Setting Aside Political Differences for Common Goals

-By Frank Salvato

American politics has become so caustic that many engaged in the process have become blind to the fact that there are many common goals that exist between the two factions that currently hold good government hostage. Clear thinking Americans – those not slavishly beholden to opinion polls and special interest groups – understand that the overwhelming majority of us have more in common than not. To this point it will be the wise politico that will take advantage of harnessing the energy of polar opposite groups to achieve common goals.

Let’s take two issues that have a common goal but that also have supporters firmly planted on the opposite ends of the political spectrum: alternative energy sources and energy independence.
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Teaching Communism to Our Children in Seattle

-By Warner Todd Huston

Any number of examples can be found these days to illustrate the poor or destructive education received by our children in the United States today. All across the country our children are being slighted by Teacher’s Unions and organizations who don’t wish to teach but wish to indoctrinate our children with their brand of political activism. From the whitewashing and PCing of our history textbooks to the failed “new” concepts in teaching being so regrettably foisted upon our little ones as an “education,” the examples are legion and can be found with ease. That activism is almost universally in the socialist or communist mode of thinking, one antithetical to the whole of the American experience. It is a mode of thinking designed to destroy the things that make America great.

No better example can be found than that out of the Hilltop Children’s Center of Seattle, Washington, where recently an experiment in communism was imposed upon the innocent children who were unfortunate enough to have had their unthinking parents force them to attend.*

In the face of a perfect example of the natural inclinations of man acted out by the children at this Seattle indoctrination center, the “teachers” there decided that their class room offered the perfect opportunity to, in their words, “launch a critical evaluation of … the inequities of private ownership and hierarchical authority on which it was founded.”

In other words, these teachers decided that the truly human characteristics exhibited by their students, those characteristics upon which our Founding Fathers based the greatest political experiment in liberty and freedom known to man, needed to be crushed, and that their children needed to have their humanity wiped clean in favor of a new, “collectivist” way of thinking. These so-called teachers’ goal was not one of happenstance, but one of purposeful indoctrination in communist thinking. The kind of thinking responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of people in the 20th century — millions in the 20th and still counting into the 21st.
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BET TV Airing a PSA Telling Kids to ‘Read a Mo F’n Book’?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Black Entertainment Television has been playing what is being called a Public Service Announcement created by a rapper named Bomani “D’mite” Armah. It is in cartoon form and made in the Rapper music video style. However, it contains some very offensive language even as the underlying message is one encouraging children to read by telling them to read a “mother****ing book, N***er.” It’s a mixed message, indeed. Do we need to encourage kids to read by cursing at them every other word in a song aired to them on a black centric television station? Is this the proper type of work that should be seen on BET?

The thing begins in a school auditorium with bored kids looking on. The cartoon rapper starts by playing Beethoven’s Fifth on a piano (the whole song is set to the Fifth Symphony). “D’Mite” starts off by telling the kids, “See, I used to do songs with hooks and concepts and sh*t, right? Well, f*ck that, I’m trying to go platinum!” It then goes into the first verse which is made up entirely of “Read a book, read a book, read a mah fuc*in book,” repeated over and over again.

It’s over-the-top and offensive to be sure. But is it the “right message” despite that and to be congratulated? BET sure thinks it should.
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Stirring the Flames of Race Baiting Over School Segregation

-By Warner Todd Huston

Reuters seems to be jumping into the fray over the Supreme Court’s latest decision on the issue of racial diversity in our schools. At least, it seems so because their latest story on the decision seems an advocacy piece against the Supreme Court and for forced “diversity” policies in our schools. In fact, Reuters seems only too happy to claim that the Supreme Court is causing “fear” in our innocent children in their piece titled, “Students, schools fear end of racial diversity.”

Reuters is obviously giving voice to this forced “diversity” and giving the bussing crowd the thumbs up in a report that also seems to say that black kids only “get in fights” when they go to predominately black schools.

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (Reuters) – Seventeen-year-old Quantae Williams doesn’t understand why the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his school district’s racial diversity program.

He now dreads the prospect of leaving his mixed-race high school in suburban Louisville and returning to the poor black downtown schools where he used to get in fights.

That seems vaguely racist, doesn’t it?
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If You’re Fat, So are Your Friends?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here is another reason why people look askance at University “researchers” and wonder why for smart guys they seem so stupid? Reuters passed on some stupid smart guy “research” that posits that if someone is fat, so will their friends and family become fat just the by association with that fat person.

Your best friend can make you fat: researchers

“This is the first (study) to show how obesity spreads through the social network from person to person to person,” James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, who worked on the study, told a telephone briefing.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers said their findings show that obesity is contagious — not like a virus is contagious, but in a social sense.

Maybe it’s the “first study” because it is so stupid that no one else would have bothered with it before?

So what is the idiocy they have miraculously “discovered”?
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THE AD YOUR KIDS SHOULD TAKE TO SCHOOL

-By Vince Johnson

It is a full-page ad designed to appear in such papers as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, or USA Today. The headline is in 72 point type and appears over a photo of 12 Middle School students in a classroom:

WILL YOU SEND US TO PRISON IF WE
REFUSE TO MAKE PAYMENTS ON YOUR DEBTS?

We are talking about your federal debt. You keep borrowing money from our future to finance wars, build billion dollar bridges between Alaskan villages, and “little” things like the multi-million dollar Indoor Rainforest Project in Iowa. You blame this continual borrowing on the politicians and do nothing except complain about it whenever you get tired of yakking about the weather.

If you were truly responsible adults, you would tell us the truth. You would tell us that you do not have enough money to pay for all the things you want, so you borrow from us. The amount is now around nine trillion dollars and increasing everyday. That’s Nine Thousand Billion Dollars you have borrowed from us!

How would you like it if we borrowed that kind of money directly from your future? How would you like it if we did it without your permission? How would you like it if we passed laws authorizing the courts to send you to prison if you refused to make payments on money we borrowed from you?

That is exactly what your generation is doing to our generation. If you want to discuss this further, please wait until we graduate from high school. These next four or five years may be the few remaining where we can be kids and never have to worry about our nation going bankrupt or how we can survive with what we have left after paying taxes.

This ad concept designed by Vince Johnson, Reality Consultant

I am a veteran of WW II and the Korean Conflict. I believe it is unconstitutional to force our children to make payments on a debt we created without their knowledge or approval. If you agree, print this article and have your kids use it at school for “Show and Tell.”
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Making a Difference

-By Thomas E. Brewton

If Christianity hasn’t made a positive difference in your life, you haven’t fully embraced it.

The question posed by Sunday’s sermon at Black Rock-Long Ridge Congregational Church (North Stamford, Connecticut) was “How Can I Be a New Creation?”

Rev. Josh Feay’s main text was:

Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:11-17)
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True Grit: Winning the Hearts and Minds of Al-Qaida

-By Lee Culpepper

I wonder if John Wayne is glad to be dead. If he were alive, I imagine our impotent politicians’ apologizing to the public about Iraq would kill him. Seems like America’s once-triumphant spirit endured through our unrelenting grit and hunger to prevail. Such perseverance remains a prerequisite to all success. Sadly, our new breed of representatives has no familiarity with the hunger necessary to win a war. Do you think our barbaric enemies suffer the same dilemma?

Have we simply grown used to life being too easy? Today 76% of the entire Congress has never served in the military (source: Military Officers Association of America). The 24% of Congress that has served should appreciate the perils inherent to military duty. People die during basic military exercises – danger is in the job description. The fact that warriors kill and also die is not romantic. Military victories come at high prices. Victory requires considerable pain and sacrifice. There was a time when Americans refused to consider defeat. However, the painful sacrifices we have endured in the past are now being polluted by nauseating, limp-wristed politicians who are folding to the insolence and intimidation of an enemy who rejoices in fear and death. Perhaps more telling of our politicians’ moral fiber appears in their cowering to opinion polls.
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Three Good Reasons to Become a Teacher: June, July & August

-By Nancy Salvato

“Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain, With the barkers and the colored balloons . . .”
– Neil Young

In the July 9, 2007 Issue of National Review is a short piece on “Workaholics”. In it, the author makes the argument that Americans are preoccupied, actually obsessed, with work. He comes to this conclusion based on a number of factors. First, he points out that any increase in leisure activities over the past four decades is due to electronic appliances making our lives easier. Secondly, people living in Italy, France, Germany, the UK, Canada and Japan can take advantage of 10-28 more vacation days than the average 14 allotted to Americans. Most remarkable is that, on average, Americans, don’t even take advantage of three of their vacation days.

Reading the aforementioned article, I couldn’t help but feel that the author, Kevin Hassett, could have explored this subject much further. Although interesting in and of itself, this tidbit of information was just the jumping off place for something more central in understanding what a cross section of Americans are willing to do to maintain a particular standard of living, forge a career, or keep a roof over their heads. Something else he doesn’t explore is the idea that there are people who do enjoy working, who find it feels a need in them to be doing something useful, perhaps for the betterment of society. But his most egregious omission is something that I, an education reformer, noticed straight away. What about teachers?
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When Even The Teachers Know Nothing

-By Warner Todd Huston

A short column by Ray Mcallister of the Richmond Times-Dispatch scolded a Virginia Middle School for having a drawing of Karl Marx on their graduation certificate. The school replied that they had thought that the drawing represented Frederick Douglas and didn’t realize they had been using a picture of Karl Marx.

As Mcallister reports:

Richmond schools spokeswoman Felicia Cosby called last night to explain:

“She really thought she was capturing clip art representing Frederick Douglass. She did a search to pull up Frederick Douglass and this is what came up… with the beard and the hair.”

It was all just a big mistake, you see?

OK. Maybe it was. Maybe this uninformed school teacher who helped design the graduation certificate didn’t know what Frederick Douglass looked like and mistook the Marx image for Douglass’. She just didn’t know.

But, if it was a mistake born from a lack of knowledge, does this make it all better? Can we just go on and forget about it? Is there no deeper meaning here?

I say a mistake is one thing, but this whole incident reveals that not only did this uninformed teacher not know what she was doing, but neither did the rest of the school’s design committee, the school board, or even the printer who printed the thing.
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More like Religious ILLiteracy!

-By Warner Todd Huston

– A review of the new book by Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn’t, Harper Collins, 2007, $24.95

Stephen Prothero should be hailed as the great “setter-righter” where it concerns truly how religious Americans are or aren’t. It is true, of course, that Americans are generally the more religious of the current great western nations, but the assumption that Americans know much about their religions or even how to BE religious is one that Prothero dispels quite well. He shows us that our actual knowledge of what our own religions really are, what they mean, what their history is and how they differ one from the other is being lost with time. He successfully proves that America is a religious country with little religious knowledge and that our claims at being religious ring a bit hollow.

The best thing about Prothero’s revelation is that he chronicles that our loss of religious knowledge didn’t just happen with the beginning of the counterculture in the 1960’s, but that it began to happen well before the Civil War in the 1800’s. According to Prothero, it is a result of our own democratic propensities, but regardless of why it has happened, we must take steps to stop it.
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Free Speech From the Mouths of Babes?

By Selwyn Duke

Last week the Supreme court handed down three free speech rulings that find favor with conservatives. One of them is Morse et al. v. Frederick, a case involving the free speech rights of students. At issue is a five year old incident wherein a Juneau-Douglas High School senior named Joe Frederick raised a 14-foot banner stating “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” and was subsequently suspended for “drug speech” by then school principal Deborah Morse. Writing for the majority in a five to four decision in favor of the school, Chief Justice John Roberts reasoned that the First Amendment should not be applied in this case because the student was encouraging drug use.

While I agree with the principal’s actions and take solace in the knowledge that educators’ hands won’t be further tied, the Supreme Court’s ruling does nothing to address what is the underlying problem. In fact, with the convoluted logic displayed by virtually all members of the court, it’s hard to find much to applaud in this judgment.

The real issue here extends far beyond this one case and harks back to a precedent set in 1969 in the Tinker v. Des Moines ruling, which divined from the Constitution a right to free speech in schools. Upon issuance of that decision the court stated,
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School Discipline

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Enforcing proper behavior is anathema to liberals, but essential to learning.

The recent Supreme Court decision in the MORSE ET AL. v. FREDERICK case, better known as the “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” case, has generated controversy, both because of the Court’s decision, and because of the concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas.

Facts of the case were the following:

At a school-sanctioned and school-supervised event, petitioner Morse, the high school principal, saw students unfurl a banner stating “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS,” which she regarded as promoting illegal drug use. Consistent with established school policy prohibiting such messages at school events, Morse directed the students to take down the banner. When one of the students who had brought the banner to the event—respondent Frederick—refused, Morse confiscated the banner and later suspended him.

The Court’s ruling, expressed in the opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts, was:

Because schools may take steps to safeguard those entrusted to their care from speech that can reasonably be regarded as encouraging illegal drug use, the school officials in this case did not violate the First Amendment by confiscating the pro-drug banner and suspending Frederick…. Our cases make clear that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503, 506 (1969). At the same time, we have held that “the constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings,” Bethel School Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U. S. 675, 682 (1986), and that the rights of students “must be ‘applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment.’
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A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing

-By Nancy Salvato

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.” — Alexander Pope

Around this time last year I participated in the Center for Civic Education’s National Academy, where Professor Will Harris led a selected group of students in 21 days of intense study on the basic issues of political theory, and the values and principles of American constitutional democracy. Early on, the importance of gaining a “surplus of mind,” as a crucial element of the democratic process, was discussed. In order to become thinkers or problem solvers, our citizenry must be taught by teachers who are ambitious in their learning goals. When teachers over simplify learning objectives, this conditions our citizenry to fail at more complicated tasks. Conversely, giving the populace the tools to figure out the world’s complexity enables each person to be more powerful and free. Moreover, this is a necessary component of our system of government.

To elaborate further, a surplus of knowledge is especially useful when dealing with unexpected situations. When weighing the possible consequences of a decision, an intelligent person draws on these reserves. The key to “intelligence” is a capacity to weigh the variables that come into play when assessing individual situations. A surplus of knowledge gives us a reasonable shot at being able to anticipate short and long term repercussions of actions or inaction. Indeed, as a colleague of mine recently noted, every choice comes with regret.
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A Nation of Sleepwalkers — Even Southerners Forget Their History

-By Warner Todd Huston

Many Americans from the north like to scoff that our southern brethren are still fighting the Civil War, treating them as if they are unaware that the war was over nearly 150 years ago. It has been so often repeated that southerners are still “Confederate” that the stereotype of the southerner looking to the past instead of the future is secure in northerner’s minds. Would that it were true that all southerners are so fond of their history because it appears that even one of the most famous Confederate cemeteries in the Confederacy’s very own capitol is being forgotten, uncared for, and repeatedly vandalized.

The bad news is that Oakwood cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, is being forgotten and ignored, and, as mentioned, it is also being increasingly vandalized. The good news is that a community group has not only volunteered to take upon themselves the upkeep and maintenance of the final resting place of 17,000 Confederate solders, but they have already raised $100,000 to do so. They have also gotten the blessing and legislative support of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the effort.

But even as dozens of grave markers are vandalized repeatedly by God knows who, the city of Richmond refuses even to take a meeting with the Sons of Confederate Veterans who are ready to take on the duty.
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Download Your FREE Gun Facts book – Fight Anti-Gun Propaganda

Gun Facts Version 4.2

Gun Facts is a free e-book that debunks common myths about gun control. It is intended as a reference guide for journalists, activists, politicians, and other people interested in restoring honesty to the debate about guns, crime, and the 2nd Amendment.

Gun Facts has 89 pages of information. Divided into chapters based on gun control topics (assault weapons, ballistic finger printing, firearm availability, etc.), finding information is quick and easy.
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Technophobia Serves the Status Quo

-By Nancy Salvato

Education is probably the most important element in a functioning democratic republic, one in which citizens’ value and are responsible for the maintenance of their individual freedoms balanced against the needs of the society as a whole. To ensure that members of the communities which make up our great nation have equal access to learning, schools must provide the same tools and information across socio-economic groups. This is no easy feat. Regardless of how well an education is delivered, each child will bring a different set of challenges to the table and every student will not take away the same experience. Still, a reasonable goal is to present everyone the opportunity to learn and thus be in a position to care for themselves and be responsible citizens. Therefore, we must strive to deliver every student a high quality education.

It can be argued that, “Technology provides both mechanical advantages over manual approaches and enables learning experiences that would otherwise have been impossible or highly improbable.” (1) While many people already take advantage of technological innovations, others for myriad reasons have not taken the steps to learn how to use these tools properly or to incorporate them into their everyday lives. While it is not an expectation that the average person integrate technology into their world, teachers have a responsibility to learn how to use computers and other devices so as not to put their students at a disadvantage. Not only can information be accessed and processed at a faster rate, but “intangible benefits such as high levels of satisfaction and motivation, improved self-esteem, are often noted as outcomes of technological innovation in education.” (2)
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We Should be More ‘British’ Says Tory Cameron – So Should Americans!

-By Warner Todd Huston

Several years ago, I wrote an article in which I urged our school systems to teach Americanism so that we could reestablish our American culture. I remember several letters scolding me for this notion, but I got far more agreeing with my main point; without our shared American culture we cannot stand as a nation.

I got one letter from a Brit extolling the virtues of his country saying that they didn’t “need to be British.” He said that it was fully accepted that being British was a meaningless construct and they didn’t need to be “British” there like we need to be “American” here. He was proud that they were somehow past all that “stuff and nonsense.”

Then came the bombings of 7/7.

Now comes the young leader of the British Conservatives, David Cameron, making the self-same argument I made back in 2002, but for his own countrymen. He feels they must be taught “Britishness” once again.
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The Devil of the West—Islam and Science (A Review)*

-By Gregory Stewart

In a recent article, in the July’s issue of Discover Magazine, by Todd Pitock, titled Science and Islam: Special Report–The Ultimate Conflict Between Science And Religion, begins with the usual insinuation of “Islamic” suspicion of embracing science. He infers that Islamists fundamentalist place blame squarely on the West for its role in hindering Arab countries development—like Egypt for instance. He speaks of Zaghloul El-Naggar, who views the West as evil incarnate—and sees the spiritual nature of his contemporaries—as waning and corrupt. In the sense that, the moral consciousness of the West’s scientists are “…’bringing the man far below the level of animals…’” In other words, like fundamentalist Christians, some of the Islamists feel and see science as subverting the word of God since it was has been by Him.

Admittedly, although Islam to some degree is willing to “acknowledge” the scientific method in the context that “its” scripture reveals, it is bounded; however, to the belief their prophets have provided the empirical knowledge. Pitock gives the examples of Islamic scientists using each other as sources to validate their work (p. 39). Thus, as he puts it, “creating the illusion” that proper research has been done.
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The Culture of Public Education

-By Lee Culpepper

While excuse makers and vacillating politicians bicker over immigration and No Child Left Behind, public education’s politically correct culture continues its noxious indoctrination of those confined inside its system. The kinder and gentler social experiments that masquerade as modern pedagogy are brainwashing many students into a bunch of low-achieving, over-sensitive, undisciplined, and dimwitted wimps. How anyone remains perplexed over floundering classroom performance eludes comprehension. The problem is in “the culture.”

Having taught high school English for nine years, I effectively ignored every buzzword imaginable of political correctness and so-called education reform. In a system notorious for tiptoeing around feelings and devaluing facts, I created a classroom environment that embraced merit and (when necessary) confronted the immaturity or apathy that inhibited learning. No, I did not acquire my approach from the peddled hoaxes camouflaged as teaching methods in today’s teacher education courses. On the contrary, I acquired my methods from sound training techniques and leadership principles I learned in the Marine Corps. Like the Corps, my classroom had its own culture: hard work, discipline, and responsibility. This was the only culture I tolerated, so multiculturalism had to be stomached somewhere else.
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For Such a Time as This

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Each of us must take individual responsibility for answering God’s call to help others, even at mortal peril to ourselves.

Our liberal, socialistic welfare state impels us to selfish indifference toward the needs of individuals in our midst. Benefits entitlements paid for by high taxes foster an attitude of “I gave at the office.” We shrug and walk on when we are asked to help needy individuals in our own backyards.

We become concerned only when a problem affects us directly. Our instinctive response then is to demand that the government do something about it.

There is nothing new about this. It became evident in the earliest days of socialism. Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1856 The Old Regime and the French Revolution observed that the French, after several decades of socialism, were concerned with one thing only — socialistic equality of status. Each person focused greedily upon what he demanded as his share of public largesse and was indifferent even to his own neighbors.

Under the secularity of socialism, only material things are regarded as valuable. And only the state, liberals presume, can provide the requisite material things. Spiritual matters are dismissed as unscientific ignorance.
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Making English the National Language

I’ve written about this about a dozen times these past few years. And here we are again with such a proposal. We get them nearly every year and every year Congress does nothing about them.

So here is the newest attempt:

English proposed as ‘national’ language

WASHINGTON, June 1 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate may consider making English the national language, not the common language included in immigration reform legislation.

The proposal from Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., would reduce the government services provided in languages other than English, the Washington Times reported Friday.

There is not an entitlement for language, other than the English language, to be given to people who want government services, Inhofe told the Times.

Many Democrats oppose the measure, which would lift President Bill Clinton’s executive order encouraging government services to be delivered in different languages, and its fate as an amendment to the immigration bill was uncertain.

The immigration bill would require former illegal aliens to show they had applied to take an English class after four years with a visa. They would have to pass the English requirement on the citizenship exam before getting a green card.

If we are proposing a “path to citizenship” then the sign posts on that path MUST be in English…. or NO citizenship.

Let’s hope that THIS time the idea gets through the heads of our Congress.

If I may quote a great American sage:

“If at first you don’t succeed, keep on succin ’til you do succeed!”

A Rod, a God, Two Nuts, and a Pedagogue

-By Lee Culpepper

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I was honored to be the guest on a radio program called Political Pistachio. The show’s host (Douglas Gibbs) and his wife (“Mrs. Pistachio”) invited me on to discuss several issues facing public education. I shared my inside view regarding two PC agendas polluting public classrooms:

multicultural excrement and artificial self-esteem. In nine years of teaching, I saw firsthand how PC programs retarded my students’ critical thinking skills and defiled American cornerstones like competition and self-reliance.

Multiculturalism and tolerance sound pleasant and polite, but their mesmerizing drones have paralyzed students’ ability to think. The staggering number of American students who cannot formulate meaningful arguments based on reason and facts is a serious concern, but why is anyone surprised? Multiculturalism orders students not to make judgments about anything, and tolerance deceives kids into believing that uninformed opinions are just as valid as reasoned arguments.

Considering these issues, the Pistachios and I discussed the appropriateness of teaching moral values in school.
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The Conservative Mind – A Must Read For All Americans

The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal has a great piece that all Americans should read to understand American Conservative theory, how it operates, what it posits and how it came to its conclusions.

If you are at all curious about why American Conservatism is different from European conservatives, read this piece. Even if you aren’t, this piece will give you a firmer foundation of what it is that American Conservatism is.

It might help you find some other reading material that might help you in your search for the true American Conservatism. It also shows how utterly bereft of intelligent thought is the American left… which is always good to have pointed out!

The Conservative Mind

The American right is a cauldron of debate; the left isn’t.

BY PETER BERKOWITZ
Tuesday, May 29, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

The left prides itself on, and frequently boasts of, its superior appreciation of the complexity and depth of moral and political life. But political debate in America today tells a different story.

On a variety of issues that currently divide the nation, those to the left of center seem to be converging, their ranks increasingly untroubled by debate or dissent, except on daily tactics and long-term strategy. Meanwhile, those to the right of center are engaged in an intense intra-party struggle to balance competing principles and goods.
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Middle Class An Endangered Species In Maryland

-By Frederick Meekins

With the reassertion of the monopoly of the Democratic Party over Maryland politics which for the previous four years had been what amounted to a party-and-a-half system, the jurisdiction jokingly referred to as “the Free State” is well on its way to becoming a socialist nightmare where only the hyper-rich or the fashionably impoverished having suppressed their own dignity to enjoy a life of entitlement program luxury will be able to eke out an existence there.

In my column “People’s Republic Of Maryland Taxing Its Subjects Into Submission”, I wrote about plans to enact legislation that will end up costing motorists about $2000 more just to purchase an automobile so that new vehicles in the state will be in compliance with California emission standards Now plans are being announced to sock residents even harder in the gut all in the name of protecting the environment.
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Taking the “Bull” out of Bullying

Lee Culpepper

Two years ago during a teachers’ staff meeting, the speaker caught my attention revealing that bullying causes over 150,000 student absences every day. She also reported the obvious as if it were profound — most kids eventually experience some form of bulling. When she stated bullying had become an epidemic in America, I started sensing the force behind this seminar.

Finally, the speaker described an incident that she witnessed at another school. Apparently, a teacher had been reprimanding a student in the hallway. She said this teacher had hovered too closely to the student while pointing his finger at the student’s chest. She accused the teacher of bullying – describing the actions as intimidating. Having no clue what this student had done, she claimed such reprimands are unacceptable.

Today, it takes guts to disregard political correctness. Teachers and administrators who dare to discipline firmly can face hysteria from hopeless supervisors, touchy-feely colleagues, permissive parents, and melodramatic headlines. The criticism seems more about appearing compassionate and understanding than actually confronting and correcting a child’s issues. Advocating friendship skills and nurturing skills makes such critics feel sophisticated, but pampering words alone don’t solve low self-esteem or behavior problems – two traits that some bullies and their victims often share. Even teenagers resent obvious con-jobs meant to manipulate better behavior. However, teaching self-discipline and how to overcome challenges does help.
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Dems Positioned to Create Permanent Underclass — From Illegal to Legal With the Stroke of a Pen … GOP Buckles Under

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Democrat Party is angling to destroy the economic and societal balance of the United States by creating a permanent lower class that it can exploit for votes … and the Republicans are helping them.

Now, before you go off castigating me for going off into tin-foil hat territory, I am not saying that this is their stated goal. I do not believe that the Democrats think they are creating a permanent lower, slave class. But, they are looking to create a permanent class of voters who will keep them in power because those voters would ostensibly be forever dependent upon Democrats’ control of government handouts. And that, when all is said and done, is just the same as intending to keep lower class, uneducated (currently) illegal aliens in thrall and enslaved to Democrat Party operatives and in a permanent status as lower class citizens unable to rise from their downtrodden position on the lowest rungs of the ladder of success.

An unregulated flow of immigrants across our southern border has opened the door to the least educated members of the nations south to come here and exploit the opportunities open to them in the USA. They come here to better their lives, and who could blame them? The hellholes they are coming from would cause any sane man to risk all to leave there and come to the USA. Americans who get upset over this law breaking, wondering what kind of scum-bag would purposefully break the law like that, are righteously angry, but that anger is based on a serious misunderstanding of the world these people are leaving.
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Understanding the Worth of Our Nation

-By Frank Salvato

It is difficult to value something when its worth is unknown. The adage of one child being given a toy only to leave it out in the rain to rust, never understanding the toys worth, while another child made to earn the same toy is found to take care of it, valuing its worth, is a fitting analogy. This basic truth applies to our American heritage and the continued welfare of our nation.

Most of us have never had to take up arms to protect our freedoms, our liberties, our rights as guaranteed under The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and The Bill of Rights, our Charters of Freedom. In most cases these gifts have been bequeathed to us from those of generations past who did have to serve, to protect and defend our nation and by those who valiantly volunteer to serve today. What is asked of us in return for this legacy of freedom is loyalty to the covenant between citizen and government, loyalty to our nation.

Today, our country faces both a threat from abroad and a threat, in the form of ideological conflict, from within. Some among us choose to accentuate the imperfections of our nation. Some condemn our culture. And still others literally champion our nation’s defeat and demise. Those who choose to diminish the significance of the United States’ contributions to the world, do so in ignorance of the intent of the documents that charted the course for this great nation and the ideologies and principles that provided the foundation for the creation of our governmental covenant.
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How “Journalism” is Rapidly Destroying the Credibility of Highly Regarded Credentials

-By Vince Johnson

What happens when mainstream America notices that many PhD’s, educators, and noted scientists, which according to the media, are in resolute disagreement with each other?

The answers are obvious and frightening:

  • Students, educators, and ordinary citizens do not know what to believe.\
  • Severe damage is foisted upon the credentials of respected and highly regarded individuals.

Proof that this is happening right now can be verified and analyzed by observing how journalists cover the “Global Warming” issue.
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In Electronic Age, Americans Getting Less Educated

-By Warner Todd Huston

A few weeks ago the Pew Research Center released their newest Political Knowledge Survey, a report that tracked the general political knowledge of responding Americans, and compared it to similar survey results from 1989. The results show that, as Pew reports, “public knowledge of current affairs is little changed by news and the information revolutions.” It seems somewhat reassuring for Pew to say we really haven’t gotten any dumber on politics. But a closer look at the results not only shows we are getting dumber, but that the internet and cable news “revolutions” really haven’t made us a whole lot smarter on politics, when you’d think that they would have. In fact, it seems more like these wonderful new sources of information we have at our fingertips have helped us but tread water in the hunt for a more informed public… even losing some ground.

Pew puts a rosy face on this news, but it certainly seems less optimistic when one takes a bit of time to think about the results. Saying that “On average, today’s citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago”, Pew makes it seem as if nothing has really changed in the level of correct knowledge that Americans have about politics. But, there are some hints, even in their report, that things have actually deteriorated.
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