For years, I’ve been advocating the complete shutdown of the U.S. Department of Education. In the United States Constitution, funding of education is never mentioned or implied, but for 35 years federal government has been handing out cash to states and school systems in return for capitulating to prescribed standards and rules created by federal bureaucrats. Now President Obama wants to offer up “free” college education.
You probably won’t see that creative writing assignment in a high school English class, but some students in an Albany, N.Y. High School English class were asked to “argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!”
The real question here … Who is responsible and who will be held responsible? An independent investigation confirmed student test answers were altered at Betances School in Hartford to improve test scores. The cheaters altered the answers and were so greedy they got caught.
All this renewed talk about gun control in the wake of the Newtown murders made me realize: the liberals just don’t trust you do to much of anything on your own.
Consider, if you will, a few of the liberties the left has tried to, is trying, or has, wrested from you:
Trust is the fundamental basis for liberty, as a government that doesn’t trust you to take care of yourself will give you no liberty. Remember “a government that is big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take everything you have”? Jefferson knew this day was coming, stating “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”, as did Ben Franklin: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” If they don’t trust us, there is no reason for us to trust them.
Back in the good old days, people were expected to take responsibility for themselves and their family, their health and their retirement, buy insurance as they felt necessary, educate themselves on the issues of the day or elections etc., or live with the results of their choices. In other words, stupidity and laziness were supposed to hurt you, not everyone else. Now, we have to have the clods in government micromanaging every aspect of our lives, regurgitating and distributing information (with the aid of their flying monkeys in the press) and supposedly protecting us from all the bad things (read it: hard choices and sensible decisions) in life in the Quixotian pursuit of some utopian, risk free society that they get to contrive, and ultimately, control.
Now surely, the prime motivator for this is the relatively lousy education students are receiving in most government schools. And by relative, I mean compared to the rest of the world and the way we educated children prior to the second World War. Who has been in charge of the schools? You guessed it: the liberals. They have tried every crackpot educational theory from the “new math” to “dumbing down” the curriculum in the name of self esteem resulting in a lack of a competitive spirit and a plunge in critical thinking, math and science education. Go look at graduate school enrollments: STEM majors (science, technology, engineering and math) come from other countries now.
What has all this produced? The low information voter (read it: Democrat) that cares more for “reality shows” than reality; a population that thinks “gimme” is the first word in the Pledge of Allegiance. A group that thinks it is too important to do the “menial” labor that they outsource to “insourced” (my word) illegal aliens. A group of people that vote to take the money from the pocketbooks of others rather than earning it themselves, and a party that promises it to keep giving it to them. A group that has traded a lot of liberty for less security. A group that thinks “news” is regurgitated, prechewed, selective pap in 30 second sound bites that the liberal media chooses to give them. People that think the police will be there before a crime happens, instead of long after. A group whose apathy is only exceeded by their own infantilism. People stupid enough to think that a president who has repeatedly demonstrated the epitome of economic incompetence will do a better job in a second term.
In other words, the people that Democrats can cater to for votes. Or more accurately, people whose votes can be bought.
The United States was built on capitalism and the Protestant work ethic. These two concepts produced American exceptionalism. They built this country. As history keeps showing us, failed ideas like socialism, Marxism, progressivism, communism etc., can only destroy once great countries. Every time politicians think that their feel good legislation is better than tried and true business, banking and governing practices, chaos ensues. A prime example is the last housing bust. You know the story.
Self determination and the freedom to make choices are the very foundation of liberty. Trading it for free stuff, handouts from the government, and some elusive “safety” has been warned about since the Constitution was written. So much for the whining “the Constitution was written for the 1700s” or some such pap. The truth is, the politicians from the 1700’s were just plain smarter and more patriotic than the self important, self interested hacks we see today.
It is time to take back the country from the politicians, the lawyers, the new world order types, and the hangers-on, the parasites, and make sure that the United States remains the greatest country in the world.
Nothing to see here, it’s all a misunderstanding. Andre Pearson, the principal at Mission Viejo Elementary in Aurora, Colo. sent out a letter promoting an after-school tutoring program open only to students of color. How do you think that went over?
While many union teachers in Michigan called in sick yesterday to protest in Lansing, 100 miles east in Detroit, only 7 percent of 8th graders can read at grade level.
This is scandalous. Unfortunately, it comes from the Board of Education of the State of Florida. That would be my Board of Education. Read more
You see, some kids from different cultures may not eat sandwiches. Kids in the Portland, Ore. elementary school system may eat a torta or pita, and therefore would likely feel left out and discriminated against if a teacher referenced a “sandwich.” The result – of course – is lower grades in math and reading.
Honestly, my headline is totally misleading, but that’s how it’s being reported. The student was not criticizing Obama, he was pointing out Obama admitted to bullying a girl when he was in school. Because the teacher has blinders on, she was deaf to the actual point. Now, she’s suspended with pay.
When the federal government is handing out funding for programs they never should be funding, there will be winners and there will be losers. Connecticut’s application for $50 million in Department of Education funding was denied again; some other state(s) will be the winners.