FYI
Dear Members of LC/NA and the RIC Community,
Now that the synod assembly season has concluded, time is of the essence as we move forward with our plans for Churchwide Assembly. With an unprecedented 23 synods representing 40% of the membership of the ELCA passing memorials to move the church toward full inclusion, we have the best chance yet to make real progress in August. Here's the dope:
1. Please come to Chicago for the assembly. The dates are August 6–11, 2007.
2. Please register as a visitor on the ELCA website. Cost is $50/person. Visitor status will allow you access to the visitor section of ELCA plenary hall and ELCA worship events. Register through www.elca.org, click on Churchwide Assembly. Registration ends July 15!
3. Please volunteer. Register to volunteer through www.goodsoil.org. Volunteer opportunities are described there.
4. If you are a voting member willing to network for full participation, please register through www.goodsoil.org as a voting member.
5. Housing is available at the Hyatt Regency through the ELCA. Register online for a room. The rate is $118/night plus tax. If you have a room and need a roommate give us that information when you register through www.goodsoil.org. Alternative housing recommendations are also available on the website.
6. The schedule of events is now available through www.goodsoil.org. But here are the highlights:
1. Tuesday – ELCA hearings on the Sexuality Study.
2. Tuesday – Educational session at the Hyatt following the hearings with Pastor Bradley Schmeling and members of his congregation in Atlanta.
3. Wednesday – earliest possible day for ELCA quasi-committee of the whole regarding memorials on blessings, delay, policy change, and refraining from discipline.
4. Wednesday – 8:00 pm Festival Worship at the Hyatt with Pastor Bradley Schmeling preaching. Reception following.
5. Thursday – possible day for ELCA debate on memorials – all hands on deck for silent prayer vigil in the hall.
6. Thursday evening following ELCA workshops at the Hyatt – Full display of the Shower of Stoles project with reception for voting members and visitors.
7. Friday – possible day for debate if not complete on Thursday
8. Friday – evening party for all goodsoil allies at the Hyatt
Remember the ultimate outcome is assured. Only the time, the when it happens, is in question. Win or lose in 2007, we will make history and real progress toward full inclusion. Come be a part of this chapter in the movement for full participation.
– Emily Eastwood, Executive Director
---Katie
Friday, June 29, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Cloture vote fails again!
Maybe the senators are getting the picture that we the people don't want their Shamnesty bill!!
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Understanding the Middle East Situation
Finally, perhaps, someone in mainstream media is getting it. In Canada even.
Watch the Fault Line
By MICHAEL COREN
They drag families out of homes and force wives and children to watch as the men are murdered. They shoot a rival 40 times in the head until there is only mush and muck left. They bind innocent people hand and foot and throw them from the top of apartment buildings.
Whom to blame? Israel and the U.S.A. of course.
They raid the hospitals, caring nothing if the sick and dying are thrown to the floor and trampled. They always seem to go for the hospitals. In Lebanon militia members dragged wounded men, from the same sub-sect of Islam, from their sickbeds and killed them with knives and blades as they moaned for pity.
Whom to blame? Israel and the U.S.A. of course.
They round up their Palestinian brothers as helpless prisoners and then machine-gun them to death. They drag the body of a commander of another faction through the streets from the back of a car, laughing as they do so.
They firebomb and shoot bullets into a United Nations' school that is immensely sympathetic to their cause but is, they claim, teaching children Christianity. It is not. They round up enemies they claim to be informers when they are nothing of the kind. They kill them like animals while crowds of onlookers cheer.
Whom to blame? Israel and the U.S.A.
A mother of eight children who is pregnant with her ninth plans to be a suicide bomber and kill innocent Israelis -- Muslims and Christians as well as Jews. She is allowed to enter the country because Israel makes exceptions to its closed border on compassionate grounds and gives first class medical treatment to people sworn to destroy it. She is captured, but is unrepentant, as apparently indifferent to the fate of Israeli children as she is to her unborn baby.
Whom to blame? Israel and the U.S.A. of course.
When Israel leaves Gaza, the Palestinians are left businesses and industries. They immediately destroy them. Within days they have assembled mobile rocket launchers and are shelling Israeli border towns. They do this every day until Israel responds.
The rockets and launchers require time and money, both of which could be used to build houses and hospitals and schools. But no. They complain that western countries have cut off aid after they elected a government dedicated to murdering Jews and exterminating a member of the UN.
But when North America and Europe was giving billions of dollars, they still launched rockets and failed to use the money properly. And what of the billion dollars recently given by Iran, or the countless amounts of cash possessed by Saudi Arabia and the Arab world?
They refuse to deal with this because, yes, it is far easier to blame Israel and the U.S.A.
The world says so little. So few words compared to what was said when Israel defended itself against holy fascist murder gangs in Lebanon or Fatah child-killers in the West Bank. The world lied about the numbers or blindly accepted everything the notoriously dishonest Palestinian spokespeople had to say. The world called for boycotts and motions and condemnation.
Because it's so easy to blame Israel and the U.S.A. But finally good and fair people are turning. Enough of your lies, enough of your animalistic behaviour, enough of your cause. You, they are saying, and only you are to blame.
----------------
Yet my pastor preaches from the pulpit that he cannot understand why American Christians don't vacation in the Middle East. Our church body condemns Israel again and again. They talk about the unfairness of the wall, how terrible Israel is to treat Arabs the way they do.
I think Israel has been incredibly patient. They have the ability to to utterly destroy the Palestinians, yet they don't do it. What they do is to try to punish those responsible for promoting the murder of Israelis and they try to reduce the opportunities for attacks to succeed. It is just like if you had a bad neighbor who allowed his dogs to wreck your yard and attack your children and guests. You would find a way to keep those dogs out of your yard and let in the people you want in...perhaps you would use a fence. Israel is using a fence to control who can get in. Just like we should be using a fence to decide who gets in when....
---Katie
Watch the Fault Line
By MICHAEL COREN
They drag families out of homes and force wives and children to watch as the men are murdered. They shoot a rival 40 times in the head until there is only mush and muck left. They bind innocent people hand and foot and throw them from the top of apartment buildings.
Whom to blame? Israel and the U.S.A. of course.
They raid the hospitals, caring nothing if the sick and dying are thrown to the floor and trampled. They always seem to go for the hospitals. In Lebanon militia members dragged wounded men, from the same sub-sect of Islam, from their sickbeds and killed them with knives and blades as they moaned for pity.
Whom to blame? Israel and the U.S.A. of course.
They round up their Palestinian brothers as helpless prisoners and then machine-gun them to death. They drag the body of a commander of another faction through the streets from the back of a car, laughing as they do so.
They firebomb and shoot bullets into a United Nations' school that is immensely sympathetic to their cause but is, they claim, teaching children Christianity. It is not. They round up enemies they claim to be informers when they are nothing of the kind. They kill them like animals while crowds of onlookers cheer.
Whom to blame? Israel and the U.S.A.
A mother of eight children who is pregnant with her ninth plans to be a suicide bomber and kill innocent Israelis -- Muslims and Christians as well as Jews. She is allowed to enter the country because Israel makes exceptions to its closed border on compassionate grounds and gives first class medical treatment to people sworn to destroy it. She is captured, but is unrepentant, as apparently indifferent to the fate of Israeli children as she is to her unborn baby.
Whom to blame? Israel and the U.S.A. of course.
When Israel leaves Gaza, the Palestinians are left businesses and industries. They immediately destroy them. Within days they have assembled mobile rocket launchers and are shelling Israeli border towns. They do this every day until Israel responds.
The rockets and launchers require time and money, both of which could be used to build houses and hospitals and schools. But no. They complain that western countries have cut off aid after they elected a government dedicated to murdering Jews and exterminating a member of the UN.
But when North America and Europe was giving billions of dollars, they still launched rockets and failed to use the money properly. And what of the billion dollars recently given by Iran, or the countless amounts of cash possessed by Saudi Arabia and the Arab world?
They refuse to deal with this because, yes, it is far easier to blame Israel and the U.S.A.
The world says so little. So few words compared to what was said when Israel defended itself against holy fascist murder gangs in Lebanon or Fatah child-killers in the West Bank. The world lied about the numbers or blindly accepted everything the notoriously dishonest Palestinian spokespeople had to say. The world called for boycotts and motions and condemnation.
Because it's so easy to blame Israel and the U.S.A. But finally good and fair people are turning. Enough of your lies, enough of your animalistic behaviour, enough of your cause. You, they are saying, and only you are to blame.
----------------
Yet my pastor preaches from the pulpit that he cannot understand why American Christians don't vacation in the Middle East. Our church body condemns Israel again and again. They talk about the unfairness of the wall, how terrible Israel is to treat Arabs the way they do.
I think Israel has been incredibly patient. They have the ability to to utterly destroy the Palestinians, yet they don't do it. What they do is to try to punish those responsible for promoting the murder of Israelis and they try to reduce the opportunities for attacks to succeed. It is just like if you had a bad neighbor who allowed his dogs to wreck your yard and attack your children and guests. You would find a way to keep those dogs out of your yard and let in the people you want in...perhaps you would use a fence. Israel is using a fence to control who can get in. Just like we should be using a fence to decide who gets in when....
---Katie
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Going Down with the Ship
An interesting piece on the immigration bill by Michael Reagan.
The S.S. GOP is sinking fast, and it looks like Skipper Bush is going down with his ship. That’s only fair -- after all, he’s the one who torpedoed his own ship with the immigration-reform-bill warhead. Not fair is the fact that he’s taking his party down with him.
I can understand his stubbornness in sticking with this insane program that doesn’t do a damned thing to plug the leaking borders that are allowing the United States to be flooded with all manner and shapes of illegal aliens, some of them terrorists who want to kill large numbers of Americans -- he really has nothing to lose.
In less than 18 months he’ll be history -- one of those curiosities who at one moment wielded the vast powers of the presidency and the next found themselves with all the other John Q. Citizens.
That’s not true of the senators who stand on the bridge with him as the water rises up toward the quarter deck where they can either jump into the life boats and survive, or go down with the ship.
I’m amazed at how many of them appear to be choosing a watery grave. After all, it should be more than obvious that standing firm behind this monstrosity of a bill carries with it the death penalty -- it’s just plain suicidal.
He might not yet fully realize it, but Sen. John McCain has suddenly gone from being a serious candidate for the presidency to that of being a politician with no political future at all. And I can’t imagine how Senator Lindsay Graham could ever imagine that his strong advocacy of a bill that in the blink of an eye turns lawbreakers, some of the most serious kind, into instant legal immigrants could be helpful to his political future. Ditto John Kyl and the others.
If it weren’t so serious, it would leave us laughing at the spectacle we saw when the president went up to Capitol Hill Tuesday to try to revive the bill.
It wasn’t serious politics, it was a joke.
Did he really, seriously think that Harry Reid was going to be his friend and help patch the sinking GOP hull?
Here you have a president with a dismal 30-something-percent approval rating rubbing elbows with a group -- Congress -- that has a more-dismal 27 percent approval rating being led by a guy with a horrendous 19 percent approval rating. It doesn’t get more comedic than that.
These people are living in a dream world, and one that has not yet been shattered by the incredible backlash from Americans outraged to see their national sovereignty imperiled and determined to keep the bill from ever becoming law. The message is loud and clear: kill the damned thing or get ready to pack your bags and head for home because your political career is all but over.
To continue to push for passage indicates that the backers are either stupid, or arrogant and determined to impose their wills on the nation whether the people like it or not. When this bill emerged from the back room where it was crafted in secret by the likes of Teddy Kennedy, Rush Limbaugh took one look at it and renamed it the “Comprehensive Destroy the Republican Party Bill.”
No matter how many Democrat senators back the bill in a Senate they control, Republicans will take the blame for it. Unless the GOP roars back and in one voice makes it clear that their president does not speak for them on this issue, and goes all-out to kill it, 2008 is going to be a sorry time for all Republicans.
The late Sam Francis must be grinning up there in paradise as he watches the GOP prove once again that it is what he called it “the Stupid Party.”
After all, stupid is what stupid does. And when stupid defies the will of the American people, stupid goes under.
---Katie
The S.S. GOP is sinking fast, and it looks like Skipper Bush is going down with his ship. That’s only fair -- after all, he’s the one who torpedoed his own ship with the immigration-reform-bill warhead. Not fair is the fact that he’s taking his party down with him.
I can understand his stubbornness in sticking with this insane program that doesn’t do a damned thing to plug the leaking borders that are allowing the United States to be flooded with all manner and shapes of illegal aliens, some of them terrorists who want to kill large numbers of Americans -- he really has nothing to lose.
In less than 18 months he’ll be history -- one of those curiosities who at one moment wielded the vast powers of the presidency and the next found themselves with all the other John Q. Citizens.
That’s not true of the senators who stand on the bridge with him as the water rises up toward the quarter deck where they can either jump into the life boats and survive, or go down with the ship.
I’m amazed at how many of them appear to be choosing a watery grave. After all, it should be more than obvious that standing firm behind this monstrosity of a bill carries with it the death penalty -- it’s just plain suicidal.
He might not yet fully realize it, but Sen. John McCain has suddenly gone from being a serious candidate for the presidency to that of being a politician with no political future at all. And I can’t imagine how Senator Lindsay Graham could ever imagine that his strong advocacy of a bill that in the blink of an eye turns lawbreakers, some of the most serious kind, into instant legal immigrants could be helpful to his political future. Ditto John Kyl and the others.
If it weren’t so serious, it would leave us laughing at the spectacle we saw when the president went up to Capitol Hill Tuesday to try to revive the bill.
It wasn’t serious politics, it was a joke.
Did he really, seriously think that Harry Reid was going to be his friend and help patch the sinking GOP hull?
Here you have a president with a dismal 30-something-percent approval rating rubbing elbows with a group -- Congress -- that has a more-dismal 27 percent approval rating being led by a guy with a horrendous 19 percent approval rating. It doesn’t get more comedic than that.
These people are living in a dream world, and one that has not yet been shattered by the incredible backlash from Americans outraged to see their national sovereignty imperiled and determined to keep the bill from ever becoming law. The message is loud and clear: kill the damned thing or get ready to pack your bags and head for home because your political career is all but over.
To continue to push for passage indicates that the backers are either stupid, or arrogant and determined to impose their wills on the nation whether the people like it or not. When this bill emerged from the back room where it was crafted in secret by the likes of Teddy Kennedy, Rush Limbaugh took one look at it and renamed it the “Comprehensive Destroy the Republican Party Bill.”
No matter how many Democrat senators back the bill in a Senate they control, Republicans will take the blame for it. Unless the GOP roars back and in one voice makes it clear that their president does not speak for them on this issue, and goes all-out to kill it, 2008 is going to be a sorry time for all Republicans.
The late Sam Francis must be grinning up there in paradise as he watches the GOP prove once again that it is what he called it “the Stupid Party.”
After all, stupid is what stupid does. And when stupid defies the will of the American people, stupid goes under.
---Katie
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Do Away with Public Schools
Jonah Goldberg, Townhall.com
Here's a good question for you: Why have public schools at all?
OK, cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government's interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can't leave any child behind.
he problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run nearly all of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run the vast majority of the schools - particularly when it gets terrible results?
Consider Washington, home of the nation's most devoted government-lovers and, ironically, the city with arguably the worst public schools in the country. Out of the 100 largest school districts, according to the Washington Post, D.C. ranks third in spending for each pupil ($12,979) but last in spending on instruction. Fifty-six cents out of every dollar go to administrators who, it's no secret, do a miserable job administrating, even though D.C. schools have been in a state of "reform" for nearly 40 years.
In a blistering series, the Post has documented how badly the bureaucrats have run public education. More than half of the District of Columbia's teenage kids spend their days in "persistently dangerous" schools, with an average of nine violent incidents a day in a system with 135 schools. "Principals reporting dangerous conditions or urgently needed repairs in their buildings wait, on average, 379 days ... for the problems to be fixed," according to the Post. But hey, at least the kids are getting a lousy education. A mere 19 schools managed to get "proficient" scores or better for a majority of students on the district's Comprehensive Assessment Test.
A standard response to such criticisms is to say we don't spend enough on public education. But if money were the solution, wouldn't the district, which spends nearly $13,000 on every kid, rank near the top? If you think more money will fix the schools, make your checks out to "cash" and send them to me.
Private, parochial and charter schools get better results. Parents know this. Applications for vouchers in the district dwarf the available supply, and home schooling has exploded.
As for schools teaching kids about the common culture and all that, as a conservative I couldn't agree more. But is there evidence that public schools are better at it? The results of the 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress history and civics exams showed that two-thirds of U.S. high school seniors couldn't identify the significance of a photo of a theater with a sign reading "Colored Entrance." And keep in mind, political correctness pretty much guarantees that Jim Crow and the civil rights movement are included in syllabi. Imagine how few kids can intelligently discuss Manifest Destiny or free silver.
Right now, there's a renewed debate about providing "universal" health insurance. For some liberals, this simply means replicating the public school model for health care. (Stop laughing.) But for others, this means mandating that everyone have health insurance - just as we mandate that all drivers have car insurance - and then throwing tax dollars at poorer folks to make sure no one falls through the cracks.
There's a consensus in America that every child should get an education, but as David Gelernter noted recently in the Weekly Standard, there's no such consensus that public schools need to do the educating.
Really, what would be so terrible about government mandating that every kid has to go to school, and providing subsidies and oversight when necessary, but then getting out of the way?
Milton Friedman noted long ago that the government is bad at providing services - that's why he wanted public schools to be called "government schools" - but that it's good at writing checks. So why not cut checks to people so they can send their kids to school?
What about the good public schools? Well, the reason good public schools are good has nothing to do with government's special expertise and everything to do with the fact that parents care enough to ensure their kids get a good education. That wouldn't change if the government got out of the school business. What would change is that fewer kids would get left behind.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online.
Click on the title to find the original article.
----Katie
Here's a good question for you: Why have public schools at all?
OK, cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government's interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can't leave any child behind.
he problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run nearly all of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run the vast majority of the schools - particularly when it gets terrible results?
Consider Washington, home of the nation's most devoted government-lovers and, ironically, the city with arguably the worst public schools in the country. Out of the 100 largest school districts, according to the Washington Post, D.C. ranks third in spending for each pupil ($12,979) but last in spending on instruction. Fifty-six cents out of every dollar go to administrators who, it's no secret, do a miserable job administrating, even though D.C. schools have been in a state of "reform" for nearly 40 years.
In a blistering series, the Post has documented how badly the bureaucrats have run public education. More than half of the District of Columbia's teenage kids spend their days in "persistently dangerous" schools, with an average of nine violent incidents a day in a system with 135 schools. "Principals reporting dangerous conditions or urgently needed repairs in their buildings wait, on average, 379 days ... for the problems to be fixed," according to the Post. But hey, at least the kids are getting a lousy education. A mere 19 schools managed to get "proficient" scores or better for a majority of students on the district's Comprehensive Assessment Test.
A standard response to such criticisms is to say we don't spend enough on public education. But if money were the solution, wouldn't the district, which spends nearly $13,000 on every kid, rank near the top? If you think more money will fix the schools, make your checks out to "cash" and send them to me.
Private, parochial and charter schools get better results. Parents know this. Applications for vouchers in the district dwarf the available supply, and home schooling has exploded.
As for schools teaching kids about the common culture and all that, as a conservative I couldn't agree more. But is there evidence that public schools are better at it? The results of the 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress history and civics exams showed that two-thirds of U.S. high school seniors couldn't identify the significance of a photo of a theater with a sign reading "Colored Entrance." And keep in mind, political correctness pretty much guarantees that Jim Crow and the civil rights movement are included in syllabi. Imagine how few kids can intelligently discuss Manifest Destiny or free silver.
Right now, there's a renewed debate about providing "universal" health insurance. For some liberals, this simply means replicating the public school model for health care. (Stop laughing.) But for others, this means mandating that everyone have health insurance - just as we mandate that all drivers have car insurance - and then throwing tax dollars at poorer folks to make sure no one falls through the cracks.
There's a consensus in America that every child should get an education, but as David Gelernter noted recently in the Weekly Standard, there's no such consensus that public schools need to do the educating.
Really, what would be so terrible about government mandating that every kid has to go to school, and providing subsidies and oversight when necessary, but then getting out of the way?
Milton Friedman noted long ago that the government is bad at providing services - that's why he wanted public schools to be called "government schools" - but that it's good at writing checks. So why not cut checks to people so they can send their kids to school?
What about the good public schools? Well, the reason good public schools are good has nothing to do with government's special expertise and everything to do with the fact that parents care enough to ensure their kids get a good education. That wouldn't change if the government got out of the school business. What would change is that fewer kids would get left behind.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online.
Click on the title to find the original article.
----Katie
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Honor Killings in Great Britain
Coming attractions in the US??
LONDON -- A father who ordered his daughter brutally slain for falling in love with the wrong man in a so-called "honor killing" was found guilty of murder on Monday.
Banaz Mahmod, 20, was strangled with a boot lace, stuffed into a suitcase and buried in a back garden.
Her death is the latest in an increasing trend of such killings in Britain, home to some 1.8 million Muslims. More than 100 homicides are under investigation as potential "honor killings."
Click on the title to read the article.
So I wonder when this will start happening in the US. Of course, our politically correct media won't report it. It would be hard to maintain the "Islam is a religion of peace" lie if our media were to tell the truth about the kind of society the followers of Mohammad really want. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's just a minority of Islamists who practice these atrocities. That's why we see so many of their coreligionists standing up and saying, "Stop!" Not.
---Katie
LONDON -- A father who ordered his daughter brutally slain for falling in love with the wrong man in a so-called "honor killing" was found guilty of murder on Monday.
Banaz Mahmod, 20, was strangled with a boot lace, stuffed into a suitcase and buried in a back garden.
Her death is the latest in an increasing trend of such killings in Britain, home to some 1.8 million Muslims. More than 100 homicides are under investigation as potential "honor killings."
Click on the title to read the article.
So I wonder when this will start happening in the US. Of course, our politically correct media won't report it. It would be hard to maintain the "Islam is a religion of peace" lie if our media were to tell the truth about the kind of society the followers of Mohammad really want. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's just a minority of Islamists who practice these atrocities. That's why we see so many of their coreligionists standing up and saying, "Stop!" Not.
---Katie
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Overcome Evil with Good
From Peacemaker's PeaceMeal:
"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Romans 12:21
Peacemaking does not always go as easily as we would like it to. Although some people will readily make peace, others will be stubborn and defensive and resist our efforts to be reconciled. Sometimes they will become even more antagonistic and find new ways to frustrate or mistreat us. Our natural reaction is to strike back at such people, or at least to stop doing anything good to them. However, Jesus calls us to take a remarkably different course of action: "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . . Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:27-28, 35-36).
----------------
Sadly we are not using Peacemaker's Ministries for our conflict resolution process - our senior pastor is not comfortable with their doctrinal positions - but at least we are meeting with a conflict consultant from the Alban Institute next weekend. Please keep St. John in your prayers.
---Katie
"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Romans 12:21
Peacemaking does not always go as easily as we would like it to. Although some people will readily make peace, others will be stubborn and defensive and resist our efforts to be reconciled. Sometimes they will become even more antagonistic and find new ways to frustrate or mistreat us. Our natural reaction is to strike back at such people, or at least to stop doing anything good to them. However, Jesus calls us to take a remarkably different course of action: "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . . Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:27-28, 35-36).
----------------
Sadly we are not using Peacemaker's Ministries for our conflict resolution process - our senior pastor is not comfortable with their doctrinal positions - but at least we are meeting with a conflict consultant from the Alban Institute next weekend. Please keep St. John in your prayers.
---Katie
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Letter to the Editor Regarding Immigration-Snopes says False!
A friend of mine forwarded this to me and I did my usual thing, I checked it out at snopes.com. I was surprised to find that snopes did not tell me if this is an actually letter to the editor. They just debunked the content. I think it shows a bit of an agenda on snopes's part.
Here is the letter I got:
ORANGE COUNTY ( CALIFORNIA ) NEWSPAPER
This is a very good letter to the editor. This woman made some good points. For some reason, people have difficulty structuring their arguments when arguing against supporting the currently proposed immigration revisions.
This lady made the argument pretty simple
NOT printed in the Orange County Paper..................
Newspapers simply won't publish letters to the editor which they either deem politically incorrect (read below) or which does not agree with the philosophy they're pushing on the public. This woman wrote a great letter to the editor that should have been published; but, with your help it will get published via cyberspace!
New Immigrants
From: 'David LaBonte'
My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the OC Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to 'print' it myself by sending it out on the Internet.
Pass it along if you feel so inclined.
Dave LaBonte (signed)
Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register :
Dear Editor:
So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren't being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.
Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States , people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.
They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture.
Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity. Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany , Italy , France and Japan. None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people. When we liberated France, no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.
And here we are in 2007 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900's deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.
And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty, it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn't start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.
(signed) Rosemary LaBonte
P. S. Pass this on to everyone you know!!!
KEEP THIS LETTER MOVING!!
I hope this letter gets read by millions of people all across the nation!!
Bill Kreger
Integrity Security Solutions, LLC.
Systems Designer
512-374-9190 Office
512-374-1451 Fax
512-736-4781 Cell
-----------------
I can't copy and post what snopes said, but they say the letter is false. Not that it did not happen, but that what the writer said about past and current immigrants is not true. I agree with snopes that it might not be true about all immigrants then and now, but in general, I don't think we had immigrants in the early 20th century who were expecting to take over parts of the US for their home countries.
I just thought that was interesting!
---Katie
Here is the letter I got:
ORANGE COUNTY ( CALIFORNIA ) NEWSPAPER
This is a very good letter to the editor. This woman made some good points. For some reason, people have difficulty structuring their arguments when arguing against supporting the currently proposed immigration revisions.
This lady made the argument pretty simple
NOT printed in the Orange County Paper..................
Newspapers simply won't publish letters to the editor which they either deem politically incorrect (read below) or which does not agree with the philosophy they're pushing on the public. This woman wrote a great letter to the editor that should have been published; but, with your help it will get published via cyberspace!
New Immigrants
From: 'David LaBonte'
My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the OC Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to 'print' it myself by sending it out on the Internet.
Pass it along if you feel so inclined.
Dave LaBonte (signed)
Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register :
Dear Editor:
So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren't being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.
Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States , people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.
They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture.
Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity. Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany , Italy , France and Japan. None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people. When we liberated France, no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.
And here we are in 2007 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900's deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.
And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty, it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn't start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.
(signed) Rosemary LaBonte
P. S. Pass this on to everyone you know!!!
KEEP THIS LETTER MOVING!!
I hope this letter gets read by millions of people all across the nation!!
Bill Kreger
Integrity Security Solutions, LLC.
Systems Designer
512-374-9190 Office
512-374-1451 Fax
512-736-4781 Cell
-----------------
I can't copy and post what snopes said, but they say the letter is false. Not that it did not happen, but that what the writer said about past and current immigrants is not true. I agree with snopes that it might not be true about all immigrants then and now, but in general, I don't think we had immigrants in the early 20th century who were expecting to take over parts of the US for their home countries.
I just thought that was interesting!
---Katie
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