Free Republic

Unintended Consequences: How the “relevant” church and segregating youth is killing Christianity. I recently spent six-months doing a rotation as a hospital chaplain. One day I received a page (Yes, hospitals actually still use pagers). Chaplains are generally called to the rooms of people who look ill: People gray with kidney disease, or yellow with liver failure, discouraged amputees, nervous cancer patients. In this room, however, was a strikingly attractive 23 year-old young lady sitting up cheerfully in the hospital bed, holding her infant daughter and chatting with family and friends. Confused, I stepped outside and asked her nurse, “Why...

A (New) Lost Generation: As the media focus on a slight drop in unemployment, an ugly trend gets ignored: the declining participation of young Americans in the job market. We'll pay for this for decades to come. We keep hearing the job market is "improving" or even "solid," with 162,000 new positions created in July and unemployment falling to 7.4%, the lowest since 2008. But one group is sitting it out. And it's the one that most enthusiastically embraced Barack Obama in both of his presidential elections: America's young. Their unemployment rate is a shocking 16.1%. Increasingly, those ages 18...

As high schools and universities turn out more and more students (like George Mason University), I felt it was time to review the economic environment facing the young people in the US, aka “Millennials.” My conclusion? This is no country for young people. At least in the current state of affairs. Let’s start with healthcare premiums under the “affordable” healthcare act. According to a study by the American Action Forum, 45% of respondents who are currently covered report they would no longer purchase health insurance and would instead pay the penalty each year if their premium costs increase 30% in...

If you’re a young person who happens to be reading this and you somehow have yet to figure out that our esteemed president’s crowning legislative achievement relies directly on you volunteering to pay what in many cases will amount to at least a couple thousand more dollars a year for a health insurance plan that you in all likelihood will not need to use very much… then you really haven’t been paying attention.That’s a couple thousand dollars you should’ve/would’ve/could’ve used as part of a down payment for a house or a car, for payments on your student loans, or just...

Officials in Long Beach, California are warning residents about a potential “bash mob” possibly planned for Friday afternoon. Bash mobs are unruly crowds that group together to race through streets committing petty crimes such as assault and property damage, reports CBS LA. One of these mobs happened in downtown Long Beach on July 9, and investigators discovered another one planned for 2 p.m. today, July 19. “The Long Beach Police Department takes this issue very seriously and will be prepared to arrest anyone whose intent is to commit criminal acts,” Long Beach Police Sgt. Aaron Eaton said. “We will continue...

Late last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the homicide rate for those 10 to 24 years of age has hit a 30-year low. Let’s credit USA TODAY for running an article on this news while acknowledging that this report was lost in the tireless news coverage of the George Zimmerman trial verdict. One of the cable news networks may have put an expert on air about the positive results of this study, but I doubt it. There’s not much drama in statistics, after all, especially those showing that things are safer.The CDC study echoed...

This Is For Trayvon !! Baltimore police say they are investigating a witness account that a group of black youths beat a Hispanic man near Patterson Park Sunday while saying, "This is for Trayvon."

When the last reports came out showing that youth unemployment had reached 16.2 % in the United States, alarm bells began to be heard in some quarters. This is more than double the rate of unemployment of the adult population. The rate is fast approaching the average youth unemployment rate in Europe which stands at approximately 24%. Can we learn from the European experience? Using data compiled by the economic freedom indices of the Fraser Institute in Canada, and the Heritage Foundation, in the United States, we recently looked at how economic freedom, labor regulations, social spending, and regulatory climate,...

Starting in 2014, Obamacare will attempt to get almost every American to obtain health insurance. The system desperately needs healthy young people, millions of whom don’t have health insurance, to sign up because their money is needed to subsidize treatment for older, sicker Americans. But will they? Young people will be asked to buy policies that don’t reflect the low risk they have of getting sick. Obamacare allows health insurers to vary premiums based on age, but they can charge older customers only up to three times as much as healthy young customers, while most insurers have as much as...

The Obama administration has been doing a pretty poor job hiding their desperation when it comes to convincing the young people that they need to subsidize the entire system that they should sign up for insurance through ObamaCare — because without getting them to pay more money into the system than they’ll actually need to use, that whole “affordable� thing is going to fall apart pretty quickly.The White House and ObamaCare’s supporters are mounting a full-scale campaign to tout the law’s supposed benefits and convince Americans to sign up en masse, and according to a new poll from the Kaiser...

Media outlets lately have emphasized the challenge of enticing healthy young adults to sign up for ObamaCare, "exactly the type of person insurance plans, states and the federal government are counting on to make health reform work," as the L.A. Times put it. These pieces are useful as far as they go, but miss a key point that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito managed to convey in many fewer words during last year's Supreme Court argument on ObamaCare. Mr. Alito pointed out that young, healthy adults today spend an average of $854 a year on health care. ObamaCare would require...

A repudiation of my “tea partiers aren’t that libertarian� thesis or an illustration of it?We won’t know until there’s a Republican in the White House again.All of the numbers are extraordinary there, but the most eye-popping is the fact that the only other partisan segment that agrees with TPers that Snowden’s FISA/PRISM leak was in the public interest are … liberals. In a separate question, Pew asked people if they would feel “violated� if they knew that the government had collected their data; then they divided the results up by various demographics — sex, race, age, education, partisanship, you name...

Youths surround Pope Francis as he meets with students from Jesuit schools June 7 in Paul VI hall at the Vatican. (CNS/Reuters) By Carol GlatzCatholic News Service VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis ditched a 1,250-word prepared speech to students saying it would be "a tad boring" to read out loud and opted instead to just quickly hit the high points and spend the rest of the time answering people's questions. "Would you like that?" he asked as some 9,000 students, alumni and teachers from Jesuit-run schools and associations in Italy and Albania yelled "Yes" with cheers and applause....

Tulsa’s largest United Methodist church is considering dropping its scouting program after the Boy Scouts of America decided to allow homosexual boys to participate. “We’re leaning in that direction. I don’t know exactly what we’ll do,” said the Rev. Tom Harrison, senior pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church, 6767 S. Mingo Road. The Boy Scouts’ decision can be troubling for troop-sponsoring churches whose denominations oppose the practice of homosexuality. The United Methodist Church, a major supporter of Boy Scouts, has maintained that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. “We find this to be a very troubling decision,”...

A new postmortem on the November elections from the nation’s leading voice for college Republicans offers a searing indictment of the GOP “brand” and the major challenges the party faces in wooing young voters, according to a copy given exclusively to POLITICO on Sunday. The College Republican National Committee on Monday made public a detailed report — the result of extensive polling and focus groups — dissecting what went wrong for Republicans with young voters in the 2012 elections and how the party can improve its showing with that key demographic in the future. It’s not a pretty picture. In...

Tonight! Inaugural Friday Night National Muster of the Young Minutemen of America 9 pm Eastern - 712-432-3566 - 340794# All of good will are welcome!

It was a wreck so devastating that at first investigators thought two cars had been involved. The gray Infiniti G35 hit a tree in the center median at a speed that split the car in half. It landed in separate pieces on the road. The driver, Abdulrahman Alyahyan, did not have a California license, according to DMV spokesman Artemio Armenta. … Alyahyan visited the DMV twice – most recently in February – and both times was rejected for a learner's permit, the spokesman said…. Alyahyan came from Saudi Arabia four years ago, and was not able to prove he was...

In addition to the horrendous beheading of a British soldier in Woolwich by Muslim terrorists, Stockholm's suburbs have seen riots for the last four nights, with car burnings and crowds throwing rocks at the police, reminiscent of the recurring riots in France. Who are these rioters? The story on the Huffington Post has the following descriptions: "Gangs of youth... Around 50 youths...The youths set light to a parking garage... masked youths hurling rocks.... One policeman was attacked by youths." On the Bloomberg article with a link on Drudge, the rioters are described as "stone-throwing youths." The Washington Post: "Some 200...

Tales of newborn babies struggling for life before Dr. Kermit Gosnell allegedly snipped their spinal cords at his Philadelphia clinic haven't dramatically altered public opinion on abortion, a poll released Friday by Gallup finds. Forty-eight percent of respondents told Gallup they were "pro-life" and 45 percent said they were "pro-choice." This indicates a closer divide than in 2012, when a Gallup poll found the "pro-choice" position sinking to an all-time low of 41 percent support. The results indicate shades of gray for people who identify with the "pro-life" or "pro-choice" labels. Twenty-six percent of respondents said all abortions should be...

May 9, 2013 – Much ink has been spilled in recent months over what social analysts are calling the “rise of the Nones.” The trend describes the seeming surge in people who claim no faith or say they are unaffiliated with any belief system. The term rose to prominence when a Pew Research poll found that the number of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated rose to almost 20%—a nearly 5% leap in just the last five years. In the subsequent months, a Gallup poll showed similar numbers, and most recently, in March 2013, a poll from UC-Berkeley and Duke University...

Twitter has reduced historical memory to minutes, but think back to what had the political class atwitter last week. Back then the air filled with worry on the left that Barack Obama was losing his juice after the gun-control setback, the sequester backfire and the Syrian red-line roll-up. The left can breathe easy. Conservatives this week, clearly over the funk of losing to him last November, have resumed their favorite political blood sport: Tearing each other apart. The conservative tribes are at it again over that most ancient of all grievances: immigration. Here's the rub: Just as this self-immolating civil...

Inside a Mouse's Brain Lies a Chemical Key to the Fountain of Youth By Greg Thomas Source image via Wikipedia If a scientist came to you with a plan to tweak a gland in the center of your brain so that you may live to be 140 years old, you'd probably back out of the room slowly and go to file a police report, because that's creepy. But new research shows that it's not altogether impossible. A new report from researchers at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx shows that scientists can tinker with the minds of...

(Vatican Radio) It was truly a day to remember for 44 people who had come to St Peter’s Square to be confirmed by the Pope. The special Mass on Sunday was organized as part of the Year of Faith and those who received the Sacrament of Confirmation had come from all over the world to be in the Square. During his homily Pope Francis offered the thousands of people gathered and in particular those being confirmed three short reflections. The Holy Father began by recalling the second reading in Sunday’s liturgy which describes the vision of St John. Pope Francis...

“What’s the matter with Kansas?” syndrome of young people voting against their economic interests. Thus follows the constant courting of the hip and cool Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Lena Dunham, Occupy Wall Streeters, and others who blend pop culture, sex, youth, energy, and fad — almost anything to avoid the truth that today’s teenagers are starting out each owing a lifetime share of the national debt amounting to more than three-quarters of a million dollars. Those who ran up the debt enjoyed the borrowing, but won’t be around to pay back their proverbial fair share.

Pyongyang, April 10 (KCNA) -- An oath-taking meeting of young people took place before the statues of Generalissimos Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on Mansu Hill Wednesday. They vowed to uphold the leadership of the dear respected Marshal Kim Jong Un with loyalty, true to the behests of the great Generalissimos. Laid before the statues were a floral basket in the name of the participants in the meeting and flowers. Jon Yong Nam, chairman of the Central Committee of the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League, read out a letter of pledge. Thanks to the pure loyalty and...

Stephen Schaetzle, college student and Navy reservist didn’t know what was in store early Wednesdaywhen the little kid in a red Liberty Day t-shirt with Betsy Ross flag on the back, asked for a minute of his time. A good sport, he submitted to being politely grilled on the Constitution by Claire Byrnes, fifth grader. It didn’t go so well. “I haven’t a clue,” Schaetzle replied when she asked what the requirements are to be a U.S. Congressman. Sympathetically, she handed him a mini-version of the Constitution and asked him to read the answer: be at least 25 years of...

<p>It is popular wisdom that President Obama’s progressive social agenda is predicated on widespread support from the younger, hip generation. Certainly, concerns like gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, the DREAM Act, gun control, women in combat, and blocking gas and oil exploration and pipeline transportation all get a lot of play on campuses and in popular culture. And these wedge issues supposedly represent the future direction of the country — a wise agenda for liberals eager to cement a majority constituency for decades to come.</p>

22.9%: The unemployment rate for Americans under age 25, adjusting for the decline in the labor force since the start of the recession. Perhaps no group has been hit harder by the recession and grinding recovery than the young. The official unemployment rate for those under age 25 is 16.2%, more than double the rate for the population as a whole. In percentage terms, unemployment has fallen far more slowly for young people than for the wider population. Those figures actually understate the severity of the problem, however. The government only considers people “unemployed” if they’re actively looking for work....

Exactly the same reason Obama doesn't like  small business OR teen workers I guess... could contaminate the NEA's K-12 brainwashing As KGB/Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov made clear, America's public education system -which demoralizes kids and keeps them pliable/stupid- has been infiltrated by low standards of achievement/morality + communist doctrine for decades now. The self-hating, unthinking drones it was meant to produce have already helped to elect Barack Obama -as dangerous a post turtle as there's ever been- to the most powerful office in the world, great. But 13 years of far-left indoctrination by the neo-Soviet zombies of the NEA are apparently...

The Department of Labor estimates that some three million Americans with Bachelor degrees work in jobs that don’t require an education at all–janitors, barristas, bartenders and retail clerks.There are a lot of obvious reasons why junior is now living in your basement at age 25.

Hollywood, the mainstream media and the public school system are all almost entirely controlled by people and groups friendly to the Democrat Party. Yet and still, even with that almost overwhelming advantage, Democrats can't do any better than a rough parity with the Republicans. If the tables were turned and the GOP controlled what you see on TV, in the news and what your kids are taught at school the same way the Democrats do, the Republican Party would win every presidential election and would permanently maintain unassailable majorities in Congress. So, why aren't the Democrats running away with every...

Just after November’s election, I posed three paradoxes of American politics, asking why certain demographic groups make up reliable voting blocs for the left, even though the pro-free-market ideas of the right have so much to offer them. I have begun to revisit these paradoxes. In part one of this series, I laid out the case for why the pro-free-market right needs to reclaim these key demographic groups—young people, racial minorities, and city dwellers—and why I regard these as natural constituencies for the free market whose lockstep voting for the left is a paradox. In this installment, I take up...

Students were well known for their strong opinions at the time, and in that fashion not much has changed. Universities are still a place where feelings are expressed, points of view stated, and every side is convinced, without a doubt, that they are right. Groups gather with home-made signs and shout chants that are spun from the issues at hand. They want their voices heard, and they should. That, within itself, is not the topic of my thoughts today, but rather the disturbing lack of knowledge and education on the subjects for which they speak and protest that seems to...

Glenn Beck just talked about this on his show, I managed to find it online. Here is the full text: I welcome the intention of the German Youth Movement to devote a special issue of their Magazine to the subject of England, and I gladly accept the invitation to contribute to a project which I regard as a sign of the growing desire for mutual understanding between our two countries. In writing to you, the young manhood and young womanhood of Germany, I need to remind you that you are, in the words of the poet Shakespeare, "The expectancy and...

In-N-Out owner Lynsi Torres, is 30-years-old with no college degree and no formal business training. But she has been called the youngest billionaire in America. Lynsi Torres inherited a California icon when she was given half ownership of Baldwin Park native In-N-Out burger when she turned 30 last year. This week, Bloomberg Magazine named Torres the youngest, wealthiest woman in America, given that she will receive full ownership of the estimated $1.1 billion burger empire when she turns 35. Torres inherited the In-N-Out empire from her grandparents, Harry and Esther Snyder who founded the Christian-themed chain in 1948 with their...

The Ocean Springs high cheerleaders. The Ocean Springs High School varsity cheerleading squad competed in the UCA World Cheerleading Championship competition over the past weekend at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. The Greyhounds placed second in the National Championship and took the grand prize in the World Championship.

In light of the skyrocketing popularity of Mormonism in the United States helped along by the Broadway Musical, "The Book of Mormon", Mitt Romney and your nice Mormon neighbors I thought it would be good to recycle this five year old article I wrote. The thesis? Mormons do better youth ministry than the average Protestant church! Read on and see if you agree with me… "Let's face it. Most of us look at the clean cut Mormon missionaries that peddle the streets of our city and knock on the doors of our houses as somewhat out of date. Although they...

Yesterday, thousands of members of the site Reddit answered the question, "What was your biggest "holy **** why haven't I done this sooner" moment?" At the time this article was written, the question had an astounding 14,815 answers... Decidedly more controversial answers, particularly illegal ones, garnered much more approval, however. Unsurprisingly, the answer "pot" received a tremendous amount of "upvotes," which show mutual agreement from other members. User dogslike us responded to the question, in part: Then at 22 I tried pot. Sooo much better than alcohol. At the time of publication, this comment had received more than 3,000 upvotes....

Check out the news anchor power-pose! Foxy blogger/journalist/libertarian commentator Michelle Fields and All-American hero Col Allen West have been brought together by Pajamas Media for a major new online project, the former US Congressman announced on Fox News' On the Record.  The new initiative -to be called NextGeneration.TV- is a reach-out to young conservatives/libertarians, sounds like a superb idea, and what a great paring: we need him out there fighting for us on the front lines -a fresh youth offensive is sorely needed on the right- and I've always said Michelle's going places: ______________________________________________________________ West: To have been the first black Republican member...

h/t Theresa

It might seem easy to say, “you get what you vote for,” to the millions of young voters who supported President Obama and now can’t find work. But, with a record number of young Americans becoming homeless, blaming the victim of President Obama’s well-crafted rhetoric doesn’t seem right. In one of his last campaign speeches, President Obama told a crowd of people at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, “We tried our ideas; they worked. The economy grew. We created jobs.” This sham President Obama cooked-up is nothing short of immoral for the millions of young Americans that have been living in...

A recent article on Yahoo extolled “The Benefits of Marrying Later in Life.� The writer, who waited until age 46 to marry, listed the benefits of delaying marriage:– Learning to love herself and accept her self-worth – Time to become her own person – Benefit of knowing who she is – Experiencing life as her own complete personWith all due respect to the author, her list looks like a recipe for perpetual singleness. A decade or more of doing what’s best for “me” and learning to love and complete “myself� is not the best way to prepare for the...

Obama's Eviction Notice: November 2012 "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." --Adolf Hitler, Quoted in John Toland, "Adolf Hitler", p22 4. The hand sign on the right is that made by The hands of the Führer Adolf Hitler as he organized his speech. This picture captures Hitler's hands as he speaks of the unity...

  "German Islamists Target Youth on the Internet" By Christoph Sydow 11/01/2012 "Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan." PHOTO CAPTION: "A growing community of German-speaking Islamists has developed on the Internet. Aiming to find new recruits, they glorify jihad and call for attacks on Germany. A new study warns that such online propaganda might foster a new generation of terrorists." SNIPPET: "International terrorist groups like al-Qaida recognized the importance of the Internet for recruiting new supporters early on." SNIPPET: "Intelligence services can also take advantage of the anonymity of Internet forums to deliberately plant false information or obtain insider...

Recently, nature punished us for our fossil fuel burning with hurricane Sandy; ask any science enthusiast, like Meghan McCain. Some people deny global warming exists, but that is foolish. It’s been proven. It is settled science. Globes have been warmed in science labs. And now we’re getting hit with massive hurricanes because… warming. It’s science — you don’t have to understand it, you just have to fear it. If we continue to pump carbon into the air, we will be hit by frequent hurricanes, flooding of the coasts, and men in white lab coats yelling at us and calling us...

AP's already picked through the gruesome national exit polling from Tuesday. I'd like to highlight one additional piece of data that is especially interesting: According to CNN's figures, Mitt Romney actually won white Millenials (18-29 year olds) by seven points, 51-44, despite losing the broader demographic by 23 points. (McCain lost young voters by 35 points in 2008). Virtually all of Romney's gains within this age bracket came from young whites. He got absolutely demolished by young people of color; losing young Hispanics by 51 points, and young blacks by 83 points. The specific age breakdown of Asian voters isn't...

I spent a great time talking to my sweet, but sometimes clueless daughters about the impact of this election. They tend to see themselves as more progressive - pro gay marriage, global warming, etc... (before you guys flame away, please know I did my best -- this is college academic influence on them). The sense I get from them and from my conversations today with friends and acquaintances, is that there seems to be a overwhelming atmosphere of regret or to be more graphic and explicit...an oh s__t, what did we just do attitude. I don't see an in-your-face hurrah...

October 7, 2012Share Homeland Security graduates first Corps of Homeland Youth October 7, 2012. Vicksburg. The federal government calls them FEMA Corps. But they conjure up memories of the Hitler Youth of 1930’s Germany. Regardless of their name, the Dept of Homeland Security has just graduated its first class of 231 Homeland Youth. Kids, aged 18-24 and recruited from the President’s AmeriCorp volunteers, they represent the first wave of DHS’s youth corps, designed specifically to create a full time, paid, standing army of FEMA Youth across the country. On September 13, 2012, the Dept of Homeland Security graduated its first...

In the mid and late 90s, Japan experienced a deep recession that was mainly rooted in a collapse of land and property prices and the aftermath of sovereign debt crises in other East Asian countries.Riva Fromovich points us to a 2000 study by The University of Tokyo's Yuji Genda of what happened to Japanese youth during the recession. It is ugly.First, the hiring rate of new graduates relative to the initial number of employees, using human resource stock variables as explanatory variables in a regression analysis:Click to enlarge. Yuji GendaGenda:The hiring rate of new graduates relative to the initial number of employees is signi�cantly lower at establishments...

According to a recent study, religion is dying in America. And it’s a trend that has grave implications for our politics, culture, and the fate of our civilization. Ben Fearnow of CBS News reports on the story, writing: ...The study also posits some theories for this burgeoning irreligiosity, which, writes Fearnow, “run the gamut from a backlash against the entanglement of religion and politics to a global relationship between economic development and secularization.” Now, I don’t know if that “gamut” includes the obvious, but these two theories miss the mark. Question: Do we wonder why Pakistan is spawning jihadists when...