Good Afternoon,
Okay, finally starting to catch my breath from the past week. Thank you for your prayers. Our house managed to avoid significant flood damage thanks to some angels/friends that helped my wife while I was trapped working at the hospital. And thanks to some other angels/friends, we are putting the pieces back together. However, many others have not fared so well and are cleaning up after losing homes, vehicles, and many belongings. Please continue to pray for them and consider helping out by going to Hands On Nashville.


Two Great Articles

The first article comes from Family Security Matters. This website has provided a variety of good articles on other similar subjects. I can't vouch for the entire site, but so far it has been a pretty sound resource. The ARTICLE discusses the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its impact on the American Family. It would be a good article to forward to others (hint-hint) that need to hear about this issue.


The second article addresses Ontario's recent proposal for their public education sex-ed curriculum. While this proposal eventually was rejected, the quote below indicates what many think is the "best" for children.
"By the third grade, which in Ontario generally means children aged 7 or 8 years old, teachers would introduce topics such as homosexuality, gender identity and sexual orientation. In grade six, masturbation would share time with grammar and complex math problems, while in grade seven, children would begin to learn about oral and anal sex."

If you think, so what, that's not in our country?, consider this quote from the National Post in which US education "experts" were quoted praising Ontario's plan.

"I thought this is so fantastic that someone is finally setting the stage that, to be comprehensive, sex education cannot start in high school or even middle school - you have to start early because everything is a building block," said Elizabeth Schroeder, executive director of Answer, an organization based at Rutgers University providing and promoting comprehensive sexuality education.

Read more: HERE

Reflection on Parenting

Good Morning,
This week's theme is simply "Reflection". Please take a few minutes to consider two things this week. First, what is parenting to you (if you are a parent or hope to be one)? Think along these lines: Why do you do what you do? What exactly do you do? What are your parenting goals? And one more challenging question: Have you fallen prey to culture's deceit that the "experts" know how to raise your children better than you do?

Second, what does today's average parent think of parenting? Is it a chore? Is it best done by delegating parenting tasks to select "experts"? Is it a priority or a nuisance?

What am I getting at? Our culture seems to have swallowed the deception hook, line, and sinker. A high percentage of parents seem to believe that they are either incapable of directing their child's upbringing or they don't seem to understand that they even have a responsibility to direct the child's upbringing in the first place. "Experts", some well meaning and others ill-intentioned, have convinced many in society that parents aren't smart enough to raise their own children. Parents are told that they must always follow the latest "expert" advice. As parents, we all need wisdom from others at times or a helping hand, but when have we crossed the line and expected various "experts" to do our job for us.

In contrast, the Bible has delegated this responsibility to parents (see Ephesians 6:3 and other scripture) not to "experts" and policy makers. We must help parents see this responsibility before they will be concerned with defending their "parental rights".

Please reflect on your own perspective on parenting and consider the trends in our culture. The biggest hurdle may not be the passage of an amendment, but the apathy of our nation's parents.

Tri-lingual couple with TWO Ph.D.'s and Masters Degree are not qualified to homeschool their children?

A 2006 article by American Thinker is very pertinent to today's debate over the UN CRC, especially if you homeschool. In America, we have had legal battles about whether or not a parent must have a teaching degree or license in order to qualify for homeschooling. Relative to an incident in Belgium in 2006, that requirement is "child's play". Read below or at this LINK to learn how a father was called into the police for interrogation and informed:

"that, as a homeschooler, he has not adequately educated his children and, hence, is neglecting his duty as a parent, which is a criminal offence."

Was he or his wife somehow deficient in their own educational preparation? Let's see if their credentials fall short....

1) Father: Ph.D., fluent in Dutch, English, and French.

2) Mother: Master's degree in Linguistics, doctorate in Philology, lecturer at two universities, author of books on topics which are so intellectual that I do not even understand the titles. Gave up full-time work to homeschool their children.

If that isn't qualified, what is? What did the Ministry of Education say was their crime? They refused to sign an oath:

"respecting the respect (sic) for the fundamental human rights and the cultural values of the child itself and of others."

Please, pause, take a deep breath, and consider the implications of this philosophy (inherent in the UN CRC) on your family. You can't even hide behind a Ph.D. to prove your fitness to homeschool if you don't follow their rules.

Our Response - Part 5 of 5 in the Series

Hopefully, by this point, only one question remains in the minds of readers, “Is there anything I can do to stop the insanity behind the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child?” If that is not the question you are asking, then go back and re-read the prior 4 postings before reading this one. Without that question in the forefront of your mind, there is no need for reading this posting. From there the title says it all. “Our” means that a victory for families will require the combined voices of parents across the nation shouting “no” to this treachory. “Response” means that parents cannot sit back and hope for the best. They must take action. From there the script should go like this.

First, parents must educate themselves on this issue by reading these postings and other information on the Parental Rights.Org website as well as the UN treaty itself. Then, each “educated” parent must alert other parents by simply sharing with them what they themselves have learned about the issue. Patience is required at this step as many will no believe this news nor even want to consider the possibility that it is a reality. From there, pressure must be exerted on our Senators who are the final step in this treaty’s ratification. If they fall prey to the deception, this treaty becomes “as-if” Supreme Law of the Land according to Article 6 of our constitution (see future post for an explanation of “as-if”). American parents must present their stance politely yet firmly by phone, e-mail, fax, and even in face to face meetings with Senators and their staff.

The Senate’s defeat of this treaty, however, is not the end of the story, but only a temporary victory. This treaty can reawaken later for ratification if the only action is a “no” vote. The underlying philosophies will still continue to simmer and are even now eroding parental rights through developing legislation and deceptive practices by government agencies including the public education system. Unless something more is done, the only difference will be between an immediate victory for the treaty supporters and a delayed victory of slow but eventual complete erosion of these rights. The complete and final answer is a Parental Right Amendment that is currently before both houses of the US Congress. This amendment uses wording from past Supreme Court cases that upheld parental rights and combines it with a section that exempts parental rights from any international treaty’s effects. If ratified, it places clear and explicit protection in our constitution for parent’s right to direct the care and education of their own children. Currently, this right has only been implied from the 14th amendment and is on shaky ground thanks to the last Supreme Court case in 2000 regarding parental rights. Without going into the details, it basically left open the question of whether parental rights are constitutionally protected or not, to the lower courts where there is no guarantee of safety for these rights. The Parental Rights Amendment now proposed would recognize parent’s God-given rights and would finally close the door on such unconstitutional international treaties. It would provide a clear constitutional ground for protecting our rights. For the parent desiring to retain their parental rights, this means a call to both Senators and Representatives to urge support for this amendment.

So, our response, as parents with God given rights and responsibilities towards our children, should be 1) to educate ourselves and alert others to this threat, 2) to jointly urge our Senators to vote “NO” on the treaty, 3) to urge all our Congressmen to sponsor the Parental Rights Amendment. For those desiring to go further in defending their rights, www.parentalrights.org has more ways that you can contribute. If you live in Tennessee, please contact our Tennessee organization through www.tennesseeparentalrights.com.

Thank you for reading this series. I pray that together, with God’s help, we can retain the freedom to raise our children according to the values and beliefs which we hold dear.

Specific Rights in the UN CRC - part 4 of 5

The previously described philosophies (see part 3 of this series) are spelled out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child by way of “rights” codified in the treaty’s articles. Many of these so-called “rights” are benevolent, like outlawing child abuse, outlawing using children as soldiers, and outlawing child prostitution. However, most if not all Americans should recognize that we already have laws for protecting children in these circumstances and absolutely do not need a duplication of those laws. This is especially true if parents realize what other baggage comes packaged in this treaty.

At first reading, some of these other rights seem harmless at face value while others are obviously at least concerning. The reader of the treaty could be left wondering whether there is cause for fear or not until they look at how the treaty has been used in other countries and the United Nation’s actions through other human rights treaties. The right to privacy found in article 16 was used in Japan to prevent parents from accessing their children’s text messages, chat rooms, and e-mails. In Britain, this treaty is being used to legislate that home-schooled children can be subjected to an unannounced in-home examination without their parents present through its right to an education that government determines is best. In Belize, the committee overseeing the treaty recommended that the Belize government create formal avenues in which children could legally protest their parent’s violations of this treaty’s rights. The treaty also guarantees a right to health care including reproductive health care which seems noble. However, the intention of this right needs to be considered in light of another UN treaty called the Convention to End All Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW. CEDAW has been used to force countries to legalize abortion and decriminalize prostitution (1,2,3). Given the treaty’s right to health care provision, children could be guaranteed the right to abortion even without parental consent as it is a reproductive health care right. One final issue should cause great concern for American gun-owners. Given the treaty’s stance that government should always seek the best interest of the child and the UN’s stance that guns are bad for children, this will naturally lead to gun control in our country in the guise of protecting children. Parents will be forced to part with their guns voluntarily or possibly lose their children to government officials like child protective services. Many more examples could be provided, but this alone should be enough to raise the alarm of American parents who believe that God has given them the responsibility and the right to raise their children according to their own values and beliefs, not those of the government.

As stated at the beginning, some of these “rights” sound vague, benign, or sometimes benevolent when first read. However, each is ultimately an open door to further control of our private family life by the federal government and the United Nations. As a whole and individually, they infringe or forsake our constitutional rights in multiple ways. In doing so, they spell the end of the American tradition of parenting. America’s future under this treaty can be forseen in the effects they are having in other countries (see www.parentalrights.org for more examples). Do we want our federal government to begin teaching our 4 years about sex like the Netherlands educational system does (based on same philosophy as the treaty? Especially when the United Nation’s idea of sex education at that age includes an explanation of masturbation? (4) Shouldn’t the parent decide upon the appropriate timing these discussions?

Stay tuned for the final part 5 in the series.


Footnotes

(1) Web posted letter from National Right to Life to US Congressmen: http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/ForeignAid/SenateCEDAWletter020107.html
(2) Catholic Exchange Article, CEDAW Committee Abortion Misinterpretations Infect Human Rights Committee, Sept. 11th, 2008, Samantha Singson. http://catholicexchange.com/2008/09/11/113696/
(3) United nations Report, Women and Health Mainstreaming the Gender Perspective into the Health Sector, Expert Group Meeting 28 Sept. to 2 October 1998. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/healthr.htm
(4) United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, International Guidelines on Sexuality Education:…, June 2009 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/082509_unesco.pdf

The Two Philosophies Behind the Convention on the Rights of the Child

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child seems benevolent or at least benign to many parents. Parents ask, “Who could oppose such a noble endeavor?” However, before supporting or simply ignoring this treaty, they must understand the philosophies that underlie it and the potential impact. Two philosophies summarize the heart of this UN treaty. The first is that the government knows what is best for children better than parents. The second is that, as international human rights theory promotes, governments are obligated to protect not just rights, but also to provide services at the child’s request, even over the parent’s objections. Taken together, this means that government has the final say in the upbringing of children.

The two philosophies work together but can be understood best by first examining them separately. The first philosophy has been promoted by Hillary Clinton in a number of her books and also by other prominent figures. They all advocate that government or its experts are better equipped to decide how a child should be raised. Article three of the treaty says that government will always seek the best interest of the child in all it does. While all parents would agree with seeking the best interest of their own children, the crux of the problem lies in “who decides what is best?” According to this philosophy, the government decides rather than the parent. This alone is a dangerous philosophy to apply in American law.

The second philosophy is an application of general international human rights theory to the area of child rights. America has long held rights to be God-given, or inalienable, and thus protected both by the government and from the government. The international view goes further and also holds rights as services or goods that the individual can claim from the government. Article 18 of the treaty creates a vague open door by saying that parent’s primary responsibility is to seek the best interest of the child AND the government will provide appropriate assistance. The central question to ask are “who decides when that assistance is needed?”. Under this philosophy, the government and its experts will make that decision. From there, article 12 adds fuel to the fire by saying that the child should have their voice heard in all administrative and judicial matters affecting them. Therefore, the child can petition the government directly to complain that their parents are not seeking their best interest and expect that the government will step in to provide appropriate assistance. Ultimately, articles 18 and 12 do not give the child freedom, but it instead enslaves them to the government and removes their most ardent protectors, the parents. Under the current system, parents serve as barriers to outside forces that would harm children or infringe on their rights. This new system would be replace parents with government representatives who would become the final line of defense protecting “their” children.

Taken together, the federal government and its experts decide what is best, the child can petition the government to overrule their parents, and the government is obligated or empowered to intervene on behalf of the child even against the parent’s wishes. The government becomes the parent and the parent becomes the babysitter. Is this what American parents want for their children?

(Return soon for part 4 discussing specific rights outlined in the treaty.)

Silent, but Urgent Threat to Parental Rights

Very few recognize the slow, yet continual erosion of parent’s rights by many forces in our government at local, state, and federal levels. The erosion has occurred without fanfare and, what little media attention it garners, usually casts the parents in a negative light or takes only the most egregious examples of bad parents to make the point against all parents. Even when parental rights were restored in some cases, the media often still accused the parents of wrongdoing. Often the media would lament that the child protective workers just couldn’t get enough evidence to prove the parent’s guilt. The media never assumes that maybe the “protective” workers were not so innocent and the accused parents were not so “guilty”. Besides such individual cases and the overgeneralizations, dangerous court precedents are being set one case at a time, usually disregarded by the media as unimportant. If that is not enough, bills are working their way into laws which erode parental control over education, healthcare, religion, and other important areas. Slowly the heat is being turned up on parents wading in the waters of our nation’s culture. Those simmering parents must realize the urgency of the next few degrees of heat that will bring the legal waters to a boiling point and will mean the end of parenting in America as we know it.

Why do the supporters of government-controlled parenting enjoy the silence and stealth? In the quiet, they can slowly turn up the heat one degree at a time without anyone taking much notice. American parents just learn to accept the warmer water as being natural since they trust the government to do what is best. The supporters set up law after law, one court precedent after another, until, with a simple tweak of one more degree, everything boils and American parents are stunned to find themselves in boiling water, unable to escape. If parents saw the final goal held by these forces or read the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC) with open eyes of understanding, they would protest with outrage. The UN CRC aids our understanding because it is the most tangible manifestation of the philosophy that government knows what is best for children and should overrule parents in their decisions for their own children. As it is now, if no parent reads the recipe in that treaty, we will all suffer a common demise of our parental rights in this legal environment.

Why is it urgent? The US State Department is processing this treaty as fast as Senator Barbara Boxer can push them. She wanted to present it to the US Senate for a 2/3’s ratification vote in April of this year. The State Department thankfully wanted time to process it properly. Senator Boxer and others such as our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, believe that their long awaited dream of ratifying this treaty by 67 Senate “yes” votes is ripe for the picking. Furthermore, our president and many in his chosen administration believe that it is a disgrace that America has not yet signed this treaty. Even though this treaty hands over state and national sovereignty unconstitutionally, they will do so and act “as if” it is constitutionally allowed. Meanwhile, outside Washington D.C., many groups are building momentum to help push this through the Senate. They have held conferences, raised funding, and started grassroots campaigns. No punches are being pulled in this battle for who controls the future of our children.

In summary, supporters enjoy the relative silence compared to the roar surrounding other government issues facing Americans and their fading liberties right now. They benefit from American parent’s deafness and ignorance towards this crucial issue. Yet the situation is growing more and more urgent as each day passes without American parents awakening to this threat, a threat that is ready to boil over at any minute.

(Return soon for part 3 of the series which discusses the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child itself.)

Why the Convention on the Rights of the Child is a Core Issue

(Part 1 of 5 in a series)

There are certain issues in our epic battle for freedom so fundamental that winning all other skirmishes, but losing these critical battles still results in defeat. With multiple attacks on freedom coming at us daily, discernment, focus, and coordination are required by America’s citizens if these issues are to be targeted for special efforts. The right of parents to decide how their children are raised and what their children are taught is one of these core issues. In America we have long held this tradition as a fundamental right granted by God. However, this tradition is being challenged by forces from within and from outside our own nation. If, through slow erosion in the courts and legislatures or through the floodgate of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the government gains full control of “parenting”, one thing is guaranteed. The passing of the current generation will leave the next generation shaped, molded, and indoctrinated according to the values of our government’s leaders and experts. That generation will be enslaved to the government as the one to whom it owes allegiance, and freedom will be forsaken.
Three simple truths prove the fundamental nature of this issue. First, God ordained that the family has the primary responsibility for directing the intellectual and moral education of children. Within this family structure, parents were made the primary source of influence as to what values and beliefs are passed to the next generation. If parents abdicate that role to the government, then the values of the government, not the family, will shape the next generation. Second, a simple historical investigation reveals how multiple dictators targeted children for indoctrination from early ages. The dictators knew that their future power lay in the hands of the next generation’s submission to government authority. Even Plato was concerned that the very stories told to infants were important in shaping society’s future. Finally, as the introduction tried to highlight, only one generation’s passing stands between freedom and its disappearance if parents allow the government to control the next generation’s upbringing. You see, if the government controls their upbringing, they will be taught that submission to the government and its values is of the highest importance. Whatever sense of freedom that our generation holds dear will not even be a memory in the next generation’s mind after such indoctrination.
Health care, the banking industry, the car industry, and other areas are unquestionably important skirmishes, but the intellectual, spiritual, and moral development of our next generation is not a battle that we can afford lose if we hope to win the ongoing war for freedom. As Wendell Phillips said in 1852, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. May God help American parents to recognize the magnitude of this issue and to be eternally vigilant in protecting children by protecting our rights to parent them.

Stay tuned for part 2 of 5 in this series.....

Good Morning America !

While not packed with juicy morsels to raise your blood pressure or drive you to insane irritation at our government's intrusion into private life, I did not want to pass up an opportunity to ask how you are handling our brave new world. In a day when the issues come flying by you at warp speed, reminiscent of the blurring stars in a Star Treak or Star Wars movie, how do you stay sane?
My answer: I spend each day living another analogy, that of standing in a burning building with one bucket of water. So many fires, so little water. I just have to stop and pray for wisdom. I pray that God will lead me to use my bucket of water (time, resources, energy, talents) in the direction where it is most effective and fits in with His plan. Then I pray that others will go through the same process in using their buckets of water. With God's directing and our listening, some coordinated effect should result.
So grab your bucket, ask for direction, and go put out a fire today. Tomorrow, start all over and do it again......

Sincerely,
Eric Potter MD

Berkeley and the United Nations

Berkeley dealing directly with United Nations

A good friend forwarded a very concerning article to me this morning. The city of Berkeley, California, will soon be voting on a measure to begin reporting directly to the United Nations on their compliance with UN human rights treaty. I believe we would all agree that torture, civil rights, and racial discrimination are important issues. However, should a city forge a "treaty" of sorts with the United Nations. I am not a lawyer, but I believe that the people of the United States of America delegated that power to our federal government. Under division of powers in federalism, a city can not do this constitutionally.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is not explicitly mentioned, but obviously would be a logical initial piece of the plan or later addition. In this you can see the direction of our nation.

Read THIS LINK for more information.