Who is No Hate No Violence?

A letter from our founder on the importance of free speech and debate theory:

I am 71 years old and I have experienced and have seen a lot in my lifetime. I’ve watched our world evolve in so many ways. Because of this I know that we are fully capable of changing from a bad attitude to a good increasing our happiness. And I know we will continue to make this world a better place for future generations.

This is why I started the No Hate No Violence blog. I started it because I truly believe there is no place in the world for hate or violence. I believe we CAN make our world a better place. And I want to help do this. So, I began by writing posts trying to encourage others to embrace this ideology. This is my pay it forward.

Our team here created NO HATE NO VIOLENCE signs and took them to the streets to be carried at the different marches and protests. All in the hopes of reducing the tensions and encourage peaceful demonstrations and dialog. I’m not going to lie. It was intimidating for us to do this. But it was successful. We found that it didn’t make a difference what position a person stood on in the matter. Most were receptive and wanted to hold our signs. This gave us hope.

But, in my process of learning how to be a blogger (and yes, I am still learning how all of this works), I have spent many hours researching various topics. And as does everyone, I too have my own personal beliefs. But above all I believe in free speech. So, when I came across debate teams and the rules of debate I thought AHA! This is what we need. This can help!

No Hate No Violence believes in free speech with open and respectful dialog. So, we began developing the No Hate No Violence Debate Forums.

If we could promote free speech and reduce today’s angry rhetoric using facts we could encourage people to actually listen to each other.

We could get people to really hear different points of views objectively. What better way to start than to encourage healthy respectful debates. Especially in our youth.

In today’s world when we follow our politicians and media we become more and more exposed to so much negativity, mistruths, and corruption. Sadly, we are teaching our youth how to be corrupt, how to lie, how to be self-absorbed and how to be closed off to differing points of view. Much of our society claims to be enlightened and open-minded in today’s age, but in reality, many have become more intolerant.

I think that our issues with bullying alone, is an indicator of what our society and social media is teaching our youth. Our political leaders and their rhetoric spread all across the media spectrum just screams intolerance and is the epitome of bullying.

We want to change that. We want to bring the fine art of debating back to the forefront of American society. We want to re-open the dialogue.

Let’s encourage and support the benefits of debating. Debating promotes open dialogue and respect and tolerance for others. It teaches people how to think objectively and quickly. After all, to be objective you must be able to hear both sides of an issue.

The more we thought about debating the more we realized that we need to expand and promote these programs nationwide from grade school through university. Especially to those schools needing assistance. We want to get these debates recorded and publicized to provide ongoing education and awareness to the general public.

There are so many benefits that debating can offer.

Teaching our children to debate at the grade school level will develop their cognitive skills giving them greater confidence and self-esteem. It will improve their study habits and encourage them to take more interest in subjects they may otherwise shy away from. Click on this link to check out 3rd graders debating!

Debating at both the grade school and high school levels gives the teachers fun opportunities to engage their students in some of the more challenging or “boring” topics. It’s also a great avenue of redirection for kids lacking in social skills. The child identified as a “bully” could redirect their aggressive behavior in a more productive way. And the “shy” kid can find their voice.

These skills carried through high school and college will provide far better opportunities for success in life. High school debaters will improve their future college and scholarship opportunities. And those who choose not to go to college have gained invaluable skills to promote themselves in the workforce and their future careers.

Benefiting our youth with these skills benefits our society.

As you can probably tell, we are very passionate about this. But we are small and have been self-funding everything. We need your help. To fully make this a reality we need volunteers and donations to enable us to develop and distribute our systems, market the program, provide outreach and training, and to fundraise and secure sponsors. We hope you will join us on this journey to pay it forward.

There is no debate…debating can make the world a better place!

We Can Do Better

I think the Democrats and Republicans could help us get back on track and away from all the negativity and hate if they would just lower their rhetoric. We can do better.

They need to reach across the aisle and work with each other. Have face to face conversations or debates away from the media. They need to focus on getting the right things done rather than what kind of exposure they can get for their own re-election. The more respected politicians don’t go to the press all the time. They’re too busy making things happen by actually listening and doing the work.

I get that the Democratic party isn’t always conspiring with the mainstream media. But they are definitely in cahoots with each other.

Their constant same rhetoric is teaching our children how to lie, deceive, never answer a real question, or give any real facts.

They don’t report the facts because it might not fit their narrative and it’s teaching our children how to do the same which creates hate. All of this anxiety is a source of depression, and bullying. A lot of these issues I blame on the politicians in general–parents who really aren’t doing the right job of parenting.

We need to teach our children to be curious about everything.

Not how to think. We are all responsible for raising our kids with good morals and as they say, it takes a village. Especially when it comes to single parents and at-risk youth. They need our help.

We as parents should demand from ourselves and our leaders, media, and teachers that we be better role models and examples. The way we’re acting right now needs to stop. Think about the future we are creating. What can we do to improve it?

Let’s stop talking and do the right thing.

D-Day—What We Can Learn From History

Recently we celebrated the 75th anniversary of D-Day with most of the world watching the coverage showing the sacrifices the people of Europe and the United States made.

It is absolutely incredible, and we should be teaching this more to our kids, really driving home the price of freedom. The price of freedom is huge, and we are very blessed to have it. We need to continue to celebrate it and for me, there’s a big lesson for all of us that can be learned from history.

We all know that history can repeat itself both in a positive way and a negative way. But let’s think about the positive. Look at what happened between Europe and the United States. I think it’s a great historic reminder for what the possibilities are for us to do in the Middle East, Iran and Korea. Sometimes there has to be intimidation and sometimes there has to be conflict to defend those who cannot defend themselves and that’s what we are doing or trying to do. We have not always done the right thing, but we have tried. I believe the intentions have been good. We’ve had bad intelligence in some cases. And in some cases, we just flat out made bad decisions.

Again though, look at our history. Europe was our adversary.

We fought a war to get away from them. We lost a lot of young American lives and we are a country that is extremely young relative to Europe. For the naysayers to see the United States be the greatest in the world when you consider Europe is thousands of years older than us, how did that happen?

Well, let’s go back to the wars, and where we fought Britain mainly, some France, and then some of them came to our aid so we could become a free country. In World War I, we fought for freedom again but World War II for me is another one who are now our allies. Who ever thought in 1944, that Germany would be one of our greatest allies and one of the best countries in the world after we disseminated them and got rid of the Nazi’s?

It’s unfathomable what the Holocaust did.

It was one of the most horrible times is world history (and now we have the Middle East and ISIS). Yet, in Germany, once we won the war, we helped rebuild the country. Look at it today. It’s one of the strongest, best countries in the world. We did the same with Japan who attacked us first at Pearl Harbor.

But more importantly, all of Europe and Japan are our allies now, when they were once our enemy. Germany is one of our best allies and they were once our enemy. We need to learn from that. We can do the same in all of the Middle East. Yes, we have to get rid of the bad actors. But we can do it without war now because the United States is the strongest economic power in the world. China is coming at us, but China also can be our ally because we can do it with economics. We don’t need to do it with wars or hate and violence.

I’d like to believe that most people don’t hate the Middle East.

You might hate their governments and the wrong things they do and a few of their leaders but I don’t think most people hate the people themselves. I dislike the leaders that lead their people into the wrong direction or into the wrong economic model that only can hurt them in the long run, and I am

talking about communism and socialism.

Those are just covers for wanting to control the people for some groups own benefit. Look at what some countries do. They starve their people while they build military weapons and nuclear weapons. They actually starve them. Those aren’t things we can sit back and watch but we can negotiate them to a peaceful level. 1940’s Germany was a great example of a bad leader. But look at them now.

They wanted to have a peaceful nation.

So, if you have some pride and a job and are able to support yourself and/or your family, you’re more than likely not going to want to go to war. You’re not going to want to kill your neighbor to get some food. You’re not going to listen to people who are trying to get you to load a bomb on yourself and go blow yourself up because they’re going to take care of your family. Those are things that wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for the way they’ve been manipulated into economic peril.

A lot of the leaders of these countries are keeping their people in economic peril for a reason, so they can control them. We can help with all of that. We don’t need to do it with guns and war. We can do it with economics. Make it tougher on them to do things and then help them once they agree not to be terrorists or nuclear threats or things of that type.

Let’s make our worst enemies our greatest allies. What a concept. Wishful thinking? I don’t think so. Just look at what our great D-Day heroes did for us in 1944.

For all who served and sacrificed for this great nation and the world, we salute you.

Snowplow Parenting: The Decline of Our Society

Helicopter parenting, snowplow parenting, all the different versions of it, protecting our kids from having any anxiety as children, is probably the largest source of depression in our country.

These ways of parenting are not preparing your children how to deal with their future anxieties or how to deal with life in general. We need to shift our attitudes.

Graham C.L. Dewy Davey, PhD talks about the anxiety caused by this in his article “Helicopter, Snowplow, and Bubble-Wrap Parenting – How is anxiety transmitted from parents to their children?” Many times anxiety ultimately ends up in depression. And we wonder why these kids end up depressed in their 30’s and 40’s. Well it came from our coddling them too much.

There is another version of parenting, which is the old-day proper way called hold your child accountable parenting. It is a lot firmer and doesn’t let children get away with things. It holds them accountable as much as possible. For one example, it restricts their use of social media. Social media has been known to be a huge source of depression and suicide among children and students. The bullying alone is enough reason to limit your child’s access to social media.

Parents have also got to stop trying to get them into colleges they shouldn’t. Stop snowplowing their way in.

Not all kids should go to college. Think about it. You could go to college to be a teacher making about $45,000 a year. Or you could spend two years in a trade and start out at $80,000 a year.

You could go to work for Google right out of high school. They won’t pay you but $20 to $25 an hour initially. But they will pay you $60 to $70 an hour after two years working there. It’s like Walmart. Everyone raises hell about Walmart, but their average income is $25 to $30 after three years of employment.

The point is there are many successful people without a college degree.

The main thing today is we’ve got to stop this snowplowing and helicoptering and coddling our kids.

For single parents, we need to figure out how to help them get role models for their children. They don’t have to be the same ethnic upbringing, just a good person who will volunteer to “adopt” a single parent family. There are thousands of great people out there who want to help. Everyone is trying to be White on White and Black on Black and I firmly disagree with that theory. If somebody helps make a family stronger, I don’t care what color they are. I think we should live in a colorless society.

The one thing I’m sure of is that we’ve got to practice more discipline and accountability.

Anyway, let’s get rid of the helicopter and snowplow parenting. And let’s take responsibility and get these darn smart phones out of our young children’s hands.

There is a great article from Business Insider, “Silicon Valley parents are raising their kids tech-free – and it should be a red flag“, that shows the reason their kids are tech-free. I think they’re right. We need to limit our children’s use of technology. They shouldn’t have a cell phone until they are at least 12 years old. And even then it should be limited use. Make your kids earn their tech time. Only allow them to use it after all of their homework and chores are done.

Don’t be afraid to hold your children accountable. Quit snowplowing or helicoptering or bubble wrapping them. They will love and appreciate you more because of it.

Our Moral Compass Needs to Get Back on Course

The moral compass of today’s society has really gone astray. Not to mention the decline in emotional intelligence. Between the hate crime accusations from Jussie Smollett and the inappropriate touching claims against Joe Biden, what are we supposed to think? Oh, and let’s not forget the exoneration of President Trump from colluding with the Russians.

When it comes to Jussie who knows if we’ll ever get the truth, but either way that story pans out, hate and resentment were the culprits. If Jussie is guilty he had enough hate and resentment in him to make false claims. And if he’s innocent then those who attacked him were full of hate and resentment as well. Either way, it’s an ugly truth.

Then we have President Trump. The Mueller Report says he didn’t collude with the Russians. You would think we as a country would be happy to hear that our President is not guilty. Instead, people are angry and in disbelief. It really is a sad state of affairs.

The truth is the feelings of hate can go beyond the level of any cognitive thinking or ability to deal with resentments. We really need to rethink and work on tolerance in our country. How do we take situations such as these and turn them into a positive?

How do we as a society become truly objective once again? How do we learn empathy and tolerance? Especially for a difference of opinion?

First of all, we need to re-embrace freedom of speech and learn to listen respectfully to one another. It is okay to disagree. I think a great example of this is in the art of debating. Debating forces both parties to look at both sides of the issue objectively whether you agree with it or not. There is a lesson to be re-learned there.

Our society has fought long and hard for many years for free speech and civil rights. We can’t lose all of the progress we have made because of a current lack of emotional intelligence in our society.

How do we fix this? No Hate No Violence likes to say Stop Talking Do Something. But for now, let’s start talking and start to really listen. Let us know your thoughts!

Let’s Do Something While We’re Talking

Let’s Preserve Our History With Transparency

Let’s put up large well-lit plaques instead of tearing down our monuments.

I know there are monuments that some people would love to tear down because they represent a dark part of America’s past. I understand why some of these monuments might offend certain people, and I am sensitive to their pain. However, to tear down these monuments would amount to an erasure of the history that they represent. To remove them disrespects the work of the artist and the historical significance of the pieces as they are.

One of the arguments for the removal of Confederate monuments is that they exist in public spaces without context.

They could be seen as a glorification of ideals that our country no longer represents instead of an example of how far we have come. So, instead of tearing them down, why don’t we provide that context? The cities and states that are home to these monuments should choose to maintain the monuments but put up a plaque that explains who the person was and what they did. In the case of Confederate generals, the plaque would explain the person’s involvement in the Civil War and that the war was fought for the preservation of slavery. The explanation should condemn the enslavement of black Americans, but let’s not forget that these pieces of art have become fixtures in communities and, beyond that, are the work of talented artists who spent time, sweat, and tears on them.

There will be people who are offended by this suggestion.

I recognize that. Those whose ancestors were enslaved and are reminded of that horrific history and pain by these monuments should be the ones in charge of the committees that would oversee what should be written on the plaques. Let those on the side of history that has been silenced for much of the existence of our country tell that story as they want it to be understood. Whether it be a few sentences or several paragraphs, providing context would allow for the preservation of the historical art while condemning racism and slavery.

Don’t we want the United States to be a country of redemption? Forgiveness?

If we don’t acknowledge the grim parts of our history, we may be doomed to repeat them. Adding a large well-lit sign explaining the historical context of these monuments would elevate them from a monument to a lesson. It could explain the wrongs of the person and how much our country has grown. If we intend to move forward and build a stronger, more united country free from the tensions of the past, we need to embrace our history and our monuments for the growth that they now represent.

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