A Conversation With Dr. Allan C. Carlson

In his interview with Derek Buikema of Orland Park Christian Reformed Church, Dr. Allan C. Carlson discusses the current political climate as it relates to American Christianity and the family. Certain policies, for example, though promoted by the Republican party, are detrimental to the family. If replaced or improved, Carlson argues, conservatives could restore the focus on marriage, children, and the family in our country as well as improve the economy. Using examples from Hungary and other countries, Carlson delivers his opinions on reshaping conservative politics to more truly reflect Christianity, as well as his ideas on why Christians ought to be involved in politics at all at this time.

Dr. Carlson is President Emeritus of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society (previously known as the Rockford Institute). He is the John Howard Senior Fellow at the International Organization for the Family, and Editor of The Natural Family: An International Journal of Research and Policy.

Dr. Carlson is the author of the books, Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis; The Swedish Experiment in Family Politics: The Myrdals and the Interwar Population Crisis; From Cottage to Work Station: The Family’s Search for Social Harmony in the Industrial Age; The New Agrarian Mind: The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in 20th Century America; Society, Family, Person; and The American Way: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity.

Dr. Allan Carlson: What is a Politics of The Family?

The third excerpt from Pastor Derek Buikema’s interview with Dr. Allan Carlson is a fascinating discussion of how public policies can be family-friendly–that is, can support and encourage the creation of natural marriage and childbearing—or family-unfriendly.

Dr. Carlson discusses how, despite the many, huge, and important benefits of capitalist market economies, there are ways that such economies negatively affect natural marriage and childbearing. By exploring policies implemented in Hungary and Poland to encourage the formation of natural and larger families, Dr. Carlson illuminates some of the ways such deleterious effects can be blunted here in the United States.

Watch the previous segments:

Part 1 – How to Win The Culture Wars

Part 2 – What Can America Learn From Other Christian Politics?

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Illinois’ Shrinking Birthrate Adds to State’s Decline

In 2000, the U.S. Census showed Illinois with 12,419,293 residents. Ten years later, the number of Illinois residents had grown by 411,339 to 12,830,632. The latest estimate for July 2014 is 12,880,580 – four years, and the amount of growth dropped to a little under 50,000. That means instead of growing by 400,000 in the 2010 to 2020 decade, Illinois may grow by little more than 100,000 – perhaps a generous 150,000.

That’s a dramatic decline from growing by 400,000 in the 21st Century’s first decade to 150,000 in the second. In statistics circles, it’s called “negative growth.”

Sunday, the Bloomington Pantagraph’s editorial board was very concerned about Illinois losing population:

While the state has lost jobs over the last decade, this is the first year that the state has lost actual population since 1987-1988. A lot of figures go into the population loss: people moving, deaths, births and immigration from other countries.

The biggest reason the state is losing population is a greater number of people moving to other states. In state-to-state migration last year, the state had a net loss of almost 95,000 people, the highest rate in decades. That sort of loss has a devastating impact on tax revenue for state government and local governments.

Illinois’ population dwindling is a “clear symbol of a state in decline and that trend needs to be reversed as quickly as possible,” the Pantagraph said.

While Illinois had a net loss of nearly 95,000 people, there’s another negative population trend neither the Pantagraph or the Chicago Tribune cited: the dramatic decline of Illinois live births over the last decade.

In a chart recently published by the Illinois Department of Public Health, the agency showed that in 1990, 196,000 babies were born in Illinois. That proved to be the high mark for Illinois in the past 24 years.

For seven years, the state’s live birth numbers fell consistently until 1997, when it hit 180,000. The numbers huddled around that mark for eleven years, and then when the 2008 recession hit, not only did people leave Illinois seeking jobs, they took their babies and future babies with them. Live births in Illinois began to fall precipituously.

Illinois live births quickly fell from 180,000 in 2007 to just over 170,000 in 2009 and two years later, by another 10,000 to 160,000. All indications point to the latest official 2013 live birth stats hitting a new low – 155,000.

A consistent decline of live births indicates a dying state, says Rockford-based Howard Center’s Dr. Allan Carlson.

“A declining number of live births is a sign the state is downtrodden and destroying its human capital,” Dr. Carlson told Illinois Review. “Illinois politicians have dug a hole. Any smart young person would look at those numbers and leave Illinois.”

Dr. Carlson said up until the 1990s, Americans were having enough babies to just about replace themselves – the average woman’s total fertility was a little of 2.1 in 2000 and now it’s at 1.7 levels.”Weve not seen a child-rich culture since between the 1940s and 1970s,”

All the while, state governments, like Illinois, are spending funds extravagantly, expecting the next generation to pay the bills, while the numbers of future taxpayers dwindles.

“Across the U.S., the culture is anti-natal, anti-child,” Dr. Carlson said. “The focus is on personal gratification and deconstructing natural marriage. The price is being paid.”

While politicians will say they demonstrate the value of children by investing billions in public education, those funds are really not for the children, Dr. Carlson said.

“Those funds go more to feed bloated teacher unions and school administrators’ demands,” Dr. Carlson said. “Overall, the economy and the tax policy is anti-child.”

However, there are some peripheral segments of society that are doing their part to populate the next generation, he said.

The old order of the Amish are having children, as are American Mormons and conservative Catholics and some Protestants, Dr. Carlson said. “We need to protect those groups’ religious liberties and parental rights. They’re key to the future.”

This article was originally posted at the IllinoisReview.com news blog.

Sen. Kirk Ignores Pro-Family Concerns

Last week, the Family Research Council (FRC) issued a press release in which they publicly ask Illinois’s U.S. Senator Mark Kirk to apologize for his bigoted decision to cancel a U.S. Senate office building room reservation for our friends at the Rockford-based Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society, a decision Kirk made at the behest of radical homosexual activists.

According to Kirk’s press secretary, Kirk cancelled the meeting because he “will not host groups that advance a hateful agenda.” The so-called “hateful agenda” was a discussion titled, “[W]hat might conservative Americans learn from Russia, Australia, and other nations about rebuilding a pro-family policy?”

Despite the out-pouring of calls and emails from his own constituents and the public appeal from FRC, Kirk has not responded.

In response to Kirk’s narrow-mindedness hostility toward pro-family conservatives, IFI’s Laurie Higgins wrote an article in which she points out:

Sen. Kirk thinks that it’s hateful to believe that marriage is inherently sexually complementary, but not hateful to kill the unborn. To Kirk, cross-dressing and perverse sexual acts are moral goods and fighting for the rights of children to survive the womb and be raised by a mother and father are moral evils. What kind of man thinks like this? C.S. Lewis calls men like this “men without chests,” and Isaiah warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

FRC President Tony Perkins also had a strong statement in response to this foolishness:

Sen. Kirk’s decision is true discrimination, silencing anyone who doesn’t adhere to a politically correct view of sexuality.

We welcome open debate about policy differences on social issues. However, Sen. Kirk’s decision to cancel the event signals that he wants to silence those who disagree with him. We are encouraged by the many Illinois residents who have stood up in support of the Howard Center and its right to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Holding a different view of marriage and sexuality is not discriminatory – especially when all the social science research demonstrates the benefits of the natural family.

Sen. Kirk should respect our faith and our views, even if he doesn’t agree with them – instead of literally closing the door to any debate or discussion.

Take ACTION: Don’t let him off the hook! Please click HERE to contact Senator Kirk to express your opposition to his endorsement of homosexual “marriage,” his engagement in religious discrimination, and his subordination of the wishes of Illinois conservatives to the desires of homosexual activists.

You can also call his office in these locations:

(202) 224-2854 — Washington D.C.
(312) 886-3506 — Chicago
(217) 492-5089 — Springfield

Click HERE to make a tax-deductible donation to support IFI.

Mark Kirk Discriminates Against Christian Pro-Family Think Tank

Last week, U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) confirmed my reasons for vehemently opposing his election. His obamaniacal act of hubris last week also reminded me of the emails I received chastising me for what some perceived as my wrongheaded, doctrinaire naïveté in opposing Kirk’s election.

Last Friday, Kirk, in league with homosexual activists, abruptly cancelled access to a U.S. Senate meeting room that had been reserved months ago by the Rockford-based Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society. According to Sen. Kirk’s press secretary, Kirk cancelled the meeting because he “will not host groups that advance a hateful agenda.” And what is the “hateful agenda”? The question posed on the meeting’s invitation was” [W]hat might conservative Americans learn from Russia, Australia, and other nations about rebuilding a pro-family policy?”

The discussion panelists were Austin Ruse, President of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute; Allan Carlson, former professor of history at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan and president of the Howard Center; Stephen Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and an advocate for human rights in China; and Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, Senior Fellow at The Beverly LaHaye Institute, the think tank of Concerned Women for America.

If Kirk considers these scholars hate-promoters, then logically he must call all orthodox Christian theologians hate-promoters for every contemporary orthodox theologian and every theologian in the history of Christendom has held the same views on the nature of marriage and the nature and morality of homosexuality as these panel participants.

If Kirk’s Democratic opponent in the U.S. Senate race had won, the Republican Party would be working feverishly to find a candidate to challenge him. Of course, with the Illinois GOP polluted by the corruption and ignorance that plagues much of the Democratic Party, who knows what dubious character they may have trotted out and insisted Republicans support. The designation “Republican” is no guarantee of integrity, wisdom, or humility.

But with Kirk ensconced in the corridors of the U.S. Senate, (where he works tenaciously for every pro-homosexual bill including Illinois’ recent same-sex “marriage” bill), the Illinois GOP has little motivation to dethrone him. They couldn’t care less if he abuses his position to normalize sexual deviance while trampling the conscience rights of untold numbers of people.

kirk3 “Moderate” Republicans (hereafter referred to as immoderates) caterwaul that social conservatives are exclusive, narrow-minded, parochial voters who just don’t get the bigger picture. That bigger picture is centrally shaped, in the exclusive, narrow-minded, parochial view of immoderates, by “electability” and fiscal issues. Their big tent is really not so much big as it is blue-tinged. They don’t really want social conservatives to expand their scope of interests beyond the issues of prenatal rights, marriage, religious liberty, and the post-natal rights of children. They want social conservatives to abandon wholly those issues.

Conservatives, move to the back of the big immoderate purple circus tent and shut your flapping jaws about those irrelevant issues pertaining to sexuality, the First Amendment, and children’s rights—none of which (in the view of immoderates) have any substantive bearing on the public good.

In the meantime, the immoderates unctuously ooze that social conservatives should just let the big daddies who know best—people like Mark Kirk who solicited support from the baby-killing industry when running for the U.S. Senate—to run the country for them.

Sen. Kirk thinks that it’s hateful to believe that marriage is inherently sexually complementary, but not hateful to kill the unborn. To Kirk, cross-dressing and perverse sexual acts are moral goods and fighting for the rights of children to survive the womb and be raised by a mother and father are moral evils. What kind of man thinks like this? C.S. Lewis calls men like this “men without chests,” and Isaiah warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

Don’t you fret, oh ye of little conservative minds, your time will come—the immoderates hiss. Just wait until men without chests have solved our debt problem and then they’ll end the forfeit—I mean, truce—on the “social issues.” Yessiree, once we get out of this $17 trillion debt, our lawmakers will work to restore the proper marriage laws, religious liberty, and children’s rights that they’re allowing to be trampled or, in the case of Kirk, actively and jubilantly trampling.

But does anyone really believe that in the future conservatives will be able to restore marriage laws or repeal the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) so that business owners will have the right to refuse to hire cross-dressers if men like Senators Mark Kirk and Rob Portman (R-OH) have been in Washington D.C. for decades using their power and friendships to shape the votes and views of colleagues?

If right-thinking Americans would spend just a little less time thinking about clever political strategies and just a little more time thinking about truth and courage, we might have a shot at preserving America.

Take ACTION: Please click HERE to contact Senator Kirk to express your opposition to his endorsement of homosexual “marriage,” his engagement in religious discrimination, and his subordination of the wishes of Illinois conservatives to the desires of homosexual activists. You can also call his Washington D.C. office at (202) 224-2854.

As you know, the Illinois Family Institute is completely dependent on the voluntary contributions of individuals just like you. Without you, we would be unable to fight the radical agenda being pushed by the godless Left. Please consider chipping in $5 or $10 to help us promote family-friendly laws and policies.

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