Obama Fails in Berlin

“There are many people in the world who really don't understand-or say they don't-what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!” — John F. Kennedy, Berlin, June 26, 1963.

Barack Obama returned to Berlin on Wednesday, almost five years to the day from when he delivered his famous "Victory Column" speech that cemented his reputation as an international rock star. Unfortunately, his reception this time was a lot different.

An estimated 200,000 people turned out in July 2008 to see then Candidate Obama deliver an address in front of one of Germany's most notable landmarks. He took a lot of criticism from Germans for his choice of location and from his U.S. political opponents who weren't happy about seeing an American presidential hopeful being adored by tens of thousands of foreigners. The Berlin event was larger than any of his U.S. campaign stops, though some critics even disputed the crowd figures. (Republicans in the heat of a campaign, obviously found other flaws with the speech.)

Fast forward to 2013, and many are now saying that Obama's reputation is "tarnished," by his recent snooping scandals, his extensions of the war on terror, and the hard luck realities of failing to deliver on all your promises. (Even ones you didn't really make.) He's "demystified" and "no longer a superstar" in German eyes. Now he's just another world leader on a state visit, and whatever problems people have with U.S. policy are on his shoulders.

And instead of opening up the speech to the whole city, Obama spoke in front only about 5,000-6,000 spectators, all of them invited guests.

The White House pool report revealed that only 6,000 will be in attendance for Obama's Berlin speech on Wednesday:

“The stage for the president's speech is set up on the East side of the Brandenburg Gate, in the old East Berlin. The sun is pounding down and there are around 6,000 invited guests according to German authorities. There are bleachers set up either side of the square, with a big two story riser facing the stage which has a row of bullet proof glass and 12 U.S., German and EU flags and the grand backdrop of the Gate. There is a large standing crowd between the bleachers.”

The actual crowd count at the Brandenburg Gate speech was 4,500.

His speech on Wednesday (you can click here for a detailed comparison vs. the 2008 speech) called for a reduction in global nuclear weapons (through more negotiations with Russia) and defended the idea of Western intervention in Syria. Hammering on the theme of "peace with justice," he also discussed closing Guantanamo Bay and taking action on climate change, calling it the "global flood of our time." (Much more on that here.) But it was notably different in tone than 2008's more sweeping view of the world, which was a speech more fitting for a candidate.

Nonetheless, directly out of the Brandenburg gate, the president commenced with injecting race and gender into the conversation when he said "Angela and I don't exactly look like previous German and American leaders." Obama then informed the audience, consigned by invitation to stand in the blistering heat listening to his blather, that Michelle, Malia, and Sasha, rather than endure his grueling speech, chose instead to experience the "beauty and the history of Berlin" (at American taxpayers' expense).

But probably the most amazing aspect of Obama's Berlin speech was his typical lack of self-awareness when making assertions that conflict with everything he does. For instance, although President Obama is actively persecuting the "unoriginated birthright of man," he quoted German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who said "freedom is the 'unoriginated birthright of man, and it belongs to him by force of his humanity.'"

Obama even posed questions Americans ask about him:

“Will we live free or in chains? Under governments that uphold our universal rights, or regimes that suppress them? In open societies that respect the sanctity of the individual and our free will, or in closed societies that suffocate the soul?”

In Berlin, Obama attempted to one-up Ronald Reagan's "Peace through Strength" strategy by stealing John F. Kennedy's "Peace with Justice" mantra and scheduled the revision to take place at Brandenburg Gate, where his social justice spiel paled in comparison to authentic Reagan strength.

The president's references were pitiful attempts to support the liberal dream of a daisy-holding, Kumbaya-singing utopia that the human condition prevents.

Ignoring nations stoking the nuclear flames, President "Ich bin ein Dumbkopf" cited JFK's famous 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech when suggesting that Germans "lift their eyes beyond the dangers of today to the day of peace with justice." Caught up in the rapture of the moment, Obama apparently missed the contradiction in mentioning Kennedy's assassination five months after he promoted "peace with justice."

Speaking of contradictions, Mr. Obama shared that Kennedy's words are "timeless because they call upon us to care more about things than just our own self-comfort." This from a president who's about to embark on a $100 million African vacation, toting along a wife whose "self-comfort" demands recently included bunking in a $3,300-a-night Princess Grace suite in Ireland.

President Obama has been facing increasing scrutiny both at home and abroad as scandal after scandal rocks the administration. From Ireland the president went to Germany to talk about the dangers of global number of nuclear weapons, climate change and his views on social justice.

After encouraging youthful unemployed Germans to relinquish self-comfort, citizen of the world Obama shifted to "For we are not only citizens of America or Germany — we are also citizens of the world. And our fates and fortunes are linked like never before." That is, unless linking "fates and fortunes" means sharing a $3,300-a-night hotel room with Michelle Obama.

Never mentioning pressure cookers, hijacked airplanes, banana hammock bombers, or wild-eyed Muslims gunning down American soldiers, and after riding around in an armored limo and building a mysterious underground bunker beneath the White House, Obama proclaimed, "We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe."

President Obama also seemed to imply that food stamps and unemployment checks may be the answer to the threat of worldwide terrorism, which he claimed results from the "agony of an empty stomach or the anguish of unemployment."

Then, after dissing Catholic education in Ireland, Obama dredged up sins that penitent nations have already remediated when he unnecessarily brought up intolerance and abuses "based on race, or religion, gender or sexual orientation."

Obama then advanced a concept that he doesn't apply to Christians or American conservatives, which is that "When we stand up for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and treat their love and their rights equally under the law, we defend our own liberty as well."

That's when the "Peace with justice" rant began. Obama cited free enterprise and freedom, neither of which he's a huge fan of. From there, he segued into environmentalism, closing Guantanamo, ending the Afghan war, controlling the drones he has surveilling U.S. airspace, undermining the Constitution and calling it "balancing the pursuit of security with the protection of privacy," and meeting moral obligations that have nothing to do with morality.

Funny, Obama proves he's vulnerable to nuclear self-destruction whenever the Teleprompter is unavailable. Yet, he imagines peace can only be realized through sending a message to America's enemies that in a nuclear-aggressive environment the most powerful nation in the world is voluntarily reducing the number of its nuclear warheads.

Not to worry though; Barack quoted James Madison and then claimed that he too is moving "beyond a mindset of perpetual war." The president cited a 2016 'secure nuclear materials' summit, which despite the growing threat of international terrorism, Obama believes is a "step" toward "creating a world of peace with justice."

The problem is that the guy who said "Threats to freedom don't merely come from the outside. They can emerge from within" is the one threatening America's freedom, and the perpetual warfare he speaks of is not America's doing.

Appearing on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports on Wednesday, NBC's chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd came up with a long list of excuses for President Obama's poor speech performance in Berlin: "I want to give you a little context here there was an attempt to shrink the crowd size. Maybe they would have gotten 25, 30, 40,000 people. President Obama feeds off a crowd very well."

Todd then grasped at other reasons for the lackluster event: ".you had that very distracting glass and you could just see that the President himself wasn't feeding off of the crowd. And I think look, part of it, it was hot. Those folks were out there for two and a half hours it can sap your energy a little bit. And I just wonder if that added a little bit to this."

Barack Obama ended with a Martin Luther King Jr. quote crescendo:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

In the end, so too does "loss of freedom in America threaten freedom everywhere." That loss is precisely why, both in Germany and here at home, free people must grasp the potentially harmful impact the 'peace-loving' guy riding around in a million dollar armored vehicle and standing behind eight inches of bulletproof glass seeks to impose on the Western world.

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.

We Belong To The Government

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” — The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, July 4, 1776.

Last night the Democratic National Convention started 2012 convention with a short video clip on the big screen at the Charlotte Convention Center proclaiming proudly that “We all Belong to the Government.”

In a statement right out of a communist state, the Democrats started their convention with a bit of propaganda declaring we all belong to the government. Seriously. They started their convention with this video:

“We do believe you can use government in a good way. Government is the only thing we all belong to,” the narrator says, with the words “Democratic National Convention” appearing in the bottom left. “We’re different churches, different clubs, but we’re together as a part of our city, or our county, or our state — and our nation,” the narrator adds. But despite the video playing on the convention floor, the two major players at the convention quickly passed blame.

“The video in question was produced and paid for by the host committee of the city of Charlotte. It’s neither an Obama For America (OFA) nor a DNC video, despite what the Romney campaign is claiming,” the Obama campaign told Buzzfeed. “It’s time for them to find a new target for their faux outrage.”

Dan Murrey, executive director of the host committee, fell on his sword:

“The “Welcome to Charlotte” video was solely produced and paid for by the Host Committee’s New American City Fund, which promotes the city of Charlotte and welcomes our guests. The intent of this video was to tell the story of this region and it is completely unaffiliated with the Obama campaign or the Democratic National Committee.”

This is still unreal. The founders, like Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and Washington, must be rolling over in their grave. The constitution starts with “We the People,” not we the government. The government belongs to us, we do not belong to the government. The government is our servant. We do not serve government. We are Americans. We are not all wards or property of the state, despite Barack Obama’s best efforts.

But even though the campaign and the DNC want to distance themselves, the idea of the preeminence of government is alive and well at the convention, meaning the video fits right in with the message and the disavowing is curious. For example, Fox’s Chris Wallace observed after Michelle Obama’s Tuesday night speech:

“I’ve got to say, listening closely to the speech one of the things that struck me was it was all about government,” Wallace said Tuesday night during Fox News’ coverage of the DNC. “When she talked at the beginning about the people who exemplify the best of the American spirit, she talked about teachers”

He continued:

“When she talked about ways to build the middle class, it was all about the auto bailout and student loans and health care reform, once again, all government programs…That was a subtle subtext to the entire speech.”

I think we can say the Democrats are fully embracing Barack Obama’s claim that “you didn’t build that.” It’s clear from this we did not take Barack Obama out of context. The Democrats really do believe government built it all.”

I think we can say the Democrats are fully embracing Barack Obama’s claim that “you didn’t build that.” It’s clear from this we did not take Barack Obama out of context. The Democrats really do believe government built it all.

This is what the Soviets did in their propaganda. They portrayed the people in service to the state. The collective overrode the individuals. The Democrats are finally embracing their inner Marxists. Consistent with this, they’ve ditched God from their platform. This is the paragraph that was in the 2008 platform:

"We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given-potential."

Now the words "God-given" have been removed. Religion is, after all, the opiate of the people and is unnecessary when we are all collectively creatures of the state.

By the way, you’ve now heard the Democrats’ audio that “we all belong to the government.” I’ll see you that and raise you Clint Eastwood. Listen to what he had to say on this topic and tell me who is more in touch with America?

American history can be divided into three phases: the American Founding, the crisis of slavery and the Civil War, and Progressivism.

The meaning of the American Founding can best be understood by considering two primary source documents: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Looking to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” as the source of their arguments, the Founders established a constitutional system of limited government, marked by the separation of powers, and based on the consent of the governed through a system of representation. We are now in the throes of the progressivism of the masterminds who would rule us with their vision of a state run utopia where government, not natures God doles out our rights. No matter what the talking heads and spin doctors of the Democrat party will tell you this is what the Democrats really believe.

The idea of a “living constitution” takes concrete political shape in the form of a bureaucratic administrative state. As a result, modern American government to a large degree consists of thousands of unelected masterminds, bureaucrats and numerous unaccountable regulatory agencies. By their very nature, they undermine the Founding principles of limited government, representation, and the separation of powers. Unless the American people—the sovereign rulers of the United States of America—halt the growth of bureaucratic despotism, we risk losing the last vestiges of constitutional government. And the Democrat spin doctors call this a “distraction” from their real issue of providing government sponsored social justice.

Both the pro-slavery proponents in the Civil War and the tenets of Progressivism challenge and offer a critique of the American Founding. They both assume that the principles of the Declaration—natural rights, equality, consent of the governed—are historically and scientifically false. The forward march of science and an ever-improving human nature—progress—have disproved them, which in turn requires that the government instituted by the Founders be discarded and replaced.

For over one hundred years, Progressives have systematically derided the principles of the American Founding as outdated and inapplicable to the complexities of contemporary politics. According to Woodrow Wilson, the Founders’ Constitution is mechanistic and Newtonian, rather than evolutionary and Darwinian. Wilson sought to substitute the notion of a “living constitution” for the Founders’ Constitution. The Newtonian axioms got us to the moon and beyond while the evolutionary theories of Darwin produced Auschwitz.

The idea of a “living constitution” takes concrete political shape in the form of a bureaucratic administrative state. As a result, modern American government to a large degree consists of thousands of unelected masterminds, bureaucrats and numerous unaccountable regulatory agencies. By their very nature, they undermine the Founding principles of limited government, representation, and the separation of powers. Unless the American people—the sovereign rulers of the United States of America—halt the growth of bureaucratic despotism, we risk losing the last vestiges of constitutional government.

Progressive political science was based on the assumption that society could be organized in such a way that social ills would disappear. Frank Goodnow, president of Johns Hopkins University and the first president of the American Political Science Association, helped pioneer the idea that separating politics from administration was the key to progress. In his speech, given at Brown University in 1916, he addresses the need to move beyond the ideas of the Founders when he stated:

“In a word, man is regarded now throughout Europe, contrary to the view expressed by Rousseau, as primarily a member of society and secondarily as an individual. The rights which he possesses are, it is believed, conferred upon him, not by his Creator, but rather by the society to which he belongs. What they are is to be determined by the legislative authority in view of the needs of that society. Social expediency, rather than natural right, is thus to determine the sphere of individual freedom of action.

…..

“As our conditions have changed, as the importance of the social group has been realized, as it has been perceived that social efficiency must be secured if we are to attain and retain our place in the field of national competition which is practically coterminous with the world, the attitude of our courts on the one hand towards private rights and on the other hand towards social duties has gradually been changing. The general theory remains the same. Man is still said to be possessed of inherent natural rights of which he may not be deprived without his consent. The courts still now and then hold unconstitutional acts of legislature which appear to encroach upon those rights. At the same time the sphere of governmental action is continually widening and the actual content of individual private rights is being increasingly narrowed

We no longer believe as we once believed that a good social organization can be secured merely through stressing our rights. The emphasis is being laid more and more on social duties. The efficiency of the social group is taking on in our eyes a greater importance that it once had. We are not, it is true, taking the view that the individual man lives for the state of which he is a member and that state efficiency is in some mysterious way an admirable end in and of itself.”

A few more observations on last night’s Roman Carnival called the Democratic National Convention, or as I like to call it — The Vagina Monologues.

Last week the Democrats trotted out their outrage specialists to lament on televisions everywhere that Mitt Romney did not talk about any of the wars.

Yesterday, the Democratic National Convention started in Charlotte and the Democrats are doing their best to not mention one word: sixteen, i.e. the $16 trillion in national debt the nation faces as of close of business this past Friday. If you have a problem getting your head around the number 16 trillion here are a few breakdowns that may help you:

• $16 trillion translates to $135,000 for every family in the United States
• With 16 trillion you could buy the New York Yankees 8,600 times
• With $16 trillion you could buy Apple 25 times
• $16 trillion is greater than the combined GDP of all of Europe

In fact, the Democrats spent Monday night attacking the GOP for a so called war on women while remembering Ted Kennedy. Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.

The entire night seem focused on “reproductive rights” which is just a politically correct euphemism for abortion which is itself a politically correct euphemism for killing kids.

So no talk about debt or entitlements or jobs, but abortion was a fixation. It’s just as galling that the media spent several weeks painting the GOP as out of touch on abortion when, in fact, the Democrats’ abortion on demand position is even more out of touch with both American men and American women.

The most striking thing about the whole convention so far is that, for a President campaigning on the motto “Forward” we saw Kennedys, a celebration of Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and a whole lot of the past.

As an aside, there is a whole lot of Republican outrage that the Democrats used now deceased Ted Kennedy to attack Mitt Romney from beyond the grave. In their tribute, they used bits of Kenney’s campaign against Mitt Romney for the Massachusetts Senate in 1994.

I’m not upset they used Ted Kennedy to attack Mitt Romney from beyond the grave. I’m upset they accused Mitt Romney of killing a woman and used a man who really did kill a woman to attack Mitt Romney.

I will have a difficult time watching tonight’s coverage of the DNC Convention as the New York Giants will be playing the Dallas Cowboys at Met Life Stadium at the same time — what a shame. The NFL should be more considerate of the DNC as this is night Bill Clinton will speak. So the question is Eli Manning or Bill Clinton. I think I will go with Eli and read Clinton’s speech without the fanatical applause. It is also a shame I will miss the brilliance of the oration of Sandra Fluke who wants the government to pay for transgender operations.

How Your Tax Dollars are Indoctrinating Our Children

“The essential question is whether, in America, the people’s psychology has been so successfully warped, the individual’s spirit so thoroughly trounced, and the civil society’s institutions so effectively overwhelmed that revival is possible. Have too many among us already surrendered or been conquered? Can the people overcome the constant and relentless influences of ideological indoctrination, economic manipulation, and administrative coerciveness, or have they become hopelessly entangled in and dependent on a ubiquitous federal government? Have the Pavlovian appeals to radical egalitarianism and the fomenting of jealousy and faction through class warfare and collectivism conditioned the people to accept or even demand compulsory uniformity as just and righteous? Is is accepted as legitimate and routine that the government has sufficient license to act whenever it claims to do so for the good of the people and against the selfishness of the individual?” — Marl Levine, Ameritopia

Are we so far down the road to Ameritopia that there is no turning back? Sometimes I wonder if this is not true. For the past 40 years or so we have been educating generations of young American children in a public school system that is so corrupt with radical liberal indoctrination that we are lost as a free Constitutional Republic.

If you pay attention to national polls you constantly see a trend where so-called “young voters” are leaning more and more to the left and have definite belief that the government knows best and that it can meet all of needs. Social justice and fairness has replaced individuality, entrepreneurship, and freedom.

As a society dependent on government as we live our daily lives, and get our news and information from a media so biased to the left it no longer denies this fact, we blithely live our lives paying little heed to what is going on around us. Most people over the age of fifty tend to believe things are much as they were when they were young while those under that age believe things the way they always were. This is the product of our K-12 and college education systems.

We, the older folks, have allowed the radical left to kidnap our K-12 education and have gleefully paid the bill for it.

The latest expose of this fact is reported in a comprehensive article from Accuracy in Media detailing how PBS is Re-Educating America’s Schoolchildren, Thanks to Your Contributions by Mary Grabar and Tina Trent.

The opening paragraphs of the report state:

“When most people think of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s education programs, they remember the gentle Mr. Rogers welcoming children to his home, or documentaries offering exciting encounters with whales and other exotic creatures.

These shows still exist. But CPB today produces lessons that glorify the Black Panthers and riots and protests of the 1960s, present rocker Patti Smith as a “patriot” for singing songs that condemn President George W. Bush, vilify Wal-Mart, and sanctify environmentalist Rachel Carson. Although their educational materials claim to be objective, the truth is that their unrelenting ideological slant that promotes the politics of protest and civil disobedience is aimed at re-educating children into becoming far-left activists.

But whenever there are attempts to cut federal funding to CPB, the corporation points to its “educational programming” as proof that the approximately $450 million it receives annually from federal taxpayers is being put to good use. Big Bird and other members of the cast of Sesame Street show up in Congress to tell members of the educational value of CPB-funded programs.”

The PBS Teachers website touts its “high-quality pre-K–12 educational resources…classroom materials suitable for a wide range of subjects and grade levels…thousands of lesson plans, teaching activities, on-demand video assets, and interactive games and simulations.” Education is big business for CPB.

Their teacher training and certification are also big business. PBS Teacherline boasts it is “the premiere provider of high-quality online professional development.” Their “collection of more than 130 top quality, graduate level courses for educators spans the entire curriculum.” PBS offers peer assistance, instructional coaches, and other “productive communications and collaboration,” to K–12 teachers.

For the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, providing course syllabi, teacher certification, and other materials to schools serves a dual purpose: it justifies the continuation of taxpayer subsidies for Public Broadcasting while inculcating millions of schoolchildren—a captive audience—with their programming and ideological messages.”

As a person well over the age of 50 I watched as my children grew up in the 60’s to Sesame Street and the gentle Mr. Rodgers. As a busy parent building a business and career I did not give much thought to PBS and even provided financial support for their numerous and on-going requests for money. I also enjoyed their documentaries and reports on historical issues and nature. I also enjoyed the fact that there were no commercials, with the exception of the numerous pledge drives.

Over the years, until recently, I gave little thought to PBS and with the advent of cable and satellite radio I changed my viewing and listening habits and rarely watched public television or listened to public radio.

Recently for the past two or three years I began reading articles and learning how radically left PBS has become. It is loaded with leftist and anti-American propaganda, and this is paid for with our tax dollars. Here are a few snippets from the AIM report that I found very disturbing.

“For foundations that donate to CPB, PBS, NPR, or state affiliates, PBS Teachers provides a ready-made platform for advancing their ideas and agendas to those same captive student audiences. George Soros’ combined Open Society Foundations (OSF) has supported National Public Radio and independent projects throughout the CPB universe, including underwriting documentaries used in classrooms to “educate” students on various causes. In 2010, Soros made an additional grant of $1.8 million to NPR’s state government reporting initiative. Other large donors include the Joan B. Kroc estate ($230 million after Kroc’s 2003 death), the U.S. Department of Education, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

By creating primary materials through programming and reporting and then producing syllabi packaged by age group based on those primary materials, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has evolved into perhaps the single most influential voice in the nation’s classrooms, while defending their own taxpayer funding streams by doing so.”

As you see there are some powerful and left-leaning and radical organizations financing and controlling PBS. It is even worse when you consider that the U.S. Department of Education is putting your tax dollars into PBS’ radical agenda.

What types of lessons do students get for this money? An analysis of the thousands of lessons available would fill volumes. At first glance, PBS Teachers curricular materials reflect the skill Public Broadcasting has achieved in putting a veneer of objectivity on their radio and television news programs. But a closer look at the courses offered reveals two overriding tendencies: first, a decidedly leftist ideological slant promoting a “social justice” agenda, and second, relentless emotional manipulation of students, the aim of which is to make them into activists for far-left causes.

“The leftist ideological slant is evident in a variety of ways: the quantity of lesson plans focusing on multiculturalism, or identity politics, versus traditional learning; an emphasis on leftist causes and social movements; partisan political material disguised as “media analysis” of elected officials or government policies, and criticism of capitalism and the idea of American exceptionalism. In addition, there is an overemphasis on pop culture, that isn’t necessarily leftist, but is of questionable educational value.

For example:

• There are approximately equal numbers of courses about George Washington and “hip-hop” music.

• Nearly 100 lessons are dedicated to protest movements, several of which are large, interdisciplinary projects designed to occupy substantial portions of the school day or school semester.

• The number of courses dedicated to the theme of environmentalism dwarfs other subjects.

• Health and Fitness, Economics, and Current Events curricula routinely feature highly ideological themes, such as the negative effects of a Wal-Mart moving into town (Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town), or the dangers of genetically modified foods.

Even traditional subjects are presented with an ideological bent. Lessons on periods of history such as World War II or major literary works focus on oppression. Short shrift is given to universal themes, major literary developments, or a sense of historical progression.”

How Are Subjects Being Taught? (The Emotion Revolution)

According to the AIM report subjects are taught focusing on emotion rather than fact. This is a proven tactic of the left to play on emotions to indoctrinate rather than allow the child to learn and be influenced by their parents. In fact many parents do not even know what is being taught in the K-12 system and by the time their child graduated from high school they wonder why he or she has such radical leftist and anti-American views.

The AIM report continues:

“PBS Teachers is leading the shift in education from objective to “emotional” learning. This increasing reliance in classrooms on emotion-based encounters is revolutionary, affecting both what is taught and how it is taught. PBS lessons across the curriculum de-emphasize facts and ideas in favor of eliciting subjective responses and personal opinions from students, or even leading students through exercises designed to make them imagine the emotions of various individuals involved in historical events. Students are evaluated not so much on what they know as on the attitudes they hold.

Consequences of the Emotion Revolution:

• PBS lessons vigorously promote an extreme, trans-historical version of identity politics, dividing all people into groups of “victims” and “victimizers.”

• Lessons and assignments are designed to force students to express political beliefs and engage in coercive, emotion-based exercises in reaction to controversial issues.

• Students are forced to engage in a variety of staged traumas in the classroom and with each other, ostensibly to “experience” historical events.

• Students are subjected to obsessive exhortations to “oppose bullying” and “teach tolerance.” They are made to play-act instances of bullying and are instructed to discover intolerance and prejudice in their own families, communities, and peers.

By imposing political bias and forcing students to participate in scripted explorations of “appropriate” emotional responses to selective historical events, PBS Teachers is transforming education into re-education. A closer look at individual lesson plans will demonstrate how PBS curricula turn classrooms into recruitment sites for leftist causes.

Any benefits once derived from allowing your children watch Big Bird, Mr. Rogers, or learning their ABC by watching PBS have been far overshadowed by their leftist ideology in their programing. If you allow your children to watch PBS in an unsupervised manner, as many parents do as the go about their business while PBS takes care of the kids, it’s tantamount to allowing Regan MacNeil play with an Ouija board in her basement as portrayed in the 1973 horror file The Exorcist.

Protest Lessons: Pigs in the Street

“Public Broadcasting has become bolder in casting an ideological lens over history, and this is reflected in the classroom materials they produce. Some of the most egregious examples of this ideological bias appear in syllabi covering the protest movements of the 1960’s. One such lesson was derived from an episode of the PBS show, History Detectives. The show examines a protest poster from the 1968 Democratic Convention featuring a picture of a thuggish street cop and an upraised “black-power” fist, with the words: “Hot Town—Pigs in the Streets…But the streets belong to the people! Dig it?”

The Hot Town lesson plan requires students to contemplate the radical street protests and riots of the late 1960s almost exclusively from the perspective of the protesters. The videotaped segments taken from the History Detectives show are narrated by an academic who speaks of having been enrolled in a “Black Panther Party breakfast program” and having “heard a lot of their educational speeches.” The violence of the Black Panthers, including murders and armed bank robberies, goes unmentioned as the Panthers are romanticized as mere social workers. The poster crudely depicting policemen as “pigs” becomes the object of a “mystery” hunt to discover its origins.

The Hot Town lesson is typical of many PBS syllabi that deliver radical content from a biased perspective while claiming to be teaching students useful interpretive skills: in this case, the skill is “researching an historical artifact.” The lesson enables sympathetic-appearing radicals to reminisce about screaming epithets at the police and rioting in the streets. “Police brutality” is discussed at length, while the Black Panthers’ murderous campaign against real police officers and fellow activists is not mentioned. The Hot Town video ends with the poster creator’s happy memory of knocking over a police van. He is described as an activist who went from rioting to serving health food to poor people and who now works as a Chicago Ward president for the Democratic Party.

A related “protest” lesson that whitewashes protester violence is the multi-part curriculum, Chicago 10. It uses an animated version of the 1968 Chicago riots depicting violent protesters as victims of police brutality to “encourage people to take a more active role in protest.” The lesson also describes the arrest of protesters planning to bomb the 2008 Republican Convention as mere police over-reach that was exposed by courageous activists with cell phones. Revolution in Newark teaches students that the Newark Riots were a principled “uprising.” A Civil Disobedience exercise featuring Code Pink activist Cindy Sheehan directs students to imagine “a situation in which they might use civil disobedience” and then write a journal “reflect[ing] on” their imaginary protest and law-breaking.

PBS protest-based curricula are deployed throughout the disciplines with the justification that the lessons are not only about the protest itself but also are intended to teach “critical thinking” (a means of leftist indoctrination introduced by the Frankfurt School in the 1920’s) or historical research, or music, or art. Thus, more of the school day may be dedicated to romanticizing protesters, demonizing those trying to maintain social order, and training children to become activists.”

Even their coverage of World War II has been couched in an emotional and leftist biased view. As AIM reports:

“It is not only in lessons on current hot-button issues that students are directed toward activism, but also in regular history lessons. Even when dealing with major world events, like World War II, students are required to engage emotionally, play out roles as if their actions and attitudes had decisive effects, and respond on the spot under group pressure—all in a virtual knowledge vacuum.

For the search term, “World War II,” 59 lesson plans among 162 total items (including videos) show up. Most of these lessons take the focus off the world stage to the domestic. Large political questions are skirted in favor of the personal. This has the effect of leveling all players, ally and foe.

The largest number, 13, of these lessons use the PBS series The War directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Many focus on the domestic and personal: in Combat and War, students study soldiers’ testimonies about psychological and physical effects of war; Letters from the Front Line asks students to examine letters of a soldier and “imagine that you are a soldier fighting on the front lines…and create a letter to your family”; On the Home Front asks students to “Consider life in America prior to its entry into World War II and explore changes brought on by wartime industry.” There are units on Art and Propaganda and Censorship, and one on The War through the Eyes of Al McIntosh, who reported on the local impact of the war. Other lessons focus on The Hispanic Experience in World War II, the Double V program to gain access for African-Americans, and two dealing with the Japanese-American Internment. Even the lesson on the Battle of the Bulge asks students to examine the battle “from both American and German points of view.” The unit on Just War directs the teacher to another unit on pacifists and suggests bringing up the possibility of ulterior motives that might not be evident at the beginning of war. The lesson, D-Day: June 6, 1944, asks students to put together multimedia presentations on their specific battle plans for Operation Overlord.

A disproportionate number of lessons related to World War II focus on the relocation to camps of 110,000 American citizens and aliens of Japanese descent from 1942 to 1944. This regrettable wartime event has taken on monumental proportions, and in the PBS universe, it dwarfs major battles, worldwide suffering and death, and Allied victory.

As in the earlier lessons described, emotional engagement is elicited at every turn. History Detectives appears again to offer artifacts for contemplation, including Japanese internment camp materials. “Webisodes” and documentary clips are available as prompts. Students are imaginatively catapulted into various traumatic scenarios, like being asked to pack for a trip to an internment camp. Comparisons are made to the treatment of Jews by the Nazis, with any buried feelings of animosity presented as potentially erupting into “hatred” of the same order.

Students are then asked to apply lessons from World War II to other, more recent, events like the 9/11 attacks. The internment camps become launching points for discussions about racist feelings harbored in the hearts of Americans. Students are asked to scour their consciences as they “reflect” on situations in current events or in their own environments. Such lessons are often, ironically, tagged as addressing “Mental/Emotional Health” and other pedagogically suspect areas like “Historical Perspective” and “Critical Thinking.”

There are many more disturbing examples including racism, social justice, Islamophobia, the evils of Wal-Mart, and radical environmentalism of how your tax dollars are being used to indoctrinate K-12 students in our public schools. (I am sure no mention was made of the millions of African children died from malaria and dunge fever due to the fallacious banning of DDT).  was I imagine lazy and uneducated teachers, especially in the lower grades, love these PBS programs as they relieve them of the burden of doing their own research and learning the facts. I suggest you read the complete AIM report to see how your tax dollars are being used to turn our K-12 students into burgeoning radical, anti-American leftists and recruits for the Occupying Wall Street Movement or any other socialist movement that comes along.

No student should be subjected to the unsettling and coercive teaching techniques evident throughout the PBS Teachers lesson plans. Merely increasing political “balance” by adding more viewpoints and resources from across the political spectrum will not do enough to address underlying problems involving teaching techniques, techniques that replace knowledge, logic, and the acquisition of real critical thinking skills with emotional manipulation and the production of guilt and shame.

Nor should taxpayers be asked to support the dissemination of biased educational materials. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s ace in the hole in demanding taxpayer support has long been their argument that they deserve to be funded because they contribute to the education of America’s schoolchildren. But should taxpayers continue to fund what is in reality the re-education of America’s schoolchildren? We think not.

Adolph Hitler and other totalitarian dictators such as Lenin and Mao said that if you gave then the children until they were seven they were theirs. Is this what we are allowing with our tax supported Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I think so.

Note:

Mary Grabar teaches in the English department at Emory University and writes frequently about education, and cultural and political issues, for the Weekly Standard, Minding the Campus, Townhall, PJ Media, Roll Call, Big Government, America's Survival and many others. In 2011 she founded Dissident Prof Education Project, Inc., a nonprofit education reform initiative intended to “resist the re-education of America.” Tina Trent, PhD. writes about crime policy and the media, academia, and political radicalism. She is a researcher for The Soros Files and blogs at TinaTrent.com.

The Truth of the Intellectual

"Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason." —Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin’s quote could be better said in today’s culture as; here comes the intellectual with his flood of opinions and nary a drop of reason or logic.

Today we have an industry of intellectuals, an industry that is promoted by the academics and intellectuals. Barack Obama is said to be the most intellectual person to occupy the White House since Woodrow Wilson, or perhaps ever. The media is constantly touting his intellectual prowess and his academic achievements. He has surrounded himself with like-minded intellectuals who have absolutely no, as Thomas Sowell claims, no consequential knowledge of the world. This is the main reason we are in the fix we are in today. These people have read and talked about creating jobs, yet they have never created a private sector job. They spout old and tired Keynesian axioms about government planning and intervention and never have to suffer the consequences for being wrong.

If an engineer or architect designs a bridge or building and it falls down he or she must suffer the consequences from their decisions. If an airline pilot misjudges the runway approach he has to suffer the consequences. If a businessman makes bad financial decisions he must suffer the consequences. When an intellectual is proven wrong he merely moves on to the next subject and begins touting his opinions once more. He has suffers no consequences for his erroneous beliefs and bad decisions.

As an example take the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman when in 2007 he said; “To understand what’s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.” Krugman, an intellectual and Nobel Prize winner was wrong. The surge did work. Was Krugman held accountable for his erroneous opinion? Did the editors and stockholders of the New York Times fire him? No on both counts, he just went on to his next left-wing rant. This is what intellectuals do. They spill out their opinions and other intellectuals fawn over his brilliance.

Bill Whittle of Pajamas Media has a very clear and concise 8 minute video explaining how the intellectuals of the left use information and data to fit their agenda while ignore facts that would contradict it.

As Whittle stated; how many people risked their lives to sail across 100 miles of shark infested water to reach Cuba for their wonderful health care, the health care the intellectuals tout so highly. How many people risked their lives to climb over the Berlin Wall to enter the worker’s paradise of the German Democratic Republic, a country that was neither democratic or a republic. The answer to that one is zero. Yet over one hundred people were killed attempting to escape to the west.

For 45 years we heard a constant stream of intellectual nonsense from academics and left-wing intellectuals about the advantages offered in the GDR. In fact most of them supported all forms of socialism and communism. When the Soviet Union disintegrated and communism in Eastern Europe all but vanished what consequences did these intellectuals suffer? They kept their jobs in the colleges and universities and just went on to the next cause de jour, like global warming.

There is a great interview with Thomas Sowell on his book Intellectuals and Society.

Mr. Sowell exposes the uselessness of the intellectual in our society and politics in the past 100 years. According to Sowell, There has probably never been an era in history when intellectuals have played a larger role in society. When intellectuals who generate ideas are surrounded by a wide range of others who disseminate those ideas — whether as journalists, teachers, staffers to legislators or clerks to judges — the influence of intellectuals on the way a society evolves can be huge.

Whether in war or peace, and whether in economics or religion, something as intangible as ideas can dominate the most concrete things in our lives. What Karl Marx called “the blaze of ideas” has set whole nations on fire and consumed whole generations.

Those whose careers are built on the creation and dissemination of ideas — the intellectuals — have played a role in many societies out of all proportion to their numbers. Whether that role has, on balance, made those around them better off or worse off is one of the key questions of our times.

The quick answer is that intellectuals have done both. But certainly, during the 20th century, it is hard to escape the conclusion that intellectuals have on balance made the world a worse and more dangerous place. Scarcely a mass-murdering dictator of the 20th century was without his supporters, admirers, or apologists among the leading intellectuals — not only within his own country, but in foreign democracies, where intellectuals were free to say whatever they wanted.

Given the enormous progress made during the 20th century, it may seem hard to believe that intellectuals did so little good as to have that good outweighed by their wrong-headed notions. But most of those who promoted the scientific, economic, and social advances of the 20th century were not really intellectuals in the sense in which that term is most often used.

The Wright brothers, who fulfilled the centuries-old dream of human beings flying, were by no means intellectuals. Nor were those who conquered the scourge of polio and other diseases, or who created the electronic marvels that we now take for granted.

All these people produced a tangible product or service and they were judged by whether those products and services worked —consequential knowledge. But intellectuals are people whose end products are intangible ideas, and they are usually judged by whether those ideas sound good to other intellectuals or resonate with the public. Whether their ideas turn out to work — whether they make life better or worse for others — is another question entirely.

The video 36 minute video shown here is one of the most succinct, clear, and informative explanation of the failure of the intellectuals and academics I have ever heard. It will well worth the time to watch the video and ponder on Mr. Sowell’s remarks.

In this last video you can see a young Thomas Sowell and Milton Freidman take on a British socialist and Francis Fox Piven over the issues of economic equality and the failure of the policies of the so called liberal intellectuals. You can decide for yourself who makes the clear and logical arguments that echo the writings Bastiat, Hazlitt, Hayek, and von Misses.

Now we have George Magnus a senior economic adviser at UBS stating to give Karl Marx a chance to save the world economy:

“Policy makers struggling to understand the barrage of financial panics, protests and other ills afflicting the world would do well to study the works of a long-dead economist: Karl Marx. The sooner they recognize we're facing a once-in-a-lifetime crisis of capitalism, the better equipped they will be to manage a way out of it.

The spirit of Marx, who is buried in a cemetery close to where I live in north London, has risen from the grave amid the financial crisis and subsequent economic slump. The wily philosopher's analysis of capitalism had a lot of flaws, but today's global economy bears some uncanny resemblances to the conditions he foresaw.”

The ideas that Karl Marx created in the 19th century dominated the course of events over wide portions of the world in the 20th century. Whole generations suffered, and millions were killed, as a result of those ideas. This was not Marx’s intention, nor the intentions of many supporters of Marxian ideas in countries around the world. But it is what happened.

Some of the most distinguished intellectuals in the Western world in the 1930s gave ringing praise to the Soviet Union, while millions of people there were literally starved to death and vast numbers of others were being shipped off to slave-labor camps.

Many of those same distinguished intellectuals of the 1930s were urging their own countries to disarm while Hitler was rapidly arming Germany for wars of conquest that would have, among other things, put many of those intellectuals in concentration camps — slated for extermination — if he had succeeded.

The 1930s were by no means unique. In too many other eras — including our own — intellectuals of unquestionable brilliance have advocated similarly childish and dangerous notions. How and why such patterns have existed among intellectuals is a challenging question, whose answer can determine the fate of millions.

Why Do We Call Liberals Liberals

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigues of supporting it." — Thomas Paine

Classical liberalism is a philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets.

Classical Liberalism developed in the 19th century in Europe, and the United States. Although classical liberalism built on ideas that had already developed by the end of the 18th century, it advocated a specific kind of society, government and public policy required as a result of the Industrial Revolution and urbanization. Notable individuals who have contributed to classical liberalism include Jean-Baptiste Say, Frederic Bastiat, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo. It drew on the economics of Adam Smith, a psychological understanding of individual liberty, natural law and utilitarianism, and a belief in progress. Classical liberals established political parties that were called "liberal", although in the United States classical liberalism came to dominate both existing major political parties. There was a revival of interest in classical liberalism in the 20th century led by Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman.

Economic Liberalism is the economic component of classical liberalism. It is one the main components of the ideology of capitalism. It is an economic philosophy that supports and promotes laissez-faire economics and private property in the means of production. Although economic liberalism can be supportive of government regulation to a certain degree, it tends to oppose government intervention in the free market when it inhibits free trade and open competition. Economic liberalism opposes economic planning as an alternative to the market mechanism. Economic liberalism contrasts with mercantilism, state capitalism, socialism, market socialism, and fascist economics (Corporatism)

Economic liberalism opposes government intervention on the grounds that the state often serves dominant business interests, distorting the market to their favor and thus leading to inefficient outcomes. Ordoliberalism and various schools of social liberalism based on classical liberalism include a broader role for the state, but do not seek to replace private enterprise and the free-market with public enterprise and economic planning. For example, the social market economy is a largely free-market economy based on a free price system and private property, and includes government regulation to promote competitive markets and social welfare programs to address social inequalities that result from free-market outcomes.

Theories in support of economic liberalism were developed in the Enlightenment, and believed to be first fully formulated by Adam Smith, which advocates minimal interference of government in a market economy, though it does not necessarily oppose the state's provision of a few basic public goods with what constitutes public goods originally being seen as very limited in scope. These theories began in the eighteenth century with the then-startling claim that if everyone is left to their own economic devices instead of being controlled by the state, then the result would be a harmonious and more equal society of ever-increasing prosperity. This underpinned the move towards a capitalist economic system in the late 18th century, and the subsequent demise of the mercantilist system.

Social Liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding civil rights. Under social liberalism, the good of the community is viewed as harmonious with the freedom of the individual. Social liberal policies have been widely adopted in much of the capitalist world, particularly following World War II. Social liberal ideas and parties tend to be considered centrist or center-left.

A reaction against social liberalism in the late twentieth century, often called neoliberalism, led to monetarist economic policies and a reduction in government provision of services. However, this reaction did not result in a return to classical liberalism, as governments continued to provide social services and retained control over economic policy.

The term "social liberalism" is often used interchangeably with "modern liberalism". The Liberal International is the main international organization of liberal parties, which include, among other liberal variants, social liberal parties. It affirms the following principles: human rights, free and fair elections and multiparty democracy, social justice, tolerance, social market economy, free trade, environmental sustainability and a strong sense of international solidarity.

From the three examples cited above you can see the deviants in the term “Liberal.” Is your philosophy more in line with Classical Liberalism, Economic Liberalism or Social Liberalism?

Our Republic was founded on the principles of classical liberalism. Founders such as Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Mason were classical liberals who believed in small government, private property, minimal government interference, and the free market. the Constitution is proof of these beliefs.

After the Civil War we began to fall into the path of social liberalism. This trend continued, albeit minimal, until the beginning of the 20^th century when the progressive movement, under Theodore Roosevelt and Robert Lafollette.

It was not until the election of Woodrow Wilson that the progressive movement began to dominate our political scene. Wilson’s internationalists foreign policies, his entrance into World War II and his support of every growing government be began to move the Democrat Party to the left of center.

With the election of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression the Democrat Party began to define itself as a party more dedicated to social justice than classical liberalism. The Democrat Party had discovered the key to power by their populous stances on many of the social issues of the day.

By the end of World War II the government had grown to a sized never envisioned by our Founders. The federal government had gained control over many aspects of our life and Roosevelt’s social justice programs were becoming larger and larger, especially in the areas of farm subsidies and welfare programs.

When John Kennedy was elected, although a Democrat, he was not an advocate of social liberalism. He had grown to age under his father, Joseph, a wealthy businessman and political boss. He lowered taxes, taxes that had grown to an obscene rate of 81% and was loath to get into the civil rights issues. I believe Kennedy was an economic liberal.

When the Texas Democrat Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency after the assassination of John Kennedy he began his cynical policies leading to the Great Society. This is when the Democrats learned to really adopt the policies of social liberalism and adopt the term “Liberal.”

Today people and politicians we refer to as liberals are not classical, economic, or social liberals. They are some sort of mutant of a social liberal with an interjection of fascism, Marxism, and statism.

Here are a few examples of what today’s “liberals” espouse.

Take the Gay community for example. Why they call themselves Gay is a mystery to me. I don’t see how being a homosexual is gay. Gay means happy, delighted, ecstatic, and thrilled. This is how our society has introduced euphemisms into our lexicon. The Gays will tell you they do not want anyone to tell them what to do in the privacy of the bedroom (or in San Francisco a public park). They don’t want government or anyone else telling them what to put in their butt. On the other hand they want government to tell us what we can put in our mouths. No salt, no burgers, no cigarettes, and no fast food. I wonder what government would say if they put a cigarette in their butt?

The gays claim they don’t want government in their lives until they contract Aids, then they want government (us) to pay the bill. In other words personal responsibility for thee but not for me.

In another example we have the “liberal” women. They want government to keep their hand off their bodies and want abortion on demand, at any stage. But, they expect government to pay not only for the abortions, but also for birth control. Once again they want their will to be done and anyone who disagrees with them is demonized. Personal liberty ends in the pocketbook.

“Liberals” love to engage in class warfare. They tell us the rich should pay more, especially those with planes and yachts. But who has the planes and yachts? Yes the liberals like John Kerry and the Kennedys. President Obama tells us we need to sacrifice yet he vacations with his very wealthy liberal friends and donors on Martha’s Vineyard. It’s okay to be rich, but don’t demonize those of us who want to be rich. This is reminiscent of the old Soviet Union where the apparatchik and party bosses lived in their dachas on he Black Sea while the proletariat stood in line at the GUM Department Store all day for a pair of ill-fitting shoes. Once again socialism is for the people, not for the socialists.

Liberals like Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. decry the iPad and other technologies as killing jobs. They cannot see the jobs and opportunities created by technology. If you told them if we wanted to create jobs we could eliminate bulldozers and only use shovels on construction jobs. Their response would be that’s irrelevant. Liberals do not believe technology in the hands of the free market can create jobs, They believe that only the government can create jobs. This is in part due to the lack of education in the inner city where unemployment is 20% and among Black youth as high as 40%. They cannot accept the fact that the lack of personal responsibility and bad choices such as dropping out of school, having babies out of wedlock, a devotion to a gangsta culture, and drugs has anything to do with this high unemployment rate. They have dumbed down the public school system, even after pouring billions of dollars into it, to such a state that these youth can longer compete for good paying jobs in the free market. They believe government will put forth all the solutions, which they haven’t been able to do for the past 60 years.

Liberals will claim it’s for the children, the poor, the underprivileged, and the middle class. Yet when asked to define what they mean they are vague and cannot explain why for six decades these policies have failed. When you challenge their views or policies they will demonize you, call you selfish, call you racists, and say you don’t care about your fellow man. It was Frederick Bastiat who called their game some 150 years ago when he wrote:

"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."

Liberals believe government can solve all the problems of mankind if they just have enough time and money. They believe all rights come from government, not from God. In fact they don’t really like God. You see God has laws that have been around since Moses. It’s these laws they don’t like. They say they are too clack and white and too judgmental. Liberals don’t like to be judged, but they like to judge. Just ask one and they will tell you what is wrong with you and your evil, selfish conservative thinking. After all isn’t the Tea Party evil for wanting the government to reduce spending so our grandchildren will have a country to live in without being crushed by debt.

So what should we call these people, and politicians? That’s hard to define. Do we call them liberals? Do we call them Marxists? Do we call them progressives? Do we call them Mutants or do we call them statist? Perhaps statist is the term that fits them best, but we will have to educate the public to that term and what it means in today’s body politic.

Today’s liberal (statist) is not very liberal at all. He is a tyrant who believes in social justice and using the power of government and their fellow travelers in the media to crush opposition by demonizing and demagoguery. All they really want is power and they will ignore all lessons of history to obtain that power.