A great piece by John Nolte, who I keep seeing across the room at various events and conferences and yet never seem to introduce myself, about the essential nature of Twitter — easily my favorite social media platform.  A kinda long excerpt (sorry, Breitbart folks):

We all laughed in 2009 when Politifact fact-checked an “SNL” sketch critical of Obama, but there was a method to their madness. Leftists like those at Politifact understand the power of satire to define someone. Thus, in order to protect Obama, Politifact was willing to make of fools of themselves to undermine any traction the “SNL” sketch about Obama’s broken promises might have received.

On a more serious note, here’s the harrowing story of how Media Matters stole justice from a black man beaten in public by Obama’s SEIU thugs only hours after the White House issued an order to “punch back twice as hard.” Most importantly, it’s the tale of how Media Matters gave the media the cover it so desired to ignore the story.

But it’s not 2009 anymore; it’s 2012, and Twitter has not only changed everything, it’s allowing everyday American conservatives the opportunity to beat Media Matters and these corrupt fact checkers at their own game.

The first time I took notice of the power of Twitter was when hundreds and perhaps thousands of everyday Americans completely dismantled the left-wing, superior snark-site, Wonkette, after the reprehensible publication viciously ridiculed Sarah Palin’s youngest child, Trig, who has Down Syndrome. This showed me that Twitter was an unbelievably effective organizing tool that could effectively call attention to and do something about an issue the media would’ve normally ignored. This was a passionate citizenry meting out justice, and because it was done in a responsible way, it was a beautiful thing to watch.

The Twitter event that really caught my attention, though, was what happened in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden. All of America was celebrating our president’s only successful decision to date, and it looked as though Obama would get a huge poll bounce as a result. Once again, though, everyday Americans who had taken to Twitter weren’t having any of it. Within hours of the news breaking, people started to ask how Obama could take this credit when it was the policies he opposed regarding enhanced interrogations that resulted in the intelligence that located bin Laden.

This question blew up on Twitter in such a way that something happened that up till then only the media could do: it changed the narrative. And as a result of thousands of people having this discussion without their filter, the MSM couldn’t do what they normally would’ve done: ignore something inconvenient to the Left. Suddenly the fact that Obama opposed the very policies that resulted in bin Laden’s death became very much a part of the news narrative and, as a consequence, in my opinion, Obama’s bounce was pretty much of the dead cat variety.

In the ensuing year, again and again, I’ve seen Twitter overwhelm the MSM and their protectors at Media Matters and those phony left-wing fact-checkers. Try as they might, whether it’s about Obama eating a dog, the hypocrisy of the War on Women, or the real facts behind the economic “recovery”; the media cannot ignore a conversation being had by millions upon millions of citizens. Most importantly, they can’t filter or control that conversation. If the media won’t tell the truth or point out the hypocrisies, we will — and the media not only can’t stand that, they’re also forced to grudgingly cover it or look completely out of step with what the “real news” is.

John’s “five crucial reasons” for this, each expounded further in the linked piece, are as follows:

1. Twitter is an equalizer in an eco-system where MSM types are no longer insulated in their bubble.
2. More and more news narratives start on Twitter.
3. The media no longer gets the last word.
4. The Left is losing the social media war.
5. It’s fun!

This morning, I spent a few minutes urging one of my favorite people, the uber-intelligent and amazingly generous (but frustratingly liberal and smart) attorney Gregory Forman, to immerse himself in Twitter — not for political reasons, though I suspect he’ll have fun cruising #p2 like the rest of his progressive buddies, but because it will allow himself to project his competence, thoughtfulness and intelligence as one of Charleston’s premier family law practitioners beyond the bubble of the Lowcountry and, indeed, beyond South Carolina.

I don’t know whether Greg bought my pitch, but I described Twitter as the online equivalent of sitting in a room (or, preferably, a drinking establishment) with thousands of friends, discussing the issues of the day.  That dynamic, in part, is why I love it.  I also love it in part because of what John Nolte wrote about — that it allows conservatives to dictate the message where they previously were kept out of the loop.

Dictating the message on your own terms is crucial, both in family law practice and in politics, and much in the way as the hilarious #ObamaDogRecipes meme took control of the Internet after the Obama campaign tried to make an issue of Mitt Romney’s treatment of the family dog–at least Romney didn’t eat man’s best friend–Twitter allows for discussions to be kept on point at times when the mainstream press will use any and all means to distract, delay and obfuscate.  Think about the solid week we spent talking about contraceptives and transvaginal ultrasounds, for example, when millions of people are dropping out of the workforce at an alarming rate.

It doesn’t always work–consider, for example, that we heard only briefly about how some connected with President Obama attempted to pay for Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s silence in advance of the 2008 presidential contest–but for the most part, with thousands and thousands of eyes put on Washington and its cast of characters, Twitter is remarkably reliable as a purveyor of sunshine.

So, if you’re not already on Twitter — join.  You’ll find me there: I’m @AmericasRight.  It’ll be nice to make your acquaintance.

So, while John Feeny and I were in Charlotte a few weeks ago for BlogConCLT, one of the workshops was on investigative work, and how to present that sort of work in a way that can make a tremendous impact on a local scale — this, versus what I find myself doing all to often here, which is making a very small impact (negligible) on a national scale.

While I think you may see a little more state-centric work from me here at America’s Right over the next few weeks and months–even if it’s bits and pieces about how a national issue affects us on a local level here in the Lowcountry–the truly investigative work takes time that, obviously, I haven’t been able to find in recent weeks and even months.

However, one of my good buddies in new media–and a blogger hero of mine–has hit a home run, not only with regard to substance but also with regard to what happened in the aftermath.  While I’ll leave it up to Duane for the details (click HERE for his piece, or click HERE for Duane’s story on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze), here’s the gist:  Duane took the time to wade through auditor’s reports, discovered some shortcomings in a local Sheriff’s Department, wrote about it, and then NINE DAYS LATER, watched as a small local newspaper ripped off his work at All American Blogger and ran it–nearly verbatim–as their own.

Then, after discussing his options with a few attorneys known in the conservative blogosphere–what am I, Duane, chopped liver?–he took things up a notch.  In true Duane Lester form, he brought his six-foot-five-inch Midwestern frame into that newspaper office, with camera in tow, and demanded to be paid for his work.  Here’s what happened:

I love every single second of this video.  I’ve watched it three times, and there’s so much victory in this video, that I might have to watch it again.  Truth be told, I’ve been slacking at America’s Right recently–I have my reasons, but still…–and watching my buddy in action is just inspiring as can be.

Go get ‘em.  Don’t mess with Duane.  Love it.

Well, I now likewise have a signature moment for myself: for the first time in my lifetime, I’m somewhat proud – not “really proud”, because we certainly shouldn’t get rash here – of Arlen Specter, because he actually displayed a singular moment of integrity and common sense on, of all places, MSNBC, or what might be more aptly termed “MSDNC.”

We all know about Arlen Specter, of course, the Pennsylvania senator who apparently experienced a damn-near miracle-level epiphany almost immediately following the 2008 elections, as he suddenly saw the “evil ways” of his brethren in the Republican Party and switched party affiliations. It was “purely coincidental” that his doing so helped to facilitate the Democrats’ taking supermajorities in Congress, but he also unknowingly expedited his own exit from the Washington aristocracy as his blatant act of selling out to the “winning side” led to the Tea Party’s removing him from what was left of his power and influence in the 2010 mid-term elections. It was his decision, in both a literal and figurative sense, that was one of the contributing factors to the awakening of the sleeping giant.

What a lot of people don’t know about Arlen Specter was that it was he who came up with the “magic bullet” theory to explain away the inconsistencies in the assassination of JFK and to help validate the ascendancy of invisible governance in America, which tells you a number of things about the man, if he can actually be called such a thing: he was and continues to be insanely ambitious for power and influence in elitist Washington circles, he is willing to throw anyone under the bus in order to advance his own interests (including a sitting President of the United States), and he has always placed himself on the side of the fascists in our country who endeavor to consolidate as much power as possible in the hands of as few as possible. Liberals may not like to hear this – after all, truth is something to which they are strenuously averse – but if JFK were alive today and still in his political prime, he would, without question, be a Republican (all one has to do is actually take the time to read his words); further, he was taken down by the global elite, a group of people that today we associate with the power of the Left.

I know. It hurts.

All of which brings me back to the immediate in Specter, who in an appearance on NBC’s leftist flank to shamelessly pimp his book (the clip shows you all you need to know there), actually had a moment of reverse Alzheimer’s and seemed to be remarkably honest, common-sensical, and clear-minded. In a Saturday segment with Melissa Harris-Perry – who sells herself as the “moderate” on MSNBC – Specter responded to her analysis of the “extremes” that seem to be driving our nation’s governance during these bitterly-contested times:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There are a number of things that need to be explored here, some of which I find fairly disturbing.

First, while this is certainly not a reason to condemn Mrs. Perry, but in addition to her gig as a pundit for MSNBC, she is also a college professor of political science at Tulane University. Indeed, I’m sure she’s an extremely bright woman and has earned any and all accolades that she may have received. Hearkening back to my piece entitled “Educate Yourself, Volume II”, however, and placing what is seen of her in this clip, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce what the probable message is in Mrs. Perry’s lecture halls.

Second, Specter called it correctly, perhaps (I’m guessing) for the first time in his life – the “extremes” to which Mrs. Perry is alluding in her segment, a group with which she clearly does not want herself or her other self-styled “intellectual moderates” on her panel identified, have found outlets for themselves on both MSNBC and Fox. Of course, I’m speaking only for what I see in Fox News here, but what I see in mainstream Fox News are actual moderates: Bill O’Reilly, Bernie Goldberg, Megyn Kelly, to name only a few. Certainly, there are others on the network whom I would consider further to the right, such as Sean Hannity and Monica Crowley, but in what sense do they come across as “unhinged”, as in the fashion of Chris Matthews and Ed Shultz? Further, it is on Fox that there are just as many unabashedly liberal pundits (Alan Colmes, Jehmu Greene, Sally Kohn, Juan Williams, Bob Beckel) as there are clearly conservative ones. How many conservative pundits do we see on MSNBC on a regular basis? Specter even had the unmitigated temerity to challenge Mrs. Perry on her own show when she reacted in a rather strong way to his statements, claiming that he “calls them as he sees them.”

About 50 years too late there, big guy, but hey, like I said – credit where credit is due.

Third, if the viewer watches closely, Mrs. Perry’s reaction to what she most likely believed was a like-minded guest challenging her drive to get him to castigate the extremes on the right is one that I can only characterize as silent, seething anger. She clearly stiffens up as she is forced to listen to what Specter has to say, and her face seems almost “squared” for confrontation. Specter, it seems, was the actual moderate, at least in this instance, and she struck me as wanting none of that.

And finally, fourth, and what I deem to be the most disturbing aspect of Mrs. Perry’s segment, are the titles and slogans displayed on the screen, words that so obviously have different levels of suggestive meaning to them, both conscious and unconscious. Worst of all for her, Specter even called her on this, and I’m guessing that he may have even wanted to go further to something along the lines of what I’m about to offer here. He seemed to catch himself and stopped short, though, most likely because he wanted to maintain the safety of his purported political environment and for the sake of his book.

Specter called her on MSNBC’s slogan for the 2012 campaign, “Lean Forward”, when he pointed out that such a slogan can easily be interpreted as “lean left”. True enough. It’s also NBC’s cable outlet’s extension of the Obama campaign’s one-word slogan, “Forward”. If one understands Barack Obama’s Saul Alinsky background and the use of force that is historically at the heart of leftist political philosophy, “Forward” makes complete sense. If you’ll pardon the pun, but when push comes to shove and the political deck is stacked against leftist goals, that’s when the time comes for them to resort to violence if necessary. Taking “no” for an answer in the free market of ideas is simply not and will never be an option for these people.

“Lean Forward”, however, has even more disturbing connotations. Arlen Specter was absolutely correct in his analysis, and I bet he would’ve loved to say that “Lean Forward” also is tantamount to telling your audience to “step forward”…..into the faces of the people standing I your way. How many times have any of the readers experienced that uncomfortable moment when one person, apparently willing to come to blows over a disagreement, steps forward and into another’s face in an attempt to intimidate?

That a network program would display that on its screen in such divisive times is…well…divisive, as well as unconscionable.

The name of Mrs. Perry’s segment, “Down with the Middle”, also reeks of double entendres that are rather troubling. On the surface, I’m sure, Mrs. Perry will claim that the title simply refers to the segment when the viewers of “fashionable intellect” can spend some time with the fashionably intelligent people who occupy the space on the middle part of the political slider. My interpretation, however – one that I think is validated by the torn paper that seems to represent the message that is bandied about their discourse – is that “down with the middle” is analogous to “down with middle America” or “down with the middle class”. In either case, these are also images that suggest violence to either greater or lesser degrees.

There’s absolutely no question that part of the Obama administration’s and the Leftists’ agenda is to degrade the foundation of the culture of white, middle-class America. After all, even Saul Alinsky was astute enough to point out that that is where the real wealth and power lie. What is the typical person like who inhabits white, middle-class America? He or she is simply a person who wants to be left alone to a productive working life and to raise a family. There are obviously other variations, but this is mostly it. Liberals would like nothing better than reduce that foundation to rubble.

The Washington and media elite also have no use for those in the middle class, probably because they don’t understand us and our “simple-minded” values. After all, how can we be happy and content with such meaningless lives? They seem to be completely out-of-touch with the predominant class of people who don’t put all their self-worth into being perceived as “intelligently contrarian” by the rest of the allegedly important world. There’s also the harsh reality that our self-ordained political aristocracy – the country club elite in both political parties – would like nothing better than to have only two classes in this country: the people of titles in the master house and the plantation servants.

So, then – “Down with the Middle”, indeed.

Arlen Specter has nothing left to lose, nowadays, except possible profits on his book, and to that end he is still beholden to someone, this time his publisher. For one fleeting moment, though, he showed me that, much like Macbeth in the last moments of his life, there’s still a spark of the divine left in him. Perhaps his conscience is crying out, trying to save himself before it’s too late.

At the outset of this article, allow me to offer to the reader(s) — especially if you’re parents of teenage children, and even more especially if you’ve children on the precipice of entering college — a “plea” of sorts: Read very carefully what I have to say here. I am an educator of two decades in a private Catholic, college-preparatory high school, one with reasonably distinguished ties to some of the best colleges and universities in the country. I have worked the latter half of those years in administration and, consequently, I have a good deal of experience with the very nature of the academic world into which your children may be headed.

Are there good colleges? Yes, of course; however, what I’m attempting to paint in this piece is the larger, more general picture of the situation into which the academic, political Left in this country has delivered us. For the past half-century, it seems to have become more and more an accepted part of life that all students should go to college. While that may still have a good degree of truth to it, as I’ll present here, there is now more reason than ever to begin at least evaluating whether or not attending college at all is the right decision for your child and/or your family. Please pay attention.

– John Feeny

In attempting to shed some degree of light on the current, rather complex problems that have twisted the heart of the American educational system, I first presented a piece in which those who support a big-government apparatus have incrementally tried to make unencumbered school choice for parents as difficult as possible, by whittling down to a bare minimum the seeming “realistic” avenues available, trying desperately to leave them with but one alternative in the local public system. Now, I plan to explain how they’ve done basically the same thing with higher education, but in this case it applies to the career choices available upon graduation.

A few weeks back, on April 20th, the students at the University of Colorado held their annual “smoke-out,” a day when all of the “really, really smart” people come together to collectively inhale as much of the cherished herb as humanly possible. Why? Who knows? Perhaps it’s some type of statement regarding their feelings about leaving childhood, having to grow up at some point, and being responsible for their own lives. Personally, I think it’s more an impulse to impress one’s friends and to show everyone who seems worthy of being called “cool” and “enlightened” that “hey, I’m cool and enlightened too, darn it.”

One thing is for certain, however: the Colorado Smoke-Out is a metaphor for what “higher” education has become in the United States of America, for whether it’s smoking marijuana, excessive drinking, or consuming illicit drugs, the higher academic world has generally become little more than extended adolescence and four to five years of partying, with marginal attention to detail devoted to refining the education of the future leaders of a free society. It’s now more the province of the re-education, or perhaps “finishing school”, for the in-doctrinal tactics of the political far-Left in our country.

For the better part of the past half-century, nearly all of us in mainstream America have grown up listening to the elders in our family tell us that “we have to go to college” for a litany of reasons, not the least of which is simply the most obvious: to educate oneself. Anyone who has gone to and graduated from a four-year college can certainly attest that four years of much more abstract thought do have a profound effect on one’s perspective. I’m honestly unsure as to whether I’m expressing my thoughts adequately in this case but, in short, emerging from collegiate studies–assuming, of course, that one can sift out the leftist nonsense from the majority of the professors–that have actually been taken seriously has the effect of widening one’s outlook and leading a person to consider all sorts of possibilities about life that he or she might otherwise not have .

Beyond this, though, what have always been the time-tested reasons, so to speak, that were repeatedly spoken to us about the necessity of going to college by the people in our lives who really mattered? Off the top of my head, I can think of a few general ones: to finish one’s formal education; to earn the degrees that would enable us to compete in an increasingly sophisticated world and job market; so we wouldn’t have to “work with our hands”; and, perhaps, simply because it’s the right thing to do.

At some point, however, something else entered the dynamic regarding the “necessity” of moving on to college — and, perhaps, even a very prestigious college or university: it gradually became more about the self-prestige of the parents than the betterment and happy future of the children, as though the children’s attending an allegedly “elite” university was a trophy for the parents to display in social circles in an effort to impress “important” people.

After all, what would our friends think?

This evolutionary process has had far-reaching ramifications for our society, ramifications that are only clear if a person actually takes the time to think about the situation in which we now find ourselves. We now live in an American society and educational reality in which at least two generations–and quite possibly three–have been raised believing that college is one of the next “required” steps in life.

Funny, but in the not-too-distant past, a student’s achieving enough academically in high school in order to attend college was considered an accomplishment; now, the significance of going to college is analogous to “passing Go” and collecting your handout of $200. Further, this is all very much in line with the collectivists’ thinking that every human has a “natural-born right” to an education.  Further, many jobs that decades ago would take high school graduates and provide them with the on-the-job training necessary to succeed now will not even take a second look at a prospective employee unless that employee has at least an undergraduate degree.  It’s a dangerous cycle.

The extended ramifications to which I alluded have been eating into the foundation of our society for decades now. As a result of roughly half a century of more and more students “automatically” moving onto college, we now have an exponentially-growing number of students who believe that “individual freedom” and a “state-controlled society” go hand-in-hand, in addition to an exponentially shrinking number of skilled tradesman and people who generally work with their hands — in short, the “makers of things.”

Of course, based on the seeming belief that has been hammered into the heads of young people during the latter half of the twentieth century, those “menial jobs”–as well as those who work them–are to be avoided at all costs. Consequently, we now see displayed in front of our very eyes on our television screens a generation of young people who feel that they shouldn’t have to pay back their college loans, that doing so is somehow the government’s or someone else’s job; a generation of young people who feel that others who work hard and achieve good things are to be torn down, not celebrated; and, most telling, a generation of people who wouldn’t accept the proverbial job of “flipping hamburgers” if it were flatly given to them, because let’s face it — that’s beneath them.

In short, this is a recipe for disaster. The number of skilled people who can make things, fix things, or are talented enough to work as a tradesman or start their own businesses is diminishing rapidly, and the number of people who are not willing to do these jobs or to make their own stake in life is growing even more quickly. Basically, we’re walking a path on which the necessary hard work incumbent on any organized civilization will not get done.

More to this point, John Ratzenberger–”Cliff Clavin” of Cheers fame, and one of the integral voices in the Disney/Pixar Toy Story animated films franchise–has lent his influence to an initiative called Nuts And Bolts Foundation, an organization with a mission, so to speak, to make people more aware of our now desperate need for future skilled workers, to interest young people in learning to and the value of work with their hands, and to show our young people that they can, indeed, have a very productive future as skilled workers.

After all, if the entire pool of skilled laborers dried up, who would fix the sinks of the elitist liberals?

Beyond that, more young people should wake up, because the demand for these workers is going to be so high over the next generation or so that they could well be able to punch their own financial ticket in life. The “elitists” might just be working in their posh offices in order to pay their plumbers.

While there are no doubt plenty of students who emerge from a college or university having taken their studies seriously, I think that most people around the country who pay attention to such things realize and would admit that there are probably many, many more who, as I pointed out earlier, view their four years on campus as their opportunity finally to be free of any parental restrictions, to live away from home, and to live an unabashedly party lifestyle. I would think, however, that this reality would now begin to give pause to more parents who are paying the nearly unaffordable–and exponentially rising–price tag of a four-year college education.

While there’s no question that there are probably some wealthy families who send their children off to more prestigious schools, knowing full well the types of activities in which their children will involve themselves (likely justifying the tuition cost and the risks against the university’s name on the diploma and the connections that come with it), one would think that more parents of reasonable common sense would be shocked at the knowledge of what is deemed acceptable social behavior on many campuses, to say nothing of the “soft, intellectual strong-arming” that takes place in many of these classrooms, incubators in which leftist politics are dressed up as “academia”.

On a couple of occasions during my time here at America’s Right, I’ve mentioned that one of my former students, Travis Rowley, has become one of the more significant conservative voices here in Rhode Island, a young man who is an author, writes a weekly political column for GoLocal Providence, serves as a fill-in talk show host on WHJJ, and is a Brown University graduate. Travis, who was viewed as being just slightly below the Antichrist at Brown (he’s white, extremely intelligent, Catholic, athletic–starting wide receiver on the football team–and conservative), was so shocked at what passed for acceptable behavior and education at an allegedly “elite” university that he was inspired to write his book, Out of Ivy, which can be found at Amazon. Perhaps an Op-Ed that he wrote for the Providence Journalback in 2005 might catch the attention of prospective collegiate parents as to what goes on behind the gates at Brown University, as well as many other colleges like it around the country:

Undressing Brown University
Providence Journal – November 23, 2005

Sayles Hall “shall be exclusively and forever devoted to lectures and recitations, and to meetings on academic occasions.” – William F. Sayles, June 14, 1878

LAST WEEK, Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor delivered to the nation disturbing footage of Brown University’s annual Sex, Power, God party. Images of half-naked students and reports of public sex within the party did little to maintain the prestigious image of Sayles Hall, where the festivity took place.

However, as a record number of students in one night required the use of emergency medical services, it gave the university’s suddenly humiliated administration the opportunity to frame this incident in the unalarming and simple context of college students’ just having a little too much drunken fun on a Saturday night. But there is much more to this story hidden behind the Ivy curtain.

The Brown administration has declared that it is “reviewing” its alcohol policies by “analyzing” last weekend’s mischief. And Ruth Simmons, the university’s president, would love the discussion to end right there. As administrators tell us that they are “consider[ing] policy changes,” they hope that we accept the impression that everything is now under control. Go on with your daily routines; the administration will take it from here.

Thus, the liberal dominion at Brown — absolute student autonomy, and an administration that is detached from student affairs.

Sex, Power, God is hosted each year by Brown’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual Alliance, otherwise known as the Queer Alliance. You will notice that the LGBTA, one of the campus left’s most potent activist organizations, has received only a slap on the wrist for its ineffectiveness in keeping alcohol out of its party. In turn, Sex, Power, God has been wrongfully equated with the average fraternity shindig, while the scapegoat has become the university’s alcohol policies. This has let Brown and the LGBTA escape the harsh critique that they both deserve.

Let me tell you a little bit about the sponsor of Sex, Power, God.

The LGBTA is a thunderous and well-organized association of radical students. If they weren’t so repugnant, I’d say that they were a very impressive activist group. Any College Hill veteran will tell you of this organization’s in-your-face practices. But not too many will reveal to you the LGBTA’s top priority: to convert every Brown student into a sexual heathen, with eyes numbed to the sight of anything hypersexual. Any words that the Queer Alliance speaks, any lectures it sponsors, and any project it takes part in — including a party — is a step toward that goal.

A frat party? Not even close.

First off, fraternity events are held in — you guessed it — fraternity houses. Not historic Sayles Hall, where portraits of U.S. and Brown luminaries adorn the walls, and prominent national figures are invited to address the Ivy League school. And, last I checked, wearing clothes is the norm. So is privatizing any sex that may result from a party’s debauchery.

But the most significant difference between LGBTA-sponsored parties and “Animal Houses” is simply the objective. Most student organizations coordinate events to have a good time. However, like all events organized by the Queer Alliance, the Sex, Power, God party seeks to advance the gay agenda by desensitizing Ivy League students to sexual deviance. The Ivy League then sends those graduates off to sit in Congress and other important offices. Any person who equates an LGBTA event with the usual fraternity bash is utterly out of touch with the radicalism of Ivy League student groups.

Over the years, the LGBTA has discovered the effectiveness of liberal activism; that is, not to bring ideas to the table for discussion and debate, but rather to effortlessly label its political opposition as bigoted, and spend most of its time turning Brown’s campus into one big Hustler magazine, promoting acts that traditional values would see as moral depravity, and that mock Judeo-Christian values.

The LGBTA makes the public claim that it exists to provide a safe space for “people of all identities.” Its members organize and rally for “marriage equality,” and they combat “homophobia” and other “forms of discrimination.”

Fine. But here’s something you may not know about the Queer Alliance: Each year it sponsors lectures by famous pornographers and “sex educators.” It conducts oral-sex and anal-sex “workshops.” It hosts “porn parties” and “drag shows.”

So how could anyone flinch when it tastelessly names its parties Sex, Power, God and [sexual obscenity], and advertises the events with pornographic posters that decorate university halls and courtyards? These advertisements always cross the decency line, and are often beyond justifiable. One poster in my junior year portrayed four naked men performing some sort of sex conga line in a shower room. And now the administration wonders how Sex, Power, God got so out of control.

Bill O’Reilly got one thing right: This was the “party Brown University doesn’t want you to know about!”

President Simmons’s hesitation to publicly denounce Sex, Power, God and ban any further LGBTA events from university buildings is nothing but disgraceful. But that’s the way it has been for decades at Brown. Radical student groups have been given control of the campus, and they savagely silence any dissenters.

For a student to speak out against the indecency of the LGBTA would take John Wayne-type bravery. And if any news organization ever catches wind of campus injustice, the administration has an easy out: Hey, we didn’t know what was going on. But we’ll be sure to take care of this right away.

In 1878, William F. Sayles, in memory of his late son, gave $50,000 to Brown University for a building that “shall be exclusively and forever devoted to lectures and recitations, and to meetings on academic occasions.” They call themselves “progressives” up there on College Hill. Just look how far they’ve come.

In short, while a sampling of the college life at Brown University might not be the status quo for all schools across the country, it’s certainly not too much of a stretch to believe that a) most, if not all, Ivy league schools are quite similar, and b) most schools around the country have devolved into bastions of the “freedom from responsibilty” mindset that the political Left in our country has been softly attempting to impose on our culture for half a century. True educational principles have taken a backseat to allowing the inmates to run the asylum, so as to keep the tuition dollars flowing freely.

All those “really smart” professors ask in exchange for their benevolence is blind adherence and obedience to the liberal mantra. Our children are being sent into a den of intolerance, but not toward people who are different; this is an intolerance of ideas, which is significantly more lethal.

“Well, that’s great stuff. I was so proud of the president there, I must say. This has nothing to do with partisanship. This is a Commander In Chief meeting with the troops, as it was right out of ‘Henry V,’ actually, a touch of Barry in this case in the night for those soldiers risking their lives over there.“

Chris Matthews, an objective journalist

The Setting: Agincourt, a sandy suburb of Kandahar.

The Date: 25 October, 1415 … or May 2, 2012 (historians are not clear on the date).

On Stage:

• Henery V
  
• TelePrompTer: His trusty advisor
  
• Westmoreland: His cousin

Scene: Henery V is ready to address his troops.

Westmoreland:

O that we now had here
But one more team of those SEALs
That do their work to-day!

King Henery V:

What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we, y’know, are mark’d to do
This dog and pony show,
The fewer men, the greater share of credit.

God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, y’know, I am not covetous for gold,
I give to charity more even than Joe Biden!
Nor care I who doth feed upon taxpayers’ cost;
It yearns me not if men eat Bo for break fast;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires;
But if it be a sin to covet credit,
I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from Navy;
God’s peace! I would not lose so great a credit in election year
As one man more, y’know, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which claims to have been there,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And less than honourable discharge
Put into his jacket.

We would not dine in that man’s company
That wants his recognition alongside with me.
This day is called the feast of killing of bin Laden;
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Barak, the bin Laden slayer.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow’s Saint Barack:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show tattoo
Of me upon his arm.
And say ‘That man has killed bin Laden.’

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
The SEAL Team Six,
The Admiral who had to give the order,
The hated CIA, intelligence that led
To killing of Osama,
Those evil Bush and Cheney…
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats I say I did that day;
Then shall My names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Barry the king, Obama the Exhalted, Barack the First –
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And May the Second shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of elections,
But I in it shall be remember’d;
The One, the happy Me, the lonely hero;
He Who has spent Sixteen of agonizing hours
Deciding, after all, bin Laden must be killed
Then went into the breach
With battle axe in his uplifted hands,
To kill, y’know, bin Laden, all alone.
(There might have been some others.
I mention them, y’know, so none can say
I’m hogging all the credit).

There are some photographs that prove this tale of valour,
But none shall see them ‘till the end of days
For spiking the football is shameful and inciting…
Say, Westmoreland, is there still a stage
That I have not yet used
To shout of my heroism on this Saint Barack Day?
And he to-day that stands in silence,
While I claim all the credit for the kill
Shall be my friend; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.

And all Republicans State-side now a-bed
(it’s middle of the night, still no excuse)
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
(How could they, though, this being a secret trip?)
And hold their chances cheap while any speaks
Of Me, who fought Osama all alone upon Saint Barry day.

*  *  *

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Some names, places or dates might have been mixed up.
No politicians were harmed during the writing of this text.

My apologies to Willie S. and Messrs. Murray and Weston.

The problem is, however, that rather than help to facilitate this movement to what might be aptly termed the next phase in our development or evolution, we are apparently being thwarted at nearly every turn by our own self-ordained political establishment, aka “aristocracy”.

During the weekend of April 19-21, when I had the privilege of attending the #BlogConCLT convention in Charlotte, North Carolina along with Jeff and some of the single most influential individuals at the head of the conservative movement that is beginning to re-shape the conversation in America, I also came upon and acknowledged another turning point in my own life, in that for all that I thought I knew about the social, cultural, and political war in which this country is currently entangled, I still have a lot to learn. Namely, that there’s much, much, more going on about which I know little and that the average, everyday person who has little time to pay attention to politics could possibly fathom.

Viewed through a wide-angle lens, ironically, it all comes back to the foundation of all understanding: education, the problems with which in this country we have reached a critical stage. Much like a person limited to a 15-year-old wreck of a car, into which he must continue to pointlessly throw money merely to keep it and his daily life afloat, our federal government continues to throw millions of dollars into a failed school system more to placate its Democratic, sycophantic employees than to actually develop the quality of education delivered to the standard-bearers of our future – our young people.

Our educational system long ago passed the point of its next evolutionary stage. It’s just been ignored.

One of the speeches at the BlogCon event that truly grabbed my attention was given by Pamela Geller, a woman who so fiercely believes in the goodness of America that she literally puts her life on the line every day by willingly walking out on the front lines of the white heat of the conflict by speaking not only to friendly audiences — like our own, which would no doubt be a whole lot easier — but also to audiences that do nothing other than project at her hatred bordering on physical violence. Obviously, her speech caught my attention simply because she’s a captivating speaker; however, one nugget in particular piqued my interest, and I was fortunate enough to speak with her about it afterward.

Of the many venues at which Ms. Geller speaks, one of the more hostile is at colleges and universities, because as we all know, our system of higher education fell to the forces of the academic left in this country a long time ago. In mentioning that she was due to speak at Temple University in several days, she emphasized that the colleges are now the incubators for the collectivist mindset in our country, and while some of them begrudgingly allow her to speak consequent to her right to speak freely, generally speaking, the colleges and universities are fiercely intolerant of free speech (contrary to what they would have you believe, of course) and don’t want conservative activists within ten feet of their campuses. This led to me to thinking on an idea upon which I’ve written on a couple of occasions here at AR, in pieces entitled “Searching for Answers While We’re Waiting for Superman” and “Change You Can Count On”, both of which would be pieces that provide further understanding for this article. Further, as Jeff has mentioned on a few occasions that he’d like me to put something together on school choice, it seemed as though this might be an opportune time to explore the issue and the manner in which it currently impacts the path on which our children now blindly and unknowingly find themselves.

In any discussion of the issue of parents’ rights to choose freely the school that their children attend, one must first ask a very basic and simple question: in an allegedly free country, why is this even an issue? Why have we de-evolved to the point at which the state has decided that it’s apparently in a student’s best interest to systematically whittle down the realistic educational opportunities? For that matter, why for Heaven’s sake in America of all places, are we limited to anything in terms of the things that we choose for ourselves? Of course, discussions about issues such as the legalization of drugs and the like are certainly legitimate issues, as one can easily make the case that such libertarian freedoms put the rights of others at risk. As to my original point, however, why is the right to choose what you see as the best school for your children coming under attack from our own leaders?

The answer to that question is very simple, but one with far-reaching and very damaging consequences: allowing individuals unfettered access to quality educational opportunities is a macro-level threat to the power of the aristocracy.

Two things that oppressors always try to take from those that they’re attempting to subjugate are their guns and their access to knowledge. Why, do you think, it was illegal for slave owners in the 18th and 19th centuries to educate their slaves? Because knowledge is power.

As Keanu Reeves’ Neo adequately put it in The Matrix trilogy: “the problem is choice.”

Of course, those in our political aristocracy will claim that they’re doing no such thing. In America, parents are allowed to send their children to any school that they wish, be it public or private. Really? Just like we’re free to once again purchase the light bulbs that we wish, I suppose … if we can find any, that is.

Remember, I made it a point earlier in this piece to state the problem in terms of realistic educational opportunities. A parent may want to send his son or daughter to the private school ten miles away rather than Hometown High right down the road, but as is more often than not these days, more and more families find themselves under the ever-increasing economic and cultural weights of lack of employment, inadequate employment, broken families, rising costs in the private system, higher state and/or federal taxes, popular culture’s lack of moral values steering kids’ desires away from schools with solid academics and appropriate structure, to name only a few. As a direct result of what is now two or possibly even three generations of deterioration in the public school systems in our country, we now find ourselves in a situation that can only be termed a self-fulfilling prophecy — because a strong percentage of today’s parents were raised without being taught to truly value the meaning of an education, many of them are ill-equipped to make or care about such decisions, and, truth be told, sometimes find it a whole lot easier to let the children decide where they want to go to school. As an administrator in an extraordinarily successful Catholic all-boys’ college preparatory school, I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve heard parents say, “Well, he just won’t be happy if we send him to private school X. He wants to be with his friends.”

No doubt.

Put all these factors together, and you have just one of a number of ways by which Obama administration stalwart Cass Sunstein is “nudging” the American people into doing exactly what the federal government wants them to do.

What’s even more ironic about situations such as these is that we as a society seem to expect our children to go to college. On its face, that would seem to directly contradict my previous observations. Think about it, however: what parents don’t want their children to go to college? Don’t many parents begin those “college dreams” nearly as soon as their children are born? How many parents, when looking into the bright-eyed innocence of their newborn’s face, dream of his or her being a doctor?

When one considers the larger system that the political Left has gradually set up over the past four decades or so, however, these two observations really don’t contradict each other at all. What we have now in this culture are people who want all the trappings of educational success without any of the real commitment and investment that goes along with it. In fact, if this “system” weren’t so insidious and dangerous, I’d actually be inclined to give some of its architects a well-deserved pat on the back for their ingenuity.

So, in order to fully explore what has led to the moral, academic, and physical disrepair of our public schools and the manner by which this is brought to bear on our colleges and universities, we need to start with two of the most basic contributing factors: the rise of the “New Left” in the 1960′s and its now unholy alliance with public sector unions.

In many ways, the very first “Occupy” Demonstration was the several days during which thousands of young people occupied Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York. That was the signature event for a generation that could be aptly characterized as little more than petulant. Members of the Baby Boom generation and raised largely in the comforts of wealth and security by predominantly decent parents who were members of the greatest generation to which our country has ever borne witness, these young people were nonetheless angry at the system that had given them so much, and the vast majority of them, having reached the age at which most people grow up – one of the “turning points” to which I alluded at the lead of this article – simply refused to do so and cloaked their desire to avoid adult responsibilities by taking up the “noble” cause of protesting the apparent injustices of America, which, in truth, was more a protest against their parents for not letting them have their way anymore. As the late-60′s melded into the early 70′s and the fuel for the fire in their demonstrations needed to take a new form, many of them entered the teaching profession, at all levels: elementary, secondary, as well as the colleges and universities. As stated at the site History is a Weapon,

A large contingent relocated from college towns to large cities, moved into working-class neighborhoods, and took jobs in auto plants, other industrial sectors, post offices, hospitals, or public schools. Flush with optimism, they believed prospects were good for building a solid base in what seemed an increasingly restive and angry working class. There were more and harder fought strikes in 1969 and 1970 than there had been in any year since 1946. The early 1970s also saw the outbreak of rank-and-file insurgent movements in a number of major unions, with black workers, young workers, and often Vietnam vets in the forefront.

In short, many of these young adults took positions in seemingly respectable professions, playing the “middle-class America” game but simultaneously planting the seeds of organization throughout an unsuspecting populace and waiting for those seeds to bear fruit. In the case of those who were either already in or were entering the field of education, they saw the need for a new, radical approach to the education of children. Typically, whenever one social group is bent on overthrowing another from within, the destruction of the latter’s foundational element – in our case, family unit – and the re-education of the most impressionable and vulnerable – the children – are the very first targets. As is stated by two members of the New Left themselves, Susan Gushee O’Malley and Robert C. Rosen in their book, Politics of Education: Essays From Radical Teacher,

If we protested against racism and the war on the streets and in Washington, we felt, there is something that we ought to be able to do about it in school. The challenge to the society implied a challenge to our workplace.

Take a look around – it would appear that the seeds planted by the radical, New Left have, indeed, begun to bear impressive fruit. By effectively merging their politics with their profession, they were able either to place themselves in the schoolyards and talk freely with the younger children or in the college atmosphere of intellectualism, in which they would be able to effectively live out the protest life for the remainder of their working days. While there are very few, if any, common-sense people who would object to teaching children about the hope for peace in the world, the vast body of counter-cultural ideas that were also part of the ’60′s radicals’ worldview are now being forced upon our children, the parents, and entire families. Couple that with the power of unionization – a force with which theses radicals allied themselves – and the agenda takes on actual muscle that now attempts to strong-arm the free choice that is at the essence of being an American individual.

Unions as a whole in today’s American society are also very much like the aforementioned wreck of an automobile that, unfortunately, must be maintained with bandages of money, specifically by the Democratic party. Unions are arguably the cornerstone of the loosely-constructed group of alliances upon which the Democrats depend for votes, even if it means maintaining the disastrous status quo rather than breaking things down and re-inventing them with an eye toward a productive future. The unions are the foundation of the liberal Democrats’ attempts to maintain power. Any attempt to pull the reigns back on union entitlements (or what might be termed “austerity measures”, of sorts) is met with fierce resistance, because human nature is such that people living comfortable, complacent lifestyles are generally averse to surrendering any degree of what they feel should be given to them and because, as is said at the beginning of this piece, people don’t like change. Further, while the common American person may likely associate the concept of unions with “worker protection”, the unions have evolved – or, perhaps, de-evolved, depending on one’s perspective – to the point at which worker protection has little to do with their inner workings.

At the high school at which I’m an administrator, we have a handful of retired public school teachers on staff. We’re very picky in our hiring process in general, but even more so with retired public school teachers, because as recently as ten years ago or so, we’ve been burned by a few. There were several in the past who came to our school seemingly as dedicated educators, but in the end all they really saw in being hired to teach at our school is what they perceived to be the equivalent of a lifetime achievement award. Since they had put their time in on the “front lines”, so to speak, in the public sector, their work performance dictated that they saw themselves as entitled to settling into a plum sinecure and to collecting their state pensions and a healthy salary from the private educational sector to boot.

Much like the conflict that we see unfolding in our society today, it didn’t take very long for the larger portion of the faculty – many of whom are making significantly less than our public school counterparts (admittedly, by our own choice) – to begin to resent the few people on staff who not only weren’t performing their job above board but who were also nonetheless collecting not one but two paychecks. Consequently, their employment here didn’t last very long.

We do currently have on staff two retired public school teachers who are worth their weight in gold, men who come to work everyday and who bend over backwards for their students and everyone else. Both of these men have told me horror stories about their unions, the leadership of which was more often than not never around when they needed them but who always sought them out when it was time for votes on union-related issues. Sure, both men could be criticized for hypocrisy to an extent, I suppose, for taking the reasonably fat paychecks from the public sector, keeping their mouths shut, and then bad-mouthing them after the fact; however, both of them agreed that unions have become progressively worse as they’ve become more powerful over the decades. The primary interest of the unions at this point in their histories is to maintain the flow of cash, most of which goes into the pockets of union bosses and the Democratic party.

The important consideration, then, is simply this: how does all this affect the deteriorating conditions – academic, moral, physical – of our public schools? How does this all affect the freedom to choose where your children will be educated and safe?

It’s pretty obvious by now that most decent parents are onto the fact that the public schools have become little more than adolescent day care. Academic standards have been watered down to the point that they can’t even be considered “standards” anymore. Social promotion – the “outcome-based, whole-person” approach, which, interestingly enough, was the same educational methodology applied by the Nazis – is now the rule of the day, rather than achievement-based promotion, because to require the latter would, of course, apparently and irreparably harm the self-esteem of the young person, should he or she fail to succeed with anything less than flying colors. We wouldn’t want them to ingest anything as harsh as learning from one’s mistakes in order to grow more fully and to develop as a person, now would we? Perish the thought. Beyond failing standards, more and more public schools are becoming breeding grounds for violence, bullying, police presences in the hallways, metal detectors at the entrance to the schools, drugs, and physically-collapsing infrastructure. The question is – why?

Primarily, students have been indirectly taught during roughly the past four decades that there aren’t any real consequences in life for bad decisions. We therefore now have parents who feel the same way. Merely providing the general example of a teacher’s sending a student out of a classroom for poor behavior, and then having the principal return with the student in tow, essentially telling the teacher that sending him or her out of the class cannot be allowed, sends the obvious message to all students: there’s nothing that educators can do to me, nothing that educators have that I want, and by extension, there aren’t really any situations in life in which an authority figure can do anything to me that won’t be fixed by someone else. Is it any wonder, then, that this generation has zero respect for the police, agents of the law who have the unmitigated temerity to hold them accountable for their behavior?

Oh, the humanity.

Secondarily, the academic, moral, and physical deterioration in the public sector is exacerbated by, ultimately, the allocation of financial resources. Teachers automatically have “union dues” deducted from their paychecks (which is really their tithe of “tribute” to their union administration), and if they want to be “happy every two weeks”, as several of my friends in the public sector tell me, they have to tow the company line, even if they understand what’s going on and can do little about it. The high salaries must be paid, so what suffers? The list is obvious: academic resources, school improvements, athletic programs, and, in the end, a willingness on the part of the good teachers to actually want to do their job.

Some people may not like to hear all this, and yes, there are some dedicated public school teachers who persevere for the sake of the kids, despite all of the enormous roadblocks to doing one’s job effectively, but in the end, the bigger picture that I’ve painted here is the harsh truth.

So, what other educational choices do parents have for their children, and why are more not taking advantage of these opportunities? Well, while I discussed the general factors toward the beginning of this piece, the one that stands out the most is the “nudging” by the power of the unions and the federal government in an attempt to make it as difficult as possible for many parents to have any viable alternatives. The obvious choices are private schools (mostly Catholic, and schools that generally have a very high success rate in terms of students that emerge from schooling having been well-educated and disciplined, in addition to high approval ratings from parents), charter schools, a voucher system that helps tax-paying citizens to defray the cost of private schooling (thereby making “choice” far more realistic), and home schooling. Let’s take them one at a time.

Why is a school such as the one at which I teach far more successful (it’s not even close) than the public schools against which it competes? Well, rather than re-invent the wheel, allow me to provide for you what I had to say in a previous piece here at AR, “The Public and the Private”:

On several occasions during my time here at AR, I’ve commented upon the nature of the excellence at our school – an excellence that is expected on the part of not only the students but also the faculty, staff, and administration. We expect this from ourselves, and the parents – paying tuition at $11,600 a head, many with more than one son attending – certainly expect it as well. The school has been in existence since 1959, and for at least the past 25 years, it has come to one of the best – if not the best – college preparatory high school in our region. The administration demands accountability of its teachers, and the teachers push our young men toward excellence. Should anyone ever care to witness this for himself, I’d be happy to arrange a tour. In fact, a college representative from the University of Chicago (yes, that pains me a bit) happened to visit our school for a recruiting visit just recently and happened to walk in during one of our mandatory fire drills, drills that have become quasi-legendary around the state – one can hear a pin dropping while the students are lined up outside. Might be a good time and place for a Sprint commercial. In any event, after having walked into the building and being greeted by some of our students, and then having witnessed the fire drill, the gentleman commented to me, “You know, this is quite a school you have here. The boys are polite, hold doors, are dressed up….and that fire drill…I’ve been in secondary and higher education for over 25 years, and I’ve never seen anything like that.”

All of which, of course, begs the question – in the rapidly devolving morality and personal responsibility of our culture, how is this possible?

At one point during that administrative meeting, we were informed of a conversation that had taken place between our chief financial officer and the gentleman who occupies the same position for the entire Diocese, who showed him the general numbers that lay bare the essential financial conditions of all Catholic schools in the state. Obviously, it goes without saying that nearly every public school is in dire financial condition, never mind the private ones. The Diocesan employee simply said, “It makes no sense. You guys are not only in the black financially right now, but you’re solvent beyond the wildest dreams of practically anyone else in the state, private or public. In this economy and with the tuition that you charge, it makes no sense. It’s little short of a miracle.”

It really isn’t a miracle. When people are truly free to make their own decisions in life, they will almost always choose what they perceive to be the best product available. Are we perfect? Heavens, no; we have made mistakes, but we always try to learn from them. The constantly changing “future shock” of social networking comes to mind as an area in which we sometimes struggle, as the line between the rights of the private institution and the privacy of the individual become understandably blurred at times. We do, however, try our best – not in the sense of, “Ah, well, we did our best” and then proceeding to throw our hands up in the air but more like we actually strive to do our best. In the end, the current educational product and experience speaks for itself.

Charter schools, which are more frequently popping up around the country seemingly in direct proportion to the degree that people are waking up to the educational crisis that currently confronts us, are also having some difficulty getting started, because – surprise! – the unions are fighting the emergence of these private schools because of the direct threat that they represent to the political jobs’ program that the public sector gravy train has become. Charter schools are generally considered public entities, as many of them receive some form of public funding; however, they are mostly free some some of the academic constraints and burdensome union regulations that are placed upon mainstream public schools in exchange for their meeting the goals that they put forth in their own mission or charter. Do they offer a degree of choice? Yes, they do; however, the unions are not taking this threat to their power lying down. Rather than be concerned about the education of the students, they’re now beginning to try to make inroads into gradually taking them over. As is stated in a recent Washington Times article,

If you can’t beat them, take them over. That seems to be the new union strategy on charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded schools that are governed by private groups that sign a contract, or charter, with the state. The charter requires that the school meet certain standards of accountability in return for taxpayer funding, but in other areas it exempts the school from many burdensome state or local regulations. Some of the most burdensome are rules required by labor unions.

Charter school teachers usually are not required to join existing union collective-bargaining units. This means charter schools can more easily promote good teachers and fire bad ones. But, of course, this has made charter schools targets for hostile union action.

Unions correctly view charter schools as a threat to their stranglehold over public education and the tax dollars that come with it. Unions have denounced charter schools for “skimming” off the best students from the public schools, and they have sued school districts that introduce charter schools. Unions have tried to block or repeal charter school laws, and they’ve tried to limit the number of charter schools allowed by states.

But in Minnesota, the teachers unions are moving in a new direction. State officials recently have given the Minnesota Guild of Charter Schools, an organization created by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT), the right to authorize charter schools.

The political debate about families’ being granted “vouchers” – credit, essentially, to be used to defray the expenses of a costly private education for tax-paying citizens who opt not to use the resources of the public system – has been going on now for the better part of two decades. From where I stand, the only good reason to deny a family the right to credit for having paid their taxes that are used in the public system is to prevent people from having that financially-viable free choice. If several families ever discover that the quality of the education is markedly better in a certain private school, and word spreads, then more people might make the same choice. The dam will break on the proverbial slippery slope, and fewer teachers will be required in the public system, which will, in turn, result in less revenue from teacher’s dues, and finally, a loss of political power. The final choice, homeschooling, is, believe it or not, being declared illegal in more and more places. All one has to do is to is google “homeschooling illegal” to find the evidence.

Think about that – the state is forcibly telling parents that they do not have the fundamental right to educate their own children. And before anyone makes the claim that the parents “aren’t trained teachers”, I’d counter by saying that a)some of them are more than qualified to do the educational work just as well, if not more effectively, than what’s being produced in the public sector to begin with, and b) just the fact that they’d be more than just a bit invested in the education of their own child would more than make up for what’s being offered as state-run education.

It’s no wonder that there are more and more arguments about “parents’ rights” these days. Like I said – for any group working from the inside, it always begins with the children.

The school choice issue is not going away anytime soon, as is evidenced by the fact that just this past Tuesday, FreedomWorks in South Carolina held a press conference, with state senators in attendance, to help advance school choice legislation H. 4894. The link to the article can be found here: http://www.freedomworks.org/press-releases/south-carolina-freedomworks-to-hold-press-conferen?utm_source=co2hog

How about this? Twitter, in many respects, has become the public voice in today’s society. Here’s a sampling of what people are saying these days about public schools:

RT @GallagherPreach: When our schools are teaching students to pass state tests instead of teaching them skills, we have failed. #publicschool #homeschool

24 #charter #schools will open this fall in #NYC. Most charters will fill space vacated by closed #public schools. http://tinyurl.com/d7w9ual

Just realized I’ve been spelling the word hundred wrong on my checks since I was 18. #publicschools

#publicschools only place where pupils marked their fellow classmates homework and the top students work was the marking scheme

#MO House Ways & Means Committee Chair Andrew #Koenig, what exactly IS the “gay agenda” that is flooding our #publicschools? Examples? #LGBT

@MayorRTRybak wow! With this money you can triple the amount of horrible schooling you give your citizens! #publicschools #Minneapolis

Learning about weed prices and the weed market in personal finance man #publicschools #mcs

I grew w Northern Marxist communists; If I challenged the manifesto was told “U think U are so smart” #publicSchools #MarxistIndoctrination

I miss being able to eat, text, and talk in class without the teacher even looking at you. #publicschools

@rolandsmartin You can’t fix something that was born broke. #publicschools & it seems temporary to patch a faulty foundation.

Without question, getting under the hood in order to try to gut the engine of our educational system – especially the secondary and higher institutions – is, quite possibly, the single most important yet largely unspoken issue facing our nation at this point in our history. Our children need to be instructed in the principles of freedom, in addition to their reading, writing, and arithmetic. They don’t need to be non-instructed in the principles of lazy collectivism.

]]> http://americasright.com/2012/04/25/educate-yourself-volume-i/feed/ 3 http://americasright.com/2012/04/21/romney-hitting-hard-on-keystone-xl/ http://americasright.com/2012/04/21/romney-hitting-hard-on-keystone-xl/#comments Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:21:19 +0000 Jeff Schreiber http://americasright.com/?p=9147 The Hill: Romney on Keystone: ‘I will build that pipeline if I have to myself.’

Mitt Romney drew a line in the oil sands on Friday, focusing on the controversial Keystone pipeline project opposed by the White House and saying, “I will build that pipeline if I have to myself.”

Romney blasted Obama on a range of policies during a speech to the Republican National Committee’s State Chairmen’s National Meeting in Arizona, but singled out the controversial project that would route Canadian oil sands south to Gulf Coast refineries.

Thank goodness he’s on the right side of this.  Keystone is a winning issue for the GOP; we need the new jobs, and we need to be the junkie instead of the dealer.

Plus, I’d rather Romney hit Obama hard on energy than healthcare.

]]> http://americasright.com/2012/04/21/romney-hitting-hard-on-keystone-xl/feed/ 1 http://americasright.com/2012/04/20/great-video-the-2012-national-debt-road-trip/ http://americasright.com/2012/04/20/great-video-the-2012-national-debt-road-trip/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:14:23 +0000 Jeff Schreiber http://americasright.com/?p=9143 So, here in Charlotte, North Carolina for #BlogConCLT, John Feeny and I just saw Political Math’s Matthias Shapiro and Alex Lundry give a great presentation on data visualization.  For me, the highlight was this video from Mr. Shapiro.  Enjoy.

]]> http://americasright.com/2012/04/20/great-video-the-2012-national-debt-road-trip/feed/ 0 http://americasright.com/2012/04/18/vilified-christians-fear-arrest-as-secularist-persecution-increases-says-former-archbishop/ http://americasright.com/2012/04/18/vilified-christians-fear-arrest-as-secularist-persecution-increases-says-former-archbishop/#comments Thu, 19 Apr 2012 03:29:48 +0000 Ian R. Thorpe http://americasright.com/?p=9122 First, I must say I am not a Chistian or, some might say, at best “cultural Christian,” and yet as a libertarian I find myself often defending Christians against the sniping of the “human rights” industry. Those of us who are classical liberals in the true sense of the word (small government, big individual liberty and responsibility), have no time for the authoritarian bullies who have hijacked the word “Liberal” because they don’t like to admit what they really are. True liberals believe in equality but, unlike the authoritarian liberals, do not believe that “some of the animals are more equal than others,” to quote George Orwell.

To put it another way, a true liberal believes in religious freedom, not just for Muslims but for followers of all religions and those of no religion. If there are any misgivings about religion, they centre on those fanatics–Christians, Muslims and Jews alike–who believe their sacred texts lay on them a duty to impose their beliefs on the entire world. Fortunately such people only make up a fraction of the followers of their respective religions.

A true liberal also believes in free speech as a human right and free speech extends to white people being able to criticize (fairly or unfairly) members of the dark skinned races or sexual minorities. It would be easy to make a long list of the areas where the liberal principles of these pseudo-liberal crypto-fascists falls somewhat short of anything that could be considered truly liberal, but that is not the purpose of the article.

As mentioned, my outlook is by no means Christian or in any way religious,but many true liberals are concerned that Christians feel they are being “persecuted” and their faith “driven underground.” Dr. George Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury and man who understands Anglican Christian values probably better than anyone other than Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of South African Anglicans, has said as much and claimed that the courts are failing to protect the religious values, not just of his own church but all Christians and not just in Europe but around the world.

In a copy of his submission to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) released to the press ahead of a landmark case on religious freedom, Lord Carey said Christians were excluded from many sectors of employment because of their beliefs, “vilified by state bodies,” and feared arrest for expressing their views in public. I was shocked at this last assertion but then recalled several members of my blog community have complained in their comments of being warned at work not to discuss even the social side of their church membership in case it offends Muslims or other non Christians.

The ECHR hearing Dr. Carey has addressed will deal with the case of two workers forced out of their jobs after visibly wearing crosses, the case of a relationship counsellor sacked for saying he may not be comfortable giving sex counselling to homosexual couples, and a Christian official registrar of births, deaths and marriages who wishes not to conduct civil partnership ceremonies.

In the submission, Lord Carey said the outward expression of traditional conservative Christian values has effectively been “banned” under a new “secular conformity of belief and conduct.”

The former archbishop detailed how in “case after case” British courts have failed to protect Christian values and urged the European judges to correct the balance. He said there was a “drive to remove Judeo-Christian values from the public square” and argued UK courts have “consistently applied equality law to discriminate against Christians” as they show a “crude” misunderstanding of the faith by treating some worshippers as “bigots”.

Lord Carey, who was archbishop from 1991 to 2002, also wrote this in his submission:

In a country where Christians can be sacked for manifesting their faith, are vilified by state bodies, are in fear of reprisal or even arrest for expressing their views on sexual ethics, something is very wrong. It affects the moral and ethical compass of the United Kingdom. Christians are excluded from many sectors of employment simply because of their beliefs; beliefs which are not contrary to the public good.

He added:

It is now Christians who are persecuted; often sought out and framed by homosexual activists. Christians are driven underground. There appears to be a clear animus to the Christian faith and to Judaeo-Christian values. Clearly the courts of the United Kingdom need guidance.

The submission also argues that British judges have used a strict reading of the equality law to strip the legal right to freedom of religion of “any substantive effect.”

What should be of more concern to the non-religious, politically non-aligned centre of society is the politicisation of the law, along with the politicisation of education, healthcare and public services. All the main areas in which the state interfaces with the public have now fallen under the control of politically correct, left leaning activists. We have heard of pupils excluded from school for expressing views that are “off message,” cases of elderly people being evicted from care homes because they refused to answer questions on their sexuality (this was part of a drive by one local authority to ensure that care homes receiving funds from its treasury were meeting their quotas for elderly and infirm gay and lesbian residents). The deeper we dig, the crazier the politically correct antics of the left become.

These loons cannot see what is wrong with their attempts to create a socially engineered utopia, nor can they sense the irony of their backing up overblown rhetoric about “diversity” with attempts to impose a secularist monoculture on all of us.

Keith Porteus-Wood, executive director of the UK National Secular Society, said in a response to Dr. Carey’s submission:

The idea that there is any kind of suppression of religion in Britain is ridiculous. Even in the European Court of Human Rights, the right to religious freedom is not absolute – it is not a licence to trample on the rights of others. That seems to be what Lord Carey wants to do.

Quite how Mr. Porteus-Wood can say there is no persecution of Christians when in several high profile cases Christian workers have been sacked for wearing a small cross visible outside their clothes while in the workplace is a mystery. As if to pile irony on top of irony, Porteus-Wood conveniently overlooks the fact that in none of these cases have the complaints that led to dismissal and prosecution come from Muslims, Jews, Hindus or members of other minorities. They have all come from secularist lefties eager to be offended on behalf of religious minorities.

What this gentleman fails to understand is that while his comment is to some extent true, it also applies in reverse. Equal rights does not extend to depriving society’s mainstream members of their rights and freedoms in order to pander to the demands of politically motivated minorities. And the feelings of churchgoers, people who oppose affirmative action, who can see no benefit in pumping tax revenue into third world nations or the people who dare to attack the left’s sacred cows are of equal value to those of the “right on” minority.

I can only write of what I know, which is British and European news, but I do get the impression that a lot of American citizens feel their freedoms and way of life is under attack from the current administration, political activists in the legal system and public officials too weak to stand up to the unreasonable demands of minorities. All these and a self elected elite that has so homogenised the political system there is no longer any discernable difference in the policies of the main parties. As a result voters have become totally alienated voters from the political process. And that puts democracy in very grave danger.

]]> http://americasright.com/2012/04/18/vilified-christians-fear-arrest-as-secularist-persecution-increases-says-former-archbishop/feed/ 6 http://americasright.com/2012/04/16/oh-hillary/ http://americasright.com/2012/04/16/oh-hillary/#comments Tue, 17 Apr 2012 02:08:26 +0000 Jeff Schreiber http://americasright.com/?p=9129 Okay, after having a wickedly busy week at work, I wanted to weigh in about the photographs of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that have emerged — specifically, the ones showing her putting back a few beers and shaking her tailfeather on the dance floor down in Cartagena, Columbia for the Summit of the Americas.  So, in looking for a linkable Assigned Reading piece to draw from, I stumbled across this one …

The Atlantic: Hillary Clinton Responds to Her Meme … With a Meme

“The many LOLZ”! The meta, it is almost too much.

So the story has a happy ending for all involved: The guys get rewarded for their work, the Internet gets some laughs, and Hillary gets some cred for laughing right along with us. But today’s turn of events brings with it a new question, too: What, actually, just happened? What do you call it when the subject of a meme responds to that very meme with a meme of her own? What is the specific, socio-scientific term to describe something so meta — and meta-meta, and meta-meta-meta — that it hints at the idea that it won’t be the Hadron Collider that leads the earth to implode into itself, but rather an echoing infinity of lolz?

A meta-meme? An instance of, as Jared Keller suggests, “memeception”?

The problem with choosing that particular piece, besides the fact that it does not reference the Clinton photos but rather the very funny (and now closed down) Texts From Hillary Tumblr, is that I have absolutely no clue what the heck they’re talking about.  I may be a part-time blogger and New Media guy, but that doesn’t even look like English to me.  Yes, I know what a Tumblr is (check out the not-safe-for-work but hilarious Texts From Dog Tumblr), but LOLZ? Meta? Meta-meta-meta?  I’m confused.

So, I managed to find this piece …

The Atlantic: Hillary Clinton Loses the Scrunchie in Columbia

The photos, awesome as they are, have already attracted scrutiny — mostly in the form of self-parodic media coverage. Exhibit A is the New York Post, which went with the characteristically classy “SWILLARY” on the wood. Meanwhile, Politico miraculously found a way to turn this into horserace coverage: “Clinton letting her hair down is the kind of thing that would play well in that presidential run in 2016 that some of her supporters have suddenly started talking about in the last few weeks.” Do they all have a keyboard shortcut for hollow 2016 speculation?

For years, I was saying that Hillary was going to challenge President Obama in the Democratic Party primary this year.  Ronald Glenn and I even talked about it at length while we both worked in the Record Room at City Hall in Philadelphia.  Obviously, I was wrong about that.  I also wonder about whether Hillary is truly done with national politics in this country.  I could see her as a UN Secretary-General or something, but I just don’t see her going for a presidential run, 2016 or otherwise.

Why? I don’t know.  There is just something at-peace about Hillary Clinton right now.  And while this administration is truly an unmitigated disaster (hat tip to Dick Cheney) in matters domestic and foreign, botched “reset” button aside, Hillary has still managed to maintain credibility when everyone around her is turning into a complete joke.

Let her party.  Let her have a good time.  Obama is going to be a one-term president, the world is going to wake up and smell the amateur hour, and Hillary Clinton–like her wayward husband–is going to live to see another political day.  If that’s not something for her to be happy about, I don’t know what is.

In the meantime, I’m gonna work on finding out what “an infinity of LOLZ” means.

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