Study Finds Kids Need Authority, Faith

Kids do best when they are raised in homes with loving authority and faith. That's the result of a new study.

Kids are genetically wired to thrive under loving authority. That's the conclusion from the Commission on Children at Risk. The research means strong families and religious communities are especially helpful in keeping kids from destructive behavior.

The study found that kids do best when their boundaries are scripted by caring "authoritative communities" like family and faith. The study's lead investigator, Kathleen Kovner Kline, said the need for authority starts from the moment the child is born.

"When an infant is born, the basic structure of the infant's brain and emotional system is set up to develop together with another person," Kline said.

The researchers also found that faith communities are especially well-suited to keeping children from delinquent behavior.

"They're multigenerational, they have children and parents and other adults and elders that share a common vision and value, that treat children as ends in and of themselves," Kline said.

Youth for Christ President Roger Cross said he has observed the benefit of homes of faith and authority in thousands of kids around the world.

"We've seen the change that happens in their behavior and their life and also the purpose that comes when they begin to live their life on a value system based on God's principles," Cross said.

The study also found that the influence of religion on young people is "grossly understudied."

For teens, faith is "significantly associated" with reduced instances of suicide and crime. In addition, religious teens are better drivers and are less prone to substance abuse.

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I would like to begin by focusing on the title of the book, It Takes a Village. The title comes from an African proverb which states that "It takes a village to raise a child." This oft- repeated African proverb has become the mantra of recent international women's conferences (Cairo, Beijing). I believe it represents the new paradigm of feminist and socialist thinking.

I believe the real issue is that Mrs. Clinton's book, It Takes a Village, is flawed at its premise. Government is not a village. Parents do not need government bureaucrats and federal programs to raise their children. In many ways, the problems Mrs. Clinton discusses are the result of government "solutions" proposed decades earlier (through the New Deal and Great Society programs). Families don't need more government; they need less government. In a very limited sense we might agree that it does take a village to raise a child, but that doesn't mean it takes the government to raise a child. Children should be raised by families, churches, and communities--not by the federal government. It Takes a Village

Pearcey analyzes "the crucial role played by the Darwinian view of origins" in the development of American legal philosophy. "Darwinism is not only a biological theory," she emphasizes; "it is also the basis for a comprehensive world view -- implying a new philosophy of mind, knowledge, morality, and law." Pearcey sees a direct connection between Darwinism and the postmodern view that "the only objective and absolute truth is that there are no objective and absolute truths." She argues that a "thorough-going critique" of judicial activism "must begin with Darwinism as a scientific theory." Pearcey advocates taking "the intellectual battle into science itself. The controversy over Darwin versus design is not a peripheral issue," she insists, "but lies at the heart of the cultural crisis of our day." Darwinian Roots of Judicial Activism

For three decades, Holmes brought his distinctively Darwinian bias to the Court. He spoke candidly: "I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand." Do Laws and Standards Evolve?

"I've been predicting this for 20 years - that ultimately this theory of the living Constitution will destroy us, it will destroy the federal courts," Scalia said. WorldNetDaily: Scalia: Supreme Court jester

It was in ' the 1870s and 1880s that Social Darwinism spread throughout the western industrialised world, where it exerted a considerable influence, before reaching it apogee in the radical racialist theories of National Socialism ( the Nazis).' (1) An example of the voluminous literature devoted to popularizng Social Darwinism from the turn of the century period, is the great literary success of 1913 written by Geberal Bernhardi called Vom Heutigen Kriege, which ' expounded the thesis that war was a biological necessity and a convenient means of ridding the world of the unfit. These views were not confined to a lunatic fringe, but won wide acceptance especially among journalists, academics and politicians.'(2) Darwin, Racism, Evil

I don't claim that Darwin and his theory of evolution brought on the holocaust; but I cannot deny that the theory of evolution, and the atheism it engendered, led to the moral climate that made a holocaust possible" Jewish scholar Edward Simon D arwin at Nuremberg I

Hitler used the German word for evolution (Entwicklung) over and over again in his book. In fact, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the very title itself of Hitler's book ("My Struggle"), was influenced by Darwin's subtitle, "Struggle for Existence," and by the German advocate of evolution, Ernst Haeckel, who published a book, in 1905, entitled, Der Kampf um den Entwicklungs-Gedanken ("The Struggle over Evolutionary Thinking").

In Hitler's Mein Kampf, he spoke of "lower human types." He criticized the Jews for bringing "Negroes into the Rhineland" with the aim of "ruining the white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization." He spoke of "Monstrosities halfway between man and ape" and lamented the fact of Christians going to "Central Africa" to set up "Negro missions," resulting in the turning of "healthy . . . human beings into a rotten brood of bastards." In his chapter entitled "Nation and Race," he said, "The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable." A few pages later, he said, "Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." ³ Ascent of Racism

The linkage between the God > life > choice > sex paradigm and the American polis is remarkable. And it has never, to my knowledge, been identified either theologically or politically in history. That is to say, nowhere in church history are these four subjects of Genesis 1-2 defined as such and laid out explicitly. Yet they are everywhere implicitly assumed or recognized. Genesis and the Declaration of Independence

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