Donald Hank
Nationalizing children
By Donald Hank
The text that follows the introductory e-mail from our German homeschooling friend, Heiko Krautter, was written in a German context. But this article is just as relevant to today's America. The hotly debated nationalization of children is one step away in that country, two steps away in America. Intelligent Americans know it is Hillary's final solution, but few suspect the GOP is her facilitator.
This article shows the utter lack of any meaningful difference between the parties on the right and left in Germany. The "conservative" party, the CDU, is strikingly similar to our GOP. George W. Bush's no Child left behind act takes America a major step closer to the goal of nationalizing our children. And the excuses given are the same: American parents aren't educating their children, American women aren't home to care for their children.
As Stefan Dietrich points out, the downward spiral in education is government-induced, which parallels the situation here. The self-perpetuating cycle created by government is the following:
High taxes increase poverty > poverty (and state-supported feminist ideology) leads to two working parents > both parents on the job leads to child neglect > child neglect leads to "problem children" > problem children create a need for public child care > public care means less parenting > less parenting leads to problem children.
Americans desperately need to be educated prior to these coming elections. They need to learn that neo-conservatism is socialism in drag and they need to understand that all of the candidates promoted by Fox News, talk radio and the GOP are cookie cutter copies of each other. Our next candidate must break out of this mold. There are 3 candidates who break with the dangerous pattern we have become accustomed to: Alan Keyes (who has pulled ahead of Ron Paul in a recent poll), Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul. These are men of character who will be much less inclined than the run-of-mill GOP brand names to follow leftist tendencies, espouse supranational policies or turn your kids over to the state. We do not endorse any particular candidate.
Our translation follows.
Dear friends,
We have not written you for quite a while. However, if there should be any news about homeschooling in Saxony, we'll let you know immediately. We are happy and thankful for a bit of a respite.
Below you will find a news item that is chilling. If you already are aware of it, you have certainly thought of it in prayer. May the Lord watch over families.
In the news we hear our minister of family affairs saying that the Youth Office and Health Office will control families, that preventive checkups with the controversial inoculations are obligatory, and that [government sponsored] day care should be available for every child once and for all. That way women can have their equal right to work.
You see, this is also why homeschooling is banned in Germany. Families must be destroyed, all godly models must disappear. Are these (families, that is) perhaps the mysterious parallel societies we keep hearing about?
It probably won't be long before children completely lose the right to their own parents. At any rate, this is not God's will, and parents should certainly resist it. Children are a gift of God, God, who created life and gave breath to every human child, but gave parents the task of bringing up children in the Lord. Where do we find a mandate from God to send children to such anti-Christian institutions?
I don't want to wax rhapsodic, but aren't our children sacred? Aren't they like pearls? Do we not read "give not what is holy to the dogs; cast not your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot and turn and rend you"? Matt. 7:6.
Whether our children are "sacred" depends on our position before God, but at any rate, we read in I Corinthians 7:14: "... otherwise, your children would be unclean, but now they are holy."
Best wishes,
Heiko Krautter
Children's Rights in the Constitution
Downward Spiral
By Stephan Dietrich
The SPD [German Socialist Party] isn't satisfied. Party boss Beck wants the Constitution to read: "every child has a right to positive development and to the achievable degree of health." At first glance, anyone would be glad to sign this. However, in article 6, this immediately conflicts with paragraph 2: "the care and upbringing of children is the natural right of parents and their primary duty." In other words, children's rights are secondary to parental rights.
The actual goal is something else
However, parental rights are (still) the strongest constitutional barrier to the nationalization of preschool education. The actual goal of this initiative to change the constitution is therefore to replace the one with the other — even if Beck hasn't said that yet.
The ground has long been prepared for this, and that with help from the CDU [Christian Democratic Union — supposedly, the conservative party]. Sometimes compassionately, sometimes reproachfully, politicians and the media deplore the increasing overburdening of parents, lack of education capacity and lack of early intervention for children.
There surely are poor family conditions, but most parents are not overburdened by their children but rather by the state. Throughout all economic cycles, the percentage of children whose support must be ensured by subsidies has grown steadily — to 25% according to the latest surveys. A Darmstadt family judge by the name of Borchert laments that a professional salary of ?30,000 is no longer enough to feed a family with two children; but that families without children are far above the social minimum on the same salary.
Lost in the shuffle
For decades, there has been a downward spiral in family policy. The risk of poverty increases with the number of children; the pressure to have two incomes increases with poverty; the double burden increases the risk of child neglect, and the desire for public care increases with the number of "problem children." This is how politics created the problems it purports to solve.
Ingrid Sehrbrock the deputy chairperson of the Christian Democrat Employees Association, just repeated it: "in fact, the goal must be to make day care, kindergartens and all-day schools mandatory. But we can't get there in one step." Margot Honecker [socialist] would feel right at home in this atmosphere. [LF comment: Notice how the "conservative" party in Germany is just an extension of the Left. Sound familiar?]
We had the chance to break out of this spiral. In the 2005 election campaign, the Union parties came out with the promise to raise the tax exemption to ?8,000 per child. The bulk of today's entitlement recipients would have at least become independent of state subsidies. This idea was lost in the shuffle at the coalition bargaining table.
A lot of losers here
The CDU took up the platform of combining jobs and families and celebrated this as a bold "departure from an antiquated family pattern." ?4 billion flowed twice into the development of day care openings and the new parent subsidies to promote working mothers. The earmarking of the parent money primarily for those with higher salaries was intentional. But it was justified by Mrs. Von der Leyen, who stated "all families will be better off in the future."
Less than a year later, the results failed to confirm this. The Munster administration scientist Stefan Fuchs calculated from available data that about 60% of parents are worse off with the parent money than with the now abolished child subsidy (?300 a month for two years). The biggest losers are low-income families and families with numerous children, and also single parents and university students.
The threat of child nationalization looms
Meanwhile, the debate over the social justice of minimum salaries and managerial salaries has glossed over the fact that the most valuable contribution made to this society, that is, the rearing of children, is always lower paid. But why reward a home contribution that nobody wants anymore?
Children's rights in the Constitution would be the next major step in nationalizing children. It would no longer be "primarily the parents" but instead "the state community" that would assert these rights. There is no talk of children's right to their parents. The consequences of such a remedy in family policy would be worse than the causes that served as the pretext for it.
© Donald Hank
The text that follows the introductory e-mail from our German homeschooling friend, Heiko Krautter, was written in a German context. But this article is just as relevant to today's America. The hotly debated nationalization of children is one step away in that country, two steps away in America. Intelligent Americans know it is Hillary's final solution, but few suspect the GOP is her facilitator.
This article shows the utter lack of any meaningful difference between the parties on the right and left in Germany. The "conservative" party, the CDU, is strikingly similar to our GOP. George W. Bush's no Child left behind act takes America a major step closer to the goal of nationalizing our children. And the excuses given are the same: American parents aren't educating their children, American women aren't home to care for their children.
As Stefan Dietrich points out, the downward spiral in education is government-induced, which parallels the situation here. The self-perpetuating cycle created by government is the following:
High taxes increase poverty > poverty (and state-supported feminist ideology) leads to two working parents > both parents on the job leads to child neglect > child neglect leads to "problem children" > problem children create a need for public child care > public care means less parenting > less parenting leads to problem children.
Americans desperately need to be educated prior to these coming elections. They need to learn that neo-conservatism is socialism in drag and they need to understand that all of the candidates promoted by Fox News, talk radio and the GOP are cookie cutter copies of each other. Our next candidate must break out of this mold. There are 3 candidates who break with the dangerous pattern we have become accustomed to: Alan Keyes (who has pulled ahead of Ron Paul in a recent poll), Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul. These are men of character who will be much less inclined than the run-of-mill GOP brand names to follow leftist tendencies, espouse supranational policies or turn your kids over to the state. We do not endorse any particular candidate.
Our translation follows.
Dear friends,
We have not written you for quite a while. However, if there should be any news about homeschooling in Saxony, we'll let you know immediately. We are happy and thankful for a bit of a respite.
Below you will find a news item that is chilling. If you already are aware of it, you have certainly thought of it in prayer. May the Lord watch over families.
In the news we hear our minister of family affairs saying that the Youth Office and Health Office will control families, that preventive checkups with the controversial inoculations are obligatory, and that [government sponsored] day care should be available for every child once and for all. That way women can have their equal right to work.
You see, this is also why homeschooling is banned in Germany. Families must be destroyed, all godly models must disappear. Are these (families, that is) perhaps the mysterious parallel societies we keep hearing about?
It probably won't be long before children completely lose the right to their own parents. At any rate, this is not God's will, and parents should certainly resist it. Children are a gift of God, God, who created life and gave breath to every human child, but gave parents the task of bringing up children in the Lord. Where do we find a mandate from God to send children to such anti-Christian institutions?
I don't want to wax rhapsodic, but aren't our children sacred? Aren't they like pearls? Do we not read "give not what is holy to the dogs; cast not your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot and turn and rend you"? Matt. 7:6.
Whether our children are "sacred" depends on our position before God, but at any rate, we read in I Corinthians 7:14: "... otherwise, your children would be unclean, but now they are holy."
Best wishes,
Heiko Krautter
Children's Rights in the Constitution
Downward Spiral
By Stephan Dietrich
The SPD [German Socialist Party] isn't satisfied. Party boss Beck wants the Constitution to read: "every child has a right to positive development and to the achievable degree of health." At first glance, anyone would be glad to sign this. However, in article 6, this immediately conflicts with paragraph 2: "the care and upbringing of children is the natural right of parents and their primary duty." In other words, children's rights are secondary to parental rights.
The actual goal is something else
However, parental rights are (still) the strongest constitutional barrier to the nationalization of preschool education. The actual goal of this initiative to change the constitution is therefore to replace the one with the other — even if Beck hasn't said that yet.
The ground has long been prepared for this, and that with help from the CDU [Christian Democratic Union — supposedly, the conservative party]. Sometimes compassionately, sometimes reproachfully, politicians and the media deplore the increasing overburdening of parents, lack of education capacity and lack of early intervention for children.
There surely are poor family conditions, but most parents are not overburdened by their children but rather by the state. Throughout all economic cycles, the percentage of children whose support must be ensured by subsidies has grown steadily — to 25% according to the latest surveys. A Darmstadt family judge by the name of Borchert laments that a professional salary of ?30,000 is no longer enough to feed a family with two children; but that families without children are far above the social minimum on the same salary.
Lost in the shuffle
For decades, there has been a downward spiral in family policy. The risk of poverty increases with the number of children; the pressure to have two incomes increases with poverty; the double burden increases the risk of child neglect, and the desire for public care increases with the number of "problem children." This is how politics created the problems it purports to solve.
Ingrid Sehrbrock the deputy chairperson of the Christian Democrat Employees Association, just repeated it: "in fact, the goal must be to make day care, kindergartens and all-day schools mandatory. But we can't get there in one step." Margot Honecker [socialist] would feel right at home in this atmosphere. [LF comment: Notice how the "conservative" party in Germany is just an extension of the Left. Sound familiar?]
We had the chance to break out of this spiral. In the 2005 election campaign, the Union parties came out with the promise to raise the tax exemption to ?8,000 per child. The bulk of today's entitlement recipients would have at least become independent of state subsidies. This idea was lost in the shuffle at the coalition bargaining table.
A lot of losers here
The CDU took up the platform of combining jobs and families and celebrated this as a bold "departure from an antiquated family pattern." ?4 billion flowed twice into the development of day care openings and the new parent subsidies to promote working mothers. The earmarking of the parent money primarily for those with higher salaries was intentional. But it was justified by Mrs. Von der Leyen, who stated "all families will be better off in the future."
Less than a year later, the results failed to confirm this. The Munster administration scientist Stefan Fuchs calculated from available data that about 60% of parents are worse off with the parent money than with the now abolished child subsidy (?300 a month for two years). The biggest losers are low-income families and families with numerous children, and also single parents and university students.
The threat of child nationalization looms
Meanwhile, the debate over the social justice of minimum salaries and managerial salaries has glossed over the fact that the most valuable contribution made to this society, that is, the rearing of children, is always lower paid. But why reward a home contribution that nobody wants anymore?
Children's rights in the Constitution would be the next major step in nationalizing children. It would no longer be "primarily the parents" but instead "the state community" that would assert these rights. There is no talk of children's right to their parents. The consequences of such a remedy in family policy would be worse than the causes that served as the pretext for it.
© Donald Hank
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