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!

Unplanned VS Planned

The topic of abortion certainly is one that carries a lot of debate. As does the movie “Unplanned”.

But rather than debate the topic of abortion we wanted to bring up the topic of censorship.

Many of you may have seen the movie “Unplanned” which tells the story of Abby Johnson, a young clinic director for Planned Parenthood who ultimately becomes an anti-abortion activist. It’s an interesting movie.

But the making of the movie is an interesting story in itself.

The writer and directors of the movie have faced quite a bit of opposition in marketing this film. So much so they testified at a Congressional Committee meeting on “Technological Censorship and the Public Discourse”.

Their testimony includes reports of being blocked or suspended from Google Ads, Twitter, and other social media.

The NPAA gave them an “R” rating limiting their ability to market to a Christian base. These are just naming a few examples of the challenges they faced. Their testimony was very interesting. We encourage you to check out the link “Technological Censorship and the Public Discourse”. It is quite enlightening.

We are supposed to be a country who supports free speech. Yet, here we find big tech companies trying to restrict our rights. How is this right or legal? What they are doing is censorship and seems discriminatory. Our moral compass needs to get back on course.

This type of censorship is an insult to the intelligence of American adults.

We should always be free to hear both sides of a debate and be free to make our own educated decisions on what we choose to believe in. Or what we want to watch at a movie.

That’s what makes America great. We choose which movie ticket we want to purchase. We choose what we want to believe in.

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.