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You point is moot, for one reason only.

Today in our country Child Protective Services in all states are removing children from their home and putting them in foster care because their parent have been found to be unfit, and those children once in foster care are so wounded that it take years of social work and millions of dollars to work with them that it make no sense to have let such a thing come to pass if we could have stopped it in the beginning.

And the horror some of these children have gone through is beyond imagination, and all of us that work in a field the is aware of the problem know that the ones we find are really a small number to those we never find.

You arguments do not come even close to dealing with the facts.


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Dear Jim and All,

Maybe the best approach in the short-term is mandatory parenting schools for foster parents. After all, they receive compensation from the state for their services, so they should have to pass some kind of test, or undergo some sort of training, so that they do not do more harm than good...

If that proves successful, parenting school for biologic parents should be a no-brainer, and should be welcomed by all prospective parents. People need to WANT to be better parents, and should be eager to learn what they can to be the best parents they can be...

Also, what is needed here is a larger world-view for all of us. So many of us have a very narrow view of the world, encompassing only our own small circle, which is many times littered with old baggage and prejudice and no good for anyone at all, much less the community.

How to achieve this? You guess is as good as mine, but Jesus' mandate to love your neighbor as yourself is a good place to start, I'd say...

http://www.truthbook.com/index.cfm?linkID=1392#U140_8_11 Jesus came presenting the idea of active and spontaneous kindness, a love of one's fellow men so genuine that it expanded the neighborhood to include the whole world, thereby making all men one's neighbors. But with all this, Jesus was interested only in the individual, not the mass. Jesus was not a sociologist, but he did labor to break down all forms of selfish isolation. He taught pure sympathy, compassion. Michael of Nebadon is a mercy-dominated Son; compassion is his very nature. [/url]


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Didn't Henry David Thoreau say "that which governs best; governs least."

If Jesus thought that politics and secular laws could be used to make the world a better place, He would have gladly sat upon the throne of David. He did not. He knew that politics and secular laws empower the politicians and lawmakers. Whereas the spiritual law of loving the Father with all your being and your neighbor as yourself in mercy, compassion, and forgiveness will truly make the world a better place by empowering the individual.

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Last edited by rhermen on Wed May 20, 2009 10:47 am +0000, edited 2 times in total.

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Gee, Randy, you just let all the air out of my balloon -- the one that kept me afloat, thinking I was doing something for the Evolving Supreme, wherein we are admonished that sooner or later we are going to want to DO SOMETHING. I know what it is to be a human being -- at last! -- but that does not mean I don't still want to DO things for and with myself and my countrymen towards creating a new paradigm of reality, towards light and life! While religionists as a group ought to be concerned only with religion, or spiritual matters, religionists as individuals are encouraged to get involved in politics and economics and all kinds of finite concerns, so as to have something to do and somewhere to do it "as we pass by."

You make it sound like there are two kinds of people on this earth: the ones who cause trouble by trying to create order and those who cause peace by praying alone in their closet.

When the covenant with Abraham was made, that God would do everything and all we have to do is believe, I don't think that meant we could sit on the couch and he would turn the channel for us and bring us popcorn. I think it meant we are entitled and encouraged to create and maintain a lifestyle that fits within the prevailing infrastructure; if and as the infrastructure needs to expand or modify to meet evolving conditions or advancing technology or whatever, then we need to discern the wise way to go about it. Like developing alternate forms of energy. I have a hunch that we might even get some guidance on this from the Spirit of Truth. God created the wind and the rain and the sun, but it is up to us to make the windmills and the solar panels that will provide the energy that we can store in batteries and use to make the physical world function.

It is up to us to think and act as citizens of the universe who live on Urantia, and it should be regarded not just as a duty but as a privilege to help keep our neighborhoods safe, clean and effective places to live, to raise our crops and our children. By shirking our responsibilities to be good stewards of our planet and failing to be our brother's keeper, we are thus turning over the reins of civil administration to the politicians and lawmakers, or the priests and preachers, or the taxman, or the taxi driver. We need to be mindful of all this stuff. Being religionists should make us better citizens.

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Has anybody seen that new show, "Raising the Bar"? The moderator is essentially correct. People who work at that level of law are often gone in a couple of years because it can be just too brutal. For years I worked for a judge, at the state level, and the snootful of civil, criminal, tax, domestic, probate, worker's comp, etc., dysfunction I got to witness first hand was enough to make your head spin. The fruits of those labors are cynicism, alas. I used to call our court system "meatball justice", after Hawkeye Pierce's calling his M.A.S.H. unit's activity "meatball surgery." One can get quite discouraged, dealing with this kind of stuff day after day, year after year.

My husband thought that people who got into trouble with the law, or who became addicted, or developed behavioral problems could do something with themselves and make something of their lives if they set their mind to it, if they applied a little grit and determination. Then he went to work for this State-run treatment center which is like the last stop for troubled teenage boys and if they don't get it together from there they either go into prison or into a mental institution. Over time he began to see that it's too late. They are ruined already. Their parents (if they have any) are dysfunctional; their neighborhood is dysfunctional; the cops are crooked, the infrastructure is dysfunctional; the educational system and the economic system are dysfunctional; our economic system is dysfunctional; the mininum wage and tax incentives are dysfunctional. And there is no hope. Motivation has been beaten out of them. They are used, abused, thrown away. They have been cheated. They are damaged. They were not born damaged, but they became damaged because the world they were born into was not sufficiently nurturing, consoling, directing. That is not just their problem, it is also our problem.

The statistics are dire, and they keep going up. More and more people are succumbing to alcohol and drug abuse. The value of life is so cheap, they do drive-by shootings for amusement. We think it is dreadful that the "terrorists" make themselves into living bombs and blow themselves up so as to make a point, but that is what our youth is doing ... they just use different tools. They destroy themselves and others around them to make a point, but nobody is getting the point, which is that under their current circumstances, life is not worth living. That is no kind of life to bring people into and then expect them to have all the tools to rise above the poverty, disease, sickness, and despair that surrounds them night and day from the time they are born until the time they reach the age of consent.

The Social Services Department can't handle it all. Their agents will go into a home, break up the family, place kids in a home somewhere, but the kids are not necessarily better off. They become a commodity; they have separation anxiety; they are sexually exploited. Mary Jo is right -- the foster parents, at least, should attend parenting schools, but that is a stop-gap measure. Somehow, people have got to be convinced that they want and need Marriage Schools and Parenting Schools before this kind of damage is done.

It ought not be that difficult to alter the mores if we set our minds to it. In Paper 72 it talks about how the unequal distribution of wealth has been the brunt of social criticism, such that the paradigm is changing. If we can harangue the rich for being too rich and flaunting it, maybe we can guilt them into setting some new standards for it is very difficult for poor people to feel hope when they look at the disparity between real estate prices on the hill versus those in the ghetto. No wonder they become drug dealers and prostitutes.

Our country is a mess! It needs some serious overhauling. It might not look too bad for those who are surrounded by church-going, squeeky-clean folks who look good and smell good, but taking off our blinders and seeing how many people have to endure injustice in this alleged land of opportunity can be blinding. I can understand why people prefer to live in denial of truth and instead blame those in trouble for just being losers.

We really need the haves to set an example for the have nots. Not of largess and entitlement, but of humility and good will. Otherwise, the haves will have to support the have nots for a long, long time to come.

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If I had your word skills i would have gotten much further in my field... :)

I am not good at looking up quotes, but i do remember in the papers about Religious experiences and True religion, there is some where a statement about if a Preacher does his job of focusing on teaching his congregants they will be come better citizens. do you know of the section I am talking about.

Don't us my words at a key to finding it, just look in those papers and you will see the Intent and content of what I am talking about.


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Protect Kids & Parents!

http://www.parentalrights.org/

The Issue: Parents play an irreplaceable role in the lives of their children. This vital relationship positively impacts a child's physical, mental, and emotional well-being. The right of parents to maintain a strong involvement in their children's lives has been continually upheld by Supreme Court doctrine. It is deeply valued by millions of American families.

The Attack: The right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children has been recognized and upheld for centuries. But there are dark clouds on the horizon. Today parental rights are coming under assault from federal judges who deny or refuse to recognize these rights. Adding further danger to the child-parent relationship, international law seeking to undermine the parental role is advancing on the horizon. Together, these threats are converging to create a "perfect storm" that looms over the child-parent relationship.

The Solution: The only solution to the attack on the child-parent relationship is a constitutional amendment securing the rights of parents to raise their children. Only a constitutional amendment will ensure that the courts of our nation protect the fundamental right of parents to raise their children. And only a constitutional amendment will override international law that seeks to undermine the parental role. As the only complete solution to the danger confronting the child-parent relationship, the Parental Rights Amendment will place current Supreme Court doctrine protecting parental rights into the explicit text of the Constitution. Only a constitutional amendment completely eliminates all threats to the child-parent relationship. It is the only comprehensive response to the attack on parental rights across our nation.

Answer Center: At ParentalRights.org, our goal is to amend the U.S. Constitution to protect parental rights. A constitutional amendment is the only way to comprehensively protect the child-parent relationship from unnecessary government intrusion. Amending the Constitution is a challenging task, and we can't do it alone. Our supporters come from many different backgrounds—uniting for the common cause of protecting parenthood. Everyone has questions about how this will work, why it is important, and what each of us can do to help kids and parents. That's why we have an answer center. Of course, if your question isn't covered here, please send it to us and we will do our best to answer it.

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Last edited by rhermen on Sat Jul 10, 2010 8:23 am +0000, edited 4 times in total.

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I just read you site, and I would think that our Parent education program would make you excited because it would protect parent from the court because they will have passed a class showing that they were qualified to be parent, thus making it harder for the court to question their rights ..thus protecting their rights.


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No. I strongly disagree because a parent shouldn't have to prove their innocence. In this country people are innocent until proven guilty. Therefore, the burden of proof rests on the state to prove they (biological or foster parents) are guilty of some kind of abusive behavior.

A recent article from the Parental Rights website:

Guilty until proven innocent
Posted by: Rich Shipe on May 20th, 2008

Quote:
A big part of the problem here is that social workers generally have incredible power over the whole situation and all rights are held by the state. Read on for more from the investigative report.

More from the article that shows a lower burden of proof required and that you must prove your innocence to the state instead of the state proving your guilt.

When our legals system is built on the “best interest of the child” instead of the parental rights doctrine we can expect that the first people to lose will be the poor. The only way to have a chance against the system is to hire the best attorney but if you are poor you can’t afford an attorney.

It is important to note that most of the social workers and others in the child protection service systems are good people who mean well. They are truly trying their best to help families and children. There are also real child abusers out there that need to be dealt with strongly. We cannot as a society tolerate child abuse. But it is also child abuse to take a girl from her mom and put her into a psychiatric ward. Falsely accusing parents of child abuse is also a form of abuse to the child. Taking or even threatening to take a child from a loving home is child abuse.

The system is broken. At the heart of the problem is our legal drift from the parental rights doctrine. While the Supreme Court has consistently favored parents, we need to reestablish at the state and local levels the basic legal concept of “innocent until proven guilty.”


A hypothetical parental licensing act would cause a further drift from the doctrine of being innocent until proven guilty to the dysfunctional doctrine of being guilty until proven innocent.

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No matter how you cut it there is more child abusers than parents being unjustly accused and a parent education program is not about calling any one guilty of any thing.

If you can see the truth in education in any endeavor than being a parent would stand out as the most wanting of education.


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Randy quotes Rich Shipe as saying,

"When our legal system is built on the “best interest of the child” instead of the parental rights doctrine we can expect that the first people to lose will be the poor."

I just want to point out that this statement contradicts itself, because the truly poor people ARE the children.


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If you can see the truth in education in any endeavor than being a parent would stand out as the most wanting of education.


I am all for educating parents so long as people choose of their own free will to improve their parenting skills. Parents, whether they are biological, adoptive, foster, or step parents, who understand the high honor and duty of raising children will desire to improve their parenting skills without the need of state intervention. I have made that point as clear as I know how. But who would license the parental licensers? Who would educate the educators? And who would hold these accountable for their programs?

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I just want to point out that this statement contradicts itself, because the truly poor people ARE the children.


The article "guilty until proven innocent" discusses an eleven year old "poor" schizophrenic and bipolar child who falsely accused her foster parents of physical and emotional abuse.

Who defines "the best interest of the child"?

An eleven year old child diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorders...

The "experts" who serve the state by taking children away from their "abusive" parents based upon the uncorroborated word of a disturbed child...

or the licensed foster parents whose responsibility it is to raise the child?

quote from "Guilty Until Proven Innocent"

Quote:
Fighting [Department of Children and Family Sevices] cost the Brunsteins $20,000 to hire a lawyer. And the three girls they hoped to adopt — ages 2, 5 and 11 — were taken from them and never returned.

“I don’t know if you can call this a win,” Nick Brunstein said. “Our savings are wiped out, and our caseworker who wanted to take our foster kids and hurt us did exactly that. No one at DCFS will be held accountable.”


The Illinois DCFS took the kids without due process or probable cause. Talk about abuse. It seems someone needs to educate the DCFS. A Parental Rights Amendment would ensure accountability for everyone involved in the "best interest of the child" by defining the rights of both the parent and the child by assuming that both are innocent unless abuse could be legally proven by due process and probable cause. Checks and balances apply to both people and the state. Even non-profit agencies.

Quote:
Petition for the Parental Rights Amendment

As Citizen Co-Sponsors of the Parental Rights Amendment, we recognize that parents possess a fundamental right to lovingly guide and direct the upbringing and education of their children. As the Supreme Court has proclaimed, "the custody, care, and nurture of the child reside first in the parents."

We call attention to the tragic reality that this right is now being watered down by judges in our state and federal courts, and eroded by international laws created beyond our borders and without our consent.

We believe that no child should be a victim of abuse or neglect. We hold that the government should not seek to intrude upon the child-parent relationship, nor deprive a child of his or her parents unless absolutely necessary. We draw attention to the current state of affairs in which decisions affecting the welfare and happiness of children are too often made on the basis of expediency, not necessity, with great harm resulting toward the child and the whole family.

Therefore, we call upon Congress to pass a constitutional amendment which will secure the vital liberty of parents to raise their children, both for ourselves and for future generations of American families.

PROPOSED TEXT OF THE AMENDMENT

SECTION 1
The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.

SECTION 2
Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.

SECTION 3
No treaty nor any source of international law may be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.

Read the Annotated Version.

As a Citizen Co-Sponsor, your support of the Parental Rights Amendment is laying the groundwork for support from congressional co-sponsors, which will lead to the initial stages of the passage of the amendment. Sign today!


The Parental Rights Act empowers both children and parents through legal rights which may not be abrogated by any state (or non-profit) agency. If parents are truly abusive, then the state must prove it through proper legal means. Having proven this abuse through proper legal means (where the state or non-profit agency licensed by the state is just as accountable for its actions as the parents) only then could parental rights be temporarily suspended until rehabilitation is achieved. Such people who have had their parental rights suspended would have no choice but to comply with rehabilitation. But those who have chosen to help with this rehabilitation (whether they work for the state or a non-profit agency) would be just as accountable for their rehabilitation skills as the parents they seek to rehabilitate and their license to serve in this capacity could also be suspended if they have been found to be derelict in their duties.

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Last edited by rhermen on Thu Nov 13, 2008 4:51 pm +0000, edited 1 time in total.

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Generations of Hope

http://www.generationsofhope.org/index.htm

Quote:
Generations of Hope, formed in 1993 to develop and sustain the intergenerational neighborhood Hope Meadows, is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation and a licensed foster-adoption agency. Through Hope Meadows, it promotes permanency, community, and caring relationships for adoptive families of foster children while offering safety and meaningful purpose in the daily lives of older adults.

Generations of Hope is a unique program that changes the lives of foster children, retirees, and families by enabling them to create their own neighborhood and forge their own network of caring relationships. At Hope Meadows, children, who might otherwise spend most of their childhoods in foster care, are adopted; retirees maintain a meaningful, productive life by helping younger generations, as well as one another; and families adopt children whose birth parents can no longer adequately care for them. At the heart of this neighborhood is a sense of shared purpose and values. This serves as a foundation for caring relationships among all members of the community, including staff.

In 2006 the Generations of Hope Development Corporation (GHDC) was established, with the support of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, to extend the Hope Meadows model to address a range of social problems, and to develop new sites across the country. In 2008 a white paper entitled "Generations of Hope Communities" was written, defining these communities and presenting critical insights gained from over a decade of experience with Hope Meadows.


For those parents whose children are experiencing behavioral problems, how about the Total Transformation Method.

http://www.thetotaltransformation.com/

Quote:
Finally…a guaranteed, simple way to stop your child's
defiant, out of control behavior - RIGHT NOW


For a unique perspective on parenting skills as well as many other topics:

http://www.ringingcedars.com

For a more practical resource how about:

Quote:
The mission of Family First is to strengthen the family by establishing family as a top priority in people's lives and by promoting principles for building marriages and raising children.


http://www.familyminute.com/

Talk about empowering the individual!

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Last edited by rhermen on Wed Apr 06, 2011 8:15 am +0000, edited 5 times in total.

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Much earlier in this thread, I made reference to Bro Dave once posting that we are all at the beginning of our learning curve. This learning curve might be symbolized by the exponential algebraic function:

f(x)=b^x.


Image


This learning curve also symbolizes what the book Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior by David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. discusses. It symbolizes the quality of one's life force or the "vibration" of your soul to put in somewhat different terms.

On a couple of other threads, Thomas Didymus has submitted this diagram:

Image

Let's compare the line going from A to H in TD's diagram, the exponential function f(x)=b^x, and the hidden determinants of human behavior: in my opinion, they are discussing the same concept from a somewhat different perspective.

We all have emotions and emotions are a good indicator of one's vibration. All the negative emotions keep one closer to "A" relevant to TD's diagram and symbolize a negative value for x in the exponential function. Perpetuating these negative emotions will hold back an individuals' growth potential. People who come from a place of shame, anger, fear, hate, jealousy are truly at the beginning of their learning curve. When coming from this low vibration, one's actions are likely to create more problems than they solve. Also, one will most likely attract others of similar vibration.

Courage is the key to increasing one's vibration, to unlocking the door of growth potential, and achieving true spiritual ascension. In TD's diagram this is symbolized by entrance into the seventh psychic circle. In the function f(x)=b^x, it is symbolized by the y-axis and especially the point (0,1) on the graph of the function. People who come from a place of courage are higher in their learning curve. Such people will likely attract others of a similar vibration and begin to solve more problems by their actions than they create. Individually & globally this open the door for still higher vibrations and spiritual growth potential.

Everyone believes that his or her intentions and point of view are correct. True goodness and true love are selfless actions that come from the freedom which dwells in the completed human being in full possession of their personal sovereignty and free-will dignity. Selfless action never arises to oppose, resist, or glorify negativity. Selfless action is a positive action and therefore worth more than mere words on love or improving the world.

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 Post subject: Re: Parental Licensing?
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peoples all intermarried.

(2) 64:7.5 (727.2) When the relatively pure-line remnants of the red race forsook Asia, there were eleven tribes, and they numbered a little over seven thousand men, women, and children. These tribes were accompanied by three small groups of mixed ancestry, the largest of these being a combination of the orange and blue races. These three groups never fully fraternized with the red man and early journeyed southward to Mexico and Central America, where they were later joined by a small group of mixed yellows and reds. These peoples all intermarried and founded a new and amalgamated race, one which was much less warlike than the pure-line red men. Within five thousand years this amalgamated race broke up into three groups, establishing the civilizations respectively of Mexico, Central America, and South America. The South American offshoot did receive a faint touch of the blood of Adam.

rhermen wrote:
Are You Fit to Be a Parent?
by William Norman Grigg

Link to full article found at: The New American

Of course, a google search will yield far more than this one article..


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