Thought For The Day
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It is incontrovertible; a huge majority of Jews refuse to acknowledge even the remote possibility, that as a people, they are being incrementally "frog-marched" into oblivion.
Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).
Response from Marty D.:
Its not the gun - an inanimate object that has no will of its own. It's the amoral, anti-authoritarian, anti-faith, 'balkanized' anti-American culture that produces people willing to resort to unspeakable violence to establish domination and settle grievances. Without the 2nd Amendment, and re-establishing the rule of law, the whole country would (will) look like Chicago!
Chicago fights rise in teen murders -
Recent wave of violence includes 20 students killed since September
The Associated Press
March. 27, 2008
CHICAGO - The morning trip to school for dozens of teenagers here had all the normal signs: bleary eyes, oversized jackets zipped up against the chill, the seemingly endless wait for the bus.
But there was tension underlying the routine: The trip was under the watchful eyes of parents, an alderman, a principal and police.
The escort to and from Crane Tech High School this week, dubbed "Operation Safe Passage" is just one of the ways Chicago is dealing with a wave of violence that has stunned the city.
Since September, 20 Chicago Public Schools students have been killed, 18 by gunfire. Last school year, 24 of the more than 30 students killed were shot to death, compared with between 10 and 15 fatal shootings in the years before.
"The loss of life that we've seen among our young people is ... devastating," said school district spokesman Michael Vaughn. "This gun nonsense has reached a crisis level."
Dramatic increase
The number of violent deaths involving students in the nation's third-largest school district has increased so dramatically in the last two years that police are increasing school patrols and soon will be the first department in the country with live access to thousands of security cameras mounted outside — and inside — schools.
Chicago Public Schools is one of the only urban districts to track how many students are killed by guns — though none of the slayings have occurred on school property.
Nationally, homicide was the second-leading cause of death for young people ages 10 to 24 in 2004, and of those killed, 81 percent were killed with a firearm, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Chicago's overall homicide rate, like that in other major cities, dropped to a record low in 2007. But the murders that do occur are hitting young people hard, frightening students and parents, and prompting everyone from Mayor Richard M. Daley to activists to call for action.
Operation Safe Passage began this week. It provides escorts for students from the ABLA Homes public housing development to Crane Tech High School. Many of the 120 students from the housing project have not been to school since March 7 because they fear retaliation after a reputed gang member from ABLA shot and killed another student who lived on a rival gang's turf.
Three of Michelle Johnson's children attend Crane, and she says the escorts help — somewhat.
"For right now, I feel it's kinda safe," said Johnson, who added that she is willing to take her children to school every day until the situation improves.
Police to have access to school cameras
Daley recently announced a new resource for police — access to the 4,500 security cameras mounted inside and outside about 200 elementary and high schools.
The real-time video from the cameras once was available only to school officials, but now police and the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications will be able to see it as well. Daley said indoor cameras will be used only in emergencies.
Daley also has rolled back the curfew times for minors by half an hour, to 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. on weekends.
Many observers insist the issue isn't a school problem but a symptom of overall violence in the city. In fact, students in some of the city's most violent neighborhoods say school — with metal detectors, private security guards and uniformed police officers — is the one place they feel safe.
Antigun activists and officials say the violence highlights a dangerous reality: Arguments among young people that used to be resolved with fistfights now end in gunfire.
"They're just shooting out of rage," said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, an outspoken priest on the city's South Side whose church is putting up a $2,500 reward for information each time a CPS student is killed. The Chicago Board of Education has promised to match with its own $2,500 reward.
Tio Hardiman, executive director of the anti-violence group CeaseFire, said many young people consider a firearm their only protection. The way to reduce violence is to stop petty arguments among young people before they escalate into gunfire, Hardiman said.
"A lot of young guys in the community, first of all, would rather get caught with a gun than without a gun," Hardiman said. "There's a need a dire need for more conflict resolution training."
In the annals of judicial imperialism, we have arrived at a strange new chapter. A California court ruled this month that parents cannot "home school" their children without government certification. No teaching credential, no teaching. Parents "do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," wrote California appellate Justice Walter Croskey.
The 166,000 families in the state that now choose to educate their children at home must be stunned. But at least one political lobby likes the ruling. "We're happy," the California Teachers Association's Lloyd Porter told the San Francisco Chronicle. He says the union believes all students should be taught only by "credentialed" teachers, who will in due course belong to unions.
California law requires children between six and 18 to attend a full-time day school. Failure to comply means falling afoul of the state's truancy laws, which say kids can't play hooky without an excuse. But kids who are taught at home are less likely to be truants. Their parents choose to spend their time teaching English, math and science precisely because they don't think the public schools do a good enough job.
The case was initiated by the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services after a home-schooled child reportedly complained of physical abuse by his father. A lawyer assigned to two of the family's eight children invoked the truancy law to get the children enrolled in a public school and away from their parents. So a single case of parental abuse is being used to promote the registration of all parents who crack a book for their kids. If this strikes some readers as a tad East German, we know how you feel.
That so many families turn to home schooling is a market solution to a market failure -- namely the dismal performance of the local education monopoly. According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, the majority of states have low to moderate levels of regulation for home schools, an environment that has allowed the option to flourish, especially in the South and Western U.S. Between 1999 and 2003, the rate of home-schooling increased by 29%.
For some parents, the motive for home schooling is religious; others want to protect their kids from gangs and drugs. But the most-cited reason is to ensure a good education. Home-schooled students are routinely high performers on standardized academic tests, beating their public school peers on average by as much as 30 percentile points, regardless of subject. They perform well on tests like the SAT -- and colleges actively recruit them both for their high scores and the diversity they bring to campus.
In 1994, a federal attempt to require certification of parent-teachers went down in flames as hundreds of thousands of calls lit up phone banks on Capitol Hill. The movement has since only grown larger and better organized, now conservatively estimated at well over a million nationwide. But what they can't accomplish legislatively, unions are now trying to achieve by diktat from the courts.
If John McCain wants an issue to endear him to cultural conservatives, this would be it. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama rarely stray from the preferences of the teachers unions, but we'd like to know whether they really favor the certification of parents who dare to believe they know best how to teach their children.
Wall Street Journal Online
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120614130694756089.html
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Are Voters Smarter than 5th Graders?
Gabriel Garnica
Unlike Michelle Obama, I have been proud of this country and what it represents since I was knee high to a Tonka truck. Unlike Michelle Obama, I do not conveniently forget that everything I am today I owe to my parents’ love and this nation’s opportunity and freedom. In fact, I seem to be going in the completely opposite direction as Michelle in most respects (not a bad thing). One of those things is pride. While she has only recently found something to be proud about, I am rapidly finding something to be ashamed of.
Dumber Than Doorknobs
Unless I am delusional, it seems to me that the typical American voter has never been dumber, has never been more naïve and has never been more susceptible to every media con game in the books.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the dumbing down of this country has now reached the point where dumb and dumber could describe America’s collective intelligence progression over the past decade.
We have kids who cannot spell half the words they remember or remember half the words they should know. We have students whose grasp of basic math is about as tenuous as their association with common sense, critical thinking and logic. We have the babes of progressive education, fed a steady supply of victimization, pop education rubbish and flimsy notions of right and wrong. We have an entire generation whose rational and moral capacity is almost as deficient as their ability to follow simple directions, unscrew a medicine cap or vote without leaving a hanging chad.
Of course, there are exceptions, outstanding students who have managed to develop a fully-functioning brain and conscience. There have always been lights in the darkest nights, and there always will be. You cannot stamp out every ounce of human intelligence and moral capacity, no matter how hard you try. The vast majority, however, have become increasingly alienated from constructive brain use, content to turn the phrase “coast to coast” into a primer on handling successive courses in school. These are the kids who refuse to use any word longer than their curses, who dare you to listen to their rhetoric and conversations on a bus without leading you to suicide or, at least, thoughts of jumping off the bus, which may or may not be suicide but will certainly be a lot better than listening to what stands for America’s future.
Let us not slam the youth exclusively, however, for their precursors, the adults of today, are no wiser and more wrinkled. Just listen to what laughingly poses as serious discussion on The View, where airheads with serious looks spew their drivel wrapped as thought and insight, once in a while hugging or kissing, apparently delusional in the idea that their ramblings are in the same time zone as wisdom. I do not know which is worse: the fact that these fools are highly paid to display their superficial, mental deficiencies or that the sheep and lemmings in the audience cheer their burps and swoon at their pathetic swipes at relevance.
Finally, let us not forget that this mass stupidity has not befallen this nation through sheer coincidence. It is the result of an increasingly useless public school system and an increasingly dangerous media propaganda effort. When the media tells most people to jump, the vast majority do not only ask, “How high?” but also, “How often?”
Voting By the Mentally Poor
The right to vote is certainly one of the greatest expressions of a free nation yet, like all privileges, it carries a great responsibility with the benefit. That responsibility is to think, to reason, to critically analyze, to compare and contrast, to rationally dig and to make use of all of one’s mental and moral capacities in making the best possible decision and choice. Pray tell, how can the average American voter, academically and rationally babied for so long, have a prayer to make an effective choice of cheese, much less the leader of this nation?
The other day I was speaking to a friend’s toddler when she told me that she wanted a fork I was holding. Obviously, I did not want to give this child the fork as she could harm herself, so all I did was make some comment about Barney and the little girl completely forgot about the fork. All of this to remind you that innocent, naïve minds can be manipulated at whim. We have a media that wants to honeymoon with its favorite candidates half the time and hail them as the second coming the other half. That same media bashes, mocks or ignores those candidates it detests with such subtle or blatant frequency that one wonders if the word “objective” is the new hate word.
Why do we have debates? One candidate can make serious errors or praise controversial figures and still have his fanny kissed by a fawning media. Another can flip-flop; point hypocritical fingers or rant mindlessly and not be challenged. Why do we have political parties? They used to mean disparate views of the world, divergent approaches to society and differing takes on how to make this country great. Having finally eliminated the blur from my own vision through laser surgery, I find that the blur just moved to the differences between Democrats and Republicans as conservatives look under the bed for candidates to believe in.
Why do we have a media? We once imagined that true journalism meant reporting the truth accurately and objectively. Now we find that they play the average American “thinker” like I played that toddler, except I was moving the child away from harm and this media moves America toward it. Have you ever watched or listened to an ad for a TV program or store, listening to all of the inane, stupid rhetoric and mindless exclamations that this the show or place “you have been waiting for all of your life” or is the “greatest one yet”? Have you ever wondered who is stupid enough to buy this rubbish, not able to see through the hype, the lies, and the agenda?
Sadly, the answer is increasingly becoming “most people.”
Conclusion
I have always worshipped the power of words. Perhaps it is because I have always had a facility with them. Maybe it is because they are the tangible, audible expressions of intangible thought.
People often talk of the shrinking middle class, of the growing disparity between the haves and the have nots. They are, of course, speaking in economic and social terms, but I submit a new set of haves and have nots, on an intellectual, rational, moral plane.
We are breeding successive generations of sheep, of mental toddlers, of fawning, superficial groupies ready to cheer, faint, and throw their underwear at any charismatic, smiling media darling that comes along.
We are turning government by the people into government despite the people, and most of us are too clueless to even see it. We are justifying, rationalizing, defending and even praising stupidity when we used to do our best to eradicate it.
Increasingly, we are becoming a nation of intellectual haves and have nots. The haves know how to use words and construct arguments whether logical or manipulative. The intellectual have nots, however, only know how to swoon, drool, cheer, faint and follow instructions off a cliff on a cue. The old adage that “whoever rocks the cradle, rules the world” has never been more relevant than it is today. Increasingly and tragically, the Left is rocking the cradle, the Right is wearing diapers and the vast voting public is the infant listening to the media’s lullaby.
Gabriel Garnica
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Gabriel Garnica, Esq., is a college professor and licensed attorney whose regular commentary appears on familysecuritymatters.org, newmediajournal.us, The Daley Times-Post, and Michnews. He holds a law degree from New York University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from St. John’s University in New York.
“I don’t want to pay for your damn private school,” fumed the retired public school teacher, whose three kids attended public schools.
The angry comment was in response to a question I’ve asked in scores of newspaper columns over the years. His answer was typical of the hundreds of answers I’ve received, for it put words in my mouth and had nothing to do with what I had asked.
There’s something about THE QUESTION that brings out a primordial response in people, similar to how a chimpanzee is genetically programmed to respond to a perceived threat with barred teeth, screams, somersaults, and hair standing straight on its back. I’m coming to the conclusion that humans are hardwired to be collectivists and thus attack expressions of individualism, especially if the tribe’s children are involved.
I had not asked the retired teacher if he would pay for my kid’s Catholic education. Rather, the question was this: “What is the justification for my wife and me being forced to subsidize the pubic education of the three children of a well-off physician in our neighborhood?”
The question came with these background facts: The physician will pay approximately the same $190,000 in public education taxes over his lifetime as my wife and I will pay. But he will get about $360,000 in education services in return (the school district’s cost of educating each of his children for 12 years) and we will get no direct benefit in return. In a real sense, the difference of $170,000 between what he pays and receives will be picked up by my wife and me.
I don’t know about you, but $170,000 isn’t chump change to Kim and me.
A typical answer to the question in bold above is that “Public education taxes are for the common good.”
Beware of abstractions like the 'common good'. It’s an historical fact that such abstractions have been used to justify putting people in railroad cars for delivery to the gulag or showers. Invariably, some people are excluded from the common good, such as peasants under Stalin, Jews under Hitler, and, by no means even close in evil to these two examples, people who have their money taken in a liberal democracy for other people under the pretense of the common good.
But even if someone buys into the rationale about the common good, how does it help the common good for the physician to be subsidized by Kim and me? After all, because he would educate his kids without the subsidy, the subsidy does not result in a net gain to the common good. It’s a net gain to the physician, but not to the common good. It might be a different matter if the subsidy only went to the poor, but that’s not the case with public education taxes or most other collectivist programs.
For the record, my family subsidizes the education and living expenses of an orphan at a Catholic orphanage in southern Mexico. But we do so voluntarily and not through coercion. I’ll use that fact as a segue to the next point.
Another typical answer to the question in bold is that because I have chosen to send my kid to private school, I shouldn’t complain about being coerced to pay public education taxes. That’s like saying that Russian peasants shouldn’t have complained about having their land expropriated by the Bolsheviks, because they chose to own private land instead of joining the collective. Using that logic, if the US government were to nationalize the food industry and collect taxes for government commissaries, people shouldn’t complain about paying extra to shop in private supermarkets, because that would be their choice. The same with nationalized healthcare: If American healthcare were to be nationalized, people shouldn’t complain about paying extra to see a physician outside of the nationalized system.
Still another typical answer is that if it were not for public education, children would not be educated and taught to be good Americans. Sigh. First, that is not an answer to the question in bold. Second, it’s hogwash.
What kind of thinking is behind such answers? A cynic might say that the answers are driven by self-interest--that people like the retired public school teacher at the beginning of this article are on the receiving end of the subsidy but don’t want to admit their self-interest, choosing instead to hide it behind lofty rhetoric about the common good or personal attacks against me.
A cynic might also say that most people don’t question the status quo or think philosophically. They accept what exists because it has always existed in their lifetime. And since 90 percent of Americans have been taught in government schools, they have not been encouraged to think differently about government schools or other forms of collectivism.
But after years of being attacked for my belief in individualism and opposition to collectivism, and after seeing the leading presidential candidates be cheered by the masses for proposing more collectivism, I believe that the reason for the prevailing thinking is more basic: that people are hardwired for collectivism. As such, when the idea of individualism is inserted into their mental cage, they respond with the civilized equivalent of barred teeth, screams, somersaults and hair standing on their backs. “Destroy the threat” is their programmed response.
The blessings of industrialization, the division of labor and the Enlightenment are too recent to have changed the hardwiring that developed from a million years of living in hunter-gatherer tribes, or collectives. Clearly, my different hardwiring is due to a genetic mutation.
As such, it would be wise for me to stay away from chimpanzee cages.
By Craig J. Cantoni
Jan. 24, 2008
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An author and columnist, Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.
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Letter to Joe Crummy (KFYI 550 AM)
Phoenix, Arizona
February 18, 2006
Joe, I listened intently to your radio broadcast Friday afternoon, February 16th and thought your opposition points were sincere in regards to the proposed AZ legislation that would restrict political discourse in AZ classrooms. With the same facts that you have, my conclusions are somewhat different. Please indulge me for a moment.
What should be taught in the classroom is the subject material published by the school, in the course catalog, expected by the student, and not material solely chosen by the instructor. Isn’t that a novel concept!
The course catalog should contain an accurate description of the course, which it does not; otherwise students would not be caught unawares. The course catalog should also include a statement regarding how the student’s performance will be measured. For example, will it be measured objectively (based on facts/objective testing) or subjectively (based on opinion).
Secondly, most courses at accredited educational institutions have something called “terminal performance, skill and knowledge objectives.” The name may have changed in recent years, however there is such a document behind every single course of instruction at an accredited institution. This document describes the specific content of the course and what the student is expected to learn during the process of instruction - precisely. If properly written it even includes the testing methodology - an example of which would be “criterion reference testing.”
If there is subject material that is being presented in the classroom that is not contained in the TPSKO’s, and clearly unrelated to the advertised course content, then it is readily evident to even the most casual observer that a teacher is shoveling onto the students what we shall call politely a personal agenda. In fact, if the courses are not being taught in accordance with the TPSKO’s, the school should loose its accreditation and the teacher should lose his or her state certification. Why, because it is the institution’s responsibility to know what is being taught in their classrooms. What teachers are doing when they ignore the TPSKO’s and engage in unsupervised aberrant behavior is arguably willful malpractice in their trade. As an aside, teaching it is not a profession.
If the student signed up for a chemistry class, then the subject material should be chemistry; not politics. If it is supposed to be an algebra class, then no politics. If it is an under-graduate accounting class, then no politics. However, if a student were to sign up for some soft subject like "contemporary viewpoints in political science," a student should reasonably expect exceptionally divergent views.
Additionally, all students have core courses that are required of them, like them or not. Those should not be a hidden trap-door or rabbit hole to a liberal socialist hiding in the darkness like a predator. Core courses are supposed to be a foundation for future studies, not a political indoctrination which contains severe penalties if you hold or express differing views.
There is a significant difference in a course of instruction and a course of indoctrination, just as there is between an instructor and an ideologue. The former is more often than not grounded in facts and history and the latter in opinions. If it is supposed to be a fact-based classroom, then it should remain so. Save the opinions for a cold beer enjoyed with associates outside the academic environment.
Additionally, courses in education, particularly in earlier stages such as K-12, are FACT courses, not opinion courses – whether multiplication tables or state capitals. There is no basis for deviation from facts except and unless it is the teacher’s insidious intent to indoctrinate a particular racial, moral, political or sexual agenda - since opinions cannot be fact by definition.
Those teachers who would object to being denied a podium for their opinions are trumpeting from the rafters that they want unfettered latitude to indoctrinate and spew views that cannot be challenged either by students themselves or by citizens outside the educational establishment.
Putting one's head in the ground, ostrich-style is no different whether it regards the threat of Islam, whether it applies to enforcing existing laws on immigration, or whether it applies to classroom education vs. indoctrination. Teachers/professors and the education industry may want YOU and me to ignore the threat, but make no mistake, we have for too long and the results are evident. All of these aforementioned cultural issues, and many others, are strongly correlated in the tactics being employed and are the subject of relentless daily indoctrination in every imaginable academic setting.
Please take note that by our merely challenging the agenda of university professors and K-12 teachers, it has abruptly and dramatically changed the debate. Suddenly, if you are critical from outside the classroom, you are accused of limiting free speech and the open exchange of ideas (often ideas and opinions not relevant to the particular class in the first place). Soon there will be a suitable label such as "racist" for those who are critical of trap-door ideologues at universities.
Even worse, if you have the temerity to be critical as a student from inside the classroom, you will be unceremoniously caused to fail, regardless of your invested effort and displayed excellence. Any artificially diminished grade is a failure. Or, you will be brought up on academic ethics charges, or both. As a student, you shall absolutely comport yourself in the style of political correctness that the teacher and the university ruthlessly dictates, and you shall regurgitate the egalitarian party line, or else you can forget your entire future. This is less an exaggeration than you might imagine and prevalent nationwide.
Joe, are you old enough to remember what was done to members of the U.S. Armed Forces who were unfortunate enough to become prisoners of war in North Korea? They were subjected to years of intense indoctrination. It was called it “brain washing” in those days, but it was nothing more than sophisticated indoctrination. Brain washing became the basis for the original version of the movie, “The Manchurian Candidate.” And now, pure and unadulterated indoctrination has been institutionalized in American classrooms. Americans have been made afraid to confront it, just as we have been made afraid to offend an American of African descent or a homosexual. Joe, does that PC fear envelop you as it does most Americans? Remember, a man that must be politically correct, cannot by definition tell the truth. Is that what you want for yourself and the rest of us? Of course not.
Joe, you see other issues clearly for what they are. Possibly you don’t realize how many people are trembling in fear because their freedom of speech has been taken away. The AZ legislator who put forward the bill you were discussing is among the most courageous politicians you can imagine. The personal risks in trying to do the right thing for AZ and the United States are huge. This man is a leader. This man is to be commended and celebrated, not reviled.
You seemed to be saying on the radio (if I didn't misunderstand you) that it would not be Politically Correct for us to try to restrict a teacher’s opinion-based-rants from outside the classroom, even if they are unrelated to the course of instruction. At the same time, you seem to be suggesting we should allow professors to continue to restrict and unilaterally control all thought and analysis inside the classroom - and allow them to severely punish students for divergent viewpoints. That kind of thought process is dangerously PC and nonsensical. Remember Joe, the national culture ten years from now begins in our classrooms today. Do you want the whole nation to go this way, or in your opinion is it already too late to stop it? Even if it is your opinion that it is already too late, please don't enforce your opinion on me (or your listeners) and call me names and disadvantage me if I choose to disagree and stand in opposition to mentally defective ideologues. If you care about our children, and I know you do, and believe that they are the future of our country, and I know you do, then education must be seen differently than indoctrination and alternatives sought quickly. We must find (demand) a creditable alternative to our having to blindly feed our youth to the government’s indoctrination centers.
Joe, let's try it your way. Consider the following as a possible solution. The first premise is: No restrictions in the classroom. The second premise is: Let's empower the free market. Are you ready? In the future, there will be two categories of courses, opinion and factual - or if you will, fiction and non-fiction. In those classes that are factual, there will be no opinions. In those courses that are opinions, no facts are needed. Extraneous opinions are hardly needed in any form of chemistry, physics, mathematics, accounting, etc. Teaching "what is" should suffice. The course catalog should indicate if a course, supported by TPSKO’s, is based on opinion or facts. No such limits will be applied to other courses unless they are the “core courses” required of every student in the pursuit of a major. No opinions should be allowed in core courses. If the course content is opinion, by definition it should not be a core course.
Secondly, the instructors who are giving the courses should be required to annotate next to their name in the course catalog, "conservative" or "liberal," which are code words for liberty or socialism. Think of it as part of the instructor’s curriculum vitae. Let the students and their parents choose which courses they want to subsidize and which to avoid. The free market will quickly resolve the problem and these ideologue professors and faculty members will quickly go the way of Air America. The only answer is to open competitive avenues to an education rather than submit our youth to indoctrination.
There will be a mushroom cloud of response to such proposals because liberals, by definition, have never had to compete for anything in their life and competition is an anathema to everything they believe. Occasionally, as I drive by ASU, I think I can hear chanting of something that sounds very much like, “Egalitarianism, uber alles.” You would be well served to listen closely and react accordingly. We all should.
After this letter is cleaned up, it will be published on a conservative website. I would be pleased to include your response – whether in agreement or disagreement.
It’s a lively community forum. A nice young woman named Jan Smith from Freeland (a tiny country tucked away somewhere in Western Europe) is telling us about how Freeland has solved many of the problems our local politicians have been struggling with. Some think our city council members could learn from Freeland’s example.
"One of the problems we’ve dealt with quite successfully is the gun issue," Ms. Smith says. "Now remember, we’re a free country like yours – we believe in individual liberty and responsibility. We certainly allow citizens to own and use firearms.
"However, we noticed that this creates several problems. Many people just don’t take proper care of their guns. They don’t know how to clean them, how to store them, how to make sure they are safe. Other people modify their guns in ways that are illegal or not in the best interests of the public. This poses a danger not only to themselves, but to the community.
"Some of our cleverest leaders solved that. First, we passed a law requiring that everyone care for their guns and store them properly. We instituted a massive educational campaign to stress the importance of this.
"That helped, but of course there were still people who didn’t comply.
"The way we ultimately solved the problem was for the government to provide citizens with the service of taking care of their guns for them.
"We built huge buildings in every community and hired firearm experts to work there. We passed a new law requiring everyone to drop off their guns at the building closest to them every morning, and then pick them up in the early evening. Some complained this was inconvenient for them, so we created a system to pick the guns up at each home every morning and return them to the owners in the evenings.
"Having the guns all day gives our government-trained firearms experts a chance to modify those that don’t comply with gun regulations, in addition to making sure they are cleaned and stored safely.
"It’s a win-win. Folks really appreciate this service!
"A great side effect that we didn’t anticipate was that it gives more freedom to everyone! No longer do citizens worry about what might happen to their guns if they left them at home during the day, so they can go to work or run their errands in peace.
"They know their guns are safe and well-cared-for. And of course they appreciate not having to do the hard work of taking care of their guns themselves."
Councilman Brown interrupts with a question: "Have you encountered any problems with this system?"
"Not really." Ms. Smith pauses. "Well, some people complain that the government experts don’t do a good job. Some say that their guns don’t work as well as they used to, or that they prefer to take care of them themselves, for whatever reasons.
"No problem. To appease these complainers, we allow them to take their guns to private, licensed companies that provide the same service. Of course, not many people take advantage of these private services, because after all they have to PAY for them, whereas the tax-funded government service is free.
Councilman Jones: "Sounds great! This is something I think we should consider here."
I look around at the mostly conservative and libertarian crowd – who, predictably go ballistic.
"You’ve got to be kidding!" says a man on the front row. "You’ll never see that here!" says another.
"You’ll take my guns when you pry them from my cold dead fingers!" shouts a man in the back row, and soon the crowd is on its feet – echoing his statement and booing the politicians.
Whew! It’s clear we won’t see this sort of thing in my community any time soon.
As I nod in agreement with the crowd, I notice an image out of the corner of my eye – a bright yellow school bus is passing by the window.
And suddenly I realize that just about everyone in the room allows government workers to come every day and take away something – something far more precious than any piece of metal.
That big yellow school bus takes our children to huge government buildings where most of their waking hours are spent. Where each day begins with an invocation of loyalty to the state. Where their most treasured spiritual values and symbols are banished. Where peer pressure replaces family values. Where the truly important questions of life can’t be asked, much less answered. Where pop culture surpasses the classics. Where socialism is taught – both in theory and by example. Where conformity and indoctrination are far more important than thinking or reading…
Libertarians and most conservatives boldly and nobly take a stand for our right to keep and bear arms. Not so we can go duck hunting, but so we can defend ourselves and our families from invasion. And so we can, if necessary, defend our liberty from the possibility of a tyrannical state.
But what if the tyranny we fear comes to pass – grown and nurtured in our very homes?
Until we have equal passion for defending our children from the invasion of their MINDS – unless we take a bold and noble stand for the separation of SCHOOL and state – we will continue to allow our children to be taken from our warm, loving arms.
Liberals embrace socialist “ideologies.” Ideologies are a collection of ideas, or a systematic body of concepts about human life or culture. In somewhat different words, ideologies are the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program, e.g., Marxism or some economic and political variant. Socialism is best illustrated by a secular society in which the state owns all productive assets and there is no private property. Collectively we refer to such idologies as Liberalism.
A conservative (or a libertarian) would tell you that society cannot be made (forced) to fit some abstract scheme dreamed up by this or that thinker, and attempts to make it do so have always failed. An ideology is not a naturally occurring event, but an unnatural order applied to individuals of a collective membership, in this case, citizens of the United States.
Conservatism, in contrast to liberalism, is a philosophy as opposed to an ideology. The philosophy is to preserve what is established, which is based on evolved tradition and social stability, and which relies on the best of culture that has been historically successful. Conservatives do not embrace any ideology. They reject all ideologies. A conservative individual is less likely to experiment, avoids abrupt change, and is typically cautious and discreet.
Income redistribution (redistribution of wealth) is a political policy promoted by liberals as part of their ideology, and understandably it is opposed by conservatives. The basic premise of the belief system underlying liberalism is that money (wealth) should be more equally distributed so that accumulated wealth benefits all members of society, regardless of who earned it, and that the rich should be obliged (forced) to assist the poor on the pretense that the income shifting mechanism benefits the whole of society.
Thus, earned money should be redistributed from the earner to those who have not earned it, creating a more financially egalitarian society. Politicians expect - no, demand public funds, your tax money to subsidize those who they have arbitrarily classified as somehow disadvantaged (in return for votes). The entitlement culture (egalitarianism) is saying you owe it to them.
Egalitarianism is a liberal moral doctrine imposed by force. It is an ideology that equality ought to prevail throughout society even if it is at the detrimental expense of many members of society, typically those in the top 50% of American wage earners (those with a joint income over $30,000 per year). The most common form of egalitarianism today espoused by liberals, of whom both political parties are rife, centers on the belief that government should engage in an unnatural communal approach to individual income.
"Who is supposed to be equal?"
"In what respect are they supposed to be equal?"
“At whose expense are they supposed to be equal?”
Apparently it isn’t enough that equality already exists in all endeavors of the American mind, hands and heart, only that those Americans who compete poorly believe they are wrongfully and/or “unfairly” materially disadvantaged and therefore should be subsidized by others in society.
• According to legal egalitarianism, everyone ought to be considered equal under the law.
• According to education egalitarianism, everyone ought to be provided an education.
• According to moral egalitarianism, each person is of equal moral worth.
• According to democratic egalitarianism, everyone ought to have an equal voice in public affairs.
• According to political egalitarianism, everyone ought to be equal in political power.
• According to opportunity egalitarianism everyone ought to be equal in economic opportunity.
• According to material egalitarianism, everyone ought to be equal with respect to material possessions.
With the exception of the last liberal epistle, American society is egalitarian. Few would dispute this as a fact except to be argumentative. The final premise regarding material and financial wealth is understandably the greatest source of consternation and debate. Those receiving have come to expect it. Those giving have come to resent it. The undeniable correlation is an inverse relationship between material egalitarianism and the American Economy, the latter peaking over 30 years ago. Material egalitarianism (redistribution) continues to grow unchecked, arguably beyond reason, and seemingly without limits.
Our founding documents provided all egalitarian equalities, short of income and education redistribution, which only began after income taxes became a national reality and Congress attempted to engineer social mores with the revenues. Until then education was viewed as the reward for seizing opportunity, regardless of am individual's material circumstances. All that need be provided was opportunity.
Often, liberal proponents of redistribution argue that the rich are somehow exploiting the poor, first by the rich educating themselves, then working, achieving and enriching themselves, and somehow gaining “unfair” benefits as if by deceit and avarice. Socialists, a synonym for liberals, contend redistributive practices are necessary in order to redress the imbalance. Today, even when opportunity is spurned by the recipients, as in education for example, all other forms of wealth are never-the-less liberally redistributed with life-time tenure.
If in fact all men were created equal, why are some still receiving welfare? Egalitarianism is nothing less than the liberal acknowledgment that nobody is created "equal," except arbuably in the eyes of the law in the United States of America. Egalitarianism is also a profound liberal acknowledgment that redistribution will be a wildly successful method in a representative society to obtain and hold on to power. Thoughtful reflection will convince anyone that redistribution benefits no one - except politicians. (See archived article: The End Times)
“Unfair” is the key word. Everything depends on the vantage point of the person using the word. In typical fashion, the person using the “unfair” word has either: (1) never had to compete for anything in their life and seeks equitable distribution of national assets without competition, or (2) is so poorly prepared to compete, often by presonal choice, that productive citizenship is not reasonably possible. Congress has seen fit to reward the latter’s stellar performance with lifetime tax-free annuities on behalf of the rest of us, members of what should be Team America.
From each according to his ability (education and work ethic and a host of other attributes), to each according to his need (lack of education, lack of work ethic, etc.). It is often lost on ideologues that education and work ethic are somewhat redundant and typically the result of personal choice.
You may not believe it today, but redistribution has only just begun. If the current Administration has not made you a believer, it is hard to imagine what could.
The ignorance of our nation’s youth is one of conscious design.
So obvious are the shortcomings in the American system of education and so intransigent are the educators, Education Department and NTA, one can only conclude that the ignorance of our nation’s youth is the result of a carefully orchestrated “dumbing down of America.” Orchestrated does not imply a vast conspiracy. However, it does strongly suggest that most educators serve their own interests before those of the nation or the youth entrusted to their care.
Assuming change will eventually be recognized as needed, and before it is going to occur, avowed liberal socialists (both Republicans and Democrats) are going to fight conservatives every inch of the way. Why? Because liberals think the status quo is just fine, thank you very much, since it serves their self interest.
Why is education such a critical factor in our economic destiny?
Socialism is a direct and predictable result of the current system of government public education.
What else is a nation to do with a generation of unprepared youth, uneducated to the extreme, unable to compete, unable to communicate or comprehend in writing, unable to read instructions or perform the simplest vocational task, let alone make change. Underlying the ugly surface deficiencies, our youth are unable to reason, be self-reliant, display integrity when challenged, and a great preponderance are unreliable, unmotivated, and unable to speak a recognizable form of business English.
What is a good socialist to do? Add them to the welfare roles of course, or give them government or corporate jobs under the guise of equal opportunity. Call it what you want, it’s still a form of welfare and institutionalized prejudice. Clearly more qualified individuals applied for those jobs and did not get the job, or the seat in a college or university.
And by all means, we must reward the most ignorant of our youth with the right to vote. Now sit back and watch the perfect political example of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).
Our system of education is both grounded in and advocates socialism in its purest sense. How could that be?
Education in America today, little better than a human “puppy mill” and juvenile day care center, is government subsidized, regulated and void internally of meaningful competition. Rather than emphasize initiative, excellence, integrity, achievement, character and citizenship, public schools encourage conformity to substandard mediocrity. What is lacking is the societal premise that "Good enough, isn't." Our education system lacks criterion reference testing, terminal performance skill and knowledge objectives in any variation, and functions without standardized student accountability. Needs analysis are non-existent except to justify next year’s budget. Admissions are dictated by anything but merit. Centers for education are staffed by large (huge) numbers of people who have done nothing in life except read a book and express their opinions, people who never served their country, people who refuse to tolerate free speech, people unaccountable for their competence, people who refuse intellectual exchange of ideas, people who endorse secularism as the “state religion” while demonstrating no tolerance for any other, people who ostracize and demean faculty members and the public with divergent views, people who condone aberrant behavior, people who serve only their own self interests and narcissism, people who coerce their students under the veiled threat of failing grades, people who have institutionalized lifetime welfare in the guise of tenure, people who coddle terrorism, people who repudiate patriotism and demean military service, people who scorn free markets and capitalism, and people who even advocate undermining of the American democratic process. Did I leave anything out? And not a word was exaggeration.
Do you remember when teachers were underpaid? Today, the average annual teacher’s salary is $46,752, more that the average enlisted man’s salary in Iraq or the police officer on the front lines in our cities. And you thought “expected return” was based on risk analysis.
In fact, educators wrongfully refer to their occupation as a profession. At a minimum you'd think they would know the difference. If education were a profession, it would be exclusive which it is not. People routinely teach others outside a traditional school environment. Entrance to the occupation would be competitive and educators and the system of education would be self-regulating, neither of which it is the case. Laypeople in state legislatures and unions, or those on boards of education typically set the rules for and regulate teachers. Teaching is an occupation, i.e., a group of people with a vocational expertise that in many states is less difficult to obtain than a real estate license.
It is unusual to find a single person in the education industry who understands the simple postulation that we are all the end result of the sum of our economic, behavioral and political decisions, both as a nation and as individuals, each and every minute of every day. And the decisions we make are both cumulative and more often than not, irrevocable!
Meanwhile, our lack of individual education is manifested in our collective voting decisions. Whether voters are informed or not, their votes still result in choosing our elected representatives. The pathetic state of affairs in the United States Senate makes the point.
Consequently, one could cynically suggest that America deserves what Congress and State Legislatures vote for. We would argue that American citizens don’t deserve what is happening to their culture at the hands of an ignorant and self-serving Congress, anti-American media, activist Judiciary and Marxist system of youth indoctrination in government-controlled public schools.
At the end of the day, liberals won’t like it either; but true to form, it will be someone else’s fault and they will once again portray themselves to be the victims.
Why ask such a question? Because Americans have a profound need to understand fundamental economic issues and the policy alternatives society utilizes in order to reason accurately and objectively and make informed choices with democratic votes. That is arguably the singular premise upon which the experiment in American liberty depends and the most important determinant of success and continued existence of our nation.
Americans, since the earliest days of the nation’s founders, were informed and engaged, arguably until the advent of the Education Department. Ever since, knowledge accumulation in our schools has been minimal, and as a result, informed choices are rare at any level of society, particularly in Congress and the Courts. The trajectory of the trend resembles that of a gliding anvil.
The cause and effect is readily apparent to anyone willing to look with one eye and see with the other. Everything that is clearly visible in society today, including culture, was once taught, indoctrinated, condoned, repudiated or ignored in the education, media and entertainment systems of America, which in large part explains why several Supreme Court Justices know little about the Constitution of the United States of America or the Bill of Rights.
We casually joke and occasionally complain about congressmen, but they weren’t born that way. They were educated and trained by our academic institutions, and encouraged by a justice system that rewards social avarice. Similarly trained were our judges, trial lawyers, doctors, corporate executives, pilots, nurses, school teachers, police officers, governors, mayors, etc.
Americans are today exactly what we taught them to be - in our schools. They are precisely what our educational institutions created yesterday. In other words, today’s educators will always create tomorrow’s culture which, without serious change, will be intellectually, culturally, morally and ethically vacant.
Since our youth are specifically being indoctrinated to reject liberty and morality, and embrace licentiousness and collectivism, what would you reasonably expect economically and politically in the years ahead?
Only in unusual cases does a family have a modifying influence and that fortunate student avoids drugs and finds access either to a private school or a school voucher program. If you think about it, liberals have proudly and defiantly strived for years to replace parents with a village, family with a government, parents with law enforcement, reward the less productive and marginal achievers with a free ride, and to deny citizen access at the state and local levels to all forms of private, religious and charter schools, and all forms of voucher programs.
Assuming all the brightest children in America weren’t victims of abortion, the only other explanation for the low achievement scores and educational AIDS (acquired intelligence deficiency syndrome), is an inexcusable public (government) education system, with mindless administrators, unqualified and under-employed educators, tenure without excellence or accountability, unmotivated miscreants as students, massive state and federal government subsidies, institutionalized prejudice, and government oversight and regulation in lieu of private enterprise and competition.
In the meantime, educators make the achievement tests easier and easier, and when that doesn’t work, they lower the passing score and claim improving results and unions demand pay raises and benefit increases.
Educational AIDS is no less a disease than HIV, and no less deadly to the nation. Nor is there any cure short of eradication. That must begin with a profound national attitude and behavioral change from one of inept delivery of poor quality indoctrination to irresponsible youth, to one of individual responsibility to obtain an education and personal accountability for failing.
No amount of taxation, grants, endowments, programs, subsidies, sports, magnificient campus structures, salaries, tenure and redistribution of opportunity give a single youth the barest elements of an education. Only when a majority of Americans begin to understand that education is possibly the only thing in life that cannot be "given" - and instill that reality in their children and their politicians, will change begin.
