Do They Care…Continued

  

Earlier I wrote about a new study that shows promiscuity in young girls increases directly in proportion to the amount of adult themed sexually oriented TV that they watch, and I posed the question to those who put out this type of TV and star in the shows, “Do they care about the influence they are having?”  We know that promiscuity leads to sexually transmitted diseases and to unwanted pregnancy, and both of these lead to many issues in young girls, the most severe of which is suicide.

 

I had the opportunity to talk with Rabbi Daniel Lapin www.rabbidaniellapin.com about this issue.  He spends a great deal of time on the public stage debating and discussing these issues and points out how a faulty point of view leads to dire consequences in our society.  For example, he explained to me that there is massive statistical evidence that when sex education is taught in schools promiscuity goes up, and along with it sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy.  Of course, when you mention this in a debate format the defense is always, “They are going to have sex anyway, so we need to teach them to do it safely.”

 

Rabbi Lapin then went on to explain to me why the teaching of sex education in schools is not about what is best for our kids, but rather it is about indoctrinating them into a secular world view.  He poses this question: “If it is true that sex education will help prevent kids from getting sexually transmitted diseases and getting pregnant, then we should also teach gun safety in the schools.  After all, kids are going to find a gun anyway, and then a tragedy will happen.”

 

We have had some great comments on the Do they care? post.  I agree with Drew that much of what is on TV is a result of greed.  I did some research on liberal and conservative and the definitions of each and I have to disagree with Drew on his assessment of my use of the term, but in the end that is not really important.  What is important is: Do We Care?

 

Do we care enough to prevent unwanted consequences?  After all, if you believe in gun control because the unwanted consequence is that a child will find a gun and a horrible tragedy will take place, then you should absolutely want to stand up and fight the trash that is on TV because the scale of tragedy is a thousand times greater in terms of destroyed lives.  Saying “parents have the ability to put a parental lock on the TV is enough defense” makes the case for those who believe gun owners are responsible enough to secure their own guns.

The Impurity of Politics

 

I was a political science major in college.  I always thought I would go into politics.  Watching the election process reminds me that I just don’t have skin thick enough to withstand the personal assaults.

 

My goal for this year is to live according to these three words:  Pure, Simple, and Transparent.

 

Pure – if you are in politics, how do you remain pure?  And if you somehow figure out how to do this on the personal level, you will be attacked for it for sure!  And when you are attacked, there is nothing harder than remaining pure in your response.  It is tough to never stoop to someone else’s level.  Politics demands that you fight fire with fire.  What our country needs is someone to rise above this.

 

Simple — as in the straightforward, blunt truth.  It seems like politics is all about “spin.”  You can’t be simple and have spin.  Plus, you would never be able to promote two different things that contradicted each other.  Like, for example, lower taxes and increased government spending.

 

Transparent – what you see is what you get, and oh, by the way, I am an open book so dig as much as you want and ask me any question you want.  Here is a wild idea.  What if a politician always told the truth?  They would have nothing to fear because they would have nothing to hide.  Much easier to be transparent when you’re not hiding anything.  And if you make a mistake, admit it. 

 

Besides personal attacks, a few other things that drive me crazy:

 

The media – can’t they just focus on the issues and the facts without giving their opinions?

 

Underground character assassination campaigns — I use www.digg.com to check out the top stories of the day.  Basically, it’s a news story ranking service where individual “diggers” make comments on different stories that come out on the Internet.  Anybody can be a digger.  The more digs, the higher the ranking.  This great tool has been hijacked by special interest groups who will post a character assassination article filled with lies and then email their lists to go and digg it.  This results in the top stories of the day by ranking being controlled by the special interest group.  Digg needs to figure out how to fix this or they will no longer be relevant.

 

Consistency – the way you answer questions, the way you vote, the issues and policies you are in favor of, should show consistency from speech to speech, day to day, and year to year.  If you change your position on something, why not write out an explanation as to why, post it, and move on?