WDBJ-TV, the CBS affiliate in Roanoke, broadcast a story on our RCC/GAP at Liberty University.  It was very well done, except for their unwillingness to show what the display was all about: abortion.

But you gotta hand it to WDBJ.  They did something we were unable to do.  They got Liberty University to state their official policy toward abortion.  Unfortunately, Liberty is just like the pro-life church; they oppose abortion, but they also cover it up.  Out of sight and out of mind.  Liberty was quoted as saying this:

Liberty has always taken a strong pro-life position on the abortion issue, but it does not encourage the public display of the horrific images of the deaths of aborted babies in order to further the pro-life cause.

In other words, we can talk against abortion, but we won’t show people what it really is, even those who desperately need to know.  But can anybody provide even one example of a deadly social injustice that was ever eradicated by covering it up?

Compare this policy to that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who brought about dramatic changes in our society, even ending segregation in less than 10 years.  Was he wrong when he said this?:

We bring [injustice] out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.  Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Dr. King also said, “America will never reject racism until America sees racism.”

Was he wrong?  We’ve been asking that question for many years, and nobody … not one person … has ever stood up to defend the proposition that Dr. King was wrong.   We can name many historical examples that prove that his strategy of exposing injustice works.  People who criticize our our use of King’s stragegy to fight abortion can’t provide even one example to suggest hiding injustice works.

This all reminds me of that regular feature on Monday Night Football …  Liberty, you’re a university.  You’ve got a whole department of history.  C’mon man!

Liberty coed (facing camera) speaks with CBR Virginia Director Nicole Cooley.

We were blessed on our first day of GAP and RCC at Liberty University.  Read our letter to Liberty U here.

Many of our team has arrived safely, but we are pleased to say that reinforcements are on the way!

We are driving our fleet of Reproductive “Choice” Campaign (RCC) trucks all around the perimeter of the campus.  Also, we are displaying Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) signs and handing out pro-life photo-brochures at 3 of the most heavily trafficked entrances to the campus.

We thank God for a wonderful first day on campus.  We pray for many more to come!

If you agree that we must show Christians the truth about abortion, please click here.

Truck and GAP signs at Liberty University.

Pro Life Training Academy at Lynchburg, Va.

Here we are in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Thankfully, we are well west of Hurricane Irene.  We have students here from Liberty U, Central Virginia Community Collge, James Madison U, the U of Virginia, the U of Richmond.  Pro-life activits from Lynchburg and Roanoke have also joined us.

This is a critical place for us to be.  The pro-life Liberty University students are telling us that there are many pro-choice students on their campus.

We don’t charge students to attend this Academy.  We depend on you to cover our costs, which are about $75 per person (mostly speaker travel).  Please click here, and please be generous, so that we can do this again for more students in Virginia and across the country.

Our featured speaker is Jay Watts of the Life Training Institute (LTI).  As a former pro-choice atheist, Jay is uniquely prepared to train students how to deal with people like … well … his former self!

Hardin Family GAP Team

Did you know that White House is home to a family of pro-life missionaries like no other?  Ask yourself this question: Would you do this with 7 of your children?  Read on; it’s even more incredible than you think.

I’m talking about the Hardin Family of White House, Tennessee, just north of Nashville.  Yes, Mom and 7 children (3 teenagers and 4 younger children) are coming to Lynchburg, Virginia, for CBR’s outreach to Liberty University.  (See photo at right.)  They’ll drive 8 hours to get here, just so they can stand out in the hot sun holding GAP signs for members of the Liberty community.

Bright Eyes in the center of the photo is Karine, the newest member of the Hardin family. You may remember our story of her arrival from Armenia earlier this year.  This will be her first GAP!

This will be more Hardin’s than we’ve ever seen at one time! Because of the them and the rest of our traveling team, students at Liberty will see abortion in all its horror.  When Christians see the horror of abortion, they are more likely to obey God’s command not to kill their own children (Mark 10:19).  They are more motivated to protect and defend the defenseless (Proverbs 24:11-12).  They more fully understand their duty as Christian leaders to teach other believers to do the same (Matthew 28:20).

The Hardin’s are willing to come to bring truth in love to Liberty students.  (Others are coming from Florida, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina.)  They offer themselves freely.  All they ask is their expenses.  Could you help us cover their expenses?  Here’s what it will cost to bring the Hardins:

• Gas: $250 (500 miles in a van big enough for 8!)
• Lodging: $250
• Food: $480 (ever try to feed 8 on the road?)

Your tax deductible gift to CBR (link here) will transport the Hardins and the rest of our team to Liberty University next week.  This is one of the most important GAPs we’ve ever done.  Please be as generous as you can, maybe even more so.  Thank you for saving babies and moms.

The USGS has determined that the epicenter of yesterday’s earthquake was in a cemetery just outside of Washington, DC.  The cause appears to be all of our founding fathers rolling over in their graves.

Interesting project by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).  They actually endorse CBR’s strategy of using horrifying photographs to expose and eradicate injustice.

For All the World to See is organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at UMBC.  In introducing the project, Project Director Maurice Berger describes activists who are  “exceptionally skillful image-makers, adept at capitalizing on the authority of pictures to edify, educate, and persuade.”

Pay particular attention to Section 3, Let the World See What I Have Seen: Evidence and Persuasion.  Check out this quote:

Positive images could not by themselves resolve the problem of segregation or racism. While some white Americans supported the movement, many knew little about it, were apolitical, or rejected its goals.  As the civil rights movement evolved, its leaders faced a daunting challenge:  How best to spur black activism and inspire white people to support the cause of racial equality?  Although there was no single answer, it was clear to many that visual images could be decisive in convincing the nation of the severity of the problem of racism and the extent to which it threatened American democracy.

In this regard, photographs and motion pictures were employed to report, document, or offer proof: imagery helped underscore the reality of racism in America, and bring to light little-known events. Leaders of the movement understood the power of visual culture, far more than words alone, to influence public opinion by exposing the ugly, violent, or deadly side of racism and segregation.

Sound familiar?

Hear the anguish of Mamie Till Bradley as she describes her decision to publicize the photos of her son’s mutilated body:

I couldn’t bear the thought of people being horrified by the sight of my son. But on the other hand, I felt the alternative was even worse. After all, we had averted our eyes for far too long, turning away from the ugly reality facing us as a nation. Let the world see what I’ve seen.  (Mamie Till Bradley, mother of Emmett Till)

Clearly, civil rights leaders understood the power of pictures.  So do the folks at UMBC.  Perhaps that explains why pro-life students at UMBC were forced to sue the University to protect their own First Amendment rights to display pictures of abortion.  Stories here and here.

OK, UMBC doesn’t endorse CBR; but they certainly endorse our strategy in their presentation.  If pro-aborts understand the power of pictures to reform society, why are some pro-lifers still reluctant to use them?

A common logical fallacy they teach in pro-abortion debating school is the ad populum technique.  (That means appeal to popularity, for all you people in Rio Linda.)  It is often combined with the ad hominem attack, like this:

1. Most people disagree with you. (ad populum)
2. Therefore, you are an extremist. (ad hominem)
3. Therefore, you must be wrong.

Rejoice when they try that.  Without exeption, the pro-abortion debater will be so extreme in his/her views as to be an embarrassment to the typical pro-abortion citizen.  A recent Gallup poll found several points on which pro-choice people actually agree with us:

• Third trimester abortions should be illegal.  (79% of pro-choicers agree)
• Informed consent should be required.  (86% of pro-choicers agree)
• Partial-birth abortions should be banned.  (63% of pro-choicers agree)
• 24-hour waiting period should be required.  (60% of pro-choicers agree)
• Perental consent should be required for minors.  (60% of pro-choicers agree)
• Second trimester abortions should be illegal.  (52% of pro-choicers agree)

Compare these results to the typical pro-abortion activist who agrees with none of these statements.

Gallup concludes:

Abortion politics have been quite contentious in the United States; however, self-described “pro-life” and “pro-choice” Americans broadly agree on more than half of 16 major abortion policy matters Gallup tested in June and July.  These policies generally have to do with protections for women’s vital health, preventing late-term abortions, and ensuring that abortion patients and parents are fully informed before an abortion.

FAB will accept these results as largely accurate, because they are within the range of other polling data we have seen.  However, a word of caution is in order.

Always be wary of abortion statistics, whether they be trumpeted by pro-lifers or by pro-aborts.  Unlike many people on both sides of the issue, FAB tries to avoid the two most common errors we see:  (1) dismissing the results we don’t like and (2) taking the results we like as the final word.  It’s almost comical to watch both sides hold up the same poll and claim final victory.

We approach statistics with a certain amount of skepticism.  In that spirit, we found some major curiosities in the results of this poll:

1. Only 97% of pro-choicers agreed that abortion should be legal when a woman’s life is in danger.  What is the other 3% thinking?  How can they claim to be pro-choice?
2. Only 91% of pro-choicers agree that abortion should be legal when the pregnancy is caused by rape or incest.  What are the other 9% thinking?
3. On the flip-side, 35% of “pro-lifers” want abortion to be legal in the first trimester.  How could such people claim to be pro-life?  Could it be that 35% of pro-life people simply don’t pay a bit of attention to what they are doing when answering a poll?
4. Gallup says 9% of “pro-lifers” want abortion to be legal when when the woman/family can’t afford a child.  Again, how could such people claim to be pro-life?
5. Only 90% of “pro-lifers” want abortion to be illegal in the 2nd trimester and only 94% want it to be illegal in the third trimester.
6. Bottom line:  Somewhere between 6% and 35% of pro-life respondents aren’t paying attention.  Same is true for between 3% and 9% of pro-choice respondents.

We’ve all seen the rioting in the UK, Greece, Italy, and France.  We have to wonder if it can happen here.  If the Left has successfully created in our youth an entitlement culture and a predisposition for mob-like behavior, then the answer is “probably so.”

To really understand the mob mentality, read Ann Coulter’s book, Deomonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America.  You don’t have to be a Coulter fan to learn a lot from this book.  She begins with a detailed analysis of the French Revolution, drawing heavily on Gustave Le Bon’s 1896 book, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.

Le Bon — a French physician, scientist, and social psychologist — was the first to identify the phenomenon of mass psychology.  His ground breaking book The Crowd paints a disturbing picture of the behavior of mobs.  Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini used his book to learn how to incite a mob.  Our liberals could have been Le Bon’s study subjects.

She goes on to identify the mob-like behaviors of the modern liberal/progressive:

[L]iberals thrive on jargon as a substitute for thought.  According to Le Bon, the more dramatic and devoid of logic a chant is, the better it works to rile up a mob:  “Given to exaggeration in its feelings, a crowd is only impressed by excessive sentiments. … To exaggerate … and never to attempt to prove anything by reasoning are methods of argument well known …”

Liberals love slogans because “laws of logic have no action on crowds.”  Mobs, Le Bon says, “are not to be influenced by reasoning, and can only comprehend rough-and-ready association of ideas.”  He could be referring to the New York Times and other journals of elite opinion when he describes periodicals that “manufacture opinions for their readers and supply them with ready-made phrases which dispense them of the trouble of reasoning.”

To see what happens when a people abandon logic and reasoning, take a look at the riots going on in the UK.  Listen to the words of these young mobsters who blame the riots on “conservatives” and “rich people”:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0pblS1DuBU

There’s no logic to it.  But there is a lesson for the rest of us.  It really doesn’t matter how much wealth you confiscate from the producers and give to the looters and moochers, it’s never enough.

You can hear these young people blaming the producers — the very people who pay for their educations, health care benefits, and Lord knows what else — for the rioting.  It makes no sense.  It’s just like hearing liberals/progressives blaming taxpayers for the debt crisis here.  It doesn’t matter how much the taxpayers provide, it’s never enough.  The takers want more and more and more.  If they don’t get it, watch out!

Although several factors have been identified as contributing to the UK rioting, the sense of entitlement to OPS (other people’s stuff) is a major one.  From the Wall Street Journal:

The rioters in the news last week had a thwarted sense of entitlement that has been assiduously cultivated by an alliance of intellectuals, governments and bureaucrats. “We’re fed up with being broke,” one rioter was reported as having said, as if having enough money to satisfy one’s desires were a human right rather than something to be earned.

“There are people here with nothing,” this rioter continued: nothing, that is, except an education that has cost $80,000, a roof over their head, clothes on their back and shoes on their feet, food in their stomachs, a cellphone, a flat-screen TV, a refrigerator, an electric stove, heating and lighting, hot and cold running water, a guaranteed income, free medical care, and all of the same for any of the children that they might care to propagate.

According to Reuters:

“It’s been building up for years.  All it needed was a spark,” said E. Nan, a young man in a baseball cap surrounded by other youths in Hackney in east London.  “We ain’t got no jobs, no money … We heard that other people were getting things for free, so why not us?”

Consider this essay by Max Hastings entitled “Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters.”  In this piece, he asks who is to blame for the rioting, and then he answers:

The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young underclass.

The social engineering industry unites to claim that the conventional template of family life is no longer valid.

***

This has ultimately been sanctioned by Parliament, which refuses to accept, for instance, that children are more likely to prosper with two parents than with one, and that the dependency culture is a tragedy for those who receive something for nothing.

He concludes:

So there we have it: a large, amoral, brutalised sub-culture of young British people who lack education because they have no will to learn, and skills which might make them employable.  They are too idle to accept work waitressing or doing domestic labour, which is why almost all such jobs are filled by immigrants.

They have no code of values to dissuade them from behaving anti-socially or, indeed, criminally, and small chance of being punished if they do so.

They have no sense of responsibility for themselves, far less towards others, and look to no future beyond the next meal, sexual encounter or TV football game.

They are an absolute deadweight upon society, because they contribute nothing yet cost the taxpayer billions.  Liberal opinion holds they are victims, because society has failed to provide them with opportunities to develop their potential.

Most of us would say this is nonsense.  Rather, they are victims of a perverted social ethos, which elevates personal freedom to an absolute, and denies the underclass the discipline — tough love — which alone might enable some of its members to escape from the swamp of dependency in which they live.

Only education — together with politicians, judges, policemen and teachers with the courage to force feral humans to obey rules the rest of us have accepted all our lives — can provide a way forward and a way out for these people.

There it is, the liberal mob in action.  And the entitlement mentality that infects the UK is threatening to engulf our own society.  Unless we work and pray and work to stop it.

I’m indebted to my good friend Chris Lefebvre, along with the worldwide interwebs, for giving me some things to think about.

• I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.
• Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
• The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on my list.
• Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
• If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
• We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
• War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
• Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
• Evening news is where they begin with “Good Evening,” and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.
• To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
• A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.
• I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.
• Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says, “In case of emergency, notify:” I put “DOCTOR.”
• I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
• Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
• A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.
• You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
• Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
• I used to be indecisive. Now, I’m not so sure.
• You’re never too old to learn something stupid.
• To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
• Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
• Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
• Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
• A diplomat is someone who tells you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.
• Hospitality is making your guests feel at home even when you wish they were.
• I always take life with a grain of salt. Plus a slice of lemon, and a shot of tequila.
• When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.

Marco Rubio, the next Vice-President of the United States, is a rising star in American politics because he can see the important issues of the day with clarity and talk about them with conviction.  His clarity of thought and power of oratory are nothing like we’ve seen since Ronald Reagan.

On the floor of the US Senate, he laid out the terms of the debate that will dominate the years ahead.  It’s a debate between two very different visions for America’s future:

1. The job of government is to deliver economic “justice”, where the government makes sure that everyone does well.
2. The job of government is to protect economic opportunity, where the government doesn’t guarantee the outcome, but preserves your opportunity to fulfill your dreams and hopes.

He makes one mistake in his analysis.  He says that neither vision is more moral than the other.  He is mistaken about this.  Where is the morality in the government deciding who gets what?  More to the point, where is the morality in professional politicians and bureacrats deciding who gets what?  Here’s what politicians and bureaucrats do: they take money away from the people who won’t vote for them and give it to the people who will.  Where is the morality in organized thievery?

Other than that, Senator Rubio is right on target:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-nj2H7ALzg

.

Did you hear what our Senator Corker said on TV this morning.  It was one of the most astonishing things I had ever heard any legislator say.

He was asked, “So, you’ll vote yes for it, right?”  His stunning response:

I would like to at least read the 70 pages [before I decide how to vote].

We are not making this up.  See for yourself … click here.  We thought you were supposed to pass a bill before you can find out what’s in it!