Really exciting trend in medical school students choices regarding Pharmaceutical perks.
I hope they can hold on to their idealism!
Jenny Hatch

Mao The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

I finally have my hands on Jung Changs Mao Biography.
I have been on the wait list at the library for a couple weeks, and last week it showed up.
I won’t take the time now to fully review it as I have not finished reading it yet, but I have been struck by a couple of things.
First, Mao was not a die hard Marxist. He was instead an opportunistic poser who looked at politics, especially communist politics as being his ticket to a life of leisure and womanizing. He treated his wives and children with contempt and disdain and made this scripture from the Book of Mormon come to mind when I was reading last night.
Helamen 7:5
“Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness, letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money; and moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and the glory of the world, and moreover, that they might the more easily commit adultery, and steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills.”
Mao’s whole personal philosophy was tied up in absolute and complete selfishness. He was only looking out for number one, and killed millions to make sure he was able to live according to his own will.
It’s been somewhat nauseating to read the realities of what one evil man was able to do, but I feel compelled to continue reading. The text is easy to follow, and the authors have done an incredible job of distilling the information down to a readable narrative. I’ll blog more about it when I finish it.
Jenny Hatch
Mao The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

For those of you who live in the Boulder Colorado and Denver area, I will be teaching a Provident Living Class here in my home later this month. Here is the information from the flyer I made up for the class.

An add I put together with flyers and my grain poster for our foyer at church a few months ago!
2006 Provident Living Classes! Saturday Family Canning Sessions!
This series will be duplicated four times – once each quarter – Dates for 2006
Provident Living Classes: Jan 14th, April 8th, Sept 9th, Nov 11th – 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM
All Classes will be taught at the Hatch home Please Email for Directions
Dry Pack Family Canning: Jan 21st, April 15th, Sept 16th, Nov 18 – 8AM to Noon
All Canning will take place at the Aurora Cannery 3233 Fraser St. Aurora Co. 80011 – 303-371-7650
Topics covered in the Provident Living Class –
Class Title – All about wheat
How to cook a 25 cent Loaf of Bread, Make a ten cent muffin and feed your family breakfast for pennies a day!
72 hour kits and safe water storage
Rotating and using Cannery foods in day to day cooking to increase health and save money!
Sprouting, beans, food allergies to grains, and how to make foods taste great – all will be covered in this comprehensive class!
One Month Food Storage Kits
To help families with their food storage, home storage centers are now offering guidelines for assembling a one-month food storage kit. The kit contains enough food for one adult for one month. The focus of the Canning sessions will be on producing one month kits.
Each kit that you assemble will contain:
ITEM #10 CAN KIT POUCH KIT
Wheat 3 #10 cans 2 pouches
White flour 1 #10 can 1 pouch
White rice 2 #10 cans 1 pouch
Quick oats 1 #10 can 1 pouch
Macaroni 1 #10 can 1 pouch
Pinto beans 1 #10 can 1 pouch
White sugar 1 #10 can 1 pouch
Powdered milk 1 #10 can 1 pouch
Shortening 1 3# can 1 3# can
Salt 4 4-oz shakers 4 4-oz shakers
Cost $33.02 $29.74

Jenny Hatch

“America has less freedom of speech today than it has ever had in its history. Yet it is widely believed that it has more. Liberal law professor Archibald Cox has written: “The body of law presently defining First Amendment liberties” grew out of a “continual expansion of individual freedom of expression.” Conservative constitutional scholar Walter Berns agrees: “Legally we enjoy a greater liberty [of speech] than ever before in our history.” Both are wrong.
Liberals and libertarians applaud what Cox, Berns, and others perceive as an expansion of free speech. Conservatives sometimes deplore it, rightly assuming that the expansion in question leads to greater scope for nude dancers, pornographers and flag burners. But from the point of view of the original meaning of free speech, our speech today is much less free than it was in the early republic.”
…”The Founders’ Approach
Let us turn to the original meaning of free speech in the Constitution to see how far we have abandoned the original meaning of that document.
The Declaration of Independence calls liberty an inalienable right with which we are “endowed by our Creator.” As human beings are born free in all respects, they are also born free to speak, write and publish.
Nevertheless, although all human beings possess the same natural right to liberty, the Founders believed there is a law of nature that teaches us that no one has the right to injure another. The most obvious kind of injurious speech is personal libel. Here is a quotation from an early libel case:
[T]he heart of the libeller…is more dark and base than…his who commits a midnight arson…. [T]he injuries which are done to character and reputation seldom can be cured, and the most innocent man may, in a moment, be deprived of his good name, upon which, perhaps, he depends for all the prosperity, and all the happiness of his life.
But the Founders knew very well that allowing government to punish abuses of speech is potentially dangerous to legitimate free speech. So they relied on three pillars to secure this right of free speech while setting limits on injurious speech.

First, no speech could be prohibited by government except that which is clearly injurious. Today, as we have seen, noninjurious political and religious speech is routinely prohibited and punished through campaign finance and other laws.
Second, there could be no prior restraint of speech. Government was not permitted to withhold permission to publish if it disapproved of a publisher or his views. Today, the media from which most Americans get their news is subject to a government licensing scheme that is strikingly similar to the system by which England’s kings kept the press in line in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Third, injurious speech had to be defined in law, and punishment of it could only be accomplished by due process of law. Guilt or liability could be established only by juries—that is, by people who are not government officials. Today, clear legal standards, formal prosecutions and juries are mostly avoided in the convoluted censorship schemes employed by government in broadcasting law, campaign finance law, harassment law and the like.”
…”The Founders would have replied that we are precisely not free to define our own concept of existence and meaning. God and nature have established the “laws of nature and of nature’s God,” which have already defined it for us. Human beings, Jefferson wrote, are “inherently independent of all but moral law.” If men defy that law, they are not free. They are slaves, at first to their own passions, eventually to political tyranny. For men who cannot govern their own passions cannot sustain a democratic government.
Our task today is to recover the cause of constitutionalism. In doing so, the recovery of a proper understanding and respect for free speech must be a high priority.”
Read the whole thing….really good analysis.
I’m all for complete freedom of speech. If the powers that be want to truly reform campaign finance, they should make one law and one law only. It is: only those who have a vote should be allowed to contribute to a particular candidate’s campaign. No foreign money should be a part of the American Political Process. And on the state and local level, only members of various states should be enabled to contribute money to a local candidate or cause. No outside money or influence should be a part of a local governments political process. These reforms would force grassroots changes.
Jenny Hatch

We had a nice sabbath service today. Good testimony meeting and I taught my lesson on Jesus Christ. We had a good spirit filled discussion. I especially felt the Holy Spirit witness strong when we discussed the first person account of the Brother of Jared in the book of Ether from the Book of Mormon. He talked with Jesus Christ face to face and has a powerful witness of the divinity of the Lord. This line in particular was good as we discussed the text from the lesson…
“One scripture tells us that long before Jesus was born, he appeared to the brother of Jared, a Book of Mormon prophet, and said: “Behold, I am he who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem my people. Behold, I am Jesus Christ. … In me shall all mankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name””
I also taught my sons primary class. Ben is no longer in Nursery! He graduated to Primary today and his class of five three year olds were very excited to be in the big room with all the older children. We had a lesson on the topic “I am a child of God“. Since I just taught this lesson two weeks ago with my adult class much of the material was the same, albeit, shared in a method appropriate for three year olds. We did lots of singing and finger plays. They were a fun group to teach and it made our first sabbath day of 2006 busy, but fun.
Happy New Year!
My predictions for 2006:
I believe Freedom will continue to march around the globe. The American economy will continue to recover in a way that is simply impossible for the media to spin as “the worst economy since 1933” which they always do when a republican is president. Remember President Reagans “homeless”? It was like this non-stop drum beat….Homelessness, selfishness, rich getting richer, etc etc…
I see great things ahead for the country, and I predict the elections in 2006 will go very nicely for conservatives.
I predict that the big all encompassing top down systems in our world that seek to control our lives will continue to be exposed as the enemies to freedom that they are.
And I believe that people by the tens of thousands will come unto christ and be baptized and welcomed into the Kingdom of God.

Jenny Hatch