This certainly is complicated, isn't it?  Lots of us would be pretty poor at digging wells, and have specialized skills at which we are very good indeed, and for which we earn a substantial amount of money. I'm with Adrastus in asking whether the purpose of philanthropy is to help ourselves or someone else, and I am a bit uncomfortable with the universe of short-term mission projects that has sprung up at least in part with the apparent intention of giving the participants an enriching experience.  The big problem is that the government has made it so difficult for people here in the US to be helpful to the needy immediately around us. 

Don't forget that there is more than one way to a child of one's own. Mine came to me through adoption, and she is clearly, perfectly, the child God meant for me.  I heartily wish that I had pursued adoption earlier so that I might have ended up with more than one child. 

Mollie, that whole adoption thing? It doesn't get any easier. My kid is doing phenomenally well, and I'm still paranoid that someone will think we are doing an inadequate job of raising her. It definitely colors how I answer all those doctor questions and is part of why I am glad that we don't happen to have guns.In fact, I have two acquaintances who have endured CPS investigations for completely ridiculous reasons and one who was separated from her parents by CPS when she was a child. It is all very well to go into a doctor's office with that "mind your own business" attitude, but I am not sure that it is entirely safe, and it is one thing to take on personal risk and another to expose one's child to it.

I answered no, and felt guilty because I think it's none of their business. But it is true that I don't have a gun even though I think there isn't anything wrong with having one. The ethics of this kind of grilling are pretty poor, though, and the bike helmet one has caused issues for us. I don't want to teach my daughter that it is okay to lie. But I just don't believe she needs to put on a helmet when she scoots along a path on her scooter.

I believe that you are only allowed to have one post on the Most Popular list at a time. I assume that the first one is the one that displays, but I am not sure.

Anyway, I'm not sure whether someone is listening or it's a coincidence, but I'm not getting the pop-unders today.  I hope they're gone for good.

Hmm.  Let me guess.  You're switching to Epic, right?

Well, it seems from all I hear that the effect of Obamacare on computerization has been not to spur innovation and create business for small companies, but to throw massive amounts of business at one large company, Epic. And of course, the fact that the founder and CEO of Epic, one Judith R. Faulkner, is Obama's "medical information czar" is a pure coincidence. Nothing to see here folks. Move along. 

Thanks, BrentB67, for this.  I couldn't agree more. I have stopped going to NRO because of the pop-unders, and have drastically reduced my visits to Ricochet since they started.  There really couldn't possibly be anything worse for traffic than pop-unders.

I have no interest in re-arguing things that have been thoroughly hashed out elsewhere (without my participating, I might add).  But I have to say that the idea that one can label all of Christian and Jewish and Muslim history, right up to the point a few decades ago when a few minority religious dissidents appeared in the wealthiest and most decadent Western societies, "bigotry under the guise of religion" is just hilarious.

Really? I looked for a bit at his website http://standamerica.us/bishop-jackson-biography/ and didn't see such a thing.  I would have to hear what he had to say to know whether I thought it was problematic. If he's preaching in a religious context against homosexual activity, then no one should be able to fault him for that.  If he's battling the redefinition of marriage, again, that's a perfectly legitimate point of view that might well be popular in Virginia. We've noticed in the past that you tend to define "anti-homosexual" pretty broadly.

I'm still a bit lost about what is supposed to be so crazy about this guy. I gather he has a law degree from Harvard, which is a pretty respectable credential.  And as far as I can tell, "bishop" in the black American church is a much more nebulous title than it is in most liturgical churches.  The criticisms I find seem to be predominantly about his comparing Planned Parenthood to the KKK, which is a perfectly reasonable comparison if you know anything about the roots of Planned Parenthood in the eugenics movement, a link that I am sure most liberals have studiously avoided learning about.

I married late, and was the child of parents who married late. Perhaps as a result, I fall firmly into the "marry early" camp.  I wonder how many of us are simply reacting against our own experiences.

There have also been a lot of allegations of racial discrimination on the part of the store--that they won't hire nonwhite salespeople, for example.  For that reason and because of the sexualization of kids, I would not let my daughter shop there.  It's as if they are taking a "one-size-alienates-all" approach. I wish it weren't succeeding so well.

. . . or perhaps because you don't have any skills, unlike many people from overseas, or feel entitled to earn money out of proportion to your productivity.

I feel plenty sorry for kids who have invested tons of student loan money in "educations" that will never pay off. However, you can't hire people out of pity and stay in business, particularly if you have to compete in a global market.

CPS is frequently pretty awful, isn't it?  I know a woman who was removed from her perfectly decent parents for an extended period as a child, and ended up with serious PTSD.  And yet we seem frequently to hear of kids with real abuse issues recognized and ignored by CPS until the children end up murdered.  I guess I can't imagine doing their job, though, so maybe it isn't fair to judge. 

And yet Kaiser keeps getting held out to the rest of us as the model of how American health care should be run, and my Californian lefty friends just love their Kaiser health care. 

As long as intelligent lay people choose Kaiser for their health care, I don't see how other people can be held legally negligent for doing the same for their child--as much as I, like you DocJay, might be convinced their choice is a mistake.