Mourning Joe

OCPA has hosted several interesting people through the years, and I've had the good fortune to talk to many of them and even shuttle them around town. But if you ask me who my favorite is, it's not even close. I loved the author and columnist Joseph Sobran, who died today at the age of 64.

In high-school math class, rather than paying attention to my teacher, I was furtively reading the latest issue of National Review (which, miraculously, was available at the Bartlesville High School library. Hooray for public education!). I would also read Joe's essays in The Human Life Review, many of which were compiled in the 1983 book Single Issues: Essays on the Crucial Social Questions. And his extended NR essay, "Pensees: Notes for the Reactionary of Tomorrow," was and is a masterpiece.

Fast forward 15 years, and I'm driving him around the metro. It was the day after Constitution Day in 1998, and I took him to speak to the students at Edmond Santa Fe High School, and then to the old Applewoods Restaurant south of Reno off Meridian, where some 300 folks heard him discuss "How the Constitution Was Stolen." The photo at right was taken that day. I even asked Joe to write a piece for Perspective, which he did.

There's much more to say, but my heart is heavy and I'm not in the mood. Besides, others will have plenty to say, and I'll start compiling some links below. Joseph Sobran, dead at 64. R.I.P.

"Joe Sobran, R.I.P." by Jack Fowler
"Bard of the Right" by Matthew Scully
"Extraordinary Joe" by Kevin Lynch 
"A Noble Heart" by Robert Royal
"Not Your Average Joe" by Ann Coulter
"Joseph Sobran, RIP" by Lew Rockwell
"Joseph Sobran, R.I.P." by the editors of Chronicles
"Joe Sobran, RIP" by Tim Bayly
"Interregnum -- and a Transition" by Tom Bethell

When 'Special Education' Is Neither

Read Pat McGuigan's heartbreaking (and infuriating) story about an Oklahoma City boy who has been neglected and abused, but not educated.

Fortunately, people now have choices.

The Rest of Your Life? The Rest of Your Life?

Michael Kinsley once remarked that a gaffe is when a politician inadvertently tells the truth. I'm pretty sure the editors at TIME are going to regret this one.

HT: Touchstone

That Pretty Well Sums It Up

In a new Marvin Olasky interview with Grover Norquist ('An almost ally,' World magazine, Oct. 9, 2010), Grover says "now there are two teams: the Leave-Us-Alone Coalition and the Takings Coalition. ... The Takings Coalition is made up of trial lawyers, labor unions, and the two wings of the dependency movement -- the people who are locked into welfare dependency and the people who make $90,000 a year managing the dependency of others and making sure they don't get jobs and become Republicans."

Crowding Out the Private Sector

In the cover story ('Government spending squeezing out private sector') of the October issue of OKC Biz magazine, Dean Anderson reports on one OCPA economist who fears we could be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Oh No, Does This Mean Mrs. Obama Is Back to Not Being Proud of Her Country Again?

What Next!

I honestly don't know how much more of this Democrats can take. First Jari Askins comes out of the closet as a conservative. Now we learn that she's -- gasp -- a creationist!

Friday Night Football

Is This a Great State or What?

Check out the latest numbers from Rasmussen, who yesterday surveyed likely voters in Oklahoma: 

"How would you rate the job Barack Obama has been doing as President? Do you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove of the job he’s been doing?"

• 21% Strongly approve
• 10% Somewhat approve 
• 7% Somewhat disapprove
• 60% Strongly disapprove
• 2% Not sure

"A proposal has been made to repeal the health care bill and stop it from going into effect. Do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose a proposal to repeal the health care bill?"  

• 59% Strongly favor
• 11% Somewhat favor  
• 5% Somewhat oppose 
• 23% Strongly oppose
• 2% Not sure

"Have the current policies of the federal government put the U.S. economy on the right course?"

• 21% Yes 
• 65% No 
• 14% Not sure

 "Is the Tea Party movement good for the country or bad for the country?"

• 58% Good 
• 21% Bad 
• 16% Neither
• 6% Not sure

Player Spotlight

Nice write-up on Lincoln.

Suffering, Sovereignty, and Submission

These past few weeks have been hard. I think some of the hardest I've had in a long time. This season and this time of the year bring back so many memories of last year.

It was a year ago tomorrow that we moved to Dallas. I remember that day so well. We had gone to the doctor that morning and I was so big that our doctor didn't think we should wait any longer. He said we should go to Dallas as soon as we could. I had been getting ready for weeks, but this was still much earlier than I had planned to leave, so there was a last-minute scramble of packing. I remember making plans for places for the kids to stay until they would join us in Dallas. I remember putting my clothes in a suitcase not really paying attention to what I packed. And I remember standing in the kitchen saying goodbye to Lincoln. I think that was the hardest. And later we drove out of town, not knowing when we would be back. We were nervous and anxious, but so hopeful.

It's seems hard to believe that it has been almost a year since Anne Marie was born. For me it just feels like time has been standing still. In this past year there have been births, and deaths, weddings, and graduations, birthdays and holidays,  the end of a school year and the start of a new one, and yet sometimes I feel as if life is going on and I'm still in the same place. So, it's been hard. And it's really hard even to explain or describe -- so many emotions and memories. And so many questions.

Not long ago, during one of these times of questioning, I was walking on the trail in our neighborhood listening to a message by Nancy Guthrie. I've read several of her books over the past year and they have been so helpful. Nancy's message was on suffering, more specifically what Jesus thinks about suffering. So many things from her message stood out to me, but she said one thing at the very beginning that really hit home. She was speaking about the loss of her first baby, Hope, and she said, "Nothing could have prepared me for the emptiness that her death left behind in my life." That's how I felt walking along that trail. Empty. Just so empty.

I kept walking and listening and I heard the best message on suffering that I have ever heard. Nancy talked about the questions that were going through her mind after she lost her infant daughter, Hope, and then a few years later, her infant son, Gabe. They were the same questions I had. And I imagine the same questions so many others have during times of suffering.

I have struggled so much lately with God's plan for me. I have wondered how losing Anne Marie could be God's perfect plan for me. I have wondered why after hoping and praying so long for a baby, God would give us a baby girl who we would have to give up. I have wondered why Anne Marie had to endure so much pain.

As I listened to Nancy's message she gave biblical examples of what Jesus thinks about suffering and she referred to passages I have read hundreds of times, but seemed to be hearing for the first time. And then she talked about the question that I have struggled with the most. She says:

I remember reading in the midst of my grief, somewhere, that God was sad with me. And I really struggled with that because I thought to myself, "Well, He doesn't have to be sad. I mean He's the one who had the power to change things." I think this is the wall that so many of us who believe in God's sovereignty run into, don't we? And it hurts. We think, "God if you are powerful enough to have done things differently, if you are really in charge of this world, how can I believe that you are sad with me if you could have given Hope and Gabe long and healthy lives if you had wanted to?" Have you ever hit that wall of confusion about God and His purposes and His power in your life.

In the lowest part of my grief and in the midst of these questions looming in my heart and mind I came across this verse, Hebrews 5: 7-9. And it was like a doorway opened up where I had hit that wall. It says, "During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him."

When I read that Jesus offered up prayers to the Father with loud cries and tears I could relate to that because I had so many tears that needed to come out. And it helps me to know that Jesus understands what that feels like. It helps me to know that Jesus does not dismiss suffering. To think about suffering like Jesus is not to dismiss it and say it doesn't matter or that it shouldn't hurt. Jesus is not rushing you, telling you you need to just get over it. Secondly, here is Jesus, and if ever anybody ever deserved to have his prayers answered in the affirmative by God, it should be Jesus, right? And here is a picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane pouring out his repeated requests to His father, asking Him to save Him from death on the cross, and God says no. It helps me to know that Jesus knows what it feels like to bring your heartfelt passionate prayer to God and hear God say, "I've got something else in mind. I have another plan, and that plan includes suffering." Because I have wrestled with God's plan for my life and it helps me to know that Jesus wrestled with the plan for His life, even as He submitted to it.

Have you cried out to God in frustration about how He could have the power to heal and yet choose not to heal the one that you love? Have you agonized in your effort to reconcile your understanding of a sovereign, loving God with the one who allowed the accident, the abuse? I have. . .  But I'm here to tell you that when you groan because there are no words for how deeply you hurt, and when you cry out to God with hot tears and you agonize over His plan that has caused you pain, Jesus understands. He understands what it's like to cry out to the Father, who has the power to make another way, but chooses not to.

I still have a lot to learn about suffering, sovereignty, and submission. I am still taking baby steps and sometimes steps backwards. But slowly, God is teaching me what He thinks about suffering, something that conforms all of us more to the image of Christ.

You can listen to the entire message here. You won't be sorry, and I imagine that, like me, you'll listen to it more than once.

Morning, and Mourning, in America

Traditional Family Key to Economic Health

[This column by Brandon Dutcher was published today in The Oklahoman.]

“We are going to be poorer for a generation and perhaps longer.” So says economist David P. Goldman, formerly global head of fixed income research at Bank of America. And no, it’s not merely because of Obamanomics.

“Unless we restore the traditional family to a central position in American life,” writes Mr. Goldman, now a senior editor at First Things, “we cannot expect to return to the kind of wealth accumulation that characterized the 1980s and 1990s.”

To understand why, I commend to your attention an important article (“The Family GDP: How Marriage and Fertility Drive the Economy”) by former Heritage Foundation scholar Patrick Fagan. Writing in the Spring 2010 issue of The Family in America, Dr. Fagan, now a research fellow at the Family Research Council, says that for too long policymakers have neglected our country’s “economic trump card,” the “indispensable building block upon which the fortunes of the economy depend: the married-parent household — especially the child-rich family that worships weekly.”

“The family GDP, or the contribution of the family to the economy,” is massive, he says. “Every marriage creates a new household,” and “the vast majority of these new households produces babies and transforms what are largely self-centered children into responsible adults, contributing the necessary next generation of human capital to the economy.”

Like any responsible entrepreneur or portfolio manager, he says, married mothers and fathers are necessarily thinking about the future.

“The married homemaker who focuses her attention on the children, hearth, and home has rarely been acknowledged for the economic force that she is,” Fagan says. “Paraphrasing Teddy Roosevelt who rebutted those who claimed she is a parasite, the married mother at home is the economy.”

How so? “First, she raises the future labor force; second, her at-home labor saves the family money; and third, by tending to details on the home front, she both allows and motivates her husband to be fully committed to his occupation, job, or profession.”

Fagan says the Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker once suggested to him that “the married mother at home exerts a more far-reaching impact on the economy than the married father in the workplace” (emphasis mine). After all, “the mother contributes to both the present and future economy, but especially the future through the more highly productive children she raises.”

It’s time to play our economic trump card. Politicians need to stop taking so much money from intact families and giving it to other people. For starters, they must stop the Obama tax increases slated to go into effect January 1 — specifically the return of the marriage penalty and the halving of the $1,000 child tax credit.

Here at home, state legislators should shrink the Department of Human Services budget and enlarge your family budget: Redirect a portion of Oklahoma’s daycare subsidies toward a tax break for families with a parent at home.

Because as author Bryce Christensen says, "ignoring the irreplaceable role of the intact family in fostering social-capital formation … undercuts the very possibility of long-term prosperity."

Endowed by Whom, Mr. President?

He can't bring himself to say it.

On Newsstands Now

Sarah ♥ Oklahoma

At a speech Wednesday night in Tulsa, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the crowd that a reporter recently spotted her wearing an Oklahoma Sooners tee shirt. Indeed, Palin said she wears that shirt frequently.

So she had me from hello. But then she went on and gave a shout-out to Oklahoma homeschoolers, and also praised Oklahoma's new law giving private-school scholarships to special-needs kids.

Where Do I Get One?

'These Children Don't Understand Why Mom's Not There'

This is the lament of Susan F. Sharp, a University of Oklahoma sociology professor. Indeed, when Mom's not there, the children "may become sad, withdrawn, have a low self-esteem, experience a decline in school performance, have health problems, or start using drugs or alcohol and participating in criminal behavior, she said."

Very true, and very sad. It's true when Mom is incarcerated, and it's also true when the child is incarcerated.

Missing Her

I miss her all the time.

It's hard to explain how someone can always be on your mind, because even in the times when she's not in the forefront of my mind she's still there, always close. I might be doing laundry, doing a school lesson, or talking on the phone and she is still there in my thoughts. It's like I used to have only one train of thought, but now she is there parallel to all my thoughts.

Of course there are reminders of her everywhere. Her pictures in the house, the Children's Hospital parking passes that are still in my car, her little lamb sitting on my bed. And there are times when I see a baby about the age Anne Marie would be and I think about what she might be doing. So I miss her, all the time. But there are times when the ache is particularly deep and when the yearning to have her here is so strong. It's when we are all together as a family, laughing and having fun and I think about how much I want her there also.

When we were in Colorado, everywhere we went I thought about how much we would have loved having her with us -- riding the lifts, in a backpack hiking up the mountain, putting her little toes in the chilly Gunnison River. And when we would go out to eat and be talking and laughing I missed her. During a school day when this kids are all together at the table for lunch I miss her. I think about how much she would have loved her brothers and sisters. And times when we go places as a family and I get in the car and look in the back seat to make sure everyone is there, I'll have the split-second thought, "Wait, someone's missing." When we go into a restaurant or someplace as a family I want to tell people, "We are not who you see. Our family is bigger than a family of six." I don't imagine that feeling will ever go away, and that's okay. I imagine that years from now, perhaps when the kids are grown and we are all together for holidays or other occasions, I will miss her and still be imagining what it would be like if we had been able to keep her.

Of all the pictures we took in Crested Butte, this one is my very favorite. We had gone to Brick Oven Pizza and enjoyed eating pizza, talking and laughing. I remember sitting in the booth watching my kids, thinking how much I love them and wishing so much that Anne Marie were there also.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

Football season is upon us. On Thursday night Jack Henry quarterbacked the Vipers (who, unfortunately, lost to the Colts).

Then last night Lincoln quarterbacked the Oklahoma City Patriots homeschool team, which rolled up a 72-27 victory. Lincoln scored two touchdowns and added a pair of two-point conversions. On the defensive side he had a couple of picks.



Today Lincoln, Jack Henry, and I went to Norman with my dad. The Sooners were 8-point favorites, which I feared might be a tad high. Jack Henry predicted a 28-point win, and indeed we won by 30. The nation's longest home winning streak (now at 32 games) is intact. Coach Stoops is now a ridiculous 68-2 at home and, as I never tire of repeating, Lincoln has been to all 70 of them.

But I Promise to Pay Closer Attention the Next 15 Years

I've been at Oklahoma's conservative think tank for 15 years now, and for several years have run the Oklahoma center-right coalition meeting. I thought I had a reasonably decent grasp of the situation. Then comes the startling news yesterday that "Jari Askins is an Oklahoma conservative." Bewildered (and more than a little embarrassed), I pounded my desk and bellowed at a hapless intern, "Why wasn't I informed of this?!"

'Like a Dog'

Is Mr. Obama a Labrador Deceiver, a BullShih Tzu, or an Open-Border Collie? Here is an entertaining video about our thin-skinned president.

'A Long-Term Waste of Money'

The Journal Record editorialized against State Question 744 today, calling the measure "a long-term waste of money" and saying "it’s clear that the proposed formula will not improve classroom performance."

Now where do they get off saying something crazy like that?

Patriots Win Opener

Congratulations to the Oklahoma City Patriots homeschool football team for defeating Oklahoma Christian Academy 44-20 on Friday. I'm pleased to report that Patriots quarterback Lincoln Dutcher completed a 67-yard touchdown pass and also scored on a two-point conversion (photo here).

[Photo credit: Drew Harmon, Edmond Sun]

Movie Opens October 15

Not That It's Just Free Babysitting or Anything

FOX 23 in Tulsa reports that one Tulsa mom 

is breathing a sigh of relief now that her son Brody, 4, has entered public school. "It definitely has cut our childcare costs in half," Moore said. "Your child has to go somewhere and when you drop them off in the morning, you know they're going to be safe."

Oh yeah, safety is all but guaranteed.

Especially When You Remember Who Is Paying Whose Salary

Janice Shaw Crouse writes today about the tendency of some colleges to demonstrate a "derogatory attitude toward parents."

These attacks against parenting are another attempt to intimidate parents into surrendering their influence to that of supposedly "superior" intellectuals and professional "educators" who know what's best for our children. ... There is no reason for parents to accede to the condescending and patronizing attitudes of those who believe that parents are superfluous in their children's lives once they reach college age.

Putting the 'Glory' in Old Glory

I received a surprising amount of pushback recently when I posted something that seemed (to me) self-evident: the American flag has no place in church.

Now that Glenn Beck has everyone all stirred up again, and Christians must once again "beware the idolatry of a Christless civil religion," let me ask this question: Does the U.S. flag merit a "position of superior prominence" to the Creator of the universe?