Inalienable Rights

There seems to be a lot of chatter recently about "rights".  The Establishment Left, an odious creature, creates rights out of whole cloth, based on legislative ideas that have been pet projects of the Socialist World Controllers for centuries.  A "right to health care" is one of the latest shibboleths of the Establishment Left - seen in its push for 'Obamacare'.  Naturally, the Establishment Left got snookered by big corporate, as the main architect of the legislation was a big shot from Big Insurance / Big Bank.  They never seem to learn that their 'egalitarian' movement got co-opted during the Roosevelt administration.

Now, because of the recent reports of 'gun violence' (rhetorical framing intended to stifle debate) the Establishment Left has been pushing the theme of limiting rights, namely the second amendment. After pushing the idea of a dubious 'right',  it feels now that protection is a right that can be altered, changed, abolished and / or regulated.  As usual, they miss the fact that it is a central tenet of freedom, the ability to protect your private property.  For if you cannot protect it, someday it may not be yours.  The President of the US could make an edict tomorrow limiting or abolishing guns - it would be for nought. This is a natural right - the framers put it there at the last minute, they figured it was ridiculous to even put such material in print it was so obvious.  One does not have his rights because of any gov't edict - including the Bill of Rights.  A person has them because he is a person.

They can get away with such a thing ONLY because of the lifeless husk that is the American Public Education system.  Stating that one of the inalienable rights can be toyed with is pure folly.  The Bill of Rights are the rights that are inherent in human souls, the things that are non-negotiable.  These are the true human and natural rights of people.  Only the most simpering toady or the the scraping sycophant would think to limit basic rights.  Despite ones opinion on guns, it is not only dangerous, but wrong to try to limit a person self protection of his or her property.  I may not like things people say, but we see only cursory (and clumsy) 'free speech zones' intended to curtail free speech.  Political correctness was a spectacular attempt to limit free speech.  It has worked, to a point, but I think it's fading.  The ease with which these people seek to deny certain natural rights - but only the ones they personally don't like - is sad, strange and infuriating.  Why do people advocate for serfdom?

The previous generation would have scoffed at such a thing.  First of all, access to guns was easy - often through Sears catalogues and the like.  This made the specter of 'guns!' a non issue.   American children grew up with them, and they had hours in school teaching them about individual freedom, independent thought and classical education.  Much of this is gone now.  The Public Education system teaches little more than politically correct sound bites, obedience to authority, and empty sloganeering.  This toxic mix makes it necessary to start from the beginning.  Let's begin with the Declaration of Independence.  This is the 2nd paragraph.  Notice what it says about rights.  Analysis of this document should be the focus of the first week of U.S. History and Government class.  It's doubtful the average American has read it.  Read it closely and slowly.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Mid Year Report 2013

Midterms

Normally this is not a topic worthy of mention, but this year, with these groups, it is.  I eschewed the classic midterm format long ago.  We all remember the classic midterm / final exam format.  Some multiple choice questions, followed by some reading comprehension, some vocabulary and then a composition or an essay.  As these tasks, all at the same time, were too much for the average American (although it used to not be this way) so exams were dumbed down and made shorter.  The usual 'midterm' at my school is usually a 25 question bunch of multiple choice questions about literature and / or literary terms.  This is followed by an essay - on a dull and unimaginative 'regents based' concept.

My exam is quite simple.  I give seven thematic / reason based questions that have to be answered in a minimum of a paragraph.  There will be ten questions in total and the student must choose seven.  Why no multiple choice?  Because life doesn't provide you with multiple choices at critical junctures.  The top schools don't use much (if any) multiple choice exams because those at the top realize they have no real world usefulness.

The students' reactions were eye opening.  Most were unaware that the exam had started.  Some were thinking that the questions were part of a 'review' and that the test would come the next day.  Even though I had announced in advance the start date of the exam, and I had labeled it thusly on the chalkboard (yes, chalk and slate is the order of the day in my place), and I had announced the beginning of the exam, there was chatter and bafflement at the exam itself.  It was as if it wasn't to be understood.  I even had a student, 20 minutes into class exclaim in surprise "This is the midterm?!"  It wasn't what was expected, it wasn't the norm, and it involved a lot of writing - active literacy.

Not Their Fault

My students are not inherently limited.  They've been taught to be that way.  They've been taught that there really isn't such thing as hard and fast truth.  Relativism rules the day.  Things are what you perceive them to be, and there isn't really any reason or logic to anything.  I routinely (and most public school teachers will tell you the same thing) have students ask me why they failed, and when I tell them they have missed many assignments they retort "but I do all of my work!"  This is the creation of reality on the fly - if the image exists in ones' mind, then it must be so in reality.  How can things not be what I perceive them to be?  Things just happen, and there is no reason for those things, they were just meant to be and they are 'right'.

We are witnessing this philosophic corruption every day.  We have an entity (the State) that has ravaged and disemboweled a once proud public educations system.  We say nothing and accept the "Core Curriculum" it has produced to solve the problems it has created.  The country witnessed a tragedy in CT, and the response is to track behavior through the health care system.  The story behind the tragedy, as presented by the media, is so full of holes that one can't help but suspect that the idea of "you must never let a crisis go to waste" is in full effect.  The cause and effect is ignored, as are discrepancies in the story, yet a "solution", one that doesn't at all fit the problem, is ready - as if it had been written in advance.

Cognitive Dissonance is defined as: "the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, esp. as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change."  This inability to reason, to use the trivium or any logic whatsoever is corrupting society.  We see this most prominently in our political process / dialogue, where there is no reason or analysis - just "my team must win at all costs" and the "other team is bad."  My student who walked out of my class because I "was saying bad things about Obama" is indicative, not of a young mind, but one that is incapable of sound, flexible, reasoned thought.

This podcast, by the folks at Tragedy and Hope Communications, is one of the best sources of this phenomenon.  How do you make an entire nation sick, stupid, broke and afraid?  How do you control the herd and eliminate reason and logic from their lives?  Most of the answers are here.  I found the information fascinating:

You're Crazy!

Two points:
1) Students and friends often ask where there is good, independent and reasonably thorough news that they can trust.  Because the Mainstream Media has completely taken a fall for the Consolidated Wealthy Corporate / Government Complex, there are some sites you should seriously consider.  One of them is the Corbett report.  Mr. Corbett runs his site via donations and sales.  There are no ads, no shills for agendas, and no nonsense.  The information would be ridiculed by Establishment Thinkers and Mainstream Press, which by definition makes it worthwhile.

2) Mr. Corbett had a podcast about 'conspiracy theorists'.  He brought up a great point about how, in order to malign someone, it is necessary to simply call them a 'conspiracy theorist' and ridicule them.  This is intended to stifle discussion and debate.  "Well, that is a conspiracy, and you're a conspiracy theorist, therefore the things you've said are not to be discussed".  This is still relevant today.  There are people in the public eye who would prefer to be called anything except a conspiracy theorist.  It has become the new "crazy".  In the old days, calling someone 'crazy' was a way to defeat them in the battle of ideas.  The new way is conspiracy theory via the internet.  This incites laughter among The Herd and is supposedly a debate stopper.

Corbett takes this absurd, and logically fallacious idea and crushes it in this podcast.  The quote of the podcast is near the end, when, after pointing out all of the things that Mr. Brzezinski says that qualify as 'conspiracy', he notes that one is not considered a 'conspiracy theorist' if one is one of the 'conspirators'. A priceless line and totally appropriate.  Watching the obsequious fawning of the MSM interviewers while listening to material that would qualify anyone else as a conspiracy theorist is particularly funny, and somewhat nauseating.

What's Happening

In School

We have (another) new initiative - this time from the State - a two fold bureaucratic monstrosity that involves hours of useless grading and paperwork.  None of the grading or paperwork will help a single student, nor will it affect positively the time I am able to spend with my students during the day.  Here's the system:

1. We have to give a diagnostic exam in the Fall, and then another follow up exam in the Spring.  
2. The SLO, (student learning objective) will be written by the teacher predicting how much better the students will do on the exam in the Spring than they did in the Fall.
3. The diagnostic exams are simple re-hashed state exams with little to no relevance to anything in the school world or the real world.
4. Naturally, the grades were crushed during the grading of the Fall exams.  This ensures that the 'grades' for the Spring exams will be WAAYYY better than the Fall exams. 
5. This will be touted as 'improvement' by the students and proof that the teachers are doing a great job.

Who loses? The students, as usual.  They lose days that could be going toward real information, and are instead inundated with more high stakes exams that do nothing but justify the jobs of highly paid bureaucrats in the state capital and in the district office.  Public education has become a dangerous farce.  The 'State', which has taken a once proud and effective public school system and run it off the rails, is now saying: "here's the new system, and trust us, this time it will work."  This is the crowd that, with the help of the NEA, destroyed whatever credibility they had with their education policies of the late 1960's and early 1970"s.  Here's the worst part.  Our new 'system' uses the Common Core Learning Standards.  This is the government's way of trying to fulfill the dream they've been having for the past 100 years - a one size fits all curriculum that will so totally dumb down the youth of America via a national standard.  As usual it is couched in verbiage like 'literacy' and 'standards' and other fancy eduspeak.  Nowhere will you hear about active literacy  and passive literacy, the trivium or the classic seven liberal arts.  Orwell would be proud, these state documents that dictate our 'system' are Newspeak to the core.  On a positive note, we all had a good laugh while going through the new state 'plan' - it is the little people, us, who understand the joke that all of this is.

Current Affairs 

The mainstream media is having a time with the 'fiscal cliff' chatter on the main networks and newspapers.  There is cognitive dissonance at its finest.  The government has created over $16 trillion in debt.  (The real number is much higher).  Now, it is expected to 'save' the financial straits of the country by - - spending more and cutting nothing.  The US gov't spend $10 billion a day, yet the politicians are bickering about tax levels and the inability to cut anything, at any time.  The problem is spending, yet spending cuts never seem to happen.  The only solution, possibly, is the day of reckoning when the well runs dry, and the government checks bounce, or the dollars are worthless due to reckless money printing by the FED.  The American people are half of the problem, as the huge majority of incumbent representatives were reelected in the House and the Senate - no changes made there.  There is an old quote about democracy - that it is the type of government where the people get the government they deserve.  Well, with the dumbing down of the American electorate, and the resulting charade that is the political scene, that quote seems more appropriate than ever.

GeoPolitics

One of the many glaring deficiencies in school these days is the lack of geopolitical discussion and awareness.  At the university level there are usually professors on the Left preaching their political dogma, even when it is inappropriate.  At the high school level, there are many reasons for the dearth of geopolitical discussion, not the least of which is that students are being prepped for the Global History Regents during 9th and 10th grades, then the US History and Government Regents during 11th grade.  For three years, students are being 'prepared' for a high stakes exam that is riddled with errors and propaganda and are useless for post high school life.  Even burgeoning history majors are not helped by these exams as they are barely surface level exams written by statists in Albany, NY.  A serious person would have to unlearn what he has learned for these exams.

Globally, we are in financial trouble.  The US, and much of the developed world, went through a technology bubble during the late 1990's and the early 2000's.  This was 'irrational exuberance' when it came to stocks that ended with a '.com' - a new phenomenon at the time.  Pets.com and the career of Henry Blodgett are worth analyzing for more information on this topic.  The US (the gov't and the Federal Reserve) then repeated the errors of the .com bubble by creating a new bubble in housing.  This meant that people were buying houses (plural) with borrowed money, taking money out with the house itself as collateral, and buying more houses and other things they may not have needed.  This was all predicated on the belief that the price of housing would never go down.  The 'housing bubble' burst in late 2007, and the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average), the main indicator as to the health of the US Stock Market, hit a low in March of 2009.

Here's the problem.  The US government has never allowed the crash to happen fully.  It lowered interest rates, which keeps the price of money artificially low.  It also means that government spending can continue because paying the interest on the debt of the country is artificially inexpensive.  There were huge corporate bailouts - meaning that the large banks were, for all intents and purposes, bankrupt, but they were given taxpayer money to stay afloat.  There were huge 'stimulus' packages, gigantic spending packages courtesy of congress done under the idea that "government spending can juice the economy and get it going".   This is known as kicking the can down the hallway, and it can't go on forever.

The most absurd aspect of this obvious and frightening prospect of economic crash is the ability of the mainstream media to downplay or ignore it.  For the MSM, it is always a sunny day, and the looming fiscal cliff can be handled by our politicians making 'tough decisions' and 'getting things done' and 'working toward a bipartisan goal'.  Over the past years it has been helpful to find people who will talk plainly, about difficult topics, and tell the truth.  Marc Faber, of the aptly named "Doom Boom and Doom Report" is one of the people who is unafraid to speak of bad news.  Here he explains how badly he thinks things will go economically worldwide, and he begins by poking fun at how optimistic the shills at CNBC are.  I couldn't help but notice he politely laughed as the news anchors tried to poke fun at him - as if he were telling the audience that he'll have the last laugh.  It is important for you to learn about geopolitical issues because there is so much financial interconnectedness between countries.  A large crash in a country would cause connected economies to get pulled down as well.

People / sites I've found helpful:
The Aden Sisters
Peter Schiff
Marc Faber
Chris Martenson
Kyle Bass
Michael Lewis
Matt Taibbi

Here Marc Faber insists on telling bad news to people who ignore it:

School Shooting

The school shooting tragedy is of a magnitude unfathomable.  The families and the communities deserve the wishes and help of anyone with a soul.  There is nothing more horrible than losing a child.  My mother has actually given me a directive that she made me swear by.  It is that I will not die before she does.  She told me in no uncertain terms that I could be an odious human being, a bum on the street loser, as long as I don't predecease her.  The parents must be going through a torture that I cannot imagine.

As to be expected, the mainstream media, bought and paid for by the Elite Class of these United States, is pimping the horror of the tragedy for all its worth.  They are on record of wishing the regular people to be disarmed, helpless and dependent, so they are playing this to the hilt.  Their unabashed wailing about the type of weaponry is ham handed and cloddish.  As usual, they expect the majority of people to follow along.  The NY Times this morning had "submachine gun" plastered in the title of the lead article.  Naturally, when a drunk driver mows down a family, they go into great detail about whether the car was a hybrid, or if it was a diesel, or if it was front wheel or all wheel drive.  The pathetic MSM is now not only going bankrupt, it is brazenly trying to control opinion with clumsy propaganda.

The call for 'more gun control' is the meme that the Power Elite wish to perpetrate.  The CT shooting was in a 'may issue' state, and the school was a 'gun free school zone'.  I see those signs saying 'gun free zone' and I wonder who they are for.  It was impossible for anyone to defend himself, as all of the law abiding people were unarmed.  The same thing happened in VA Tech a few years ago, and at Columbine HS in 1999.  The push for 'more gun control' is as absurd as it is wrong.  What more do people wish to control?  John Lott has researched the effects of gun bans for years.  He was originally a gun control advocate, but when he actually researched the topic, he found out that everything he had believed was wrong.  His book, More Guns, Less Crime obliterates the the shibboleths that surround gun control.  The founders had it right with the 2nd amendment.  You are not free if you can't have private property, or the ability to protect that property.  Your property begins with yourself, and if you are at someone's mercy to stay alive - you are not free. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Please notice - it says the "right of the people" and this amendment was seen fit to be second, right behind free speech.

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One of my HS friends asked a good question on FB.  Interestingly, only a few people that are FB 'friends' are calling for stricter gun control.  They're usually partisan ideologues or not historically well versed.  Most people are hesitant to hit the "ban guns" red button.  Luckily, the Power Elite don't seem to be aware that there is an internet, and are doing their propaganda as if it's still 1988.  Here is some of the thread with my friend:

Original post: Me: "and yet when I post about the 168 children killed by the Bush Obama drone attacks - nothing. Nada. Actually, that's not true. One person asked me to help them buy a rake in 'Farmville'."

MRM: it's all horrible...all of it and us. we create this mess then scoff at it

Me: It is horrible Michelle, but we didn't create it and we aren't horrible. Everyone who liked or commented on this post, and the age range is from 14 to 40, is a good, peace loving person who is a non violent law abiding American. Some of them I've known since 1986. Some I met this Sept. Our Overlords, the Elite who are parasitical and despicable, use events like these to rip freedoms away from regular folk, get us to bicker amongst ourselves, and have a Corporate Media Monolith to disseminate their message. Notice how every 'tragedy' is used to assault the Bill of Rights. It is 'they', not 'us' who needs to be ignored and rejected.

MRM: We ridicule, persecute, ignore ppl who are "not normal". We allow and praise the media when they do what they r doing. We herald the shooter, bicker like u said, and then continue as if nothing happened. How r we part of the solution? If we r not, what does that make us?

Me: I think we need to teach the younger people a few things. Independent thinking is at top of the list. Right behind it is the fallacy of authority. People do and think what they're told. This tragedy is the perfect case. The NY Times had 'submachine gun' as part of its heading today. When a drunk driver mows down a family, is it on the front page? Why not? Do they say if it's a Prius or an SUV? Do they mention if it was a diesel engine under the hood? No, of course not as it's irrelevant. But most Americans are having the 'gun debate' decided for them via a corporate owned Elite propagating mainstream media and they don't even realize it. Thinking for yourself, doing research, questioning authority are things you should show everyone you know who is under the age of 18. That's what you can do. I have my opinions, and they come from lots of reading and a pathologically independent mindset. The Ruling Class would prefer that we watch 'Toddlers and Tiaras', shout "tastes great - less filling" at each other, and worship our Overlords (gov't). Sorry - those things aren't my style and I explain to young people that you can be different and think for yourself.

Here's John Lott going up against a bought and paid for MSM propaganda piece.  Watch how Lott uses logic and reasoning, and MSM puppet uses emotion and scare tactics to try to marginalize and sway opinion:

Why I Hate School But Love Education

This video is indicative of the fact that people are beginning figure out that the cost of a degree does not equal the long term payoff of the degree.  "School" does not equal "educated".  The student loan bubble, the lack of rigor in many schools, the nonstop partying, the lack of the classics are all things that people are getting wise to.  The cost of the school simply is not worth it.  An amazing education is practically free.  You have to begin with the Trivium and continue a never ending journey into books all the while being entrepreneurial and running your own business, however small.