John Stonestreet – Page 67

Dads on Duty

Nov 1, 2021John StonestreetFamilyFamily, Fathers, Parents and Family

Security guards and local police were at a loss about how to deal with the rampant violence plaguing a Shreveport school. Detention and even arrests weren’t enough to curb fights on campus. So, a group of dads stepped up, and have committed to being present at the school every day. There hasn’t been a fight in over a month, and now kids say they love going to school.

They call themselves “Dads on Duty,” replete with sweatpants, gas station coffee, and dad jokes worthy of eye rolls. They fist bump students in hallways, providing a fathering gauntlet that is deterring fights and decreasing gang activity. “Not everybody has a father figure at home – or a male, period, in their life,” one of the dads told CBS News.

The crisis in Shreveport required more than good intentions. It required fathers. After all, God created dads for just this kind of thing. I love how these dads stepped up and stepped in. Their actions offer a real-life example of the difference it makes when we find ways to answer four simple questions: What good can we celebrate? What’s missing that we can offer? What’s broken that we can fix? What evil must we oppose?

No Female Is In this Picture

Oct 25, 2021John StonestreetTransgenderLGBT, Transgender

Admiral Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a transgender woman, was commissioned into the U.S. Public Health Service’s Commissioned Corps. Officials called Levine’s promotion “historic” because, they assured everyone, Levine was the first female four-star admiral in the Commissioned Corps.

When something like this is announced the way it was – surrounded by fanfare and reporters constantly reminding us that this is a woman – it’s not cynical to wonder whether the job was earned by qualification or just a PR campaign. But it is unsettling to consider that the administration might promote someone more for the photo op than their abilities. And it’s frankly condescending to the Admiral, though he didn’t seem to see it that way.

This feels a lot less like a culture that’s soberly “following the science” and a lot more like a culture heading “through the looking glass.”

When Solzhenitsyn Stunned Harvard

Oct 18, 2021John StonestreetCultureAleksandr Solzhenitsyn

*John Stonestreet, Radio Host and Director of the Colson Center*

A little over forty years ago, Soviet dissident and literary giant Aleksander Solzhenitsyn delivered a thunderbolt of a commencement address at Harvard University.

Survivor of the Soviet GULAG, a fierce opponent of communism, Solzhenitsyn stunned his elite audience as he took aim at the disastrous social and worldview trends happening in the West.

He bemoaned that Western societies had given “destructive and irresponsible freedom . . . boundless space.” By which he meant license, what Chuck Colson called freedom without virtue. Then he went after the Western appetite for “decadent art.” Finally, he argued, no healthy society or culture lacks great statesmen.

Solzhenitsyn was prophetic. But sad to say, the West has largely ignored his voice. Irresponsible freedom? Check. Decadence? Check. Now go through your mental checklist and see how many great statesmen or stateswomen you can name these days.

Come to BreakPoint.org for more on Solzhenitsyn’s stunning address, including a BreakPoint commentary.