Southern History, American Freedom, Christian Liberty
In a followup story to the news the other day about Melissa Busekros, the German authorities have offered the Busekros’s a way to resolve the situation. They simply need to agree to give up custody of their other five children. Wow! What a great deal. Who wouldn’t agree to that?! Well, when this is all said and done I would expect that the Busekros’s will probably be packing their bags and leaving for some other country. I know I would.
My wife and I ran across this story last night while checking out a couple of homeschool blogs. It tells the story of a 15 year old girl who was recently seized from her family and placed in foster care because she was being homeschooled by her parents. The article explains:
“Melissa Busekros was home schooled by her parents after she began having trouble with two of her subjects in school. Her four younger siblings are in the German school system. Authorities barged into the Busekros house Feb. 1, with 15 members of the police force at hand and seized the girl. She was then placed in a psychiatric ward for assessment after it was decided she had a “phobia” against public school.”
…
“The girl’s parents have not been told where she is being held.”
So let me get this straight. The girl’s parents take one of their 5 children out of public school because she is struggling in a couple of subjects (evidently they thought that she needed more one-on-one attention in those subjects), and that is deserving of an all out Elian Gonzalez style home raid? You’ve got to be joking. It continues:
“Melissa’s parents began tutoring her in math and Latin at home when she began having trouble keeping up with the subjects in school, according to the WND report. When school officials discovered her parents’ involvement, the girl was expelled. The family then began home schooling her, and the school took the family to court.”
Holy crap. Now we find out that they didn’t even take their kid out of public school at all. The crime they committed was being “involved” and giving her tutoring. Seriously, I had no idea that Germany had slunk back into it’s socialist depths to this degree. And lest you think I’m about to bring up Hitler, don’t bother. The article does it for me:
“Home schooling was outlawed in Germany under Adolf Hitler–the original edict banning at-home instruction has been resurrected over the past decade, with accelerating persecution of families attempting to keep their children out of the mainstream curriculum.”
“In January 2005, county education director Heinz Kohler told a group of Christian parents desiring to home school, “you and your children are not living in isolation on some island but rather in an environment posing intra- and extracurricular situations where you’ll have to accept that your world view will be curtailed.””
“Home schooling could not be allowed, Kohler stated, because, “children should not be encapsulated or kept apart from the outside world. In these cases, the parents’ rights to personally educate their children would prevent the children from growing up to be responsible individuals within society…””
And that’s the kicker. The number 1, overwhelmingly main reason you hear people objecting to homeschooling, even in the US is the socialization argument. I guess being shuffled from class to class for 8 hours each day in an environment where if you talk you get sent to the principle for discipline is the only way to socialize. That’s so obviously incorrect that it hurts. My daughter is the most social creature on the planet. She’s involved in cheerleading, ballet and church activities on Wednesday and Sunday each week. She has more friends than I do! And with each one of those friends comes Birthday Parties, playdates, etc. If anything, we probably need to scale back a little on the socializing front for our own sanity sometimes. The socialization argument is bogus.
So here’s the common sense advice I have for Germany on this issue:
By the way, where is Human Rights Watch in all this? Isn’t educating your own children a pretty basic inalienable human right. Oh wait. I forgot. They only criticize the US.
If you don’t know who Phillip Johnson is then you should find out soon and read his work. He has been the prime mover behind the ID movement for many years. CREV put up a link to his latest article and it’s a good one. A must read. You can find it here.
The finalized Auburn football schedule just came out and I think it’s a good one. There are some quality non-conference games on the dock for next year which should give AU a boost in the SOS department. I like the fact that we are opening the seasons lately with mid-teir BCS conference opponents. We opened last year with Washington State. Kansas State is not as good as it used to be but the name recognition means a lot. South Florida is also a good opponent from a BCS conference. They aren’t terribly good but their penchant for knocking off either Louisville or West Virginia on an annual basis makes playing them a good bet for extra BCS formula points. New Mexico State is a good warmup game before the big one at Florida. I also like how most of the tough road games are spaced out with some softer sandwich games in between. It’s a good schedule. Here’s the schedule:
I’ve mentioned Antony Flew here many times in past blog posts. Lee Strobel recently interviewed him and posted it on his website here. Flew is an excellent modern-day example of the power of the Intelligent Design argument. Men of his renown do not just lay down their beliefs after a lifetime career of atheism unless the arguments against them are powerful. Many atheists dismiss the Flew “conversion” by saying that he did not embrace Christianity so it doesn’t count. That’s like saying that Martin Luther’s revolution was no big deal because he continued to read St. Francis. Give me a break. When a hardened atheist admits that some things just can’t be explained apart from the supernatural, that is a HUGE deal. Don’t kid yourself.
As thinking Christians we need to put events like the Antony Flew “conversion” in proper context though. His is an example of nothing more than the fact that theistic arguments have merit in the marketplace of ideas. The fact that thinking, rational, reasonable and scientific people will embrace theism because of naturalism’s defeciencies and ID’s strengths. Let’s leave him at that for now. There are other examples of more religious ideas to draw from. Flew is simply a good starting point for those who would rather ridicule Christianity as opium for the ignorant, than discuss it seriously.
I’ve been doing a lot of LAMP work on Linux lately and I thought I might share a simple set of steps to get you up and running with the latest and greatest LAMP stack on your Linux box. My focus with this is going to be stability, performance and flexibility; not bells, whistles and bleeding edge. Most of us don’t need that anyway in a small business situation. These steps will give you a web server that you can do almost anything with while letting you feel comfortable that it isn’t going to segfault on you in the middle of the night because of something weird that you compiled in. Here we go.
There are 7 components to this setup. They are Apache 1.3.x, MySql, PHP4, mod_perl, MM, OpenSSL and mod_ssl. The first thing to do is to create a directory called “lamp” in whatever directory you use for compiling your software. I’ll assume “/usr/src” for the rest of the post. Now go and download all of the components I listed. As of this writing the most stable/secure of these are Apache 1.3.37, MySql 4.1.22, PHP 4.4.4, mod_perl 1.29, mm 1.4.2, OpenSSL 0.9.8d and mod_ssl 2.8.28. After you download all of those and get your MySql server binaries installed do the following.
Configure Apache:
$> cd /usr/src/lamp $> tar -zxvf apache_1.3.37.tar.gz $> cd apache_1.3.37 $> ./configure $> cd ..
Build and install OpenSSL:
$> tar -zxvf openssl-0.9.8d.tar.gz $> cd openssl-0.9.8d $> ./config no-threads -fPIC $> make && su -c ’make install’ $> cd ..
Build and install MM:
$> tar -zxvf mm-1.4.2.tar.gz $> cd mm-1.4.2 $> ./configure --disable-shared $> make && su -c ’make install’ $> cd ..
Configure mod_ssl:
$> tar -zxvf mod_ssl-2.8.28-1.3.37.tar.gz $> cd mod_ssl-2.8.28-1.3.37 $> ./configure --with-apache=../apache_1.3.37 $> cd ..
Build and install PHP:
$> tar -zxvf php-4.4.4.tar.gz $> cd php-4.4.4 $> ./configure --with-apache=../apache_1.3.37 > --with-openssl > --with-ldap > --with-mm > --enable-track-vars $> make && su -c ’make install’ $> cp php.ini-dist /usr/local/lib/php.ini $> cd ..
Build and install mod_perl:
$> tar -zxvf mod_perl-1.29.tar.gz $> cd mod_perl-1.29 $> perl Makefile.PL APACHE_SRC=../apache_1.3.37/src > PREP_HTTPD=1 > USE_APACI=1 > EVERYTHING=1 $> make && su -c ’make install’ $> cd ..
Build Apache:
$> cd apache_1.3.37 $> pico -w config.status ##: Add the following to the config.status file ##:---------------------------------------- CC="gcc" CFLAGS=" -D_REENTRANT -DDEBUGGING -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -I/usr/local/include -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -I/usr/include/gdbm" EAPI_MM="../mm-1.4.2" SSL_BASE="../openssl-0.9.8d" ./configure "--with-layout=Apache" "--prefix=/usr/local/apache-1.3.37" "--enable-module=rewrite" "--enable-module=ssl" "--enable-module=so" "--enable-rule=SSL_SDBM" "--activate-module=src/modules/perl/libperl.a" "--activate-module=src/modules/php4/libphp4.a" "--disable-rule=EXPAT" "$@" ##:---------------------------------------- $> ./config.status $> make && su -c ’make install’ $> cd..
Make a symbolic link for Apache:
$> ln -s /usr/local/apache-1.3.37 /usr/local/apache
If all went as it was supposed to then you now have a fully installed Apache server in “/usr/local/apache” that has perl, php and ssl compiled in and ready to use. Any time a new version of Apache comes out you can just recompile, install and adjust the symbolic link to point to whatever the new version’s folder is. I gleaned this information from multiple sources of documentation on the internet and it hasn’t failed to make a rock-solid lamp setup yet. Much of the feel and order of this install came from this article on Slacksite.com.
I’ve commented on some posts from Evan Erwin’s blog before, and I subscribe to his RSS feed, but I have to admit that my respect for his opinion dropped with one of his latest posts. Here is how he gets started:
It’s weird to me yet strangely familiar. I see, first hand, the overzealousness of the religious among us. The sort of blank stares, the blind beliefs, the insistence on the imaginary guy they’ve been told their entire lives really, really cares and is listening to them.
And I can’t help but shake my head in pity.
–Evan Erwin, The Search for a Good Story
Look, I can deal with being made fun of and ridiculed for believing that Christianity is true. Every Christian in this country must develop thick skin or else you won’t be able to watch TV for five minutes without getting angry. But, comments like the one above make the writer instantly lose credibility in my eyes. It doesn’t make me mad or upset, just disinterested. I’m just not interested in what people have to say when they start off by declaring that they have a higher level of knowledge than 85-90% of the global population over the course of human history. Self-proclaimed atheists have an elevated opinion of their own intellect that is unrivaled in any other circle.
The line of reasoning that says that people believe in supernatural things because they are too stupid, gullible, scared or weak-minded to face the facts, is a dead-end. Just look at a cross-section of the Christian population and I have no doubt that you will indeed find lots of people that fall into those categories. But, you will also find some of the greatest thinkers in human history. And they don’t fall into any of those categories at all. And atheists as a group reflect the same type of cross-section. You will find stupid people standing right alongside brilliant ones in the atheist camp too. So the reality of the matter is that whatever category you fall into really doesn’t matter one whit to whether or not what you believe is true.
A person’s IQ score tells you nothing about the truth of his beliefs. Any given person is going to have many true beliefs and many false ones. They might not be able to tell which ones are which, but that doesn’t mean the true ones are any less true. No, an idea or belief stands on it’s own and should be judged according to it’s own merits and proofs. The intelligence of it’s adherents has about as much bearing on it’s validity as the way they smell does. Atheists need to stop acting like they are the smartest people in the world and learn some humility. You lose respect when you tell people that you pity Christians for being weak-minded, because you just included many of the greatest minds the world has ever known in the group that you believe is beneath you. I really don’t think Antony Flew, GK Chesterton, John Clerk Maxwell, Blaise Pascal or Thomas Aquinas need the pity of modern day atheists.
