Political Correctness Gone Amok

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.” John Adams, Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law — 1765

Last Friday I had the honor to attend the Honors and High Honors awards at my granddaughter’s elementary school. These honors are given to students who achieve exceptional academic excellence in the advanced classes. For Honors a student must attain 80% in their advanced classes and for High Honors its 90%. My granddaughter received the High Honors award for her 4^th grade work in this past trimester.

The awards ceremonies were hosted by the principal and attended by the 3^rd and 4^th grade classes along with parents who were able to attend the afternoon event. The awards were given by grade and category with each group being called by name and given the award in front of the assembled audience. Once they received their awards they proceeded to the stage where they sat for applause and photographs.

It was a very fulfilling experience for the students, teachers, and parents. For those who did not receive awards it was worthwhile to see what hard work and study could achieve. Reward of excellence is a positive things as it honors those who have worked diligently during the school year and demonstrates to others the recognition that will befall students who follow their lead.

My granddaughter’s elementary school is part of a more conservative and traditional school district in Riverside County, California. The district and county also sponsor National History where students from the 4^th grade to seniors in high school are encouraged to participate with projects on history. Their projects range from posters and 3D displays to documentary films and web sites. Both of my granddaughters participated and advanced to the county level with my 4^th grader advancing to the state level.

In recent years, there’s been an odd cultural trend emerging. As parents seek to shield their children from negativity, there’s been a major push in some school districts to rid schools and youth groups of competitive spirit — all in the name of inclusiveness and protecting kids’ emotions.

Considering this ongoing dynamic — one that tends to anger parents who believe in the rewards associated with hard work and dedication — Forward-thinking principle David Fabrizio of Ipswich Middle School finds himself in hot water for taking the “progressive” ethos to its absurd extremes: he canceled Honors Night because it makes the kids who didn’t earn honors feel bad.

Rather than inviting only those students who have outperformed their peers, the Daily Mail reports that Fabrizio has reorganized the event, called “Honors Night,” and is ensuring that every individual in the school can take part.

In an e-mail announcement to parents, Fabrizio purportedly said that the decision was made in an effort to avoid “devastating” those individuals who did not perform well and were, thus, not invited to the traditional awards event. Parents purportedly shared this note with Fox affiliate WFXT-TV.

“The Honors Night, which can be a great sense of pride for the recipients’ families, can also be devastating to a child who has worked extremely hard in a difficult class but who, despite growth, has not been able to maintain a high grade point average,” Fabrizio wrote to parents.

According to WFXT-TV, the principal’s decision was also predicated upon the fact that academic success is also tied to the support that students get at home. And since not every student gets the same level of academic and emotional support from parents, there’s potential inequality. In other words Fabrizio wanted to bring down the top performers to the level of mediocrity in the name of “fairness.”

Some have expressed surprise that he would come to this conclusion, because he comes from a coaching background and ostensibly “believes competitive environments are healthy and necessary.” Those who find this difficult to reconcile with canceling Honors Night clearly haven’t checked out the everybody-gets-a-trophy-just-for-showing-up rules under which “competitive” school sports now operate.

So if the level of support students receive at home is a crucial factor in their success, doesn’t canceling Honors Night remove a potent incentive to parents to provide that support? Won’t all students be inspired to work harder by the possibility of winning recognition as an honors recipient? Discard such icy logic, because we move now through the land of warm feelings and academic mediocrity, where the really important thing is to teach kids that nobody is responsible for their own success or failure. Winners cheat. Honors students get unfair amounts of support from their high-quality parents, so there’s no reason to celebrate any “achievement” on their part, especially if it makes less accomplished students feel bad.

Another recent horror story from the world of academia found teachers in Wisconsin suffering “racially charged” indoctrination into the evils of “white privilege.” Bullet points dispensed by this program included:

• In this country the institutional system supports the dominance of white people.
• More frequently than not, white people take advantage of privileges generated by a racist society.
• We are given a false sense of superiority, a belief that we should be in control and in authority, and that people of color should be maids, servants, and gardeners and do the less valued work of our society.
• There appears to be a national trend that can be attributed [to] the conservative agenda that currently exist[s] with former closet racist[s] leaving the closet and entering the light to write policies that support covert and overt racism that impact[s] students of color.

Your tax dollars at work, parents of Wisconsin! (And tax serfs across the fruited plane, since this program reportedly got federal money.)

Look past the racial grievance mongering, and efforts by useless educrats to siphon money away from real education into their bank accounts, and you’ve got another burst of essentially the same transmission that middle-school principal in Ipswich is sending. No one succeeds on their own, and no one is responsible for their own failures. The game is hopelessly rigged against you, in countless ways.

It’s not a long journey from these premises to the conclusion that only benevolent government authority can bring any semblance of “fairness” into our wildebeest lives, shielding us from the predatory forces that stalk the shadows around daily life. Virtue and equality must be imposed. High achievers cheated somehow — they enjoyed the benefits of racist privilege, or they exploited the surplus value of labor to make demon profit, or they “stole” their riches from “the people” by taking disproportionate advantage of our lovely public infrastructure.

The trick is to sell lots of people on the essential belief that powerful forces they can never overcome on their own have placed them at a permanent disadvantage, from which only the Anointed Ones can rescue them. That sale is easier to make if achievement is treated as fundamentally illegitimate, and you can’t do that while simultaneously celebrating achievement.

It is no wonder that there is approximately 47 percent of the American electorate who have been politically correctly called “Low Information Voters” (LIVs). The idiot liberals in this country have surreptitiously taken over the entire education system and in doing so; have dumbed us down to the level of some third world nation in Africa or Central America. The dumbing down is apparent in this failed school in Massachusetts, where the failed Principal continues to concentrate on NOT upsetting the poor students who will someday join the ranks of the LIVs.

By failing to recognize excellence, this “educator” has elevated the status of those students who are guaranteed to fail in life. This is what we silent majority Americans have to overcome lest we face an infinite number of bozos on the political horizon, like the empty-suited, dooby-smoking Choom-boy that occupies the White House.

If people like Fabrizio have their way, they will create a mediocre society in which there is no reward for success and achievement — no incentive to do better.

Note to Fabrizio: the real world doesn’t work that way. And you are not preparing your students for real life by pretending that it does.

Why is America losing its competitive advantage? Why don’t youngsters want to earn anything anymore? It’s because people like Fabrizio are more concerned about protecting their feelings than aspiring them to greatness. I am reminded of the scene in the 1984 film Amadeus — a fictionalized account of the life of the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the scene a visitor is wheeling the Italian composer and jealous competitor of Mozart Antonio Salieri (played by F Murray Abraham) through the halls of the insane asylum where he has been confined after attempting suicide. As he passes through the he is waving his hands and paying at the various inmates while paying homage to mediocrity.

If you reward mediocrity you will receive more mediocrity. If you reward had work and excellence you will receive more hard work and excellence. Life is not fair.

If you have a few minutes watch the video clip from Amadeus where Salieri has composed a rather pedestrian march for the emperor and seems pleased with his efforts until Mozart improvises on the piece and creates an excellent piece of music.

A Bright Light in Public Education

“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.” — Edmund Burke

This past weekend I had a surprising and pleasant experience attending the awards presentation for the Riverside Unified School District’s History Day. RSUD’s History Day is where students in the district’s K-12 schools submit a history project in one of several formats. It could be a presentation board, a documentary film, a web site, or a reenactment. Each project, however, must be accompanied by a paper written by the student.

National History Day provides an exciting way for students to study and learn about historical issues, ideas, peoples, and events. Started as a single day's contest at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, History Day soon became more than just a day. The first national contest took place in 1980, and the program now operates in forty-eight states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the Department of Defense schools. Each year an estimated 500,000 students nation-wide take part in History Day contest events. During its history, millions of students have participated and have gone on to careers in business, law, medicine, teaching, and countless other disciplines where they put into practice the skills and knowledge gained during their History Day experience.

During the 2012-2013 school year, History Day invited students to research topics related to the theme, Turning Points in History: People, Ideas, and Events. As is the case each year, the theme is broad enough to encourage investigations of topics ranging from local to world history, and from ancient times to the recent past. To understand the historical importance of their topic, students have asked questions about time, place, and context; cause and effect; change over time, and; impact and significance. They have considered not only when and where events happened but also why they occurred, what factors contributed to their development, and what impact they had on broader history. In other words, History Day entries go far beyond mere description to include an analysis of information and conclusions about how the topic influenced and was influenced by other people, ideas, and events.

The projects are judged by a panel of judges comprised of teachers from the district, professors from the local college, or qualified volunteers. The judges are not allows to judge projects from the schools they represent. The projects are evaluated with 20% going towards the quality of the presentation and 80% towards the content and research effort of the student. Each student submitting a project is required to appear before a panel to give an oral presentation on their project and then answer questions from the panel of judges.

The judges are looking for the students understanding of the project and what the project corresponds to the theme for the year. They want to know how and why they choose their project, how the project fit the theme, how they did their research, and what the influence the project had on the world or the United States. They are also looking for projects where the parents might have had too much input. The projects are supposed to represent the work effort of the student, not the parent or a teacher.

The students are permitted to pick any event in history as long as it fits the theme. There are no restrictions or influence from the schools or districts. It’s totally up to the student to choose a project, research it, write a paper, and prepare their presentation.

There are three levels of history project submissions: Elementary school level — students in grades 4 and 5. These students are required to submit projects on presentation boards only. The next level is for middle school students in grades 6-8. This group is permitted to present their projects on presentation boards, documentary films, or web sites. The third group is for high school students, grades 9-12 who may use any format including reenactments.

The three winners from each level and category advance to the county level where they compete against other school districts in the county and those winners then move on to the state level. The winners of the state level the advance to the national level in Washington, D.C. There are monetary awards for the winners at each level ranging from $100 dollars at the county level to $10,000 dollars at the national level.

Some of the projects representing this year’s theme were:

• The D-Day Invasion
• Gettysburg
• The Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings
• Mosquitos versus the Panama Canal
• Brown vs. Board of Education
• Women’s Suffrage
• The Discovery of DNA
• The 1848 Irish Potato Famine and the Effect on Immigration
• The Battle of Stalingrad
• The Tet Offensive
• Henry Ford, a Turning Point in the Industrial Revolution
• The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
• The Attack on Pearl Harbor
• The Bolshevik Revolution
• The Battle of Tsushima
• The Transcontinental Railroad
• The Treaty of Versailles
• The Internet Revolution

Yes, there were quite a few repetitive projects devoted to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. This was expected by me as our K-12 public school curriculum, as formed by the NEA, focus on this as the beginning of American History. But, surprising, there were many other diverse topics where the student moved away from the NEA progressive curriculum. To my disappointment, however, there was only one student project that addressed the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, or the Constitution as a turning point. Perhaps there will be a few at the County level.

Both of my granddaughters were participants and winners. My youngest granddaughter’s project was entitled “The California Gold Rush and The Remaking of America.” She is a 4^th grader and this was her first attempt at entering a History Day project following her older sister, a two-time winner. Her thesis was that “the California Gold Rush caused rapid population growth and led to California becoming a state very quickly. This led to the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny, and also resulted in further division between slave and non-slave states, which led to the Civil War and the remaking of America.” Not bad for a 4^th grader. No, her father did not pick the topic, but I am sure he assisted her with the text and graphics. The judges gave her high marks on the placement of the text and graphics on the board and the ease of reading.

My youngest granddaughter Helin with her history project presentation board

My eldest granddaughter, an 8^th grader and experienced History Day participant and winner took another path. She prepared a video documentary on the passage of the 16th Amendment — the Income Tax — and the progressive views of Woodrow Wilson. She did do the research on her own, although her father gave her a book by Ron Paul on the morality of the corrosive income tax. In talking with my granddaughter she told me it was difficult to fine positive views on the progressive income tax. This is a very difficult subject for an 8^th grader to tackle. She did a great job in preparing her documentary video, and the judges were impressed to the point of awarding her first place in her category and grade level. Perhaps I have a granddaughter in training to be a Libertarian.

Aylin and Helin posing with their blue ribbons

My prejudice not withstanding I thought the National History Day program was a proper exercise in our public education system. Today there are too many young people and adults who have graduated from our K-12 public school system and even our universities that have no basic knowledge of our national history. Too many believe history began yesterday or even those that do some knowledge of our history are ignorant of the cause and effects of those events. This is due to the way history is taught in many of our schools. We have teachers that are either incompetent to teach history or teach according to their agenda — usually progressive leftwing. They prefer to indoctrinate students in history rather than allow the student to research and learn from primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. This takes time and effort on the part of the teacher something many of them are unwilling to give.

The RSUD History Day Program is a bit on sunshine on a dreary K-12 public education system. Those students who participated will remember their experience for the rest of their lives and hopefully will have learned how to separate the wheat from the shaft when it comes to learning history in their future scholastic endeavors.

Next year’s theme will Rights and Responsibilities. I can barely wait to see what the students will focus on.

Can Republicans Increase Their Share Of The Hispanic Vote?

“When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it—without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud—to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.” — Frederic Bastiat (The Law)

Yesterday I quoted extensively from a Column by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. In his column Mr. Krauthammer wrote referring to the future of the Republican Party:

“They lose and immediately the chorus begins. Republicans must change or die. A rump party of white America, it must adapt to evolving demographics or forever be the minority.

The only part of this that is even partially true regards Hispanics. They should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example). The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back.

For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.”

While this may or may not be a strategy for winning elections by increasing the Hispanic vote conservatives must take a very cautious approach to this issue. It was Ronald Reagan who followed a similar course, but was sabotaged by Congress when they failed to secure the border allowing millions illegals to cross over our southern border.

Hispanic amnesty activists are expanding their goals beyond the so-called “DREAM Act” youth amnesty, towards a national amnesty for roughly 11 million Hispanic illegals.

President Barack Obama and Congress “need to come together to deliver change on immigration policy, and by that we mean a roadmap to citizenship for our parents and communities,” said Cristina Jimenez, director of an advocacy group, United We Dream.

According to an article in the Daily Caller Jimenez was born in Ecuador and arrived in this country as an illegal immigrant.

“Deporting members of our community is irresponsible and unacceptable,” added Lorella Praeli, the group’s policy director.

Their demand is an opening salvo in a post-election campaign to persuade the House GOP to provide “a path to citizenship” for roughly 11 million illegal immigrants, most of whom are low-skill laborers who compete for jobs against low-skill Americans.

The amnesty goal is supported by many progressive groups, in part, because most Hispanics prefer generous welfare policies, and so usually vote for Democratic candidates.

In contrast, many Republican advocates and legislators favor high-skill immigration, partly because high-skilled workers spur the economy and lower unemployment.

But the issue has been gridlocked because most GOP leaders prefer high-skill immigration, while most progressives believe that continued arrival of low-skill immigrants boosts their political power.

For example, the board of Jimenez’s group includes Josh Bernstein, the “immigration director” for the Service Employees International Union. That union’s membership has been boosted by the recruitment of many foreigners working without legal permission in the United States.

Polls show some support for amnesty, but other polls of working-class Americans in swing states show opposition.

Gov. Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election, in part, because of low turnout by blue-collar workers in Ohio and other states.

The renewed advocacy for an national amnesty comes as the formal unemployment rate among Americans ticked up to 7.9 percent.

Roughly 23 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Many additional low-skill workers Americans are paid low wages because employers have many potential job-applicants.

In June, Obama announced a temporary amnesty for roughly 800,000 younger illegal-immigrants.

That move greatly boosted Obama’s political support among Latinos prior to the Nov. 6 election.

Under this so-called “Deferred Action” measure, up to 1.76 million illegal immigrants could get work permits, according to an estimate by the Migration Policy Institute.

Only 6 percent of the eligible illegals have college educations, the MPI estimated.

However, Obama’s June decision isn’t enough, said Sonia Martinez, another young illegal immigrant working with the United We Dream group.

“I’m undocumented [and Deferred Action] is really important for me and my daughter. But we believe that Deferred Action is not enough for us,” she said.

“We’ll be fighting to keep families together,” instead of winning amnesty for younger illegal immigrants, she said.

The call for Republicans to discard their opposition to immigration amnesty will grow deafening in the wake of President Obama’s victory. Hispanics supported Obama by a margin of nearly 75 percent to 25 percent, and may have provided important margins in some swing states. If only Republicans relented on their Neanderthal views regarding the immigration rule of law, the message will run, they would release the inner Republican waiting to emerge in the Hispanic population.

If Republicans want to change their stance on immigration, they should do so on the merits, not out of a belief that only immigration policy stands between them and a Republican Hispanic majority. It is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic party, but the core Democratic principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation. Hispanics will prove to be even more decisive in the victory of Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30, which raised upper-income taxes and the sales tax, than in the Obama election.

And California is the wave of the future. A March 2011 poll by Moore Information found that Republican economic policies were a stronger turn-off for Hispanic voters in California than Republican positions on illegal immigration. Twenty-nine percent of Hispanic voters were suspicious of the Republican Party on class-warfare grounds — “it favors only the rich”; “Republicans are selfish and out for themselves”; “Republicans don’t represent the average person”– compared with 7 percent who objected to Republican immigration stances.

It is estimated that each illegal immigrant costs the people of the State of California $22,000 per year. That’s equivalent to the cost of a very good new car each year or a year’s worth of payments on a $200.000 home mortgage. The County of Los Angeles is going broke with the burden imposed by the welfare and health care costs of illegal immigrants, people who have broken our laws by coming here illegally.

To me I cannot understand how giving illegals amnesty will help Republicans as according to the law a person cannot vote in a presidential election unless they are a citizen. This is an issue the Democrats have advanced on a purely emotional level in attempt to get the votes of citizens of Hispanic heritage. It is an issue the Republicans have not adequately explained to Hispanics or the American People on the whole.

According to Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute writing in National Review On “Line Why Hispanics Don’t Vote for Republicans:”

“I spoke last year with John Echeveste, founder of the oldest Latino marketing firm in southern California, about Hispanic politics. “What Republicans mean by ‘family values’ and what Hispanics mean are two completely different things,” he said. “We are a very compassionate people, we care about other people and understand that government has a role to play in helping people.”

And a strong reason for that support for big government is that so many Hispanics use government programs. U.S.-born Hispanic households in California use welfare programs at twice the rate of native-born non-Hispanic households. And that is because nearly one-quarter of all Hispanics are poor in California, compared to a little over one-tenth of non-Hispanics. Nearly seven in ten poor children in the state are Hispanic, and one in three Hispanic children is poor, compared to less than one in six non-Hispanic children. One can see that disparity in classrooms across the state, which are chock full of social workers and teachers’ aides trying to boost Hispanic educational performance.

The idea of the “social issues” Hispanic voter is also a mirage. A majority of Hispanics now support gay marriage, a Pew Research Center poll from last month found. The Hispanic out-of-wedlock birth rate is 53 percent, about twice that of whites.

The demographic changes set into motion by official and de facto immigration policy favoring low-skilled over high-skilled immigrants mean that a Republican party that purports to stand for small government and free markets faces an uncertain future.”

On election night, as the camera panned the audience waiting to hear Barack Obama give his victory speech, what struck me was that the audience was primarily young people and minorities. My thought was, "These are the very people who will suffer the most under a second Obama administration. Don't they know they are voting against their own best interest?"

And then I thought about it and came to the conclusion: "No, they don't." They don't because they are, by and large, uneducated. Oh, some of them may have college degrees or even graduate degrees, but they are still substantially uneducated. I would bet that very few of them know the difference between Keynesian economics and Austrian School economics. I am sure that most of them have never heard of the Laffer Curve. I would guess that most of them aren't familiar with the first principles behind the origin of our country. I doubt that many of them know what evil lies in Socialism or Communism, or unbridled leftism. Or are even aware that Barack Obama is a man of the left, and what that means. They, for the most part, have no idea what the concept of individual liberty is, nor how a big, powerful central government reduces that liberty. I also am pretty sure that they feel that Barack Obama is someone who cares about the poor, women, minorities, and the "middle class," and that Republicans don't. I would stake my substance on the fact that they don't know what is meant by a limited government, or what the Tenth Amendment says. I am certain that most of them don't know anything about Benghazi. Substantially uneducated!

For the past 40 or so years most of our K-12 (and college) educators have been teaching a progressive agenda and class warfare to their students. From kindergarten up they use text books that focus on social issues and downplay our heritage. In many of the urban school districts classes are taught in Spanish so as to provide this progressive agenda without the need for learning English. They are providing these students a crutch, a crutch that will keep them in low paying jobs and poverty so they will be dependent on government for their existence. Also this lack of learning to common language of the United States along with the lack of exposure to our founding principles and heritage tends to keep these immigrants (legal and illegal) in ghettos where politicians can exploit them for their support and votes and they become easy prey for unions like SEIU.

If you live in Germany, France or Italy you need to learn the language to exist. Unlike the United States in these countries official documents are in the native language. You cannot get a license to drive a vehicle unless you take a test in the native language and all ballots are only printed in the native language. The Bundestag or French Parliament does not have a black caucus or Hispanic caucus. Their legislatures are concerned with all of the people not just certain racial or ethnic special interest victim groups. You are either German, French or Italian or you are not.

If you talk with a student in Germany, which I have, they will tell you, in detail, about their history, legal system, culture, and politics. Upper grade students will also tell you a great deal about the American system of government — much more than the average urban black or Hispanic students can.

To summarize — the children in our K-12 urban public school system, for the most part, believe the following:

a) Republicans care about only the rich — the top 1% — and don't care about anyone else.

b) Republicans hate people of color and especially Latinos.

c) Republicans hate gays.

d) Republicans are racist. Many do not know that it was the Republicans under the leadership or Abraham Lincoln who emancipated the slaves and Republicans who advanced the civil rights legislation of the 1960s while the Democrat party led by Al Gore senior, Richard Byrd, and J. William Fulbright who attempted to block it.

e) It is the government that provides jobs. When asked that question many times in classrooms or assemblies — "who is it that creates jobs in America?" The answer is invariably, without hesitation, "the government." This is what they learn from their teachers and parents.

f) Corporations are bad, and profits are very bad. Business shouldn't make profits; they should give any excess money they make to their employees.

g) Taxes are good; they provide the money for the government to take care of people.

h) Government should expand and take care of everyone in the country.

i) America, rather than being a force for good in the world, has been a force for evil.

j) Government has an unlimited source of funds. (When asked "where is the government going to get the money to do all these things you want it to do?," the answer is "taxes.")

These children will soon be voters. How is it, in America, that we are raising children to believe that bigger government is better, that government is the engine that provides jobs, that profits are bad, that Republicans care about only the rich, that we are racist, and that we hate minorities and gays.

This is not something to be ignored. Our country is being changed forever by children who have had this type of indoctrination. We must figure out how to stop it. We need to create a love of country in our children as we once did. We need to have our children say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag every morning or the Preamble to the Constitution (in English), as we once did. We need to teach our children that America has been a force for good in the world. We need to teach them that it is not the role of government to "take care" of people. We need to teach civics once again, and the Constitution. And above all we must stop this culture destroying policy of bi-lingual education. English should not be a second language, but the language of this Republic.

Until this problem is dealt with, and it needs to be soon, we will be raising generations of children who believe in an ever-larger government and who will permanently change America into Greece. There will be no Republican Party or conservative candidates who will win elections as more and more of the population is indoctrinated with leftist thinking. Goodbye to the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free if we don't act on this issue.

If you look at the county by county map of how this nation voted in this last presidential election you will see how the Democrats dominated the urban population centers while the rest of the nation voted Republican. (You can click on the map for a larger view). You can also see a more interactive detailed view of the California vote for President and Jerry Brown’s enormous tax raising Proposition 30 by clicking the links shown.

In State after State and district after district, Democrats won by promising that government would do something for the people hearing their message. Subsidize their healthcare, pay for their prescriptions, finance their schooling, guarantee their retirement… the list goes on and on. It’s the 21st century version of promising a chicken in every pot.

And, folks, let’s face it. It worked. What happens when a majority of voters are told they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury, if they’ll only put the “right people” in charge?

We saw the answer Tuesday. They’ll stand in line for hours to vote to keep the goodies coming.

It’s going to be awfully hard to outwork, outspend and outvote them. The silent majority is being replaced by a “gimme” society. What’s going to prevent them from dragging this country over a fiscal cliff — and us along with them?

I don’t know. Do you?

Sorry to sound so pessimistic, but I’m stunned and saddened over the results of Tuesday’s elections. I thought it was one of the clearest choices between two different directions for this country I’ve ever seen. And I’m scared to death of the decision a majority of voters just made.

Ah, well, there is one positive thing I can say about the outcome. It will give this humble scribe — and the other conservative and libertarian writers — plenty to write about for the next few years.

Religious Liberty in the Administrative State

“No person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship, or religious sentiments, in the said territories.

Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” The Northwest Ordinance, 1787.

The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, and also known as the Freedom Ordinance or "The Ordinance of 1787") was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States, passed July 13, 1787. The primary effect of the ordinance was the creation of the Northwest Territory as the first organized territory of the United States out of the region south of the Great Lakes, north and west of the Ohio River, and east of the Mississippi River.

On August 7, 1789, President George Washington signed the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 into law after the newly created U.S. Congress reaffirmed the Ordinance with slight modifications under the Constitution. The Ordinance purported to be not merely legislation that could later be amended by Congress, but rather "the following articles shall be considered as Articles of compact between the original States and the people and states in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent.

Arguably the single most important piece of legislation passed by members of the earlier Continental Congresses other than the Declaration of Independence, it established the precedent by which the federal government would be sovereign and expand westward across North America with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation. It is the most important legislation that Congress has passed with regard to American public domain lands. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized the authority of the Northwest Ordinance of 1789 within the applicable Northwest Territory as constitutional in Strader v. Graham, 51 U.S. 82, 96, 97 (1851), but did not extend the Ordinance to cover the respective states once they were admitted to the Union.

The prohibition of slavery in the territory had the practical effect of establishing the Ohio River as the boundary between free and slave territory in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. This division helped set the stage for national competition over admitting free and slave states, the basis of a critical question in American politics in the 19th century until the Civil War.

The Natural Rights provisions of the ordinance foreshadowed the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Many of the concepts and guarantees of the Ordinance of 1787 were incorporated in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In the Northwest Territory, various legal and property rights were enshrined, religious tolerance was proclaimed, and it was enunciated that since "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." The right of habeas corpus was written into the charter, as was freedom of religious worship and bans on excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment. Trial by jury and a ban on ex post facto laws were also rights granted.

The Northwest Ordinance was a clear, unambiguous expression of the beliefs of our Founders. There could be no doubt that this new Congress believed that education and morality should go hand in hand and that as long as the religious practices of one did not violate the social compact or encourage criminal acts such as human sacrifice or refusal to support the common defense of the nation. Religion was not only to be tolerated, it was to be encouraged.

In his 1781 Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII: Manners Thomas Jefferson said:

“With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.--But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one’s mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.”

Here Jefferson is referring the immorality of slavery and the wrath of God that will descend on those who support this policy. Jefferson made no bones in referring to God, as he did in the Declaration four times, and warning that an immoral nation devoid of God would no doubt perish.

In his 1796 Farewell Address to the nation George Washington stated:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. ’Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government. Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric.”

Washington, however, offered on caveat to absolute religious freedom in his September, 1789 letter to the Annual Meeting of Quakers when he gently reminded them of their obligation to support the common defense. In his letter Washington stated:

“Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the persons and consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but, according to their stations, to prevent it in others.

The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their consciences, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights. While men perform their social duties faithfully, they do all that society or the state can with propriety demand or expect; and remain responsible only to their Maker for their religion, or modes of faith, which they may prefer or profess.

Your principles and conduct are well known to me; and it is doing the people called Quakers no more than justice to say, that (except their declining to share with others the burden of the common defense) there is no denomination among us, who are more exemplary and useful citizens.

I assure you very explicitly, that in my opinion the conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with great delicacy and tenderness; and it is my wish and desire, that the laws may always be as extensively accommodated to them, as a due regard to the protection and essential interests of the nation may justify and permit.”

Once again we see how our Founders viewed the value of religion in the life of the nation and its schools.

Even the Wilsonian Progressives believed in the value of religion and morality in our national affairs and government policies. They believed in criminal and civil laws that would protect one citizen from the actions of another. This changed with the advent of the Post 1960s Progressives when they embarked on a campaign of anything goes sexual liberation and a complete intolerance for religious institutions.

Post-1960s Progressivism has steadily eroded religious liberty and the freedom of association in America. Measures such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and many anti-discrimination laws express a new understanding of rights that rejects the Founders’ view of religious liberty and the freedom of private associations to govern themselves. Recent Progressivism follows the early Progressive belief that effective freedom requires government to redistribute resources in order to provide equal access to the goods that promote mental development and that make life comfortable. This redistributive agenda is combined with a new emphasis on the empowerment of victim groups, sexual liberation, and an aversion to traditional Christianity and Judaism that requires government intervention in the internal affairs of private organizations. Religious liberty today is divorced from the freedom of association and the free exercise of religion, which the Founders understood to be essential for a free society.

The Founders’ conception of religious liberty was anchored in the belief that the natural right of liberty—and religious liberty—meant not only that all persons may worship God in the way each thinks best, but also that all are permitted to follow what they believe to be God’s laws in their daily life outside of church. The Founders understood, however, that actions based on religion are limited by the purpose of the social compact—the security of rights. No one has a right to disturb the public peace, to obstruct others in their religious worship, or to incite crimes.

While the Founders believed that religion, especially Christianity, is helpful to the cause of liberty because it encourages the virtues necessary for the survival of a free society, they held that government involvement in religious organizations must be limited by the very purpose of government: to secure the equal natural rights of citizens to life, liberty, and property. Denial of the rights to religious liberty and to freedom of association violates the right to liberty.

In practice, liberty—including religious liberty—means that individuals are free to organize and conduct their affairs as they see fit through self-governing private associations. Contrary to today’s practice, the Founders understood that churches, businesses, and other private associations had the right to determine all internal policies, including rules for membership, employment, and conduct, free from government interference. As long as these entities do not harm the rights to life, liberty, or property, they should be free to manage their internal affairs.

After 1965, Progressives adopted a new attitude towards religion and private associations, viewing both as threats to effective or positive freedom. The redistributive agenda of early Progressivism required the violation of the natural right to property, but in general the early Progressives supported the traditional family and liberal Christianity. Post-1965 Progressivism (in the interest of sexual liberation) explicitly attacks Christianity and rejects the older morality which supported the traditional family.

One of the first steps along this road to the rejection of morality in our public education system was the 1963 Supreme Court case of Abington v. Schempp. This was a case in which the Court decided 8–1 in favor of the respondent, Edward Schempp, and declared school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be unconstitutional. Associate Justice William Brennan wrote in his concurring opinion:

“[I]t is implicit in the history and character of American public education that the public schools serve a uniquely public function: the training of American citizens in an atmosphere free of parochial, divisive, or separatist influences of any sort. Attendance at the public schools has never been compulsory. [The Constitution reserves] such a choice to the individual parent. The choice which is thus preserved is between a public secular education with its uniquely democratic values, and some form of private or sectarian education, which offers values of its own.”

Not only did this decision fly in the face of the Northwest Ordinance and the intent of the Founders it set the stage for most of the tyrannical laws against religious beliefs we live with today. Used as stare deices for lower courts to follow in subsequent decisions involving the free practice of religion in public schools and the public square such as; banning the singing of Christmas Carols, not allowing Christmas trees on public property, punishing students for wishing a fellow student a “Merry Christmas” or exchanging a Christmas Card. This is tyranny by a minority group that views itself as victims as they feel offended by these practices — practices that do them no harm. This was not the intent of the Founders when speaking of religious tolerance.

Another landmark case along the road to our throwing organized religion’s moral convictions and tenants was the 2003 case of Lawrence v. Texas, decided by a 6-3 vote of the Court.

In this case the Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in thirteen other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.

Lawrence explicitly overruled Bowers, holding that it had viewed the liberty interest too narrowly. The Court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Lawrence invalidated similar laws throughout the United States that criminalized sodomy between consenting adults acting in private, whatever the sex of the participants.

In this case Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority:

“These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”

It seems that the Court uses the 14^th Amendment time and time again to override the 10^th Amendment

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a dissent, which Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joined. Scalia objected to the Court's decision to revisit Bowers, pointing out many decisions from lower courts that relied on Bowers that might now need to be reconsidered. He noted that the same rationale used to overturn Bowers could have been used to overturn Roe v. Wade, which the Justices in the majority in Lawrence had recently upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Scalia also criticized the majority opinion for failing to give the same respect to stare decisis that three of those in the majority had insisted on in Casey.

Scalia wrote that if the court was not prepared to validate laws based on moral choices as it had done in Bowers, state laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity would not prove sustainable.

He wrote that:

“Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct. The Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed.”

He cited the majority opinion's concern that the criminalization of sodomy could be the basis for discrimination against homosexuals as evidence that the majority ignored the views of most Americans:

“So imbued is the Court with the law profession's anti-anti-homosexual culture, that it is seemingly unaware that the attitudes of that culture are not obviously "mainstream"; that in most States what the Court calls "discrimination" against those who engage in homosexual acts is perfectly legal.”

He continued: "Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means." The majority's "invention of a brand-new 'constitutional right'", he wrote, showed it was "impatient of democratic change."

The case attracted much public attention, and a large number of amici curiae ("friends of the court") briefs were filed. Its outcome was celebrated by gay rights advocates, who hoped that further legal advances might result as a consequence. And it did!

Now we have another special victim group demanding a redistribution of resources and special protection under the color of law. If a religious institution or secular organizations like the Boy Scouts they are taken to court by the Gay Rights activists demanding their rights to be a part of the organization even if they are not welcomed. If a business like the photographer in New Mexico refuses to photograph a same sex wedding the photographer is fined $6,637.97. What if a Gay photographer would only photograph same sex commitment ceremonies? Would they suffer the same government sanctions. I doubt it. In this case Gay Rights trump religious rights.

To implement the new view of freedom from Christianity and moral self-restraint, government involves itself ever more pervasively in the internal affairs of churches and businesses. Since these private associations all have employees, they are thus subject to anti-discrimination provisions that actively promote affirmative action policies geared toward sexual liberation and the redistribution of resources to supposed victim groups. Private associations are not allowed to govern themselves, and businesses are often prohibited from treating religion as a positive good. Religious liberty is increasingly confined to the freedom to worship. The natural right to liberty and the specific application of that right as religious liberty and the freedom of association are denied by the contemporary Progressive view of religious liberty.

Is Federal Spending On Education Worth The Money?

"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." — Frédéric Bastiat (The Law)

Firstly I apologize for using this quote from Frédéric Bastiat once again, but I find it the most appropriate for my following post on education in America. It appears Bastiat’s writings are as valid today as they were when he first wrote them. In the case of education Bastiat hit the nail on the head 164 years ago.

Many philosophers like Locke, Montesquieu, and Smith have made important contributions to the discourse on liberty and the rights of property, Bastiat among them. But Bastiat’s greatest contribution is that he took the discourse out of the ivory tower and made ideas on liberty so clear that even the unlettered can understand them and statists cannot obfuscate them. Clarity is crucial to persuading our fellowman of the moral superiority of personal liberty.

In the nineteenth century, however, there was one champion of freedom who mastered the art of making the complexities of economic reasoning understandable to the layman: the French classical-liberal economist Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850). More than one historian of economic thought has emphasized Bastiat’s special abilities in undermining the rationales for protectionism, socialism, and interventionism.

Like others, Bastiat recognized that the greatest single threat to liberty is government. Notice the clarity he employs to help us identify and understand evil government acts such as legalized plunder. Bastiat says, “See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” With such an accurate description of legalized plunder, we cannot deny the conclusion that most government activities, including ours, are legalized plunder, or for the sake of modernity, legalized theft.

As the economist Henry Hazlitt rightly emphasized, the central idea in much of Bastiat’s writings is captured in his essay “What Is Seen And What Is Not Seen,” which was the last piece he wrote before his death in 1850. He points out that the short-run effects of any action or policy can often be quite different from its longer-run consequences, and that these more remote consequences in fact may be the opposite from what one had hoped for or originally planned.

Bastiat was able to apply the principle of the seen and the unseen to taxes and government jobs. When government taxes, what is seen are the workers employed and the results of their labor: a road, a bridge, or a canal. What is unseen are all the other things that would have been produced if the tax money had not been taken from individuals in the private sector and if the resources and labor employed by the government had been free to serve the desires of those private citizens. Government, Bastiat explained, produces nothing independent from the resources and labor it diverts from private uses. This is also called “opportunity cost.”

This simple but profoundly important insight is the theoretical weapon through which Bastiat is able to demonstrate the errors and contradictions in the ideas of both protectionists and socialists. Thus in such essays as “Abundance and Scarcity,” “Obstacle and Cause,” and “Effort and Result,” he shows that barriers and prohibitions to freedom of trade only lead to poverty.

He points out that each of us is both a consumer and a producer. To consume a good we must either make it ourselves or make some other good that we think someone else will take in exchange for the good we want. As consumers we desire as many goods as possible at the lowest possible prices. In other words, we want abundance. But as producers we want a scarcity of the goods we bring to market. In open competition, in which all exchanges are voluntary, the only way to “capture” customers and earn the income that enables each of us, in turn, to be a consumer is to offer better, cheaper, and more goods than our competitors. The alternative to this method, Bastiat warns, is for each of us as a producer to turn to the government to gain from our neighbors what we are unable to obtain through peaceful, nonviolent trade on the market.

Herein lays Bastiat’s famous distinction between illegal and legal plunder, which is at the center of his analysis in The Law. The purpose of government, he says, is precisely to secure individuals in their rights to life, liberty, and property. Without such security men are reduced to a primitive life of fear and self-defense, with every neighbor a potential enemy ready to plunder what another has produced. If a government is strictly limited to protecting men’s rights, then peace prevails, and men can go about working to improve their lives, associating with their neighbors in a division of labor and exchange.

But government can also be turned against those whom it is meant to protect in their property. There can arise legal plunder, in which the powers of government are used by various individuals and groups to prevent rivals from competing, to restrict the domestic and foreign trading opportunities of other consumers in the society, and therefore to steal the wealth of one’s neighbors. This, Bastiat argues, is the origin and basis of protectionism, regulation, and redistributive taxation.

But the consequences of legal plunder are not only the political legitimizing of theft and the breakdown of morality through the blurring of the distinction between right and wrong—however crucially important and dangerous these may be for the long-term stability and well-being of society. Such policies also, by necessity, reduce the prosperity of the society.

By now you are no doubt asking what all of this has to do with government spending on education — everything.

In a recent column, David Brooks considers Charles Murray’s thesis that “America is coming apart,” and concludes that:

“The American social fabric is now so depleted that even if manufacturing jobs miraculously came back we still would not be producing enough stable, skilled workers to fill them. It’s not enough just to have economic growth policies. The country also needs to rebuild orderly communities.

This requires bourgeois paternalism: Building organizations and structures that induce people to behave responsibly rather than irresponsibly and, yes, sometimes using government to do so.

Social repair requires sociological thinking. The depressing lesson of the last few weeks is that the public debate is dominated by people who stopped thinking in 1975.”

The first recommendation is reasonable. The second suggests Brooks is not very familiar with the history of education.

For the past century and a half, the biggest single intervention by the government in American lives has been our state school systems. Prior to the mid-1800s, all education in this country was local. The majority of children attended private schools, and those who attended the local “common” or “public” schools usually paid tuition. Even “common” schooling was only free for the truly destitute. Partly as a result of this direct financial responsibility, parents had ultimate control over what and by whom their children were taught.

From the 1830s to the 1850s, Massachusetts state senator Horace Mann and his colleague in the House, James Carter, imagined and ultimately laid the foundation of the state school system we know today. They did so for a variety of reasons, one being their belief that the common man and woman could not be trusted to educate their own children. Their solution was to take educational power and responsibility out of parents’ hands and place it under the control of state-trained, state-appointed masterminds.

Shockingly, taking responsibilities away from people does not make them more responsible. Responsibility is like a muscle: use it, or lose it. The kinds of “organizations and structures that induce people to behave responsibly” are those that actually impose responsibilities upon them. When parents must not only choose but pay for their children’s education, they expect rather more from the system than when they are assigned “free” schooling by the state. And school efficiency rises as a result.

Some parents could not afford to pay for a good education for their children even without the heavy tax burden imposed by the present bloated state school monopolies. For those parents, we could easily provide financial assistance to cover most or (as necessary) all the cost of schooling. This is already being done on a small but growing scale in 8 states, thanks to k-12 education tax credit programs.

If Brooks wants “an organization and structure” that induces people to behave responsibly, he need look no further than the free enterprise system. “Using government” to achieve that end has been tried for 150 years, and the results are not impressive.

Education is, indeed, very important. But while Washington spends huge sums on things that are education-related, the riches produce almost nothing of educational value. If anything, the feds keep stuffing donuts into an already obese system.

Federal elementary and secondary education spending has risen mightily since the early 1970s, when Washington first started immersing itself in education. In 1970, according to the Federal Digest of Education Statistics, Uncle Sam spent an inflation-adjusted $31.5 billion on public K-12 education. By 2009 that had ballooned to $82.9 billion.

On a per-pupil basis, in 1970 the feds spent $435 per student. By 2006 — the latest year with available data — it was $1,015, a 133 percent increase. And it's not like state and local spending was dropping: Real, overall, per-pupil spending rose from $5,593 in 1970 to $12,463 in 2006, and today we beat almost every other industrialized nation in education funding.

What do we have to show for this?

Certainly more public school employees: Between 1969 and 2007, pupil-to-staff ratios were close to halved. Not coincidentally, these same people, through their teachers unions, powerfully and constantly politick for ever more spending and against reforms that will challenge their bloated monopoly. They also routinely defeat efforts to hold them accountable for results.

This constant feeding of special interests is why we've gotten zilch in the outcome that really matters — learning. Since the early 1970s, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — the "Nation's Report Card" — have been utterly stagnant for 17-year-olds, our schools' "final products." In 1973 the average math score was 304 (out of 500). In 2008 it was just 306. In reading, the 1971 average was 285. In 2008 it was up a single point, hitting 286.

The higher education tale is much the same, especially for student aid, the primary college dumping ground for federal dollars. According to the College Board, in 1971 Washington provided $3,814 in inflation-adjusted aid per full-time equivalent student. By 2009-10 that figure had more than tripled, hitting $12,894.

By most available indicators this has been money down the drain. For instance, only about 58 percent of bachelor's seekers finish their programs within six years, if at all. Literacy levels among people with degrees are low and falling. And colleges have raised their prices at astronomical rates to capture ever-growing federal aid. Why shouldn’t they? After all if the taxpayer money is on the table why not take it for their bloated staffs and grandiose expansion schemes and programs.

Millions of the people taxpayers are sending to college are getting little if anything out of it, while the colleges rake in heavy dough. But that means the root problem isn’t the colleges — they are just taking the people government sends them — it is the federally dominated funding system that insists on giving dollars to almost any warm body that declares it wants to experience ivy-covered walls and frat parties.

Nobody wants to be the guy — especially the Congress-guy — who says that we need to cut education spending. Nobody wants to be the target of attacks from both the well-intentioned and politically opportunistic that they hate children, only care about “the rich,” or any of the other deviousness that long ago snuck up behind reasoned debate, threw a rope around its neck, and pulled it backwards. As Bastiat stated; “Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education.”

If you address it honestly, it’s nearly impossible to deny that federal education meddling has been not just a failure, but a failure with all sorts of bizarre tendencies and unseen consequences. Several months ago, Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned that this year 82 percent of the nation’s public schools would be identified as failing under the No Child left Behind Act. A lot of people smelled pure politics behind the pronouncement — the administration wanted to unilaterally issue waivers from the law in exchange for states adopting POTUS-dictated policies — and today the Center on Education Policy released a report finding that only about 48 percent of schools “need improvement” under NCLB.

Wait, 48 percent? Isn’t that still really high?

It certainly seems so, but who the heck even knows? Every state sets its own standards-and-testing regime and most appear to have gamed the system wildly to stay out of trouble. So are all our schools failing? Half? And what even constitutes failing? No one knows, and few politicians appear willing to talk straight about it. Of course, most probably have no idea what should constitute math and reading “proficiency” — the law’s goal — to begin with. Indeed, it’s an extremely subjective designation for anyone to make, though some in Washington act like they pretty much know what it is.

Obviously, no sane individual would ever construct a system like this. But politically, all this illusion and contortion makes sense: Every politician wants to be seen as the savior of our children, but never wants the abuse that would come with creating and enforcing high standards, or being honest about progress made — or not made — under his or her watch. So we get all this sound, fury, and when you compare spending to test scores, educational nothing.

Now, you’d think just the sheer lunacy of federal education policy making would make it clear to all that Washington should get out of education. And if that didn’t do it, the abysmal track record absolutely would. But no: Today the U.S. House of Representatives – the legislative body supposedly full of angry, tea-guzzling Republicans — produced their FY 2012 appropriations bill. And by how much did they cut the U.S. Department of Education budget? 20 percent? 2 percent? No, a microscopic 0.2 percent! A $153 million quark out of a $71.3 billion whale!

While office holders are wrongly considered our leaders by some — they are, in fact, our employees — you’d hope they’d lead a bit by ignoring short-term political consequences and cutting utterly failed programs. But that would be the triumph of hope over reality; politicians are as self-interested as anyone else, and will generally do only those things that help them keep or gain votes. So what must happen is that the public gets intimately familiar with the sick reality of federal education policy and votes based on it. And that means those of us who know the truth, must do a better job of getting that word out and helping education policy to finally meet reality.

If Brooks wants “an organization and structure” that induces people to behave responsibly, he needs look no further than the free enterprise system. “Using government” to achieve that end has been tried for 150 years, and the results are not impressive.

Obama’s Propaganda Truth Squad

"A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another, and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government." — John Stuart Mill

Last night I watched several films on the Turner Classic Movies channel. All the films I viewed focused on the Soviet Union and dated from 1940 to 1965. The first film I watched was Doctor Zhivago, the classic directed by David Lean. The film, based on the book of the same name by Boris Pasternak, depicts Russia from the time prior to the 1917 revolution through the period of the civil war between the forces loyal to the Czar (Whites) and the Communists (Reds).

The film shot in stunning color still captivated me with its wonderful shots of the Russian winter and spring (shot in Canada), its elaborate costuming, and its haunting musical score by Maurice Jarre. Who can forget those magnificent scenes of the fields of daffodils and birch trees and those scenes of the Russian winter where you can feel the bitter cold?

I first saw this film in 1967 in Hamilton, Ontario when my wife and I paid a visit to my Canadian relatives with my two-year old son. I always remember having to stand for “God Save the Queen” prior to the start of the film in the Canadian movie theater.

The next film I watched was the farcical comedy Comrade X staring Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr. The story is about an American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow who blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country. McKinley B. "Mac" Thompson (Clark Gable), American reporter in Moscow, smuggles out uncensored news under the alias "Comrade X," but hotel valet Vanya discovers his secret. Vanya fears for the safety of his daughter Golubka ("Theodore" – played by Hedy Lamarr) and blackmails Mac into helping her leave the country. Mac is happier about his task once he meets lovely Theodore, but can he convince her of his sincerity? The anti-communist humor becomes alternately grim and farcical.

While not a “classic” film it was fun with its satirical humor depicting the evils of Soviet Communism and life in the Soviet Union under the tyranny of Stalin. The film ends with Gable and Lamarr in the United States watching a ball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds with Lamarr (once a dedicated Communist) jumping for joy when the Dodgers beat the “Reds.”

The third film was real humdinger of a 1943 Communist propaganda film called Mission to Moscow. The movie, starring Walter Huston, was made in response to a request by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was one of the movies famously targeted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It chronicles the experiences of the second American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies.

Mission to Moscow is a book by the former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph E. Davies published by Simon and Schuster in 1941. It was adapted into a film directed by Michael Curtiz in 1943.

The movie, starring Walter Huston, was made in response to a request by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was one of the movies famously targeted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It chronicles the experiences of the second American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies. The movie covers the political machinations in Moscow just before the start of the war and presents Stalin's Russia in a very favorable light. So much so, that the movie was cited years later by the House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC) and was largely responsible for the screenwriter, Howard Koch being blacklisted.

The movie chronicles Ambassador Davies' impressions of the Soviet Union, his meetings with Stalin, and his overall opinion of the Soviet Union and its ties with the United States. It is made in faux-documentary style, beginning with Davies meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss his new appointment as United States ambassador to the Soviet Union. It continues to show the Davies' family's trip by boat to Moscow, with stops in Europe

The movie chronicles Ambassador Davies' impressions of the Soviet Union, his meetings with Stalin, and his overall opinion of the Soviet Union and its ties with the United States. It is made in faux-documentary style, beginning with Davies meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss his new appointment as United States ambassador to the Soviet Union. It continues to show the Davies' family's trip by boat to Moscow, with stops in Europe.

Davies is shown witnessing the famous show trials conducted by Stalin in the 1930s (known as the Moscow Trials), which are portrayed as trials of Fifth Columnists working for Germany and Japan.

The voice-overs continue throughout the film, interspersing storyline with Davies' opinions. The basis of the film's narrative focuses on the journey of Davies and his family. First, their physical journey from the United States to the Soviet Union. And, second, their less tangible journey from skeptics of communism and the Soviet Union into converts and enthusiasts. The narrative of the movie and the book are almost identical.

Mission to Moscow was the first pro-Soviet Hollywood film of its time and was followed by others, including Samuel Goldwyn's The North Star (1943), MGM’s Song of Russia (1944), United Artists’ Three Russian Girls (1943), Columbia’s The Boy from Stalingrad (1943) and Counter-Attack (1945).

It was Roosevelt himself who approved the creation of the film version of Mission to Moscow, even meeting with Davies several times (July, October, and November of 1942 and March 1943) during the film's production and discussing its progress.

As part of his contract with Warner Brothers, Davies had absolute right of control over the script, and could veto any dialogue not to his liking.

During production, Office of War Information officials reviewed screenplay revisions and prints of the film and commented on them. By reviewing the scripts and prints, OWI officials exercised authority over Mission to Moscow, ensuring that it promoted the "United Nations" theme. An administration official advised the film's producers to offer explanations for the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the Red Army's invasion of Finland. After reading the final script, in November 1942 the OWI expressed its hope that Mission to Moscow would "make one of the most remarkable pictures of this war" and "a very great contribution to the war information program."

The OWI report on Mission to Moscow concluded that it would:

“..be a most convincing means of helping Americans to understand their Russian allies. Every effort has been made to show that Russians and Americans are not so very different after all. The Russians are shown to eat well and live comfortably, which will be a surprise to many Americans.^[6] The leaders of both countries desire peace and both possess a blunt honesty of address and purpose. One of the best services performed by this picture is the presentation of Russian leaders, not as wild-eyed madmen, but as far-seeing, earnest, responsible statesmen. They have proved very good neighbors, and this picture will help to explain why, as well as to encourage faith in the feasibility of post-war cooperation”

Government information specialists were equally enthusiastic about the completed print. Judging it "a magnificent contribution" to wartime propaganda, the OWI believed the picture would "do much to bring understanding of Soviet international policy in the past years and dispel the fears which many honest persons have felt with regard to our alliance with Russia." That was particularly so since "the possibility for the friendly alliance of the Capitalist United States and the Socialist Russia is shown to be firmly rooted in the mutual desire for peace of the two great countries."

The movie, made during World War II, showed the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin in an extremely positive light. Completed in late April 1943, the film was, in the words of Robert Buckner, the film's producer, "an expedient lie for political purposes, glossily covering up important facts with full or partial knowledge of their false presentation." It whitewashed the Moscow trials, rationalized Moscow's participation in the Nazi-Soviet Pact and its unprovoked invasion of Finland, and portrayed the Soviet Union as a non-totalitarian state that was moving towards the American democratic model, a Soviet Union committed to internationalism. There was no mention of the death by starvation of a million Ukrainians due to collectivization of their farms nor the partition of Poland under Stalin.

The book was vague on the guilt or innocence of defendants in the Moscow trials, but the final screenplay portrayed the defendants as undeniably guilty. It also showed the purges as an attempt by Stalin to rid his country of pro-German fifth columnists. The fifth columnists are described in the film as acting on behalf of Germany and Japan. The film even contains "a quarter-hour dedicated to arguing that Leon Trotsky was a Nazi agent."

In the film, Davies proclaims at the end of the trial scene: “Based on twenty years’ trial practice, I’d be inclined to believe these confessions.”

Also, there are many anachronisms. For example, the trial with Nikolai Bukharin and Mikhail Tukhachevsky are depicted as occurring at the same time, but in reality the trial with Bukharin was two years after the execution of Tukhachevsky. Tukhachevsky and Tymoshenko are marshals at the same time, but Tukhachevsky was executed in 1937 and Tymoshenko became marshal of the USSR in 1940.

Mission to Moscow has been "universally despised" by critics. However, there have been a few notable exceptions. The critic for the New York Times, future McCarthy opponent Bosley Crowther a useful idiot, found the film's attempts to rehabilitate Stalin believable:

“Based entirely on the personal observations reported by Mr. Davies in his book, it will obviously prove offensive to those elements which have challenged his views. Particularly will it anger the so-called Trotskyites with its visual re-enactment of the famous "Moscow trials". For it puts into the record for millions of moviegoers to grasp an admission that the many "purged" generals and other leaders were conspirators in a plot.”

Similarly, Leonard Maltin, another useful idiot, gave the film three and a half stars.

Mission to Moscow was not a commercial success. Although Warner Brothers spent $250,000 advertising the film before its release on April 30, 1943, the company lost around $600,000 overall at the final accounting. Mission to Moscow's numerous factual inaccuracies and outright false portrayals of Soviet leaders and events resulted in criticism from those on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. According to Jesse Walker of Reason Magazine, "it would be a terrible movie even if its politics weren't so repulsive: It's stiffly acted, poorly plotted, padded with stock footage, and just generally clumsy. But it's a must for fans of propaganda kitsch."

The House Committee on Un-American Activities would later cite Mission to Moscow as one of the three noted examples of pro-Soviet films made by Hollywood, the other two being The North Star and Song of Russia. It's been called "unquestionably the most blatant piece of pro-Stalinist propaganda ever offered by the American mass media."

In 1950, the film became an object of attention by members of Congress, who saw it as pro-Soviet propaganda. Davies was largely silent on his role in the film, though he did submit a letter to the House Committee on Un-American Activities Committee (HCUA) in 1947. Called to testify under oath before Congress, Jack Warner at first claimed that the film was made at the request of Davies, who with the approval of FDR had asked Warner Brothers to make the film (this version of the facts was confirmed by Davies' letter as well). Warner later recanted this version, stating that Harry Warner first read Mission to Moscow and then contacted Davies to discuss movie rights. [Source: Wikipedia]

While watching this film I wavered from anger to laughing. The anger was due to the ignorance and lies pushed on the audience by Davies and the filmmakers. By 1943 the American people had been given plenty of evidence as to the tyranny and cruelty of the Stalin regime. This film flew in the face of all historical facts known at the time. Only a useful idiot or fellow traveler could have possibly bought into the films message. Yet the American Communist Party thought it was great.

The laugh ability stemmed from the corny lines and Soviet archival propaganda films used throughout the film to show the wonderful, happy workers, the stores filled with consumer goods, the dams and hydroelectric plants, and the wheat fields with giant harvesting machines working in tandem to bring the crop while people were starving in Moscow and Leningrad. What a farce of propaganda this film was.

Of course at the time the western allies were building a case to support the Soviet Union in the war against Germany. I can understand that. But the heavy-handed manipulation of historical facts was a farce.

Now we get to the point of this blog — the Obama Truth Squads and their indoctrination of our school children. They are just like the tactics used by the Young Communist League and Hitler Youth.

The left loves to talk about how America has been historically guilty of it. Every time a kid stands up, puts his hand over his heart, and recites the Pledge of Allegiance, he is being manipulated to love this country of ours, overshadowing the past American imperialist and human rights crimes that kids should be focused on.

And the indoctrination doesn't end there, they claim. Once these apple pie-loving robots leave the secondary schools, they continue their right-wing education on the airwaves of talk radio, where independent instructors are hired by private companies to compensate for the learning that they fail to get in those state-sponsored universities. Poor Joe Six-pack, don'tcha know, didn't have the benefit of learning the truths of the world from a college professor whose "coming-of-age" years could best be described as a montage of group sex and psychedelic acid trips set to "Time of the Season" by The Zombies.

Yet when educational institutions are systematically teaching their young children to chant phrases supporting Barack Obama's political agenda — well, there's just no harm in that. Schoolchildren singing in support of the notion of "spreading the wealth around": "Hooray, Mr. President! We honor your great plans to make this country's economy number one again!" Children too young to know the meaning or implications of Obama's proposed "change" involving expansive government infrastructure, yet creepily singing: "Obama's gonna change it, Obama's gonna lead 'em, we're gonna change it, and rearrange it." And most recently, children innocently singing the “nonpartisan phrase” "Who do we know is the man? Barack Obama is our man! He's our man, yes he can!"

All this, though it's all innocent in the eyes of the left. After all, don't you remember the schoolchildren singing: "Who's the greatest in the land? Why, Bush, of course, he's our man!" You don't? It never happened? Oh well, that doesn't matter. Because now Barack Obama is president, and you're just supposed to support him.

Of course, Talk Radio U. teaches those conservative robots to be wary about schoolchildren being uniformly instructed to sing praises to the president. Sure, Barack Obama takes opportunities to pitch increased federal education spending to schoolchildren in hopes they might get their archaic old parents on the trolley with the whole "hope and change" thing. But that doesn't mean he's trying to charge their thoughts with his brand of politics. No big deal, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is manipulation of the highest order — indoctrination meant to support the politicians and positions of the radical left. And it's evolving. It's not just in the mainstream media anymore. It's not just in the public schools. It's soon to be on every social network — the greatest propaganda campaign ever tweeted. It is just described as "grassroots communication."

ABC News reports:

The Obama campaign is today beginning a new effort to enlist and educate at least 2 million supporters for a "grassroots communications team" they're calling the Truth Team.

"The goal is to ensure that when Republicans attack President Obama's record, grassroots supporters can take ownership of the campaign and share the facts with the undecided voters in their lives," the campaign said in a statement.

Of course, grassroots implies an initiative by the people, bottom-up, and free of top-down influence, which is a curious description considering that this is actually an Obama campaign initiative. But anyway, here's how this unapologetically works. A nonpartisan, independent reader comes across this article. He reads in this post something that doesn't exactly paint Obama in a good light. Better do some fact-checking, he thinks. He goes to an Obama Truth Team outlet, like Media Maters or Move On.Org, online, saying, "I heard that Barack Obama wants children to take the political ideology they're learning at school home to challenge their parents' ideas." The millions of Obama's trained Truth experts, fed its "truth" by the ruling political regime and eerily reminiscent of the Ministry of Truth in the dystopian novel 1984, reply, "Of course not. That's just a conservative lie meaning to dress our administration with the trappings of totalitarianism." This is similar to the way the American Communist Party whitewashed the tyranny of Stalin through the 40’s. 50’s, and 60’s and the education campaign of the Nazis.

The Nazi policies towards young people could be viewed as one of the most successful aspects of Nazi Germany. This is because of a variety of reasons. The Nazis took advantage of the need for German youth groups and used what teenagers wanted to slip in Nazi ideals, took over the education system to portray Nazi views, and used the school system to glorify war; they also often alienated children from their parents. However it did have its flaws as there were several groups of youths who opposed Hitler such as the "Swing Movement" and the "Edelweiss Pirates."

The Hitler Youth group played a major role in Nazi control of youths especially in 1939 when it became compulsory to attend. The Nazis took what the children wanted such as group activities, hiking, camping and singing and added in extra activities such as marching, learning about Nazi policies and practicing military exercises. Many of the members were merely drawn to the youth group due to the leisure opportunities it offered and some just did not have a choice as other organizations were shut down and made illegal.

As the Nazis wanted to control each aspect of a child's life they realized that education played a very important role. They altered textbooks to include Nazi history and also Nazi views of History. Students were taught about the injustice of German government and how the Jews were slowly taking over. The National Socialist party also managed to glorify the military in each school subject. They also made sure that the students had to study race and ideology every day.

As the Nazis needed to control each aspect of a child's life to have full hold on the child they realized that it was a necessity to control a child's home or family life, in many cases this meant isolating a child from his/her family. It became increasingly common in Germany for the children of the household to be much more pro-Nazi than their parents. This is because the children grew up being controlled by Nazi forces and therefore found such things as routine household checks normal, whereas older family members found it an invasion of privacy. This often resulted in family disputes and caused unsettledness. This was also caused by the fact that the Nazi party always expected to be put before everything, even before your family.

Of course, I link evidence above of Obama doing this very thing, and the horse's mouth should absolve me. But that doesn't matter. Why do any thinking for yourself when the Obama's Truth Team can do it for you?

There is a well-known maxim that goes: "A lie, told often enough, becomes truth." And with millions of government-sanctioned propaganda distributors charged with taking the government's message to various social media in today's world, it can spread millions upon millions of lies each day. It seems that technology has vastly improved the efficiency with which an ambitious and power-hungry government can disperse the lies it disguises as "truth."

Every day millions of parents trundle their children off to the public school system for 6 to 8 hours each day believing they are getting an education and not worrying about them as the schools take control of their lives. In fact study after study and test score after test score shows that they are not being education for all the money being spent. They are being indoctrinated with left-wing ideology that contradicts our founding fathers, history, and Constitution. They are learning about class warfare, global warming, green energy, how we raped the Native Americans, how we stole the Southwest from Mexico, and other left-wing clap-trap.

They are being force feed unhealthy food by government inspectors and incompetent and pervert teachers are protected by the union. They are taken to left-wing demonstration and taught how unfair capitalism and free enterprise is. They are indoctrinated in atheism, homosexuality, and transgenders. They are forbidden under penalty of expulsion from hugging, exchanging Christmas and Valentine’s cards and that our rights stem from government not from God. As Adolph Hitler said, “Give me a child until he is seven and he is mine.”

Obama, a skilled community organizer and follower of Saul Alinsky, knows this just as Hitler and Lenin did. His supporters will fall in step with his radical agenda of transformation and one day we will wake up to the fact that he has captured the minds and souls of our children. This is why he speaks at middle and high schools where he can draw on the emotions of these young uneducated minds.

Unless we take back our public education and begin to kick out the union teachers with their radical left-wing agenda and left-wing educated academics we will be falling off the cliff as we follow the Nazis and Communists into oblivion.