Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Education, Freedom, History, Law, The United States | Tags: "President's Day", Studying American History, What We Don't Know Hurts
I dislike President’s Day, which is a mixture of Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday, supposedly honoring both of our most important presidents, but mostly an occasion for a three-day weekend and special sales. I liked it better when little kids cut out pictures of log cabins and cherry trees and axes, which at least indicated the possibility that schools might actually be talking about President Lincoln and President Washington, albeit with faulty symbols.
The warfare between President Obama’s Democratic Party and the Republican-led House over the budget, the national debt, entitlements and regulation represents an historic chasm over the size and scope of the federal government. Understanding accurately just what is at stake in the struggle requires knowledge of American History. That is the very subject that today’s liberal education is denying to today’s college students.
The Constitution begins “We the People of the United States , In Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Note that We the People is in great big letters for a reason.
A recent report from the National Association of Scholars (NAS) “Recasting History: Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History?” clearly demonstrates that our colleges and universities are doing a bad job. History departments promote a distorted vision of America by concentrating on the teaching of race, class, and gender at the expense of nearly everything else. Universities usually avoid transparency and accountability, so it’s hard to determine what is actually being taught in their classrooms.
Texas mandates that undergraduates in the public universities take two courses in American history, and that faculty member’s backgrounds, research interests, course assignments be easily available.At the University of Texas, 78 percent of the courses through which students could satisfy the American history requirement devoted half or more of their readings to issues of race, class and gender. At Texas A&M 50 percent of the courses did the same. Key documents of American history were rarely assigned. In 2010 not one qualifying course for the history requirement asked students to read the Mayflower Compact or Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.
I took little history in College, largely because my history professor was a date freak. His concept of history was ordered by dates rather than understanding of how events followed each other. He was big on snap-quizzes on Saturday mornings at 8:00 a.m. in which he would ask us to enumerate what happened between 1872 and 1893, for example. That turned me off of history for several years, until I discovered that not all historians approached history in that way, and learned that history could be fascinating. Many universities do not require any American history.
Last week we learned that according to a study of 2,200 people by the National Science Foundation, one in four Americans do not know the Earth orbits the Sun, and fewer than half know that humans evolved from earlier species. The survey is conducted every two years and is reported to the President and Congress. The president believes that sending more Americans to college is the answer to economic growth. Andrew Cuomo has just announced that he wants to send the people incarcerated in New York prisons to college. Where apparently, studies in race, class and gender will make them employable in the 21st century. At least they couldn’t cut class.
If we are to retain our liberty, we must have some understanding of our own history and some understanding of how the country is supposed to operate. When a president takes it upon himself to revise laws, change laws in direct contradiction to his oath of office under the Constitution, why would those who have never read the whole Constitution nor learned about past struggles to preserve our adherence to the Constitution think it is a big deal?
“The clear lesson of history is that individual liberty, the basic underpinning of American society, requires constant defense against the encroachment of the state.” (Walter Wriston) Will the people who don’t know that the Earth orbits the Sun understand what is important about the preservation of individual liberty and why? Sending more kids to college to study race, class and gender isn’t going to do it.
Filed under: Education, History, Science/Technology | Tags: A Mammoth Tusk, A Seattle Construction Site, Ten Thousand Years Ago
Local news: A tusk, believed to be from an Ice Age mammoth, was found Tuesday at a South Lake Union construction project. The tusk was found on private property, so the landowner will decide what to do with it, but the Burke Museum paleontologists are very interested in excavating it. It’s a good way to learn a little more about what is under Seattle’s fabled seven hills and the bluest skies bit. (both are fables—there were bits of blue today and the temperature hit 58°). The Seattle Times said:
Mammoths and their ancient elephant elephant relative, mastodons, inhabited the ice-free lands of North America. Mammoths arrived from Asia about 2 million years ago, while mastodons lived in North America from about 15 million to 9,000 years ago. Both became extinct as the glaciers started receding at the end of the Ice Age, between 10,000 and 11,000 years ago.
Some mammoths grew to 12 feet at the shoulder, their tusks curved down from the face and then upwards at the ends. They chewed grass with large, flat teeth similar to elephant’s teeth.
Mammoth fossils have been found in various locations around the Pacific Northwest. Seattle, for those unfamiliar with the area, borders on Puget Sound to the West, and lies between the Sound and Lake Washington on the East which borders Bellevue on the West, then Lake Sammamish on the East. Lake Union is a smaller affair, connecting the Sound and Lake Washington with locks and canals.
(photo: Jeff Estep/Transit Plumbing)
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Education, Regulation, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Chicago Politics, Gangster Government, President Obama's Economics
One of the problems is that President Obama learned his economics from Saul Alinsky, I guess. We are not allowed to see his transcripts, so no one knows if he ever had a course in economics. He was reported to be the best student of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals ever.
Andy McCarthy summed up the Alinsky approach in his excellent book, The Grand Jihad.
Alinskyites, though, are more sophisticated, patient, and practical. They bore in, hollowing out the system from within, taking on the appearance and argot of the heartland. Their single, animating goal is to overthrow the capitalist social order, which they claim to see as racist, corrupt, exploitative, imperialistic, etc. Everything else — including the cultivation of like-minded Islamists — is negotiable. They reserve the right to take any position on any matter, to say anything at any time, based on the ebb and flow of popular opinion. That keeps them politically viable while they radically transform society. Transform it into what, they haven’t worked out in great detail — except that it will be perfect, communal, equal and just.
Filed under: Education, Freedom, Politics, Terrorism | Tags: Lack of Common Sense, The American Schoolhouse, Zero Tolerance Policies
Liberty Pen has assembled recent examples of the zero tolerance policies of our schools. It’s time for a zero tolerance policy for over-zealous principals who do damage to our children because they themselves cannot distinguish between absurd levels of political correctness and a real threat.
In the meantime, the acts of violence prevented by their zealotry — zero. Loss of respect for a school’s overzealous pursuit of a useless zero tolerance policy — immeasurable.
I’m for the kids. They have more sense.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Education, Election 2014, Taxes | Tags: electoral fraud, IRS Regulations, Silencing the Tea Party
During the long negotiations over the budget deal, Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal reports that Obama’s top priority was keeping the IRS clamp on Republican 501(c)(4) groups. The vehicle for that is the recently proposed IRS rule that redefines “educational activities” as excluding anything of a political nature that 501(c)(4) non-profits have routinely conducted.
This would be anything like moral opposition to ObamaCare’s contraception-coverage regulation. Or training poll-watchers, or other efforts to true the vote. This puts a muzzle on Tea Party groups who want to train their members in responding to political skullduggery, and intends to put them out of business. Democrats depend on fudging the vote with previously deceased voters, voting in more than one location, finding “extra” votes, and helping those who are not qualified voters — to vote, like illegals and felons.
Treasury is going to great lengths to keep the process behind the rule secret. The Obama supporter who was put in charge of the investigation of the IRS has unsurprisingly found no real fault, but only misunderstandings and a little mismanagement. The FBI could find no problem with the IRS, except careless mistakes and nothing that could be prosecuted. The 90-day comment period on the proposed IRS regulation ends on February 27.
Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who represents targeted tea party groups filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Treasury and the IRS in December, demanding documents or correspondence with the White House or outside groups in the formulation of this rule. By law, the government has 30 days to respond. Treasury sent a letter to Ms. Mitchell this week saying it wouldn’t have her documents until April — after the rule’s comment period closes. It added that if she didn’t like it, she can “file suit.” The IRS has not yet responded.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Economy, Education, Election 2014, History, Law, Politics, Progressivism, The Constitution | Tags: Eliminating Tea Party Opposition, IRS Targeting Continues, Winning Elections
Republicans are arguing — as usual — about who is a Conservative, an Establishment Republican, a Moderate, a RHINO, a Tea Party member, a Libertarian, and who is the right representative of the right side of the political spectrum. And not just that — but who is conservative enough — call it the purity test.
Republicans are arguing about ideas, principles and policies, what is Constitutional and what is not. They are furiously writing blogs, op-eds, books, tweets and deluging their members of Congress with their opinions, worries and anger.
Democrats, on the other hand, are focused intently and exclusively on winning the next election. That’s what Democrats do. They have gone to great pains to insist that they knew nothing about any IRS targeting of 501 (c)(4) conservative nonprofits before the 2012 election. The IRS has claimed, um, mismanagement, ever so sorry, all fixed now. The FBI has obediently said that criminal charges will not be filed, nothing to see here, and no, we didn’t find it necessary to interview any of the 501(c)(4) groups who were targeted by the IRS. We just knew that there couldn’t be any criminal act here. This is your federal government.
That taken care of, the Democrats have been at even greater pains this week to ensure that the same conservative groups are silenced in the 2014 midterms. Kim Strassel explains in the Wall Street Journal:
That’s the big, dirty secret of the omnibus negotiations. As one of the only bills destined to pass this year, the omnibus was—behind the scenes—a flurry of horse trading. One of the biggest fights was over GOP efforts to include language to stop the IRS from instituting a new round of 501(c)(4) targeting. The White House is so counting on the tax agency to muzzle its political opponents that it willingly sacrificed any manner of its own priorities to keep the muzzle in place.
The Treasury Department and the IRS introduced a new rule during the Thanksgiving recess to “improve” the law governing nonprofits. What the rule does is recategorize as “political” all manner of educational activities that 501(c)(4) groups now engage in. This is again IRS targeting, this time by administration design and with the straightforward political goal of putting tea party groups out of business, according to House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI).
Kim Strassel says according to her sources, Democrats had their own priorities, but “went all in” on keeping the IRS rule, even if it meant losing their own plans. Mr. Camp’s committee notes that Treasury appears to have combed through the list of previously targeted Tea Party groups, compiled a list of their main activities and then restricted those functions. The White House is using the IRS to win an election this fall.
Democrats have been alarmed by the Tea Party. They are unaccustomed to Republicans as activists, speaking out, picketing, holding demonstrations. The idea of ordinary Americans uniting in opposition to the policies of the administration is really scary. Who knows what they might do next? Treasury is going to great lengths to keep secret the process behind the rule which is directed only at 501(c)(4) social-welfare groups. Mr.Obama’s union foot soldiers who file as 501(c)(5) can continue to play politics.
Democrats freely admit that they have no principles, but act on circumstances. Their policies have not done too well, and ObamaCare has awakened the nation to that fact. They have, however, gone to great lengths to make sure they win elections by fair means or foul.
There was the “Secretary of State Project” designed to elect Democrats to that office in every state, because that was the officer in charge of elections. There is the ongoing effort to claim that asking a voter to show picture ID to prove their identity and their eligibility to vote is racist, and make it unlawful to require such identification. Here in Washington State where vote fraud has been a way of life, we now vote by mail, which makes fraud much easier, and voter ID more difficult to confirm.
If your only goal is winning, you don’t have to worry about the effect of your policies on the nation. That is becoming significantly apparent.
Filed under: Education, Politics, The United States | Tags: Equal Rights Amendment, NOW 1966, The Clock is Turning Back
“I am woman hear me roar, In numbers too big to ignore,”
Hillary is apparently planning to run on Women’s Liberation, to show that she is completely up-to-date. She warns in a new book that the “clock is turning back” on women across America and offers a passionate argument for prioritizing the advancement of women and girls. It’s 1966 once more.
[Fighting] to give women and girls a fighting chance isn’t just a nice thing to do. It isn’t some luxury that we only get to when we have time on our hands. This is a core imperative for every human being in every society. If we do not continue the campaign for women’s rights and opportunities, the world we want to live in — and the country we all love and cherish — will not be what it should be.
Well, I am woman too, but I’ve never been able to think properly of myself as a victim of a male dominated society. I have never been particularly impressed with the idea of “the first woman…” It’s fine to notice that Janet Yellen is the first woman to head the Fed, but her gender is not the important question, the important question is her capability and her intent.
Hillary’s career has been notable for starting things, advocating for things, but never accomplishing much. Her career as Secretary of State was notable only for the amount of air miles she racked up — and a reset button.
Filed under: Education, Freedom, Fun n Games, Heartwarming, Humor | Tags: A Daily Surprise, Making Magic For the Kids, Sharpies & Sandwich Bags
In 2008, David LaFerriere decided to surprise his kids at school, drawing on the sandwich bags he packed in their lunches. The kids loved it, so he kept drawing. Every day they are greeted with a new creation their dad has made for them.Now, five years after the first drawing, he has created over one thousand lunchtime surprises, cataloging them all on Flickr.
A little magic and an act of love that lets the kids know you’re thinking of them.
Dave is a graphic designer, and his work has been featured on Sharpie’s website, but you don’t have to draw well to create magic for your kids. They will probably never remember the Christmas or birthday presents, but they will always remember the magic. Here’s the rest of the story.
Here’s another example of fatherly magic. The coolest tooth-pull ever! When this kid is old and grey, he will still remember the time his dad tied his tooth to a rocket, and laugh.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Education, Freedom, Health Care, Politics, Regulation | Tags: Anti-Childhood Obesity, Michelle Obama, School Lunches
It seems odd. but there are fads in issues as well as fashions. When’s the last time you heard a rant about childhood obesity? The First Lady took that one on as her personal project. First Ladies apparently must have a “project.” Lady Belle Johnson was enthusiastic about wildflowers, Laura Bush promoted childhood reading, Nancy Reagan took on drug abuse. I cannot remember what if anything was Hillary’s project. I remember that she was quite determined to be a “co-president” along with her husband — which didn’t go over well with the public at all.
Michelle Obama took on childhood obesity as her special project, and supported new rules that would restrict calories and limit portion sizes in school meals. Her ideas suffered from the same problems as her husband’s. “One size fits all” didn’t fit the nation’s school children. The calorie restrictions and smaller portions left kids who were active sports participants hungry. The food police rejected lunches prepared at home that did not fit the new USDA guidelines, making many parents furious. There was little recognition of the foods that kids like. If you have ever visited a school lunch room at lunchtime, you will have seen the enormous waste as kids throw away the foods that they don’t like.
I can sympathize. I still remember scraping the tomato aspic off my plate into the napkin in my lap while a confederate distracted the nun’s attention. I don’t know if she was fooled, but we all hated tomato aspic, and probably all still do till this day.
The modified meals, which took effect starting with the 2012 school year, were aimed to limit fat and salt, curb portion sizes and boost fruit and vegetable servings. Under the guidelines, half of breads and other grain-based foods offered must contain whole grains until the start of the 2014 school year, when all such foods must be whole-grain.
Schools that adopted the changes got more money back from the federal government, in part to offset the higher prices of “healthier foods.” Read that as the heavy hand of government will direct what your child eats, or you will pay! Children cannot possibly make proper choices without government control.
There is some question about governmental estimates of obesity and overweight. The guidelines may be all one size, but kids aren’t. Some kids are small and skinny by nature. Others are stocky, but not fat. Obesity estimates seem to have come from Body Mass Index (BMI) guesstimate or measurements which were not meant to serve such a purpose. Some kids get their growth early, and tower over others who are the same age.
Over time, those who produce school lunches have learned a lot about what kids like — pizza for example. Pizza can be healthy food, and a good way to get the vegetables down. The standards have not been ended, but “relaxed.” Kids will get more meat and increased weekly maximum amounts for grains and meat alternatives. School districts can serve larger portions without penalty.
The other part of the equation is recess and activity. For a while, at least, competition was out, as were competitive sports. It was thought that having ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ was bad for the kids self-esteem, which ended up reducing the activity in recess. That last sentence in the previous paragraph should cause any parent major anxiety. “School districts can serve larger portions without penalty.” How did we get here?
Filed under: Politics, Education, Economy, Media Bias, Health Care, Energy, Capitalism, Regulation | Tags: "Do-Nothing Congress", The American Dream, The Yearly Summing-Up
I always hate the week between Christmas and New Years. The Media does the “Great Summing Up.” Lists and rankings, best and worst, biggest news stories, best photos, most notable deaths, the best books, the worst books, the funniest cartoons and the best and worst movies. These are not exactly think pieces.
The American Dream is dying, or dead. Things are really bad and only getting worse. The Least Productive Congress in History? The Do-Nothing Congress has been good for America, and if they pass few new laws, we can breathe slightly more easily. Congress passed just 70 laws, which may be too many. But Obama and Congressional Democrats planned an array of Big Government initiatives — gun control, immigration reform, a higher minimum wage, more job creation, infrastructure (again!), climate change, and education, to name only a few. Congress ended the year with none of those initiatives signed into law. And we are far better for it. No major tax hike, and the probability of a major tax hike in the next year has fallen.
Congress’ approval rating fell to a new low in a November Gallup poll at 9%, and 72% of Americans agreed that “big government” was the nation’s Number One threat. That is an encouraging opinion.
It used to be that a limited government with only modest aims was the guiding principle of nearly every Congressman. Until some sanity is restored to Congress, gridlock may be the best thing we can hope for. A year spent thoughtfully repealing useless laws, wretched excess, and governmental duplication would do us a world of good.
Markets have been encouraged by governmental inaction. Businessmen are not quite so frightened about what government might do next. In 2013, the growth oriented NASDAQ has surged 40%. Markets look six months to a year on down the road.
The EPA is facing real questions about just what ‘science’ they are relying on in their push for power and control. They are backing off their attempt to require 15% corn ethanol in gasoline, which will save many cars and all sorts of small engines. Inaction from the EPA would be a real boon to the economy.
The Democratic majority is running scared from the ObamaCare disaster and its potential influence on the 2014 election. The President is not going to win back the approval of the American people easily. The economy might survive after all. Let’s hear it for gridlock, and root for another do-nothing year in the nation’s capitol.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Education, Freedom, History, Liberalism, Politics, Socialism, The United States | Tags: America's Colleges and Universities, Eliminating History, Race Class and Gender
I was startled recently to read that “the eleven elite liberal arts colleges that make up the New England Small College Athletic Conference, which includes Amherst, Williams, Trinity and Wesleyan” — not one of these eleven colleges requires undergraduates to take a single course in American history. In fact, most of these eleven elite colleges don’t even require that students who are majoring in history, take any American history courses.”
More than 50% of our new history PhDs are now trained in women and gender history, cultural history, or world and African-American history.
Hoover Institution senior fellow Peter Berkowitz recently noted that the trench warfare between the parties reflects a profound and historic difference of opinion over the size and scope of the federal government.
Because the people are the ultimate source of legitimate power in a liberal democracy, the United States has an interest in a citizenry well-acquainted with the principles on which our political order is based; the nature and development of our economic system; the role of diplomacy and military affairs in securing American liberties; the impact on our manners and mores of religious belief; and the quest for equal treatment of minorities, women, and the poor.
He adds that, unfortunately, according to a new report by the National Association of Scholars “Recasting History: Are Race, Class, and Gender Dominating American History?,” our colleges and universities are doing a bad job. History departments promote a drastically incomplete and distorted view of America by concentrating on the teaching of race, class, and gender at the expense of nearly everything else.
I have read dozens of articles about the huge problem of enormous college loans, which usually vectors into a conversation suggesting that college in no longer a worthwhile investment. It is not the amount of money involved alone, but the superficial ideas imparted. Are our colleges and universities turning out graduates who are qualified only to work in the world’s human resources departments?
Leftist activists now dominate the study and teaching of U.S. history. The heavy emphasis is on race, class and gender with all the more traditional topics reconfigured to conform to the dominant paradigm. It is about social justice. If we wonder why the players seem not to understand the history behind events, and behind efforts like the Affordable Care Act and why it is such a dismal mess, it is because they are ignorant of history and interested in social justice, which I assume to be some sort of romantic attachment to the idea that everyone should be equal? U.S., diplomatic, military, political and constitutional history are rearranged to conform to the race, class and gender paradigm.
This is beyond absurd. We cannot predict the future, much as we try. Our only guidelines are to be found in the record of what humanity has tried, and where they have succeeded and where they have failed. Noble ideas about all men being born equal with the chance to make of themselves what they will, have been transformed in the intellectual closets of academe to questions of who can use which bathrooms, and those who need the guidelines that were once provided by America’s colleges and universities are left with enormous debts and empty heads.
An ideological movement is a collection of people many of whom could hardly bake a cake, fix a car, sustain a friendship or a marriage, or even do a quadratic equation, yet they believe they know how to rule the world. The university , in which it is possible to combine theoretical pretension with comprehensive ineptitude, has become the natural habitat of the ideological enthusiast. A kind of adventure playground, carefully insulated from reality in order to prevent absent-minded professors from bumping into things as they explore transcendental realms, has become the institutional base for civilizational self-hatred.
Kenneth Minogue
ADDENDUM: Here’s Heather McDonald of the Manhattan Institute on the substitution of Western Greats with gender studies. Raise this subject around the Thanksgiving table instead of ObamaCare.
