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Ruby Payne’s work on effectively interfacing with and helping students from the lower income levels has brought the expected howls of indignation from her colleagues.  But the truth is that this is the absolutely most explosive issue in the U.S. today, which is why no one wants to discuss it.

Let’s look at this from both sides.

The U.S. is supposed to be the place where "anyone" can start out "anywhere" and be successful.  It is ingrained in our national psyche.  The fact that class differences exist is an offence to this idea.  That’s reason #1 why people don’t want to discuss it.

For those in the lower income strata, this reason #1 induces shame.  It implies that they either have done something wrong or are "bad" people who can’t make it.  So they don’t want to think about it.  It used to be that churches provided some solace from this.  They could say that those who followed Jesus were going to heaven while those of a more worldly bent weren’t, so the inequities in this life would be reversed in eternity:

There was once a rich man, who dressed in purple robes and fine linen, and feasted every day in great splendor. Near his gateway there had been laid a beggar named Lazarus, who was covered with sores, And who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the very dogs came and licked his sores. After a time the beggar died, and was taken by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In the Place of Death he looked up in his torment, and saw Abraham at a distance and Lazarus at his side. So he called out ‘Pity me, Father Abraham, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering agony in this flame.’ ‘Child,’ answered Abraham, ‘remember that you in your lifetime received what you thought desirable, just as Lazarus received what was not desirable; but now he has his consolation here, while you are suffering agony. And not only that, but between you and us there lies a great chasm, so that those who wish to pass from here to you cannot, nor can they cross from there to us.’ ‘Then, Father,’ he said, ‘I beg you to send Lazarus to my father’s house– For I have five brothers to warn them, so that they may not come to this place of torture also.’ ‘They have the writings of Moses and the Prophets,’ replied Abraham; ‘let them listen to them.’ ‘But, Father Abraham,’ he urged, ‘if some one from the dead were to go to them, they would repent.’ ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets,’ answered Abraham, ‘they will not be persuaded, even if some one were to rise from the dead.’" (Luke 16:19-31)

But now we have prosperity teaching, so we don’t talk about that any more.

On the other end, liberals talk about restructuring society so that people who start out with disadvantages can make it.  But experience teaches that people at the top know that they could not make it if such a society was in place.  So they continue to send their children to the best schools and dispense social programs that they think will work.  But they are so far out of touch with the "other half" that they really don’t know what it will take.  The result is what we have, i.e., the left continues to push trendy causes and the gap between the top and the bottom continues to grow.

Ruby Payne doesn’t need "New Age" inspiration to see that what she proposes has good truth content.  Anyone who has made their life’s adventure to travel the longest trip in America–up and down the social ladder–can discern the veracity of what she says.  Boomers would rather travel to exotic places around the world than to explore unknown places in their own society.  But Boomers are a hard bunch to teach anything, which is why they really don’t understand either.

It’s time to acknowledge the existence of this problem and face it forthrightly.

For a long time historians have unfolded their narratives without worrying about setting up a chronological punctuation, without the need of pausing at a major stopping point.  When the concept of medaevalism was imposed on general consciousness–it has only been a century–the dogma of evolution, of the continual and slow transformation of nature and of humanity made it difficult to understand the fact of discontinuity.  The indubitable result of this is that the primary differences between the period to which it fits to reserve the term of "Antiquity" and the following times continued to be misunderstood without the need of inserting breaks in the historical narrative for teaching purposes.  Unfortunately these chronological curriculum-driven divisions were made clumsily, or frequently the subject of ridicule, and they compromised the whole proposition of division between Antiquity and the Middle Age.

This separation nevertheless corresponds to a reality and it is dangerous not to apply it.  Even if it’s true that the river of Time glides in an continuous movement, it is also true that its course does not flow at an even rate.  Sometimes it slows down to the point that its movement is hardly perceptible, and the description of several centuries seems to be able to be contained in a few pages.  ‘At other points it tumbles over a waterfall, boils up and races away, and the historian, crushed by the abundance of important and tumultuous events, spends a lifetime retracing several revolutionary days.  (Ferdinand Lot, La fin du monde antique and the début du moyen âge (The end of the ancient world and the beginning of the middle ages) Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1968, pp. 11-12 (originally published 1926)

One of the main assumptions of current evolutionary dogma (to use the phrase of Ferdinand Lot, a French historian cited here earlier) is that of gradualism, that all changes in the structure of species took place gradually over long period of time.  This, of course, is taught as court-enforced fact in our schools, in spite of the warnings of creationists (even old-earth ones like myself) and some secular evolutionists that certain things just can’t be explained by anything else than cataclysmic events.

Although biologists would probably object, some correspondence can be made between the study of history and the study of the "prehistory" that is the subject of so much controversy.  After all, aren’t both the recounting of living organisms interacting in a geological/marine environment?  In human history the decision making capacity of people is further thrown into the mix (which in turn has some correspondence with Intelligent Design, but I’ll leave that for another time.)

Lot’s statement should be a caution for all those who would impose a scientific dogma without recourse to further study, and (to add injury to insult) impose it on disciplines which have some relation but also have significant differences.  The imposition of an evolutionary/gradualistic world view not only blinds us to the importance of cataclysmic events of all kinds, but also to the role of human volition and decision making processes in the course of events.  Too much history is written–and this translates into how current events are seen–with the idea that it’s driven by impersonal "forces," with the result that we slide all too often into historical determinism.  The end result is that we don’t learn anything applicable from history other than the idea that we can’t change it.

This quote also should warn us of the effects of how we teach subjects on how we view the knowledge they contain.  Anyone who has taught knows that there are ways of arranging the course content that make it easier for the students to learn, but in the long run may have to be "unlearned" for fuller understanding.

Trapped between fanatic gradualists and the demands of the curriculum, sometimes it’s a wonder anyone learns anything.

Back in the fall, I received an email from one of our visitors challenging my article Gay Marriage: What Marriage? and especially my statement that "it can be shown that the optimum home for children is one where there is a father and a mother."  I referred him to a number of places on this site (and one elsewhere) when I bloviate on the subject of gay marriage.

Well, he finally responded to me as follows (I will reproduce it fully, as he refrains from bad language:)

Thanks for the references to the well-designed and objective studies on the children of gay parents; they’ve opened my eyes, and convinced me that hack-job research by such partisan institutions as The American Academy of Pediatrics <http://www.aap.org/>&nbsp; — which makes such outrageous statements as, "the research has been remarkably consistent in showing that lesbian and gay parents are every bit as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by heterosexual parents." <http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-surrogacyside1xoct30,0,1727418.story?coll=la-home-headlines>&nbsp; — is pure pablum. You’re a shining beacon of truth and rationalism in a world-gone-gay.

I share your concern for the welfare of children. I worry, however, that your rationalism isn’t going to gain much traction with the gay-loving U.S. society. But I think I may have found a back door — forgive the pun — to helping the children to an even greater extent than preventing gay people from raising children.

Negro parents.

You see, I’ve found that there are many good arguments to maintain marriage as a union of one white man and one white woman. Research shows that the children of negro parents don’t fare nearly as well — economically, educationally, or getting arrestedinally — as the children of white parents. And here’s the beauty of it: there are relatively few gay parents, so even if you abandon the noble-but-difficult cause of keeping gays from raising children, you’re only dooming a relative handful of kids. But there are tons of negro parents. Tons. The number of kids that need saving from negro parenting is literally in the millions.

How can we team up to get this initiative off of the ground? You’ve apparently got a framework already in place; all it needs is a slight shifting of focus to help millions of kids, rather than the thousands that stand to benefit from not having gay parents. I think I’ve got some good ideas that I’d like to brainstorm with you. Please get back to me and let me know what we can do.

This one’s for the kids! Let’s roll.

P.S. This is in the preliminary stages, but I’ve also begun to look into the detrimental effects of low-income parenting as well, and I think you’ll find the numbers pretty darn interesting…

Needless to say, this is as absurd as it is offensive.  But even at that some comments must be made:

• The one thing I agree with is that "your rationalism isn’t going to gain much traction with the gay-loving U.S. society."  It generally doesn’t.  I am pleased that the left-wing community, filled with secularlists who keep telling us that religious people are incapable of rational thought, has at least one person who considers me a rationalist.
• With satire like this, it’s little wonder that many black people resent the whole concept of gay rights.
• His addition of low income people finally tipped his hand.  One reason why people might seem to do better in GLBT homes is that same homes are generally upper income places, as I noted in Protecting the Master Race.  If you took into consideration the income disparity, you would doubtless get a different result.  But GLBT people don’t want to do that, because it would seriously reduce the sympathy that they might generated for themselves.  (Just ask Paris Hilton!)
• I still can’t understand how a group of people who routinely describe themselves as "alternative" is so fixed on gay marriage and gay adoption.  It’s just too bourgeois!  (I still don’t have an answer to that.)

P.S. After posting this, an item appeared on Andrew Sullivan’s blog that just might really move things in a positive direction.

The whole Sojourners’ discussion with Clinton, Obama and Edwards is a exercise in wishful thinking by both the Sojourners and the Democratic candidates.

It’s no secret that the Democrats’ own base is very secular.  It’s also no secret that the Republicans’ base tends to be religious.  So the trick for these candidates is to sound like they’re religious when they convey a message to their own base that they’re not.  This is very cynical politics.

Hillary is the best positioned to take advantage of this, as is the case with many other things.  She was raised in a United Methodist church and was led into the "religious left" by her activist youth minister, Don Jones.  She is a moralistic person, which sometimes doesn’t fit well with the "party animal" branch of the left.  Her background makes it easier for her to use the buzz words of evangelicalism, which she did profusely, especially when talking about her dealing with the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Edwards has to deal with the whole religious issue because he is a lower middle class Southerner.  He obviously knows how to sprinkle a little religion in front of a jury, which probably helped him become a successful trial lawyer.  Religious lefties probably find his high lifestyle hard to take, but that’s part of the scene he’s a product of too.  Those who come up to success are almost expected to flaunt it because it creates a visible example for others to follow.  That’s why so many preachers do it that way.

Obama, with a complex background, is probably less at ease with this issue than the others.  That’s one reason why George Soros likes him so much.

The truth is, however, that statists–and all of these people are that–see religion solely in its ability to serve the interests of the government, not religion as a way to animate society to be and do better.  This is close to an "opiate of the people" line of thinking, as Marx and Engels would put it.  That’s why conservative evangelicalism frightens them and the rest of the left–it represents to them a power challenge.  That’s why they want to co-opt it the best they can.

It would be more honest of them, however, to stick with secularism and try to buy off the public with new government programs than to try and impress the rest of us with their religiosity.

The uncovered plot to blow up the jet fuel at the JFK Airport is being continuously reported on Fox News, as one would expect.

However, their geography leaves a lot to be desired of.  Leading up to the 1300 FBI news conference, one of those arrested was a member of the parliament of Guyana, which Fox thought was in Africa and which they repeated.  Their "expert" who had travelled in Africa didn’t challenge this either.

Guyana is in South America.  Both Guyana and Trinidad/Tobago have substantial Muslim populations.

This reminds us of a story about Sir Lionel Luckhoo, the famous Guyanese barrister and diplomat who was born again in the wake of representing Jim Jones.  He went to a hotel  who couldn’t find his reservation.  Finally they unearthed a reservation of a "Sir Loin" from Guinea, which is in Africa.

Evidently Fox News (which I usually like) needs a geography expert which knows more than a hapless hotel clerk.

Evangelist Bill Keller’s saying that voting for Mitt Romney is like voting for Satan should neither be taken seriously nor be the business of the Internal Revenue Service.

I’d like to know: how many people has Keller trained to effectively share their Christian faith with a Mormon?  How much does he really know about Mormonism?  Does he realise that the Book of Mormon doesn’t teach Mormonism?  Chances are, if he could give positive answers to these questions, he wouldn’t be saying the things he is.

If he really wants to see what a "vote for Satan" is like, he needs to look at the other primary series.  One Catholic woman we know routinely refers to the "Lizard Queen" as "evil" and prays for her defeat.  And then we have the matter of the "Manchurian Candidate" put up by George Soros.  If either is elected, evangelists will be seeing a lot more of the Internal Revenue Service.

I have reservations about Mitt Romney, serious ones.  But a vote for Satan?  Hardly.

The news that Fred Thompson will announce his candidacy on 4 July is good news for Republican conservatives who have been looking for an alternative to a field that is either a) too liberal or b) too erratic and opportunistic.

Rumours are cheap and plentiful in politics.  The first indication that I saw that his candidacy was for real was back in March, when Congressman Zach Wamp announced that Thompson was likely to run.  Zach is too well placed to make such a statement without substantiation.  Since then virtually every party leader in Tennessee has been pushing his candidacy.

Fred is not perfect.  He, in a lawyerly way, was too slow to pick up on the basically political nature of the Watergate scandal.  And some conservative Christian leaders have challenged his "true believer credentials."  But this is politics, and the same caution I expressed about Rudy Guiliani and Mitt Romney should be exercised here.  Christians need to understand the limitations of politics and that, if you want to see a religion where religion and politics are a unity, you should take a look at Islam.

And Fred Thompson lazy?  That’s the best road to small government yet!