God Save America

by Thomas E. Brewton

Liberals see the natural world as flawed and presume hubristically to restructure nature to fit their artificial, intellectual blueprint for perfection. In contrast, religious Jews and Christians are instructed to take joy in God's marvelously created cosmos, to recognize that the world is complex far beyond the capacity of any human minds to comprehend its entirety.

Liberals look to Marxian economics. Religious Jews and Christians seek God's guidance.

Liberal Republicans and Democrats, along with the media that follow the lead of the New York Times, are ceaselessly intent upon criticizing everything about life in the United States. This is true not just during political campaign season, but unendingly so.

Perfection, from liberals' viewpoint, would be a theoretical world-society with equal distribution of income in a socialistically regulated economy, under a one-world government led by socialist intellectuals in the UN.

If a liberal sees anything that differs from his idea of perfection, his knee-jerk reaction is to demand a new law to regulate or correct it. The implicit assumption is that everything in society is the product of materialistic forces emanating from the political state. Hence the harping, for example, on income gaps, and the presumption that the Federal government can, and should, run the economy to eliminate income discrepancies.

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by Sher Zieve

In the leftist mainstream media’s ongoing campaign to break the will of the American people, regarding the Iraq war, CNN has fought for and has now established itself as the “leader of the pack”. Airing the Islamo-fascist “snuff film” of US troops, the voice of CNN reporter Michael Ware, traveling with the Islamic fanatics, is heard conversing with one of the terrorists. One of the terrorists advises the CNN reporter that his group is going to take out one of the US soldiers in the distance.
Then it does.

Subsequently, the terrorist and CNN reporter discuss the killings. CNN has aired the film multiple times on its network. I have no doubt they will step up its airing, as the November elections move closer. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), chairman of the House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee, wrote in a letter to Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld: “CNN has now served as the publicist for an enemy propaganda film featuring the killing of an American soldier.” During a press conference, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) added: “This is nothing short of a terrorist snuff film.” Still the leftist media persists in stretching “freedom of the press” to the breaking point. And this time, it broke. If treason is still defined as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”, CNN has committed treason. But, CNN doesn’t care, as long as it and its leftist media brethren can assist in encouraging the downfall of the US—by now aligning with terrorists to affect the US’ destruction. Besides, CNN knows no one will do anything about its treason. So it has little fear of reprisal (for anything it does) and has become bolder and bolder in its now overt traitorous behaviors.

Then, to add insult to already injured Americans, on Monday CNN is reported to have aired an interview with al-Qaeda leader Aiman al-Zawahiri. Apparently due to CNN’s spoken and written support for al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, it knows where the terrorist leader is—or at least was when the interview was conducted. But, it didn’t bother to tell anyone else. CNN, and no doubt the rest of the mainstream bunch, wants the terrorists to win the war in Iraq. More people, including Rep.
Bilbray, are now stating it publicly.

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by Erik Rush

On August 23, 2005, Christian broadcaster and one-time presidential hopeful Pat Robertson called for United States intelligence operatives to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him "a terrific danger" bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas. This was all true; Chavez, who has also made no secret of his desire to trade in nuclear technology with Iran, routinely made accusations that the U.S. was trying to kill him or planned to do so.

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson on a broadcast of "The 700 Club" on August 22, 2005. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."

Hard to find an argument there — but I digress.

Our invertebrate State Department called Robertson's comments "inappropriate"; Robertson was later compelled to publicly apologize for his statements.

On October 17, 2006, the House Committee on Homeland Security Sub-committee on Investigations released a lengthy report entitled: A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border. Citing numerous thoroughly-investigated confrontations between Border Patrol agents and Mexican drug gangs, and other border-focused nefarious activity, two (of many) menacing facts which surfaced included:

1. Our border Patrol is significantly outgunned by "soldiers" of Mexican drug cartels operating on the border.
    
2. Individuals from terrorist-sponsoring nations have been freely using this porous border to infiltrate the United States. A program initiated by Venezuela's proto-human dictator Hugo Chavez trains visitors from terrorist-sponsoring Middle Eastern and Asian nations to speak Spanish and "pose as Latinos" as they enter the U.S., equipped with Venezuelan passports.

We are at war with an enemy that flies no flag and has no borders. This fact has redefined modern warfare and has been the boilerplate argument for the American Left: "There's no war unless Congress declares it." This is like saying no rape occurred because the victim wouldn't admit it.

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by Thomas E. Brewton
 
Liberal educators accord to John Stuart Mill's essay "On Liberty" the status of holy scripture. Mill's particular version of liberty, essentially that of the ACLU, is a prescription for anarchy degenerating into tyranny.
 
American academic liberals (not to be confused with the original version of liberalism represented by Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" and by our own Constitution) have long employed Mill's essay to inculcate in callow students the idea that actions to subvert society's traditions are both heroic and socially progressive.
 
Mill notes that English liberty originally meant limitation of the sovereign's arbitrary powers, the ethos undergirding our own War of Independence.
 
But, says Mill, that principle having been long since established, the modern (1859 in his case) definition of liberty must be expanded. "It is now perceived that such phrases as 'self-government,' and 'the power of the people over themselves,' do not express the true state of the case. The 'people' who exercise power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised….. there needs protection also against the tyranny of prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them."
 
Mill's ringing summation is, "The sole object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle…… that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection." 
 
Libertarians will find nothing to disagree with in that statement. But, as James Madison noted in Federalist No. 51, experience has taught mankind the need for auxiliary precautions.
 
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Is Academia Semillas del Pueblo Training the Next Generation of Mexican Revolutionaries?

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes corruption, today announced the release of a special report, Academia Semillas del Pueblo (Seeds of the People Academy):  Training the Next Generation of Mexican Revolutionaries with American Tax Dollars.  Judicial Watch’s report includes excerpts of new documents obtained by Judicial Watch through the California Public Records Act that highlight the school’s radical agenda.  According to the report’s introduction: “Academia Semillas del Pueblo is not much more than a training ground for the Mexican reconquista movement, which seeks to conquer the American Southwest – by force or by ballot box – and return it to Mexico.”

Among the highlights of Judicial Watch’s special report:

• Academia is led by Mexican revolutionary radical Marcos Aguilar, who recently told an interviewer with UCLA’s Teaching to change L.A.:  “We don’t necessarily want to go to White schools…the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction.”

• Academia offers an 8th grade United States history and geography class entitled, “A People’s history of Expansion and Conflict – A thematic survey of American politics, society, culture and political economy; Emphasis throughout on the nations the U.S. usurped, invaded and dominated; Connections between historical rise of capitalism and imperialism with modern political economy and global social relations.”

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“The recent shootings in schools across the nation should be a major wake-up call for educators and parents,” says Finn Laursen, Executive Director of Christian Educators Association International (CEAI).

“The latest killings of the young girls in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where a gunman held students hostage and later killed them execution style, reinforces that our children are not totally safe anywhere,” says Laursen.

“This outrageous attack on innocent children did not take place in the inner city or in an affluent suburban community, but in a setting most of us considered safe: within the non-violent, isolated Amish community that separates its children from the modern world, in what was believed to be a totally safe one room Amish school house.

The Amish community has responded to an evil, ungodly act in a Godly fashion. They offered forgiveness at the onset and asked the rest of the nation for valued support in prayer."

“Through our national network of Christian educators, most of who are in public schools, I am encouraging CEAI members and friends to do the same, to pray for all those touched by this latest tragedy,” says Laursen.

“I believe the unfathomable killing of innocent little girls in Lancaster is a wakeup call to which we in the Body of Christ need to respond proactively. Since over 50 million children reporting to schools across the nation daily are at risk of future acts of violence, we need to act now to protect our children."

“First, we have a responsibility to make sure our local schools have in place a well-developed and rehearsed Crisis Response Plan. Second, we need to make sure we cover our schools and school children with prayer on a daily basis. Our schools, both public and private, are just that, our schools. We Christians need to take an active role in both the physical and spiritual realm to assure our children’s safety,” says Laursen.

CEAI’s mission is to serve the educational community by encouraging, equipping and empowering Christian educators in public and private education. CEAI is committed to offer resources and support for those willing and called to take an active leadership role in their schooling community in such a time as this. Those resources and contact information are available on their website at http://www.ceai.org/.

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by Sharon Hughes

First we've watched Iran's President Ahmadinejad display his anti-Semitic colors in all their glory, and for all the world to see. Then Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's Red was never as bold as it was when he called the President of the United States 'the Devil' at the UN, before the cameras of the world. And who hasn't heard about Rosie O'Donnell's true colors flying high when she compared 'radical Christians' to terrorists? Of course, it doesn't stop there.

David Horowitz's FrontPageMagazine has been reporting for years about the increase of anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-American activities, and bigotry by professors, in America's colleges and universities.

As well, WorldNetDaily has covered examples of the same kind of bigotry happening daily across America. One of the latest examples was pointed out by Joseph Farah, founder of WND last week about Pennsylvania State University Professor Mel Seesholtz's comments in the Online Journal in regards to the 'Christian Right's' opposition to three homosexual indoctrination bills which California Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed…

"A very wise woman recently asked me, 'Who will rid us of the evil lunatics?'"

"We will. We must. Public education and a civil civilized society depend upon it."

Farah writes, In fact, he compares our collective form of "perverted Christianity" to a 63-year-old self-proclaimed prophet from Texas who reportedly raped a 22-year-old woman because she was possessed of a sex spirit and a lesbian demon. Seesholtz sees no difference between opposition to California legislation that would indoctrinate all schoolchildren – from kindergarten up – in the merits of homosexuality, transsexuality and bisexuality without their parents' permission and the use of religion to justify rape. You talk about "perversion," this is it."

I don't know which bothers me more. Such comments by leftist professors and communist, Islamo-fascist dictators, or that some Americans are cheering them on!

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Either the Supreme Court is ignorant of Islam or there is a double standard when it comes to religious indoctrination when it is taught in public schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday by evangelical Christian students and their parents who said a Contra Costa County school district engaged in unconstitutional religious indoctrination when it taught students about Islam by having them recite language from prayers.

The court, without comment, left intact a ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco last November in favor of the Byron Union School District in eastern Contra Costa.

The suit challenged the content of a seventh-grade history course at Excelsior Middle School in Byron in the fall of 2001. The teacher, using an instructional guide, told students they would adopt roles as Muslims for three weeks to help them learn what Muslims believe.

She encouraged them to use Muslim names, recited prayers in class, had them memorize and recite a passage from the Quran and made them give up something for a day, such as television or candy, to simulate fasting during the month of Ramadan. The final exam asked students for a critique of elements of Muslim culture. (SFGate.com)

A post in Dhimmi Watch did ask the right questions that the Supreme Court had failed to ask:

What prayers are said? Is the Profession of Faith one of those things that is said? Do little boys and girls say the Shehada, and are then told "now you have done what everyone has to do to become a Muslim"? And if so, is this done under the beaming eye of the teacher? And do the children return home, full of stories about "I recited this prayer and if I want, I can be a Muslim" or "I did just what Muslims do, mom, and it's really neat" or "I really like those prayers, they're just kinda like our prayers so I think the teacher is right, all religions are just the same" or [fill in the seemingly innocent, in reality quite dangerous nonsense]? Those helpless little heads are a captive audience of their teachers, whether those teachers are of the terminally naive variety or the sinister sort. Who suggested this lesson plan? Who's been pushing it?

So  why are they not teaching anything about Christianity or from the bible and give equal attention to the other "religions?"

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School choice can transform the teaching profession, study finds

WASHINGTON – Public schools shun the best and brightest teachers, claims a study released today by the Cato Institute. Indeed, the study finds that the best teachers fare worse than their mediocre colleagues due to biases in hiring and compensation practices.

In the study "Giving Kids the Chaff: How to Find and Keep the Teachers We Need," Marie Gryphon, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, reveals serious flaws in the teacher training, selection, and retention practices of monopolistic state school systems, and argues that market-driven personnel policies produce a far superior alternative to the status quo.

In public schools, "teachers are chosen and compensated on the basis of criteria set by teachers' unions and other entrenched interests," Gryphon explains. "Because those criteria do not focus on the qualities that define good teachers, they often favor less-qualified applicants over applicants whose skills could dramatically improve educational outcomes for their students."

While many policymakers advocate across-the-board salary increases, Gryphon finds that such pay raises do not, in fact, improve teacher quality. In actuality, "untargeted, across-the-board teacher salary hikes may lower the overall quality of the teaching workforce, because they may attract more low-quality applicants," she states. "Only new hiring policies that effectively separate the wheat from the chaff can transform the teaching profession."

Give parents school choice, and give schools the autonomy and incentives they need to hire the best teachers, Gryphon recommends. School choice will foster competition among schools, and in turn, "public school administrators seek out higher-performing applicants and work harder to retain them." This effect, Gryphon finds, is "especially pronounced in low-income districts and can meaningfully improve educational outcomes for poor students."

Source: CATO Institute

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By Thomas E. Brewton

Progressive educators today proudly declare that they don't warp students' minds by teaching specific bodies of knowledge, by teaching to the test; they teach students how to think.  That concept is a meaningless and dangerous abstraction.

Commenting upon a recent posting, a reader wrote:

"…. Now, if you go to college, you learn how to analyze information critically as opposed to reeling with whatever gut, emotional response you get. You learn not "What to think," but "How to think." The only way that education will ever succeed in our times is if it raises a generation of children who can not only read, but read between the lines."

No one would disagree with the sentiment that children should be able to understand the context of what they read and have a sufficient breadth of knowledge to bring critical judgment to what they read.

But the concept of learning how to think, as a stand-alone pedagogy, is meaningless.  One has to think about something, and, in order to understand what one is thinking about, is is necessary to learn a great many facts about that something.  In many cases understanding comes only with much practice and drill.

One might as well hand an oboe to an untutored music student and lecture him on how to think about playing the oboe, without benefit of being able to read music and without practice to master the mechanics of producing correct notes from the instrument.

This is particularly true, for example, in mathematics.  When a teacher presents a concept with a blackboard demonstration, keener students may be able to follow each step of the process.  But only later, working alone at home on assignments, will the student discover what he doesn't know and in the process learn the concept sufficiently well to solve similar problems in the future.

When students are allowed to use electronic calculators to solve problems, their minds are not engaged in any meaningful way with mathematics itself.  They might as well be playing a video game.

But they are learning how to think about mathematical problems.  They just don't really understand what they are thinking about.

Even teachers' unions dominated by progressive liberalism have begun to admit that the various genres of new math fail to teach mathematics to students.  When it doesn't matter whether students can solve problems and get correct answers, when it is believed sufficient for students to have some conceptual idea about a problem, we have a nation of students falling each year farther behind Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian students in real scientific accomplishment.

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