Midnight thought on economics: Leverage

A year ago, I promised myself that I would never apply for another minimum wage job ever again for the rest of my life.

I just listened to a podcast by a wealthy man who, as a teenager, decided to never work for a minimum wage. He cut grass instead because he knew he would get paid double of what his friends were making working at burger king.

So, I'm not crazy after all, and cleaning houses for a living has really changed my financial situation for the better.

Gives me more time and money to work on bigger things. This concept is called leverage.

More on that later.

Feelings vs Living

In the link below, Albany Rose, a post-abortive mother, says something that I find interesting.
She said pro-choicers seem to think that pro-lifers who stand and pray/advocate in front of abortion clinics make the women "choosing" to abort "feel bad." I find this interesting, because that accusation has been leveled at me--albeit in a polite manner.

I was asked to speak on the radio and invite the general populace to join a local pro-life advocacy group in a Lent-long, prayerful, silent protest in front of one of Guam's abortion clinics. I was asked to send out a news release to the different radio hosts to see who would have me on their show.

One of the radio hosts, who knew me personally, was disturbed by the goal of the news release and the topic I wished to address on the air. He was concerned that I would make people feel bad. "Please dont do this," he said.

It stumped me at first. Oh, yes, you're right. Dont want to make these poor pregnant mothers feel worse than they already do. Abortion is a "hard" choice to make. People are desperate...

But I had to snap out of it. Abortion isn't about "choice" or about whether someone's feelings might get hurt.

Abortion--legal abortion--is about legally having one's offspring killed. And that reality simply outweighs whether someone's feelings are hurt or not. It outweighs everything. If we wish to uphold the integrity of a mother, then the integrity of her child must be upheld as well. And I would hate for a woman to have to compromise her dignity by being involved, in any way, with an abortion. And if she has already suffered in that way, than I want to protect her--and another innocent child--from going through it again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNWUaZQG7RI

Abortion is Never Safe

I actually had this thought before I read the text on this photo.

I know people who believe in the "rare and safe abortion" myth. Even a part of me thought, "Well, sure, it's safer, if the doctor uses sterilized medical tools and chops up the child carefully without perforating the uterus." 

But then, that realization that, even for me, is hard to make sometimes (it's amazing what being steeped in a corrupted culture can do to the subconscious mind) finally broke through: 

Abortion is NEVER safe. A "successful" abortion is always fatal.

There are some powerful, and probably deliberate flaws in the pro-choice rhetoric. And it is the flaws that we are battling, and not really much else. The Devil can only work through lies. These lies are powerful, because they do creep into your subconscious. They block you from using your common sense: Instead of automatically mentally seeing the unborn and thinking, "Abortion is never safe," I only thought of the person I could physically see (the mother) and thought, "Yeah, sure, it could be safe," and that's exactly how the abortion farce has been able to thrive all these years.

Remove the thought impediments. Reverse the flawed logic. The Devil knows you are a threat to his lies.

Yom HaShoah

I chose Miriam.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/downloads/names_2010.asp

how do i choose?
how
do i
choose?
im scrolling and scrolling
as if the list never ends.
and it doesn't.
their face will be mine for a while--
online, anyway.
but how do i choose
e pleribus unum?
and there ARE so many,
whom we shouldn't forget.
yom haShoah.

#holocaustremembrance

God's Will in the Little Things

I get days when I feel like God's just leading me around by the hand (or by the ear), helping me do His will.

Today was one of those days, because, before today, I was freaking out about having enough supplies for my pro-life display at a 5k this evening.

The final product was exactly what it needed to be, and I knew that God had taken it into His own hands. This was apparent to me because hardly anybody asked for or would receive any of the variety of pamphlets I had scraped together.

But I could tell that people were aware of our presence, and taking in the information written on our signs, and experiencing some kind of effect when they saw our pro-life banner.

God used my presence as a pro-lifer just the way He wanted to.

I hope I can always try to be receptive of His lead, and it's easy to do when you don't let your anxieties get in the way.

Botched and Bucketed

I get a kick out of watching stuff like Divergent and Hunger Games because I know that stuff like what you see in this picture is actually happening, and the government doesn't need a syrum or a game designer to do it.

http://www.catholicsistas.com/2012/04/05/baby-drowned-in-bucket-after-failed-abortion/

Why Am I Pro-life?

I've had to ask myself the question: Why am I pro-life? 

I guess in the midsts of starting a crisis pregnancy centre and doing pro-life advocacy work, you start to--ironically--lose your sense of purpose, your sense of direction. Or maybe this is just something that happens as you grow up, and you start to forget some of the subconscious convictions you held onto before adulthood started to occupy most of your brain cells. 

It's okay, though, because, while you're sitting around, browsing Facebook when you should be in bed, you can come across stories that somehow reteach you who you are and why you do what you do.

This man in the picture...

...he didn't have to do what he did.

In fact, if you had been his neighbour, you might have felt a little uncomfortable, if you knew that he was forging illegal travel passes for Jews who were trying in escape Nazi persecution. He was a Japanese diplomat, living in Lithuania at the time of the Holocaust. He put himself out there: he risked his life for the lives of others. He was married; had a nice job, I would think. But he risked it all. For people he didn't even know; for people in a country he wasn't even from. He saved 6,000 lives, and he didn't want to stop, even as he was leaving the country.

Someone asked my friend the other day,supposedly to combat her pro-life view, if she had ever thought of the legal repercussions of making abortion illegal. Imagine all the mothers and doctors, for example, who might be prosecuted for having been involved in an abortion.

It's easy for a point like that to make a person go cross-eyed for a minute. Gee, I've never thought about that. Well, that's because it's the last thing you're thinking about when children are being aborted by the thousands every single day in America alone. All arguments are irrelevant when you try to answer the only question that counts:

What is an abortion?

As a pro-lifer, I'm trying to make sure that people don't get hurt, no matter the cost, even though I don't have to. I could shut up and hide instead (I'm often tempted to). But, I'm trying to be like the guy in the picture. It was illegal to help the Jews. He could have been shot in his own home. I'm not going to retract my stance or my efforts overs scruples any more than he would have stopped forging to save his own life.

Besides, it is the law that has taught women and doctors to view abortion as a legal right, just as Hitler taught his people that exterminating the Jews was their moral obligation. We didn't give every single German soldier the firing squad for being involved in the Holocaust, but we definitely took their leaders to task. 

The government of a  nation that destroys it's own people cannot last. People like you, me and Sugihara have to remember the bottom line.

Think about it.

Anyway, that's why I'm pro-life.

Facebook photo caption:

Chiune Sugihara. This man saved 6000 Jews. He was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sugihara risked his life to start issuing unlawful travel visas to Jews. He hand-wrote them 18 hrs a day. The day his consulate closed and he had to evacuate, witnesses claim he was STILL writing visas and throwing from the train as he pulled away. He saved 6000 lives. The world didn’t know what he’d done until Israel honored him in 1985, the year before he died.
http://www.gdfalksen.com/post/38576888989