TRENDING TODAY

This Women-for-Trump Group Isn’t for Me

For years, mainstream media has pretended that women make up a monolithic, liberal group. A number of years back, one could expect most articles concerning women to include a quote from a NOW (National Organization for Women) spokeswoman despite the fact that it represented its members only, not the totality of women. Conservative women’s groups, no matter how large, were routinely ignored. Today there is still a pretense that abortion rights are a united liberal “woman’s issue” even though the majority of women are not in favor of the radical abortion policies the Left is increasingly espousing.

Portraying President Trump as an enemy of women is part of this media lie. As a female supporter of the president, I would like to add my voice to those women brave enough to make their stand public, despite the bullying that often follows. I eagerly clicked on this article: Women for Trump -There’s No Conceding the ‘Women’s Vote’ to Liberals in 2020.

Unfortunately, I can’t march in this particular parade. As one of their “selling points,” this group mentions President Trump’s support for paid family leave. While it doesn’t diminish my support for the president’s other policies, one of my biggest concerns is how to make sure that the president and members of Congress know how many women think this legislation would be a terrible idea. I certainly do.

How many times do we have to face dire ‘unintended consequences’ before recognizing that when the government imposes social engineering, it usually leads to damaging and expensive costs? If every government program had only its promised and intended result we would be living in Nirvana. We aren’t. In fact, many studies seem to show that, as a population, we are less happy than we used to be.

Yes, women are in the workforce and yes, it is difficult to meld working with having a family. However, no single prototype represents “the working mother.” The government can help by lowering taxes, reducing regulation and encouraging freedom, thereby reducing the cost of living so that everyone can make his or her own free choice. The government promoting one way of life by subsidizing it is the wrong way to go.

I know many young women who wish they could spend their days building their homes, nurturing their marriages, raising their children (and having more children) and being involved in neighborhood and community organizations. They are working because they and their husbands do not see how they can make ends meet on only one salary. Many of these women are accomplished professionals. They enjoy their work and it is valuable. But in a world restricted to 7 days in the week and 24 hours in the day, they cannot have everything. No one can.

These women, of course, are in a different category from women who work in a low-paying jobs, often struggling to support themselves and their children. The government is already responsible for misguided programs that encouraged women to have children outside of marriage. These women would benefit more from education and improving their skills than from being subsidized for having more children. We all make good and bad choices throughout our lives as well as having to live with the hands we are dealt. As a society, living with the consequences of the decisions we make spurs making better decisions. Breaking the link between action and consequence leads us in the wrong direction.

Imagine a couple who marry in their twenties and have a few children. They choose to live on a tight budget so that the wife can be home. Why should they help support someone who chose to emphasize her career during those same years and have her children, let’s say, in her mid-thirties? Did the career woman share her vacations, restaurant meals and fashionable clothing with the stay-at-home mom?

How about individuals who choose not to marry and not to have children? Do they owe something to those who make other choices? As a mother, I have tons of hugs, kisses and priceless moments. I have a family support group as I age. My husband and I (and our community) received many benefits from my not being pulled in two by an outside career. Does that give me the right to demand payment from someone who receives accolades and a substantial paycheck from a career that was her focus? What of the woman who raises her family and then, in her forties, builds a business or enters professional school. Why is her choice deemed second place?

When companies such as Google or Amazon provide employees with campuses rather than office buildings, it isn’t a selfless gesture of goodwill. If workers can exercise, eat, send their clothing to the dry cleaner and take care of all their other needs at the campus, they will put in more hours at work. As private companies this may be very smart management. But people have the option of working there or not. By contrast, when the government sets a policy, citizens don’t have any choice.

Paid family leave is slyly misnamed. It actually puts a premium on work, not family. As a private decision, that is one individuals can make. It is not the government’s place to lay their heavy hand on the scale. Someone has to pay for paid family leave. Whether that is companies who then raise their prices to compensate for higher expenses or taxpayers who pay more, everyone is forced to support the government’s chosen ‘preferred’ category of people—working (out of the home) woman. Guess what? A lot of women would rather prioritize raising the next generation over working in an office. Do we really want to penalize them?

I do support President Trump’s re-election. I do not support family leave legislation. I also guarantee you that if Republicans offer X amount of weeks of leave, the Democrats will offer 2X or 5X or 100X. The end result will be further intrusion into the lives of individuals and the diminishing and demeaning of families. As women who support President Trump, let us acknowledge that we can have different viewpoints on specific policy issues while sharing a love for our country and a belief that, at this time, this is the right man in the right place.

INTRODUCTORY SALE
THE ANCIENT JEWISH WISDOM TV SHOW DOWNLOAD
Access 12 of our favorite shows in minutes.
Each set includes 4 shows.

@ 2 days ago by Susan Lapin

Summer Homework – for Mothers

I loved our family’s summer boating trips for many reasons. Among them was, that as long as my husband and son were willing to heave and ho, I could bring along as much stuff as I wanted. This meant boxes and boxes of books and supplies that I used to plan the coming year’s homeschool.

Doing this in the lazy days of summer was so much fun. I could be swept away by a period of history and spend more hours reading about it than I would ever share with a ten-year-old. I could explore craft ideas and experiments without any pressure to have them ready by the next morning. Most of all, I could imagine that our children would be engaged by everything I was excitedly choosing for us to do. Of course they would want to dissect a cow’s eyeball—who wouldn’t? (That would be each and every one of my children including the future doctor and the future nurse.)

If you are a homeschooling mom who takes things easier in the summer you, too, probably use this time for planning, ordering and organizing. If you are not homeschooling, this time is valuable for you as well. A September reset button allows us to review what worked well and what didn’t over the previous year.

Maybe there were just too many activities and we became chauffeurs more than moms. Maybe our kids’ lives were so structured and busy that they had no time to be creative. Maybe we turned into grumpy crones every afternoon when a hungry family and tired mother faced each other.

Perhaps we read some books out loud and we still hear our children referencing them. Or we might have cut back on screen time, endured grumbles and whines for a few days or weeks and then found that our children were quite able to entertain themselves. Maybe we need to take the time to notice that a child we worried and worried about matured and is in a new and much more pleasant space.

Make some time this summer to think through the past year and plan for the next one. Turn off your auto-pilot and figure out what will work best for each of your children and your family as a whole. Enjoy these precious days before ads for school supplies set you back on a treadmill that may not be the one you want to ride.

If you do want to watch TV, check out our newly downloadable sets
of the Ancient Jewish Wisdom TV Show. (Introductory pricing right now!)

@ 3 days ago by Susan Lapin

Socialism and atheism – why do they go together?

Could you further explain the following passage from your book Business Secrets from the Bible?

“One would have expected the political left to excuse what it calls the “greed” of capitalism and to recognize it as nothing other than Darwinian law applied to the life of modern man. Yet, this is not possible; something as truly spiritual as commerce simply cannot coexist with socialism. The atheist himself recognizes that, to be true to his credo, he must reject the free market because of its godliness.”

Why can’t socialism exist with commerce when socialism also helps those that are less fortunate?

Why would you assume an atheist would reject a free market because of its spirituality when his basis for understanding spirituality is different from yours and he may himself benefit from capitalism if it allows him to benefit himself?

I am trying to test my previous ways of thinking and understand ideas and thought processes that I have never considered before.

Alo

Dear Alo,

We are delighted that you are reading Business Secrets from the Bible so carefully and actually thinking through each point.

We disagree with you that socialism helps those who are less fortunate. Its proponents gain control by promising to do so, but the reality has never matched the promise. As Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons on October 22, 1945,

‘The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.’

The only ones who do not share in the miseries of socialism are those in power. Somehow, they manage to live quite well, even opulently, as those who foolishly bought into their promises suffer, some of them even starving to death. We encourage everyone to learn history from fair and honest sources. Sadly, the information taught in schools and universities today is often neither. Unfortunately, you needn’t restrict yourself to history. Search out information about what is happening in Venezuela and other socialist paradises today.

Now, to get to your main point. We must acknowledge that when we write words such as, “the atheist,” we do not mean to say “each and every atheist.” Individuals do not fall 100% into categories. The atheist philosophy rejects the idea that humans are uniquely touched by the finger of God. We insist that this spiritual distinctiveness is precisely what allows humans to make individual decisions on thousands of large and small subjects. No lion decides to be a vegetarian and no kangaroo chooses to carry her babies on her back rather than in a pouch. People, however, can live not only with great variation but even with inconsistency. By “the atheist” we mean a philosophical idea rather than a specific person.

Also, you refer to spirituality whereas we tend to talk of Judeo-Christian Biblical thought. Sometimes spirituality is a word used as a synonym for “new age” thinking. We are talking of the set of Bible-based values that created the wealth and freedom of western civilization.

In 1000 AD the world’s population was about 200 million. Life was short, and dangerous for almost everyone. Disease and poverty were rampant. Even kings lived far worse than a lower-income individual in a large western city today. Yet, in less than a millennium, global population has grown to over five billion people the overwhelming majority of whom live in a state of health and comfort their ancestors could only dream of. According to David Landes an economic historian who is not in any way a religious man or Bible believer, this astounding progress is largely due to Judeo-Christian Biblical thinking

We see how a secular society grants full license to concupiscent behavior because it recognizes it as barnyard behavior and views us as no more than sophisticated animals. Regarding money however, its spiritual nature–no animal understands money–causes discomfort to the secularist. It’s no coincidence that atheistic societies have never succeeded in building effective economies. Nobody can succeed at something he deep down considers to be morally reprehensible.

In our writings, CDs, appearances and DVDs, we make the point that money is spiritual. We cannot condense thousands of words into a short few sentences here. But, when a society doesn’t acknowledge that money is spiritual then it is left to treat making it as immoral and selfish. It needs to reject the free market and capitalism. This, unfortunately, plays out in history over and over again.

Keep reading and asking questions,

Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin

New! New! New! Special Introductory Price this week.

You can now download these favorite episodes of the
Ancient Jewish Wisdom TV Show
(for a better understanding of the answer above, watch this show on Volume 1:
Physical and Spiritual – What do those words really mean?)

Available in both standard and high definition

@ 4 days ago by Rabbi Daniel And Susan Lapin

Do the First Time Right!

Do it right the first time! How many times have you heard those words? How many times have you uttered that phrase? You’ve heard it from your parents, from your educators and from your boss at work. You’ve said it to your children, to anyone you’ve been responsible for training, and to your employees.

Why should I do it right the first time? We all know the standard answer: because it will take more time and money to redo it than it would have taken to do it right the first time.

Whether it is Boeing, Airbus or any other manufacturer, it takes about 100,000 man-years to design, test, and build a commercial airliner. Typically that means a team of perhaps 10,000 engineers working for ten years or 20,000 professionals working for five years. This helps us understand why total development costs for a brand-new plane can run as high as ten billion dollars.

In 2010 it became clear to Boeing that they needed to offer their airline customers an aircraft powered by a new type of jet engine which was larger, more powerful, and more fuel efficient. Apparently, they spent a few months trying to decide whether to commit to a multi-year new airplane development program or whether to find a way to fit the new engines onto the wings of the venerable 737.

In the summer of 2011, Boeing’s biggest customer, American Airlines, announced that they were purchasing over 400 new planes. Since they wanted the new, efficient engines, they planned on buying hundreds of planes from Boeing’s competitor, Airbus, which had already placed an airliner powered by the new engines on the market. This forced Boeing’s hand and they decided to retool the 737 to accept the new engines.

Boeing’s earliest test flights revealed that the extra power of the new engines could force the nose of the 737MAX upwards under certain conditions. This was because the fifty-year-old airplane was designed for smaller engines. The famed airplane company decided on a software fix which they called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System). The flight computers were programed to adjust the flight attitude of the airplane whenever the nose tended to pitch upwards. Without even notifying the pilot, the computers would momentarily push the airplane’s nose down towards the ground. A better solution would have been aerodynamic changes to the ancient airframe, but they would have taken much longer and cost far more.

Two planes crashed (October 2018 and March 2019) and 346 lives were lost. Regulatory agencies around the world grounded the 737MAX last March. Optimistic voices at Boeing predicted the plane would regain its airworthiness certification no later than April 2019. At this time, it is all but certain that the plane will not fly before 2020.

The reason I told you this long sad story is because, though it is hard to be precise and Boeing is not talking, it is certain that the entire financial cost to Boeing of the 737MAX calamity is fast approaching the 10 billion dollars that it would have cost the company to develop a brand new plane in the first place. That is not counting the cost of the damage to Boeing’s brand reputation or the harder to quantify yet more important cost of the human tragedy. Yes, indeed, do it right the first time because it will be harder/more expensive/take longer to fix.

Here comes a great big but. But that isn’t always true. There are some things just not important enough to take the extra time to do right if doing it quickly and cheaply will work 80% of the time. The lad mows the lawn but omits the challenging bits near flower beds and tree trunks. His father might notice or he might not. If he does, he might ask his son to fix it or he might not. And if he asks his son to fix it, it won’t take that much longer than doing it earlier. In this case, in his own interests, the young man made the logical choice.

For years already software companies have put out products far from ready for the market. They certainly did not do it right the first time. On the contrary, they counted upon early users to be unpaid fault finders. Astute consumers quickly learned never to purchase the first release of a new software product. Obviously, their “Do NOT do it right the first time” policy paid off because the practice persisted.

Doing it right the first time is often but not always the best strategy. But doing the first time right is always the right thing to do. (Reading those sentences aloud will help you see the difference.)

Let me explain. Of his own volition, Joshua prohibited Israel from taking spoils when they conquered the city of Jericho. (Joshua 6:18) However, Israel was allowed to plunder the next city they conquered, Ai.

You shall treat Ai… as you treated Jericho…
however, you may take the spoil and the cattle as booty for yourselves…
(Joshua 8:2)

It puzzles us why Joshua considered it important not to seize booty from Jericho. God even went along with Joshua’s prohibition including bringing major disaster upon all of Israel because one man, Achan, helped himself to a few items from Jericho. As a result, their attack on the second target city, Ai, turned into a catastrophe.

Here’s why Joshua prohibited plunder at Jericho. That ancient walled city was the first objective in what would be Israel’s long battle for their country. Joshua wanted the enterprise of capturing Jericho to contain no moral imperfection. The army of Israel was to attack the city with no personal considerations but, rather, only in response to God’s directions. No soldier should be thinking of what he might plunder.

Achieving moral perfection in that first capture would set the tone for future military campaigns. Doing it right the first time is often important but doing the first time right is always important. It builds morale for the future.

One’s entire career can gain a boost from the way we treat our very first job. It can be viewed as a special opportunity to do it right, thereby creating an internal sense of professional dedication which can become a lasting part of one’s personality. Many who later fail treated their first job with disdain.

One’s first act of physical intimacy with another human being of the opposite gender can be done right. It can be performed within the holy covenant of marriage thereby conferring a unique incandescence upon that marriage. There is no shortage of published (but unpopular) information on the advantages enjoyed by marriages entered into by two virgins. Yes, doing the first time right always makes a real difference.

Whether establishing a new relationship, starting one’s first business, or experiencing any other undertaking for the first time, doing it right sets up the future for success.

Some of us may be past most of life’s firsts, but there are younger people in our orbits whom we are capable of influencing. They have heard the oft-repeated aphorism of do it right the first time. But doing the first time right will be a new and novel lesson for them to hear and for you to impart.

We are doing something for the first time and we certainly hope we are doing it right. With the advances in technology we are stepping into the realm of MP4 downloads – in other words, video downloads. You can now access all three volumes of our Ancient Jewish Wisdom TV Show (4 shows per volume) by downloading in either standard or high definition format. Take advantage of our introductory sale pricing on this great new addition to our store.

Introductory Sale!
Download the Ancient Jewish Wisdom TV Show Sets
(Choose standard or high definition)

@ 5 days ago by Rabbi Daniel Lapin

THOUGHT TOOLS

Do the First Time Right! July 15, 2019 by Rabbi Daniel Lapin - Do it right the first time! How many times have you heard those words? How many times have you uttered that phrase? You’ve heard it from your parents, from your educators and from your boss at work. You’ve said it to your children, to anyone you’ve been responsible for training, and to your employees. Why… Read More

ASK THE RABBI

Socialism and atheism – why do they go together? July 16, 2019 by Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin - Could you further explain the following passage from your book Business Secrets from the Bible? "One would have expected the political left to excuse what it calls the “greed” of capitalism and to recognize it as nothing other than Darwinian law applied to the life of modern man. Yet, this is not possible; something as… Read More

SUSAN’S MUSINGS

This Women-for-Trump Group Isn’t for Me July 18, 2019 by Susan Lapin - For years, mainstream media has pretended that women make up a monolithic, liberal group. A number of years back, one could expect most articles concerning women to include a quote from a NOW (National Organization for Women) spokeswoman despite the fact that it represented its members only, not the totality of women. Conservative women’s groups,… Read More

ON OUR MIND

Join Us in Prayer July 15, 2019 by Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin - Most of the time in formal Jewish life, men and women are referred to as, “So and so, the son/daughter of (insert father’s first name). So, on a marriage contract or when a man is called up to the Torah that is the nomenclature that is used. The exception is when we are beseeching God… Read More