School Choice Knowledge–It’s Powerful!
2022 | week of January 24 | Radio Transcript #1448 If there’s ever been a time for parents to consider the panoply of educational options we have in Wisconsin, it’s now. Let’s put it this way: public schools are besieged with problems, from teaching Critical Race Theory, to having books in physical and digital libraries […]
Impacting Election Consequences
2022 | Week of January 17 | Radio Transcript #1447 Someone has said, and I’ve repeated it something like a million times, “elections have consequences.” The follow-up to that statement probably should be something like, “and you can have a great impact on whether those consequences are good or bad. How? By engaging in elections […]
Proclaiming the Sanctity of Human Life
2022 | Week of January 10 | Radio Transcript #1446 On January 13, 1984, then President Ronald Reagan issued a proclamation for the first National Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. What he said is worth rehearsing now. “The values and freedoms we cherish as Americans rest on our fundamental commitment to the sanctity of human […]
A Rare Supreme Court Session
2022 | Week of January 3 | Radio Transcript #1445 Emergency US Supreme Court sessions are rare. So, when the current high court announced the week of Christmas it was having an emergency session this Friday, January 7, to hear oral arguments on challenges to Biden’s vaccine mandates for employers and for healthcare workers, they […]
Resolved: Make Your Family Great
2021 | Week of December 27 | Radio Transcript #1444 Family is not just the middle word in our organizational name. It’s the heart of our ministry. We take very seriously God’s plan for marriage and family, the foundational relationships for people and the foundational institution for every society. When we individually and collectively get […]
On Purpose & With a Purpose
2021 | Week of December 20 | Radio Transcript #1443 Among the myriad of excellent Christmas presentations I’ve attended over the years, one phrase in one program has especially lingered with me. “Jesus Christ came on purpose and with a purpose.” That’s it. Just 9 words, and yet I find myself regularly sharing those words […]
Dads & Daughters
2021 | Week of December 13 | Radio Transcript #1442 Dads and daughters. What a special relationship when done well. Many today are trying to say dads are not essential in the lives of their children. They couldn’t be more wrong. Dads are gifts from God, and the relationship they have with their daughters is, […]
Sports Betting Comes to Wisconsin
2021 | Week of December 6 | Radio Transcript #1441 Last week Wisconsin made history—and it wasn’t good history. Thanks to Governor Evers, sports betting is now legal in The Badger State. On Tuesday, November 30, the Oneida Casino in Green Bay began offering sports betting. Here’s how the tribe talks about this latest way […]
Supreme Court, Supreme Law, Supreme Issue
2021 | Week of November 29 | Radio Transcript #1440 The Supreme Court of the United States is poised to once again hear arguments for and against life. It happens this Wednesday, December 1. Lawyers representing pro-abortion advocates and lawyers representing the State of Mississippi will state their reasons for why Mississippi’s ban on abortions […]
A Heritage of Liberty & Thanksgiving
2021 | Week of November 22 | Radio Transcript #1439 Have you ever considered that as Americans we have an eloquent heritage of thanksgiving? If not, then consider these eloquent quotations from some of our notable leaders and founding documents over the centuries. “…The Lord sent them such seasonable showers…as, through His blessing, caused a […]
How Big the ‘Big Tent’?
2021 | Week of November 15 | Radio Transcript #1438 For years, some in the Republican party leadership have been talking about expanding “the tent.” They want a “big tent”—a tent that is open to all kinds of diverse opinions, which they hope would mean more votes for their candidates. One of the groups some […]
Them Before Us: It’s Time
2021 | Week of November 8 | Radio Transcript #1437 Them Before Us. The title caught my attention. Exactly who is “them” and exactly who is “us”? Curiosity won, and I read with rapt attention about a new organization and new book from the founder of this organization dedicated to one thing: putting children and […]
Forever Families; Forever Grateful
2021 | Week of November 1 | Radio Transcript #1436 Visiting the nursery when she was in the hospital was routine for Mary. Never able to have children of her own, she enjoyed seeing the newborns all lined up with their pink and blue name cards on her frequent hospital stays. No doubt every nursery […]
Social Media Addiction: What’s a Parent To Do?
2021 | Week of October 25 | Radio Transcript #1435 Addiction is powerful—especially for young people. An addiction can mean a life of unusual struggle and hardship on many levels. But parents can make a difference. It appears Americans’ newest addiction is technology, and more precisely social media. This vise-grip is especially strong on young […]
Wearing Pink Doesn’t Help the Link
2021 | Week of October 18 | Radio Transcript #1434 I went to a public high school football game this past Friday. What caught my attention wasn’t the game itself or the marching band, which is really what I went for, but rather an entire student section dressed in pink. Since the school colors are […]
Making Communities Great
2021 | Week of October 11 | Radio Transcript #1433 What does it take to make a community great? That’s the question we’ve been asking ourselves as we plan and deliver grassroots training sessions to help people do that. Answering that question requires some basic but critical understanding. First and foremost is that God has […]
Who’s the Primary Stakeholder?
2021 | Week of October 4 | Radio Transcript #1432 This just might be the modern-day equivalent of the “shot heard ‘round the world.” “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions….I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That […]
Codifying Abortion
2021 | Week of September 27 | Radio Transcript #1431 Hammurabi. I hadn’t thought of this ancient Mesopotamian Babylonian King in a long time. I always enjoyed teaching about him in history of the world courses, but his name hadn’t come to mind in probably years—until last week. After all, how often does someone living […]
Bumper Stickers, Vanity Plates, Hearings & Worldview
2021 | Week of September 20 | Radio Transcript #1430 When it comes to bumper stickers and vanity plates, Madison rarely disappoints. Take for instance the car I saw when I was leaving the capitol recently. It was in the legislators’ parking area; so I knew it belonged to an elected official. This car sported […]
Are We Doomed?
2021 | Week of September 14 | Radio Transcript #1429 “A nation that forgets its past has no future,” once said the esteemed British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. Others have noted that the one thing we fail to learn from history is to learn from history and those who forget history are doomed to […]
Good News Is on the Road!
2021 | Week of September 6 | Radio Transcript #1428 In a day when the news is often bad, frightening, maddening, disappointing and more, I offer some good news. Last week, Choose Life Wisconsin distributed $31,000 to 11 pregnancy care centers across Wisconsin. Those centers are located in De Pere, Fond du Lac, Hayward, La […]
Digital Devices: Controlling or Controlled?
2021 | Week of August 30 | Radio Transcript #1427 Report after report says anxiety and stress, including depression, are becoming major problems for Americans, especially younger Americans. I was in a discussion recently with a nurse who was looking at college applications and noted how many of the incoming students are indicating they were […]
Parents: Guardians of Their Communities
2021 | Week of August 23 | Radio Transcript #1426 I well remember the years in the early 2000s when I served two terms on the Watertown Unified School District Board of Education. Rarely did parents show up for school board regular meetings, let alone school board committee meetings. Only twice in over five years, […]
Where (or Why) Have All the Children Gone?
2021 | Week of August 16 | Radio Transcript #1425 I haven’t seen it in a headline yet, but it should be a headline—maybe even THE headline about Wisconsin’s census data. But I suspect most people will completely lose this data point in all the hype about redrawing political districts. Let me make this clear. […]
Lifesaving or Life-taking: Worldview Matters
2021 | Week of August 9 | Radio Transcript #1424 The headline is horrific: “University may be subject of investigation after it’s caught using body parts of babies born alive.” The university is the University of Pittsburgh. Undercover operations have revealed that Planned Parenthood and the University of Pittsburgh have been delivering babies alive during […]
Marriage & Parenting: It’s Not About Your Happiness
2021 | Week of August 2 | Radio Transcript #1423 (re-aired from week of Sept. 23, 2019) “Daddy is leaving. In order for daddy to be a good daddy, he needs to be happy. Daddy’s not happy right now. You want daddy to be happy, don’t you?” “I know your dad and I just got […]
The Case To Overturn Roe?
2021 | Week of July 26 | Radio Transcript #1422 In May the US Supreme Court agreed to take up a case that some maintain could overturn the infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that gave us abortion on demand in all fifty states. The case comes out of Mississippi which has just one abortion […]
What’s Wrong with Equality?
2021 | Week of July 19 | Radio Transcript #1421 (re-aired from week of February 15, 2021) The Equality Act. What could possibly be wrong with a law that is all about equality? This question demands a response. We begin with Mary, a single mom, who has hit on hard times. She is now homeless […]
Selling Out WI Citizens on a Bad Bet
2021 | Week of July 12 | Radio Transcript #1420 Earlier this month Governor Tony Evers and the Oneida tribal officials signed an agreement authorizing for the first time in our state, betting on professional sporting events. The sports gambling would be available at the tribe’s casino in Green Bay, but the agreement also allows […]
Lies Ensnare; Truth Frees
2021 | Week of July 5 | Radio Transcript #1419 (Re-aired from week of Nov. 30, 2020) In general human beings don’t like being lied to. But because unregenerate, unsaved people are, according to Scripture, of their father Satan, who is the father of lies, lying happens all the time. Certainly and sadly, Christians aren’t […]
When Autonomy Meets Reality
2021 | Week of June 28 | Radio Transcript #1418 Reality declares that the opening statement of the inerrant, unchanging, eternal Word of God is “In the beginning God…” It’s not “In the beginning, I” or “In the beginning me.” Functionally, however, many people operate today as if this rewrite of Scripture is reality, is […]
Fighting CRT: The Tin Man, Scarecrow & Lion
2021 | Week of June 21 | Radio Transcript #1417 In the book and film, The Wizard of Oz, we meet a tin man without a heart, a scarecrow without a brain and a lion without courage. Author Frank Baum was onto something in these characters. About a month ago I addressed some basic ideas […]
Fatherhood & the Heart of God
2021 | Week of June 14 | Radio Transcript #1416 Fatherhood. It’s a concept we don’t hear about all that frequently, at least positively, in our society. And yet it is a paramount theme in Scripture: God the Father, God’s instructions for fathers, admonitions for children to obey their fathers, the joys and pains of […]
Knowledge Can Be Powerful
2021 | Week of June 7 | Radio Transcript #1415 This is Julaine Appling for Wisconsin Family Council reminding you the prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Wait! You didn’t miss this week’s commentary. It’s just really important that before I get into the meat of this commentary that I […]
Vaccinations, Constitutions, Rule of Law
2021 | Week of May 31 | Radio Transcript #1414 How do six bills dealing exclusively with the COVID-19 vaccination issue land in a state legislative committee on the Constitution and Ethics? Good question. Each of these bills is about the rule of law. And the rule of law in this country and this state […]
Saving a Daughter
2021 | Week of May 24 | Radio Transcript #1413 The following story isn’t about us. It’s really about how God used us to help parents and their daughter. A couple of weeks ago we got a call from a concerned mother with a young daughter in the Kettle Moraine school district. As the story […]
Time To Roll Up Our Sleeves
2021 | Week of May 17 | Radio Transcript #1412 It is time to roll up our sleeves! I’ve been saying that all across the state since February. It’s way more than just the title of a presentation I’ve now done fifteen times in fifteen different Wisconsin communities. It’s a declaration that the time has […]
Critical Race Theory & A Point of Action
2021 | Week of May 10 | Radio Transcript #1411 Critical race theory. That phrase is being bandied about across the country. While the phrase is new, the ideas behind the words aren’t. Christopher Rufo, founder and director of Battlefront6, a public policy research center, in a speech given earlier this year at Hillsdale College, […]
Honorable Motherhood
2021 | Week of May 3 | Radio Transcript #1410 The late Phyllis Schlafly was one of my heroes. This diminutive in stature but giant in character woman fought battle after battle for our nation’s best natural resource—our nuclear mom-and-dad married families. During her lifetime, Mrs. Schlafly was given nearly every conservative award, honor and […]
National Day of Prayer – May God Shed His Grace on America
2021 | Week of April 26 | Radio Transcript #1409 For biblical Christians, what is more powerful than prayer lifted up to the Creator God? What is more necessary than God’s grace? What is more ennobling than the prayer that beseeches that God’s grace be shed abroad in the hearts of mankind and that our […]
