posted by Bruce Porter on כ"ח אלול תש"ע כ"ג טבת תש"ל
By Bruce Porter
“We could even grant animals a right to bring suit
without insisting that animals are persons,
or that they are not property” Cass Sunstein:
page 11 of Animal Rights:
Current Debates and New Directions (2004).
The Senate is about to shove through (and down our collective throats) the confirmation of quite possibly the most radical Obama-appointed “Czar” yet. Sen. Harry Reid has declared that he is planning to push for “cloture” to force a Senate vote on the confirmation of Sunstein.
There are no words I can say that can adequately describe the immense damage Obama’s new Regulatory “Czar” could do to our nation. I urge you, I BEG YOU, please take a few minutes of your valuable time to watch the following video.
THEN, I BEG YOU, call your State Senator’s office in Washington.
posted by Bruce Porter on כ"ח אלול תש"ע כ"ג טבת תש"ל
How the Radical Left
Plan to Destroy the Republic Through Our Children
by: Dr. Bruce R. Porter
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle Is The Hand That Rules The World
-From a poem by William Ross Wallace-
“When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already…What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community. …Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state.”
– Adolph Hitler
A letter from the U.S. Department of Education was recently sent to America’s school principals, announcing that President Barack Obama “will deliver a national address to the students of America” on Tuesday, September 8, at 12 noon EDT. The letter encourages “students of all ages, teachers, and administrators to participate in this historic moment by watching the president deliver the address, which will be broadcast on the White House website.”
The letter goes on to state that the President “…will speak directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school.” and “…encourages educators to use this moment” to lay aside their ordinary lesson plans and choose from a “menu of classroom activities” prepared by the Obama administration’s own “teachers-in-residence” and “Teaching Ambassador Fellows.”
The climax of this outrage is a letter announcing that the Obama Department of Education is “launching the ‘What I am to Learn’ video contest,” offering three grand prizes of $1,000 cash to the best responses to the President’s educational challenge, to be awarded in October by a “panel of judges including” Obama’s own Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. There is a dark underside to this little exercise that is more than troubling.
Part of the exercise was to include teachers putting up “quotations” from Obama on the walls, and having the children making a “pledge” to do what they can to “serve” President Obama. This is the pinch of arsenic in the sweet-pie. Under our constitution, (unlike nations like North Korea or China) our leaders SERVE US. They are our employees and as such, we are NOT their servants! I fear that we are witnessing the beginnings of an effort to recruit our children into a dangerous cult of personality worship not unlike what we saw in Socialist Germany in the 1930s.
First of all, can anyone show me a reference in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights giving the President the slightestshred of authority to operate in the role of “Superintendent in Chief” of a national education system? Look for it. It will not be found! This is nothing less than a transparent, contemptuous, and extremely dangerous move on the part of the Left in our country to move the nation toward their agenda through our children! The only encouraging part of this sorry spectacle is that I’m hearing that no small numbers of parents are planning to keep their children home on Tuesday, and some school Principals are refusing to allow the online video to be shown in their schools. No doubt pressures will be brought to bear upon those brave dissenters in the months to come.
Is this a new tactic on the part of Socialists and Progressives to influence the education environment and the minds of our children? You might be surprised to know that the answer is emphatically NO. This has been a part of a decades-long agenda beginning around the turn of the 19th century. Journey with me now into a place were the foundations of our Republic were beginning to crumble away. A place where reason and faith were supplanted by an atheistic, humanistic, socialistic mindset that is entirely intolerant of any “belief system” other than its own.
Come with me now, into the “Public Education Zone.”
Our story begins with the establishment of the secular public school system, and to understand it, we must examine who actually set it in motion in America. If you’ve never been exposed to this information, it might seem extreme. Truth sometimes has that effect on you when you’ve lived inside the Matrix all your life. Maybe it’s time to take the red pill, and see how far down the rabbit hole goes… (Reference to the secular film, The Matrix) 1
Dewey: “The Father of Modern Education”
John Dewey has been called the “Father of Modern Education.” What is not widely known is that he was also a totalitarian socialist who envisioned total government control over all education through the agency of public schools. He believed that through secular public education, a throng of indoctrinated socialists could be brought to power and transform America into a totalitarian society. The world he envisioned would eliminate the Judeo-Christian paradigm. He built his socialist education dream-house with lumber he borrowed from a book titled; “Looking Backward,” published in 1887 by Edward Bellamy, a fellow totalitarian socialist. 2
The foundation-stone of Dewey’s vision was his utter rejection of the existence of ultimatetruth. Because the very concept of God is an absolute, he dismissed belief in God and postulated that moral relativism and evolutionary forces govern human existence through chance-random processes. Dewey recognized that deeply held religious convictions, especially those based upon the Bible, would not be easily eradicated from society and would require a long period of “progressive” indoctrination in compulsory public schools. Eventually, the students of these schools would grow up to be teachers and school administrators themselves and would pass on, perhaps unwittingly, the assumptions and world-views of secularism and socialism. What better place for this societal transformation to take place but in the minds and hearts of impressionable children? In fact, Dewey’s book, Democracy and Education, was listed by Human Events magazine as fifth in a list of the ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries. 3
Most people are unaware that Dewey was a prominent signer of the socialist/atheist Humanist Manifesto. 4 Secular Humanism is a belief system that utterly rejects the concept of sin, the existence of God, or any need of forgiveness or salvation. Humanism has an entirely different understanding of salvation, asserting that man is his own god, and any “salvation” must come from his own enlightened efforts. Dewey championed Darwinian evolution as the foundation of true science as a means of marginalizing any belief in God as utter ridiculousness. 5 Between 1945 and 1953, Dewey’s articles and books virtually amounted to the Americanized version of the Communist Manifesto. His influence helped introduce Marxist socialism into the American culture. History has proven repeatedly that wherever these evil ideologies have gained a foothold, human enslavement, poverty, and misery has multiplied.
Dewey disdained those who maintained “originalist” interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. Because he thought it ludicrous to believe in fixed, unchanging realities, 6 he gave philosophical support to the modern idea that the Constitution is a “living document” and must change according to the demands of “Progressivism.” Such fixed landmarks on the political and societal horizons must be removed, and replaced with a socialist totalitarian society free of moral or biblical restraint. He set in motion public education policies that relentlessly sought to identify and eliminate any teacher who continued to hold conservative views. This practice continues to this day, with Christian teachers frequently reprimanded or dismissed for simply displaying a personal bible in open view upon their desk. For a comprehensive study of how these totalitarian thinkers have influenced American public education, I recommend A Brief Chronology of Collectivism by Eric Samuelson, Attorney At Law (October 1997)
Recent polls demonstrate that the vast majority of youth today do not believe in the existence of absolute truth, or the concept of absolute right and wrong. Due to the effectiveness of the socialist agenda in our nation’s public schools, most of our people’s beliefs are now based on what will make them feel good, or give immediate selfish gratification, without much regard for truthful or ethical standards. 7 Throughout Dewey’s life, he diligently sought to establish a public school curriculum that erodes Christianity and absolute values, slowly replacing them with relativism. He has been remarkably successful over the past century.
Dewey labored successfully to remove from the “accepted” curriculum list the long-established Eclectic Education Series (EES) textbooks which completely dominated American schools from 1865 to 1915. He also targeted Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law. Self-proclaimed “tolerant” liberal progressives cannot tolerate views such as the EES textbooks or Blackstone’s Commentaries because they contained ubiquitous references to God and high moral standards. Blackstone was vilified for teaching that laws ultimately originate from God’s word, and taught that there were certain rights and wrongs that never change with the shifting winds of popular opinion. 8 McGuffe’s Readers, part of the ESS series, were particularly hated by Dewey and his cohorts because, as Dewey declared in his own words, public schools should be the “State established church.”
Dewey’s socialist activism extended even to helping establish the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU was founded by an associate of Dewey, Roger Nash Baldwin. 9 Baldwin was a member of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), and was a master at the art of deception regarding his true agendas. 10 It appears that the deception has been largely successful. Most people look at you askance if you dare to say that the ACLU is a Communist hack organization.
Dewey was also highly influential in the establishment in 1917 of the National Education Association (NEA). 11 Most people are completely ignorant of the true agenda of this organ of the Left, and think it exists to provide a good education to their children. The reality is, however, that the NEA is one of the foremost apparatchiks of public school indoctrination to destroy young minds and turn them into committed little liberal progressives. 1213
Dewey became even busier. In the 1920s and 30s he foisted his views on progressive evolutionism at Peking University and many other places in China with the liberal progressive, Bertrand Russell. Ironically, Mao Zedong, co-founder of the Communist Party of China (CPC) worked and studied at the University of Peking during that time, and was introduced to Communism there. Is it not possible that Dewey was a contributing factor in the Marxist Cultural Revolution that occurred there in the late 1940s, and resulted in slaughter of tens of millions of people?14
Totalitarians view state schools as a means to indoctrinate children as loyal wards of the State. School children are encouraged to reject their parent’s values and even report on them to school authorities when asked. (“Johnny, how many guns does your daddy have at home?”) Dewey firmly believed that children had to be reeducated away from the traditional values of their parents, thereby facilitating citizens for the new world order. Has anyone noticed a similar trend in America’s public schools over the past few decades?
Increasingly, “politically correct” revisionist history books that undermine free-enterprise and loyalty to the United States are finding their way into our classrooms. Recently, incidents of ranting anti-American, socialist teachers have been captured by students who recorded these indoctrination sessions with digital recorders.15 These reports have been largely ignored by the media and public at large.
Leftist radicals were publishing and promoting textbooks with a socialist agenda even as far back as the 1940s. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation spent millions of (1940) dollars to create history books introducing socialist/atheistic agendas in so-called “approved texts” to local school districts. Did these socialist activists ever stop their agenda? No! Even the California Library Association (a far-left liberal advocacy group) confirmed this fact by posted a scathing rebuttal against conservatives who wanted to stop Marxist indoctrination in the library and school systems in the 40s and 50s.16
Now we find ourselves in a socialist “Twilight Zone” after the recent presidential campaign. A majority of the electorate became enamored with the concept of “Change,” or “Change We Can Believe In,” with hardly a passing thought about what that “change” would actuallymean in practical terms. Judging from what we can read between the lines, we can reasonably expect a radical plunge into a socialist “new world” nightmare. After over fifty years of public school socialist indoctrination, our people seem sufficiently dumbed-down and willing to embrace socialism and secularism. This is playing out just as Dewey and his fellow-travelers envisioned!
The Coming Attack Against Home and Private Education
In 2008 a three-judge panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeals in California sought to effectively make the practice of homeschooling a criminal offense. While stopping short of banning homeschooling altogether, the court laid down impossibly high teacher qualifications for parents exceeding even that required of public or private schools. With nearly 200,000 home schooled children in California, we witnessed the attempted criminalization of an entire sector of California’s population. Thankfully, this court order was stayed, yet we can reasonably anticipate that future efforts to shut down home and private education will increase under President Obama’s administration.
Why is this issue so important to these government officials? Perhaps more importantly, why are such huge numbers of parents “opting out” of the public school system and risking the wrath of the State by doing so?
Could it possibly be that parents are deeply concerned with the abysmal academic quality of a public school education? Well-documented studies have shown conclusively that public schools are turning out students with grade equivalences on par with some third-world African nations in spite of massive annual infusions of billions of tax dollars to feed this insatiable system. In 1983, the Reagan administration appointed a blue-ribbon commission to report on the state of American public education. The result was alarming. The report titled, “A Nation at Risk,” sent shockwaves across the nation. Politicians made speeches, school officials sputtered their indignation, and yet, little has improved since then. A Christian Science Monitor report in 2003 revealed that our nation’s schools are in as much a crisis now as then. 17 Even the liberal Boston Globe released an alarming report on public education in 2006, calling for radical reforms.18
Perhaps most parents are also not terribly excited about their kids being taught to put condoms on bananas or cucumbers, 19 or that their God-given gender is a mere happenstance, and they must “explore their sexual identity” even in the primary grades? 20
Or, could it be that parents of faith are distressed that the entire concept of God, (especially the Christian one) is treated like plutonium in public schools; replaced with evolution’s “everything-is-an-accident-and-therefore-nothing-has-meaning” delusions?
Perhaps it just might be that millions of American parents have finally gone beyond being merely annoyed, and are now completely fed-up with the entire public education apparatus itself, and have every reason to believe that those running it have a far different agenda than simply teaching our children math, history, or science. 21
I fear we are witnessing the deconstruction of our Constitutional Republic resulting primarily from the “re-education camps” popularly known as public schools. No longer is this radical agenda found in the Colleges and Universities alone, but the radical left has captured the lower grades in the government schools. While they tout slogans about “tolerance” and “multi-culturalism,” the real agenda is the eradication of all competing beliefs and ideologies, particularly Judeo-Christian ones. Their goal is a one-world socialist order where an elite few rule over the ignorant masses and enslave them.
Some of my friends who are either public school teachers or administrators, or, have enrolled their children in the public schools for one reason or another, may feel a bit defensive and perhaps a little offended at this point. Please forgive me, but I cannot hold my peace. Truth is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow. I maintain that you are putting the spiritual and emotional health of not only yourself, but also your children, at grave risk by placing them in these government schools.
The usual defense I get is some variation of; “But our school different! We have great teachers there!” This may be true, and I acknowledge that many public school teachersare loving dedicated people who are not personally in agreement with the dark side of the system they serve. However, you can be sure that these teachers are closely monitored and live daily under the threat of censure or dismissal if they communicate in even the slightest degree to their students, their personal convictions about their faith, or misgivings about the indoctrination taking place. There are also certainly varying degrees of the socialist/humanist indoctrination agenda in play at various schools, often depending on how rural that school may be, and individual administrators. However, I maintain that the underlying “agenda” is definitely present, however cleverly masked it may be, even if only by what is excluded from the curriculum.
In light of the above, it is no surprise that California’s radical-left Judiciary sought to outlaw all home schooling in practicality. They know that private and parochial schools and home schools are the last bastion of freedom. They fear that un-indoctrinated home-school students may rise up and oppose their socialist agenda. Karl Marx called such upstarts “Reactionaries.” The “new world order” zealots must crush all other ideas, especially ones that inculcate a supreme loyalty to the God of the Bible over the State.
“I know not what course others may take…”–Patrick Henry
I cannot speak for the resolve others may hold regarding this issue, but as a home-schooling father, I will resist any effort to indoctrinate my grade-school daughter, or my grandchildren into the socialist “new world order.” This is culture war. My fervent hope and prayer is that it will not esclalate into something even more ominous. We didn’t seek this conflict, but it has come nevertheless, forced upon us by those who wish to fundamentally change our nation and world into a humanistic, atheistic, totalitarian nightmare. As the actor Sean Connery said in his King Arthur character in the film First Knight, “There’s a peace to be found only on the other side of war. If that battle must come, I will fight it!”
Will we prevail in our struggle to retain the freedom to educate our children according to our faith with academic excellence and patriotic conviction? Let us hope so, for the price we will pay for defeat is far too terrible to contemplate. Are we willing to stand for truth and pay freedom’s price yet again? Are there yet among us those who would resist tyranny with “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor?” One thing is certain. If we do nothing, if we refuse to speak out and remain on the sidelines in this battle, we will ensure our defeat and enslavement.
Dr. Bruce R. Porter is a pastor, writer, speaker, chaplain, crisis responder, and blogger and podcaster. He and his wife of 32 years live in the Colorado mountains west of Denver with their adopted homeschooled daughter from China. His blogs can be found at: http://www.brucespeaks.com and http://www.astroillume.com
http://tinyurl.com/lwlnx6 and http://tinyurl.com/d2encs“So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we’ll be called a democracy,” ACLU Founder Roger Baldwin said. (Excerpt from the ACLU’s official website).↩
http://tinyurl.com/m5py8aRoger Nash Baldwin (January 21, 1884 – August 26, 1981), civil libertarian, founding member of American Civil Liberties Union, and its first executive director. ↩
http://tinyurl.com/mjrk3cChronology of the National Education Association: The Socialist Vision and Global Connections of the NEA ↩
http://tinyurl.com/kr7brbTwenty years after ‘A Nation at Risk’ By Marjorie Coeyman. Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor April 22, 2003 ↩
http://tinyurl.com/mytrny What About the Children? An interview with John E. Berthoud By: George A. Clowes, Published In: School Reform News, March 1, 2000 The Heartland Institute ↩
http://tinyurl.com/m2trj4The British role in creating Maoism by Michael Billington. Executive Intelligence Review, November 17, 1995 ↩
http://tinyurl.com/m5yygqOut-of-control teacher reinstated after anti-US rantby: David Huntwork March 11, 2006 ↩
http://tinyurl.com/meft9eThe war on books and ideas: the California Library Association and anti-Communist censorship in the 1940s and 1950s.(The Role of Professional Associations) From: Library Trends 9/22/1997 by: Cindy Mediavilla ↩
http://tinyurl.com/kr7brbTwenty years after ‘A Nation at Risk’ By Marjorie Coeyman. Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor April 22, 2003 ↩
posted by Bruce Porter on כ"ה תמוז תש"ע כ"ג טבת תש"ל
By: Bruce R. Porter
One of my favorite talk-show hosts is Michael Medved. I often listen to him late at night lying in bed using ear buds so I don’t disturb my sleeping beauty next to me. He is a brilliant host, well-versed in most subjects, and nearly always treats his call-in guests with deferential courtesy.
One subject, however, that seems to really get under Michael’s skin and provoke near-rants of indignation, is the subject of President Obama’s citizenship status and his qualifications to hold the highest office in the land. Under Article 2 of the constitution, only a “natural born” citizen is eligible to be president. Mr. Medved becomes nearly apoplectic when people question the veracity of the Certificate of Live Birth, released by the State of Hawaii and the Obama campaign as proof of his “natural born” citizenship.
Mr. Medved, with all due respect, thou “doth protest too much, methinks.” 1
Perhaps the seriousness of this issue is lost on you, but I’m starting to think that we are facing potentially the most dangerous constitutional crisis in the history of our 233 year-old nation. Consider the following facts…
President Obama has not produced (despite repeated requests by citizens and members of the news media) any of the following information most people would consider customary and ordinary to anyone seeking high office.
His kindergarten records
His Punahou school records
His Occidental College records
His Columbia University records
His Columbia thesis
His Harvard Law School records
His Harvard Law Review articles
His scholarly articles from the University of Chicago
His passport
His medical records
His files from his years as an Illinois state senator
His Illinois State Bar Association records
His baptism records
His adoption records
These records are important insofar as they would give us valuable insights into Obama’s background and philosophy. However, they pale in comparison to the paramount importance of his producing a certified copy of his Long Form Birth Certificate. This document, above all others, would settle once and for all the growing controversy over his constitutional qualifications to serve as POTUS. Some, like Michael Medved, have argued that this is a moot point since he was elected to the office. The fly in the ointment however, remains—the constitutionality of an Obama presidency.
The implications, if he is not qualified, are nearly unthinkable. For one thing, every order he gives as Commander in Chief is an illegal order. We’re already beginning to see some members of the military question the legitimacy of his authority. Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook, an Army Engineer, has refused orders for deployment to Afghanistan because without proof of the commander-in-chief’s eligibility for office, the entire army “becomes merely a corps of chattel slaves under the illegitimate control of a private citizen.” 2
If other members of the military begin taking such a bold stand, we could see a severe crisis unfold in our national security. More than this, if our men and women in uniform begin to be regarded as illegitimate mercenaries without proper authority, they could be arrested in foreign nations and tried for “war crimes” without the protections of the Geneva Conventions. This would spell disaster.
Mr. Medved, you may want to re-examine you position on this controversy. Even CNN’s Lou Dobbs, a man of the left, has openly called for Obama to produce his Long Form Birth Certificate so that this crisis can be put to rest. However, instead of complying with this seemingly reasonable request, the Obama administration has thrown up their legal shields at a cost of millions of dollars in attorney fees to stonewall any such disclosure. Now Dobbs himself is coming under fire by the far-left to basically “shut up” about this. 3
I leave you here with the following relevant quote from the Constitution in case you hadn’t read it recently. I fervently wish that every High School student—as a requirement for graduation—be compelled to memorize and recite the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But that’s a subject for another blog.
“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1.
10th Amendment grassfire winds are blowing toward Washington!
Those of you who did not like Gov. Sarah Palin before, may like her now!
Gov. Sarah Palin has just signed a joint resolution declaring Alaska’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution; 36 other states have done the same in a growing resistance to the federal government.
Just days before she plans to step down from her position as Alaska governor, Palin signed House Joint Resolution 27 .The resolution “claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.”
Alaska’s State House passed HJR 27 by a vote of 37-0, and the Senate passed it by a vote of 40-0.
The joint resolution is not a law, but it is a significant move toward getting the message out to other lawmakers, the media and grassroots movements. She is a media magnet and this action was noted on
all the cable news networks, major newspapers, magazines, and talk radio.
Essentially it’s a reminder that the United States is made up of individual states; it’s not a federal authority broken up into political subdivisions.
The federal government was created by the states to be an agent of the states. Currently the states are treated as agents of the federal government in violation of the Constitution.
Over the past 30 years, there have been increasing federal mandates and acts designed to legislate the affairs of our various states from Washington D.C. Federal usurpation into state affairs severely limits the ability of state governments to operate by the people and for the people on the local level.
Now more close to home, I am pleased that Georgia State House Rep. Bobby Franklin (R) of Marietta, is leading the charge for the protection of The 10th Amendment.
Rep. Franklin’s bills are:
H.R. 470- State Sovereignty Resolution (10th Amendment)
HB 466- Tax the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
(This private banking cartel has been exempted from being audited and from paying corporate income tax. This law would reverse this exemption.)
H.B. 430 Constitutional Tender Act
(This law would shift the exchange transfer away from the Federal Reserve Accounting Unit Dollars to gold and silver backed currency.)
State Authority and Intrastate Commerce Act
Recognizing that everything made, assembled, grown, raised, produced, mined, generated or in any other way originating in Georgia, and is sold for use in Georgia, is not subject to federal law or regulation since it does not travel in interstate commerce.
State Authority and Federal Tax Funds Act
(Because Georgia is a “Donor State” meaning the amount of taxes paid to the federal government is greater than the amount of federal tax dollars returned to the state – This act would cause the Feds to cease from taxing Georgia citizens through graduated income tax.)
In conclusion, I would like to challenge you to join the efforts of Sarah Palin to stand down tyrrany and corruption. I would also like to challenge you to join with Bobby Franklin to guard against plunder and forced compliance to unlawful policies. We must fight or we will not recognize the country in which our grandchildren live.
CINDYE COATES:
Dr. Coates is a 7th generation Georgian, raised by a remarkable single mom, and excelled in Cobb County Public Schools.
She and husband of 25 years, Pastor Stan Coates, have two awesome sons: Kyle (20) and Tyler (14).
Cindye overcame severe dyslexia to earn a doctorate degree in Education and Biblical Studies from ICOF – Washington DC. She teaches US. Government (with a focus on the US Constitution), US History, Business/Economics, and Speech & Debate at a private school in West Cobb County, Georgia.
GIFTED COMMUNICATOR:
Dr. Coates is an award-winning author and public speaker. She speaks to churches and business organizations regarding financial literacy. Contact her at: CindyeCoates@Juno.com
