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JT seeks advice from the Voxologisti:

My wife and I are making plans to begin homeschooling our kids after this school year. I’d be interested in any resources/tips your community can recommend for parents just starting out with homeschooling — particularly for kids who were already in private Christian and public schools for 3-5 years. (We’ll be teaching 3rd and 5th grade at home next year).

You and your regular readers are consistent advocates of the advantages of homeschooling, and what I’ve read on your site has helped us reach this decision. Now we could use all the help we can get. Even knowing it’s the best thing for the kids, it’s still a daunting challenge to take this on.

Posting this feels rather like chaining a bleeding veal calf in a cage full of wolves… JT, I will simply leave you and your wife with the wise words of Douglas Adams. “Don’t Panic!” The point of homeschooling is not to design the ultimate curriculum and then begin, allow yourself instead to discover the right path through trial and error. Even the errors will almost surely be superior to the education your children were receiving previously.

A commenter to one of Unfogged’s posts on Gopnik, Lewis and Narnia makes a common error about Christianity:

I dunno about the Lion/Lamb business. It’s one thing to say that Christ was the Lion because he had the strength to sacrifice himself and was vindicated in the end. That’s one kind of strength. It’s another kind of strength that the lion of the jungle uses to kick ass all over the place. I took it that what Gopnik was objecting to was the absence of meekness and self-denial, which is pretty central to Christ’s message.

The problem here is that neither meekness nor self-denial is central – pretty or otherwise – to Jesus Christ’s message. I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE, NO MAN COMES TO THE FATHER BUT BY ME is the totality of his message, everything else is secondary.

Jesus Christ is not the Lion because of what he did, that is his aspect as the sacrificial Lamb. He is the Lion because he is the Alpha and the Omega, the Son of God, the rightful King who will return to claim his usurped throne. “kick[ing] ass all over the place” is a fair description of what John tells us is going to happen in his Revelation, after all.

Man is called to be meek before God, to be humble in the knowledge that we are nothing without Him, we can achieve nothing except through Him and we shall perish without His grace. God hates arrogance because pride is the main reason we refuse to acknowledge Him or our proper place in His Creation, and why we rebel against Him.

Like Aslan, Jesus Christ did not need to suffer and die. He chose to do so in order to pay the blood price necessary to redeem a traitor, Edmund in the case of Aslan, Man in the case of Jesus Christ.

As for Gopnik, his PARIS TO THE MOON has a spot in my most-favored bookcase, as it captures the American living abroad experience rather well. Having spent years living in Japan and Italy after growing up in the Midwest, I felt a real sense of the expatriate experience in reading that book that is missing in better-known works of travel porn such as UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN.

One need not agree with a writer on everything – or anything, for that matter – to like and appreciate his writing.

The Pan-Gargler on personal security:

The other night my dad and I were talkin’ in the kitchen… it was late… we are all about ready for bed… but home invasions had been in the news and were the topic of discussion. I was of course blowing it off. Dad looked at me and said, “hey… it happens everyday. It could happen to you. They could kick that front door down.” Now… here I am standing around in a bitch beater and a pair of boxers.

I took two quick steps, produced a firearm from no where and aimed at the front door. This happened in around a second. This of course suprised my Dad… but I have no idea why it would. You’d think he’d know by now.

Not bad really… but probly not as good as JAC… who simply carries a side arm at all times. Cut me some slack. I was ready for bed.

This reminds me of the time Big Chilly was going shooting and wanted to borrow my .38 revolver. I was reading in bed, so I leaned over to the left, tipped two books forward and handed it to him. He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything as he unloaded it and slipped it in his case.

“Hey, do you mind if I take the Glock too?”

“Sure,” I said, then leaned over to the right, tipped two other books forward and handed him the Glock. This time he laughed while checking the chamber, then pointed up to the ceiling fan and wondered aloud what he’d find on the blades if he reached up there.

Now, I’ve told that part of the story before, but forgot to mention what happened next. When he asked if I had anything under the bed as well, I told him to look for himself. He was practically rolling on the floor laughing by the time he pulled the seventh and last rifle out.

Adam Gopnik – a writer I rather like – writes a nice piece about CS Lewis, wherein he also demonstrates why non-Christians should think twice before attempting to write seriously about Christianity or historical Christians:

The most explicitly religious part of his myth is the most strenuously, and the least successfully, allegorized. Aslan the lion, the Christ symbol, who has exasperated generations of freethinking parents and delighted generations of worried Anglicans, is, after all, a very weird symbol for that famous carpenter’s son—not just an un-Christian but in many ways an anti-Christian figure….

Yet a central point of the Gospel story is that Jesus is not the lion of the faith but the lamb of God, while his other symbolic animal is, specifically, the lowly and bedraggled donkey. The moral force of the Christian story is that the lions are all on the other side. If we had, say, a donkey, a seemingly uninspiring animal from an obscure corner of Narnia, raised as an uncouth and low-caste beast of burden, rallying the mice and rats and weasels and vultures and all the other unclean animals, and then being killed by the lions in as humiliating a manner as possible—a donkey who reëmerges, to the shock even of his disciples and devotees, as the king of all creation—now, that would be a Christian allegory. A powerful lion, starting life at the top of the food chain, adored by all his subjects and filled with temporal power, killed by a despised evil witch for his power and then reborn to rule, is a Mithraic, not a Christian, myth.

This is, quite simply, a howler. Jesus Christ is the sacrificial Lamb, to be sure, but he is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Revelations 5:5: The Scroll and the Lamb: Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

6Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits[a] of God sent out into all the earth. 7He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. 8And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9And they sang a new song:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased men for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”

In short, the Lion is the Lamb. It is staggering that Gopnik should have missed this, much less tried to use it as grounds for a religious criticism of the Aslan analogy. The beauty of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion is that he was the Lion throughout, his sacrifice was entirely voluntary. “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”

But unfortunately, it’s clear that for all his true appreciation for creative greatness Gopnik is, like most secular writers, simply clueless on matters spiritual. He goes on to compound his error in the very next paragraph:

Though Tolkien was certainly a devout Catholic, there is no way in which “The Lord of the Rings” is a Christian book, much less a Catholic allegory.

Well, except for the “Servant of the Secret Fire” bit, the transformation of Gandalf the Grey into Gandalf the White, the basic theme of the Return of the King, and then, this small quote from Tolkein himself describing the Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.”

That’s simply embarrassing. And it detracts greatly from an article that otherwise appears to be surprisingly well-informed. I was particularly pleased to note how he credited George MacDonald, the first fantasy great who is all but unknown outside of Christian circles these days.

NB fails to notice what is obvious to the serious observer:

“Being susceptible to demagogues, dependent upon the ever-changing emotions of the majority and inherently unstable”

Vox, what planet are YOU experiencing things on? In case you never happened to notice it, the US Government is, instead of being unstable, the oldest continuously functioning governmental body in charge of a major state (thus excluding, say, “Lichtenstein” or others from consideration, for an example). There are NO other major nations which have not gone through a radical restructuring during the USA’s short existence (I exclude interregnums as a result of nearby wars, too) – England? Pure monarchy to a figurehead monarchy with a parliament. Germany? Didn’t exist in its current form. Italy? Same. Spain? Revolution in 1930s. France? Innumerable revolutions in the 1800s. Brazil? Argentina? China? Russia? Nope. Australia, Canada, India? Did not exist, per se, in 1850. Eastern Europe? Duh.

I pointed this out long ago in your blog, but apparently you failed to grasp it. If it is constructed properly, and the people themselves support it actively, democracy is one of the MOST stable forms of government, since it allows for a continuous, smooth answer to THE critical question at the heart of political stability: Who shall rule: Who shall succeed the predecessor?

Hell, the strength of the system, along with our belief in it, was shown in 2000, with the signal swamped by the noise. In most other nations, the solution would have been for both sides to fight for it – instead, there was a lot of legal jockeying by both sides, until they ran out of arguments, and one side became the winners by default. The reason why no one picked up a gun to resolve it was obvious: The American People would not have accepted such a solution, and those in the race knew that was so.

This need not be uniquely American. It may well not apply in Iraq, but if you don’t try, it damned sure won’t. You can be against the US’s actions, but at least get basic points right. Democracy is not inherently unstable, and the continued existence of the USA is blatant proof of it. It’s the underlying people in question who make any governmental system work or not work.

Let’s see… if we ignore longer-lived governments which happen to be smaller, forget about a violent civil war which transformed the nation from a peaceful voluntary union to a continental quasi-empire imposed by force at the will of the central government, then pretend that the English parliament hasn’t reigned supreme since beheading Charles I in 1649, we can use the “stability” of the American form of government as a foundation of our argument.

NB presents an appallingly weak case throughout. First, the American system is overtly anti-democratic, as it is full of numerous laws and institutions designed specifically to weaken the will of the people. There is not even a possibility for a national referendum, and in states which permit them they are readily overridden by legislatures and courts. The American government is not in the least democratic, indeed, the British House of Lords has been known to have a higher turnover rate thanks to the quiet machinations of the bi-factional ruling party in creating safe Congressional districts where the only question is which party creature will be anointed to win the “election”.

The transformation of the U.S. government from a strictly limited and small central government subject to state and individual sovereignty to the all-powerful imperial state with pretensions global jurisdiction is a far greater one than the exchange of King Log for King Stork in an African nation. The fact that the nominal figurehead is still called the President – even if he upholds UN resolutions instead of the US Constitution -–and meaningless elections are still held does not mean that the political system is the same as it was before. While the symbolism is there, the substance is completely altered to an extent that very few are capable of understanding.

The Founding Fathers knew that democracy was inherently unstable, but they were insufficiently skeptical about how easily it would destroy the Republic they created. The reality is that America has known three systems of government:

1. The Free Republic 1789 to 1861 (72 years)
2. The Northeastern Empire 1862 to 1945 (83 years)
3. The Global Satrapy 1945 to present (61 years)

My observations indicate that the USA is rapidly heading towards a fourth system of government, likely one where the federal government will be made openly subordinate to a supernational entity such as the American Union. Using the timeframe of the EU’s establishment as a guide, this will be accomplished by the year 2040 at the latest.

Pretty Lady brings up Madeleine L’Engle:

…but then you believe that “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” surpasses “Wrinkle.” Usually your assessments are well-reasoned, if a bit hyperbolic, but this one stymies me. “Planet” was interestingly conceived, but utterly fell to pieces in the execution, much like Mr. Lewis’ latter sci-fi works.

I disagree, although not as vociferously as I might had I read the books in the last twenty years. I just thought the entropy-loving Ecthroi and the tension of the possible world ending, (depending upon the eye color of the child, if I recall correctly), were far more gripping than the rescue of Daddy and Charles Wallace from IT. I remember feeling genuine fear while reading “Planet”; it was a perfect book for the eighties, when the media was pushing fear of a nuclear war that most people considered eminently possible, and it struck an unusual ray of hope at a time when the adult world wasn’t offering children much in the way of optimism.

Although L’Engle did about as well as it could be done, I also found the whole “win by love” climax to be more than a little weak. It reminds me a little of how Freddy could be beaten by simply turning your back on him in Nightmare on Elm Street… about the only think I can remember about that movie was turning to my friend who’d told me that I absolutely, positively had to see the movie and saying “you have to be f—— kidding me!”

And since Rowena did the cover for “Planet”, it’s also got that going for it in my book, so to speak. But to debate which novel is better is almost beside the point, as I consider both to be undeniably and inarguably excellent.

As much as I love CS Lewis, I can’t argue with you about the Space Trilogy. It has it’s moments, but I’ve always considered it to be disappointing. I may have to re-read “That Hideous Strength” one of these days, though, as my perspective on bureaucracy and the banality of evil is very different than it was when I was ten.

Don’t freak out when there’s no column tomorrow. I didn’t write one, having been sicker than the proverbial dog on Friday and spending most of Saturday asleep recovering, which is when I usually crank it out.

“Sally” seems to really enjoy the concept, having used the phrase thrice now:

Vox its nice to see you joined the sausage party! Oh..I thought you meant look up because you posted Jeremy’s email and responded. Can’t play with the big boy’s can you? The small guys usually get hurt.

It seems “she” doesn’t know how to hit reload on “her” browser. I’d originally been under the impression that “Sally” was a woman, but I stand corrected as it appears these two “big boy’s” must have been married in Massachusetts.

Jeremy not only attempts to defend what would otherwise appear to be indefensible, but he actually thinks I’m afraid to respond to him:

It surprises me that such a comment would be brought up to support women’s rights. I am not sure that I follow how past leaders decisions be them male or female have anything to with the reasons why women’s rights are important. I further more am surprised that a fellow that appears to be smart would take the time to publicly challenge the argument. Many people could point out good or bad decisions made by past leaders, I am not sure this would get either of you two anywhere.

It surprised me too. Of course, if I hadn’t responded to it, people like Jeremy would have claimed that I didn’t respond to it because I was afraid to do so.

“On June 5, 1944, after many months of heated debate, Harvard Corporation finally voted to admit women into its medical college. A committee had earlier recommended that the available “mediocre men” be replaced with a group of “very superior women.” Young female applicants with degrees from four-year undergraduate schools scored considerably higher on aptitude tests than male applicants. Harvard realized that, if only as a matter of self-preservation, its almost-two-hundred-year policy of excluding women had to be reversed.” (About.com) I am not sure your statement isn’t based on skewed historical statistics. After all, if we went on the statistics of the pre 1950’s white people are superior athletes to blacks. How about you write a column about that. Was all medical advancement made by men? Are women so helpless, or are people like you trying to make them that way once more?

And yet those “very superior women” went on to achieve nothing that the “mediocre men” weren’t doing over the last sixty years, although the push for HMOs as a precursor to nationalizing health care – very popular among women – has managed to degrade the appeal of a medical career. I’d be interested in seeing those statistics of pre-1950s whites you cite without source, considering that Jesse Owens was winning four gold medals in 1936 and Joe Louis won the world boxing championship in 1937. And yes, at least 99 percent of all medical advancement has been made by men since the days of Galen.

#1 women are now able to fend off sexist idiots such as yourself. You seem to be very unamerican, I am appauled that you call yourself a libetarian. What liberty is there in taking rights away and imposing your beliefs on to others?

According to the feminists, more women are being raped, beaten and abused than ever before, especially on Super Bowl Sunday, so even that justification would appear to be a non-starter. The only “right” I advocate taking away from women is the “right” to vote, which is not a right at all. Since women’s suffrage has resulted in the loss of individual rights from owning firearms and private property to smoking and drinking, it should be obvious how liberty can be increased by removing the voting franchise from a group with a strong prediliction for hating individual freedom. I have never imposed my beliefs on anyone, unlike the feminists, I do not believe my ideology is so rationally weak as to require legal force to survive.

While in college I found few women unable to provide for themselves. You are actually furthering this by disallowing them from their rights. You ought to check your history also. Women were not given suffrage in the US until 1920, prohibition movement was started in 1869 and ratified in 1919, began in 1920. How were women able to put this in to place?

You mean those women whose tuitions were being paid by Mommy and Daddy, not to mention the government? As for Prohibition, women first received the right to vote in 1893 in Colorado and their strong support for Prohibition was one reason that many men opposed women’s suffrage: “Opponents of the women’s suffrage movement were convinced that if women received the right to vote, prohibition would become the law of the land. In fact, women were among the most ardent supporters of prohibition, and anti-prohibition organizations, such as the National Brewers’ Association, were among the most vocal anti-suffragists.”

If they do not contribute anything how do you propose your children are taken care of in your decree? I am sure that you will be able to achieve success and take care of your children at the same time. You are quite obviously stuck in the past. While I was in college the number of successful females was starting to greatly out number the men. While in the work force and in a global company I see women in very powerful and monetarily endowed positions in increasing numbers. They are also successful in these positions (hence the increasing numbers.) You are obviously quite OLD. Your last sentence appears to me, speaking from experience, that you have been rejected by women many times. Is this the reason for your sour attitude? I surely hope not.

Jeremy clearly has the typical reading comprehension problem, as I did not say women contribute nothing to society, I said that they collectively contribute nothing to building wealth and advancing technology in a society. This should be obvious, since there are no shortage of historical or modern examples of impoverished societies where women successfully bear and raise children. I have no doubt that women are inordinately successful in college today, the problem is that success in college no longer means that one is even capable of balancing a checkbook or understanding a short text. As for the rejection issue, we’ve been over that before… suffice it to say that it has not been an issue.

That is awfully convient to say when men have ruled for over 5000 years, plenty of time to make proof for themselves. You are only going to give women, what, about 25 years?

Given how women have managed to collectively embarrass themselves by what they’ve done with their so-called freedom, I don’t believe any more time is needed to prove my point. And considering what they’ve done to the country, I don’t believe the republic will survive another 85 years of women’s suffrage. There is a reason, after all, that the same men who wrote the Constitution went out of their way to fight the “despotism of the petticoat”, as John Adams put it, and took the vote away from women in New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire prior to the Constitutional Convention.

You are a real science buff too I see. A million years for evolution? Better check again. You might be surprised to find out that it can be in the thousands, or even shorter. Again math is tough, so maybe you don’t have appreciation for numbers say after the 10,000 mark. Roaches are immune to many of the pesticides they weren’t 50 years ago.

This is interesting in that it’s always the evolutionists here who insist that evolution takes a very long time whenever an evolutionary skeptic like myself points out that evolution has not been proven by the scientific method. I’ll leave this one for them to deal with.

ALL MEN (With the exception of Mae West, the only of which did not kill excessive numbers of people). If you would like to see the continuation of the western world maybe you should look into other causes. Land conservation, natural resource preservation, a more inhabitable environment. I seriously doubt that a reduction in population is going to put an end to it.

Jeremy conveniently skips over the fact that American women alone have ended more lives than Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot combined. As for the decline of the West, conservation cannot possibly be an issue as both Europe and the United States currently have more forested, less polluted la
nd than they have enjoyed in over a century. The problem is not a reduction in population alone, it is a reduction in natural population combined with an influx of non-Western immigration within and growing enemy populations without. The West’s current supremacy is not a Divine mandate and will only continue so long as there is enough of a West to remain supreme. The long term choice is not between the feminist Equalitarian society and traditional Western society, it is between traditional Western society and either Middle Eastern or Chinese society.

Following a health trend that appears to be brewing up all over the nation, Mayor Judith Rawson has signed a proclamation for the City of Shaker Heights that addresses the issues regarding caffeine intoxication and dependency.

In the proclamation the Mayor is “calling upon all Shaker Heights citizens, public and private institutions, business and schools to increase awareness and understanding of the consequences of caffeine consumption.”

The proclamation also spells out many dangers of caffeine abuse such as heart disease, pancreas and bladder cancer, hypoglycemia, and central nervous system disorders. By getting the word out about the serious dangers of caffeine, Mayor Rawson hopes to prevent a substance that can “pose a significant hazard to health and longevity.”

City of Shaker Heights is one of several cities across the country recognizing this annual event. This will be the third year for this event which is sponsored by the Caffeine Awareness Alliance, a non-profit organization. Marina Kushner, founder, states, “Each year more and more people are waking up to the real truth about the dangers of this ubiquitous drug. We are delighted that the mayor has recognized that this is not a laughing matter.”

If you thought Prohibition was a relic of the past, just wait until there are a few more women in political office. Women with political power make the Puritans look like libertine hedonists. Given half the chance, they’ll ban everything from alchohol and coffee to red meat and NFL football.