Category Archives: Education

Economics, Education, Politics 2018, Representation, Responsibility

Earning a Vote

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People elected to office in the United States, from Senators and Representatives to state’s legislators, Governors and state-wide officers, Sheriffs, Judges, District Attorneys, Registers of Probate, Deeds and what-not, to cities’ councilors, Mayors, aldermen, local selectmen and various trustees of reservations, libraries, housing authorities and conservation commissions, all have an obligation, TO WHICH EACH SWORE ON HIS OR HER HONOR, BEFORE WITNESSES, to conduct him or herself and the business of the office at stake according to the law and in defense of various charters, bylaws, state and federal constitutions.

That is, each swore to be honest. Prudence recommends honesty as the best way to conduct the people’s business. Unfortunately, honesty, truthfulness are almost NEVER part of anyone’s campaign message, platform, literature or advertising, despite each knowing that he or she will happily SWEAR to be honest during the conduct of the office being striven for. Odd, that. In practice, all oaths to the opposite, many office-holders consider that honesty, in fact, extends only to the scrupulous fealty to the letter of the law: every jot and tittle and loophole thereof.

We do hear a lot about “working hard for you,” or “it’s time your group is treated more fairly,” or “my opponent, the incumbent (stated in a low voice) has not been honest with you,” or, if the case, “he doesn’t even pay his parking tickets!”

Because legislation – and regulation – is devised and designed by people who are hoping to find a way to gain personally from the “loopholes” they write into it… legally of course, voters rarely get much input to the process or the content of new laws. And, we are reassured from the rooftops as to the diligent efforts made on voters’ behalf, sometimes late into the night at great sacrifice, keeping their promises to “fight” for us and to “work hard for us” if entrusted with the office. After all, they swore an oath to uphold the law and the constitution, and there they are keeping every word of at least part of what was promised. And we re-elect them, sometimes for decades, as if we can’t imagine causing them to “lose” their jobs, for goodness sake!

Most gain considerable wealth while in office, and this is a very mysterious consequence of becoming a public servant. Some are paid from the public treasury quite handsomely, even exorbitantly, yet they continue to “sacrifice” in public service instead of accepting much more lucrative positions in the “private sector.” Just look at the millions paid to people like the presidents of nationwide banks, insurance companies, invest firms, Boeing, Amazon, Facebook and Exxon-Mobil. Yet still they toil on our behalf under terrible conditions and low pay, particularly in view of the tremendous responsibilities they carry for the rest of us. [See: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/03/31/massachusetts-vaults-into-first-place/]

Congress members and Senators seem to fare the best of all – at least the crafty ones. Politics, unfortunately, seems to attract those who are always looking for an edge of some kind… not a scam, necessarily, but some special advantage, like signaling what’s in your hand to your Bridge partner. One notices that there are many laws that specifically exempt the “Royals” (those currently in Congress) from their terms or penalties. For decades, for example, members of the House and Senate could take advantage of what in the private sector is known as “insider trading.”

That is, by virtue of knowing what laws and attendant regulations were about to be imposed, the Royals could buy stocks about to go up as a result, and short stocks that were about to go down as a result. It’s “edgy,” one could say, and we can be comforted in our beliefs that none of them would ever share that information with a mere civilian, since they all are sworn to uphold the law: every jot and tittle and loophole thereof. Moreover, they are forced to be away from their families and pay for extra housing in or near Washington, and it’s not fair to demand so much additional sacrifice on top of that already entailed in their “jobs” in Congress.

In response to negative press, Congress crafted the “STOCK” act, that essentially made insider trading by legislative employees (over 28,000 of them) and by executive department employees, illegal. President Obama signed it into law with cameras blazing. Not only was the trading illegal, finally, but everyone affected would have searchable financial disclosure statements available on some website, a requirement that was not very popular. A few months later, with most members absent, the House and Senate rushed a bill through and the President signed it with little notice or announcement. This bill kept the thousands of disclosures under lock and key in a basement room in the Capitol, where virtually anyone could review them… individually, by correct name, and even copy them for 10 cents a page. But they couldn’t be “searched,” per se, and you had to get to the Capitol and to that room during limited hours, and provide the correct name of the disclosure-owner. Nothing illegal, but just a little edge over the competition – us.

The search for truth is a competition, if you hadn’t realized that before now, and in this competition relative to our public servants, we have very wily opponents. Think of that: opponents.

How nice would it be to hear an office-seeker say in his “stump” speech: “I promise only a few things, ladies and gentlemen… just a few.” He or she holds up the fingers of one hand. “First, when you ask me a question about any part of my public job – the one you pay me to do – I will answer truthfully and fully, unless there is a specific statute that prohibits me from doing so. I will then explain that statute to the best of my ability, or get back to you promptly with the explanation. If there is a way for you to obtain the information from another person or office I will tell you and, if you need it, I will help you get the information… not just an ‘answer,’ but the information you are entitled to.

“Secondly,” holding up his pointer finger, “I will tell you the truth about the budget and about expenditures. The money we spend and allocate is all taken from your wallets and I will show you at least enough respect as American citizens, to tell you the truth about what’s being done with it.”

“And, finally, point number 3. I will not vote for any legislation that contains provisions that are ‘snuck’ into the wording because those provisions could not have passed on their own merits. In other words, some legislation is brought forth with titles that indicate it is about one issue, while hiding legislation about unrelated issues. Those bills are at least partial lies and I will not vote for them. On the other hand, I will fight to stop this practice. To do so I need your vote on Tuesday.”

Prudence declares her support for any such candidate. Sadly, none has presented him or her-self for consideration. On the other hand, if one were looking for someone who has crafted an articulate message of hate for certain groups, individuals or for the United States, there are several from which to choose.

The underlying problem with elected and appointed malfeasance is that it undermines the ideas of America. And there is no one to our West who will come to our rescue when our citizens lose all trust in our “self” governance. There is no one else with a more “free” system or where citizens have sufficient sovereignty to perfect themselves, who will ride to our salvation and help as throw off tyranny. We, the United States of America, still somewhat free, still somewhat honest, still somewhat Christian, are the last best hope on Earth. If, in our libertine libertarianism we allow Constitutionalism to perish, or if we fail to reverse our educationally slipshod descent into sexual confusion and feelings education, the whole experiment is at risk.

Indeed, for an American elected official to abuse his or her office, particularly for illicit, if not illegal personal gain, is among the worst offenses against our nation. It is virtual treason against the electorate, and utterly inexcusable. Compromised judges and law-enforcement officers naturally follow the path of rot blazed by dishonest elected officials. Tightening and increasing the penalties for official corruption should be the fourth part of our “honesty is the only policy” candidate wished-for above. Let’s hope.

Economics, Education, Politics 2018

Socialist is as Socialist Does

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The “flash” of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’ success over Joe Crowley in the 14th District in Bronx and Queens, New York, seems to have ignited latent socialist dreams in dozens of Democrat Party “leaders.” All of a sudden there is a “new” idea on the political landscape: more than half the people are downtrodden victims of capitalism and the “lucky” ones who work are the oppressors and should be forced, by law, to support those less fortunate. Hallelujah! We are saved.

Aside from the fact that there is absolutely nothing new about these views, there is also nothing new about their perpetual, predictable failures. Their primary justification is envy and, more frequently today, hatred. Those are sad and fetid foundations for a plan intended to “lift” people out of poverty and hopelessness. Ocasio-Cortez has done a service to America, however, by revealing the vacuum of historical understanding of human nature and of the American people in particular. Perhaps it is a reasonable reaction to the mess we have made of enlightened economics in the United States; it is not a reasonable reaction to the lessons of history.

If only Republicans and other mildly conservative people were awake to the rot eating away at the true American promise and premise, instead of being so deeply beholden to the salamanders of money.

Loosely described, the American economy (and political dysfunction) is a result of creeping socialism that has been gnawing at our strengths since the Civil War – more noticeably since the 1900’s.

Socialism and other forms of mis-identified Social Justice, can win votes, sometimes for very ignorant or, dare we say, stupid candidates for office. They get elected by promising to A) Punish the oppressors, and, B) Hand out free stuff. Sometimes they are neither ignorant or stupid, but evil; sometimes they’re all three. Unenlightened conservatives, at the other end of the pendulum’s arc, promise to punish the freeloaders and to enrich the productive, hard-working class. Deportation and prevention of illegal entrants is a perverse gift to their politicking, just as outrageous concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of some of history’s most accomplished thieves is to Socialists.

Ocasio-Cortez is a graduate of Boston University where she learned something about economics. Her statements about economics and “public” financing, however, would lead one to recognize that what one believes is far more motivating in both words and deeds than any expensive education. Maybe she believes what she says about Socialist distribution of wealth… if only there were a Socialist distribution of productivity that partnered with it.

One can forgive her misunderstandings of the current federal budget, tax rates and overall distribution of taxation, [see “http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/11/04/a-few-words-on-capitalism-part-1/”] but it is a bit harder to overlook her total misrepresentation of her “Bronx” background and the supposed house-cleaning by her mother. She displays no better ethics than many disreputable politicians before, beside and in front of her. Conservatives, or Republicans, at least, seize on her ignorance and inconsistency, “progressive” socialists overlook it – belief trumps evidence.

It is harder to overlook the deliberate ignorance of both soft Republicans and hard Democrats who hold office, now. Well, perhaps ignorance is too generous; maybe most are stupid, or evil. Prudence indicates that holding office in the U.S., these days, is altogether too lucrative, too irresponsible and too secure against challengers. “Conservatism, Socialism… what’s the difference if I can snag the sweetest pension in the free world?”

It makes a lot of difference to the function and future of the United States. One needs, as does Ocasio-Cortez, to appreciate the origins and history of the U. S. The Europeans, Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Germans, Scandinavians and others, who came to the “New World” were very strong people. They were courageous enough to risk everything simply for opportunity. If they survived the first winter, there existed a chance they could make a successful life, one they’d have to carve out of wilderness. If they didn’t hunt game successfully or failed to prepare a field for planting, they could starve. Each had, or very quickly learned multiple skills since there were no hardware stores or clothing stores… or even cloth stores.

Virtually all were religious, Christian, mostly, or Jewish. Establishing churches was one of their first community projects; thanking God a daily ritual. Many died young from disease, injury, bad food, and from Indian defenses of their own lands and livelihoods. For women, childbirth was a major risk. Still, they came and slowly triumphed, knit by religion into common weal and defense, even when fighting other Europeans. The borders and nations we know in North and South America are the result, including hard-fought wars of independence from the European homelands. No matter how easy it is to smugly judge their actions it is admiration that we owe them, not condemnation.

They arrived with what they could carry. There was no welfare. Some were charitable, some more than others. There were no chits for free food and no subsidization for housing or health-care. Still, they came: strong, risk-taking, resolute, religious. Some of the strongest people in the world, and the government they formed, a constitutional republic, is based on the finest secular distillation of Biblical lessons ever devised: As ye sow, so shall (must) ye reap. It’s based on personal responsibility, if you don’t grasp the meaning in the King James version: personal responsibility for actions and inactions, successes and failures, honesty and dishonesty. Each is personally responsible for his or her actions throughout life. For many, there is a personal responsibility to God for everything good or bad. In lieu of that faith, personal responsibility is still the best approach to life, growth, personal improvement and the strength of society. Washing the concept out with the soft soap of Socialism is a choice made at great peril, threatening the strengths of society, families and individuals.

Today we are throwing out every vestige of the Bible we can identify. Ten thousand years of strengthening morals have been flushed away in a hundred years. America is losing its way at the very point that the original lie, Socialism, is rising up in the hearts and minds of poorly educated young people, led by the crassest of politicians.

One can recognize the original lie, easily. Under socialism individuals are absolved of individual responsibility, first by their identification with a group or class of people. Indeed, when it comes to politics, each identified group – and group member – is expected to vote the socialist ticket. If one can also be placed in a group that has been victimized by “the establishment,” which is defined variously as fits the socialist need, then that group is supposed to vote even more reliably socialist.
If a person runs afoul of the law, Socialism likes to diffuse the causes of that criminal activity, often by ascribing a history of victimhood and abuse, poverty, discrimination, lookism, sexism or, the trump card, homophobia. Therefore a long-term incarceration is unfair and we should extend the hand of additional welfare to help in the unjustly-charged individual’s rehabilitation. Just an example; no one can seriously imagine such an argument carrying any weight in a courtroom.

Socialism does not respect nationalism. For many of our young people, today, defining and defending of our borders is viewed as some sort of international crime, an affront to everyone who wants to live here instead of his or her own homeland. How twisted. How wasteful… that these people could have consumed $200,000 to $300,000 worth of public education and been granted DIPLOMAS ostensibly indicating successful completion of 12 or 13 years of learning. Yet they are so ignorant they don’t even know what they don’t know. They seem to “hang” with others who celebrate the same ignorance and who applaud statements and beliefs of abject stupidity… at least in terms of history and human experience.

It is incumbent upon Christians and Jews, and upon Constitutionalists, generally, to explain again and again why the morals and economics that help people perfect themselves, and that built the ideas and ideals of America, are better for this nation and the world, than ANY Socialist plan.

Culture, Education, Immigration, Representation, Responsibility, Trump

The Progress of Hate

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Since Mr. Trump’s campaign for the presidency commenced, the Left and those easily led by leftist propaganda have virtually exhausted the supply of calumnies that can be thrown against another person. For his part, Trump can take satisfaction at having advanced from “buffoon,” and, one of the worst, “businessman,” to “Nazi” and, topping every other, “Hitler.” And he seems to have advanced so far with no effort. Remarkable.

As interesting, and not just interesting: phenomenal, is the ability of the Left to accuse their most hated opponent of being history’s most reviled LEFTIST! Of course, as the left constantly proves, the meaning of words – and philosophies – is one of the left’s adopted tasks. The danger is that words intended to cut the deepest might become meaningless.

When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1942, Communist sympathizers infesting the West, including the U. S., immediately placed Hitler on the “far Right.” That lie was so successful it has become common “knowledge” and not just repeated casually, but taught as truth by people who ought to know better. Hitler was a socialist and a fascist. “Nazi” is an abbreviation of “National Socialist.” The enmity between Hitler and Stalin was between Cain and Abel. The Soviets suddenly became “allies” of the West by virtue of sharing an enemy – they never became a brother of American constitutional republicanism.

Ultra-leftists, George Soros and others, created the “spontaneous” agitators, “Antifa.” Antifa is an abbreviation of “Anti-Facist” which blithely mirrors the lie of Nazism being a right-wing philosophy. Fascism, as under Mussolini, Hitler’s happy Axis ally, is the primary tactic OF THE LEFT, not of the right. Antifa is a creature of the Left and it’s stated justification is to oppose fascism, a tactic of, well… the Left. Mainstream news outlets repeat their supposed purpose without analysis, in large part because most of today’s news companies are leftists, too, and the lie serves them.

No nation has ever “adopted” Fascism, although Italians were acquiescent following the corrupt failures of World War One and the economic fragmentation that followed. The soup of socialism in Italy was a widely varied mix from Catholic socialists to Communists. None could resolve the economic malaise and inflation. Fascism held out the promise of straightening everything out – putting people to work, making the trains run on time, enforcing dependable utilities of all kinds, where disparate unions had made key functions erratic and thrown people out of work. Mussolini, socialist to his core, perceived himself as the strong-man who could set things aright, and his rallying point was patriotism.

Patriotism for Italy and all things Italian, provided the unifying banner. For 30 years Italians could agree on very little but that they were Italians. The Fascists became “the Right” by virtue of usurping power that Communists and other ultra-socialists had jockeyed to obtain for themselves. Being to “the right” of international communists could hardly qualify Fascism as “Right wing” as the term is used today. Fascism was the penultimate collective, shy of Communism’s collective misery and politically elite control of production. Fascism organized business and industry to do its bidding, employing the profit motive for the State’s purposes. By putting people back to work Fascism appeared benign and was at first. Before long, however, Fascism could not help but take away freedoms as the trade-off for efficient government and, initially, efficient industry. The beliefs of fascist governors that they are in some way the best people to hold the positions they hold, is inevitable, and Fascism provides no mechanism for the governed to “clean house” of the corruption that power engenders.

Today’s “anti-fascists,” in their complete misappropriation of history, place American constitutionalists in the same camp as fascists and accuse them both of being on the “right wing” when, in fact, there is no connection. The exceptionalism of the United States is a form of “Rightness” that is at the opposite end of the political spectrum from the leftist, socialist soup of which Fascism was the outgrowth. Fascism and Constitutional Republicanism are so different as to be diametric. Yet we allow, and leftist media happily reinforce, the concept of “right-wing” and fascism/Nazism to be grouped as synonymous. Thank you, American public schools and most private schools, too. Even the Pope is now infected.

The founding Fathers, or, better, founding Philosophers, of the United States, determined to not simply create a kinder tyranny, but to create a new spectrum of Freedom. To become “an American” meant to agree with the ideas of America and, by adoption, accept the “American Dream,” defined only as the Constitutional Republic where people of all kinds can live together in Freedom and personal responsibility. We have drifted very far from the IDEAS, but not so far, quite, that we cannot row back to the safety of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, the exercise of citizenship in the United States is unlike that in every other nation: it depends upon shared morality and self-discipline. As those qualities erode and scatter in the winds of sexual abandon, the U. S. follows the same path toward leftwing fascism that far less promising nations have done before us. What might that look like?

It is, most sadly, conceivable in this summer’s reactions to normal legal functions at our southern border, that widespread rioting could erupt prior to the mid-term elections. People consumed by irrational hate for Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee and alleged “incarceration” of children in Texas have shown the ability to move thousands of ignorant people – young people – into civil disobedience. Is there a line they will not cross? Could a police incident where a young black man were killed, God forbid, in an urban setting, with cell-phone video spurring Ferguson-type rioting and destruction, spill over into multiple cities? As Federal troops arrive to support local police could shooting break out?

If erstwhile conservatives are in elective power when it becomes necessary to declare martial law, God forbid, again, they’d be accused of “police-state” tactics and “Hitlerism.” The police-state charge would have some merit. But it is a very risky step to take no matter how serious the civil unrest appears. So many legal conditions are suspended under martial law – even under a state of emergency – that “justice” is essentially discarded. Even if martial law ended in a month, say, the legal clean-up would take years.

Executive department bureaucracies would be locked out for at least some period. There is no way that “government” can appear to go on as before and, unfortunately, very little economic investment can proceed without satisfying a federal law or regulation or several of each. Large-scale trade activity would be severely disrupted for days or weeks, and with it, the World economy. No one outside of the U. S. knows how to deal with a non-functional U. S. government, any more than we in the 50 states do.

There are sizable numbers of people on the Left and the Right who would welcome a federal clamp-down in certain circumstances. On the Left one could imagine acceptance of a clamp-down to “stop fascism” and to free “political” prisoners, essentially rendering the U. S. a one-party state: socialist. On the Right, one can imagine acceptance of absolute federal stoppage of the drug trade, purging of bureaucracies of socialist-minded individuals, restrictions on abortion and absolutism on immigration. Neither adheres to the Constitution.

Martial law is too extreme to employ. We will need some rational way to walk our way back from the precipice of daily hatred of everything not “progressive” / socialist /Democrat. To Trump and those millions who wanted him in the Oval Office, the thought of relinquishing the limited exposure of foul and secretive government that Trump has begun, is anathema. Another way.

Unlike most pundits and proclaimed wise observers, Prudence dictates caution in offering solutions to our current divide between retaining the United States under the constitution, and letting it dissolve for the cause(s) of socialism. Do those fighting for dissolution even recognize which side they are on?

Have we allowed, through the actions of our “representatives,” the descent into a dilemma that democratic representation cannot solve? Aye, that’s the question.

Education, Guns, Right?

Poisoning America’s wells

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Students are on the march.  They have taken aim, so to speak, with a blunt political weapon, egged on by liberal, which is to say, leftist educators and a leftist press.  Interestingly, these kids’ targets are placed before them specifically for them to “shoot” (their protests) at: the National Rifle Association, conservatives, Republicans, right-leaning news outlets, writers and columnists, anyone who defends the Constitution and, of course, Donald Trump.  Left out of the group of targets are incompetent law-enforcement officers, organizations and bureaucrats who prefer to not enforce laws that already restrict guns and owners.  Left out are liberal policies of “mainstreaming” the mentally ill and the lawyers and psychiatrists who will bring Hell-fire upon anyone who presumes to restrict any psychopath who has demonstrated the will to kill or injure and who has stated a desire to do so, even when the intended target so referenced is a school.

And so they march.  Their weapons are their youth (so excessively revered in modern society), crafty signs and posters, memorable slogans and non-stop publicity through like-minded broadcasters and publishers.  What do these school-age pawns believe will be accomplished?

Well, they want “more gun control laws.”  After all, if (name the psychopath) could not have obtained his (99% ‘his’) “assault rifle,” those dead students would not be dead today.  It’s as plain as the noses on our faces.  There is a raw, unattainable truth to their simple demand.  Unfortunately, that truth cannot be realized without rewriting the Constitution (of which most people under, say, 40, know very little), and the institution of police tactics intended to confiscate virtually every gun held by legal and, one would then hope, illegal  gun-possessors in the country.  There would then need to be imposed truly draconian restrictions upon every port of entry and airport to prevent the entry of firearms into the country.  Maybe we could start with the illegal gun possessors without shredding the Constitution.

Ain’t gonna happen.

For those on the leftist spectrum, the dis-arming of the civilian population is an essential step toward creation of a more perfect nation.  For Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin and Stalin, and every current far-leftist, disarmament appears vital to their ability to maintain control of the lesser civilians who are harnessed to support their governments.  Now, being harnessed to support a domineering government is something Americans understand more than our founding fathers ever could have feared, but no dictator has ever encouraged private gun ownership.  This might be instructive, were we possessed of eyes to see, ears to hear and sufficient historical knowledge to appreciate.

Our agitated students have not been so blessed, and happily accept some hours out of school and bright publicity on weekends as they perform the blathering their leftist mentors could never do.

Let’s suppose, children, that AR-15’s and other scary-looking rifles were banned tomorrow and quickly confiscated by the New American Gestapo.  How much “safer” would you be, in your gun-free zones?  Suppose some pathological idiot wanted to solve some twisted problem he feels the victim of, by shooting some kids at his school.  He would be reduced to bringing 2 or 3 semi-automatic handguns and some extra clips – relatively easy to hide – and secreting them in strategic places where he could get to them on the fateful day.

The dark day comes, on his sick calendar, and he grabs a handgun and starts shooting.  Does the fact that he’s not employing a rifle make a damned bit of difference?  Wouldn’t you be praying for someone to shoot him?  Would you be comforted by the confiscation of millions of citizens’ lawful firearms, some of whom would have resisted, being killed or criminalized and incarcerated on your behalf?  After a few minutes of open season on students will you feel better when the police finally kill or arrest the wielder of a handgun rather than the wielder of a scary-looking “assault” rifle?

If the rifles were painted red and the handguns painted blue, would the absence of red guns make the recipients of blue guns’ bullets less dead?

To you the obvious response is to ban those kinds of guns, too. You are being raised as fools.  Your excited demonstrations make clear your incomprehension of the exceptional origins of this nation and of the freedoms you enjoy.  I hope you become more broadly educated after the public schools are done with you.

Education, Family, Guns, Right?

Eau to be gun free

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“School Shootings” are among those events that tear people apart and, roughly, along the widening “liberal-conservative” divide.  Certainly adults in both frames of belief have children, send them to school, love them dearly and do what they possibly can to keep them “safe.”  How is it that they can’t agree on how to do so?  Again, both types of parents love their kids.

The same divide produces separation on “rights” of a thousand kinds, on the role of governments in individuals’ lives, on the role of education, itself – particularly so-called “public” education, and even on the role of parents, themselves!  Into these widely divergent sets of opinions let’s inject the subject of guns and of the Second Amendment.  After all, many fear that the greatest threat to children’s well-being is of being shot inside their gun-free schools.  A wide divergence, indeed.

Along with other divisions between the two generic groups there seems to be one along military lines.  There are a thousand nuances, but in general conservatives are more in favor of military training, discipline, duty, honor and bravery, than are liberals.  Liberals are more in favor of government in its own right, more inclined to favor extremely personal “rights” to be codified, protected and even enforced by government, and to that degree, liberals also favor police in their roles of enforcing “civil rights,” a somewhat malleable term.

Conservatives also honor police but rather more for their quasi-military structure, honor and daily bravery.  At the same time conservatives see police as potentially threatening to constitutional rights, even twistable by “government” to control populations rather than to protect them.  Many questions arose as part of the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Parkland, Florida: questions of policing, of guns, of safety, of parenting, of news… and of government.

Quite distinctly, liberals believe that one or another form of “gun control” will make school shootings and other crimes where guns are employed, impossible.  This is not unlike liberal beliefs about governmental programs like public housing projects, in which residents of such projects will become more responsible toward themselves and others by virtue of having a decent place to live.  The same could be said of liberal attitudes toward most welfare programs.  In a generic sense, liberals believe that government in its great wisdom and goodness will make better citizens – better humans – than develop naturally or, incredibly in their view, by the hand of God.

Conservatives tend, generally, to see guns as protective devices in at least as great a degree as they might be offensive.  Almost automatically conservatives respect and honor the Second Amendment and the civil right of gun bearing.  Where liberals think that guns are the problem, conservatives think that criminals are the problem; where liberals fear guns, increasingly as they appear “scary;” conservatives respect their power and uses.  Where liberals are frightened of and purposefully ignorant of guns, conservatives see mechanisms that may be learned, understood and mastered with a set of skills.  The demands for “solutions” to school shootings following the Parkland “snafu,” exist in two separate universes.

Liberals want government to modify humans by legislating limits on their rights and actions: ban certain guns (scary ones), raise age limits for gun ownership and more.  Conservatives want a form of the “Guardian” program1 where sovereign individuals accept the training, risk and responsibility to protect themselves and others by arming themselves – including in school environments – and being willing to confront bad people using guns, and other weapons, offensively.

Liberals, including most teachers these days, fear guns, themselves.  They see the gun as inseparable from the person wielding it.  That is, the gun: metal, machining, grip, trigger, sights, barrel, caliber and bullets it holds – is as evil as the criminal prepared to use it against innocents.  No way can a liberal accept having that evil object anywhere near a school.  “Guns in classrooms?  That only puts us and our students in greater danger!”

Conservatives tend to be quieter about guns.  They don’t fear them but they do feel that it’s necessary to learn about them, get trained to use them1, get trained to deal with active threats, and, in general, they feel that concealed carry by a trained individual is a wise, sensible response to armed threats.  In other words, they believe in deterrence rather than response.

Response is a problem in every shooting incident.  Effectively, the only good response to an armed, crazed potential murderer is an armed challenger who is prepared to fire in the moment.  Schools could be turned into vaults with armored doors, metal detectors, and even Kevlar backpacks, but waiting for the potential murderer to arrive to a gun-free zone like a school and responding by hiding, simply means that it might be a tad more difficult for the killer to kill, but not at all impossible.  A couple of minutes are all it takes, whether firing an AR-15 or a 9 MM pistol, to kill a dozen or two defenseless kids and nearly helpless teachers.  In 3 to 5 minutes armed police could be on site, but those minutes are all that are needed to complete a tragedy as we too recently witnessed.

If first responders then fail to act in the most defensive, responsive way possible, then the number of dead will be greater.  There is no alternative… in the moment.

In order for gun bans to make a difference in actual school safety, there will have to be an enforced confiscation.  With millions of guns in private hands this presents the likelihood of resistance to such an action.  Will police then shoot at citizens who have never committed a crime with a gun except to own it?  Can such an ex-post-facto offense legally be imposed?  Can the right to bear arms be subsumed by popular emotion and civic policing?  It would seem that both eventualities are impossible.  But the demand for them fits the essential liberal opinion of guns, gun-owners and the Second Amendment.  All three are equal, and evil.

Liberals hate guns and, given their automatic equivocation of guns and owners, they often sound as though they hate their owners, too.  This fits with liberals’ disrespect of any who fear government more than guns.  Most of the “statistics” that gun haters cite are untrue, as are most crime statistics, themselves. Gun advocates are just as ready with inflated statistics of their own.  We have reached a point in the national debate over guns and rights and of wrongs and rights, when gun haters owe it to themselves and to the nation… and to schools and children, to grasp some realities about private gun ownership and their positive impacts on crime and social order.

The vast, vast majority of gun owners are not criminals.  There are more than 70 Million gun owners and more than 210 Million guns.  Among the 210 Million about 6 Million people own half of them.  Many gun owners have one, two or three, a rifle and a couple of sidearms.  A large subset of gun owners are active hunters and they may own 5 to 10 weapons: a shotgun or two, three to five rifles and two or three handguns.  Millions of guns are old, collectible, rarely even handled, much less used for anything.  A significant number are antiques.

But Americans own a lot of guns… gun ownership is part of America, part of our founding and heritage, written into our constitution and a legal, civilian right, like other civil rights, in fact.  Part of the chasm between beliefs is an urge and effort to, in effect, “un-do” America.  Our Judeo-Christian fundament and all the laws and traditions that flow from it, are, today, offensive to this group.  The definition of words and terms that describe the ideas and nature of “America,” are being changed daily.  There is a large and apparently growing segment of the United States that desires to “fundamentally change” America.  Those are they for whom “sovereign citizenry” is an affront, believing that a benevolent, socialist government is the only locus of trust in our society, never a sovereign individual.

Guns and self-defense are part of U. S. citizenship.  The more stupidly we deal, socially, with this fact the more times defenseless people will be victimized.  If we follow the concept of banning certain guns, now, upwards of 200 “types” of firearms, the net improvement to the safety of defenseless groups, most specifically and almost most defenseless, schoolchildren, will be approximately zero.  In a weird way the next school shooting is almost looked-forward-to by some rabid segments of leftists, for it will help ratchet up the demand for greater restrictions on the ability to own as well as buy or, likely, even manufacture certain types of guns.  The intended eventuality is a gun-free America.

That is to say, a non-American America, their ultimate goal.

Extreme defenders of the Second Amendment exclaim numerous statistics that are just as extremely “debunked” by anti-gunners.  Reviewing numerous studies over the past two decades one can learn that there are many, many thousands of instances of crime prevention thanks to civilian, legal gun possession.  There are probably not a million a year or two million – that is unknowable since most events are not newsworthy or even part of police reports.  But, there are thousands.  Even the Clinton administration, in studies2 opposing guns, found upwards of “1.5 million” yearly armed self-defense incidents.  Even “simple” female self-defenses against sexual assaults number over 100,000 events per year.

Let’s consider that there are, say, 400 thousand such events of various kinds.  That’s in the order of 1,100 events per day –a significant quantity.  A certain fraction of those would have resulted in physical assaults and murders… perhaps what, 1 in 20?  5% of crimes?  Are those lives not also of value?  Is it the position of anti-gun advocates that people have an obligation to remain defenseless, accepting rapes, beatings or worse while police are either on their way or, more likely, totally unaware of the event?

Is not self-defense of oneself and family the most fundamental of civil rights?  Can that be truly equated with the utter failure of law-enforcement in the matter of the Parkland massacre?  Or of the Fort Hood shooting?  Or even of Columbine where the weirdness of perpetrators was well-known in advance?

Anti-gun advocates need to recognize that there could barely be a civil society in the U. S. WITHOUT private gun ownership, guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

1http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/05/30/the-guardian-program/  1http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/03/26/shooting-back/

2 Gun Control Fact-Sheet 2004 / From Gun Owners Foundation, 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102 Springfield, VA 22151

 

Culture, Education

Little Things Mean a Lot

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When Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York in December of 1994, having been a prosecutor, he instituted a policing philosophy that gave importance to “the little things.”  These were little things like broken windows, littering, vandalism, petty thefts, truancy and the like.  He’d seen the cumulative degradation that took place in neighborhoods’ and even individuals’ characters, when small deviations from decency went un-chastised and uncorrected.  The next offense, public or private, singular or neighborhood, would be just a bit worse, and on and on, until the new normal became neighborhoods where good people put themselves in “jail” for safety, while feral criminals held sway “in the streets.”

Sanctioning and anticipating the little things produced a big reduction in “big” things.  The city became cleaner as well as safer.  “Stop and frisk” appeared to prevent crimes in the highest-crime areas and more people invested in the city… as in living in the city.  Between the mid-nineties and 2006 the population of Manhattan, alone, increased by some 40,000.  People react to high levels of caring in their neighborhood.  It’s a lesson that applies to groups as small as two.

In many smaller cities and towns it’s not uncommon to see signs or bumper-stickers that admonish the reader to “Think globally – Act locally.”  Oddly, these same places are where little acts of uncaring are common, while commensurate acts of “caring” are made public.  Consider this example:  A woman – and often, sadly, it is a woman  – will finish offloading groceries into her car and then carefully leave the carriage in the open parking space next to hers, or propped on the curb of the island in front of her and other’s cars, rather than pushing it 20 or 30 steps to the cart corral provided.  Sometimes they look around to see if anyone is watching, but most often not.

The cart corral became a fixture in store parking lots decades ago when store owners gave up their hopes that customers would return the cart to the store whose owner had provided it for their convenience.  At the same time jobs were created for some fellow to go out into the lot to retrieve the loaned carts that customers were too offended to return.

“Well, hey,” you might be thinking, “people are busy and the carts let us buy more stuff in one trip.  It’s a small cost for the store to pay for the increased business.”  Except it’s not a small cost, and uncaring individuals may impose costs on fellow shoppers quite easily with their failure to return the favor of the loan of that cart, particularly when it rolls into a parked car or is hit accidentally when a harried driver thinks he or she can pull into an open space where the cart was carefully parked out of laziness, earlier.

And, let’s not overlook the cost every shopper pays to have others “pick up” after them.

But let’s compound the costs by recognizing what happens when a woman with children pulls the same stunt.  I know, I know… she can’t leave her children alone or apart from herself for more than 3 seconds.  She puts the kids in their car-seats and buckles them in, offloads her groceries and is suddenly incapable of locking her car and placing the loaned cart in the corral, seconds away and in view of her vehicle and its precious cargo.  So, she, in effect, discards the valuable cart the store owner loaned to her, and blithely teaches tomorrow’s leaders that convenience trumps courtesy – that the implied contract she made with the store when she accepted the convenient use of the cart does not have to be lived-up-to!  She will wonder how, at age 13 or so, those grown-up munchkins think the world revolves for their edification – including their parents.

Small disturbances yield larger and larger ripples of dismay and, one might recognize, degeneracy.  “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”  That quote comes from the 17th century, but refers to Proverbs 13:24, “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.”  Every aware and loving parent grasps the need to make the sanction of bad behavior as close to immediate as possible.  The positive lesson will be learned and remembered.  It is valuable to discomfort yourself a little and return the cart.

There is no sanction as immediate as shame.  Yet, we’ve decided, educationally, to remove shame as a human guidance system, as it may impact a child’s “self esteem,” the strengthening of which has become paramount… to society’s detriment.  The main vector for building self-esteem is to eliminate shame, which means to eliminate rights and wrongs according to absolute social agreements, be they from shared – or similar – religious philosophy or strict legal constructs.  Relative good and bad, determined by temporary, largely uninformed or misinformed feelings – which is to say popular beliefs, often shifting with political demands and broadcast unfairnesses or, perhaps hatreds derived from both, leaves individuals free to feel and act as they think best, based on popular opinions that spread like wildfire, unfiltered.

The result is a sort of sovereignty without responsibility, where laws may be declared “bad” or “wrong” and no longer binding in this or that case.  This form of freedom shrinks, automatically, as rule upon rule upon rule must be imposed to “protect” the new personal rights devised at the speeds of change exemplified by schools of fish or flocks of birds.

Littering is another example.  Each instance is a small thing.  “What will this matter?” the offender thinks, “Look at the trash in the street… mine makes no difference.”  Ah, but it does.  Cigarette butt by gum wrapper by coffee cup, the action of tossing one’s inconvenient trash out of the car window or, simply, on the ground, creates a sort of callous over the fine membrane of community fellowship.  Someone who is practiced at trashing his own town or neighborhood is more likely to disregard the laws and mores of where he or she lives, unless it is convenient to follow them.  Many times such people live in a carefully protected and cared-for home, sometimes fenced and gated, making the point that he or she cares about him- or her-self, but not a whit about others.  Society breaks down when such are the inhabitants.

Sometimes the litterer lives amidst trash, caring not about him- or her-self or about anyone else – including children, in those environments.  Their minds may be just as trashy.  Underlying such surface depravity is a hatred for country, community and self, often projected outward as hatred for others.  Such members literally impose costs on their neighbors, yet it costs nothing to respect oneself, one’s family and children and one’s place of residence.  Discarding one’s trash in a proper receptacle is practically free, as is cleaning up one’s attitude.

Soon, because a messy living condition breeds hopelessness and resentment, there are numbers of weak-minded people who may be led into hate campaigns against their own country or neighbors.  Society’s future and its ability to create happier lives is inversely proportional to the extent of self-inflicted hopelessness.

The two greatest institutions of hopefulness: churches and schools, have been transformed in a generation or two, into irrelevance through socialist philosophizing and, now, virulent atheism.  No longer are religious pillars of right and wrong respected; no longer do government schools reinforce right and wrong – it’s all situational ethics, and we’re paying the price.

Maybe we’re too smart to be bound by religious mumbo jumbo, conscience or shame.  Is it really possible – or likely – that a majority of Americans will pull together to clean up their streets, parks, government and politics, while believing that America deserves to be swept away because it’s not perfect?  And whose perfection would that be?

 

Economics, Education, Race

Government by Unreality

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We are truly vexed in this, our great, open, rich, cruel, loving and generous country with our $20 Trillion debt, by social and civic problems of our own making. Whole industries are comprised of complaining and hating perceived groups of people unfairly imposing problems and then unfairly benefiting from them. Not much money seems to flow toward the loving business, but various dolled-up hatreds are profitable.

Some hatreds are aimed at Republicans, for no specific reason other than party affiliation; some are aimed at Democrats for the same reason. Both of those groups seem to have the same goals of expanding welfare, growing government and raising the debt ceiling. Neither is trying to seriously fight the LGBTQW revolution, although one side obtains money by claiming the other side hates LGBTQW “victims.” But aside from a lot of posturing, little honest change is proposed by either party, whether in power or out, although there’s plenty of the opposite.

When erstwhile Republicans and various independents and conservative-leaning parents elected a hard-to-fathom or mollify President Trump who thought he had the balls to actually change SOMETHING, leftists and others wedded to the status-quo ante began raising gobs of cash from fellow travelers and bird-brains who actually do hate HIM. Most of the money comes from people who hate haters. Those same hate bigots – people who pre-judge their neighbors as somehow flawed, just as much. In fact, they are able to spot bigots from quite a distance, especially if they are wearing one of those stupid red hats… or deign to vote for Republicans.

There has been some change, but nothing so dramatic as to let Constitutionalists relax.

In our hubris, we, Americans, a large minority of us at any rate, are convinced that normal laws of economics and well-established human nature no longer apply to us. Through our elected representatives we have become convinced that we can borrow a richer life, today, from our great grandchildren to whom and for which we’ll never answer.

We also believe that our enjoyment of freedom and wealth is somewhat automatic and somehow deserved. We are so happy with it and it’s easy accessibility, and being suspicious of our governors and bosses, we’re determined to share it with anyone those governors and bosses don’t like – just to get even. Why should we be so selfish as to keep America to ourselves? This misunderstanding leads us to fight against any standards or limits, like anachronistic borders, that those cruel governors want to maintain.

Freedom is some sort of gift, leftists say, provided to us by government, the source of all that’s good. If you aren’t as free as you’d like, more government will fix it. They don’t want to be limited by those Christian haters, especially the ones actually in churches… you know the ones, in their black suits and robes who read the “Bahh-bull,” for Heaven’s sake. The basis of Western civilization has no connection to today’s disconnected leftists. “Thanks, God,” they say, “thy system was far from perfect so we’ll take it from here. Call me, we’ll do a funeral.”

It’s the perfect statement of non-responsibility, which is the leftist, group-identity outlook. Whatever group we can burden you with is the reason things have gone the way they have for you – even if we don’t really know how things have gone for you. If you’re black (the best group ever invented, thank you, Lord, for giving them different skin; it helps a lot) then all sorts of causes for your victimized life can be proclaimed. Don’t y’all worry about finding justice in this White-privileged world, we are here to help the helpless. Take this check and be sure to put yourselves in POWER on election day.

To live a political existence on the basis of resentment of White people, is to, eventually, be subsumed by hatred. Evidence of this effect is everywhere poor, or “disadvantaged” blacks and other minorities are concentrated: ghettos. Surrounded by others who feel cheated out of their fair shares, and further surrounded by more richly “advantaged” Whites, ghetto residents become hateful, regardless of EBT cards, free health care and food subsidies. Welfare becomes merely a down-payment on justice.

It should be obvious, had education done its job, that government cannot create or impose justice on a social system; but, it can adjudicate injustice. In other words, if laws are made clearly and succinctly, the failure of some one or of several some-ones to treat another person or group of several persons fairly under the law, then government can ascertain appropriate charges for failing to act legally toward another or toward others, and prosecute illegal actors for their failing and impose penalty or restitution to those so treated.

What government should never do is create crimes out of feelings, or stretch clear laws into fuzziness about things people feel are unfair. This includes creating laws to cover self-declared conditions for which there is no empirical, quantifiable proof. Unfortunately, this includes special laws concerning homosexuality, sexual indecision or confusion, and mis-named trans-genderism. It should also not provide special legal strictures based on race. Rather, law is intended for, and only fair if applied to, sanctioning individuals or legal constructs like corporations when those persons/entities act outside of clear laws that are applicable to everyone of the members of society. We as a people or nation, create immense structures of unfairness and unreality when we attempt to legislate based on feelings and political unhappiness.

This old observer suggests that mankind’s worst circumstances result from acceptance of – even codification of – unreal, baseless claims and beliefs. For some this is religion, and many examples of severe warfare between religious groups or sects, can be cited. For shame. But there are other incredible murderers, like Hitler, for whom occult religious stories justified warfare on a global scale. Coupled with hatred of a group for unreal reasons, it formed an upheaval from which we still suffer, almost 80 years later. Unreality made “real.”

Communism is much the same. Not so much riven by group hate, Communists hate individuality and freedom. It is more economic than philosophical, and even more deadly than hatred. Power, of course is the currency of socialism of all stripes. For Communists there are only two groups: the official Party and, economically, everyone else. Resistance to being part of the nationwide serfdom into which Communism inevitably devolves, yields starvation or the gulag. Venezuela is an obvious current example of Communism’s “promise.”

Communism is based on unreality although its effects are brutally real. It believes in a different human nature than what is in fact reality. We are on this same path in the United States, evidenced not the least by our world-threatening debt.

Yet on we stumble, electing and re-electing people who don’t like America or the ideas that created it because the people who crafted it were white or owned slaves in a slave-owning society, or picked their nose in public. They are blind to the fact that these were the men who built a ladder to get us out of slavery and a thousand other unfairnesses. And so we are locked into hatred and failure and inability to govern while anguishing over millionaires taking the knee at football games, another example of trying to “govern” based on unreality.

Unreality as the basis for action is the same as dishonesty, well-stated by Mark Twain: “It’s not what you don’t know that’s the problem; it’s what you do know that just ain’t so.”

Education, Guns, Right?, Politics 2017

It Won’t Stay in ‘Vegas

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The atrocious murdering took barely ten minutes. It is very likely that not one person who was killed or wounded one Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, knew the man we are told was their killer. Ostensibly Stephen Paddock had been accumulating weapons for “years.” He sent his “girlfriend” back to her native Phillipines two weeks ahead of the carnage he was planning, and then wired her money. He may have been trying to set up a shooting a week or more earlier but couldn’t obtain the rooms he needed for his desired perch. So, it’s possible that all of the weapons, volumes of ammunition and loaded clips, and other preparations were solely the work of one secretive, virtually unknown man. Maybe.

The current profile of Paddock indicates that he wanted to shoot at country music fans. On the other hand, he was a Democrat. Does that paint him with a group identity that explains anything? He owned guns – like 50 to 80 million other Americans. That makes him part of the American “gun culture.” It hasn’t been reported whether he owns a power drill or handsaw, or possibly a router, like 50 million other Americans, so it’s not clear whether Paddock was part of the “power tool” culture. However, he must, must, be placed in a hated group and “gun owners” will do perfectly.

One reporter has already been fired for stating that country music fans were likely “Republican gun-toters” who deserved no sympathy. She made the mistake of stating how rabid leftists feel, and that’s a political no-no.

Legal gun owners woke up Monday, October 2nd to find that they were all potential murderers, kept from shooting up public gatherings, nightclubs, elementary schools and churches only by the thinnest of membranes between sanity and insanity. Who knew? Paddock had prepared his “blind” to be relatively immune from armed response. Most of these kinds of attacks place the shooter(s) at the scene where, in good likelihood, armed targets could have shot back.

What liberals never consider, and gun owners fail to proclaim, is that every year in the united States, more than 800,000 times (not every instance makes the papers), a private gun owner stops a crime or a criminal, usually with NO shots fired. In many instances, a non gun-owner overpowers an armed criminal and wrests a weapon from his hands and subdues him. Eight hundred thousand (some estimates are well over a million) are a lot of incidents. Essentially, open America could not maintain a civil society without private gun ownership. Oh, the horror.

The alternative is a police state. Thoughtful people should realize that they do not really want to live in a nation that will confiscate private property that is deemed undesireable by the government! Some think that that same government will somehow add to “freedom” by limiting it… so long as the limits are placed on the “group” they don’t like. Those same accuse President Trump of being “Hitler,” when the exact opposite is the case. Those who want the government to have more power to regulate this or that disapproved group, are playing the game that Germans played as Jews and Slavic peoples were systematically rounded up, stolen-from and finally eliminated in camps. Oh, the ignorance.

It should be clearer, by now, that individual freedom is the most precious of jewels, yet faced with freedom’s challenges, leftists are quick to trade it away for shifting quantities of safety and even for convenience. For shame. While a crude freedom, the ability to self-defend is excruciatingly fundamental to individual freedom. Yet the first reaction of socialists and communists of every stripe (stay mindful of the fact that Hitler, that old ultra-left socialist, disarmed Germans, too) is to limit this fundamental freedom.

In the United States, with supposedly universal public education, the most costly in the world, the lessons of history and the majesty of the ideas of America, ought to be fully appreciated. But, on balance, it appears that the rest of the world appreciates our exceptional promise of individual freedom, far better than we do, ourselves.

Freedom is a tremendous threat to socialist, controller types: those who naturally gravitate toward governments everywhere, especially bureaucrats who, never neutral, impose increasing structure and regulation on populations. By establishing itself merely as well as was done in 1776, the idea that created “America” out of disparate colonies has forever drawn enemies and subversion, and lately, outright attacks.

None of that speaks directly to Stephen Paddock’s craziness, but to the distinctly divided reactions to it. The “Left” immediately wants to restrict everyone’s rights to, theoretically, prevent future murders, mass and otherwise; the “Right” wants to enforce existing laws and employ better methods to inhibit crazy people and proto-criminals from obtaining or using weapons, including strict sanctions on less-murderous misuse of weapons. We can’t make the wild actions of one deranged screwball into a pattern that justifies attacking our rights.

What we can do is share information to identify unusual purchasing and collection patterns that might identify individuals who are potential threats. But we must guard our Fourth Amendment rights. The visceral urge to control people in order that they’ll be “safe,” cannot be allowed to subvert our privacy and personal sovereignty. Paddock was a monster and he’s now dead. Let’s not destroy our freedom because of him. Far, far more people are killed by handguns involved in gang and drug activities, almost every month.

We don’t count the innocents aborted by the tens of thousands.

Education, Politics 2017, Race

Antifa, Socialism and the Garden of Eden

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Americans, citizens at least, owe it to ourselves… indeed we are OBLIGATED… to obtain the truth about “antifa” and other culture-threatening, community-threatening militaristic “organizations.” Our media and other institutions are failing miserably to challenge their premises or their statements of justification for breaking laws and heads at will. The place to start is the money. It was costly to bus the “Anti-KKK” protestors into Charlottesville. There were 3 or 4 big buses that dropped off the “antifa” group and then left the downtown straight away. Witnesses state that whites with “KKK” Tee-Shirts(!) arrived on those same buses.

I don’t think I know anyone in the KKK, never saw a march of the KKK, never heard a KKK speech. But it’s clear that actual and former members have done their best to hide any association with the truly white-supremacist organization. This begs the question: Who the Hell would want to wear a “KKK” T-shirt? The only advantages to doing so would be 1) to avoid having your own team bonk you during a fight, and 2) to show up clearly in videos and on TV. It is no more likely that one would arrange for such T-shirts to be printed on the morning of a “Unite the Right” rally, than that he or she would obtain the PERMIT for the rally on that same morning.

There was something rotten in Charlottesville. The self-named “antifa” so-called “protesters,” are literally paid to create conflict. Evidence indicates that some of the “right-wing” rally-ers were also part of the paid actors sent to Charlottesville. Why? Who, really, is served by conflicts that rub old, old racial hatreds raw? What is the true intent and what is the inadvertent intent of these cynical displays?

The United States was formed as it was formed. The intense courage of isolated settlers is unimaginable to soft Americans today. The people who chose to come here were who they were. They were raised in a different time and culture and they grew up to believe what they believed. And, here’s a news flash: Not a single one of them came here out of hatred, or with the intention of making “Indians,” who they believed were pagan savages, sick. Not one. And they were all quite religious – Christians of their time, motivated by the need to atone for sins and to sacrifice for others and for the future. That’s why the “invasion” took root and survived. We can go back further and recognize that Christoforo Colombo had no intention of hurting people and was impressively courageous as well. He, and his crew, and his Spanish sponsors, and his home city and the rest of Europe believed what they believed. They had no benefit of the past 520 years of experience.

What profit is there to “hate” them now? Why isn’t Spain hated MORE than the United States? Why isn’t England hated for slavery? The real target of conflict is to decouple the ideas of America from the future. It’s not new.

The first and most effective way to confuse a population that believes it’s “free” and even “sovereign,” is to dis-educate its children. That is, purposely don’t teach them their nation’s history, both “good” and “bad.” Just teach about how bad things were done by “heroes.” Then skip over the courageous and pioneering steps taken in face of extraordinary odds. Concentrate on movie stars, sports figures, and popular opponents of the basic structures and institutions of their culture and heritage.

Fundamental to dis-education in the United States is ignorance of, or ignoring of, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Added ignorance of the Articles of Confederation and the Northwest Ordinance will also be valuable in separating citizens from ageless philosophies and truths that underlie our exceptional nation. The trouble with all of these ideas so documented is that they tell us that we are free NOT because of being subjects of a governor or government, but because of our CREATOR. That is the greatest threat to secular power structures.

The allegorical story of the Garden of Eden reveals the conflict in the most basic terms. Adam and Eve are created and blessed with everything they need for a bountiful life – the “thesis.” The metaphorical serpent provides an “anti-thesis” regarding the denial to Adam and Eve of the “fruits” of the “Tree of Knowledge.” Whereas God warned that “eating” of that particular tree’s fruits would cause them to “die,” the “Serpent” tells Eve that she and Adam could be as wise as God and that surely, they would not actually die.

Eve and Adam eat of the forbidden fruit, realize forbidden knowledge and God promises them great travails in life and bans them from His bountiful Garden of life. The “synthesis” is in place, slightly toward the secular and away from the original “thesis,” theos – God. They weren’t killed, but for ever after, Life will be the Death of them. This is how Socialism/Secularism spreads its sticky ideas. The thesis is always closest to our Creator’s original premise; the antithesis is always a little farther away from that and toward totally human control of life and history. This brings us to ever-larger segments of populations dependent upon human government, and less and less responsible for the consequences of their actions, or “sins.” Now we are politically agitated over publicly financed abortion as some sort of Constitutional right.

“Antifa” is but the tip of yet another antithetical spear, serving totally secular, financially dictatorial masters who wish to separate mankind from concepts of freedom and individual sovereignty. Not everyone is willing to be so separated, and they are the distinct targets of antithesis. Anything that teaches youth about the thesis, and about lessons learned in defense of the thesis, must be torn down or covered with tarpaulins.

Education

American University

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Every few weeks, when there is a slight lull in 24-7 news crises, someone will describe how terrible the student-loan burden is for stressed-out graduates.  This is then followed by some pandering politician decrying the unfairness of higher education’s being available only to those who could qualify for loans and, therefore, with E-quality being more valuable than quality itself, college should be “free.”

This is an odd declaration for a federal representative who is overseeing budgets that are trillions of dollars out of balance.  Fortunately, we have an army of migrant workers and illegal entrants who help us harvest cash from the money trees that flower perpetually in a secret orchard between Washington D. C. and Wall Street, New York City.  No one responsible for spending the money on our behalf – we, the citizens of this great bankrupt country – can imagine denying free stuff to ostensible college entrants, regardless of ability.  How fortunate that we have full-time, well-compensated spenders working to expend as rapidly as possible.

In any case, the topic of student loans can be easily turned into a big, emotional shibboleth that, obviously, only a bankrupt, spendthrift government can solve.  First, President Obama, as part of the so-called “Affordable Care Act,” essentially placed all student loan business under the aegis of the federal government, applying the “profit” from those loans toward attempting to finance Obamacare.  Soon, of course, politicians were screaming about “profiting” from poor students who just want to improve their opportunities for higher wages through diploma ownership.  Oh, the horror.

On the other hand, many families impoverish themselves to pay for college and post-graduate programs.  They’re not cheap.  The cost of college has increased more than twice as fast as the Consumer Price Index, since 1980.  Another way to look at it is in comparison to car prices.  In 1980 a 3-series BMW was around $21,000 or so, and it was pretty nice.  Today a 325i is about twice the cost of the most comparable model from 1980.  And, it’s still pretty nice.

The thing is, the 2015 version is a far superior car to the 1980 model.  Almost no part of it has not been modified for the better; its performance is better, safety is way better, as are comfort and expected life of components.  The electronics are a phenomenon all their own.  Remarkably, compared to inflationary price pressures, today’s BMW is LESS expensive than the 1980 – and it’s far, far better.

College/University education, on the other hand, is turning out a poorer product, on average, for about THREE times the cost of 1980 tuitions.  That is, college costs have gone up half-again what other big-ticket items have.  What can possibly cause this?   There are only so many instructional hours in a semester.  Are the professors smarter?  Working longer hours?  Taking on more classes each week?  Are highly-compensated administrators covering more functions for their rapidly growing incomes?

It seems that the opposite is true in all of these question-categories.  In the 35 years that automobile manufacturers have continuously become MORE efficient at higher quality to stay competitive… to keep attracting buyer dollars, education has become LESS efficient, more philosophically (politically) biased, less likely to teach American History, less likely to study the Great Books, Greek history and philosophy, English literature… and a bunch of other culture-strengthening stuff.  There are a lot of lawyers, though.

College students, however, thanks to the fatuous generosity of federal grants and loans, are able to pay more and more and still more for those still-coveted diplomas.  Like the uber-capitalists they try to hate, colleges have raised their prices in virtually direct relation to the amount of tuition moneys available.

The growing number of high-school grads going on to college has increased steadily as tuition dollars became more available; at the same time, the net quality of entering students has gone down.  While this speaks to the reduced net quality turned out by, largely, public high schools, it speaks more loudly about the cynicism of colleges and universities: if you got the money, honey, we’ll happily take it while nearly half of you drop out the first year.  Your time, indebtedness and mental health are of no concern for us.  Can your parents, grandparents, rich uncle or well-to-do siblings co-sign for you?  Yes?  Well then come right in and we’ll call you a college student.

Even worse, larger institutions are perfectly happy to create 4-year degree programs in “soft” studies that have very little chance of generating significant incomes.  It’s not that the education isn’t real, it is the reality that it is very, very hard to sell the related skills.  For the college, however, those very significant tuition payments help to finance more costly areas of study and research… not to mention the multi-hundred-thousand dollar salaries of, say, law professors at Harvard – at least the Native American ones.

There is a simple, universally beneficial answer, and it is absolutely NOT federal-taxpayer-free college, Ms. Senator Warren.  The answer is for colleges to co-sign for every student loan!

What?  You say.  Make colleges actually responsible for student success?  What if the student spends his time partying?  Is the college responsible for that, too?

Well, what if they were?  How would the college experience change if the college actually cared whether students were studying or goofing off?  If the college could only come out ahead if the students it admitted ALSO came out ahead, who would they admit?  Would they let Freshmen enter if they had no scholastic history that indicates the ability to learn, study and succeed?  Would they then offer realistic remedial programs AT THE STUDENT’S EXPENSE (as low cost as possible) that would have to be mastered before the rest of their college time could be financed with an institution’s co-signature?

Imagine the real cost of college dropping as schools, themselves, realize that huge student loans are a shared risk.  Maybe the financial wizards who have rewarded one another while money has been free-flowing will become enough sharper as to provide genuine education for far less dough… maybe even scheduling classes so that degrees can be earned in 3 years instead of 4.  Hmmnnn.  These are ideas that make you go, “hmmmnnn.”