus become foolish in regard to what man is
and what the universe is. He is left with a position with which he cannot live, and is
caught in a multitude of intellectual and personal tensions.”
In Death in the City Schaeffer described Romans one as referring not only to the original
fall, but also to a historical principle of the judgment of God against any nation or culture
that turns its back on God. And that judgment is not only in the eschatological future, but
is also here and now in the events of history. A nation which turns away from God has
forgotten that the chief end of man is to love God and to have fellowship with Him. And
in that forgetting the nation has forgotten the purpose of man made in the image of God—
to be in relationship to the God who is there. In whatever period of history the effect is
the same: man forgets his purpose and thus he forgets who he is and what life means.
The hand of God is down into our culture in judgment… Unlike Zeus, whom
men imagined hurling down great thunderbolts, God has turned away in
judgment as our generation turned away from Him, and He is allowing cause
and effect to take its course in history.
“God can bring His judgment in one of two ways: either by direct intervention in history
or by the turning of the wheels of history.”
The Reformation brought “the wonderful gift of freedom… a balance of form and
freedom in state and society. Yet once we turn away from the Christian base, it is this
very freedom, now as a freedom without form, that brings a judgment upon us in the
turning of the wheels of history… There is death in the polis, there is death in the city!”
History is not mechanical. God works into history on the basis of His
character. Israel was carried off into Babylonian captivity not just for military
or economic reasons, but because a holy God had judged them because they
had turned away from Him. He will do the same in our generation. That’s part
of the reality of history. God, History, and Evangelism
Schaeffer saw God’s sovereign actions in evangelism as an example of how God acts in
history.
There is no chance back of God, but history has real meaning. In Christianity, cause and
effect in space-time history has real meaning. The rational moral creatures whom God
created (of whom we know two classes—angels and men) influence history by choice. In
twentieth century terms, man is not programmed… Even nonpersonal elements of God’s
creation have a significance in history on their own level. The wind is the cause that
blows down the tree. In other words, mechanical cause and effect is significant in history,
and on another level, moral and rational creatures are significant in history by choice…
The marvel is that God created a universe with significance, that the things He created
have significance.
God, having created history, acts into history. It is not that history has no
meaning to God; it is not as though He is suspended above it… God acts into
history at every given moment in such a way that He respects its being there;
that is, He acts into it truly.
Schaeffer saw those same historical principles involved in election, evangelism, and
eternal salvation.
There is no chance back of God… What this means since the Fall is that when man
accepts Christ as Savior, there is a work of the Holy Spirit, yet man is not simply a zero;
there is a conscious side to justification.
If we fail to see that there is a conscious side to justification, we soon come to
the place where we must say that either the gospel is not universally offered
or that man is a zero. But neither is the case. The Bible makes very plain that
the gospel is universally offered and that man is significant… Magnificence of Man
One of Schaeffer’s most memorable characteristics was his emphasis on the glory and
creativity of men and women created in the very image of God Himself and made not
only for their creator but for each other. God gave them an inner drive to produce and
create and to seek beauty and truth. Art, music, and literature reflect not only the
fallenness of man, but also the image of God in man and woman. Throughout history
human beings have fulfilled the Cultural Mandate even when they were not consciously
obeying God. Eternity Future
The culmination of history centers around the return of Christ to this earth. Francis
Schaeffer was pre-millennial in his eschatology.
True Christians, those who have put their faith in Christ as Savior, shall be caught up to
meet Christ in the air and then come with Him. It is at this time that the bodies of
Christians who have died will be raised from the dead and that living Christians will be
glorified in a twinkling of an eye.
Before Christ’s coming visibly and in glory with His saints, there will be a period of great
apostasy with a dictator, called the “Antichrist”, ruling the world… He will control
governmental and economic life and will be worshiped as god.”
Christ will return visibly and in glory. “He overthrows the assembled might of the world
organized against Him by the Antichrist and Satan. This is the battle of Armageddon on
the plain of Megiddo in Palestine. Christ rules the earth for a thousand years….”
“There will be a new Heaven, a new earth, and a heavenly city. It is definite so that
Revelation 21-22 states the size of the heavenly city, that from which it is constructed,
that from which its foundations, gates, and streets are made. It is an objective reality. It is
eternal – forever and ever, without end.” So human history has a continuity from eternity
past to eternity future, controlled sovereignly by God Himself.
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book really helped develop my political views […]
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices once […]
The opening song at the beginning of this episode is very insightful. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 3) DEATH BY SOMEONE’S CHOICE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices […]
It is not possible to know where the pro-life evangelicals are coming from unless you look at the work of the person who inspired them the most. That person was Francis Schaeffer. I do care about economic issues but the pro-life issue is the most important to me. Several years ago Adrian Rogers (past president of […]
This essay below is worth the read. Schaeffer, Francis – “Francis Schaeffer and the Pro-Life Movement” [How Should We Then Live?, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, A Christian Manifesto] Editor note: <p> </p> [The following essay explores the role that Francis Schaeffer played in the rise of the pro-life movement. It examines the place of […]
Great article on Schaeffer. Who was Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer? By Francis Schaeffer The unique contribution of Dr. Francis Schaeffer on a whole generation was the ability to communicate the truth of historic Biblical Christianity in a way that combined intellectual integrity with practical, loving care. This grew out of his extensive understanding of the Bible […]
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