Another Example of Obama’s Administration Targeting Conservatives

“The most sacred of the duties of a government is to do equal and impartial justice to all citizens.” — Thomas Jefferson, Note in Destutt de Tracy — 1816

If you’ll recall, the Gibson Guitar Corporation made the headlines in 2011 when federal agents armed with search warrants raided their facilities in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn. The agents seized raw materials, electronic files and guitars and the company was accused of using “endangered” wood in violation of U.S. and foreign laws. Oddly enough, some of Gibson’s biggest competitors — including C.F. Martin & Co. – used similar wood in their guitars but avoided the feds.

On September 1, 2011 I posted the blog “Hide Your Stradivarius” where I detailed the raid by the Department of Justice on the Gibson Guitar Company’s facilities in Nashville and Memphis Tennessee. In that post I quoted an article in The Wall Street Journal’s August 26, 2011 article by Eric Felten:

“Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson’s chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company’s manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. “The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier,” he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

It isn’t the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian’s ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name “United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms.”

The question in the first raid seemed to be whether Gibson had been buying illegally harvested hardwoods from protected forests, such as the Madagascar ebony that makes for such lovely fretboards. And if Gibson did knowingly import illegally harvested ebony from Madagascar, that wouldn’t be a negligible offense. Peter Lowry, ebony and rosewood expert at the Missouri Botanical Garden, calls the Madagascar wood trade the “equivalent of Africa’s blood diamonds.” But with the new raid, the government seems to be questioning whether some wood sourced from India met every regulatory jot and tittle.”

Now with all of today’s questions about the Obama administration’s role in targeting conservative activist groups, one has to question if the Gibson raid wasn’t just another example of a politically motivated attack.

Interestingly, one of Gibson's leading competitors is C.F. Martin & Co. According to C.F. Martin's catalog, several of their guitars contain "East Indian Rosewood," which is the exact same wood in at least 10 of Gibson's guitars. So why were they not also raided and their inventory of foreign wood seized?

Grossly underreported at the time was the fact that Gibson's chief executive, Henry Juszkiewicz, contributed to Republican politicians. Recent donations have included $2,000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and $1,500 to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.

By contrast, Chris Martin IV, the Martin & Co. CEO, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee over the past couple of election cycles.

"We feel that Gibson was inappropriately targeted," Juszkiewicz said at the time, adding the matter "could have been addressed with a simple contact (from) a caring human being representing the government. Instead, the government used violent and hostile means."

That includes what Gibson described as "two hostile raids on its factories by agents carrying weapons and attired in SWAT gear where employees were forced out of the premises, production was shut down, goods were seized as contraband and threats were made that would have forced the business to close."

Gibson, fearing a bankrupting legal battle, settled and agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty to the U.S. Government. It also agreed to make a "community service payment" of $50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation — to be used on research projects or tree-conservation activities.

The feds in return agreed to let Gibson resume importing wood while they sought "clarification" from India. According to Juszkiewicz in an interview on Fox and Friends the raid has cost the company over $7 million in fines, forced contributions, legal fees, confiscated materials, and loss of sales in response to a civil suit filed in June 2011 by the Justice Department.

The feds say they acted to save the environment from greedy plunderers. America is a trivial importer of rosewood from Madagascar and India. Ninety-five percent of it goes to China, where it is used to make luxury items like $800,000 beds. So putting Gibson out of business wasn't going to do a whole lot to save their forests.

Juszkiewicz' claim that his company was "inappropriately targeted" is eerily similar to the claims by Tea Party, conservative, pro-life and religious groups that they were targeted by the IRS for special scrutiny because they sought to exercise their First Amendment rights to band together in vocal opposition to the administration's policies and the out-of-control growth of government and its power.

The Gibson Guitar raid, the IRS intimidation of Tea Party groups and the fraudulently obtained warrant naming Fox News reporter James Rosen as an "aider, abettor, co-conspirator" in stealing government secrets are but a few examples of the abuse of power by the Obama administration to intimidate those on its enemies list.

Gibson Guitars are among the most sought-after musical instruments in the world. Everyone from Chet Atkins to Les Paul to Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin to Slash of Guns n’ Roses played them. A vintage 1959 Les Paul guitar can go for as much as $400,000. Almost every kid who has dreams of music stardom wants a Gibson guitar.

Gibson is also a company that is proud to put the “Made in the USA” label on its instruments. While the company has lower-end lines that are made overseas, every guitar that bears the “Gibson” label is made in the U.S. by American workers.

On August 24, 2011, armed agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Homeland Security raided the corporate headquarters and two factories of the Gibson Guitar company. The agencies took away 24 pallets of Indian rosewood and ebony, as well as a number of guitars and computer files.

The federal agents’ contention is that Gibson had illegally imported the exotic wood, which is used to make fretboards and bridges for their high-end instruments. Under the 1900 Lacey Act, which was amended in 2008 to include wood products, American companies must abide by the laws of source countries when importing products. The intent of the law is to protect endangered species of wildlife and plants. U.S. Fish and Wildlife claims that the Gibson wood — in the form of fingerboard ‘blanks’ — was illegal to export from India and therefore illegal to import into the United States.

Now here’s the rub. While the feds say the wood — as imported — is illegal, had it been ‘finished’ by workers in India, it would have been perfectly legal to import. The wood itself was not banned, just the manufacturing process — or lack of it.

“I think they’re taking the position that we should be shifting these jobs overseas,” says Bruce Mitchell, the chief legal counsel for Gibson. “We have — probably 40 people in our factory here just at USA who are doing the inlays into the fingerboard that are putting the fret on. If all that was to be done over in India, then those jobs would be lost.”

What’s most puzzling about this case is that India is perfectly happy to ship the fingerboard ‘blanks’ to the United States. In a letter dated July 13, 2012, the deputy director general of foreign trade for India confirmed that “fingerboards made of rosewood and ebony is (sic) freely exportable.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife offered no comment about the discrepancy. But people involved in the import and export of musical instruments and parts believe the U.S. Department of Justice offered its own interpretation of Indian law. Even though India saw no reason for an enforcement action, the U.S. did.

“It is such an outrageous position — it has hurt Gibson tremendously — has criminalized Gibson and its workplace and its workers. It is an unsustainable position that they’re taking,” Mitchell says.

Something else to consider in all of this: Gibson uses the same wood, from many of the same suppliers and importers that nearly every other guitar company in America does. And they have not been targeted. You might ask – why?

Rewind the clock four years. Gibson was raided in 2009 and a shipment of rosewood and ebony from Madagascar was seized. Gibson argued that the wood was obtained through proper channels, but U.S. Fish and Wildlife argued that Gibson could not adequately prove that the wood came from legitimate sources. Again, the issue of ‘finishing’ the wood came into play. Had Gibson imported finished parts from Madagascar instead of ‘blanks,’ it would have been perfectly legal.

No charges have been filed as of yet, and Gibson is fighting in court to get its wood back.

It could be that the Madagascar issue put Gibson front and center on the Department of Justice's radar screen.

There was a discrepancy in the import of this latest shipment of wood. It was listed with an improper tariff code, which the importer, Luthiers Mercantile International of Windsor, Calif., claimed was a clerical error by a junior employee and tried to clear up. But rather than talk to the importer and Gibson about it, the Justice Department dispatched U.S. Fish and Wildlife and DHS agents to raid the Gibson compounds.

Gibson feels it has been unfairly targeted. “We are being singled out. Very much so,” says Mitchell. “Every music instrument company in the United States uses rosewood fingerboards. Period. And they’re in the same state — they’re buying from the same suppliers, they’re using the same shippers.”

Gibson has also been working hard to maintain proper sources of wood, working with the Forest Stewardship Council to insure its suppliers are certified. Gibson also works closely with the Rainforest Alliance on sustainable supplies of exotic woods. It’s a no-brainer for Gibson and other guitar manufacturers. If they can’t get the highly sought-after tone woods that artists crave, they just might go out of business.

Outside observers see a more sinister possibility in all of this. Henry Juszkiewicz, Gibson’s CEO, is a Republican, who has contributed to Republican candidates (as well as some Democratic candidates). Other guitar companies, which have not been targeted, are led by Democrats. Is there a political motivation to all of this? Neither Mitchell, nor Juszkiewicz will offer an opinion, but consider what Juszkiewicz told Neil Cavuto on "Your World."

“You know we've been pretty low key. We're a guitar company. We've been manufacturing guitars. We've been involved in the environmental movement. We’ve been trying to do the right thing in terms of sourcing. We really don’t know why they are picking on us.”

With the current rash of charges against the Department of Justice we might consider changing the name to The Department of targeted Injustice based on your politics.

As more and more charges mount against Eric Holder it is evident he is no doubt the worst Attorney General since Alexander Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson’s AG noted for his infamous “Palmer Raids.”

Cleta Mitchell has prepared a comprehensive guide to the IRS’ abuse of election-integrity and Tea Party Groups. It has everything you need to know to understand the legal environment that sprouted this scandal.

On May 23 we discovered that Attorney General Eric Holder personally signed the search warrants targeting Fox News reporter James Rosen. That was very bad news, because President Obama is supposed to be deeply “troubled” about the whole affair, and deeply believes that “journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs.” The President loves freedom of the press very, very, very much. He’s so troubled that he assigned the Attorney General to get to the bottom of it, a grueling search that lasted until Holder wandered into the men’s room and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

But this is more than just a profound embarrassment for Holder and his boss, because a compelling case can be made that Eric Holder once again lied to Congress — and, unlike the Fast and Furious mess, he’s not going to get out of it by claiming that he doesn’t read his email, doesn’t know what his subordinates are doing, and can only find the Justice Department because his driver and body guard know where it is.

Because Holder, in sworn testimony before Congress, said this: “In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, this is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.”

It’s not a misstatement or a slip of the tongue. Holder has not only been “involved in” the “potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material.” On May 24^th the Huffington Post reported that he not only signed the search warrants, but vetted them. This means he can’t use the “Colonel Blake” maneuver and claim he just signed a stack of paperwork without reading it.

On CNN’s State of the Union, former House speaker Newt Gingrich argued that Republicans have an important choice to make when it comes to discussing the IRS scandal: “I think this is a really important moment for Republicans in particular to make a decision: Is this a gotcha moment or is this a major educational opportunity?” Gingrich pointed to even Obama adviser David Axelrod’s recent acknowledgement that the government is too large for President Obama to have known what was happening at the IRS.

The crucial question, said Gingrich, is, “Are we going to have systemic change, and are we going to talk about the fact that big government and big bureaucracy is inherently out of control by its very definition?”

The Cultural Totalitarianism Of The Left

“Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.” — Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Totalitarianism is usually associated with an omnipresent state which enchains the individual with iron manacles of edicts, orders, and regulations. The voracious appetite of government and its eager use of coercive power make citizens into slaves whose lives are the property of those who rule rather than serve the people.

This is a grim reality in most of the world. Government power is like gravity in a black hole: it relentlessly and mindlessly accumulates more and more mass over time. Moreover, because the rationale for this power is to protect the people -- and if people were doing well, that rationale would vanish -- totalitarian government makes sure that nothing it does really makes life better. So while public education is touted as a panacea for social ills, state education administrators and politicians in their pocket resist reforms which would make schools work and insist that more money and authority over the lives of our children is the policy allowed.

There is, however, another incarnation of totalitarianism, cultural totalitarianism, which is just as dangerous as government totalitarianism. We see cultural totalitarianism all the time, although it is harder for us to grasp because we assume that those cultural totalitarians are rational participants in the marketplace of goods and services. But this is not so.

A major factor of the left’s domination of the narrative is to control the culture through the media and our education systems. This all began with John Dewey, the acknowledged father of today’s progressive education industry. Dewey, like other progressive academicians of his time were followers of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel whose historicist and idealist account of reality revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism. His ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology — moral relevance. He was a major representative of progressive education and liberalism.

In his advocacy of democracy, Dewey considered two fundamental elements — schools and civil society — as being major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality. Dewey asserted that complete democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights but also by ensuring that there exists a fully formed public opinion, accomplished by effective communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the latter being accountable for the policies they adopt.

While all of this may sound very utopian Dewey’s ideas when adopted by the academy resulted more in progressive indoctrination than in critical thinking — something our institutions of higher learning are dedicated to today.

In the 1930’s Dewey’s philosophy was further advanced with the influence of the Frankfurt School a Marxist think tank dedicated to a neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory. The school initially consisted of dissident Marxists who believed that some of Marx's followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox Communist parties. Meanwhile, many of these theorists believed that traditional Marxist theory could not adequately explain the turbulent and unexpected development of capitalist societies in the twentieth century. Critical of capitalism and Soviet socialism, their writings pointed to the possibility of an alternative path to social development.

Once again many members of the academy in the United States were and still are devotees of these schools believing in a socialist-based civil society and not ion the free market system. This has been the roots of the current tyranny imposed by the statist progressive-based education pervading throughout our education system today. If challenges these educators or their cronies in the media you will be labeled a troglodyte unworthy of recognition. As the great conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr. once proclaimed:

“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”

Two recent examples of this are from a university and a middle school. The example from the university is from a professor at the prestigious University of Southern California where a professor boldly indoctrinates his class on the evils of Conservatism and Republicans.

Click here to view the video

This is just one example of millions where the elite masterminds of academia indoctrinate the young minds paying thousands of dollars for a university education that in many cases will prove virtually worthless and not allowing any form of rebuttal their progressive rants. (The tuition at USC is about $45,000 per year)

The other example is more insidious and perhaps worse as it affects younger and more malleable minds in middle school in Racine, Wisconsin where an 8^th grade crossword puzzle assignment claimed that said conservatism is for ‘restricting personal freedoms’. The Blaze reported:

“Tamra Varebrook, a Republican activist in Racine, Wis., told The Blaze on Thursday that her eighth-grade daughter showed her the crossword-style vocabulary sheet assigned to her at Union Grove Elementary School. Varebrook described the assignment as “indoctrination.”

In another example the father of a 4^th grader found a hand-written note in his son’s backpack in response to a lesson on the Constitution that stated: “I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure.” Once again a report in The Blaze stated:

“They’re the words that Florida father Aaron Harvey was stunned to find his fourth-grade son had written, after a lesson in school about the Constitution.

Harvey’s son attends Cedar Hills Elementary in Jacksonville, Fla. Back in January, a local attorney came in to teach the students about the Bill of Rights. But after the attorney left, fourth-grade teacher Cheryl Sabb dictated the sentence to part of the class and had them copy it down, he said.

The paper sat unnoticed in Harvey’s son’s backpack for several months until last week, when his son’s mother almost threw it away. The words caught her eye in the trash, and she showed it to Harvey, who said he was at a loss for words. He asked his son, who said Sabb had spoken the sentence out loud and told them to write it down. Harvey said he asked some of his son’s classmates and got a similar answer.”

I would remind Ms. Sabb of the words of Benjamin Franklin, whom she obviously is not familiar with, when he said: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

These examples are just a few of thousands that occur each month in the nation’s universities and K-12 public schools. This stuff goes on and on, usually without the knowledge of parents or parents who just don’t give a damn as long as the K-12 schools serve their function as a free babysitting service. This may be the plight of the low information voter.

As for the media, politicians, and government officials here are a few recent examples of the cultural intolerance of the progressive left when it comes to the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment:

• AP, ESPN, and FOX refuse to mention ‘NRA 500′ by official name.
• New York town removes veterans’ Gadsden flag for being an offensive Tea Party symbol.
• Students asked to ‘argue that Jews are evil’ and prove Nazi loyalty in assignment linked to Common Core.
• The Breathitt County School District in Kentucky has removed long-standing Ten Commandments displays in local public schools due to pressure from Atheist group.
• Conn. Senator urges FOX not to air NASCAR race because the NRA is sponsoring it.
• Media Working Hand in Glove with Democrats on Gun Legislation.
• The Rehabilitation of the New Left’s terrorists.
• AP refuses to use tags ‘Abortion’ and ‘Reproductive Rights” in Gosnell's murder trial.
• Bill Maher calls ‘The Second Amendment Is Bulls—t!’

These examples were added on April 14, 2013 to demonstrate a few of the issues I am talking about.

Many parents, with the exception of the homeschoolers, are giving up their children to a K-12 education totally imbedded with a progressive, and even socialist, agenda. Many public schools no longer teach moral or Constitutional values. They disdain any semblance of patriotism or love of county. They no longer say the Pledge of Allegiance or recite the Preamble to the Constitution as we did when I was in school back in the day. Children are not expected to excel and they are given good grades for participation rather than excellence. Of course this does not apply to all K-12 schools, but is certainly applies to many across the land. This all part of a foundation laid down years ago by the likes of John Dewey and the teachings of the Frankfurt School.

The latest example of this is the recent rant by MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry when she proclaimed that parents did not have the exclusive right to raise and educate their children — this right belonged to the community, i.e. the state. In a recent promo, MSNBC claims that investing billions more than many other industrialized nations hasn’t produced any real results because we aren’t viewing our children as community property.

In an ad on MSNBC, Harris-Perry calls for "breaking through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents." Instead, she says, we should "recognize that kids belong to whole communities."

Once upon a time, people were treated like people. Businesses didn’t have “Human Resources” departments; they had “Personnel” departments. People aren’t a resource, they’re human beings. A tree is a resource. Coal is a resource. Oil is a resource. People are individuals who have a right to be treated like people.

Apparently, MSNBC and Harris-Parry don’t believe that. They believe that children are somehow the property of the community.

“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility,” the promo says, going on to add, “We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

Clearly, we are entering a new phase in family breakdown. In the earlier phases, leftist policies cultivated unrestrained sexual license, abortion and single parenting. Those policies set the stage for new forms of child poverty as well as heightened social divisions along lines of race, class and sex. Their proponents, however, refrained from openly attacking the family in mass media.

Collectivists ignore a huge truth: Any child whose mother and father have committed to rearing that child together with a moral compass has already won the "lottery of birth." Those are intangibles that serve to defy poverty. Those intangibles always tend to trump material circumstances because they don't depend upon material wealth for their existence.

The left has long worked to collapse the family. This is a fact we must face. The obliteration of family influences on kids is essential to the collectivist vision of communitarianism espoused by the left.

The family serves as a buffer zone that shields individuals — particularly children — from the tentacles of its collectivist vision of centralized state power. Harris-Perry's vision is very likely in line with the agenda of Bill Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and old colleague of President Obama's. For decades Ayres' career focus has been the transformation of K-12 education, especially early childhood education. His wife Bernadine Dohrn has specialized in family law with a strong focus on children.

This ideology has been expressed before by Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Kim Il-sung, and the Jesuits.

Another aspect of the Culture Totalitarianism of the Left can be found in the entertainment and news media industries. Consider one of the most odious facilitators of cultural totalitarianism in American life: the news media. The owners and operators of these private businesses, if they acted from enlightened self-interest, the animating principle of the marketplace, ought to induce the various news corporations to compete with each other. They would seek niches of readers and audiences not served by their competitors. This would also mean exposing the blatant bias of notional rivals and offering a better "product" — that is, more reliable and objective news.

Instead, media outlets like the New York Times behave like cadres of Orwell's Inner Party in 1984, ignoring the failures of its news competitors as long as the competitors do not present genuine competition of ideas. When giant corporations behave as if they were one, then those on the left scream collusion and monopoly, but in the case of the news media, the stupefying fact that tens of millions of Americans literally never hear the different sides of social and political issues does not bother the left at all.

Perhaps more dangerous are the monopolistic practices of the left in the area of entertainment and recreation. Watch contemporary television programs or a new film or the pathetic meanderings of an establishment comic, and what do we see? There is a dull sameness to it all. The same groups who are safely mocked and the same groups made noble victims. The themes never vary, though often they are presented as revolutionary or radical or new.

In TV shows and theatrical films the bad guys are the corporations and Christian groups. On crime shows when there is a murder at an abortion clinic it is always done by some “radical” Christian group that is opposed to abortion. It’s as tough every person committed to the Constitution is a Timothy McVeigh and every person opposed to abortion is an Eric Rudolph.

A part of the Cloward-Piven Strategy is to control the narrative and dialog of the debate by constantly brining up issues that are anathema to conservatives and by using political correct terms to silence their opposition. If you are for traditional marriage between a man and a woman you are labeled as a homophobe. If you do not agree with the policies of a Black president you are called a racist. If you are pro-life you are considered anti-woman and a part of the war against women and wanting to control their bodies. If you are for the Second Amendment and against more gun control you are insensitive to killings in Tucson, Aurora, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook. If you are against illegal and uncontrolled immigration you are a xenophobe. And if you are against the welfare state you are a greedy person who does not care about his or her fellow man.

Frédéric Bastiat, French Economist said it best in his 1850 essay The Law when he stated:

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."

Bastiat saw arguments based on political correctness 163 years ago and predicted the damage it would cause a civil society.

To make the Cloward-Piven Strategy work the progressives needed Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Saul Alinsky helped to establish the confrontational political tactics that characterized the 1960s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States. Obama never met Alinsky personally; the latter died when Obama was a young boy. But Obama was trained by the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in Chicago and worked for an affiliate of the Gamaliel Foundation, whose modus operandi for the creation of “a more just and democratic society” is rooted firmly in the Alinsky method.

In the Alinsky model, "organizing" is a euphemism for "revolution" — a wholesale revolution whose ultimate objective is the systematic acquisition of power by a purportedly oppressed segment of the population, and the radical transformation of America's social and economic structure. The goal is to foment enough public discontent, moral confusion, and outright chaos to spark the social upheaval that Marx, Engels, and Lenin predicted — a revolution whose foot soldiers view the status quo as fatally flawed and wholly unworthy of salvation. Thus, the theory goes, the people will settle for nothing less than that status quo's complete collapse — to be followed by the erection of an entirely new system upon its ruins. Toward that end, they will be apt to follow the lead of charismatic radical organizers who project an aura of confidence and vision, and who profess to clearly understand what types of societal "changes" are needed.

But Alinsky's brand of revolution was not characterized by dramatic, sweeping, overnight transformations of social institutions. As Richard Poe puts it in his book The Shadow Party, "Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process as did the Fabians. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties." Alinsky advised organizers and their disciples to quietly, subtly gain influence within the decision-making ranks of these institutions, and to introduce changes from that platform. It should be noted that for several years Obama himself taught workshops on the Alinsky method.

It is Alinsky’s Rule No. 12 that is used most by the progressive left: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.” (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.) Demonization of the opposition is used almost daily in the media. Rule No. 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions works well too.

The final point of the cultural totalitarianism of the Left is the issue of abortion. No issue has torn this nation apart more in the last 40 years than the Supreme Court’s decision to restrict states from passing laws restricting abortion. Roe v. Wade has been captured by the Left as a primary issue in elections where those opposed to any form of abortion are demonized as perpetrating a war on the rights of women. Children as young as 14-years old can get an abortion at a Planned Parenthood abortion mill without their parent’s consent and in some states even notification of the parent.

The progressive left has used this issue for litmus tests on political candidates. If a candidate like Rick Santorum stands against abortion his political capital immediately drops as the media, women’s groups, teachers unions and academia begins to demonize him for his war on women. This is pure Alinsky. Even our current Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, the former Governor of Kansas, protected the abortionist Dr. George Tiller, known as "Tiller the Baby Killer", while he was performing late term abortions.

Consider the current trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell taking place in a Philadelphia courtroom where Gosnell is on trial for murder for killing live-born babies. I take the trial excerpts from the Philadelphia Inquirer rather than Hot Air so as not to be accused of using a conservative blog site. The Philadelphia Inquirer is far from a right-leaning newspaper. The PI reports:

“Ashley Baldwin, a 15-year-old sophomore at University City High School who was thinking of becoming a doctor, got a job at one of the busiest clinics in West Philadelphia. She was paid, and in no time went from answering phones to doing ultrasounds, administering intravenous medicine, and, ultimately, assisting in abortions performed by her mentor, Kermit Gosnell.

Now 22 and the mother of a 2-year-old son, Baldwin on Thursday told a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury hearing Gosnell's murder trial of her unusual hands-on medical apprenticeship.

Baldwin also told the jury about seeing at least five aborted babies moving, breathing, and, in one case, "screeching" after late-term procedures at the clinic at 3801 Lancaster Ave.

In Pennsylvania, abortions are legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. After that, medical experts say, a fetus is capable of living outside the womb.

"They looked just like regular babies," Baldwin said.

Baldwin said one baby was so big that Gosnell joked that "this baby is going to walk me home."

She said the joke bothered her and she talked to her mother about it. Baldwin's mother, however, was also a Gosnell employee. Tina Baldwin had worked there since 2001.

Ashley Baldwin said she assisted Gosnell in abortions, applying pressure to the mother's abdomen, handing the doctor instruments and equipment.

She said she also saw Gosnell use scissors to "snip" the neck of newborns who were moving after the procedure.

Although she sometimes felt uneasy about what she saw, Baldwin said, Gosnell always had an explanation: "He told me that's how it was supposed to go."

Baldwin's tale of her teenage years in an abortion clinic was received calmly by the jury of seven women and five men who have already heard a four-week parade of horrible testimony.

Gosnell, 72, is charged with seven counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of seven infants born alive during abortions and killed by cutting their spinal cords with scissors. If the jury finds him guilty, Gosnell could be sentenced to death.

Gosnell lawyer Jack McMahon has argued that none of the infants was killed, that they were in death throes from the abortion drug Digoxin that Gosnell administered earlier.

Baldwin's testimony ended the fourth week of the trial. Testimony resumes Monday before Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart. The lawyers and witnesses are under a strict gag order.

Like other Gosnell workers, Baldwin testified that Gosnell taught her the rudiments of using an ultrasound, administering IV medicine, and some lab work. She said he told her she was working legally because, as a doctor, he had "grandfathered her in."

"We talked a lot," Baldwin said, and Gosnell gave her medical books so she could read more about what she was doing.

When it came to learning how to start an intravenous line, Baldwin said, Gosnell got a bag of saline solution and a "butterfly needle," rolled up a sleeve, and let her practice on him.

"How much training did you get?" asked Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore.

"Not much, just a little time," replied Baldwin, who described many of the procedures as "not that hard."

Baldwin said she could not remember how much she was paid. Other Gosnell workers have testified that workers were paid, under the table, $10 an hour, and $20 an hour on nights they assisted in late-term abortions.

By the time authorities raided the Women's Medical Society clinic in February 2010, Baldwin said, she had been there almost four years, and was going to school and working up to 50 hours a week, sometimes to 1 or 2 a.m.

Once, when it neared midnight, Baldwin said she told Gosnell she wanted to go home.

"It was a time when other people were leaving and he said he needed me to stay," Baldwin said.

Ashley Baldwin has not been charged with any crime. Tina Baldwin, 47, has pleaded guilty to racketeering, conspiracy, and corrupting a minor — her daughter.

Tina Baldwin also testified Thursday about working the clinic's reception desk.

Baldwin said her daughter's job was not unusual, because Gosnell often hired West Philadelphia high school students and students from his alma mater, Thomas Jefferson University.

Tina Baldwin was not asked about why she let her daughter work at the clinic. Ashley Baldwin said her mother was concerned by her late hours but deferred to her own judgment about the job's demands.

Gosnell also is charged with corrupting a minor, Ashley Baldwin, and with one count of third-degree murder in the Nov. 19, 2009, death of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, a Virginia woman allegedly killed by an overdose of Demerol by Gosnell's untrained staff.

Ashley Baldwin said she was in the clinic on the night Mongar went into cardiac arrest. She said Gosnell was pumping on Mongar's chest and called to her to plug in a defibrillator.

"I got a small shock when I plugged it in," Baldwin added. "It didn't work."

I think by now any human being reading this account of one day at this trial will be thoroughly disgusted. I can’t imagine what it is for the jurors hearing weeks of this stuff. But, that’s the problem. This goes on every day at Planned Parenthood abortion mills across the land every day and it has become so commonplace it is hardly reported. If it is reported as those young investigative reporters working with the late Andrew Breitbart did it is the reporters who are demonized or ignored by the mainstream media and the progressive lefty celebrities in Hollywood and New York.

Michael Vic received way more coverage for his dog fighting trail and PETA gets more support for their defense of catching harmless fish. Can you imagine the coverage if it were dogs? Had Kermit Gosnell killed dogs, HLN would be giving it wall to wall coverage as they do all sorts of sensational trials. Nancy Grace would be in full outrage mode every night. But this is not the case as Erick Erickson writes in Red States:

“In churches, local restaurants, and small town hair salons a lot of people across the country are talking about the terrible trial of Kermit Gosnell in Pennsylvania. It’s just not the people who interact with those who produce the news in New York City.”

It’s sad that a man who engaged in horrific acts of barbarism will never be as known to the public as Casey Anthony or George Zimmerman because Gosnell’s crime is viewed as less than a crime by the vast majority of the producers of American news and the progressive left.

It must be noted here that Kirsten Powers, a liberal contributor to Fox News stated in her column for USA Today:

“A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment on Meet the Press meant to foment outrage over an anti-abortion rights law in some backward red state.

The Washington Post has not published original reporting on this during the trial and The New York Times saw fit to run one original story on A-17 on the trial’s first day. They’ve been silent ever since, despite headline-worthy testimony.”

And yet, media mentions of the ongoing trial have been conspicuously few and far between. Could it be that the otherwise highly sensational story sheds just a little too much inconveniently negative light on a preferred narrative of theirs? Charles Krauthammer calls it out:

The progressive left does not want to give coverage to anything that might damage their narrative and agenda. This is the way it has been for the past 40 years and why the Cloward-Piven Strategy is working and why our progressive politicians are slowly changing the culture of the nation and destroying our Bill or Rights. Only the Third Amendment has yet to be tampered with. And when it came to academia and its progressive leanings William F. Buckley Jr. had this to say:

“I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

Uncle Sam’s Plantation

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all." — Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Prior to the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865 slavery was legal in the United States. The Amendment stated:

“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Prior to the passage of the 13^th Amendment slaves living in states that were at rebellion with the Union (Confederate States) were liberated by executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln through his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation did not affect the Border States and did not abolish slavery. It took a Constitutional amendment to accomplish that.

Prior to abolishing slavery Blacks were considered property of the slave-holding masters. In the South they lived on plantations where they either worked in the fields or houses of their masters. They lived in substandard housing furnished by the plantation owners. They their basic needs of food and clothing were provided by their masters. They were not allowed to learn to read and write — not even the Bible. Their children became property of the masters the moment they were born and they were denied the basic rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. If they escaped the plantation and were caught they were severely punished and made an example to other slaves with he sought of fleeing the plantation. Even if they did manage to escape and make it to a free state they had no employable skills other than providing manual labor.

After the passage of the 13^th Amendment many slaves remained on the very same plantations where they been living. With the passage and ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 these former slaves were afforded the rights of full citizenship including the right to vote. Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment states:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.”

It did not take long for the politicians and northern carpetbaggers to realize that they had a block of voters ready to be cultivated by merely promising them free stuff, stuff they could not or would not deliver.

It took 100 years for Blacks to gain equality within our civil society. There were periods of racial discrimination, especially in the south and large urban centers where Blacks had migrated to during our participation in World Wars 1 and 2. There was the segregation of Blacks from the military, after they had served during the Civil War and policing the Indians in our western territories, and from federal employment by the progressive Woodrow Wilson. It was not until WWII that Blacks were once again allowed into the military and government service. Due to the actions of Republicans in protecting the righ ts of Blacks most Blacks voted Republicans.

Fast forward to 1964 and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The Democrats were now in power and wanted to remain in power so they instituted a multitude of government programs designed to put Blacks back on the plantation — Uncle Sam’s Plantation.

Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society is the logical extension of Progressive political thought and FDR’s New Deal. While the Founders held that the task of good government is to secure its citizens’ natural rights, LBJ argued that government must eradicate all external constraints—legal, economic, educational, and environmental—which hamper the “spiritual fulfillment” of its citizens. The extensive regulations and programs of the Great Society are thus meant to guarantee not only the right to pursue happiness but also the full achievement of it.

In his Great Society Speech given at the University of Michigan in 1964 Johnson said:

“Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.

It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what is adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.

So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society - in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.”

Lyndon B. Johnson anchored his Great Society program in the Progressive understanding of freedom: Freedom in its fullest sense encompasses more than the formal or legal right to do a thing; freedom entails the ability to affect that thing. Thus the central conceptual element of the Great Society—the purpose of both civil rights and the War on Poverty—is the elimination of any economic, legal, or social hindrances to the achievement of excellence and the “fulfillment of the human spirit.”

The Founders believed that the causes of necessity are rooted in human nature itself, and that a government that seeks to eradicate necessity quickly becomes tyrannical. By contrast, LBJ held that specific government policies and programs, initiated and guided by bureaucratic experts, could overcome the unhappiness and discontent brought about especially by racial injustice and poverty.

Consequently, his Great Society legislation focuses on cities (developing community and aesthetically pleasing spaces), the countryside and the environment at large (engaging in conservation efforts to make beauty accessible to all), and education (funding not only programs and initiatives for all levels of schooling but also educational broadcasting for the public at large).

Declaring that “the Great Society is a place where the City of Man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce, but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community,” LBJ argued for a radically new purpose for the federal government: It would go beyond securing natural rights and seek the fulfillment of the longings of the human soul. This was a far departure for the shining city upon a hill expressed by John Winthorpe in 1630 — a city devoted to God. Johnson and the progressives that followed him wanted an equality of results, not equality of opportunity.

It did not take the Progressives and the Democrat Party to seize the opportunity for creating a permanent block of voters by putting them on Uncle Sam’s Plantation. They did through throwing billions of coercive federal taxpayer dollars at states and counties for welfare programs. The federal dollars were and are used for substandard subsidized housing much like the antebellum South. In fact many of these housing projects are falling apart and lack proper sanitation facilities. They are laced with vermin and are homes for drug pushers and other criminal gangs.

They did it with offering food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, and aid to dependent children where single parenting was promoted. If the father lives in the household the aid is cut. It encourages women to have multiple babies out of wedlock in order to increase their benefit payments. We have generations of teen age girls having children who in turn have children out of wedlock.

According to the New York Times:

“Large racial differences remain:73 percent of black children are born outside marriage, compared with 53 percent of Latinos and 29 percent of whites. And educational differences are growing. About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth, compared with 62 percent of women with some post-secondary schooling and 43 percent of women with a high school diploma or less, according to Child Trends.”

The children who grow up in these fatherless homes are very likely to fall into gangs and crimes and have little chance at success by escaping the plantation especially when they have criminal records.

While antebellum slave masters forbade slaves from learning to read and write the current serfs of the Uncle Sam’s Plantation are denied this ability by the poor condition of the K-12 school system in on the plantation. The school system is controlled by coercive federal dollars from the Department of Education and the Teachers Unions. Neither is dedicated to education — they are devoted to increasing power and feathering their nests. That’s’ why they fight a system of giving vouchers to parents where they can send their children to private, charter, or better schools. Washington D.C. is a good case in point where the successful voucher program was cancelled by the Obama administration due to pressure from the teachers unions.

According to a report by the AP on Yahoo News In many cases, workers in low-wage positions are not using the training programs their employers offer because they don't even know they exist, the two-part AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey of both workers and employers found. Two-thirds of employers said they offer coaching or mentoring programs and 61 percent provide on-the-job training. But only 36 percent of low-wage workers reported that their employers offer such programs.

The ability to move up the career ladder has become more important as America's economic recovery is fueled by a surge in low-wage jobs at restaurants, health care centers and manufacturing sites. Job training and education can play a major role in helping these workers advance their careers and someday reach middle-class status. At the same time, employers say they invest in job training to retain current workers, reduce turnover and improve the quality of products and services.

Yet the surveys revealed a wide disparity between employers and workers in how they view the importance of training programs. While 83 percent of employers said job training is extremely or very important for upward mobility, only half of low-wage workers felt as strongly about additional training. Similarly, 77 percent of employers rated education as extremely or very important, while only 41 percent of low-wage workers rated it similarly.

The burning question here and not addressed in the report is how can young people be trained for jobs and advancement when they have not graduated high school and very low reading and comprehension skills?

One of the largest bribes to keep the serfs on the plantation are food stamps. The House Agriculture Committee has reported out its version of a new farm bill that will cut $16.5 billion over 10 years from funding of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), once known as food stamps.

The cuts in the House bill exceed those in the Senate bill by $12 billion.

Sixteen-and-a-half billion dollars over a decade amount to a whopping 2 percent cut in SNAP program expenditures, which last year alone came to $78 billion. At a time when we are running trillion-dollar annual federal budget deficits, it's hard to see a 2 percent cut in any large spending program as provocative. Particularly in a program like SNAP, where spending in 2011 was over 400 percent higher than in 2000.

Yet, liberals are predictably ringing the alarm. Assistant House Democratic leader James Clyburn of South Carolina called the cuts "abominable," suggesting they will jeopardize nutrition of children and that it's all about protecting "the wealthy and the well to do."

If cutting back on SNAP spending is about protecting "the wealthy," as Clyburn would have us believe, why do big corporations such as Pepsi, Coca Cola, Kraft Foods and Kroger support and lobby for the program, as Time magazine recently reported?

It's because government-spending programs, even if initiated with the best of intentions, wind up being about interests, not efficiency or compassion.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, 18 million Americans received SNAP benefits in 2000. By 2011, this had grown to 45 million, one in seven Americans.

Liberals tells us that this program's mind-boggling growth is explained by our foundering economy.

But, as Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama points out, spending on this program increased 100 percent from 2001 to 2006, a period over which there was no increase in the rate of unemployment.

From 2007 to 2011, spending increased 135 percent. But CBO attributes only about 65 percent of the dramatic growth in program spending and the number of recipients to the recession.

Here's what else has happened: It has become increasingly easy to qualify for SNAP benefits, the government has been spending more taxpayer funds promoting the program, and the stigma of SNAP, food stamps, being perceived as a welfare program has disappeared.

A New York Times article in 2010 carried the headline, "Once Stigmatized, Food Stamps Find Acceptance." The article notes posters in New York City announcing "Applying for food stamps is easier than ever" and quotes Eric Bost, head of the program under President George W. Bush, saying, "I assure you, food stamps is not welfare."

According to CBO, three-fourths of recipients are "categorically eligible," which means they automatically qualify by virtue of participating in some other federal or state welfare program. They need not be receiving cash benefits from these programs. Simply having received an information pamphlet can be enough.

At one time, recipients received their food-stamp benefits in dollar-denominated paper vouchers presented at the cash register. Now benefits come on a sharp-looking electronic debit card like any credit or debit card.

And the fact that SNAP funds are provided by the federal government, but administered and spent by the states, is a proven formula, as in Medicaid, for undisciplined spending growth.

The only major difference to today’s Federal Plantation in regards to the pre-Civil War plantation is that Uncle Sam’s Plantation has no physical or legal barriers to escape. The members serfs of the plantation are free to leave anytime they wish. The problem is that the Progressive politicians keep bribing them by the offer of more stuff like free cell phones and TVs if they stay. Rather than physical force they use the coercive force of the federal purse to keep them on the plantation where the politicians can control them and garner their votes.

Despite trillions of dollars spent on social programs since the 1960s, there is little evidence that the poor have benefited. In a blistering critique, former welfare mother Star Parker has become an advocate in espousing how government has harmed rather than helped the poor—and what citizens can do to fight back. Parker, the president and founder of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education, encourages faith and individual responsibility to empower the poor to escape Uncle Sam’s “sophisticated poverty plantation.

It is other conservative Black leaders and organizations such as CURE and CORE that are leading the way to get Blacks and other poor off Uncle Sam’s Plantation and rise to their full potential. They preaching the same message to Blacks the Frederick Douglas preached after the Civil War. It will take time and some very brave leaders to end the Federal Plantation System.

The most compassionate thing that can be done today is exactly what is not happening: economic growth, job creation and getting folks to work. The path to this end is less government, not more.

How the Federal Government Hijacked Education – Part 3

“Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.” — Frederic Bastiat

In the first part of this essay on government intervention in education I covered the vision of our Founding Fathers for learning and liberty. The Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 demonstrated not only the vision of our Founders, but their actions toward supporting learning at the local, municipal and state level. In this part I will move forward to the 19^th century and the beginning of the progressive takeover of education in the United States.

In the second part I explained how the progressives in government and academia began to push for more and more intrusion by the central government into our educational system.

In this third part I will show how a 184 pound object orbiting the earth and going beep, beep, beep, influenced our education system more than Madison, Washington, and Jefferson and even Dickson and Barnard would have never seemed possible.

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first human contrivance to escape the Earth's atmosphere. Its engines were powerful enough to thrust a 36-pound satellite into orbit. Unbeknownst to its designers, it would have a similar effect on the American education system. In the Soviet mastery of rocket science, our federal government discovered lessons in administration. It did not turn to meet the challenge through the defense power, which is its own under the Constitution and was the obvious response. Rather it used the situation as a lever to manage education.

The "National Defense Student Loan Fund" — contrived in response to the launching of Sputnik-was a system of subsidized loans to students. The federal taxpayer would supply 90 percent and colleges 10 percent. The colleges would be responsible for collections and would be at risk for its 10 percent. The title of the law is, of course, an attempt to find justification for it under the defense power given to Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. (Today we have the "National Direct Student Loan Program." We become progressively less squeamish about constitutional justification.)

(The federal government began guaranteeing student loans provided by banks and non-profit lenders in 1965, creating the program that is now called the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. The first federal student loans, however, provided under the National Defense Education Act of 1958, were direct loans capitalized with U.S. Treasury funds. Today we have advanced to the Federal Direct Student Loan Program as part of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. To view a brief history of the federal student loan program click here.)

When the central government entered the education system with vigor under the authority of National Defense Student Loan Fund many people thought this was a good idea. After all didn’t we want to pass the Russians in the space race? To do this we believed we needed more engineers, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and other related technical experts. To accomplish this desire the central government initiated the NDSLF. Progressives and conservatives alike thought this was a worthwhile expenditure of federal direct taxes. It’s Constitutionality could be validated under the defense enumerations in Article I, Section 8, although when reading these 19 enumerated powers it is quite a stretch to find the authority unless you take a broad view of section 19 — the “necessary and proper” clause. No matter how you strain to find justification a can of worms had been opened that has grown beyond belief.

Finally after years of congressional overreach in spending federal fund for education — something Andrew Dickson White could not foresee the Department of Education was founded in 1979 under the Carter Administration. Henry Barnard’s Office of Education had finally grown into a full-fledged cabinet level department with spending, regulatory, and coercive policing powers. The primary functions of the Department of Education are to "establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools, and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights.”

Today The Department of Education operates a wide range of subsidy programs for elementary and secondary schools. The aid and all the related federal regulations have not generally lifted academic achievement. The department also provides subsidies to higher education through student loans and grants. Unfortunately, that aid has fueled inflation in college tuition and is subject to widespread abuse.

The department spent about $98 billion in 2012, or $830 for every U.S. household. It employs 4,300 workers and operates 153 different subsidy programs. Was this the vision of Madison, Washington, Jefferson, or even Andrew Dickson White? I think not. For a timeline on how federal government spending for education has progressed from the Northwest Ordinance to today click here. You will see that with each passing year it became more acceptable to ignore the Constitution and provide the central government with more and more power and money to control education in the United States. Every step along the path from 1787 to 2009 seemed like a good idea at the time. But as with all good ideas each successive one became more intrusive on our liberty and property and always with the mantra for the children as the rallying cry.

Today we hear of Big Pharma and Big Corporations, but we don’t hear too much about Big Education. Big Education has become and industry onto itself employing millions and spending into the trillions. It is supported by the vested interests of academia, politicians, and unions in a symbiotic relationship. Academia wants larger grants, more expensive facilities, and larger subsidized student enrollments to support more tenured professors and their grandiose schemes.

Teachers unions spend millions of dollars in dues collected from their members to support politicians who will spend more and more dollars on education so they can elevate the compensation and tenure of their members at the expense of the taxpayer while claiming they are for the children.

Local school districts fearful of asking their local taxpayers for increases in property taxes to pay for federally mandated programs and misguided expansion programs look to the central government for federal dollars — dollars that come with coercive mandates for curriculums that require more expenditures — curriculums such as the teaching LGBT history and social mores that the local citizens object too. This is far cry from what our Founding Fathers envisioned when they passed the Northwest Ordinance or 1787 and the Land Ordinance of 1785.

With this symbiotic closed loop of Big Education we have no more engineers or mathematicians that were envisioned when the first Sputnik was rocketed into orbit. In fact test scores have been dropping and the high school dropout rates have been climbing among Blacks and Hispanics. For all of the federal money spent on education our society knows less about the organic laws of the nation and the liberty they promote than the farmer of 1787.

Many subsidized and unqualified college students — students who are admitted due to mandated racial, gender, or ethnic quotas drop out after one or two years. Those who do go on take frivolous courses that lead towards degrees like women’s studies and Black history that will provide them with little or no skills to enter the workforce. As long as the college receives the federally guaranteed loan money they care little what happens to the students. It’s the student that is burdened with repayment — if they ever do — for years to come.

At the beginning of the 20^th century influential progressives like Theodore Roosevelt, John Dewey, Herbert Coley, and Woodrow Wilson began to initiate a total takeover of education in the United States. While the progressive politicians used the power of the federal purse in total disregard of the Constitution the academics like Dewy began changing what is to be taught in our schools and universities with total disdain for the Northwest Ordinance.

Influential academics, like Dewy, began listening to the Marxist philosophies being espoused by the “Frankfurt School”. Philosophies based on the teaching of Karl Marx and other socialist. Associated in part with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main the leading members of the Frankfurt School developed the theories of “critical thinking”. While critical thinking may be useful in some professions it is the antithesis of the beliefs of our Founders as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Today some of the precepts of the Frankfurt School have migrated in to our K-12 system at the middle school level where children are being indoctrinated in political correctness and class envy while learning virtually nothing of our organic laws.

Several years ago at the Field Museum in Chicago, there was an exhibit of the possessions and life of Qianlong, the greatest of the Chinese Emperors. The exhibit told a glorious tale. Qianlong was very rich, and he wielded great power after his father conquered China.

The exhibit was at some pains to say what a just ruler the man was. He loved his people. He was energetic and caring in their service. In one place the exhibit materials made the point that the glories of a great national China, as exemplified by the benevolent Qianlong, have been restored to China today. Of course the people who rule that great national China today had to give permission for the exhibit to visit Chicago. Likely they had some influence over what the exhibit said. That would explain some things about it.

A mural in the exhibit shows the Great Emperor visiting a town. The entire population of the town is ranged before him. He is being carried in an ornate chair by hefty men. All the townspeople are on their knees.

That is the meaning of mandarinism. One need only look in the Encyclopedia Britannica to see that not quite everything was rosy and fine during the rule of Qianlong in China. Nor is everything fine there today. China was, and still is, ruled by mandarinism. That is one reason why the exhibit was not candid about the evils that came under the regime of Qianlong.

The Founders of our nation did not intend to establish mandarinism. That is why they taught that responsibility and authority ought to go together. That is why they did not give the federal government power to manage education. It was too important for that. For the sake of education, and for the sake of freedom, the federal government should get out of it.

Powers and interests are so arranged today that it seems hopeless that any good can be done. The modern research university has replaced the liberal arts college as the standard bearer in education. It is entrenched, immovable, almost almighty. Its force is enrolled nearly exclusively on one side of the political spectrum. Politicians bask in its favor or quail before its frown. Bureaucrats work with it hand in hand.

Perhaps the time has passed when politicians of either party should seek to regulate this behemoth. The answer may be less rather than more involvement. It may be time, or long past time, for us to demonstrate what we are by another great act of delegation, another great episode in which the most powerful make treasures available to individuals in their multitude, to husband and direct as seems best to them. In the Northwest Ordinance, the precious resource of Western lands was sold outright to ordinary folk, without condition. The boldest and most persistent people in the world had crossed the ocean and braved a wilderness to secure land. The government owned the land. It gave it up.

In the Homestead Act, the government did the same thing, but this time it did not charge a fee. Once again a wonderful asset was given away. It was not given to barons and earls. It was not given to friends of those in power. There was no chance for bureaucrats to say who got what. There was one grand act of disposition, the same for one and all.

In 1959 the germ of an idea passed Congress, but it was vetoed in the White House by President Eisenhower. The idea was that ordinary folk could give their money to colleges instead of to the government. The great asset that government holds today, greater even than its vast holdings of land, is the enormous claim it holds upon the wealth and income of the American people. There is no good reason why the people cannot give that money away themselves. Some way should be found.

Of course the powers of modern education will object to this. They will say that this is easy for private colleges such as Hillsdale College to recommend. We have found a way to survive without money from the taxpayer. The answer to that is-yes, with great difficulty they have. What one can do, so can another.

These powers will also say that education is so very important, that people must be taxed to pay for it even if they do not want to be. That is a despotic argument, the kind of thing to which our brightest intellectuals are too much given these days.

These powers will say finally that we do not care enough about education. As Frederick Bastiat said so many years ago:

“Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

The answer to that is that people do care about it just as the Founders of America did. It is vital to all that is good and true. Therefore it ought not to be left in the hands of people who believe in neither good nor truth. It is too important for that. Let ordinary people decide, place by place and family by family, what is to be done.

This argument cannot be won until it is started. After it is started and it will continue for a long time. It face many challenges from the entrenched statist and progressive politicians, bureaucrats, academics, and unions that have a vested interest in the present system of using direct taxes to fund our massive k-12 and higher education system.