To show how the average American (including children and teens) are getting dumber, let’s look at today’s average American diet.
USDA.gov reported that in 1950-59, the average consumption of fats and oils was 44.6 pounds per capita. In 2000, it was 75.6 pounds. That was almost a 70% increase in bad fat and oil consumption.
However, total fruit consumption only improved 12% while total vegetable consumption improved 26%. Meanwhile 75% of Americans are now fat and a third obese.
The USDA also reported that consumers eat too much refined grain; too little whole grain. Per capita use of refined flour and cereal products increased by 75%. According to the survey only 7% of Americans ate the recommended three or more servings of whole-grain foods a day.
In addition, America’s sweet tooth increased 39% between 1950-59 – 2000 as the use of corn sweeteners octupled (eight times). In 1950, high fructose corn syrup consumption (the most unhealthy sweetner choice) was zero. By 2000, high fructose corn syrup consumption was 63.8 pounds per capita (mostly in sodas such as Coke).
The USDA says Americans have become conspicuous consumers of sugar and sweet-tasting foods and beverages. As for the U.S. Beef and Cattle Industry, in 2011 it was worth 79 billion dollars. The US beef, milk and dairy producers are the largest in the world. There are about one million people that work in this industry. In addition, around 3.5 million work in the fast food industry and Americans spend more than $110 billion for fast food, while the impact of the sugar industry on the US economy adds up to over 142,000 jobs and nearly $20 billion in economic activity in the US alone.
Next, how does a bad diet impact the average child’s ability to learn?
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An example of America’s continuing Cultural Revolution was reported on ABC News: “The mother of an 8-year-old Arizona girl who was presented with a “Catastrophe Award” for apparently having the most excuses for not having homework believes her child was humiliated by her teacher.”
So what!
When you scan the comments for this ABC piece , many sound like these, which I copied and pasted from the ABC News piece:
“Where has this MOTHER been? why hasn’t she been aware that her daughter hasn’t been doing her homework? Why is she going on t.v. to complain about this issue?”
“The mother wasn’t aware that her daughter had a problem with homework? Maybe she should have gone to a parent/teacher conference or two. But no. She goes on TV to cry and complain. At least we know where the daughter gets her talent for making excuses.”
” It is not the teachers responsibility to have a child do homework.. it is the parents! If a parent is having trouble taking time in the evening to help her child than she needs to hire a tutor.”
“The mother should be more aware of what her child is doing at school……I’m sorry but kids have homework every night maybe the mother should go through her back pack once in a while. I’m so sick of parents no being responsible for their children’s ACTIONS!!!!!”
As you can see, it is obvious that this mother was not doing the best job she could but she is not alone. In fact, she represents the average American parent as you shall discover. If you are reading this, I hope you are not one of those average parents.
Liberty.edu says, “Overall, most findings have shown parental involvement, whether at home or at school, have a moderately significant relationship with higher academic achievement, and this relationship has been found consistently across demographics (e.g., ethnicity, sex, or socioeconomic status) and measures of achievement (e.g., achievement tests, grades, and grade point averages). Research points to the conclusion that “parental involvement is an important predictor of children’s achievement in school” (Englund et al, 2004, p. 723).”
In addition, “A 1999 survey of St. Louis kindergarten students revealed that while 95% of the parents rated reading as very highly important, only 16% of the parents were reading to their children each day… .
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One could argue that America’s transformational Cultural Revolution started in 1861 at the start of the American Civil War which ended slavery in the United States in 1865.
In addition, the way the average American parent raises his or her children today, and how the public schools operate and the character of the average American child are all affected by this continuing revolution.
Several significant changes track this Cultural Revolution and metamorphosis—some good and some bad. After all, America’s leaders and citizens are only human. To understand this ignored revolution, one should know a few facts about US history first.
Good changes are in bold print showing improvement.
If the print is gray, the change is questionable.
If in italics, it means BAD things happened!
1. In 1800, about 6% of the US population lived in cities and more 94 % lived on farms and/or small rural communities. By 1990, almost 70% of the rural population had migrated to cities. This change took place due to the US Industrial Revolution (1820 – 1870), and America needed more educated citizens.
2. In 1850, life expectancy by age in America at birth was 38.3 years. By 1900, life expectancy at birth reached 48.23. In 1990, it was 72.7, and by 2012 (according to the CIA Factbook, life expectancy for all races and both sexes had reached 78.49 (ranked #50 globally).
3. Although critics of public education harp on the so-called low high-school graduation rates in the US, in 2007 the national graduation rate was almost 70%. However, to put this into perspective, in 1870, the high school graduation rate was less than 5% and by the turn of the century in 1900, thirty years later, only 7%. Forty-five years after that at the end of World War II, the rate was up to 55%. It wouldn’t be until 1970 that we would see the highest graduation rate at 76%. After that, it leveled off and hasn’t changed much and fluctuates a few percentage points up or down.
4. The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law on May 6, 1882. This act was one of the most significant restrictions on immigration in U.S. history and focused on all Asians. The act also affected Asians that had already settled in the US before it became law.This Act would not be repealed until December 17, 1943—sixty-one years later.
5.The 19th Amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920 establishing a woman’s right to vote.This movement started in 1848 and took 72 years to achieve.
6. For more than one-hundred-and-sixty-two years, Children in the United States could be sold by their parents into servitude to work in coal mines and factories up until the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor.
7. During World War II, 120,000 Japanese-Americans lost their homes and businesses when they were rounded up and sent to dozens of prison camps where they languished until the war ended (February 1942 – 1944; the last prison camp closed in 1945.) This act was challenged in the courts but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U.S. Government.
8. In 1948, President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 ending segregation in the US armed services: “”It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.”
9. From roughly 1950 – 1954, McCarthyism was the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. This movement was so popular that 50% of the American public supported McCarthy’s vigilante witch hunts.
10. On July 2, 1964, President Johnson sings the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction prohibiting discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.
11. The Spread of American Imperialism:the war with Mexico (1846-48) where the US seized New Mexico and California; the US Indian Wars (1865-1891), whichcost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians; in the Spanish-American War (1898) the US gained Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico; Philippine-American War (1899-1902); Banana Wars (1898-1935); Moro Rebellion in the southern Philippines (1899-1913); Vietnam War (1955-1975), and the Iraq War (note: this is not a complete list). In addition. to maintain this empire, according to the US Department of Defense, the US military maintains 662 foreign sites in 38 countries around the world. Other sources claim that number is more than 1,000.
Now, just as America need smarter people, the average US citizen is going in the other direction from dumb to dumber, and this change is a continuation of the American Cultural Revolution that has been taking place since 1861.
However, this revolutionary change has to do with how the average parent raises his or her children, and it had its roots with John Dewey in 1886. It would take 82 years for this negative element of America’s Cultural Revolution to reach critical mass when by the late 1960s self-esteem was a fashionable and influential idea and that movement, which spread to the schools by the 1980s led to grade inflation, an end to rote learning in addition to dummying down the curriculum.
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The real danger posed by alleged racist, money mongering Internet Troll sites such as the “Worsters” at Vote for the Worst.com is that if the viewers stop tunning in to watch American Idol and the show is cancelled, the opportunity for tens of thousands of music industry artists will vanish, and we will see a return to the old ways of becoming discovered, which means many will not stand a chance.
Phillip Phillips won season 11, but he was not the most talented singer. In fact, “When asked if he thought he would prevail after Tuesday night’s top two competition show, an incredulous Phillip gave powerhouse runner-up Jessica Sanchez—who some fans might argue was ‘robbed’—total props, answering: ‘No! Did you see Jessica’s last performance?’ Phillips also cited a standout performance by another powerhouse, Joshua Ledet’s ‘It’s A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World,’ as one of his favorites of the entire season.”
Jessica is no “bot” as she sings with Jennifer Holliday
To explain the Worsters’ success, Ruchard Rushfield, the author of ‘American Idol: The Untold Story’ says, “But Idol voters aren’t thinking like record producers, according to Rushfield. “You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as…who’s the nicest guy in a popularity contest,” he says, “And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.” Source: ABC News
Therefore, viewers that stop watching American Idol because white boys with guitars win supported by the alleged racist Worster Internet Trolls may hurt undiscovered talent. In fact, without American Idol, even Phillip Phillips would not have had a chance to compete and win.
Phillip Phillips singing with John Fogerty – Bad Moon Rising
Although finalists such as Jessica Sanchez, Joshua Ledet and Elise Testone (for example) did not win, these talented individuals may not be losers. A few, as other finalist losers have done, will sign contracts and record singles and/or albums and if they have an audience of fans that love their work, they will succeed. In fact, some finalists have been more successful than winners.
If we compare the winners of the previous four seasons that the Worsters claim to have helped win, we learn who the real winners are.
When we add up the sales numbers of the winners from seasons seven through ten, the sales of albums add up to less than three million in combined sales while one white boy with a guitar, Lee DeWyze of Season 9, sold less than 150,000 albums.
However, David Archuleta (season 7) and Adam Lambert (season 8) both finalists that lost did sign contracts and went on to sell more than a million copies each. In fact, the combined sales of finalists that did not win on American Idol, but signed contracts anyway, total more than 18 million albums. If American Idol had not existed, this would not have happened.
Phillip Phillips singing with John Fogerty – Have You Ever Seen
Therefore, every time a fan of American Idol stops watching the show because a less talented white boy with a guitar wins, those viewers are only helping alleged racist Internet Trolls known as the Worsters to ruin it for everyone even those white boys with guitars.
To discover the real winners that compete on American Idol, we have to wait and see how many albums these artists that landed in the loser’s circle sell to their fans.
I suspect that these Worsters are examples of young adults that as children were raised by parents that pushed a sense of false self-esteem, and these adult children cannot stand competitions where talent and merit count more than just dreams and mediocrity. Instead, the Worsters are bitter and hate the real world where merit is the only way one really succeeds in life.
Worsters were raised to believe that all one had to do was dream of fame and it would arrive without effort until, as adults, reality taught them the truth and now they are jealous and want to ruin it for artists that are willing to work hard and risk failure to have a chance at success.
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One of the most difficult challenges for most aspiring artists (authors, actors and singers) is being discovered and building a fan base. National TV talent contests such as American Idol offer these unknown artists a chance at recognition and to build a fan base by reaching a large audience.
Without these national talent programs, the road to gain recognition is a difficult one, and many talented artists may never be in the right place at the right time to have a shot at the success they dream of.
In fact, it is obvious that the odds of becoming a success in the music industry are about as high as winning a state lottery, which is about 20 million to one. For American Idol contestants, the odds may be better since the program only hold auditions in about six cities, and the number that audition can exceed 10,000 people in each city. Between 1 to 60 people in each city may make it to the Hollywood audition where the top twelve finalists are selected.
Great performance but not the best original song for Jessica.
The sad news is that eventually, American Idol may be cancelled as so many TV shows are when the number of viewers drops too low. In a May 24, 2012 New York Times piece, it was alleged that American Idol’s number of viewers is dropping drastically due to audience fatigue, but I suspect that the drop in viewers may be mostly due to the five white guys playing guitars that won the last five seasons of American Idol.
For example, 29.3 million viewers watched the finale for season 10 but only 21.5 million watched the 2012 finale. American Idol once held the record for most consecutive seasons (ten years) as number one. The largest viewing audience was 37.44 million season 6. Since then, the audience has been shrinking. Between season six and eleven there was a drop of about 57% in viewers.
The real culprit of this decline may be Vote for the Worst.com, which claimed this morning that they had succeeded. “We did it, Worsters! 132 million votes were cast last night, and in the end, we helped the fifth straight white guy with a guitar win American Idol… we succeeded yet again and helped make sure Pinoybot Jessica Sanchez was left in the loser’s circle.”
Jessica singing “I Will Always Love You:
Vote for the Worst.com launched in 2004 with the goal to support contestants on American Idol that the producers would hate to see win (according to the Worsters), and the Alexa stats show that the Worsters’ site has a very high search engine rank of 57,917 (which translates into the top .01% ) internationally and 18,539 in the United States with 693 sites linked in. Based on internet averages, Alexa says this site is visited frequently by females who are college educated in the age range 25-34 with no children.
The goal of any serious Website/Blog is to have a search engine rank in the top one percent. The Worsters have more than achieved that.
The Worsters are wrong about Jessica being a Pinoy, which is a term coined by expatriate Filipino Americans in the 1920s to refer to their immigrant ethnicity. Jessica was born in the United States and her father is an American citizen of Mexican descent that honorably served in the US Navy as did Jessica’s Filipino grandfather. Jessica’s father and grandfather defended the United States and fought for it as I did in 1966 when I was a US Marine serving in Vietnam and less than one percent of Americans serve in the US military to fight its wars as patriots.
Great Song! Best I’ve heard Phillip Phillips sing!
At best, Jessica is a Pinoy-Latino American. Tacking on the term “bot” to “Pinoy” making it “Pinoybot” alleging that she is a Filipino robot or an internal parasite of animals and that is an insult and a racial slur revealing the real character of the individuals behind the “Worsters” movement that supports mediocrity. It is obvious that the “Worsters” are alleged racist Internet Trolls.
However, how long Jessica Sanchez will be left in that so-called American Idol loser’s circle as a “Pinoybot” may not last long as we shall discover in Part 2, and most of those white boys with guitars that the Worster’s claim they helped win may be the real losers as the facts suggest. In addition, Vote for the Worst.com runs ads, which means they are monetized and using their negative spin to attract a gullible audience to turn a profit.
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As a teacher, I used brainstorming activities in my classroom. After all, I was taught and told to use brainstorming. The concept was to accept what anyone said as correct and worthy of being written down, so we wouldn’t bruise or injure a child’s self-esteem.
However, Lehrer writes, “Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, has summarized the science: ‘Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.'”
In fact, in Does Brainstorming For New Ideas Really Work? (Business Insider, March 27, 2012), it was reported that experiments where it is okay to debate and criticize (constructive criticism no doubt) generated nearly 25 percent more ideas and findings show that debate and criticism do not inhibit ideas but, rather, stimulate them…
These results prove that the self-esteem’s brainstorming mantra of refraining from judging or negating ideas is wrong. In other words, brainstorming (a product of the self-esteem movement) did not unleash the potential of the group. Instead the technique suppressed it, making each individual less creative.
In addition, Stephanie Hallett writing for the Huffington Post reported, “Barely half of Americans over the age 18 are married, according to a new report from the Pew Research Institute. The number of couples married in 2010 dropped a startling 5 percent from the previous year, and the overall number of married couples has declined by more than 20 percentage points since 1960.”
Now, let’s look at the face in that mirror again. The self-esteem movement among parents gained serious momentum in the 1960s and by the late 1970s, it was a force in the public schools leading to grade inflation and a feel-good atmosphere for students. At the same time, marriages declined in addition to an increase in a weakening of parent-child relationships, while creativity in America isn’t what it could be.
In conclusion, it is obvious that self-esteem parenting led to the weakening of the parent-child relationship, is responsible in the decline of traditional marriage and has inhibited creativity, which will hurt the United States in the long run.
Is this an example of the domino theory in practice?
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Do not blame the teachers. Do not blame the public schools. If you are not a tiger mother or father and consider yourself to be an average American parent concerned about the self esteem of your child/children, look in a mirror and blame the person you see in the glass for what you are about to discover from this post.
The articles I will refer to in this post will help explain the point I want to make. The first piece I’ll mention was posted on PJ Media and although I disagree with many of the posts I’ve read on this Blog, since it is obvious the site is biased toward conservatism and the GOP, for once I agree with PJ Media’s Daily Digest in The Unteachables: A Generation that Cannot Learn.
PJ says, “The unteachable student has been told all her life that she is excellent: gifted, creative, insightful, thoughtful, able to succeed at whatever she tries, full of potential and innate ability.”
It all started with the self-esteem parenting movement, which I have ranted about before in previous posts. PJ says and I agree: “Rather than forming cheerful, self-directed learners, the pedagogy of self-esteem has often created disaffected, passive pupils, bored precisely because they were never forced to learn… The emphasis on feeling good… prevents rather than encourages the real satisfactions of learning.”
I recommend clicking on PJ’s link above and read the entire post.
In addition, I believe that the decline in traditional marriage and the traditional family that is often the foundation and strength of a nation is also the result of the self-esteem movement, which leads me to the next article I’m going to refer to.
In The Stranger in Your Family, AARP Magazine (April/May 2012 issue), Meredith Maran reports on the rise in parent-child estrangements. In Maran’s piece, San Francisco psychologist Joshua Coleman, PhD. blames what’s behind such family fractures on a me-first mentality that he says is weakening parent-child relationships.
When Coleman launched a six-session seminar on intergenerational conflict, he expected that about 50 parents might sign up. Instead, he got 400. He says, “Little binds adult children to their parents these days, beyond whether the relationship feels good to them.”
Remember, “feeling good” is the foundation of the self-esteem parenting movement, which leads me to the next article. Jonah Lehrer writing Group Think, The brainstorming myth for The New Yorker (January 30, 2012) reports, “The thing that distinguishes brainstorming from other types of group activity—was the absence of criticism and negative feedback. If people were worried that their ideas might be ridiculed by the group, the process would fail.”
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“Born out of the Church Growth movement,” Je Gibson says, “the self-esteem movement in the church has been said to be part of an effort to bring more people back to church; the gospel being compromised in an effort to preach to people’s felt needs and to be a positive and relevant force in people’s lives.”
By 1990, the influence of Schuller surely outshines any impact that California Assemblyman John Vasconcellos had on the self-esteem movement when his Task Force report sold 60,000 copies making it a state government bestseller.
Let us not forget that Schuller preached to over 25 million worldwide. So, who had the larger audience and thus more influence?
The results of Pastor Robert Schuller’s influence on the already century old self-esteem movement may be discovered in Self-Esteem: Why? Why Not? from Catholic Culture.org.
In 2011, Msgr. Cormac Burke, writing for Catholic Cutlure.org, said, “Self-esteem or self-worth ideas of a thoroughly secularist nature inspire educational texts in widespread use for Catholic religious instruction in not a few countries. I had the occasion some time ago to go through the books used in one country as a common syllabus for all Christians (including Catholics) for primary religious education. The Grade One book (for six-year-olds) opens not with God but with “Myself.” A tone of unqualified self-acceptance is already set in the same book: “God is happy with us”; “Thank you Lord for making me just as I am.”
Burke writes that one section heading was “Working for God: Developing Self-esteem in Ourselves and Others”.
In conclusion, it is easy to see that conservative talk show host Dennis Prager’s claim and biased opinion that the self-esteem movement started with California Democratic Assemblyman John Vasconcellos in 1986 is a fraud, since the movement had its start in 1886 — more than a century before Vasconcellos and his California Task Force issued the report on self-esteem and eight years after Pastor Robert Schuller promoted “IT” in Self Esteem: The New Reformation.
The history of the self-esteem movement spans 125 years and Vasconcellos joined the movement 104 years after its launch at the top of that mountain. By the time he entered the self-esteem arena, the movement had already gained momentum and there was no way to stop it.
In fact, Vasconcellos may have been influenced by Pastor Robert Schuller, as it is obvious millions of others were.
Vasconcellos, at best, was just another misguided individual that joined the self-esteem mob and influenced the thinking of maybe a few thousand people.
Dennis Prager and his Parrots (used as a metaphor for his fans) may believe what they want, but the facts tell a different reality. Prager is either a fraud or ignorant of the history behind the self-esteem movement, and he is misleading millions—again.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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For Dennis Prager and his Parrots to discover the beginning of the self-esteem movement, they would have to travel back to the later nineteenth century when John Dewey discussed the importance of the self in his 1886 work, Psychology.
However, Prager’s Parrots would also learn that William James first used the term “self-esteem” with an explicit scientific definition in 1892.
A key task in socializing children, in James’s view, involved helping them gain the capacity to develop “self”.
The popularization of psychology and the growing notion that children often needed expert help brought concerns about self-esteem to greater attention during the 1920s and 1930s, and during the 1950s and 1960s the connection between self-esteem and supportive school program was fully forged.
Then in 1967, Stanley Coopersmith identified what he believed was a link between self-esteem and frailty, noting the “indications that in children domination, rejection, and severe punishment result in lowered self-esteem.” Source: Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society on Self-Esteem
In addition, years before Vasconcellos chaired the Self-Esteem Task Force in California, there was Pastor Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral.
In 1982, Schuller published his 177-page hardcover Self Esteem: The New Reformation (four years before the California Task Force and eight years before Vasconcellos report was released).
From 1995 to 2000, Schuller also hosted a one-hour live coast-to-coast radio show, which gained popularity, and from 1976 to 2008, he was seen regularly on the Hour of Power and from 2006 through 2008 the Hour of Power had over 25 million viewers worldwide making it the number one watched religious show and him the most listened to orator in the world.”
The Impact of Church Growth on Self Esteem Movement by Je Gibson says, “Pastor Robert Schuller, founder of Crystal Cathedral, is often given credit as the pioneer of what has commonly been referred to as the Church Growth Movement.”
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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If you read Dennis Prager’s often biased, one-sided essays or listen to his radio show, you will discover that Democrats are elite, leftist, liberal, progressive individuals that often get hysterical and emotional about their beliefs, and fear death more than conservatives do.
By the way, John Vasconcellos was born in 1932 and served in the California State Legislature representing Silicon Valley—and yes, he is an advocate of the self-esteem movement, but he is not responsible for starting the movement in 1986.
Vasconcellos served in the California State Assembly from 1966 to 1996 and as a state senator from 1996 to 2004 (when he retired).
In 1986, Vasconcellos created the California Task Force to Promote Self Esteem and in January 1990 issued “Toward a State of Esteem”, which sold 60,000 copies becoming a best seller in California State government publishing history and California was not alone in this political movement. Washington and Maryland had self-esteem legislation being considered too.
John Rosemond does not like the Self Esteem Movement – This video is highly recommended!
The California Task Force had 25 members and not all agreed with the final report. Task-force member David Shannahoff-Khalsa of Del Mar, a yoga teacher and researcher in neuroscience, denied that self-esteem could simply be given to anyone, and due to disagreements between the task force members, no generally accepted definition of self-esteem emerged.
Vasconcellos authored AB3659, which “According to this legislation, self-esteem was the key to problems such as violence, crime, alcohol and drug abuse, welfare dependency, teenage pregnancy, academic failure, recidivism, child and spousal abuse, and the failure of responsible citizenship. Making California “a state of esteem” would solve all that, and more.” Source: Cal Watchdog.com
However, nothing ever came of the self-esteem legislation, so what was the real reason for all of this interest by Dennis Prager?
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 