Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Why Mass Shootings Continue

Monday, February 26th, 2018

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In the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting of February 14th, many people have offered their own assessments of why these sorts of incidents continue to happen.  They appear in media to tell us that “something must be done,” or that “something has to change.”  Few of them offer any but superficial remedies, but sadly, many people fall for this nonsense, uncritically believing their passion rather than questioning either the concrete concepts involved,  or because they conceptually don’t bother and just wish the human suffering they’ve witnessed to end.  In part, this is understandable, and I could forgive the general lack of detailed understanding, but because this blind spot is exploited to strip law-abiding Americans of their liberty, I simply won’t tolerate these senseless exclamations to go unanswered any longer. On this site, I’ve gone to great pains to explain the technical aspects of the firearms, and the philosophical aspects of the foundations of our law, including what constitutes a right.  I realize this site is not the most highly trafficked destination on the Internet, but for all the howling lunatics who insist that we can “fix this” by banning guns, or by background checks, or by any other simple solution, let me state it succinctly: We will never eliminate the phenomenon of mass shooting entirely, but neither will we significantly reduce it if we ignore the question: “Whose job is it to protect our children?”

Let us start with a few facts that most people seem to disregard on their way to blaming all the wrong things, and permitting all the wrong things to continue.  Let’s focus on the shooting of Parkland, Florida as the exemplar of this type of event.  In the lead-up to this event, the FBI had at least two leads, one called in by a bail-bondsman, that was a little less specific, but also somebody closer to the shooter called in a solid tip on this shooter in January, contending he was going to “explode.”  A PDF of the full transcript of this call was posted by the NYTimes.  It’s astonishing how specific the information was, and more astonishing that the FBI didn’t act.

Local police had dealt with him in at least thirty-nine documented calls for service(mostly 9-1-1 calls.) The school had continuously wrestled with this kid in an ever-escalating series of incidents including assaults, fights, and terroristic threats, culminating in his eventual expulsion.  There were countless “red flags” about this wayward soul.  His classmates even half-joked about him becoming a school shooter, and ironically, they may have even unintentionally implanted in him the idea.  It should have been clear by the time he entered high school that he did not belong in the mainstream school population, but today’s education fads make it difficult to remove a troubled youngster.  All of the aggregated incompetence of individuals in the system, and the oppressive bureaucracy itself could not avoid producing the result of February 14th.  It’s baked into the cake.

Given all the failures in advance of the event, it was almost inevitable that this event was going to happen.  All that could now change would be the number of dead, and the result was dominated again by the incompetence of individuals as well as the bureaucracies involved.  Let us start with Deputy Scot Peterson, the sole School Resource Officer on the campus at the time the shooting commenced.  Peterson had been with the Broward Sheriffs Office going back to 1985, and thirty-three years later, and apart from the shooter himself, he would come to be the person most instrumental in the final body count.  He arrived outside the building less than a minute after the shooting had commenced, and there he waited, effectively seeking cover, but taking no remedial actions of any kind.  Even as he was joined by additional deputies, Peterson did not rally them to make entry and confront the shooter.  They simply waited for the shooting to stop. How many were shot and killed or bled out for lack of medical attention or simple first aid while Deputy Peterson did nothing?  A time-syncronized analysis of the various surveillance tapes might provide that answer, or at least a reasonable approximation of it, but Sheriff Scott Israel, the highly political head of the Broward Sheriffs Office, will likely do all in his power to prevent the disclosure or obfuscate any analysis that may ever be done.  You can’t be permitted to know, but most importantly, the people who lost loved-ones in this shooting must never be permitted to know lest there erupt some sort of popular lynching of the Sheriff and his deputies.  While the word “disgrace” doesn’t cover it, it is nevertheless disgraceful. The bulk of the media is covering for him, of course, and this is why the underlying dereliction was mostly covered-up until the end of the week and the gun control narrative had been thoroughly seeded. Imagine the complete arrogance it takes to make the statement Sheriff Israel offers in the video clip below:

https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/967811615419707394

In for a penny, in for a pound.

It is at this point that something of an outrage erupts over the conduct of Deputy Peterson and his fellow officers, as well as the attempt to cover this up by Sheriff Israel, including his public attempts to deflect criticism onto the NRA.  The problem is that when all the outrage dies down, Israel and his deputies will have gotten away with it, as will the incompetent school, the incompetent FBI.  Their defenses will be their incompetence.  You can already hear it from their shills. “We’re too few, we have too little money, we have to few people, we didn’t know, and it’s the guns!”  What they won’t highlight, but I’m going to tell you, is the thing they don’t dare say in plain language to the ears of a listening world:

“It isn’t our job!”

Indeed, Sheriff Israel tells us that it’s his job to hire, train, and arm his deputies, but once they’re in the field, it isn’t his responsibility with respect to what they do as individuals.

Technically, they’re right: It isn’t their job to protect anybody.  It isn’t the school’s job, and it isn’t the job of police. It isn’t the job of the FBI or social workers or any other person even tangentially-related to this even, except: All the adults who were themselves the victims, or whose children were victims.

I know I will immediately face the angry roar of the crowd for having said this, but let me assure you that it is one-hundred percent accurate.  In more cases than can be listed here, time after time, courts have held that the only person with an affirmative duty to protect any person from harm is that person.  This duty cannot ultimately be delegated for a myriad of logical reasons. I learned this lesson the hard way back in the 1990s, when our own daughter entered Middle School.  It has always been my admonishment to her that she must never threaten violence, nor enact any, except in direct and immediate response to a physical attack upon her person.  On that point, I further explained that she had a duty to defend herself if she were ever to come under attack.  It goes almost without saying that she eventually crossed paths with a bully, older, and much larger, who attacked her in the hallway of the school, and when she rose in her own defense, perhaps feebly to scale of the task before her, by the rules of the school, which had adopted a “Zero Tolerance Policy” on school violence, she was as guilty as her attacker, and issued the same suspension. This is done by school districts so as to indemnify themselves against civil claims, but it provides no effective protection to anybody.

After several arguments, often heated, with faculty and administrators of the school and the district, we withdrew our daughter from that school in order to home-school her, because the school would not admit that she had a right to defend herself against physical attack, and because they would not assume liability for any future attacks.  In essence, they said that protecting our child against physical violence “isn’t our job.”  The question they refused to answer in light of that assertion was: “Who is liable to protect my child from physical violence?”  No affirmative answer, but only: “Not us.”

One might read that and think that perhaps the school isn’t liable in any legal or financial sense, but that they must have some moral obligation to protect our children.  The courts are concerned solely with the law.  The subjective notions of morality we may hold are not their affair.  The same is true of the police.  Yes, they are supposed to stop criminals, detain and arrest criminals, thereby preventing them from committing further crimes.  What they do not have is a duty to protect you. On this matter, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held this to be the case.  Logically, it makes sense on even the most simplified basis: In order to carry out a theoretical duty to protect all people at all times, there would need to be a policeman standing guard over each of us twenty-four hours per day.  The most economical way to do this would be a prison, for all of us, including the police, who would need guards of their own.  The point is that there can be no affirmative duty to protect you or your children against every or even any conceivable harm.  It’s not possible.  This is why we withdrew our daughter from school.  We ultimately moved out of that district to a home in a vastly different district where we felt the level of risk, while still higher than we would like, was much reduced.  The school still could not (and would not) guarantee to protect our child, but the general environment was more conducive to her average condition of safety.

What does this have to do with Parkland, Florida?  Nearly every parent knows this, but pretends not to know it.  Ask any parent “whose job is to protect your children?” You would think the answer to the question would be self-evident and immediately proclaimed, but it isn’t. This same thing is true when you ask parents: “Who is responsible to educate your child?”  Or: “Whose has a duty to feed(or cloth or house or treat) your child?” Ask these questions and watch the expression on parents’ faces as they try to explain how somebody other than themselves is obligated to do all of these things.  Only honest parents will answer in all these cases: “It’s my job.”  That’s right, and it’s the only answer to any such question.

The truth is that only parents have the responsibility to protect their children against all comers. The schools know this.  The police know it.  Every department of government knows it.  The well-worn motto “…to protect and serve…” is merely a public relations pitch.  Once you understand that only you have responsibility to protect yourself and your children, we can begin to think about these mass shootings in a different light, and it immediately calls into question the whole notion of “gun free zones.”

In a “gun free zone,” under punishment of law, you are forbidden from bearing arms for any reason.  Put in other terms, what this really means is that in a “gun free zone,” you are prohibited from effective self-defense.  Much like my daughter in the school with a “zero tolerance policy,” to provide for your own defense is a crime.  When you deposit your child into one of these “gun free zones,” you have sent them into an environment where only the predators will be armed, because the predators do not regard the law as any obstruction, and they view the obstruction to law-abiding folks as an invitation to the mayhem they intend.

One of the reasons we have such large schools is for the apparent economies of scale, but such concentrations of people are inviting targets for the sort who intend massive carnage. This has always concerned me with respect to our schools, because any madman, intent on devastation, could exploit this large aggregation of our children, who we profess to be the most valuable extensions of our lives.  The truth is that the only way to stop people with guns is to confront them with guns.  All of the rest is nonsense, and as I have explained, the next school shooter is already out there.

The most pressing reason we won’t likely stop the next mass shooter is because we refuse to assign blame.  Everybody is happy to point at the killer, but people generally look for some larger reason.  The scale of the tragedy and the enormity of the human loss and suffering begs us to empathize with the victims and their loved-ones, and well we should, but we must not lose sight of the totality of this problem, requiring of us a clear-eyed assessments to come to the truth.  Let’s list them:

Let’s think of all the ways in which this shooting might have been avoided:

  • The FBI might have followed up on one or both of the tips they received
  • The school might have sought to press charges on Cruz when he committed previous acts of violence on their campus
  • The local Law Enforcement might have sought to press charges

Let’s be plain-spoken about this: If any of these entities had acted appropriately, Cruz would have been charged with felonies on multiple previous occasions, including assault with a deadly weapon(or whatever equivalent charge exists in Florida) and this would have prohibited him from purchasing a weapon.  The NICS system doesn’t magically know that some people shouldn’t have weapons.  That information has to be placed into the database.  As we saw with the shooter at Sutherland Springs, Texas church shooter, the Air Force failed to put information into the system about the shooter, permitting him to purchase firearms.  In the Parkland, Florida case, neither the school nor the law enforcement agencies ever created the paper trail that would have been entered into the database to prohibit Cruz from obtaining firearms.

This leads us to a very uncomfortable place, which is the reason guns are being blamed and the National Rifle Association is being blamed.  You see, all of the institutions named above have made quite sure they cannot be blamed, and that none among them will be held culpable, in any respect whatever.  We might become angry and claim they had “a moral responsibility to…” act or intervene or otherwise mitigated this circumstance, but the truth is that our outrage doesn’t constitute an enforceable legal claim.

I’m going to say the thing that will be most unpopular, and will cause many to heap disdain upon me, but it’s nevertheless true:  Every parent of every child enrolled in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (and indeed in every public school anywhere) knew or ought to have known all the facts outlined above long before the attack of February 14th. If they found these facts unacceptable, (and I certainly would have,) they had a responsibility to get their children out of that environment.  You might say that they had no choice but to enroll their kids in that school.  While I understand the practical arguments, I thoroughly disagree in an absolute sense, inasmuch as they are the parents, and they could move to another district, act to change that district, home-school their children, or enroll their children in other schools at their own expense.  Contextually, the tax-payers of any school district are held at gun-point to pay for that school system and in this case, for that worthless Sheriffs Office, and that is as much an indictment of our entire system as anything else.  It is said that we “get the government we deserve,” and this is equally true of schools and sheriffs.

What I would say to parents who truly wish to protect their children is to familiarize themselves with the facts variously described above.  They should inform themselves of the policies at their schools, and make their choices accordingly.  What I can say without reservation on this date is that I am unaware of a single public school in any jurisdiction, anywhere in the country, to which I would entrust the safety of my children.  To my knowledge, none of them can be trusted to provide for student safety, and none of them really want that responsibility.  You will naturally find a number of teachers who would accept that responsibility, but they are hamstrung by worthless bureaucracies, foolish unions and professional associations, and in many jurisdictions, the law.

If a teacher tells you that they are unwilling to be armed in defense of their students, what they are really saying to you is that they are not to be trusted with your children, because they don’t wish to take on the responsibility of protecting the lives of your children.

Period. End. Fin!

Everything they might say after that is merely a load of excuse-making, and largely ideologically driven.  Besides, apart from contraindicating physical disabilities, how competent is any adult who cannot(or will not) be trained to proficiency with a concealable firearm?  Should any person lacking that basic competence be permitted access to your children for any purpose?  I say “No.”

Where do we start?  We need people to answer honestly the simple question: “Who is responsible for the safety of my children?” Once you reduce that question to its irreducible constituents, the answer is all too plain.  “Something must change!”  Indeed, and what that something is must be that parents must reassert their responsibility for the lives and safety of their children.  When they do that, nearly all the school shootings will cease, and even when they do occur, there will be provisions in place to effectively defend against them.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Next School Shooter

Thursday, February 15th, 2018

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It’s coming.  You know it, and I know it.  Every rational person knows it.  Somewhere in our nation, one or more people are preparing to go on a shooting rampage, and one of them may intend your child as a target.  That shooter-in-waiting is already armed, already possesses the means to carry out the intended attack.  It’s too late to talk about banning guns, bullets, gas masks or backpacks.  The thug is already primed, and all that is now needed is for the fuse to be lit.  Perhaps the death of a relative will be the trigger. Maybe it will be something in our highly polarized political environment that will ignite this rampage.  There’s no way to know where the shooter will appear, but there’s no doubt that the shooter is waiting, and while we bicker about banning guns or ammunition or anything else, and while we talk about “mental health issues,” we are failing our children in a sickeningly fundamental way:  We’ve shirked our first responsibility as parents to defend our children by leaving them defenseless in the face of monsters.  We cannot pretend that we can intercept these shooters by banning their implements, and we must face the fact that the only way to protect our children is to rise in their defense.

When you deliver your child to the school in the morning, or watch them load onto the school bus, you’ve effectively discharged your responsibility; everything the school does with your child is a matter of the authority with which you vested them when you placed the school in loco parentis.  You’ve effectively given the school temporary custody, presumably for the purposes of education.  At the same time, our federal government has so thoroughly nationalized our schools that we have largely prohibited the faculty and administration of our schools from participating in the defense of our children.  Except for licensed law enforcement officers, there’s nobody who can legally possess a gun on our schools’ grounds.  When it is suggested that we ought to increase security at our schools, and that the faculty and administration of our schools ought to be included in that defense, it is said that teachers cannot be armed because they cannot be trusted to refrain from a shooting rampage of their own should a child or children get out of hand.  In essence, we are told that teachers are a psychologically unbalanced lot, not to be trusted with guns.

This notion is always baffling to me, particularly when uttered by actual parents of minor children.  Are we to understand that teachers and coaches and principals may not be entrusted with a firearm, but that they are to be trusted to act in loco parentis? We trust them to shape the minds of our children, but we cannot trust them to defend our kids?  If an actual parent believes this, then there are only two rational options: 1.) Immediately withdraw your children from that dangerous school, or 2.) Reconsider your qualifications as a suitable parent for your children.  It is self-evident that if a teacher or administrator is insufficiently trustworthy to possess and carry a firearm, they have no business whatever acting in place of me with respect to my child(ren.)   If I can’t trust somebody with a gun, I certainly won’t trust them to instruct or oversee my kid(s.)

Bear all of this in mind when presented with the litany of excuses as to why we can’t or mustn’t arm non-police officers in our schools.  Remember that the thug is already out there, waiting for the timer to go off, or otherwise be “triggered” on his way.  The shooter is already armed.  The shooter already has ammunition.  You can ban guns and think you’ll discover him by psychological intervention, but you’re only kidding yourself, or permitting yourself to be misled.  The only place you can approximately guarantee the safety of your child(ren) is at home, but even there, it’s not guaranteed.  That said, you are in a position to defend your child(ren) in a way that is not possible in a conventional school environment.

It’s impossible to stress this point too thoroughly.  We must defend our children, but it must be an active defense, rather than an exercise in apprehension of villains and recovery of bodies.  Our teachers, administrators, coaches, and security must be armed and able to repel attackers.  They must be trained.  If we have teachers who cannot be trusted with a firearm, they should not be trusted with our children.  That next school shooter is out there.  It’s not possible to stop the shooter by banning anything.  The shooter is likely already armed.  The question parents must answer is this:  If you know the shooter is out there, though you can’t know his location, identity, or motive in advance, how do you defend your children?  Why are you sending your children to be safeguarded by people who are unable and/or unwilling to protect them?  Why are you putting your children in the midst of people with whom you would would not trust a gun?  The answer is an active defense.  It must be.

There will always be killers among us.  We can’t stop them all, and we can’t always intervene before they’re able to inflict casualties, but the only way we might is to present an unambiguous, active defensive curtain around our children, with trained, rational adults empowered to provide that defense.  Everything else is political cowardice.  It’s time, with all the evidence before us, for parents to insist that there be an active defense, or to withdraw their children from these schools.  What do you have that you value more?  On which political issue are your efforts better spent?  It’s simple: We must insist that our schools be empowered to mount an active defense against violent assailants.  If you sincerely wish to protect your children from the next school shooter, it’s too late to talk about bans.  That shooter is already armed, perhaps casing the target, or merely awaiting a psychological trigger; your child(ren.)  Only an active defense offers any hope.

 

Editor’s Note: It’s despicable that while the Parkland Florida shooter was preparing to commit his crime, the FBI, which had been notified of a youtuber of the same name threatening to be a professional school shooter, did only a cursory investigation, apparently too busy chasing phantom “Trump-Russian Collusion,” as directed by their senior leadership in Washington DC.  If only the FBI field agents had been able to conduct a more thorough investigation, perhaps the outcome would have been different.

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Donald Trump Lied About Conservatism

Friday, February 12th, 2016

trump_bsa_ftWatching the 2016 election season unfold, I’ve become a bit tired of two things in particular about the media, and Donald Trump.  In the first instance, Trump is wholly unwilling to discuss details of his plans, and the media dutifully accepts his empty rhetoric in an unquestioning manner almost as thorough as some of his supporters.  In the second instance, Mr. Trump is lying, and it’s a big lie that we conservatives must debunk.  It could be that Trump is just ignorant, so that when he spews his lie, he’s simply the parroting of talking points emanating from the rabid left and the DC establishment. Either way, a lie is a lie, whether it originated from Trump’s own mind, or he’s merely passing it along unthinkingly.  So what’s this big lie? On Thursday, Trump tweeted that conservatives are to blame and that conservatives have failed the country.  This couldn’t be further from the truth, but once again, debunking it requires the examination of a few salient details.  His throngs of supporters won’t be moved by this, just as they won’t be moved by any other rational argument. By and large, they’re proving immune to facts, reason, and details.  It should come as no surprise to conservatives that in one respect, I think there’s a nugget of truth that makes Trump’s lie seem superficially plausible, but it’s just a nugget.  It’s time to deconstruct Trump’s lie.

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The first thing one must consider in answer to Trump’s assertion is: “Who are the conservatives?”  The truth in answer to this question is that actual, thinking, breathing, ideological conservatives constitute a minority of the Republican party.  The truth is that there are almost no actual conservatives in Washington DC, and to have been the party to blame for the state of the country, that is where one would have needed to be, not simply in a geographical sense, but in the sense of political efficacy.   Actual conservatives haven’t had any power to speak of in Washington DC for nearly two generations.  From the time of the middle of Reagan’s second term, there has been little one could properly label as “conservative” in our nation’s capital.  Where one can find any justification of Trump’s lie, despite the reality, is that for too long, we conservatives have let people who had no real attachment to conservatism pose as our representatives.

George H.W. Bush was no conservative.  Bob Dole was no conservative.  George W. Bush was no conservative. John McCain is no conservative.  Mitt Romney is no conservative.  I can extend this list to include current candidates like Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Marco Rubio to an extent, and any number of other conventional Republican politicians.  Paul Ryan is certainly no conservative, but neither were his immediate predecessors, John Boehner and Dennis Hastert.  Mitch McConnell and his caucus of establishment Republican cronies aren’t conservatives either, but the problem is that we have permitted them to claim conservatism, and we’ve allowed them to thereby define conservatism by the association with us.  Most Americans simply don’t pay much attention to politics, and in their barely-informed state of political ignorance, they’ve accepted the following basic formula: Republican = Conservative.  They may have accepted also: Democrat = Liberal.  Both of these are tragically wrong, and I will suggest to my conservative brethren that we are at least somewhat collectively guilty for letting this stick.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve permitted this to happen.  We’ve been so busy trying to expand the “big tent” of conservatism that we’ve permitted the party-crashers of the establishment to redefine what conservatism is, at least in the popular culture, by their constant association with us.  It’s been going on since Teddy Roosevelt, who was a progressive in Republican clothing.  For my part, here on this website, I’ve always endeavored to make clear the distinctions.  One cannot go through the columns of these pages and make any mistake about the fact that the form of conservatism advocated and advanced here has no relation whatsoever to the Republican party, never mind its establishment.

Of course, the truth is far removed from Trump’s nonsensical allegation.  Most actual conservatives, I’d nearly assert all, do not support the actions of the establishment, moderate, “center-right” wing of the Republican party.  Most conservatives actually detest those people, and would replace them with actual conservatives if it was in their power to do.  Every time conservatives have gone along with the GOP establishment in order to try to move things in the right direction, two things have been true almost without exception:  The GOP establishment betrays us, and we wind up moving backward.  A case in point is immigration: Those who call themselves “conservative” but are aligning themselves with Rubio in this election cycle have a very “YUGE” problem: Their guy is an amnesty-monger, having proposed the most exasperatingly un-conservative bill proposed by a Republican in quite a long time.  The so-called “Gang-of-8” bill was a nation-destroying monstrosity, and it would never have attained launch, much less threatened passage, without the efforts of people who claim to be “conservative.”

This is the problem exposed by Trump’s lie: It’s only plausible because we conservatives permit others to define what is conservatism.  We permit the misapplication of the term to people who may on occasion, for their own political expedience(and too frequently, ours) to associate with us and our body of political philosophy.  Since the greatest number of Americans don’t really pay that much attention, and use generic labels in order to short-cut thinking, we have a responsibility as conservatives to define what that means, and to take great pains to differentiate conservatives from anything else.

The facts supporting Trump’s assertion dissolve the moment one asks: “What is a conservative?” The laundry list of non-conservatives mentioned above is just a sample, but it should serve as a decent basis for understanding the problem in its proper context.  When Donald Trump talks about “the conservatives failed,” what he’s actually saying is that “Republicans have failed.”  That’s demonstrably true.  The problem is that conservatives haven’t failed, largely since they’ve never really held power in Washington, except for the briefest few years immediately after the ’94 “revolution” in the House of Representatives.  Even its leader, Newt Gingrich, isn’t really a conservative, but some of the people around him were, and a few of the people who led early efforts in those environs were, but they were short-lived as was the influence of conservatism.  To find substantial, muscular conservatism, one must return to the first term of Reagan’s presidency, which is why conservatives so thoroughly long for a Reagan-like leader.  It’s also why the fakers, the so-called moderates in the GOP, can’t wait to bury Ronald Reagan in long-forgotten history of the Republic.

We conservatives must separate ourselves from the GOP establishment in a political and cultural sense.  We must create clear separation from the party’s moderates because by failing to do so, we permit the broadest brush to be used in defining our cause, our philosophy, and our values.  It won’t be easy to do, but I believe it must be done.  The most promising of the current crop of GOP candidates, who may be able to draw this distinction, is probably Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX,) simply because on so many issues near and dear to the hearts and minds of conservatives, he bucked the political trends in Washington DC, abandoning even his own party at times, apparently on the basis of principle.  It may be that for him to fully set conservatism apart from the muck of establishment GOP politics, he will find himself required to loudly and forcefully make the distinction clear, not merely in his words, but in the clear-thinking actions of his office, so long as he may be in it.  Otherwise, Trump will succeed in painting him, and conservatism, as just more representative of the whole of the Republican party, and with such a faulty attribution of blame, conservatism label will continue to be the generic container into which the wider voting public will file all Republicans.  I suspect Trump knows all of this, but his campaign isn’t one of nuance or detail.  Quite to the contrary, his campaign is one of generic sloganeering, with thinly-veiled emotional appeals substituted in place of syllogisms.

It’s because I do believe that Trump knows the difference that I consider this attack on conservatism to be a lie on his part.  There is some small chance that he is so thoroughly ignorant that he doesn’t understand the distinction, but I suspect that’s not the problem.  I believe that Trump is gambling on and playing to the electorate in a disingenuous fashion, knowing that his prospective voters don’t understand the distinctions anyway, and won’t be motivated to discover them.  Thus far, he’s been largely correct in this assumption, although it remains to be seen whether it will hold up through the entire campaign season.

The problem for conservatives is “Yuge” because they’re stuck in the same sort of problem, in almost exactly the same fashion, as is the basic reputation of “capitalism.”  This is not coincidental.  Capitalism continues to be blamed for all the evils of statism, in its various manifestations, because few are interested in learning the distinctions between what America’s actual economic system is, and why capitalism bears no actual resemblance. In much the same fashion that we haven’t even had approximately conservative governance in more than a generation, so too is it the case that capitalism was vanquished in America by the enactment of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Sherman Act is wholly antithetical to capitalism, and whatever economic system we may have had since, it is not and cannot be labeled as “capitalism.”  Of course, once again, the propagandists for statism have managed to re-cast the meaning of the term in precisely the same way that “conservatism” has been redefined so as to include all “Republicans.” It’s nonsense, of course, but that fact does not stop them from doing it. One must be attentive to details, in a disciplined way.  It’s an article of faith among those same propagandists that our system of government be referred to as “democracy,” but that bears little resemblance to the actual form of government our Constitution’s framers designed and ratified. The United States is, by definition of its organizing document, a “constitutional representative republic,” but too often, as a matter of ease and propaganda, folks drop that longer, much narrower description, and it is to the detriment of the body politic, unless you happen to be a propagandist or advocate for statism.

The truth Trump won’t tell you is that had conservatives had their way over the last three decades, we would never have approached the state of desperate gloom under which we now suffer.  What he won’t tell you is that statism is the responsible political philosophy, in large measure because he has been among its practitioners and advocates.  When he proposes solving the “student loan problem” with another government program, he’s advancing statism. When he proposes replacing Obamacare with what seems to be a Canadian or British-styled single-payer healthcare system, he’s proposing more statism.  He’s doubling down.  When he states that eminent domain is an important tool in private initiatives, he is declaring statism in big, broad terms, while he is defiling the good name of capitalism to do it.  Donald Trump isn’t a capitalist, but instead a cronyist.  He has greased palms and bought favors with campaign contributions as much as any person who has ever sought the office of President, and maybe more.  His well-documented use of government officials and offices in the name of his private concerns is evidence neither of capitalism, nor conservatism, and that to date, he has gotten away with this mislabeling and slander is at least in part the fault of we conservatives.

After all, it’s the same thing: Jeb Bush calls himself a “conservative” and most of us won’t bother to debunk his claim.  His brother called himself a “compassionate conservative,” but too few of us challenged his claim though it was obvious in most notable respects that his presidency was rife with the growth of statism, and the advancement of anti-capitalist measures.

Yes, Donald Trump is probably going to succeed in blaming conservatism for the sins of GOP establishment, moderate actions.  His lie will stand mostly unchallenged because most of us will not even stand for our claimed political philosophy.  While I can’t do a thing about that, I can and will continue to speak out about the lies of Trump in this regard: Conservatism is not to blame for the ills of this country, any more than one can blame capitalism, and for the same exact reason: We haven’t practiced either in so long that the terms have lost their true meaning.  Trump knows this, and he’s gambling that his supporters won’t discover it either.  It’s our job, the job of actual conservatives, to educate the electorate on the differences.

Editor’s Note: The Tweet image was added again after the fact because either I didn’t save the article with that image in it, or it dropped it, or something or other. Anyway, that is what I am referencing. Conservatives didn’t HELP the GOP betray its voters.

 

 

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Posted in Conservatism, Donald Trump, Economics, Education, Election 2016, Featured, Philosophy, Politics, Ted Cruz, TrumpUnism | 24 Comments »

A Word on the Maddening Ignorance of too many Americans

Sunday, July 7th, 2013

I realize that our educational systems are filled with rot and torment, and I know many parents don’t do very much to help the situation, and I understand there are so many distractions for our young people that it’s amazing they have learned to tie their shoes…well, some of them have.  What I notice is the empty byproduct of a vacuous self-esteem that has taught them to value their opinions when it’s clear from listening to them that they don’t know a blessed thing of merit.  I don’t like to attack people in a general way, but for the love of Pete, can somebody tell these dead-heads to remember the quote variously attributed to Lincoln, Twain, and a few others, since we can predict they won’t have known it:

“It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

My apologies. These dead-heads aren’t likely to know who Lincoln or Twain had been.

“Lincoln? The car?”

“Twain? Doesn’t that have something to do with scanners?”

Who am I kidding? I’d be surprised if they could manage that much. This is why I oppose early voting.  This is why I oppose motor-voter laws.  I don’t think our nation should be run by people who haven’t the willingness to learn the first damned thing about it.  Am I an “elitist” for suggesting that some people are too ignorant to vote? I don’t think so, but then, I know what I know. If you’re as blissfully, wretchedly ignorant as the people depicted in this video, you shouldn’t be permitted to vote, or even gain entry to a college, in the first instance because you clearly don’t care enough to be a responsible participant in our nation’s decisions, and in the second because there is probably nothing a university can do to help you, other than to alleviate you of the burden arising from those few funds you likely possess.  If you’re a parent paying for college, you’d better find out whether your money is being well-spent, and if you have children in public education, if you love them, get them the Hell out!

What am I going on about?  Was it the video our friend “The Unit” posted? No, it was another video a reader provided in response to the first.  I caution you that there is vulgar language in this one, but honestly, I want you to see what your trillions of dollars in education spending has produced as college students discuss the meaning of the 4th of July(from chicksontheright.com H/T F. Brown):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UoM3MAHxcs]

This isn’t merely “facepalm” material. It’s an indictment of a nation that has grown far too complacent.  I am thankful that we still have enough young people of sufficient character to populate our armed services, but for those who appeared in this video, may whatever god(s) they worship have mercy on their souls.

I’m betting on Dionysus.

 

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Posted in Activism, Culture, Education, Featured, History, News, Politics, video | 10 Comments »

College Loans and Who Should Pay For Them

Saturday, April 28th, 2012

The Choices We Make

If you’re a college student, you may want to pay attention.  With the nationalization of student loans under Obama, you’re going to be slaves to the system if you use their loans.  It’s the ultimate racket.  You pay interest to the government at a higher rate than you would have in the previous system where private banks made loans, and the government guaranteed them, and of course, the government has the IRS to strip your future earnings from you.  I listened to a caller named “Jonathan” on Mark Levin’s show Friday evening, and I was astonished at his sniveling over the interest rates.  He insisted that it is “for the greater good” that he took out a total of $220,000 in student loans.  He’s not upset, he says, about the principal amount, but at an interest rate of more than seven percent, he’s having trouble making ends meet.

Let me save all of you aspiring college students some time and trouble:  Most universities don’t teach you much anyway.  You’ll learn more on your own if you want to do so than any college will ever teach you, and it will be more valuable.  I know, I know… The field into which you’re going requires a college education, maybe an advanced degree, perhaps medicine, or the law.  That’s fine.  Go to a cheap school.  Seriously.  All they’re giving you is a piece of paper.  The rest, you get on your own, and it’s the height of foolishness to go into debt to the tune of more than two-hundred-thousand dollars in order to fatten the higher education establishment.  It’s absurd, and our kids should be steered away from this nonsense.

I went to college.  I was thirty-one years old when I enrolled.  I was thirty-five when I graduated.  My ‘student loan officer’ was a nice gentleman with a crew-cut I met in the recruiting office of the United States Army when I was seventeen.  I loaned the government my backside for seven years, and in exchange, they matched my own contributions to a college fund.  Along the way, they taught me to be a hard-charging ass-kicker, and also some practical skills that I would one day convert to civilian use for the purposes of feeding my family.  It was likely the best deal I ever made.  The truth of the matter is that I learned a good deal more in those seven years than any college could teach you in twenty.   Nevertheless, once I was out of the Army, I used the aforementioned skills to make a living, and before long, only six years later, I was on my way to college.

Now I can almost hear caller Jonathan’s retort to such a proposition: “But, but, but,” he might stammer, “I wanted to go to a top twenty-five law-school.  It’s the only way to get work at some places.”  That sound you may be hearing in the background is the sound of the world’s smallest violin, playing just for Jonathan.   My answer: “Then shut up, and pay the interest you promised to pay when you took out the loan!”  You see, the problem is that Jonathan is finding it hard to make ends meet while paying his obligations, and he’s finding that paying for his debt is causing him to delay some gratification as a young attorney.  Boy-o, that’s what happens when you aren’t “born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”  Get over it.

Honest to goodness, $220,000 is a fantastic sum of money to me even now.  When I was that age, if somebody had lent me that kind of money, I’d either be a billionaire, or be locked away in debtor’s prison by now.  Or not.  The point is that to take out loans totaling $220K and then complain about having to pay the interest is a farce. Sure, it will probably take poor Jonathan a decade or more to pay off those loans, but what of it?  Was he making an investment in his future or not? No, you see, that’s not enough for young Jonathan: “For the greater good,” we should all be investors in his future.  Sorry, but I’m not interested in that sort of ‘investment.’

Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure young Jonathan is a fine man, and he’ll probably make a great slip-and-fall lawyer one day, but in the mean time, he’d better pay up with a big fat smile on his face.  You see, I actually had this very conversation with a young person recently, who was looking at the costs of attending the school from which he hopes one day to receive a degree, and I offered the other options open to him, and even offered my story about my own ‘loan officer.’  He replied in a matter-of-fact tone that “Well, you made your choices, and you took the path you did.”  His intent had been to dismiss my story, and yet as I the grin widened on my face, he looked confused at first, and then it hit him: “Okay, yes, I guess I see your point.”

It was somewhat amusing to hear his laments about how he’s now “over a barrel.” He can either continue his education, accruing more debt along the way, or he can quit, and begin repaying the loans immediately.  As I explained to him, “life has us all over a barrel.”  Of course, I understand how the government is going to financially wreck so many of these youngsters.  Now that the government is the sole source for guaranteed student loans, the government is going to wreck as many youngsters as they can hook into this system.  Naturally, the education establishment is only too happy to continue to increase tuition, because I can guarantee you that the faculty lounge won’t suffer.  This is the inevitable result of letting government intrude where the private sector should exist.  They created the government-guaranteed student loan program in order to entice lenders into loaning money to students for college, since they had been such an historically awful risk.  Once the government guaranteed the loans, it was inevitable that some Marxist would nationalize the program.

I am fairly certain that was the intention from the beginning.  After all, you can’t walk away from federally guaranteed(and now issued) student loans through bankruptcy, much like income tax debt, and everybody beyond the age of thirty understands that socialists love captive markets.  If we did that with healthcare, we wouldn’t have the insurance problems we do, but that also wouldn’t enable government to grow larger and reach into another market, ultimately nationalizing it, as they intend with seemingly everything.  At some point, this country is going to be faced with a choice about whether we wish to fix all of these things permanently, or simply implode and become a full-bore communist state.  I’ve seen the latter up close, and I’m afraid that’s where we’ve been heading, but young Jonathan doesn’t know that, and his professors aren’t likely to have told him.  Instead, they’ve probably filled his head with notions of how “the greater good” is the sole consideration, but what they’ve never told him is who will be determining what constitutes the greater good, or the public interest.  He believes he will have some say in the matter.

At every level now, the Federal government reaches into everything, but the simple truth of the matter is that this can generally happen only because people invite it in.  Too many people suffer under the delusion that the government is able to fix anything and everything, and that since there’s no immediate and obvious cost to them, they are quite happy to have the “help.”  All of this ignores the tendency of government to resemble a mob loan-shark, or a gang of mobsters in general.  Once you accept the help, there’s no ridding yourselves of them.  More, it’s a bit like the drug pusher, who gets people hooked on “free samples” but once addicted, the new junkie would kill his family to obtain another fix.  In other words, it’s about us.  Just as the pusher can gain no ground so long as you tell him “no,” so too is it the case that if we begin to tell the government “no,” it will lose its power.  That means doing something most people are tested to do:  Say no to themselves.  Young attorney and Levin caller Jonathan could have told himself “no.” That would have been difficult, with a degree from a “top 25 law-school” dangled before his ambitious eyes.  Now that it turns out his eyes may have been a little larger than his belly, he’s not happy about it, but I’m sure there was no dissuading him at the time.  Somebody needs to tell him “no.”  Waive the interest?  No.  Delay payments?  No.  Forgive the debt?  Hell no!

“No” is the most effective word on Earth against socialism, but it’s the word too many in this country are now afraid to utter, to their children, their neighbors, fellow citizens, but most particularly, themselves.  Until we learn to say it and mean it, poor kids like Jonathan will never understand its power.  Government bureaucrats will never understand their limits.  Politicians will never cease in their abuses.  We will never be happy.  Learn to say “No” and stand by it.  Refusing your consent is the one thing that cannot be taken from you.  Jonathan could have said “No” to the interest he’ll now pay, simply by refusing the loans.  Having taken them, he has found that he now has no right to refuse.  Do I feel sorry for Jonathan? Do you?

No…

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Posted in Capitalism, Conservatism, Culture, Education, Mark Levin, News, Politics | 1 Comment »

Occupiers: No “True Democracy” While Capitalism Continues – They’re Right!

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Anti-Capitalist Stephen Lerner

Andrew Breitbart managed to get his hands on some video of an Occupy strategy session, and in this video, SEIU skunk Stephen Lerner says that there can be no co-existence of Capitalism and “True Democracy.” Here’s the problem, and it’s one patriotic Americans need to grasp: Occupy is right. Now, before you go off the deep end to suggest that I’m losing my mind, because in this case, I agree with Occupy Wall Street, I would like you to watch the video. It’s important to understand what they’re saying so I can explain to you why they are right.

Here’s the video:

The problem we have is that most Americans have been mis-educated to believe that the United States is a democracy. It’s not. It never has been, and it was never supposed to be a democracy. Democracy is merely organized mob-rule under color of law. The United States was constituted as a representative republic, as demonstrated by the words of our own founding document, the US Constitution, in Article IV, Section 1:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government“(emphasis added)

This is a part of our constitution that is often ignored, and one that is often side-stepped by leftists because they cannot tolerate the notion that we have a republican form of government by design, and by the intentions of our framers. They understood that democracy was a horrid wrecking machine that destroys individual liberty, and is ever the precursor to tyranny. What a democracy ultimately permits, but what a representative republic is structured to forbid is the voting away of rights of some minority, including the smallest minority that is an individual. The whole purpose of the strong requirements on amending the constitution, or replacing it via a constitutional convention is specifically to make the destruction of individual rights exceedingly difficult.

What we have seen over the last century is a concerted effort to turn the US into a democracy of sorts. Capitalism cannot operate where there are not strong protections of individual rights, including the right to property, or one’s sovereignty in the marketplace. What Stephen Lerner and the rest of the Occupy Wall Street crowd understand is that there can be no “true democracy” while capitalism still lives. In short, it’s a recognition of the fact that the mob-rule that is implicit in democracy is prohibited in order to make capitalism possible.

What makes capitalism work is that you have the right to your property, exclusively, with no valid claim upon it by society at large. That’s why the income tax was pawned off on the American people with the 16th Amendment almost a century ago: The idea was to wreck your legitimate hold over your own property. In order to redistribute your wealth, they first needed the legal authority to take it, and that was the entire purpose of the 16th Amendment. Once they had a method by which to steal your wealth, they needed the ability to make it easier to redistribute it, and so the 17th Amendment was passed, providing for direct election of Senators, turning them into a more democratic institution. From that moment on, the character of American government began changing from a representative republic into a democracy as a precursor to a police-state.

What Lerner and the other Occupiers in this clip have understood is that in order to have the police and welfare state they want, they must first destroy your liberties, and that one of the reasons you will fight them is because you know that without them, capitalism, the means of your existence, cannot last. Last fall, I received a number of comments here from Occupy-sympathetic posters who assured me that OWS is not anti-capitalist. Guess again. This video proves it, and it does so very easily.

These are people who have a clear understanding of what they are after, and frankly, I think too many Americans have been intentionally mis-educated as to the proper form and function of our government precisely in order to permit these people to make such statements.  You see, they’re right, and while it may seem shocking to some who think there’s no difference, this is why Americans must begin to arm themselves with the truth.  These people are out to make us into a democracy, but that is not the form in which we were constituted.  Our nation is a constitutional, federal, representative republic.  Capitalism is only possible here because we adopted that form. This  has led to our great wealth and prosperity, but if we wish to grow it or even keep it, we will need to retain our constitutional form of government.  Occupy Wall Street understands the distinction, but if you wish to keep your country, you had better learn it, and fight for it too.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

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Posted in Anti-Capitalists, Capitalism, Civil Unrest, Education, Media, News, Occupiers, Politics, Video | 7 Comments »

Guest Submission: One Texas College Student’s Run-ins With Bias

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

The Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom

Editor’s Note:  This is a Guest Submission, the first in a long while, and I thank the author for giving us a window into the conditions in the contemporary college classroom.  I present to you Johnanne Galt:

“We don’t often think of Texas as being a progressive state, but at one point we were a very progressive state.  We haven’t always been as backwards as we are today.” – Professor Doug Hales, February 28th, 2012, Temple Junior College

Thirteen years ago I was in fourth grade, attending my Texas History class just as I would during any other school day.  Despite a memory-destroying automobile collision since, I still remember my first encounter with the all-too-common biased teacher.  Growing up listening to talk radio, watching C-SPAN, and studying my father’s old college history textbooks, I was able to quickly recognize someone who offered up her ever-growing string of opinions, instead of presenting facts.  She told the class that Texas was blooming with savages who brutalized Indians and Mexicans to grab more land, essentially filling our heads with the evil of the Texians.  I remember briefly questioning her before she threatened to send me to the principal’s office for disrupting class.  As I’ve done for many years, I merely pushed her garbage from my mind and instead turned to gaining [mostly]un-biased knowledge from my father.  I later had a similar experience in high school after informing a “history teacher” that we weren’t a democracy, but that the states are instead guaranteed by our constitution a representative, republican form of government. Once again, I was told that if I didn’t close my mouth, I would be punished.

As a grown, married woman attending a small community college, I am facing this situation once again.  The one particular difference I’d like to discuss in this encounter is the outcome.  I simply will not remain silent as the teacher, or professor in this case, continues to shove his propaganda down students’ throats.  You see, today’s display of an absolute lack of factual evidence was the final straw to fall on the enormous pile of deceit that has been placed upon my back by the education system.  Today, I will fight back, and offer up a view into the classroom of an agenda-spewing figurehead. This is intended for the parents who unknowingly send their children off to institutions of opinion rather than fact; for students who work tirelessly to place themselves in classrooms in pursuit of  degrees but instead are insulted; for the taxpayers who hand over large portions of their paychecks so that other “less fortunate” citizens and non-citizens will learn of the evil of Republicans, and for the administrations of schools everywhere who unwittingly enable the behavior of power-hungry instructors who take advantage of their positions within the one structure where so many parents feel safe sending their children.

This semester, Spring 2012, I am once again attempting to complete the History II class required for my degree.  I first signed up for the class in 2010, instructed by another professor, Gretchen Reilly, but found myself quickly dropping the class after she began to “teach” us that “the colonists were stupid, and the British had every right to do what they did.”  I asked around prior to signing up for the class this year, hoping I could perhaps find an instructor with less bias, and who would insult our nation less while teaching the facts more.  A co-worker of mine told me that Doug Hales, a professor at Temple Junior College, was “boring” and not biased at all.  To me, the general description of “boring” among people my age is assigned to things and people who are truly educational, so in a very excited manner, I signed up for Mr. Hale’s class.  Less than ten minutes into my first day of class, I was faced with the dreadful realization that I had placed myself into an indoctrination camp once more.  Here are some things that Hales told the class that I found worthy of typing down for later review:

 “Railroads could never be built without the federal government’s assistance”.

“A monopoly is a bad thing, one person can set the price of a commodity.”

“Who does J.P. Morgan remind you of on television? Mr. Burns, the evil rich man on The Simpson’s.”

“Can anyone tell me what socialism is?” (someone in the class answers “when the government regulates and runs everything”) “Yes. That’s why big businesses hate socialism, because the government regulates things.  Socialism is empowerment of the worker.”

[During the time surrounding the Agrarian Revolt] “…farmers faced bad weather, soil erosion, insect infestations, changing prices, high freight rates, high interest rates, and lots of debt because big banks were more than willing to loan out money. They would then just take the farms.” [This started the Populist party, and] “…you could say our President today is a populist.”

“It was disastrous when there wasn’t a central bank, it was chaotic, as there were no set interest rates.”

“Farmers began to depend on railroads to transport their produce, and they had no choice but to pay the high fees, so they went bankrupt and couldn’t pay back the loans to the banks. There needed to be regulation of the railroads.”

“The people’s party, or the Populist party, wanted a flexible currency controlled by the government, public ownership of the railroads, and were anti-tariff.  They also wanted the income tax, but only for the rich people.  They wanted their country back, so they began to tax the rich.”

This last statement provoked me to say something. I raised my hand and asked “so, they punished success?” He replied “that wasn’t their intent. They just wanted power, since they were the 95%.”  I asked “Is that why they advocated violence, like today’s Occupy crowd?”  He responded “yes, well, some of them.  Most of the Occupy people are anarchists”.  I don’t have to tell you that the Occupy crowd as a whole is not of the anarchist mindset, considering they want all of their debt forgiven, their school paid for and the prices of tuition regulated by the government, etc, but I let it go.

Moving on, Hales began to speak about the election of 1896.  He told us that “Mark Hanna and a lot of industrialists had a secret meeting wherein they picked William McKinley, who advocated a high tariff. They bought McKinley’s nomination.  Now, William Jennings Bryan, who was nominated by the Populists, used a railroad car to meet people. McKinley never really campaigned; he would go out on his lawn once a week and give a speech.  McKinley only wins because Republicans had all of the money.”  I asked “I thought you said he was well-liked?”  “Yes, by the Republicans.”   I had to wonder, how did McKinley win the election if only the 5%, the “rich Republicans”, liked him?  Again, this is merely more propaganda.

Hales later began to talk about Civil Service Reform.  He started off by stating “there’s always been a lot of corruption in government, but what we have now is nothing compared to the corruption we had in the 19th century.  The industrialists were putting their people in office.”  Can he honestly be serious? Again, this is an opinion based solely on his skewed theory regarding our government.

During a discussion surrounding the formation of the United States Navy, Hales said this:

“Not many people know this, but Jimmy Carter was a nuclear physicist in the Navy before he became President. Maybe he should have stayed in the Navy.”

Despite my inclination to agree, this is still an opinion, and still an insult, regardless of who it’s directed at.

Then came my absolute favorite subject, Theodore Roosevelt and Progressivism.  I immediately began typing down what he was saying, as I knew it was bound to be as twisted as it could possibly be.  The following is a series of quotes from his lecture:

“What progressivism was, it began in early 20th century, was an urban grassroots movement. Progressivism was a movement to root out corruption in the cities and reform national government, so that the government would pay attention to people and not big businesses. The progressivists wanted to take away power from big industrialists who were running everything and wanted people involved in issues of the day.”

“Scholars believed Roosevelt was our best president ever, then Abraham Lincoln, according to the most recent poll.”

“You just can’t not like the man, we’re going to talk about him because he was one of our greatest presidents.  In many respects he’s a genius.”

“He began to root out corruption as a New York Governor, which is what progressives do.  Boss Platt ran New York, and Roosevelt had problems with him.  Roosevelt was a Republican, and so was Platt. Platt convinced McKinley to run for re-election and put Roosevelt on the ticket for the vice-president, and being a vice-president is a career-ruiner, because the Constitution gives the vice-president limited power.”

“Boss Platt’s worst nightmare, Roosevelt, becomes president when McKinley gets assassinated.  When Roosevelt was elected, it was like a breath of fresh air.”

“Remember, he’s a Republican, and Republicans are run by big business. Well, he went after big business.  He was a supreme moralist.  He saw the Presidency as almost being a high priest, and would never have done what Clinton did in office.”

“The only thing he didn’t do was tariff reform, because he didn’t want to totally antagonize his Republican supporters.  The Anti-Sherman Trust act was only as good as the people enforcing it, and he enforced it.  He reopened the E.C. Knight case which showed that the Supreme Court was in the back pocket of big business by not ruling against the sugar company because the Court would not overturn the case, and Roosevelt threatened to replace them with new justices who WOULD overturn the case. In 1904, they reversed their previous ruling, and ordered E.C. Knight to break into several companies, and sugar prices fell by 3/4.  The only reason the prices got so high is because one company owned them all.”

“Roosevelt announced that he’s going to file suit against J.P. Morgan’s northern securities. Morgan finds out, calls Roosevelt and says “listen Teddy”, which was a big mistake. He didn’t show any respect, and said “just have your lawyer talk to my lawyer, we’ll solve it behind the scenes” and Roosevelt said he was going to break it up.  The court ordered it to be broken up because it was a monopoly.  Roosevelt then became known as the “Trust Buster” by the American people.  He said there were good and bad trusts, and “I do not want to break big corporations up but regulate them”, and created the modern regulatory government.  Then he wants to go after Rockefeller.   Don’t feel sorry for Rockefeller, he made a lot of money after Standard Oil was broken up into many companies.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Hales continued his speech on progressivism, and literally caused my jaw to drop when he said the following: “We don’t often think of Texas as being a progressive state, but at one point we were a very progressive state.  We haven’t always been as backwards as we are today.”  At that point, I scooped up my laptop and jacket swiftly exiting the classroom, mumbling “sure, spread some more of your propaganda” as I left.  I walked to my car and cried, wondering how it could be possible for this professor to be paid to not only insult our state, but to insult me and my money.  I immediately called my husband, and was wordless for a moment before I could collect my thoughts and utter “I don’t know what to do.”  Thanks to tenure,  teachers and professors are allowed to teach however they’d like, and say whatever they deem appropriate to their students, so I was at a loss with regard to what to do.  Fortunately, I was encouraged to speak up rather than dropping History II again due to my frustration with the perpetual spiral of bias that drowned me in the classroom.

History, as far as I know, is a subject about recorded facts.  The past is comprised of things that occurred, rather than what people think about past events today. In fact, I’ll go one step further and provide the first entry in the dictionary under the word “history” – “the branch of knowledge dealing with past events.” Mr. Hales’ opinions are that “Republicans are run by big business”, that “Teddy Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents”, and that “when Roosevelt became President, it was like a breath of fresh air”.  I did not pay several hundred dollars, aside from the textbook, to sit in a classroom and hear a man attempt to sway students in one political direction or another with regard to our nation’s past.  Had that been my desire, I could have simply stayed at home, saving money, time and gas, and listened to Rush Limbaugh, which now seems preferable.

For a professor to proclaim that “socialism is empowerment of the worker,” is sickening, but to try to imprint that opinion, or any opinion disguised as fact upon a student’s mind is exceedingly vile.  I do not wish for Mr. Hales to preach the good or evil of socialism or progressivism, but instead to educate his students using facts, allowing us to formulate our own thoughts and opinions on such topics, using logic combined with those ever-precious facts that make up the history we know.  This sad, escalating trend of distortion in the classroom must be stopped if we are to gain anything of value from the attendance of classes whose subject matter should be based almost solely upon facts and evidence.  I hope that professors who present their opinions as credible information can understand why a student might feel betrayed by the education system as a whole.  As a student at Temple Junior College attending only as my finances will permit, I would very much enjoy the opportunity to complete this class having gained something other than a distrust of their standard of academic and intellectual integrity.

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Posted in Activism, Education, Guest Submission, History, News, Politics | 12 Comments »

Sandra Fluke’s Irrational Demand

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

Limbaugh to Fluke: Have Some Aspirin

Sandra Fluke is a law student at Georgetown University.  Fluke believes it is the duty of insurers to pay for her contraception.  Of course, what she really means is that she’s another disgusting little socialist who wants others to carry her burdens.   She says she testified in order to shine light on the plight of women who aren’t getting contraceptive coverage through the university.  I have a problem with the mandates under Obamacare, and the one that will require religious institutions to provide contraceptive coverage through health-care insurance policies they provide to employees is at the center of this issue.  On Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh commented on Fluke’s testimony, asking what kind of woman demands payment for her to have sex.

While Rush was making a play on words, it’s still the fact that at the root of this, there is an undeniable truth.  First, let’s hear from Rush Limbaugh on Thursday:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Mm4CbeNtU]

Yes, Rush is his usual, combative self, but let’s examine the thought behind the sentiment: Rush is saying that Ms. Fluke ought to pay for her own contraception, because otherwise, what she is doing is to make her sex life, and the sex lives of her fellow students a matter for public review.  You can’t demand the public subsidize your “reproductive health” and not expect some sort of public denunciations or judgments.  You simply can’t.  The complaint that Fluke expresses is that this isn’t fair, because male students don’t face a similar burden.  Don’t they?  If they don’t, whose fault is that?  I do not understand the illogical claim of some, and Fluke is one of them, that they simultaneously don’t want government in their bedrooms, but do want them to fully furnish it for them.  I don’t want to hear about the relatively small number of women who actually need contraceptive pills for some therapeutic purpose, because just like in the abortion argument, and the questions regarding exceptions for rape and incest, the exception must not be the aim of the rule.

The answer here is clear:  Keep your contraception private, and it will remain private.  Contraception for that purpose is not healthcare.  It’s contraception.  I don’t care about Fluke’s sexual habits or those of other Georgetown students, but when you sign up to attend a religiously-founded institution, you shouldn’t expect coverage that conflicts with that institution’s firmly-held beliefs.  Instead, Fluke is demanding that Obamacare be enforced on Catholic universities.  I come back to the warning  of Cardinal George, of which I wrote yesterday:  If I were the Catholic church, and this law isn’t overturned, I would shut down every hospital, school, and university under that umbrella and take a bulldozer to them, or I would continue as before and refuse to pay the fines.  Either way, I would not surrender or wilt before the government on this issue.

In short, if it were up to me, Fluke would be looking for a new venue to finish her studies.  The moment people believe that they possess a right to impose costs on others, or force them to suspend their adherence to their own beliefs, a line has been crossed.  Fluke has no right to an education, and no right to contraception at the expense of others, either in cash, or in terms of quashing their beliefs.  This is one more reason why the law known as Obamacare must be overturned.  Limbaugh offered to buy her all the aspirin she needs, but I think we should let nature run its course.  She has no right to expect nature to be suspended on her behalf, and yet that is the actual aim of her testimony.  In the end, what Fluke demands is a government gun aimed at religious institutions to compel them to provide the coverage she wants.  That’s socialism, and in the end, this is really the heart of the matter.

 

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Posted in Conservatism, Education, Healthcare, Law, Media, News, Politics | 5 Comments »

Barack Obama: Replacing the Church With State

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

Obama Won't Accept Competition

I have long held the position that statists wish to supplant the church and its influence in the lives of people with its own authority, and to do so, the institutional left seeks to displace religion from the lives of Americans because this will enable them to pour government into the vacuum.  The latest controversy over the Obamacare mandates on religious institutions to provide contraception coverage in their health care insurance policies was thought to be just another ill-considered political decision from which the Obama administration would ultimately retreat.  That retreat has been only rhetorical as Obama’s dictatorial policy remains in place.  This isn’t political ineptitude, but statists’ calculations:  The Obama administration knows that this attack on the Catholic church and Christianity generally will result in the wholesale elimination of religiously-oriented institutions.  That’s what they’re after, and that’s what they’ll get, as the seek to push people even further from religion in order to make more room for the growth of an aggressive and overpowering state.

Hot Air posted an article on this, and I think it should give us pause, because it speaks to the motivations of those who are forcing these policies upon religious institutions, and what their real goal might be.  They aren’t worried that the Catholic charities, hospitals, and schools(including universities) will perhaps cease to operate, due to matters of conscience because they fully expect them to do so.  Francis Cardinal George of the archdiocese of Chicago sent a message to parishioners and its contents demonstrate the point:

“Two Lents from now,” Cardinal George warned, “unless something changes, the page [listing Catholic organizations] will be blank.”

The Cardinal didn’t stop there.  He went on to describe the choices with which the church will be confronted:

  1. Secularize itself, breaking its connection to the church, her moral and social teachings and the oversight of its ministry by the local bishop. This is a form of theft. It means the church will not be permitted to have an institutional voice in public life.
  2. Pay exorbitant annual fines to avoid paying for insurance policies that cover abortifacient drugs, artificial contraception and sterilization. This is not economically sustainable.
  3. Sell the institution to a non-Catholic group or to a local government.
  4. Close down.

This is telling, and you can already see the hand-writing on the wall.  The Catholic church will not be able to take steps 1 or 2, so they will instead be compelled to follow steps 3 or 4.  What will that accomplish?  Simply put, it will demolish their employees, their institutions, and will further serve to separate Catholics from their church.  This is not accidental, but instead a long-sought goal of the institutional left that has been seeking to drive all religion out of our society.  This move will force a retreat of the church into the physical buildings that bear the same description.

The truth is that the church, any church, is not a matter of buildings.  It is as large and widespread as its adherents, and this is the secret to what the Obama administration and his thugs of the left are really after:  They will confine the church to church grounds, but force the church out of the public sphere altogether.  Whether you’re a Catholic, or a member of any other faith, you’ve just been served notice that your church is no longer welcome in the public square except on conditions to be established, enforced, and dictated by government.

Of course, Cardinal George is well aware of this fact, and it’s with sadness I report to you his conclusion from his letter to his parishioners, and if you are a person of faith, you had better pay attention, because whether you are a Catholic or not, he’s speaking to you.  All of you:

“The provision of health care should not demand “giving up” religious liberty. Liberty of religion is more than freedom of worship. Freedom of worship was guaranteed in the Constitution of the former Soviet Union. You could go to church, if you could find one. The church, however, could do nothing except conduct religious rites in places of worship-no schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and the works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith. All of these were co-opted by the government. We fought a long cold war to defeat that vision of society.”

“The strangest accusation in this manipulated public discussion has the bishops not respecting the separation between church and state. The bishops would love to have the separation between church and state we thought we enjoyed just a few months ago, when we were free to run Catholic institutions in conformity with the demands of the Catholic faith, when the government couldn’t tell us which of our ministries are Catholic and which not, when the law protected rather than crushed conscience. The state is making itself into a church. The bishops didn’t begin this dismaying conflict nor choose its timing. We would love to have it ended as quickly as possible. It’s up to the government to stop the attack.”(emphasis added)

When you consider what the Cardinal is saying, its importance must not be ignored.  He’s issuing you a warning, but he’s also telling you the resolution.  The government is doing this.  Who runs the government?  You do.  You have it in your power to stop this.  You can stop this in November.  You can stop this by refusing.  You can.  You can stop this with a vote.  If you’re not Catholic, you’re not exempt from any of this, or the effect it will have on your church, mosque, synagogue or temple.  There are no exemptions, because if the Obama administration can successfully drive the Catholic church out, by the far the single largest religious institution in the country, with as many as one in six hospital beds in the country under its umbrella, what will your relatively less influential institution of faith do in response?  How will you hold back the government?

Here in the Bible belt of Texas, there are relatively fewer Catholics, but there is a vast diversity of small churches with tiny congregations that are all under threat by this move against religion.  As people of faith, you had better understand that this isn’t a war on the Catholic church isn’t due to an anti-Catholic bias, but instead a war on all religion as an obstacle to the supremacy of the state.  The institutional left isn’t out to slap the Catholic church in a political move for the sake of some radical, loud-mouthed supporters as has been supposed.  They are taking steps to chase churches out of the public square, the private sphere, and eventually out of existence.   This is the purpose, and if you blind yourself with the faulty notion that this is about Catholics, or about contraception, you’re setting yourself up for slavery, because whereas churches must solicit donations from you to support their various social causes, the government will instead only demand payment at gunpoint.  There will be no choice, and there will be no conscience but that which they dictate it to be.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Education, Healthcare, Law, News, Obamacare, Philosophy, Politics, Religion | 1 Comment »

Note to Big Government Statists: Leave Me Be!

Friday, February 17th, 2012

New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Dear Miserable Big-Government Jack-booted Statists:

I don’t know you well enough to give you even the most vaguely intimate details of my life.  Why do you want them?  I don’t love you, and you don’t love me, so why can’t you let me be?  Why is my contract in employment any of your business?  If my employer is happy, and I’m happy, apart from the fact that you’re already taxing both to death, why do you need to know how much I earn per hour, or anything of the sort?  Why are you involved in the question of my health insurance?  Not only do you wish to decide whether I will buy health insurance, but also what it will cover.  Note to jack-boots:  I’m a forty-something man married to a forty-something woman and we’re not interested in contraceptive coverage.

Why will my health-insurer be forced to cover it?  Florescent lighting gives me a headache.  CFL’s particularly are the bane of my existence.  Why may I not choose what kind of light-bulb I will purchase? I don’t mind paying extra for the slight difference in efficiency. Why must I be condemned to a life of headaches triggered by these lights, just to suit you?

Of course, you’re not satisfied with this, are you?  Hardly.  You don’t want me to buy weapons, but to the degree you permit it, you don’t want me to buy too many at once, and you want gun stores to report me if I buy more than one at a time.  Why?  Are you afraid I’ll arm a gang of Narco-terrorists with them?  Like you did?  Of course, since we’re speaking of terrorism, let’s cover your general ineptitude.  You want to scan Granny’s wheelchair, but you refuse to “profile.”  Why?  Profiling has been a crime-fighting technique for generations because it works.  Why is it that you’re willing to subject women to body-scanning abuse by some of your pervert agents?  Will you treat my wife that way?  My adult daughter?  What makes you think we’re chattel for your amusement?

Speaking of our children, you now seem to believe it’s your business what we pack in our kids’ school lunches.  Why is it that elected officials believe that their busy-body spouses should have any say-so in what we eat or drink, or don’t?  We didn’t elect them, but even if we had, why do you believe it’s any of your business?  You don’t buy my food.  You don’t prepare it.  You don’t feed my children, so when you explain to me how you’re seizing my kid’s lunch to be replaced by such meals as you deem suitable, are you confused as to why I might be upset?

As all of this grows and grows, I have begun to wonder if you’re even aware of how sick of you I have become.  If you were a person, I would charge you with theft, stalking, harassment, and torture.  Since you do all of this under color of your official authority, you also do it at the point of a gun.  I wanted you to know this, and to know that I no longer consent. You are in violation of the constitution that acts as the social contract between and among us. You have taken on the role of dictator, and frankly, I’m not interested in being your servant since our compact declares that you will be mine.  I don’t want anything from you.  I don’t want a single commodity.  My state and local governments are going to receive the same talking-to, but since I know you are arrogant and no longer believe you need listen, I’m going to make this explicit:  Leave me alone. I don’t want your hand-outs. I don’t want your iron fist. I don’t want anything but those limited purposes for which you were created: Defend the country against foreign enemies and domestic criminals, and act as an objective arbiters in our own domestic squabbles.  You have no other legitimate purpose.

 

Leave me alone.

 

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Posted in Barack Obama, Education, Government Reform, Healthcare, Law, News, Politics, Statism | 2 Comments »

Michigan Edu-crats Know Better Than Parents

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Face of the Nanny State

Thursday, my inbox took a long time to refresh.  Somebody sent me a video along with some background information.  The story comes from Michigan, where Debbie Squires is the Associate Director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association.  Apart from the ten-dollar title, Squires is another blooming edu-crat who believes that the educational establishment knows what is best for your children.  In fact, by listening closely to what she has to say, you discover that she also thinks that she and other professional educators know what is best for you.  This smarmy, arrogant testimony before the Michigan House Committee on Education evinces a deeply rooted contempt for parents, tax-payers, and also for children.

Here’s the video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4Hv-x-IM8g]

This is simply astonishing. What we have here is an admission that they believe they know better than you, know your children better than you, and should have absolute control over education, without respect to dissent, political or social minorities, or any other input.  She has said here that if you don’t like the curricula or policies of schools, your only recourse is to go to the polls and vote.  That is your public education establishment telling you that they don’t need to be responsive to parents directly, but only indirectly through the electoral process.  I have a suggestion for the people of Michigan, and for anybody else who encounters this attitude among such people: Vote for elected officials who will fire the edu-crats.

In my own life, raising my own daughter, I have run into such people.  The only proper response is really to remove your children from harm’s way, which means to get them out of the clutches of people who see you as an obstacle.  Education doesn’t belong to these professional nit-wits, and I am tired of the smarter-than-thou position they most frequently adopt as they preach from the bully pulpit parents and taxpayers have provided about their superiority in knowing how best to educate our children.  If they’re so damned good at it, why are our kids doing so poorly when measured against the rest of the industrialized world?  The attitude Ms. Nanny State expresses is far too common among those who say they are professional educators.

My wife and I were our daughter’s first teachers.  She learned how to count, and how to read, and how to spell, and do mathematics from us.  She arrived on her first day in public school more prepared and more focused on learning than her peers, because her mother and I knew the secret to education without having the benefit of even a higher education at that point in time in our lives.  We didn’t need an edu-crat to tell us.  We didn’t need a social worker to guide us.  We simply did as we had thought would be prudent in preparing our daughter to step forward.  This idea that “professional educators know best” has become a racket, and unfortunately, I think it has gained ground as too many parent have surrendered their sovereignty and their authority over the question of the content of the education their children will be delivered.  All too often, it is based on lowest common denominators of class progress, meaning that the best and brightest are held back by the least prepared or least able.

After three generations of telling parents they don’t know best, and shouldn’t be involved, the education establishment has managed to push enough parents away from the process of educating their children that they can now claim: “Well, parents aren’t involved anyway.”  It’s true.  Most parents deliver their children to the gaping maw of the public school system with the uncritical, unthinking indifference that is required for people like Ms. Squires to subsist in the system.  She’s not accustomed to having her authority challenged, but I will assert that if parents were so-inclined, they can educate their own children to a higher proficiency and to better result than any combination of teachers in the public school ever will.  After all, if I’m a decent parent, I don’t need the state or its edu-crats dictating the education of my child.  I know the needs of my child, and if I don’t, it calls into question the legitimacy of my claim to my competence as a parent.  Maybe that’s the point in all of this.

Note: Thanks to ‘Jake’ for the video, and also to ‘Tom’ who just indicated to me this story may have gotten first coverage on the Blaze, here.

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Posted in Education, Media, News, Politics, video | 12 Comments »

Fighting Liberal Professors – Time to Go Back to School

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Should We Fill These Seats?

We all know how useless many of our public schools have become, but have you examined the things that are now delivered as “education” in our publicly-funded universities?  You might believe the worst of had been confined to the elite schools of the Northeast, but in fact, leftists have taken over nearly all the country’s universities and colleges, from the large bustling campuses to the tiny community colleges in middle America.  My adult daughter attends a community college, as she works to finish her degree, but the problem is that even in our small town, the liberals are running the community college.  In a history class this week, she was taught that capitalism is bad, that unions are good, and that socialism is good for workers,  and all of this in the context of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.  Too many paying adults throw their money too casually to the institutions of “higher learning” in which their children are propagandized in the destruction of their own beliefs.

My daughter prides herself on the fact that she confronts these sorts of things.  A few semesters ago, she got herself into some trouble for contesting another history professor’s malevolently biased portrayal of historical events, and worst of all, doing so in the classroom setting.  The professor, unaccustomed to being challenged by students, was dumbfounded and became angry in typical leftist fashion.  It resulted in a bit of an issue that wound up before the Dean and ultimately led to a withdrawal from the class and a refund of tuition for it.  These thuggish professors continue to shove their left-wing views down our kids’ throats, and almost nobody is there who can or will challenge them.  When somebody does challenge them, they bully, cajole, and mock, and hope to swing the class to their support, essentially hoping to shut down any dissent or questioning that may go on.

There is an answer, and in the name of justice, and all that is good in the world, I for one will pursue it, but I want to suggest to you that you consider the same action.  We of more experience and knowledge should enroll in classes, basic history, government, and economic classes we’ve taken before, and sit in those classes with the specific goal of challenging very leftist talking-point of the professor.  It would help to know in advance which are the leftist professors, but even if you throw darts at a class schedule, you’re likely to land on a leftist, because they constitute the vast bulk of professors.  When the summer term begins, I am going to see about enrolling in such a class, and I have the professors all picked out.  It will cut down on my blogging two nights per week, but it will certainly give me more about which to blog.

Somebody must oppose these people.  They’ve been wrecking the political understanding of our children for generations, and if we are to have any hope of stopping the bleeding, we must do it here.  This is where the propaganda is hammered in, and it’s why we’ve lost control of our culture. It’s been a long while since I’ve sat  in a college classroom, and even then, since I went to college as a well-informed adult, I intimidated professors by virtue of the fact that in my early thirties, I was more than willing as a husband, father, businessman, and employee to challenge whatever a college professor might say if I suspected it was biased or false.  Now, nearing fifty years of age, I am not only willing, able, and informed for the chore, but now I know fully how they have been abusing their tenure, and I look at it as sport.

The college professors who infect our universities with their leftist bilge had better worry if this sport catches on.  Rather than mocking conservatives, the free market, and the rest of American culture, for once, we have every chance to turn tables on them.  I hope you’ll find time to do similar in your own communities, and join me in starting upon our long road back.

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Posted in Activism, Culture, Education, History, News, Politics | 22 Comments »