Tom Sowell on Creating the Equally Dumb in American Public Schools

The following article was written by Thomas Sowell at RealClearPolitics:

“A recent flap in a Berkeley high school reveals what a farce “fairness” can be. Because this is ultra-liberal Berkeley, perhaps we should not be surprised that a proposal has been made to eliminate four jobs as science teachers and use the money saved for programs to help low achievers.

In Berkeley, as in many other communities across the country, black and Latino students are not performing as well as Asian and white students. In fact, the racial gap in academic achievement at Berkeley High School is the highest in California– no doubt a special source of embarrassment in politically correct Berkeley.

According to the principal, “Our community at Berkeley High School has failed the African-Americans.” Therefore “We need to bring everybody up– that’s what this plan is about.”

Surely no one, not even in Berkeley, seriously believes that you will “bring everybody up” by eliminating science teachers. This is a proposal to redistribute money from science to social work, by providing every student with advisors on note-taking, time management and other learning skills.

The point is to close educational gaps among groups, or at least go on record as trying. As with most equalization crusades, whether in education or in the economy, it is about equalizing downward, by lowering those at the top. “Fairness” strikes again!

This is not just a crazy idea by one principal in Berkeley. It is a crazy idea taught in schools of education across the country. A professor of education at the University of San Francisco has weighed in on the controversy at Berkeley, supporting the idea of “projects designed to narrow the achievement gap.”

In keeping with the rhetoric of the prevailing ideology, our education professor refers to “privileged” parents and “privileged” children who want to “forestall any progress toward equity.”

In the language of the politically correct, achievement is equated with privilege. Such verbal sleight of hand evades the question whether individuals’ own priorities and efforts affect outcomes, whether in education or in other endeavors. No need to look at empirical evidence when a clever phrase can take that whole question off the table.

This verbal sleight of hand is not confined to education. A study of incomes of various groups in Toronto concluded that Canadians of Japanese ancestry were the most “privileged” group in that city. That is, people of Japanese ancestry there had higher incomes than members of other minorities and higher than that of the white majority in Toronto.

What makes the “privileged” label a particularly bad joke in this case is a history of blatant discrimination against the Japanese in Canada in years past, including a longer internment during World War II than that of Japanese Americans. But, to some on the left, the very concept of achievement must be banished by all means necessary, regardless of the facts.

Achievement by overcoming obstacles is a special threat to the left’s vision of the world, and so must be magically transformed into privilege through rhetoric.

Those with that vision do not want to even discuss evidence that students from different groups spend different amounts of time on homework and different amounts of time on social activities. To admit that inputs affect outputs, whether in education, in the economy or in other areas, would be to undermine the vision and agenda of the left, and deprive those who believe in that vision of a moral melodrama, starring themselves as defenders of the oppressed and crusaders against the forces of evil.

Redistribution of material resources has a very poor track record when it comes to actually helping those who are lagging, whether in education, in the economy or elsewhere. What they need are the attitudes, priorities and behavior which produce the outcomes desired.

But changing anyone’s attitudes, priorities and behavior is a lot harder than taking a stance as defenders of the oppressed and crusaders against the forces of evil.

To the extent that doing the latter misdiagnoses the problem, it makes solving the problem even harder. That does no good for those who are lagging, however much it exalts those who pose as their defenders. “Fairness” indeed!”

Obama Using Taxpayer Money to Fund Democrats?

Barack Obama is probably the most union-friendly president since Lyndon Johnson.  He has obviously been unable to stop the decline of private-sector unionism.  But he is doing his best to increase the power — and dues income — of public-sector unions, says columnist Michael Barone. 

For example: 

• One-third of last year’s $787 billion stimulus package was aid to state and local governments — an obvious attempt to bolster public-sector unions.
• And it was a successful one: While the private sector has lost 7 million jobs, the number of public-sector jobs has risen. 

Meanwhile: 

• The number of federal government jobs has been increasing by 10,000 a month, and the percentage of federal employees earning more than $100,000 has jumped to 19 percent during the recession.
• Obama and his party are acting in collusion with unions that contributed something like $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle.  

Public-sector unionism tends to be a self-perpetuating machine that extracts money from taxpayers and then puts it on a conveyor belt to the Democratic Party, explains Barone.  But it may not turn out to be a perpetual-motion machine.  Public-sector employees are still heavily outnumbered by those who depend on the private sector for their livelihoods. 

The next Congress may not be as willing as this one has been to bail out state governments dominated by public-sector unions, says Barone.  Voters may bridle at the higher taxes needed to pay for $100,000-plus pensions for public employees who retire in their 50s.  Or they may move, as so many have already done, to states like Texas. 

Obama’s Democrats have used the financial crisis to expand the public sector and the public-sector unions.  But voters seem to be saying, “Enough,” says Barone. 

Source: Michael Barone, “Public Unions Bleed Taxpayer To Help Dems,” Investor’s Business Daily, February 9, 2010. 

The above article was written by Michael Barone at National Center for Policy Analysis

Climate Change Scandal Spreads – Still Unreported in American Mainstream Press

It’s not just the threat of Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035.

Now another headline grabbing IPCC scare story is melting away.  A report in Sunday’s London Times highlights new humiliations for the IPCC.

“The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.”

There is however one teensy-weensy little problem.  As Professor Chris Field, the lead author of the IPCC’s climate impact team has now told reporters that he can find “no evidence” to support the claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report.

There’s more.  When the glacier story broke, IPCC apologists returned over and over again to a saving grace.  The bogus glacier report appeared in the body of the IPCC document, but not in the much more carefully vetted Synthesis Report, in which the IPCC’s senior leadership made its specific recommendations to world leaders.  So it didn’t matter that much, the apologists told us, and we can still trust the rigorously checked and reviewed Synthesis Report.

So the Synthesis Report contains a major scare prediction — 50% shortfall in North African food production just ten years from now — and there is no serious, peer-reviewed evidence that the prediction is true.

But there’s more. Much, much more.  Readers of the Times and the Telegraph are watching the IPCC’s credibility disappear before their eyes.  The former head of IPCC has publicly said the organization risks losing all credibility if it can’t clean up its act.  The head of the largest British funder of environmental research has joined the head of Greenpeace UK in criticizing the IPCC.  (At Greenpeace, they want Pachauri to resign.)  The Dutch government has demanded that the IPCC correct its erroneous assertion that half of the Netherlands is below sea level.  Actually, it’s only about a quarter.  A prediction about the impact of sea level increases on people living in the Nile Delta was taken from an unpublished student dissertation.  The report contained inaccurate data about generating energy from waves and about the cost of nuclear power (this information was apparently taken without being checked directly from a website supported by the nuclear power industry). The deeply environmentalist Guardian carries a story documenting the decline in both public and Conservative Party confidence in the need to address global warming.

More significantly, there’s an editorial in today’s Guardian that criticizes shortcomings at the IPCC and calls for a wholesale change in the way climate scientists do their work and communicate with the public.

In my February 1 post on The Death of Global Warming, I said that the movement had been killed by two things: bad science and bad politics.  The Guardian hopes that the parrot isn’t dead yet, but it seems to agree with my basic diagnosis: “It is bad science and bad politics to counter scepticism with righteous indignation. In the long run, public confidence will be inspired more by frankness about what science cannot explain,” write the editors.

The editors pick up another theme that is familiar to readers of this blog:

“In trying to avert dangerous climate change, governments are aiming for something extraordinary. They want to transform the global economy because of a hypothesis for which the evidence is mostly inaccessible to the layman.

It is the biggest pre-emption in history, and it relies on collective trust in science.”

When the IPCC has its former chief, the Guardian newspaper, and the Dutch government demanding change, something has got to give.

I just wish all these stories were a little easier to find in the American press.  These stories have been and continue to be on the front pages of UK newspapers; American newspapers by and large aren’t, yet, taking them as seriously and the growing numbers of Americans who are following the scandals are mostly tracking them from internet reports like this one or directly in the British press. This too needs to change, and the sooner the better.

The above article, “The Great IPCC Meltdown Continues” was written by Walter Russell Mead, at The American Interest.   IPCC – The United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change.

Understanding Government as Caretaker – Marxism At Its Best

For more than a generation the American Left has manipulated the nation’s language to advance its Marxist messages.  Citizens are taught certain words in the vocabulary are unacceptable for use in proper society. 

Racism, the left teaches is exclusively a white sin.  The black can only be understood as its victim.  If statistics indicate the murderousness by blacks is the major racial crime of violence in the country, one must memorize that the violence is not racist but entirely an economic matter, again a result of white  racist policies.  

Marxist language teaching begins at university which is taught to school teachers, lawyers, rabbis, priests, students in science, students not in science…and is supported by the university administration, a class which ranks among the most ineffectual, spineless groups ever known throughout human  history.

The Leftwing language police orchestrated words such as, Braves, Warriors, Redskins, Sioux, Illini, and Negro and countless others to form new meanings.  Any use of these words anywhere would indicate users were racists….white racists.  The Left is  a revolutionary movement based on hate…..hate of the villains alleged to cause victim sufferings. 

“Nigger” and “faggot” are  allowed to be used in certain circles by certain favored minorities, but if used outside these groups, violent retribution might be acceptable…after all America is  racist in the Left’s narrative.  Victims have a right to self defense.   The American Civil Liberties Union is the major American group advancing such maneuverings against Free Speech……..(in the Marxist tradition of doubletalk,  eliminating  Free Speech to advance free speech).

Certain words which describe leftwing politics have been made to disappear from the American vocabulary as well.  “Peace” is a word molded and remolded again and againg by the Left depending on political convenience.  Since the Left usually  advertises the beauty of  ”equality” with  ”love” these words becoming well used in the Marxist language rearrangements. 

Fascism was a leftwing movement…a socialist movement which gave rise to Hitler’s National Socialist Workers’ Party in Germany……Nazis.  The academic and political Left managed to redefine fascism and  censor its history, redefining the term to pose as a conservative, racist, militaristic movement of Western Capitalism. 

 ”Communism”, “Marxist”, and “Marxism” are among the words avoided….censored except in university ’studies’  where these nouns are made friendly words   representing people or organizations sympathetic to  the sufferings of women, gays, and blacks.  

For the best instruction for understanding the Left’s devotion to  language control, please read the history and purpose of the implementation of NEWSPEAK in the appendix of George Orwell’s masterpiece on Marxism, “1984″.  Orwell emphasizes the importance of reducing a peoples’ vocabulary to minimize knowledge and therefore reduce opportunities for certain thoughts.

Ignorance, that is, the absence of knowledge, is the most effective censorship.

The following reading which I recently received by email, is a quick exercise in understanding Marxism in action and  result:

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he
had never failed a single student before,  but had once failed an
entire class.  That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked
& that no one would be poor & no one would be rich, a great
equalizer.  The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment
in this class on Obama’s plan”.  All grades would be averaged &
everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail & no one
would receive an A…. 

After the first test, the grades were averaged & everyone got a B. 

The students who studied hard were upset & the
students who studied little were happy.  As the second test rolled
around, the students who studied little had studied even less & the
ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they
studied little. The second test average was a D!  No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F…  The scores
never increased as bickering, blame & name-calling all resulted in
hard feelings & no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, & the professor told them that
socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is
great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all
the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. 

(I wonder if the professor was eventually removed from the  teaching staff.)

Obama, Marxism, Sarah, Words, and the Tea Party People

This has been the weekend of the Tea Party people.  I have followed “the movement” to the degree at which I might know enough about who they are, what they are doing, and what they want to do.  If I had any money and time during this stressful economic time in my life, I would have joined them to discover more about them.  Do note that I an NOT a fan of  Ron Paul.

What they want to do, I believe is winsome.  What they are doing seems to be winsome.  Who they are is obvious….they are conservatives no matter how else they might be described…..

How does one know? 

The more Marxist a society becomes, the more likely this question becomes unanswerable.  In a Marxist society, since everything is relative in its preachment, truth has been reduced to apply to whatever fits the needs  to mold Marxist society.  Meaning of words are changed.  Dishonesty is essential.   Normal people do not willingly forfeit their lives by voting for a dictatorship devoted to forcing its population  to be equal.  Throughout the twentieth century violent revolution was the preferred method to spread Marxism.  Today,  the public  must be tricked into accepting this drone-creating,  imprisoning society bit by bit, law by law,  until return to a free life no longer is possible.

President Barack Hussein is a Marxist!!  The leftwing of today’s American Democrat Party is Marxist

How does one know?   You should have studied Marxism in school, but in case it was never brought up as a subject which mattered, better to learn about it now than not at all.

In a democratic society, you, the citizen,  are supposed to know language.  And you arere supposed to learn  meanings of important words and ideas  while in  school.  To know the meaning of terms requires knowledge…..history, geography, chemistry, physics, geology, botany, climatology, ecology, astronomy, anatomy, economics, mathematics, religion, even art, public health, phsychology and agriculture  to understand better the human struggle.  In a democratic society, it is believed, a citizen, somewhat well educated in these arenas of life, will be a better person spiritually and rationally;  therefore a better voting citizen……..a citizen better prepared to make a wise decision in the voting booth, a primary responsibility and duty of the citizen to help keep the democracy healthy. 

The quest for truth is essential in a democratic society.  American politicians seem to have forgotten that.   Listen to the words of the politicans.  It is called “spin”.  Listen to Obama’s words.  Remember what is claimed. 

 The battle in America today is the war over government control of citizen life.  Skirmishes have been occuring for generations, but until the 1970s, both of the country’s major political parties believed in democracy, both equally defended American sovereignty and agreed on the country’s role in the world.  Both believed in private enterprise.  You should have learned this  in school. 

An auto mechanic votes, too.  So do I, who co-owns a landscape business whose business partners vote as well.  They may not have studied  the sex habits of the government protected Asian Tiger Beetle, but they work bobcats, fix motors, plant plants to create beauty, study principles of landscape art and design and  install them  to beautfiy the environment.  They also know that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.  They  manage sales and salesmanship, arrange budgets, and attempt to achieve a profit in order to live.  And  they take risks.  At any time they may lose everything.  They are among the best people I have ever met.  Most of my life was spent in academia, however.   Of all the snobs I have met in my 75 years of life, I can’t remember any who  operate a bobcat.  Some, like Sarah Palin, have peculiar ways of expressing their English, however.

Marxists like Barack Obama and the masses of  professors at university are  foreign to this world I have just described.  They seem  pinched and isolated, breathing a different kind of oxygen.

Members of the American Tea Party AD 2010 are not foreign to this world.  They seem to  be people like Sarah Palin.  No wonder she appears energized as when I saw Chris Wallace’s  interview a few hours ago on Fox Sunday News.   By the way I personally do not favor a Sarah Palin presidency, but I don’t fear it….on the contrary, it probably would be a breath of fresh air without carbon tax.

Citizens, if you want to know the difference between America’s Marxism today and its conservative opponents,  SEE this interview  as soon as possible.  Listen carefully to the words of this former governor of Alaska and then to the words of Barack Obama, with or without  teleprompter.   We do know Barack is the most unqualified person to be elected president since Warren G. Harding in 1920.  So it may be an unfair comparison.   Nevertheless, you can identify the opposing sides from what these two Americans say.

Which is the foreigner?  Listen to the words.  Who believes deeply in America’s strengths?  Who knows America’s story even though both have lived it?  Listen to the words….One supports government managed and directive solutions.  One does not.  They both have accents.  Which is the brighter speaker?  Which commands the  understanding of the American story and can explain it to live in the American heart?  Again, listen to the words. 

For politicians some persuasion is based on style.  Important messages contain words which must be listened to and analyzed.   After reviewing Chris Wallace’s interview of Sarah Palin, reflect on the words of  speech and style of speaking  of any Obama  interview, or even  his recent State of the Union address or how he sells  his legislative proposals. 

 What is Marxism? 

One knows a Marxist by what company the Marxist keeps…..with whom the Marxist romances.   Better yet, if the Marxist speaks or writes, analyze what is said and written about what is valued.    Analyze also what is not said and what is not written. 

And yet there are  people  who camouflage  agendas for whatever reasons.  It has become fashionable in America, these days, for nearly every Democrat to hide their agendas, and I am sorry to say that many Republican politicians do the same.  Don’t believe for a nanasecond that the score between the two parties is even. 

The Democrat Party of today is marching for and toward Marxism.  It is the Party of the American university, the American public school, American Lebor, the nation’s media, entertainment,  establishment  foundations (who dole out to whatever is leftwing, i.e. “progressive”),  and victimhood industries as well of those who control and staff  federal and state government bureaucracies.   And then there are countless quasi-government and even antigovernment “progressive” agencies known and unknown , whom the  American taxpayers support.  ACORN comes to mind.  Once established,  Marxist governments become ruthless to defend their turf.

Minnesota is a state whose legislature likes to spend a lot  more money than it can earn….It is run overwhelmingly by Democrats, both at home and abroad in Washington D.C. from where both I and president Obama  agree the primary stench of corruption in America usually emanates.    Election time is when they bribe the people by promising handouts.  Everytime these people meet they are driven to create new systems to rule American life and demand more money from the taxpayer to do so. 

Not all Democrats are equally Marxist.  Some are even honorable Americans for example citing  Senator Klobuchar in contrast to Al Franken. 

To know the differences, a voting citizen must pay attention to what is said, why it is said, and what might result if what is said does occur…good and bad.

Leftwing Political Agenda in Ohio School – “No Proselytizing Intended!”

While “surfing” I came across this news article last Friday:

An Ohio high school teacher’s giving students job applications for a Democratic organization that included suggested radical reading material has raised concerns of indoctrination in the classroom.

The government teacher at Perry High School in Massillon, Ohio, handed out forms recruiting students to intern for Organizing for America, a grassroots organization with direct ties to the Democratic National Committee and the successor organization for Obama for America.

Included on the forms was a suggested reading list that included Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and Organizing for America’s mission to build on the “movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda of change.”

No Republican equivalent was offered to the students, according to Perry schools’ Superintendent John Richard.

In an interview with FoxNews.com on Wednesday, Richard acknowledged that distribution of the forms violated school policy and said they were never submitted to school administrators for approval, but the teacher remains on the job.

“We don’t take sides politically, nor should we, and we certainly would not support students being indoctrinated politically or religiously or anything along those lines,” he said.

Richard said the social studies teacher, whom he did not name, had no intent of proselytizing his students and was “given the material by another person.” Richard said he “addressed” the issue with the teacher, though he declined to say what disciplinary action, if any, had been taken.

“The teacher should have looked through this material,” Richard said.

Reaction to the forms, first posted on the conservative blog site, Atlas Shrugs, has sparked national outrage, particularly in the blogosphere. Some bloggers called it a “sick intrusion” and said it was nothing more than an attempt to indoctrinate students, while another, Elliott Cook, wrote: “This is all voluntary!!! No one is forcing anyone to do anything they don’t want to do.”   

One blogger claiming to be the parent of a girl in the class, wrote that students were given no option of signing up for a Republican internship. 

“The only handout was this one,” blogger Gracenearing wrote. ”My daughter even asked if there was anything else.”

The school also has been bombarded with e-mails calling for Richard to be fired, along with Perry High School principal Don Gregoire.

“I’ve been told to go apply in Cuba for a job,” Richard said, adding that angry e-mailers have labeled him a communist.

In a February 1, 2010 letter obtained by FoxNews.com, Gregoire apologized to parents, saying the incident was “not acceptable”.

“We apologize that your son or daughter was given this information without approval,” Gregoire wrote.  “this error in following Board Policy has been addressed and has been clearly communicated to staff.”

Comment:  When I was teaching public high school students, some “respectable” group had done a national study investigating in which  profession did practioners lie most frequently. 

The legal profession was right there near the top…..but only in second place.  As I remember criminal lawyers were champions in  the art of lying……at least in the legal profession.  Others in the profession apparently weren’t as skilled and dragged down lawyer scoring. 

The champion liars according to the “research”  were school principals and school superintendents, in that order.  Truth among these “professionals” almost never got in the way of telling a good lie.

Let’s review a comment quoted above by Perry school Superintendent, John Richard. 

Richard said the social studies teacher, whom he did not name, “had no intent of proselytizing his students and was “given the material by another person.” 

Were are relying on the accuracy of the reporter.  I think this reporter is definitely quoting the superintendent accurately.   Most school “educators” are programmed to avoid telling the truth in  colleges and in university  “Education Departments” where TRUTH ITSELF IS UNHEARD OF!   Knowledge is unheard of!  These people hate the human intellect.  It gets in the way of educators.

Nothing is equal within the human intellect.  This truth  is what makes teaching an art form.  If the teacher has  little or no command of the subject matter to be taught, and has little or no gift for the art of teaching,  the teacher is likely to be a fraud.  Such teachers learn how to cover their tracks.  They learn to deceive.  They live for their summer vacations. 

Superintendents and principals are people in this “profession” who generally hate teaching knowledge most…..which drives them to deceive most.  They prefer  money and prestige.  So even here in the primary world of American Marxism, the American public education system, the religion of  “Go ye therefore and teach all nations that Mankind must be made equal” is blasphemed by the practice of unequal pay!

Let us return to Superintendent Richard.  Some folks lie as a normal manner of  expressing daily pleasantries.  One would have to know this superintendent well, or any superintendent well, or any school principal for that matter, to know the degree of boldness of a bold faced lie in each case.   How can Superintendent Richard pronounce:

The social studies teacher,  “had no intent of proselytizing his students and was “given the material by another person.”  

What does receiving “the material from another person” have to do with the Superintendent’s guarantee, his vocal assuredness that  the teacher “had no intent of proselytizing his students”, except to deflect from any thought the school had instigated the propagandizing.

Did any of the “educators” have any intent to proselytize  when public elementary school students were forced to learn and sing  Hymns of Praise to Holy Leader, President Barack Obama, a few months ago?

Did any of the “educators” who arranged for a National Scholastic Newspaper,  published for junior high school students and  sent to public schools throughout the country as a teaching text for students, have any intent to proselytize anyone when in 2004  this “newspaper” endorsed John F. Kerry for president? 

NEVER.   NEVER!   WHEREEVER DID ONE GET SUCH AN IDEA!  How unAmerican even to think it. 

I should mention politicians were not included in the survey.  Perhaps  politician was not considered a profession.  Or, more likely, politicians, especially those preaching Marxism, are not expected to tell the truth, which should exclude them from the survey.

Krauthammer Again, About Obama, Intelligence, Democracy and the People

“I am not an ideologue,” protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions.

Compare his 2010 State of the Union to his first address to Congress a year earlier. The consistency is remarkable. In 2009, after passing a $787 billion (now $862 billion) stimulus package, the largest spending bill in galactic history, he unveiled a manifesto for fundamentally restructuring the commanding heights of American society — health care, education and energy.

A year later, after stunning Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a “jobs bill.”

This being a democracy, don’t the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don’t they understand Massachusetts?

Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking “in the plain words of plain folks,” because the people are “suspicious of complexity.” Counseled Blow: “The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, ‘Mr. President, we’re down here.’”

A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are “a nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive.”

Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself “for not explaining it (health care) more clearly to the American people.” The subject, he noted, was “complex.” The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.

Then there are the emotional deficiencies of the masses. Nearly every Democratic apologist lamented the people’s anger and anxiety, a free-floating agitation that prevented them from appreciating the beneficence of the social agenda the Democrats are so determined to foist upon them.

That brings us to Part 2 of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement and self-interest.

It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good. A 2002 New York Times obituary for philosopher Robert Nozick explained that the strongly libertarian implications of Nozick’s masterwork, “Anarchy, State, and Utopia,” “proved comforting to the right, which was grateful for what it embraced as philosophical justification.” The right, you see, is grateful when a bright intellectual can graft some philosophical rationalization onto its thoroughly base and self-regarding politics.

This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama’s social democratic agenda — which couldn’t get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts — is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.

By contrast, Democratic opposition to George W. Bush — from Iraq to Social Security reform — constituted dissent. And dissent, we were told at the time, including by candidate Obama, is “one of the truest expressions of patriotism.”

No more. Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. “They made a decision,” explained David Axelrod, “they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed” — a perfect expression of liberals’ conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country’s, that their idea of the public good is the public’s, that their failure is therefore the nation’s.

Then comes Massachusetts, an election Obama himself helped nationalize, to shatter this most self-congratulatory of illusions………

(The above article written by Charles Krauthammer was published on Friday, Feb. 5, 2010 at realclearpolitics.com.)

Comment:  Mr. Krauthammer opens with Obamaphrase made at the Republican House gathering which  actually went like this: 

“I’m not an ideologue!  Then, a pause and Obama moved his head to the side as his audience remained in total silence ….and then added….”No, I’m not!” as if he was seeking self assurance.  Silence continued…and Obamatalk regained his steam and returned to preach about himself. 

It reminded me of  looking at the troubled Richard M. Nixon when on television spring,  1974 in the year of his toil, paused and with rippling  jowls and troubled face, he pronounced, “Well, I’m not  a crook!”

The troubled Nixon was to finish his troubled presidency a few months later. 

The troubled Obama is not yet scheduled  to finish his troubled presidency  until  January 19, 2013 at the very earliest.  By that time this Marxist will have chosen two new Sonya Sotomayors, have given 11,476,409,003 speeches with teleprompter, 4,388,592,211, 909 apperances on tv, and will have introduced legislation totalling $44,300,000,000,000 increase in government debt. 

Dennis Prager would prefer that I spell that last total to demonstrate its full meaning; “forty four thousand three hundred Billion dollars of new debt. In 2012  Barack will still fault GW Bush for spending the seven hundred eighty two billion dollar bailout package calling it “wasteful” extravagance, overlooking the fact Obama supported the bill as well. 

The troubled graduate student president will still be lecturing Americans to pinch and save  and stop wasting money by going to Las Vegas.  Instead they should be watching their every penny so as not to fall into the trap of irresponsible spending as do those crooks in Washington.

Educators: Students will learn more American history if 75% of its history is eliminated!

 The following is an article by Molly Henneberg at Fox News: 

He may be the president who governed during the Civil War, freeing the slaves, but under a new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools, U.S. history would begin years after President Lincoln, with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877.

State education leaders say this may help students learn about more recent history in greater depth.

“We are certainly not trying to go away from American history,” Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told Fox News. “What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where students are connected to it, where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day.”

As the North Carolina curriculum stands now, ninth-grade students take world history, 10th-graders study civics and economics and 11th-graders take U.S. history going back to the country’s founding.

Under the proposed change, the ninth-graders would take a course called global studies, focusing in part on issues such as the environment. The 10th grade still would study civics and economics, but 11th-graders would take U.S. history only from 1877 onward.

Math, science and English classes are also getting an update.

Critics say the state’s decade-old high school curriculum may need an update — but not like this.

“The answer isn’t to throw out fundamental portions of U.S. history,” said Mike Belter, a U.S. history teacher and social studies director. “This is not preparing our kids to have a deep historical perspective that can be used to analyze modern events for themselves.”

Educational policy analyst Terry Stoops agrees.

“I’m all for a global outlook, but it should not be at the expense of American history and learning about American institutions and ideas,” he told Fox News.

But those considering the proposal say kids will still learn the basics.

“The students are in school for 13 years,” said Garland. “They certainly are taught U.S. and North Carolina history in middle school.”

Garland says they’re making this curriculum revision process very public to get as much feedback as possible.

Comment:   I write this commentary  as a former high school teacher and once a member of a university department of “education” for five years.   I entered this university’s program for teachers against knowledge in 1959.  The established professors of the department, both male and female, even then were already championing the new age of feminized education where feelings about views began to trump knowledge and facts related to views.  Knowing dates or major events, even personalities of history, for example, had already been scorned. 

Verbalizing ones views  regardless of facts eventually became  advertised as a new enlightenment.  Students at last became liberated,  “Liberalized”,  free to create their own opinions without knowledge.  One became  “equal”  in hating the American struggle in Vietnam, then hating white America itself, which included  demonizing and then eliminating from learnings,  its heroes.  This   eventually created today’s school curricula making room for a feminine romance  for Marxism leading  to the indoctrination of America’s young to believe that the  Marxist goal to build a new society based on  forced “equality”  is  superior to the traditional American reverence for liberty and individual pursuit of happiness.  Marxism is superior in assuring peace in the world.  It’s people won’t  think bad thoughts and pursue greed.  Better yet, they won’t think.

President Obama’s message of Marxist expansion of government power  is in synch  with the goals of the teacher groups which teach America’s  school teachers.  Obama friend, Bill Ayers, is one of the new Marxist leaders in American “education”.

Obama’s “Care” for America Is a Front for His Marxism

I came across an article by David Paul Kuhn at realclearpolitics.  He reminded readers of some words of one of America’s greatest Americans, Ronald Reagan.  Mr. Reagan spoke American because he believed in America.  How does president Obama speak?

Barack Hussein Obama the unbeliever in America?  The  Marxist Obama?   Listen to Obama sermons and compare them with the words and actions of real American presidents, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

Mr. Kuhn writes:    “Election Day 1988 was only days away. Ronald Reagan was headlining a rally in Nevada. He said the options were the same as “when I stood before you.” Reagan framed the Democratic “choice” as one for “liberal policies of tax and spend, economic stagnation, international weakness, accommodation, and always, always blame America first.”

Reagan-era framing is regaining its relevance. Fair or not, liberalism’s worst stereotypes have returned from the dead to haunt Democrats. “Tax and spend liberal,” it’s back with the charge of being soft on security threats – a claim that dogged Democrats from debates over crime to the Soviets to terrorism.

Kuhn refers to the Scott Brown election a few weeks ago.  “Brown’s upset was trail blazed by some combination of the economy, terrorism, health care, and general disatisfaction with Demcrats.Election day polling found that the economy and health care were the issues most on voter’s minds.

Brown’s stance against health care reform, like the GOP nationally, was framed around the Reagan era argument that electing a Republican would AT LEAST stop Democrats from making big government bigger………

,,,,In March 2009, 32 percent said Obama was an “old style tax-and-spend Democrat” in the ABC News/Washington Post poll. By July, 43 percent believed the same. The question has not been asked since. But it’s a reasonable guess, amid lost ground on related issues, that more adults would likely apply the term to Obama today. Then there is the return of “socialist” as a rhetorical dodge ball, evoking mid-twentieth century framing wars.

Obama appears to realize it now. His proposals over the past month – from tax cuts focused on the middle class to a discretionary budget freeze for all but security spending – betray a White House increasingly forced to refute the liberal stereotypes of old.”

Comment:  Obama realizes nothing of the sort.  His sweet words and gentle intentions are fronts. 

Our president’s god is Marxism.  What is it the American people don’t understand about Marxism?    Whereever Marxists rule government expands at citizen expense resulting in less and less citizen freedom and responsibility, the basic requirements for a human being becoming an adult.   Government ownership of private life and enterprise is the goal by fair means or foul!  Every year we elect these Leftwingers, we walk deeper and deeper into the Marxist darkness of government dictatorship!

Obama learned his Marxism at college, and afterwards from Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers. 

Obama is still in college mentally.  He lectures to his citizen children as if he were indoctrinating  beginning freshmen “students”.  Marxism is the religion of the modern university.  Its  god is government.  God in the religious sense, the JudeoChristian sense, “the opiate of the people”,  is dead.  

The Marxist priests preach a doctrine of world domination via the United Nations.  There is no need for competing political thought….What other thought could there be which is more true, more peace loving, creating more equality  than the religion of Marxism?    It is the only religion the American court system promotes.

Obama as a democrat is a front.  Obama’s love for America is a front.  Obama’s respect for the democratic process is a front!   Listen to him talk!   Please, pay attention to his own words and deeds!  Where is this Pied Piper going with our American democracy?    Two thousand plus pages of legislation called “The Health Care Reform America Needs!”  No one has read it..no one can read it.  Lawyers are required to interpret each page.  IS THIS THE HEALTH CARE AMERICA WANTS?

Follow the Wikipedia resume of Obama’s developing years as a Marxist!  No mention is made, however,  of the the 22 year “religious”  liaison with his “father figure”…using Obama’s own words, Jeremiah Wright…….Have you already forgotten the Reverend Jeremiah Wright?

From Wikipedia:

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College.^[24] After two years he transferred in 1981 to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations^[25] and graduated with a B.A. in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation,^[26][27] then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.^[28][29]

Chicago community organizer and Harvard Law School

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman and Riverdale) on Chicago’s far South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988.^[28][30] During his three years as the DCP’s director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000. He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants’ rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.^[31] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.^[32] In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time in Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time.^[33] He returned in August 2006 in a visit to his father’s birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya.^[34]
In late 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year,^[35] and president of the journal in his second year.^[36] During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.^[37] After graduating with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude^[38] from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.^[35] Obama’s election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention^[36] and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations,^[39] which evolved into a personal memoir. The manuscript was published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.^[39]

University of Chicago Law School and civil rights attorney

In 1991, Obama accepted a two-year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book.^[40] He then served as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years; as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004 teaching constitutional law.^[41]
From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois’s Project Vote, a voter registration drive with a staff of ten and 700 volunteers; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, and led to Crain’s Chicago Business naming Obama to its 1993 list of “40 under Forty” powers to be.^[42]
In 1993 he joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a law firm of 12 attorneys that specialized in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.^[43]
Obama served from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project, and also from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Joyce Foundation.^[28] He served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to 1999.^[28]

Obama and Pelosi, Leftwing Dems Continue Government Takeover of Health Industry

 

The National Center of Policy Analysis reports:

• Late last week, Speaker Pelosi made clear her continuing commitment to passing comprehensive, government-run health care legislation, stating that despite opposition, “We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in.”
• On Sunday, notwithstanding polling to the contrary, White House senior advisor David Axelrod asserted that the American people want health care reform, saying, “They want us to act. They would like us to work together to do it.” In fact, the budget President Obama just sent to Congress assumes health reform will pass.
• During the State of the Union address, President Obama called for Congress to press forward on health care, saying, “Do not walk away from reform. Not now.”
• Chairman of the Senate Health Committee, Senator Tom Harkin revealed just how close lawmakers were to achieving government-run health care. Harkin admitted that in the days prior to Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, Senate and House negotiators reached a final deal on health care reform.