By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
September 11, 2000
During the last couple of weeks, I've been involved with groups of concerned Americans who have organized to save two institutions that I would never have dreamed would ever need to be saved a few years ago - the family and the Boy Scouts of America. Both groups in this first election year of the Twenty First Century are under full-scale attack from people who seem to have the full support of the White House and much of the world's most powerful media.
I have taken a special interest in both because the attacks come from those who claim to be for supporting "human rights," an issue that has occupied my energies for much of the last fifty years. Only, neither of the groups are actually interested in "human rights." Both are interested in destroying some of the most basic rights the U.S. Constitution was written to protect - freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to life itself.
I attended, and was a speaker at the Northern Arizona Congress of Families which was held at Yavapai College in Prescott Arizona which turned out to be a mini-reunion for some of us who attended the World Congress of Families at Geneva, Switzerland last November. Dave and Juanene Fish, who found out how threatened the family was worldwide by attending the Geneva Congress of Families were strongly motivated to share their knowledge with the people of Northern Arizona and re-assembled several of the most powerful speakers at Geneva.
Allan Carlson, historian and president of the Howard Center, one of the directors of the Geneva Congress, spoke at the beginning of the Arizona Congress and Richard G. Wilkins, the other director of the Geneva Congress spoke at the end of the all day meeting on Saturday.
Dr. Carlson noted, "It is at the level of real flesh and blood communities that progress can be made" in saving the family.
Is it a mite dramatic to claim that the family is actually in peril? If the goals of the anti-population group at the United Nations is able to continue its well-financed work, "In fifty years most people will not have no brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts or cousins," Calrson warned. In the United States, "The Divorce Capitol of the World", the rate of young people marrying has dropped by 50% just since 1960. There are five million co-habitating (not married) couples in America. The average co-habiting couple lasts three years and produce many of America's children today.
Governments of the world, including the Clinton Administration, have adopted plans to get all women in the work force, because, statistics show, when who work are far much less apt to have a second or third child than women who are full time mothers.
Carlson observed that, in UN documents, and even in much of the Clinton Administration language, the word "mothering" has become obsolete. At the 1997 White House Conference on Child Care, the word "mothering" was never mentioned. Instead, it talked about "child care." There is a world of difference between mothering and child care.
The emphasis in the key-note address, given by Hillary Clinton, was not on families and children but on the need to produce workers who will pay taxes to support the government. Hillary said, "We want American parents to succeed at the most important task they have, caring for the next generation, and to be good workers who contribute to the economy and the quality of life that we enjoy in our country." To do that, both she and the president noted, it was important to get mother out of the house and into the workforce and to get the kids into day care.
Al Gore has made this view a key part of his Presidential Election campaign which is why he opposes a tax cut. He wants to spend more than $100 billion on what he terms on his website as "Universal Pre-school" so that 100% of the mothers of pre-school children could be forced into the workforce.
And then what happens to the children? The tax burden is already so high that in most families one parent's salary is supporting the family and the other parent's salary is supporting the government by paying the family's taxes. Increasingly it is obvious that the Clinton-Gore stance on "universal child care" is being motivated "not by what is best for children" Allan Carlson noted, "but by what is best for the State." Getting mother out of the home increases the amount of money that goes to the state. Women who stay home and mother their children deprive the state of two sets of taxes - the taxes the mother would pay when she is in the workforce and the taxes the "care giver" would pay who is baby sitting the kids while mother is at work.
Ted Baehr, publisher of Movieguide, and a writer, director, stunned the audience by talking about "Who teaches our children" in the area in which they spend the most time. From ages birth to 17, the average American child spends 40,000 hours watching TV, or listening to the radio, or CDs. They spend 11,000 in School and a mere 2,000 with parents.
"The mass media teaches our children that the villain is Mother," Baehr said. He talked about the movie "South Park" in which Satan rescues the children from mother. "We are training kids to kill," Baehr observed. Sixty percent of the 17 youthful killers in recent school shootings had never used a gun before. However, their "training" on video games made their first effort to shoot a gun deadly accurate.
My talk centered around the broken family. Is it possible to undo the damage of divorce in which children are raised in one-parent homes? It is, but it sure isn't easy.
Dr. Kathleen Bahr, a member of the Marriage, Family and Human Development Department at BYU talked about "the kind of home where goodness can flourish" observing "we want to do more than just hold the family together. Working together as a family, she said, is far more important in instilling values and in communicating than playing together, which has been emphasized in recent years. The value of family work, which has been devalued for year by feminists, is "essential" Dr. Bahr observed.
Fr. Peter West, from Priests for Life,(www.priestsforlife.org) talked about the conversion to Catholicism of Dr. Bernard Nathanson who performed 70,000 abortions before his conversion. "We could never have gotten away with what we did if the Clergy had been united," Dr. Nathanson has said. The movement the feminists call "choice" is called "a culture of death" by Pope John Paul II. Thirty-nine million abortions since Roe vs Wade was decided is the "worst symptom" of the Culture of Death, Fr. West noted, made possible by years of "dehumanizing" terminology, which is always the first step in justifying the destruction of any group, whether they are Jews, gypsies and retarded people in Hitler's Germany, or unborn babies in modern-day America.
Dr. James J. Harper, who had just returned from a tour of England at the request of the government, is director of the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. He talked about the importance of the "intergenerational family" and the fears the British government expressed to him about mothers who never marry. "I came away (from England) with great alarm," Dr. Harper observed. "Marriage is no longer the mode to start a family." Yet, most co-habiting couples last three years and most will have a child." And, while 65% of high school students believe that cohabitating is the "best way to test marriage", cohabitating couples that marry are 46% more likely to get a divorce."
Yet, the happy young people Dr. Harper talks to are almost invariably married. "Marriage is the best crucible for men and women to meet their needs. I am an unabashed marriage saver." In 25 years of study following divorced couples, research indicates that it takes an average of seven years to get over a divorce. "Marriage is a benefit for both men and women," Dr. Harper briefly discussed the "marriage movement" (see www.marriagemovement.com) and noted that "The divorce revolution has failed. Marriage is a social institution."
The two final speakers, Dr. Richard Wilkins, a professor of Law at J. Reuben Clark Law School and managing director of the World Family Policy Center, and Bill Saunders, counsel for the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C.(http://www.frc.org) dealt with the legal aspects of family deterioration. Dr. Wilkins observed that the changing "legal norms" being pushed at the United Nations "can affect you here in Prescott, Arizona." Yet, "not even Kofi Annan could analyze the structure of the UN" which has become a world policy maker "whether we like it or not."
Many nations are finding out the hard way that, if they sign treaties, such as those "sound good" ones called "The Rights of the Child" or "Human Rights" conventions, that they have agreed to being regulated by unelected world bodies. "The IMF will not give money to a country that is not complying and developing nations cannot resist signing documents in order to get the money." Those documents are now "shaping domestic custom." For example, under Bill Clinton, the White House reinforces documents that have never even been discussed in the U.S. Congress.
He used as an example a series on CNN which "educates" children on their "rights," listed in the Rights of the Child convention which the US Senate has never approved. Ted Turner is using his networks to get "de facto" compliance with a UN document American's have never even discussed! For example, in Executive Order 13160 issued by Clinton on June 23, 2000 attempted to create new American law, which implements UN thinking on "sexual orientation." The executive order calls for "Nondiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, disability, religion, age, sexual orientation, and status as a parent in Federally conducted education and training programs.
Yet, the Interior Department promptly used that order, which was supposed to be for "Federally conducted education and training programs" to try to circumvent the rights of a private organization, the Boy Scouts of America, to use the National Parks. The instantaneous outcry from thousands of Boy Scout supporters forced a hasty retreat in this election year by the White House prompting Janet Reno to declare that the Scouts could still use the National Forests. (see http://www.saveourscouts.com)
"Parental rights are being denigrated by the United Nations," Dr. Wilkins observed. "The 'reproducive rights' for children as young as ten are being proclaimed. Protecting children FROM their parents has become a major theme at UN conferences. CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women," which has a White House office in support of its goals, sees motherhood as a stereotype holding women back. "Armenia was admonished to halt its portrayal of the 'noble role of motherhood. The ICC (International Criminal Court), which is very close to being adopted, will have "jurisdiction over physical or server mental distress," including religious forms that might be accused of creating "mental distress."
"We can disagree on some very important issues," Dr. Wilkins concluded. "But there is a threat to the family. There is a threat to our faiths."
Bill Saunders of the Family Research Council had an even sterner warning. "The International battle could be lost. International Law could be created." Eugenics laws, the notion controlling who can become parents in order to "improve the race" got a very bad name during Hitler's era, as he slaughtered Jews, Serbs, Gypsies, the old, mentally retarded people and others he believed "inferior." However, Saunders noted, the idea of Eugenics resurfaced in recent years under the name of "Family Planning"
"Population Control suggests coercion," Saunders noted. "It was renamed 'family planning.' Your aim is not to be hoodwinked. The UN saw the family as the biggest obstacle in population control and began to attack the bonds between husband and wife. Family planning vies a license to do horrible things to people.
"Some population groups are about to collapse. Aids has killed millions in Africa - yet the UN still pushes population control on those nations." Clinton wants $169 million MORE for population control this year, although no country in Europe has a birth rate at even replacement level. Russia and Germany are burying more people than are being born each year. And "The World Population is starting to go down."
The organizers of the Northern Arizona Congress in Support of Families 2000 believe their conference is just the first of many to alert the public. Those, like Dave and Juanene Fish, who attended the Geneva Congress on the Family are alarmed at the lateness of the hour. Who would have thought when the United Nations was organized in the 1940s, with some very family and peace friendly words, that it would deteriorate into an organization that threatens the family and world peace? According to Bill Cliniton, the next big expenditure needed by the United Nations is its own army, so it can wage the kind of war NATO waged in Yugoslavia.
Only, until the people, especially the people of America who finance much of the UN, become informed, there is nothing to stop the anti-family, anti-Boy Scout, anti-Constitution groups that seem to be in control not only of the United Nations, but of the United States.
If you want to hold an area Congress in support of Families, get the audio tapes or the video of the Northern Arizona Congress which was, in many ways, more directly useful to individuals than attending the Congress for Families convention in Geneva, Switzerland would have been. To buy the tapes ($35 a set) of all the talks and entertainment at the Arizona Congress and to get information on how to organize an area Family Congress, contact Dave and Juanane Fish at fishbowlinc@juno.com. Or call at: 520 445-2746. If you like, send a copy to me at mmostert@waveshift.com and I'll relay your interest to the speakers.
To comment: mmostert@waveshift.com
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