Christine Smith

Why are the young families missing from your church? Because your congregation has no shared economic life. You share a hymnal on Sunday, and on Monday every household is an island fighting inflation alone. The older men sit on commercial real estate and successful businesses while the young fathers drown in rent. Take the risk. Back the young men in your church. Fund their start-up. Bring them in as apprentices to mentor. Be a faithful patriarch to your own people, not an isolated consumer.

Logic was once considered one of the foundations of education because students were expected not simply to know things, but to understand why they believed them. Grammar taught students how language worked, while rhetoric taught them how to use it. Logic stood between the two, teaching them how arguments were constructed and how bad arguments could be recognized. Together they formed the trivium, which remained at the center of Western education for centuries. Before students were expected to specialize in a particular subject, they were first taught how to learn and how to think. As Dorothy Sayers wrote: “The sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves.”

"Therapists love to talk about the toxic, narcissistic mother and father. But almost nobody wants to talk about the toxic adult child. There is a growing phenomenon happening in our culture. Parents spend 18 years raising their children, sacrificing for them, feeding them, housing them, educating them, worrying about them, and loving them through countless mistakes. Then one day, the child adopts a new ideology at school, through social media, a new identity, a new worldview, or a new lifestyle, or starts learning therapy language and diagnosing their parents, trying to find someone to blame for why they behave in certain ways, and suddenly the parents are placed on trial. If the parents do not enthusiastically approve, celebrate, affirm, finance, support, and validate every decision, then they are labeled toxic. If they question a tattoo at sixteen, they are controlling. If they object to a boyfriend sleeping over, they are outdated, and threats start to creep in… If they disagree with a gender transition, they are abusive. If they express concern about drugs, promiscuity, pornography, radical political beliefs, or destructive life choices, they are the villains, and their children turn them into enemies. If they refuse to affirm every choice their adult child makes, they are told they deserve estrangement and no contact. They start saying things like: “My parents do not get me, they have been brainwashed by the system, their religion. I hate them, they do not respect my authentic self-expression…” What is remarkable is how quickly ordinary parental concern is now being reinterpreted as psychological abuse. An entire generation has been taught that disagreement is harm, boundaries are oppression, correction can lead to trauma, and authority is abuse. So instead of learning how to navigate conflict, tolerate differences, or maintain relationships with imperfect people, many young adults are encouraged to cut people off, diagnose their parents, curate social media narratives, and build entire identities around grievances. Of course, there are genuinely abusive parents. There are parents who are violent, neglectful, addicted, cruel, and destructive. I have written countless posts about this, talking about restoration through not just apologies but reparation and amends so that reconciliation can take place. But this post is not about the parents who made chronic and extensive mistakes. This is for the ones who, in fact, did their very best to protect their children, yet their children still choose to follow moral decay, vice, and a lack of accountability. Not every parent who says, “I disagree,” or a strict, “No, this is not allowed in this home,” is abusive. On the contrary, the most successful style of parenting is, in fact, authoritative because expectations, limits, and boundaries are expected, not negotiated. Sometimes what is being called “healing” or “self-expression” is actually rebellion and a “progressive excuse” to revolt, dressed up as self-“reinvention” and autonomy. And sometimes what is being called “protecting your peace” is simply an unwillingness to tolerate disagreement from the very people who spent their lives trying to protect you. Somewhere along the way, we stopped teaching children that love and authority can coexist. We stopped teaching that parents have the right and responsibility to establish boundaries, rules, expectations, and consequences. A parent saying “no” to tattoos at fourteen, sleepovers with romantic partners at sixteen, substance use, reckless behavior, or poor decisions is not abuse but responsible parenting. A lot of these parents did all the workshops, read all the books, and practiced what is called “gentle permissive parenting.” Now, when the children reach adulthood, the parents no longer have control, find themselves in a big mess, and then get called the “toxic ones.” Another of the strangest developments is that we increasingly assume every self-destructive behavior must have a hidden victim narrative behind it. For instance, a woman enters pornography, OnlyFans, promiscuity, serial infidelity, or a life centered around attention and validation, and immediately the investigation begins. What happened to her? Was her father absent? Was her mother abusive? Did a man hurt her? Did society fail her? And while those realities absolutely exist and should never be ignored, there is something equally true that has become almost forbidden to say: sometimes people choose badly despite being given every reason not to. I have seen parents who sacrificed everything for their children. Parents who provided stability, morals, structure, education, faith, boundaries, and love. Parents who begged, advised, warned, prayed, and guided. Yet the child still chose a path contrary to everything they were taught. A path toward destruction. What fascinates me as a psychotherapist is how often modern culture seeks explanations that accidentally become excuses. Somewhere along the way, we began treating agency as if it were offensive. Every poor decision must be traced back to a wound. Every vice must have a psychological justification. Every destructive behavior must be explained by someone else’s failure. Yet human beings are not merely products of their environment. We possess the capacity to reject wisdom, rebel against virtue, ignore good counsel, and pursue what is easy, pleasurable, or socially rewarded. At some point, responsibility has to enter the conversation. Otherwise, we create a worldview where parents receive blame for choices they did not make, while the individual is stripped of accountability for choices they did make. This is why authoritative parenting remains so important. Research consistently shows that the healthiest outcomes emerge from homes where warmth is combined with structure, love with accountability, and freedom with responsibility. But even the best parents cannot guarantee outcomes. They can teach virtue, but they cannot force it. They can model dignity, but they cannot impose it. They can provide a foundation, but they cannot live their children’s lives for them. The uncomfortable truth is that not every destructive pattern originates in trauma, and not every unhealthy behavior is evidence of a broken home. Sometimes the explanation is much simpler and far less fashionable. Human beings are capable of choosing disorder over order, vice over virtue, and short-term gratification over long-term flourishing. If we lose the ability to say that, then we are no longer helping people understand reality. We are helping them escape responsibility for it. Before anyone misunderstands this post, please know this post is not about genuinely abusive parents, severe neglect, violence, addiction, or situations where serious harm occurred. I have written extensively about those topics in other articles because they are true and real. This post is about ordinary families with ordinary imperfections, parents who made mistakes but who loved their children, sacrificed for them, provided for them, and genuinely tried. It is about a growing tendency to interpret every disappointment, disagreement, boundary, or parental flaw through the language of trauma and villainy. This post is about good parents who feel they did everything right, yet their children still chose vice, debauchery, radical ideology, and have now completely disengaged from their families altogether because the family does not support their children’s choices." -Judith Adrianna Nailah, psychotherapist

At 220 degrees, nylon melts and runs. At 220 degrees, wool is a jumper. At 250 degrees, polyester melts and sticks to the skin. At 250 degrees, wool is a jumper. At 300 degrees, acrylic catches and drips burning plastic. At 300 degrees, wool is a jumper. At 400 degrees, the fleece is a liquid. At 400 degrees, wool is a jumper. At 500 degrees, the sofa is on fire. At 500 degrees, wool is a jumper. At 570 degrees, wool finally chars, puts itself out, and stops. That is why the seat under you on an aeroplane is wool. That is why the Royal Navy stopped issuing nylon after 1982, when the men on the Sheffield found out what it does. That is why a firefighter's station blanket was wool for a hundred years before anyone made an advert about it. The sheep grows a fire-rated, self-extinguishing, water-shedding fabric on a hill in Wales for nothing. The market price is below the cost of the haircut. The replacement is petrol you can wear.

C.S. Lewis, favorable conditions never come

Retirement is a secular invention designed to turn productive patriarchs into useless consumers. You spent forty years learning how to build, negotiate, and lead, only to spend your final twenty picking out paint swatches in Florida. That wisdom belongs to your sons and your grandsons. It belongs to the young men in your church who have no fathers to teach them the trades. Get off the golf course and get back in the boardroom.

This is my home. These are my people. And I will not watch men sacrifice their own sons on the altar of a three-point margin bump. You shipped the labor to Asia to shave labor costs. You replaced your neighbor’s boy with imported labor to juice EBITDA. You sold the family enterprise to a coastal roll-up fund just to feel the thrill of it. And then you wonder why the young men in your town have no trade, no house, and no future. A man who abandons his own household is worse than an unbeliever. A man who guts his own people for an increased multiple is a traitor to his inheritance. God did not give you this ground to liquidate it. He gave it to you to hold, to build, and to pass down. I love this country too much to let disloyal capital bury it. By God’s grace, we right the ship. For our sons. For our grandsons. For the great-grandchildren who will need a place to stand. Bring the work home. Hire your own. Accept the lower margin and rebuild the nation.

There is no second homeland waiting for us. There is nowhere else to go. This is the soil God assigned to our fathers, and it is the soil He expects us to hand to our sons. Yet we are watching Christian owners liquidate forty years of capital, trade craft, and local loyalty…not because the business failed, but because they want thirty years of uninterrupted leisure. Ask yourself the hard question. If we will not endure a season of friction to train a successor, if we will not accept a slightly lower return to keep production local, if we will not trade an ounce of our retirement comfort so our grandchildren inherit a free and productive nation, then what does that say about our values and our priorities? A brokerage statement is not an inheritance if the country around it is in ruins. A check is not a substitute for a living enterprise that covers your people. Proverbs 13:22 demands a vision that outlasts your own life. Stop planning for your exit. Start planning for their century. Secure the ground you were given to steward.

I hope everyone will read Dave Ramsey’s comments about going cashless. It’s a two minute read. No one has explained it better. He brings up several situations I'd never considered. I took this picture of my receipt in my beautiful town Kerrville Texas. I support this and I can see how this could affect our kids by having gaps in work ethic, financial literacy, and community connection. Dave Ramsey repost: HERE'S WHAT NO CASH ACTUALLY MEANS: A cashless society means no cash. Zero. It doesn’t mean mostly cashless and you can still use a ‘wee bit of cash here & there’. Cashless means fully digital, fully traceable, fully controlled. I think those who support a cashless society aren’t fully aware of what they are asking for. A cashless society means: * If you are struggling with your mortgage on a particular month, you can’t do an odd job to get you through. * Your child can’t go & help the local farmer to earn a bit of summer cash. * No more cash slipped into the hands of a child as a good luck charm or from their grandparent when going on holidays. * No more money in birthday cards. * No more piggy banks for your child to collect pocket money & to learn about the value of earning. * No more cash for a rainy day fund or for that something special you have been putting $20 a week away for. * No more little jobs on the side because your wages barely cover the bills or put food on the table. * No more charity collections. * No more selling bits & pieces from your home that you no longer want/need for a bit of cash in return. * No more cash gifts from relatives or loved ones. What a cashless society does guarantee: * Banks have full control of every single penny you own. * Every transaction you make is recorded. * All your movements & actions are traceable. * Access to your money can be blocked at the click of a button when/if banks need ‘clarification’ from you which will take about 3 weeks, a thousand questions answered & five thousand passwords. * You will have no choice but to declare & be taxed on every dollar in your possession. * The government WILL decide what you can & cannot purchase. * If your transactions are deemed in any way questionable, by those who create the questions, your money will be frozen, ‘for your own good’. Forget about cash being dirty. Stop being so easily led. Cash has been around for a very, very, very long time & it gives you control over how you trade with the world. It gives you independence. If you are a customer, pay with cash. If you are a shop owner, remove those ridiculous signs that ask people to pay by card. Cash is a legal tender, it is our right to pay with cash. Banks are making it increasingly difficult to lodge cash. Please open your eyes. Please stop believing everything you are being told. Almost every single topic in today’s world is tainted with corruption & hidden agendas. Pay with cash & please say no to a cashless society while you still have the choice. Copy and paste to your page if you like! Posted from a friend…. I agree 💯

A newly released peer-reviewed study presents the results of the first nationwide homeschool achievement study in 15 years: “A Nationwide Study on the Academic Achievement of Homeschool Students and Parents’ Reasons for Homeschooling” Among the findings: Homeschool students scored 29 percentile points higher in reading than the norm group 25 percentile points higher in language 25 percentile points higher in math 26 percentile points higher in social studies 27 percentile points higher in science The study also found that student achievement was generally not associated with family income, parent education levels, or whether the teaching parent held state teacher certification. Dr. Brian Ray of @NHERI_Research National Home Education Research Institute joined me on my podcast this week to discuss this study and the findings: Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/237… YouTube: youtu.be/7e8ACaxtgew?si=UtQW…

"But we can't afford to homeschool!" We are at a time when you can’t afford NOT to homeschool. Prepare yourself accordingly.

A Wharton economist ran a randomized controlled trial on almost a thousand high school students in Turkey. The result was so brutal for the AI-in-education narrative that it had to be peer-reviewed by PNAS before people would believe it. Her name is Hamsa Bastani. She teaches operations and information at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the study she published in 2025 alongside her co-authors is one of the cleanest experiments anyone has run on what AI actually does to learning when you remove it from the equation and check what is left. The setup was a randomized controlled trial, the same methodology used in clinical drug trials. Nearly a thousand high school math students in Turkey were split into three groups and put through four sessions of ninety minutes each. One group practiced with GPT Base, a standard ChatGPT-4 interface that could answer any question directly. One group practiced with GPT Tutor, a version of the same model that had been prompted to guide students with hints rather than hand them the answer. One group practiced with nothing but their textbook and their own head. During the practice sessions, the AI groups looked like a miracle. The GPT Base group solved 48% more problems than the students working alone. The GPT Tutor group solved 127% more. Every administrator looking at those numbers would have written a press release about the transformative power of AI in education and moved on. Then the actual exam came, and AI was not allowed. The students who had practiced with GPT Base scored 17% worse than the students who had practiced alone. Seventeen percent worse, despite having solved nearly half again as many problems in the sessions leading up to it. The students who had struggled the most, who had sat with the confusion and worked through it without a tool to rescue them, were now the only ones who could actually do the math when it counted. Bastani's team read through the chat logs to understand what had actually been happening during the practice sessions, and the answer was exactly what the exam results had already implied. The GPT Base group had not been learning. They had been extracting answers and moving on, and every moment that felt like understanding was actually the model doing the cognitive work while the student's brain waited for the next problem to arrive. The paper describes it precisely: without guardrails, students attempt to use GPT-4 as a crutch during practice, and subsequently perform worse on their own. The detail that should follow every conversation about AI in education is the one buried in the post-test survey results. The students who had relied on AI the most during practice were also the most confident they had understood the material. The tool had not just failed to teach them. It had convinced them they had learned something they had not, which is a different kind of failure entirely and a much harder one to correct because the student has no idea it is happening. The crutch had made them confident and weak at the same time.

Research data from 160,000 adults in 31 countries concludes that a sizeable home library gave teens skills equivalent to university graduates. Build a home library.

Did you know C.S. Lewis predicted the modern obsession with “being nice” would destroy the soul? In The Abolition of Man, Lewis argues that when a society stops believing in objective virtue, it doesn’t become tolerant… it becomes manipulable. He calls the result “men without chests.” People with appetites and intellects, but no courage, no honor, no trained moral instincts. They can calculate everything and defend nothing. Lewis saw that once we reject inherited moral law, we don’t become free. We become raw material… easily shaped by propaganda, pleasure, and fear. Modern man prides himself on compassion while quietly surrendering every standard that once gave compassion meaning. Lewis’s insight is brutal: a civilization that educates clever cowards will eventually be ruled by tyrants or technicians. Because when nothing is worth dying for, everything becomes negotiable… including human dignity.

What ever happened to Finishing Schools for young women? Manners, Etiquette, Elegance, Poise, Personal Development, Life Skills, building confidence, and knowledge of polite society.

What kind of fresh hell is this?!?!? 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

What mindset built the Old World? This mindset: