Respect Life Radio

Casey Chalk: How "woke" parenting feeds kid's victimhood

Attempts by some parents to be "attentive to the latest cultural trends and sensibilities" to reach their kids are instead cultivating even more confrontational attitudes and behavior, according to Casey Chalk, a writer for "The American Conservative" and other publications, whose recent article is "Woke Parenting Eats Its Own."

"Their kids are modeling the behavior that they have seen from their parents, who have told them that they should be distrustful of authority, that the traditional stories about American history should be questioned...[as] full of bigotry and prejudice," said Chalk on Respect Life Radio. "The parents are feeding into their children's own sense of victimhood."

Katy Faust: Rights of children precede adult choices

"The idea is them — the children — before us, the adults," said Katy Faust, founder of ThemBeforeUs.com and contributor to The Federalist. "Children have very specific rights when it comes to their life, and their right to be known and loved by the two people responsible for their existence. The only way to respect those rights is for adults to conform their lives to the rights of children. What we're seeing in pretty much every area of American life — whether it's in the abortion debate, or issues of divorce or issues of reproductive technologies or cohabitation, is the adults saying: No, this is what I want and this is how I'm going to order my family, regardless of whether or not it respects children's rights."

Ramona Treviño: "Celebrate Life" with former Planned Parenthood manager

Ramona Treviño, a former Planned Parenthood manager who has become a vocal pro-life advocate, will be the keynote speaker at the Celebrate Life Rally and March on Saturday, Jan. 11, 2020, on the west steps of the state Capitol in Denver, Colo.

Treviño said providing contraception at clinics is a gateway to abortion for Planned Parenthood.

"It's future abortion clients for them: We have to get people to have sex and be promiscuous and live these risky lifestyles so that they can become pregnant," said Treviño on Respect Life Radio. "So if they do become pregnant, then Planned Parenthood becomes [an] authority in their life and someone they can trust. So then they go to Planned Parenthood to receive their abortion. It's just this cycle that they continue to perpetuate..."

Leila Miller: Divorce makes children homeless

"What divorce does is it makes children homeless," said Leila Miller, author of "Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak." "All of a sudden, they go from having a home and an identity — to not. And they have two homes, and they're traveling between homes. Things that the adults would never allow for themselves — you'd never tell an adult, 'Oh, you have to switch homes every few days, and bring all your stuff with you' — but we do this to the kids. And then we allow them to split their identity."

For more from Leila Miller, go to LeilaMiller.net. Also, listen to a prior Respect Life Radio interview (in Part 1 and Part 2) with Miller about the book, "Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today's Tough Moral Issues," co-authored with Trent Horn.

Brad Wilcox: The ripple effects from marriage

“Kids raised by their own married biological parents are markedly less likely to have teenage pregnancy and they're markedly more likely to do well in school, go to college, graduate from college; less likely to be arrested, incarcerated,” said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Wilcox also described the “community story” of families that “ripples out and affects our neighbors, our communities and even our country, of course.”

Willis Krumholz: A revolutionary Higher Ed plan

"The reality is that the government — the taxpayers, people listening to this program — you guys subsidize all the stuff that goes on" in higher education, said Willis Krumholz. "It's not just even hiding anymore how anti-Christian, anti-American, pro-Marxist a lot of the teaching is in higher education. It's a real problem."

Krumholz, a fellow at Defense Priorities, wrote an article for The Federalist, titled, "The Right Needs To Adopt This Revolutionary Higher Ed Reform Plan Now."

Helen Raleigh: Standing up to Communist China

"Hong Kong is really the only free place in China," said Helen Raleigh, an author who grew up in Communist China and now lives in Colorado. "People are naturally concerned that should this (extradition) bill pass, Beijing will demand that Hong Kong hand over human rights activists and all the other dissidents. So that's why people took to the streets" in Hong Kong.

Raleigh, who recently wrote an article titled, "China’s ultimate goal is to control American culture, and companies should resist it," also discussed how the National Basketball Association, Apple, Marriott and other U.S. businesses bend to Chinese interests. She also criticized the Vatican's agreement with China on the appointment of bishops, and its effect on the underground Catholic Church there.

Raleigh is a business owner, senior contributor to The Federalist and an immigration policy fellow at the Centennial Institute. Her website is HelenRaleighSpeaks.com and her Twitter handle is @HRaleighspeaks.

Daniel Blomberg: Defending "Religious Liberty for All" at Becket

Becket "is a non-profit law firm that represents people of all faith backgrounds to defend religious liberty for everyone," said Daniel Blomberg, senior counsel at Becket. "From our perspective, if anyone is being denied their religious liberty by the government, then everyone is losing an important part of what religious liberty is. We represent people from all different faith backgrounds, from Anglican to Zoroastrian and everyone in between.

"I personally have represented Muslims and Protestants and Catholics and Sikhs and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Folks from all different backgrounds. The thing that unites them is that they want to serve their God as best they can. In some way, or for some reason, the government is preventing them from doing that."

Blomberg discussed the ongoing case of the Little Sisters of the Poor fighting  against the prior Obama Administration's contraceptive mandate, as well as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship vs. the University of Iowa.

Brian Black: Forming young Catholic men for life and work at Harmel Academy of the Trades

"Harmel Academy of the Trades is a men's Catholic, post-secondary, residential trade school in Grand Rapids, Michigan," said Brian Black, president and co-founder of the new school. "It's open to high school graduates — and young men will enter a program that teaches them a skilled trade, and at the same time, they'll continue to be formed in their humanities education and in their Catholic faith. It's meant to be a college experience but with a trades program training in the mix."

The school, on the Kuyper College campus, is named after Leon Harmel, who "was a successful French Catholic industrialist who led a movement to recognize the dignity and rights of industrial workers," according to the Harmel website. The school is encouraging pre-registration interest at this link, in advance of its admissions process for its first class in the fall of 2020.

"The need for well-formed young men working in the trades is very high," said Black. "The timing is good. But really what we're doing is fleshing out a new mission for the Church."

Jared Staudt: Launching Our Lady of Victory High School

The establishment of Our Lady of Victory High School was "something that was really grass roots, driven by the desire of parents to give their children a fuller education," said R. Jared Staudt, Ph.D., president of the Chesterton Academy of Our Lady of Victory High School. Staudt is also the Director of Formation at the Archdiocese of Denver. 

"We are at the St. Louis school building in Englewood," said Staudt. "We have 20 students, so we actually maxed out for our first year here."

Staudt noted the classical school's emphasis on reading the Great Books and Socratic dialogue, as well as experiential learning, such as the freshman class taking a three-day backpacking trip.

"We really want to emphasize this kind-of hands-on experience of Catholic education, and Catholic culture, more generally. We emphasize spiritual formation, service and the fine arts very heavily," said Staudt of the high school, which is affiliated with the growing Chesterton Schools Network.

"We speak of the trivium and the quadrivium in classical education," said Staudt. "The trivium is just grammar, logic, rhetoric, that is, being able to read a text well and understand it; logic, to be able to think about it, comprehend it, to discern what's true, what's false; and then rhetoric, to be able to talk about it, to be able to write well, to speak effectively. The quadrivium is then applying this logic to the universe. You begin with arithmetic, geometry, extending this into space. Also, music, looking at the mathematical qualities of beauty. And then, astronomy, which is basically the foundation of the sciences, the application of math to the universe."