Power to the People

Our local radio station has been playing this on the air. It's the Indiana University Glee Club, Straight No Chaser, being hilarious and well done all at the same time while they do The Twelve Days of Christmas.

I don't do Advent calendars for the kids (usually because I don't remember to buy them until mid-December), but I found something different in one of my devotional books (How To Forgive When You Don't Feel Like It by June Hunt) that we're doing as a family this year. We started on Dec. 2 (the first day of Advent). On the first day, we each made a list of five things we are grateful to God for. On second day, we wrote four things, the third, three; the fourth, two; and on every day from then until Christmas we'll add one more thing. Molly and Doogie's are heavy on the creature comforts. Mia's veers toward Rudolph, Santa, and Pikachu. Jesse's and mine bounce between the spiritual and material, but yesterday I took another step in counting my trials as joy. I put rheumatoid arthritis on my list for yesterday. There are so many things I never would have tried and so many people I would never have met if not for my illness, so I'm continuing in my quest to praise God in the midst of suffering.

Power to the People by Laura Ingraham is one of the more reasoned and insightful political books I've read this year. Ingraham, a talk radio host, is sick of the government seizing control of education and religion from the people, and she wants things to change. Rather than gripe about the situation, she gives anecdotal evidence and then solid suggestions that anyone can do to change the status quo. Although she does swerve into vitriol on occasion, she is thoughtful without attacking her opponents, unlike Ann Coulter and so many others. Conservatives need many more voices like Ingraham out there. She brings about healthy debate with good ideas for even a small town mom like myself to do. Too many books like these end up as vicious, personal attacks that undermine the very points they are trying to make. Ingraham is assertive without being aggressive, and she makes excellent points. I don't think she's going to change anyone's point of view, but she may help encourage others to make some actual changes. The last chapter on religion was a bit too much preaching to the choir, and I found myself skimming over it, but the rest was a good read.

One excellent point Ingraham made in her book was that feminists and zero population growth advocates are going to go the way of the dinosaur, because they aren't producing children who will carry on with their beliefs. Conservatives, by nature, tend to have more children who are more likely to carry their beliefs into the next generation. It's an interesting thought that the national pendulum may swing back toward conservatism just because of numbers.