Interview with Congressman Tom Tancredo

Interview with Congressman Tom Tancredo, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, recorded Thursday, July 26, 2007 at 5:00 pm by Tom McLaughlin for Family Security Matters.

Thank you for calling Congressman. I’ll be recording this interview if that’s all right.

Sure.

You were the first government official I ever heard raise the issue of illegal immigration, at least from where I live here in Maine . . .

Yeah.

. . . and you must be pretty gratified that ah . . .

I am. I am. It’s almost a - last night when we passed the amendment that I had proposed to the Justice Department funding bill, and it said that no funding from this bill can be used for the incarceration of Messrs. Ramos and Compian, I’m telling you - that alone is the most amazing thing I have ever seen here. First of all, it’s a unique undertaking that had never been tried before. And secondly, to have it pass with a voice vote because Democrats did not even want to have some of their members exposed by having to cast a recorded vote, so they could not require a recorded vote - they just passed it on voice . . .

Um-hmm.

That will mean that we’ll have to watch them carefully because they’re going to have to try and take it out during the Conference Committee that will occur after the Senate passes their version of the Commerce-State-Justice. But nonetheless, the point I’m trying to make is that it is an amazing change of attitude and atmosphere around here - something almost unbelievable to me.

They were pretty shook up last month when a [illegal alien amnesty] bill they thought was a sure thing went down.

That did it. That did it. It was a seismic shift there - I mean it was amazing. On Tuesday we had only thirty-six votes. On Thursday we had fifty-three and every one of them were senators who were up for reelection who changed their votes. It was only because of the massive outpouring of sentiment, and that made everybody understand what we’re really dealing with here. Until then, I don’t think people really believed that Americans paid attention to it or were concerned about it. They really believed they could finesse the issue, you know?

Yes. Yes.

. . . just slip it by - nobody will really care - no big issue with most Americans. Democrats looked at it as new votes coming in. Republicans looked at it as cheap labor.

Right. That about sums it up. It was quite a shift all right. Do you think the “new media” could take some of the credit for that?

You bet your life. Talk radio and the internet - those two things. The entire playing field is different here and it’s because of the fact that people are willing to participate in this process we call a democracy - or more accurately, a republic - and the fact that they are getting information they would not get through the traditional media. I announced my candidacy for president on talk radio and I did so because, as I told John Michaelson on his show in Iowa, I’m doing this, in a way, because you guys are the ones who brought me to the party. I’ve done now almost three thousand radio shows and that’s [only since] we started keeping count about five years ago. Talk radio has given me - and certainly others - given me a megaphone that I would never have had otherwise. Then what happens is you can pick it up in the blogosphere and all the rest of it. It’s amazing and I just can’t tell you how pleased I am about this and how important it is because, really, I must admit to you that I am fearful for the republic. When only 14% of the general public actually gives approval of the Congress - and twenty-something percent for the president - you know it’s not because I’m an incumbent. The fact is I would rate us poorly also - the fact that there are 85% of the people out there who are disconnected from their government, who don’t believe it works, and you know what? It doesn’t work. It doesn’t. And I mean people see it and they become disillusioned. That’s why it’s so neat that phones rang off the hook in the Senate and it changed the bill. It reaffirmed the belief that people’s voices can be heard. I will tell you, I did feel at certain points in time, and have mentioned this to others who have agreed - during the debate on that bill I had the feeling, recognizing the intensity of the debate out there in the country itself . . .

Um-hmm.

. . . that had it passed, I believe there would have been violence, in a very limited - don’t get me wrong - I’m not talking about a revolution with everybody in the streets with arms - but I’m talking about certain areas, small, maybe on the border, there would have been violence. It’s amazing how intensely people feel about this issue. And thank God there was a revolution of sorts, a small one just the ballot box at this stage - at the email and telephone stage - of stopping legislation.

Yes, indeed. Um, I want to stop right here for a minute so I can do a check. I hope that cell phone is working. (I checked my computer recording equipment because I was getting very weak audio from him. He was in the Capitol and he took the opportunity to cast a vote. I called him back on a land line but still the signal was weak. We continued anyway, but the audio was so weak I can’t make a podcast.)

I’m going to the twelve basic questions which I think Mr. Moore gave you?

Actually I don’t believe I have them but go ahead anyway.

Okay. When and why did you decide to run for president?

It was about four months ago and it was because I had talked to and listened to the other people who had expressed a desire to run. I spoke personally to Romney for instance and asked him about his position on immigration and it was not satisfactory. And when I recognized there was no one there, there was absolutely no one there who was going to take this issue on, I decided that I had to do it. I have to tell you there is no allure to the office of president. Of course it’s enormously powerful but there’s no allure to it. I do what I do because issues need to be advanced. I articulate them as best I can, and if I’m president of the United States I will implement them. I did not begin this by simply seeking the office of president, if you know what I mean. It wasn’t me saying: “What will I do today? I know. I’ll run for president.” I did it because I could find no one else who will address these issues in the way that I believe they need to be addressed.

Okay. What do you see as our biggest domestic problem? Probably the immigration issue as we just discussed.

Of course it is. The most serious domestic policy issue would have to be immigration.

What do you see as our biggest foreign policy problem?

The Middle East. Actually, the war on Radical Islam.

Um-hmm. I like the way you phrased that. In our struggle against Radical Islam, which is the way I phrased it here [also], how important is the propaganda aspect of it - the propaganda war?

There are two ways to fight any war: one is with the force of arms, and the other is with the force of ideas. They’re equally at issue.

I’m trying to ask all the candidates the same questions and the next one is about immigraton again, but let me rephrase it: As president, what is the first thing you would do?

I’d turn to my Attorney General and tell him that he should begin a vigorous enforcement of the law against hiring people who are here illegally. Employers who are violating the law I’d want to be one of the top priorities. Then I would turn to the Homeland Security Secretary and say, you are to secure that southern border and then start securing the northern border with, first of all, a triple-layer boundary fence, and secondly the human resources behind it that need to be there in order to secure it.

Okay. How do you understand the first part of our Fourteenth Amendment?

I’ll tell you what - it has absolutely nothing to do with illegal immigration. It was a response to the Dredd Scott Decision. It was made entirely for the purpose of assuring that children of slaves would have benefit of citizenship and it has nothing to do with illegal immigrants [anchor babies]. There’s specific wording in there which would indicate, ah, the case. I think the phrase is, ah, “people have be in the United States and under the jurisdiction thereof,” Umm . . .

Yup.

And, ah, that is an important phrase.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof . . .”

Yeah.

Okay. Interesting little quote. I hadn’t looked at it that way before. Would you require states and/or cities to restrict federally-subsidized social services to citizens only?

I would if I could. The social services - if they’re not federally funded the federal government really doesn’t play a role in this, but any social services that have federal funds attached - absolutely. Now that’s almost everything to tell you the truth. I don’t know that there’s any county in the United States of America that doesn’t administer some sort of social service benefit that’s supplemented by federal funds, so yeah. Citizenship has got to mean something.

All right. What would victory in Iraq look like?

Well, it would look like a stabilized Iraq. It would not look, geopolitically like we see it today, but it would be a place of some degree of stability, and a place that is a buffer in a way between the Shia crescent and the Sunni crescent.

Okay, and how would you get there?

Ah, the first thing we would have to do is disengage as the police force in Iraq. It’s not the appropriate use of our military. It must be turned over to the Iraqis and I mean now. But we cannot withdraw from the area. We will be there for a long time and I don’t care who is president, there is no way we will not have troops in and around Iraq and in the Middle East - in that area - for a long time. There are national security interests that are at stake there - that keep us there - but we cannot continue to be the police force in Iraq. Impossible. That job has got to be taken over by the Iraqis - the patrolling of their streets in their own Humvees or in those we give them. I don’t care. The simple police, the constabulary activities in Iraq have to be done by Iraqis and there may be a great deal of violence, I know, but there’s a great deal of violence, of course, every day. And civil war? Well it could certainly be defined that way now. But one thing I do know is that civil war eventually - eventually ends in civil peace. It may be a long and ugly period of time, but we’re going to have to turn the keys to the house over to the Iraqis, and we should do so as soon as possible. I mean right away.

Okay. How important do you see democracy in the Middle East?

It may not be something we necessarily picture or define that develops over there, and I didn’t say democracy. I just said stability.

Um-hmm.

We have created an embryonic democracy. Whether it remains that way or not is still sort of, ah, something that is up in the air. What I want is stability. The idea of a democratic Iraq is not imperative. Preferable, but not imperative. What we want is a stable Iraq - not attached to either the Sunni or the Shia, and that dominates the world around them. That is preferable, but is it possible? Oh boy - another question entirely.

Okay. Next door - how would you deal with Iran?

Iran is a huge question mark because we don’t know exactly the extent to which the internal politics of Iran are playing out. There is hope. Oh, hang on a minute. Gotta vote . . . (I waited on the line until he came back) . . . Okay. What I was saying is, a great deal of information - mixed messages - a great deal of mixed messages are coming out of Iran that would suggest we have a possibility of a transition, a regime change, a modification of the regime, all because the population there is very mixed. It’s only 60% Persian. There are a lot of Sunnis even. There are a lot of Christians. There are a lot of Kurds, and it is a relatively well-educated population and, if you can believe polls taken there, Americans are thought of very well by a large percentage of the - especially the younger population - so the tricky thing is to bring about a modification of their government and not do so with boots on the ground which would be, certainly, a disaster and an embroilment in the conflict that I’m not sure we can be successful in. We have to, on the other hand, do what we can to make sure that a guy [Mahmoud Ahmadinijad] who believes he is the transition point for the return of the Twelfth Imam . . .

Um-hmm.

. . . you know in that case you’ll recall there are all kinds of catastrophic events that have to occur in order for the Twelfth Imam to return - and this guy thinks he’s going to bring them about. I just don’t think that it’s a good idea to give this guy a bomb or a nuclear weapon or let him obtain one. So it’s challenging - to say the least it is challenging, but you can work with the Iranian diaspora - there are a lot of people outside of the country and a lot of people inside of the country with whom you can work . . .

“You can work with the Iranian . . .”?

Diaspora. Uh, there are the . . .

Diaspora [Iranian nationals living abroad]. Oh, okay, yes right . . .

Because they want change, believe me.

Um-hmm.

So you have diplomatic, economic and military choices, and they are sometimes enormously challenging. For instance, we need to provide support - economic and moral, if you will - to the people inside of Iran who are working to overthrow the regime. But if we announced - if we actually said that - it puts a target on their back. I mean that’s exactly what the Iranian government wants to show the Iranian people - that any dissent whatsoever is like an American plot being paid for by the CIA.

Um-hmm.

So how do you get that done? You need to provide financial support, but you sure as heck cannot announce it. We’ve actually made this mistake. We just announced the other day we’re going to have $75 million that we’re putting into a variety of different accounts for “democracy in Iran” but, boy, that’s putting a very big target on the back of every Iranian dissident. And so it’s a tricky process, I’m going to tell you that.

Um-hmm. I’m glad you know who the Twelfth Imam is and how that’s a factor in what Ahmadinijad is trying to do over there.

Yeah.

You’re the first candidate who has voiced that and I’ve interviewed four of them. Ah, what do you think of the old quote: “That government governs best that governs least”?

That’s exactly right. I may have mentioned in our conversation - I can’t remember - our converation has gone back and forth. I may have mentioned that most people believe that, ah, the government is not working. And that’s because it isn’t.

Um-hmm.

And that’s because it’s too big. It can’t do all the things that people ask of it. Everybody has got to realize that. We cannot provide health care for every American; education for every American; social services for every American. The federal government was never designed for that. Never. The Constitution is clear about what our role is. We’re going to protect and defend. That’s it. If we just focused on that and let the states take care of the rest of the stuff, frankly, we would be able do a better job at what we can do. But, you know, demands are constant. Every time I speak, even in New Hampshire, Iowa, the heartland - where you think you are among the folks who - you know, New Hampshire, lets say. “Live Free or Die” right?

Yeah. I’m right next door.

[People are saying] “Live free or die? I don’t think I want to die, and I want to ask the federal government to make sure I don’t. You know, it’s going to protect me with a bubble. I don’t ever want to ever be ill, and if I do I want you to pay for it.” It’s astounding. We get what we demand and what we get is huge government and everybody complains about the deficit or the intrusive nature of government. Well, yeah! It’s take your pick. What do you want?

How would you shrink the federal bureaucracy?

Believe me. It’s called veto. It’s called a veto. I would veto appropriations bill for these departments until they shut down the government.

Hmm.

I have no qualms about that. I lived through it. I was in Reagan’s Administration when we actually - I used to send him faxes because didn’t have emails - I was a Reagan appointee and I worked in the US Department of Education. My task was to help bring that thing to a closure. We couldn’t close it individually but our task was to shrink it as much as possible because we couldn’t even get legislation passed - after only two years, we could not reverse it [establishment of the DOE under Carter]. So the task was, okay, we’re going to go in - we’re going to reduce it dramatically. I went from 222 people working there in a regional office to 60. It’s probably 500 now for all I know, but . . .

Um-hmm.

. . . and periodically the president would veto something, like a budget bill, and it would last over the weekend into Monday. I used to fax things like: “Mr. President: Please don’t open that door. Don’t give in. Keep it shut. Let’s see how long it is before anybody knows it’s closed.”

Interesting. How would you interpret our Second Amendment?

Quite literally. There are people in the country, of course, who should not be allowed to have a gun. They are in prison or they are felons or they are a danger to themselves or others - but other than that, every law-abiding American should be able to keep and bear arms. I have my own concealed-carry permit and I will feel much safer when the District of Columbia ban is thrown out - when that appeal is upheld, I mean when the appeal is thrown out. One court has already overturned the thing.

How would you handle efforts to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine?

I would kill it fast. Certainly nothing would get across my desk. I guarantee it.

Okay. Last question: Is it possible for the federal government to monitor and keep records of crimes committed by illegal aliens?

Of course we can do it. I mean, or we could ignore it just like we’ve ignored all the laws about immigration and continue to erode the whole concept of rules.

Thank you very much for your time, Congressman, and I apologize for the technical difficulties. I don’t think I’ll be able to make a podcast, but I got it clearly enough that I can hear it and transcribe it - which I’ll get onto right away.

Thank you very much.

You’re welcome. Good-bye.

Hunter is Different

This column ran in local newspapers July 19th in association with the Hunter interview posted below

Congressman Duncan Hunter is running for president and I had a chance to interview him last week for a web site I’ve been working at called Family Security Matters. My experience with candidates running for national office over the years has been what I’d have to call underwhelming and I was bracing myself for more of the same, but I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that Duncan Hunter is different. Here is a man who knows exactly what he thinks and he states it plainly. I wasn’t ready for that, but I found it refreshing - very refreshing. If this man gets more exposure, I suspect that many other Americans will like it too. Every time I asked a question, I got a straight answer. He didn’t equivocate. I don’t think it’s in his nature.

Hunter is a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, a former Army Ranger. He’s been a congressman for twenty-six years and was chairman of the House Armed Services for four years until Democrats regained majority control last November. Although lacking in name recognition, Hunter is strongest on the two issues that have emerged as those which concern ordinary Americans most - national security and illegal immigration. I’d never heard of Duncan Hunter until I saw him debate the rest of the Republican candidates on television. He stood out and I wondered, “Who is this guy?”

Two weeks ago, the president and the Congress were trying for the second time this year to ram through an illegal alien amnesty bill. Although it had bipartisan support, a vast majority of Americans strongly opposed rewarding people who violated our laws by sneaking into the United States and giving them priority over other immigrants who waited in line and went by the rules. As a vote for cloture came up in the Senate, their switchboard short-circuited due to an unprecedented volume of calls, nearly all in opposition. Twelve senators switched their votes at the last minute and the bill failed again. I began to realize that Congressman Hunter has been out front on this issue for years - and nobody in government has done more to stop the invasion across our southern border than he has.

When I asked him how, as president, he would deal with illegal immigration, he said: “You know, I wrote the bill that mandates a border fence that was signed into law by the president. That’s the 850 miles of border fence that is now mandated to be constructed across Arizona and New Mexico and Texas . . . it’s a double fence with a border patrol road in between. I built the fence in San Diego which has reduced the smuggling out there of people and narcotics by more than ninety percent. The 854-mile fence is mandated to be constructed across the major smuggler’s corridors in those three states . . . That will go a long way toward enforcement of the border, which is key not only to the immigration issue, but also to the security issue. So . . . I’d just simply carry out the very law that I wrote as a congressman . . .

He believes the United States will prevail in Iraq and defines victory as “ a country that is a friend, not an enemy of the United States - a country that has a modicum of freedom and which will not be a state sponsor of terrorism.” When I asked him how important the propaganda war is in our struggle against Radical Islam, he responded: “Here’s what I would say: with the emergence of mass media since [World War II], the emergence of things like the internet, the proliferation of television stations and radio stations around the world, has minimized the ability of any one entity to shape the news. Now I would say that what I call the “American example,” that is, just the basic decency and goodness of the American people that is manifested in lots and lots of activities, like the fact that we undertook - in the tsunami - we undertook an airlift that was bigger than any airlift since the Berlin Airlift. We responded with the American fleet to humanitarian requirements in a way that was totally unprecedented. I think the world takes note of that. I also think that in Iraq, al Qaeda for example, in driving these bomb-laden trucks into crowds of women and children, has damaged its image in the Muslim world. I think that’s been evidenced by the new move by the Sunni population in Anbar Province against al Qaeda leadership and the turnaround that we’ve seen in cities like Fallujah and Hamadi.”

When I asked him how he interprets the Second Amendment, he said: “Well, the right to keep and bear arms - I think that’s a very important part of homeland security. The ability of a person to own and maintain a firearm and to protect his house and his community and his country is an important part of our national security. I’m also a big hunter but I think hunting is not the reason you’ve got a right to keep and bear arms. [It’s for] personal security and the security of our community and our country.”

Here is a genuine conservative candidate. Republican conservatives disappointed with their party’s performance of late will find Congressman Duncan Hunter very refreshing. You can read the entire interview on my blog here.

Know Your Enemy

Our Islamofascist enemies know us better than we know them. They know they’re in a long war against us, but too many Americans don’t realize we’re even at war. Not really. For many of us the two biggest theaters of the war, Afghanistan and Iraq, are little more than inconveniences - unless you have a friend or loved one there. Then you know it’s a real war. An increasing percentage of Americans just want it all to stop. Our Islamofascist enemies understand this and that’s their advantage.

What’s even worse is that our enemies know us better than we know ourselves. The “us” and the “we” I’m referring to here are people who comprise what used to be called “western civilization.” If you’re old enough to remember the courses you took way back in high school or college called “Western Civ I” and “Western Civ II” - the courses which have since been expunged at leftist campuses (which most are) - then you know I’m referring to Western Europe, the United States, Australia, Canada, etc. Islamofascists are enemies of Western Civilization. They want to take over the whole world and make it Muslim - and they’re willing to die in the process. Very few westerners understand this. It’s not a secret - they’ve declared it over and over in fatwas, in the mosques and in the madrassas - but they know westerners are so busy celebrating diversity and multiculturalism, they cannot fathom that Islamofascists seek worldwide monoculturalism.

Our enemies see us as the once-mighty coalition that won World War I, World War II and the Cold War, but has become soft, decadent, salacious, satanic and lacking will to fight. They believe they can defeat us because they believe they defeated the godless Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It took an assemblage of Radical Muslims from all over the Islamic world ten years to do it, but they did and they watched the USSR disintegrate right afterward. Critics claim Radical Islam’s victory was due to the weakened state of the Soviet Union at the time more than the strength of Radical Islam. But no matter - our enemies believe it was Allah’s will that prevailed over the godless communists because Muslims practiced jihad there, and they expect the same result in their war against the west.

They know Western Europe and the United Nations are paper tigers. After they attacked the United States on September 11th, they were surprised when we counter-attacked and took over Afghanistan in a few weeks - and did it from the other side of the world after the ten-year Soviet effort failed from right next door. The even quicker defeat of Iraq shocked them again and we had them on their heels. The Libyans started kissing up to us - the Lebanese and Egyptians too. Syria and Iran were isolated as terror-sponsoring states.

Radical Muslims stuck to their plan though, believing that Americans had no stomach for a long conflict. They expected leftist Democrats to undercut the American people’s confidence in their commander-in-chief just as they did in Vietnam. Our enemies knew they could parade the Palestinians as Muslim, poster-child victims of western “imperialism” perpetrated by Israelis and Americans that and leftist Democrats would lap it up. They knew the American left hated its military and that hatred could be exploited just at the Vietnamese communists exploited it through leftist stooges like Jane Fonda and John Kerry. Our enemies knew that if they staged a demonstration, they could count on our liberal media to be there, to film angry, Muslim, young men burning American flags, and to lead with that footage on the evening news. They believed a steady diet of this would wear down American resolve and that weariness would be expoited by leftist Democrats in biennial elections. They believe we’ll pull out of Iraq, just as we pulled out of Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.

Are they right? It looks that way so far. Every candidate for the Democrat presidential nomination demands either an immediate pull-out or a timetable for withdrawal. So do leftist Democrats in Congress. Does this encourage our enemies? Of course. Yet every leftist candidate insists (s)he supports our troops and withdrawal isn’t defeat. It’s “redeployment” - kind of like the old Three Stooges line: “Advance to the rear!” Americans who agree expect the result will be as it was in Vietnam - that the war would just stop for Americans, that there would be peace - in the US at least, and Radical Muslims will just leave us alone too.

Leftist Democrats aren’t quite ready to cut off funding for the Iraq war as they did for the Vietnam War, but they’re getting closer. They’re licking their fingers and holding them up in the wind. The leftward wind is a wayward wind, and it’s picking up.

Duncan Hunter Interview

Telephone interview recorded on Friday, July 13, 2007 at 2:30 pm EST by Tom McLaughlin for Family Security Matters.

Hello. This is Duncan Hunter.

Thank you for calling, Congressman. I’ll be recording this conversation. Is that all right with you?

It is.

Okay. Let’s get started. I have twelve basic questions for all the presidential candidates, but I have one especially for you given your background. You served your country as a soldier in Vietnam. You must be having some thoughts about what happened in 1975 when the Democrats were in the majority in the United States Congress, and what is being threatened today for Iraq now that Democrats have taken control of Congress again.

Well, I think we’re going to prevail in Iraq, and I think the government of Iraq is going to hold and that the army will hold. There are a hundred and twenty battalions that make up the Iraqi Army. They’re being trained and equipped right now and a lot of them are getting quite a bit of combat operational experience.

Um-hmm.

In my estimation, Iraq will move along. It’s an inept government as most new governments are, but I think it will mature over a period of time. I’m reminded that in Vietnam, Congress totally cut off aid to South Vietnam - which was a left-wing reaction to the Democrat, left-dominated Congress. It really, to a large degree, was a function of Watergate.

Um-hmm. Yes it was. Do you have as much confidence in our Democrat-controlled Congress as you do that the Iraqi government will hold?

Yes. There are much smaller margins and a less left-leaning Congress now than we had right after 1974. Nixon was paralyzed by Watergate in 1974.

Yes. Well, I hope you’re right. Have you seen the rest of my questions? I sent them ahead of time to Mr. Tyler.

No. I haven’t seen them.

Well, I’m going to them now. First of all: When and why did you decide to run for president?

Well, I’ve always been focused on national security issues during my entire career in congress - twenty-six years - the last four years as chairman of the Armed Services Committee. I think the next five to seven years are going to be years in which national security is a major focus for our country, and I believe that I have particular credentials, strong credentials, to commander-in-chief. I’ve served the country. My son has served two tours in Iraq, and I’ve been a member of the Armed Services Committee for twenty-six years and a chairman of the committee for four. That means I can look the American people in the eye in a military crisis and say, “We’re all in this together.” I think that’s an important element, or dimension, to bring to national leadership. I also think the country needs a rebirth of its economic base, and particularly its industrial base. Right now we’re suffering under what I consider to be very bad trade policies, in which our trading competitors benefit from an uneven playing field, in which our manufacturing industry is double-taxed when it exports, and in which our competitors pay no taxes. We’re allowing China to cheat on trade right now and that unbalanced or uneven playing field is accruing to our detriment. It’s caused massive trade imbalances - massive trade losses for the US and the resultant losses of jobs and business. I want to change that as president.

Okay, that’s the why of it . . .

I’ll stop the Chinese from cheating on trade.

Okay. When did you make the decision to run?

I thought about it over the last several years and it was a decision I made about four or five months before I announced.

All right.

So, I don’t have a particular, ah, moment, but it was decision that was a long time in the making.

Okay. What do you see as our biggest domestic problem?

I think, ah, high-paying jobs and a strong economy for this next generation, so they can have the opportunity they deserve and the educational opportunity they deserve. That’s going to require a strong industrial base. That’s why it’s so important that we renew America’s manufacturing base. I think that is, in fact, our biggest problem because the manufacturing base is important to Americans for two reasons: One, it supports high-paying jobs that will allow this next generation to support an aging generation which will be dependent upon them. But secondly, a strong industrial base is important to national security. As the industrial base erodes and moves off-shore, that’s going to make it very difficult for the United States over a period of time to be able to continue to have the support that it needs in the industrial base to be able to maintain all of the weapons systems and the weapons development that we need.

Um-hmm.

Basically, America’s industrial base - what FDR called the “arsenal of democracy” - won World War I, World War II and the Cold War for this country. That industrial base is being fractured and moved off-shore right now. We need to stem that hemorrhage of industrial capability and bring some of it back to the United States. I think we should take down manufacturing taxes to zero in this country. We need to stop the Chinese from cheating on trade. That means passing the Hunter/Ryan bill which stops currency devaluation on the part of China - they’re devaluing their currency by forty percent right now - and that will provide some stability to the manufacturing base in this country.

So, you are not against what is commonly referred to as “free trade.” You would like to re-negotiate the position of the United States in that realm. Would that be a safe way to sum it up?

Yes, but in two areas: One is that China is cheating on the trade rules as they stand right now. When you devalue your currency by forty percent, that’s a species of state subsidy and that allows Chinese products to undercut the costs of American products across the board. The other one is that the trade deal we signed after World War II, when most of the world was burned out, was very uneven. It gave other nations the ability to subsidize their industries by rebating their taxes to them - allowing that to take place for every nation except the United States. The United State is the only one of the top ten trading countries that cannot rebate its taxes to its manufacturers.

And that’s because of some policy made domestically and not because of some international agreements?

No, that’s an international deal that we made. We agreed under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that we would be treated unequally from all the other trading countries of the world. It was almost foreign aid. We did that after World War II when the rest of the world was in pretty bad shape. Today the countries that were burned out now have robust manufacturing capability.

Indeed. Well, what do you see as our biggest foreign policy problem?

I think that, obviously, the development of nuclear weapons in Iran - the pursuit of nuclear weapons in Iran, the fact that North Korea has some now and is racing to develop the means for delivery, and the emergence of China as a new superpower stepping into the shoes of the former Soviet Union.

Um-hmm. Okay. In our struggle against Radical Islam, how important is the propaganda war?

Here’s what I would say: with the emergence of mass media since [World War II], the emergence of things like the internet, the proliferation of television stations and radio stations around the world, has minimized the ability of any one entity to shape the news. Now I would say that what I call the “American example,” that is, just the basic decency and goodness of the American people that is manifested in lots and lots of activities, like the fact that we undertook - in the tsunami - we undertook an airlift that was bigger than any airlift since the Berlin Airlift.

Hmm. I didn’t realize that.

Yes, and we responded, with the American fleet, to the requirements - to the humanitarian requirements - in a way that was totally unprecedented. I think the world takes note of that. I also think that in Iraq, al Qaeda for example, in driving these bomb-laden trucks into crowds of women and children, has damaged its image in the Muslim world. I think that’s been evidenced by the new move by the Sunni population in Anbar Province against al Qaeda leadership.

Um-hmm.

And the turnaround that we’ve seen in cities like Fallujah and Hamadi.

So, as president you would use the bully pulpit to call more attention to actions like that.

Yes, I’d say to what I call the American example, the example of spreading freedom and supporting humanitarian operations around the world - all the good things that are manifest in America.

All right. How will you deal with our legal and illegal immigration problems?

You know, I wrote the bill that mandates a border fence that was signed into law by the president. That’s the 850 miles of border fence that is now mandated to be constructed across Arizona and New Mexico and Texas. I wrote that bill. They’ve only built thirteen miles of that fence so far. Putting up a fence across the southern border - it’s a double fence with a border patrol road in between - I built the fence in San Diego which has reduced the smuggling out there of people and narcotics by more than ninety percent. The 854-mile fence is mandated to be constructed across the major smuggler’s corridors in those three states that I mentioned - Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. That will go a long way toward enforcement of the border, which is key not only to the immigration issue, but also to the security issue. So enforcement of the border is something I would put a lot of emphasis on. But number one - I’d just simply carry out the very law that I wrote as a congressman and that’s the Border Fence Act.

Okay. How do you understand the first part of our Fourteenth Amendment, and I quote: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside”?

(The Congressman’s car was passing through a suspension bridge and there was interference as I read the question) I haven’t had a legal analysis of that amendment lately but I know Bilbray’s legislation, Congressman Bilbray’s legislation, contemplates that there’s not an absolute right to have citizenship as a result of having been born in the United States, and I think that’s a substantive argument which appears to have some merit.

So as president you would, say, use the Attorney General to challenge the way that’s interpreted?

Yeah, well, I don’t think you want a president that makes decisions on fairly complicated legal rulings as he’s driving in a car through a bridge. I would say this - what I’ve seen of that analysis of the Constitutional amendment [in the proposed bill] appears to have merit and I’d look very carefully at that. I don’t think it makes good sense that people can simply be smuggled into the United States and having done that, acquiring citizenship for their child.

I live in a sanctuary state - right on the border between Maine and New Hampshire on the Maine side - would you require states and cities to restrict federally-subsidized social services to citizens only?

I think, generally speaking, one thing about Americans is that we don’t step over people who are dying on the basis that they are not citizens. We handle emergency calls for all.

Um-hmm.

But I would say that of course you would continue emergency medical care - life-saving medical care would not be denied people - but I think I think that it’s absolutely appropriate that taxpayers’ benefits not go to people who are here illegally.

Okay. You’ve already answered some of these questions . . .

Do you remember Proposition 187 we had in California?

Yes.

I supported Prop 187.

Okay. Victory in Iraq: what would it look like? You pretty much described that in answer to the first question.

I would say a country that is a friend, not an enemy of the United States - a country that has a modicum of freedom and which will not be a state sponsor of terrorism.

Hmm. How important do you think democracy is in the Middle East?

Having a modicum of representative government, which I think Iraq has right now, is an important element of the seed that we’ve planted in that part of the Middle East. It is, I think, an important thing, and hopefully something that will - as difficult and as tough as this is - will lead to stable governments that will have a benign relationship with our nation. That should accrue to the long-term benefit of the United States and our interests in that region.

Do you think it would be . . .

It’s not something that comes easy, but I think it’s something that’s worth working for. I think we do that - I think we pursue a modicum of democracy - understanding that it’s being done in a culture that’s been trained to accommodate dictators, and that the change is not easily delivered.

Hmm. Hopefully it will be contagious.

Yeah. Well, we saw little ripples in Lebanon and in Egypt after we, after the elections in Iraq.

We did. We did. How would you deal with Iran? You already partially answered that question as well, but . . .

Yeah. I think Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear devices.

Um-hmm.

And in my administration they would not be allowed.

All methods of persuasion on the table . . .

Yeah.

Okay. What do you think of the old quote: “That government is best that governs least”?

I like that.

Attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but I guess he didn’t say it. I guess it was Henry David Thoreau of all people, but . . .

Is that right?

Yeah.

I think that’s generally a good statement. Of course all those statements are subject to exceptions. There are certain times when you need strong national leadership, especially in time of war, and there are times, for example when you need to enforce your borders and you need to have strong federal action.

Would you shrink our federal bureaucracy, other than the military?

I think we can bring the bureaucracy down markedly. We can even bring down some of the bureaucracy in the military.

All right. How would you interpret our Second Amendment?

Well, the right to keep and bear arms - I think that’s a very important part of homeland security. The ability of a person to own and maintain a firearm and to protect his house and his community and his country is an important part of our national security.

Okay. Last question . . .

I’m also a big hunter but I think hunting is not the reason you’ve got a right to keep and bear arms.

Hunting is not the reason? More personal security.

Personal security and the security of our community and our country.

Um-hmm.

You know, especially when we’ve been invaded recently with the attack on 9-11, if there had been a ground attack that had accompanied the aerial attack in a city like New York where all the good people had been disarmed, it would have been devastating.

Certainly. Last question: How would you handle efforts as president to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine?

Well, I think the attempt to muzzle talk radio under the so-called Fairness Doctrine is a reflection of the fact that liberals don’t like that most Americans are conservative. Talk radio is generally conservative because it reflects the views of the American people. The idea that you have to inject liberal views on talk radio [broadcast] to a community that is not liberal is, I think, an invalid concept. I think we’re going to have to protect the free speech of talk radio from the objects of its criticism, and that is - liberal politicians.

Um, if I could ask one more - I saw on your web site that you would increase the size of our military. You were specific about Marines.

Yeah, about ten extra battalions for the US Marine Corps. We made this recommendation when I was chairman of the Armed Services Committee. You’d have to go back and look at the paperwork, but I believe it was ten battalions for the Marines and something like about eight additional Army brigade combat teams.

How big is a brigade?

A battalion is actually about 800 folks, so a brigade is maybe, ah, 3000 folks.

And you made that recommendation about four years ago?

We made it a recommendation two years ago to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps over the objection of the Pentagon which said they didn’t [need them] - and I actually increased the size of the Marines over the last couple of years to 180,000 people.

You wrote a bill that was passed that would do so?

The Administration came back this year with a proposal that’s in agreement with that. They do recommend now increasing the size of the Marine Corps and the Army. As a matter of fact, over the last couple of years we’ve increased the in-strength of the Army by 30,000 persons and we’ve increased the size of the Marine Corps to 180,000. I did that by putting in provisions for additional in-strength in the Marine Corps over the last several years.

Well Congressman, I really thank you for your time and Family Security Matters thanks you as well.

You’re very welcome.

And best of luck with your campaign.

Thank you.

Another '60s Legacy

Again I assert that however baby boomers remember the sixties determines their view of the world today. If they believe changes in American life resulting from the sixties have been positive, they’re liberal. If they have a negative view, they’re conservatives.

One legacy of the early sixties - the civil rights movement for black Americans - is regarded almost universally as positive regardless of where one is on the political spectrum. Conservatives, however, don’t agree with liberals that civil rights should morph into a “constitutional right” for women to abort their babies, or into a “constitutional right” for homosexuals to sodomize each other as Supreme Court decisions since the sixties have asserted.

Having commented in two previous columns on the sixties legacy in the areas of drugs and then sex, marriage and family, I now turn to how that legacy has affected America’s view of its military. Sixties slogans such as “Make Love, Not War” or “Drop Acid, Not Bombs” or “What If They Gave A War And Nobody Came?” or the more recent derivative “War Is Not the Answer” are purported alternatives to military action. While many liberal boomers have thankfully stopped dropping acid, they still abhor the military.

Liberals have believed since the Johnson Administration that crime is caused by poverty, and if we can eliminate poverty we can eliminate crime. That Johnson’s $2 trillion “War on Poverty” was a failure and crime rates skyrocketed does not affect their belief system. They apply the same flawed rationale to war, believing firmly that our present conflict with Radical Islam results from “oppression” of poor Muslims by British and American oil companies in the Middle East. How many times have you heard someone insist that “It’s all about oil”?

Liberal boomers saw the Vietnam War as a struggle of poor peasants, championed by the communist National Liberation Front (the “Viet Cong” as our soldiers called them) against neo-colonial oppressors backed by the United States. Many like Jane Fonda openly cheered for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. Others like John Kerry depicted American soldiers as murderers and rapists in the tradition of Genghis Khan. I remember people insisting that oil had been discovered under the South China Sea and that’s why the United States was fighting.

Liberal boomers who comprise most of the mainstream media today believe they stopped the Vietnam War, and they’re not entirely wrong. They certainly undermined America’s confidence in its military and in itself. Many believe they can stop war forever. If only the Wall Street Warmongers would stop exploiting other countries, then poverty would be eliminated and there would be no reason to fight. Everybody would get along. Conservatives know it’s an impossible dream this side of heaven, but liberals believe it fervently.

That they sympathize with our current enemy, Radical Islam, puzzled me at first. Islamofascists stone adulterers and homosexuals to death. They degrade women. They impose sharia law - far harsher than any Republican get-tough policy ever was. They force conversions. All this is antithetical to social policies precious to liberals, so why support them? Then I realized: the ’60s mindset of today’s liberals holds that Islamofascists are victims of US imperialism. Their dogma of multiculturalism preaches that it’s heresy to criticize Radical Islam because all cultures are equal. All, that is, except for conservative American culture which is the root of all evil. Islamofascists call America the “Great Satan” and that fits the ’60s world view pretty well. Islamofascists may say they want to kill us all right now, but when they discover how nice and tolerant liberal boomers are, they’ll lighten up.

Point out that Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Atta, the eight British doctor/terrorists and many others are (were in the case of Atta) affluent Arab Muslims from privileged backgrounds and not poor or oppressed. It won’t change their minds.

Eliminate the military and you eliminate war, they think. They apply the same philosophy to guns - eliminate guns and you eliminate killing. Point out that cities with the highest murder rates are also the ones with the strictest gun control laws and it doesn’t sway their thinking, if you can call it thinking. Point out places like Maine and New Hampshire with the lowest murder rates and also the loosest gun control laws and that won’t sway them either.

Liberal boomer President Clinton “loathed” the military, remember? His supporters believed we have wars because we have a military, so he cut it back drastically. Al Qaeda blew up our embassies? Our ships? Exploded a truck bomb under the World Trade Center? Then shoot a few missiles at them but don’t send any troops. That’s what we did in Vietnam and look what happened. Good thing we pulled out of there, huh? Now we should pull out of Iraq too because “War Is Not The Answer.” Send UN Peacekeepers with blue helmets and talk about the problem. When we fight them we only create more terrorists.

That’s the mantra of the new Democrat majority in Congress and the Democrat presidential candidates for 2008. It’s also the predominant theme in Humanities departments on college campuses where ’60s liberals dominate faculties and write the multicultural history books used in our schools.

Islamofascists are aware of how America has changed since the sixties. They know we still have a powerful military, but they’re banking on our lack of will to use it. Bin Laden said as much when he declared war against us in 1996. Perhaps our enemies know us better than we know ourselves.

More '60s Historical Revisionism

As I wrote in a recent column, how baby boomers remember the sixties often determines how they view the world today. If they’re nostalgic over the fortieth anniversary of the “Summer of Love” in San Francisco’s Haight/Ashbury district and believe that changes in American culture resulting from the sixties have been largely positive, they probably consider themselves liberal and vote Democrat. If they have a generally negative view of those changes, they probably consider themselves conservative and vote Republican.

Most middle and high school textbooks offer a generally favorable view. No surprise because they tend to be written by boomers who are now liberal/left history professors. The following paragraph from Prentice Hall’s “American Nation” - the most widely used text in American middle schools - is a good example:

Many young Americans became involved in the counterculture movement. Like the Beat Generation of the 1950s, members of the counterculture rejected traditional customs and ideas. Young people protested against the lifestyle of their parents by trying to be different. They developed their own lifestyle. They liked to wear torn, faded jeans and simple work clothes. Women wore miniskirts. Men often wore beards and let their hair grow long. Many listened to new forms of rock music. Some experimented with illegal drugs. Members of the counterculture adopted new attitudes and values. They criticized competition and the drive for personal success. They questioned some aspects of traditional family life.

I already debunked the claim that “Some . . . experimented with illegal drugs” as historical revisionism. Drug use was in fact widespread, habitual, highly destructive of countless American lives, and has been ever since. (So did Ted Nugent in a piece yesterday) That the counterculture “questioned some aspects of traditional family life” is just as laughable. They did far more than “question some aspects.” They scorned and trashed nearly all of them.

It would be more accurate to say the counterculture staged a full-scale attack on the very institution of family that is the basic unit of any society, and that the results have been disastrous. Consider just one function of family common to almost all cultures everywhere - that of marriage. Every successful society has regulated it - most by encouraging monogamous, lifelong coupling between one male and one female which recognizes/sanctifies the basic life-creating function of human sexuality. Marriage creates the nuclear family which generates children, nurtures them, and thereby sustains the culture itself. The nuclear family is the best environment in which to raise those children while it also prolongs the life span and general health of mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers who remain faithful to it. Research studies prove it.

The counterculture’s “Sexual Revolution” has resulted in a divorce rate of more than fifty percent, and that figure doesn’t take into account cohabiting couples who join and split with dizzying frequency. An offshoot of the Sexual Revolution - the “Gay Rights” movement has further eroded traditional family life with its all-out push to redefine marriage itself - separating it completely from its primary procreating function.

The family has been so weakened that one in three children today are born to single mothers. Among blacks, it’s three out of four. The “Women’s Liberation” movement claimed “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” as if fathers were superfluous. The effect of fatherlessness is seen most tragically as increasingly violent crime among unsupervised young men. Without positive male role models in the form of fathers who protected and supported their wives and children, the young men (especially young black men) didn’t learn respect for women either. Their hip-hop subculture treats them as if they were sex slaves.

The biggest issue pushed by the Women’s Movement - another counterculture creation - has been abortion. Liberal women’s groups spend most of their political capital promoting abortion. Feminists, as they call themselves, seem to believe American women cannot lead fulfilling lives unless they’re able to abort their babies. More than forty million have been aborted since abortion was legalized - first in liberal states, then in the whole nation by 1973.

The counterculture’s assault on the American family occurred simultaneously with the Johnson Administration’s “War on Poverty” initiatives. Fatherless families were subsidized heavily and they proliferated for decades, pushing them further into poverty rather than lifting them out of it. The results have been nearly lethal for the “traditional family life” as the history books call it. The black family had been making steady gains for a hundred years before the Johnson Administration attempted to “fix” it. Now it’s in the roughest shape since before Emancipation.

The sixties counterculture arbitrarily tossed out lessons learned from millennia of human experience and “liberated” itself from all societal constraints as if that were a wonderful thing. Talk about hubris! Liberal Democrat baby boomers think all this has been terrific. History textbooks written so far seem to agree with them.

This history teacher, however, begs to differ.

Historical Blindness

Flag-waving demonstrators filled the streets around our Jerusalem hotel. Sound trucks played lively Jewish music while young men sang and danced with their arms interlocked as they moved along the parade route. Our tour bus was returning from Bethlehem in the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank and the driver had to let us off a block away because streets were sealed off by soldiers and police. We walked through young Israelis celebrating the 40th anniversary of their stunning victory over invading Arab countries in 1967’s Six Day War. Men with braids growing out of their temples and wearing black hats nodded approvingly as they watched. Groups of Israeli border guards, police, and soldiers with M16s stood and watched at strategic locations on the streets, sidewalks and on surrounding rooftops.

The celebrating young Israelis were passionately patriotic and unlike anything I’d ever seen among young Americans back home. The contrast between that parade and what I had just left in Bethlehem less than five miles down the road was striking. While our bus had been inching toward the Israeli military checkpoint as we were leaving the Palestinian Authority-controlled area, I examined graffiti on the Palestinian side of the thirty-foot-tall security wall. I saw huge images which had to have been made using ladders. Raindrops from a passing thundershower blurred my view through the bus window, but I could see a huge pair of glaring eyes flanked on both sides by a keffiyeh of the pattern Yassir Arafat always wore. Next to that was a huge brown lion slaughtering a white dove. I couldn’t read the accompanying Arabic script but symbolism was unmistakable and malignant. It justified the wall. Our hotel was on the border between East and West Jerusalem and had been an Israeli bunker during the 1948 and 1967 wars. A line of soldiers with M16s faced Arab East Jerusalem as if they expected an attack, especially given that the 1967 victory being celebrated was a humiliation for Arabs.

As I stood on the sidewalk watching the parade, I thought it was a likely venue for a Palestinian Muslim suicide bomber. The dramatic graffiti I’d just seen proclaimed the hatred epidemic in young Palestinian men. I knew they were raised from childhood to blame their miserable circumstances on Israel and, increasingly, on the United States. I remembered watching film of Palestinians celebrating in the streets of the West Bank on September 11th before that film was pulled by the networks.

I also knew there were far too many Americans who see the situation as the Palestinians do, and there were others who asked themselves, “Why do they hate us?” Liberals in the United States and Europe strongly suspect the root cause of Muslim fanaticism is US and Israeli “oppression.” Not only have liberals and their leftist allies forgotten September 11th, but some like Rosie O’Donnell believe the US government itself was behind the attacks that day. I’ve been writing them off as moonbats or misguided isolationists who feel safe with oceans on either side of them. They actually believe the US can just pull out of the Middle East as we did from Vietnam and the fighting will just stop. Their numbers are growing, however, and their votes elected a Democrat majority in the US Congress last year. This de facto alliance with Palestinian fanatics is depressing.

But alas, I was even more dismayed to discover that many Israelis also blame their country for Palestinian fanaticism. These Israelis are the opposite of the ones I saw demonstrating in front of my hotel and they support the inept Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. An embarrassing photograph of Olmert’s Defense Minister attempting to look through binoculars with the lens caps still on was published in February. Several times he pretended to look through the lens caps at Israel military exercises in the Golan Heights, then turned his head and nodded to others behind him as if he were actually seeing something. This obvious blindness is symbolic of how Israeli liberals see their own history.

Israel has existed less than sixty years but it’s suffered large-scale attacks four times by Arab countries surrounding it like Syria, Egypt, and Jordan in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. Between those wars, it has endured almost constant terrorist attacks in the form of rockets, suicide bombings and kidnappings. Twice, Israel took the Sinai from Egypt and gave it back. Egypt’s part was to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, but is rocketed every day from there. Despite all this, there are just as many naive liberals in Israel, percentage-wise, as there are in the United States. Though Israel has fought off invasions and terrorist attacks constantly in its short, 59-year history, though Israel has several times given back land it conquered from Arab countries in exchange for peace that never came, there is still a sizable block of voters there who seem prepared to do it again. Prime Minister Olmert is ready to discuss giving the Golan Heights back to Syria.

Prospects for peace in Israel are remote. Another war is likely this summer. If there will continue to even be an Israel is dependent on what group prevails - Prime Minister Olmert’s liberal moonbats or those demonstrators I saw in Jerusalem last month.

Whitewashed Textbooks Alter American History

How baby boomers remember the sixties often determines how they view the world today. If they’re nostalgic over the fortieth anniversary of the “Summer of Love” in San Francisco’s Haight/Ashbury district and believe that changes in American culture resulting from the sixties have been largely positive, they probably consider themselves liberal and vote Democrat. If they have a generally negative view of those changes, they probably consider themselves conservative and vote Republican. When teaching the sixties in my 20th-century US History course, I’ve often started with this observation.

In a word-association exercise, I asked students to say the first thing to come into their minds when I said: “The Sixties.” The usual answer was, “hippies.” I then instructed them to look up hippies in the index of their textbooks and they would discover that the word wasn’t there. The closest thing to what most people understand “hippies” to have been was a passage about the “counterculture” that went as follows:

Many young Americans became involved in the counterculture movement. Like the Beat Generation of the 1950s, members of the counterculture rejected traditional customs and ideas. Young people protested against the lifestyle of their parents by trying to be different. They developed their own lifestyle. They liked to wear torn, faded jeans and simple work clothes. Women wore miniskirts. Men often wore beards and let their hair grow long. Many listened to new forms of rock music. Some experimented with illegal drugs. Members of the counterculture adopted new attitudes and values. They criticized competition and the drive for personal success. They questioned some aspects of traditional family life.

Talk about soft-soaping history. The passage was so vague it was hard to know where to start critical analysis. First I asked students if they thought the textbook’s authors were describing hippies. They did. Then I asked them to read the passage over again and make a judgment about whether it was a positive depiction of hippies, a negative depiction, or a neutral one.

Most thought it was negative or neutral - negative because it said hippies used drugs. I pointed out that the passage actually read: “Some experimented with illegal drugs,” and I asked them how many times a person who “experimented” with drugs would actually take them. Almost invariably they answered, “Once or twice.”

Then I asked them if they thought their textbook’s authors were trying to give students the impression that only a few hippies used drugs, and then only once or twice.

At this, most students paused, thought about the question, and then suggested that most hippies used a lot of drugs quite frequently over a long period. I told them their assessment would agree with what I remembered having grown up at that time, and that most other people my age would also agree. I suggested that the textbook’s authors were purposely playing down hippie or “counterculture” drug use by claiming that “Some experimented with illegal drugs” when in fact, counterculture drug use was widespread, that it destroyed countless lives, and it has gotten so bad in the forty years since that all of us personally know people who are ruining their lives with illegal drugs today.

I could have taught for a month critically analyzing the rest of that passage on sixties “counterculture” but there wasn’t time. For instance: “[The counterculture] criticized competition and the drive for personal success.” Why? [The counterculture] questioned some aspects of traditional family life.” Talk about understatement. What aspects? Why? How have American families fared under counterculture influence? “They developed their own lifestyle.” What lifestyle? How has that lifestyle played out over the last forty years? Has it been good or bad? Why?

Sure, a lot of the music was good, but what about all the rest?

Our textbook, Prentice Hall’s The American Nation 2002 is exceedingly dull - just like every other US History text available for sale when I had to purchase a new set five years ago. It tries so hard to be inoffensive and has such a strong liberal bias that it can take heroic, tragic, appalling and inspiring stories from our nation’s past and make them boring. The only good thing about the book is that my teaching can sometimes appear interesting in contrast. It makes a great foil.

The textbook industry is very lucrative. Dull but very expensive history texts are specially tailored to an overwhelmingly liberal corps of teachers who think the sixties were wonderful. Teachers’ unions are the Democratic Party’s biggest constituency. This teacher an anomaly and an anachronism, but I’ll be back next year.

What Is Wrong With President Carter?

Our most foolish ex-president just said it was "criminal" that the United States supports Fatah over Hamas, since Hamas is so efficient. Doesn't seem to matter to Carter that Hamas is dedicated to, in their own words: "killing every last Jew in Israel," or that it throws hand grenades at fleeing refugees, or that it throws teenagers off tall buildings who are bound and gagged. While I like it when a liberal icon makes a fool of himself and I would normally recommend giving him more rope, this is just too embarrassing. Someone please make him shut up.

See more here:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/010287.php

The Racist Card

Having been called a racist, a bigot or a homophobe more times than I can count, such accusations have no sting. Long ago I recognized them for what they were: ad hominem attacks by those who had run out of logical arguments. They’re still used often - most recently by President Bush against his own political base who oppose his illegal alien amnesty plan. Instead of quelling opposition however, Bush’s accusations inflamed it. What looked like a sure thing after Democrats won control of Congress is going down to defeat. Pundits are shocked. What’s going on?

Ordinary people are getting smarter as the mainstream media loses its power. That’s what’s going on. The New York Times doesn’t define political debate exclusively anymore. For decades, CBS, NBC and ABC followed the Times and broadcast the same stories the paper had on its front page and gave them the same spin. Now Pinch Sulzberger, owner of the Times and The Boston Globe, is losing circulation so fast he said he isn’t sure there will even be a New York Times in five years. What happened? Two things: the internet and talk radio, but especially the internet.

It used to be that if the Times ignored a story, so did the major networks and so did the weekly newsmagazines. The story died. People figured that if they didn’t see it on TV, it didn’t happen. Now however, The Drudge Report will publish an internet link and tens of millions of grassroots Americans will know about it within hours. Talk radio hosts keep a close watch on Drudge and they broadcast what he posts to millions more as they drive home from work. People exchange linked stories via email with relatives and friends after dinner. Now, the mainstream media may ignore a story but Americans still know about it.

And that’s not all. If the Times and their MSM cohorts deign to cover a story they consider distasteful and put a negative spin on it, they may find themselves objects of ridicule by millions of ordinary Americans the very same day. If you don’t believe it, ask Dan Rather. This is quite a comeuppance for our media elitists who for decades considered themselves sole arbiters of what people should know. They didn’t realize how insular they’d become attending the same cloistered universities and cocktail parties as our political elite. They didn’t comprehend how far out of touch with ordinary Americans they were.

To them, illegal aliens were not a drain on expensive social services or a tax burden. They were those nice housekeepers and gardeners for their McMansions. They were nice nannies for their children and nurse’s aides for their aging parent(s) whom they employed at low wages and without benefits. They felt all tolerant and multicultural and diversity-celebrating as they waved goodbye and drove to the office in their Volvos tut-tutting about the racist bigots who want to deport their nice “undocumented immigrants” and build a fence on the Mexican border.

They didn’t socialize with people who own small businesses trying to compete with outfits who keep an illegal alien workforce off the books and underbid them for roofing jobs and building contracts while had to pay minimum wages, social security taxes, workmen’s compensation and liability insurance. They didn’t socialize with tradesmen whose wages plummet because illegals work for less than half of what they were getting. They didn’t sit for hours in the emergency room listening to their kid moan as they wait for an X-ray on his arm while legions of illegals go ahead of them, knowing all the while that they’re paying astronomical health insurance premiums because illegals don’t pay anything. The elite didn’t send their kids to public schools mobbed with illegals who required expensive special services at $15-20,000 per kid per year. They didn’t stand in line behind them at supermarket checkout lines to realize they’re paying not only for their own groceries, but for the illegal’s groceries as well.

The elite don’t go to barbecues with cops who routinely stopped illegal drivers with no licenses, no registrations, no insurance and with stolen plates and be forced to let them go when federal immigration officials say they’re too busy to pick them up. They haven’t suffered property damage when illegal aliens ran into them with their uninsured junkers, then ran away. They didn’t seethe with anger viewing emails from relatives with pictures showing hundreds of thousands of illegals with Mexican flags on streets of American cities demanding their “rights.”

Ordinary Americans do this stuff every day. They know it’s not racist or bigoted to resent invaders who cut in line and expect a free ride in their own home towns. Our elites played the “racist card” thinking it was still a trump, but it isn’t anymore. Grassroots Americans have their own media. Times have changed.

Constant State of War

On our second day in Israel, Palestinian terrorists rocketed an Israeli town called Sderot near the Gaza Strip less than forty miles from our hotel. Israeli planes hit Hamas locations in retaliation. We were advised to call and assure families of our safety because it was all over the news back home. I got online and read a frantic email from our daughter, Sarah, asking if we were all right. We called to reassure her that we weren’t in danger.

But were we? Israel is in a constant state of war. When my wife visited in May of 2000, she called me from Galilee. The NBC Nightly News was reporting rocket attacks into Israel from southern Lebanon and I asked her if she could hear anything. She said she could hear explosions in the distance, but she wasn’t afraid. “We’re fine,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

Returning to my classroom after the trip, a student asked me if anyone ever pointed a gun at me. “Yes,” I said, “but not in Israel. That happened in Massachusetts.” Danger is a relative thing. In any given place natives learn where to go and where to avoid, but I was in strange territory. That night, I heard what sounded like gunshots outside the hotel. Two of the guys I sat with at breakfast the next morning told me they heard it too. One suggested it might have been firecrackers. The other, a former US Marine, said emphatically that it wasn’t fireworks.

I felt safe in Jewish areas but anxious in Palestinian sections. Traveling around the country by bus, I looked out the window constantly because I didn’t want to miss anything. The contrast between Jewish areas and Palestinian areas was stark. In the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel agreed to turn over most of the West Bank which it took from Jordan after that country, together with Syria and Egypt, were about to invade Israel in 1967. Palestinians in turn, agreed to recognize Israel’s right to exist and stop their terrorism. Israel began turning over territory (Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron, etc.) but Palestinian terrorism didn’t stop. It increased. So Israel began building walls around the areas already given to the Palestinian Authority.

Street scenes on the Palestinian side of any checkpoint we passed were markedly different than on the Israeli side. I saw groups of men loitering. Very few did I ever see working. Young, middle-aged and old men sat around and stared as we went by. I never saw women hanging around as the men did. Wearing head coverings, they were usually walking purposefully, in pairs or with children in hand. They had a destination and wasted no time getting there.

Passing through areas still controlled by Israel, we went through Jewish sections and Palestinian sections. I didn’t need to see minarets to realize we had passed out of the former into the latter. I’d see trash, graffiti, abandoned buildings and idle men. It didn’t take a sociologist to figure out that Israel functions well, while “Palestine” functions somewhere between feebly and not at all. We went into a lot of Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, the West Bank, as well as central and northern Israel, because that’s where most Christian shrines are, and I saw the same things. Palestinian towns like Nazareth in northern Israel seemed somewhat better, maybe because they’d been under Israeli control since 1948, whereas those in the West Bank and Jerusalem were taken in 1967.

For our last few days we stayed in an Arab-owned hotel in a Palestinian neighborhood on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem from the east. It was a beautiful view, but we were advised to watch out for pickpockets and take cabs to the old city rather than walk the streets. Nearly every time we were getting on or off the bus we were besieged by peddlers or panhandlers. Boys pulled at the pen in my breast pocket and put an arm on my shoulder. I had to push them away with one hand while keeping my other hand on my wallet.

Fighting in the Gaza Strip had started between rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas. Both are terrorist “organizations.” In the midst of fighting each other, Hamas fired rockets into Israel. Why? For the same reason Saddam fired scuds at Tel Aviv during the Gulf War. Killing Jews is the cheapest way to score points in the eyes of other Arabs as if Jews were responsible for their miserable conditions. Hitler did the same thing. He knew it was simpler to blame Germany’s problems on Jews than look in the mirror for the real cause. It’s no coincidence that Hitler’s book, “Mein Kampf” (My Battle) does well in its Arabic translation “Jihad.” It’s banned in Germany now, but it’s a top-ten seller in the Middle East.

Israel and the United States have the same enemy: Islamofascism. The sooner we Americans realize that, the better. Reading about Islamofascist terror plots to shoot up Fort Dix and blow up JFK the past few weeks, I wondered if what I was seeing in Israel was a glimpse of our own future.

Navel of the World

My Israeli tour was based around Christian holy sites, but I had many goals for the trip. I wanted to sample the people, politics, and history of the place as much as its religious sites. I got all that and more.

We went where Jesus went. That took us to Jerusalem first, then Bethlehem, Jericho, Capernaum, Nazareth, etc. Most of the shrines are in Arab-controlled or Israeli-controlled areas with majority Arab populations, so it was helpful to have a Palestinian Arab tour guide. He is a devout Christian, a seventy-four-year-old grandfather who had gone to seminary as a young man but dropped out. His knowledge of Old and New Testament Scripture and of the history of his country was vast and much superior to my own.

I’d had eleven years of Catholic education that included religion classes every day, but it wasn’t my favorite subject. After graduating high school, I became indifferent toward my religion for ten or twelve years and started going back to church only when I had children and they began asking questions about God. I know the basics of Old and New Testament scripture and I believe them, but I’ve never been inclined to evangelism. My faith is a private thing. I’ll discuss it with other believers but I don’t like to push it on anyone and I don’t often write about it.

On our second night in Jerusalem we were taken up on the roof of our Vatican-owned hotel by a resident priest named Father Kelly from Ireland’s County Clare. We could see nearly all of the Old City and much the new Jerusalem. It was dusk as Father Kelly pointed to the Mount of Olives from which Christ entered the city through the Golden Gate on Palm Sunday. Then he pointed to the Church of the Dormition, next to which the Last Supper was held on Thursday. From there, he explained, Jesus walked across the Kidron Valley back toward the Mount of Olives to the Garden of Gethsemane where He suffered His agony in anticipation of what was to happen the next day, Good Friday. Judas betrayed Him there and He was led back into the Old City as a prisoner. Father Kelly pointed out all the places where Jesus was passed around between Caiphas, Herod and Pilate - where He was condemned, crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead. This is the essence of Christianity and I had no idea it all happened in such a small area. I got an overview of my faith both literally and figuratively.

Very early the next morning our group’s priest, Father Bob Vaillancourt, took a few of us into the Old City to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before the crowds arrived. In that ancient building are the sites of both the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Two thousand years ago, they were just outside the city wall in the open. Now they’re in a huge building that’s been built and destroyed over and over since the 4th century. Though I’d been taught about the events of Holy Week many times during the past fifty years and had come to accept them, something changed. My awareness of what happened there was no longer just intellectual. It suffused me.

Jerusalem is the navel of the world, holy to three great religions, the followers of which comprise more than 40% of the world’s population. We Christians walked among Jews at the Wailing Wall and among Muslims just above it at the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa Mosque. History abounds with stories of conflict between and among all three religions. The war we fight today can’t be understood without knowledge of what the three have in common and what is different about them.

The political environment wasn’t too different in Christ’s day 2007 years ago from it is today. Jews ran the Temple Mount, of which only the Wailing Wall remains. Romans, with their pantheon of gods, ruled Israel. They destroyed the Temple in AD 70. Islam, the religion of Muslims, didn’t exist until Muhammad established it 600 years later. Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 632 and built the Dome of the Rock on the site of the former Jewish Temple. Christians led a Crusade to take Jerusalem from Muslims in 1099. Muslims retook it in 1187. Jews re-conquered Jerusalem in 1967. So it goes. At any given time during the past three millennia, conflicts were either just ending or just about to begin in Jerusalem. Periods of peace were short-lived. Jesus was in it but not of it. He transcended it.

A week before going to Israel, I watched a film called “John Paul II” with John Voight in the title role. As a young man, John Paul was an actor and college student in Poland when Nazis took over his country. He wanted to take up arms against them but was persuaded by a local priest that he could resist more effectively as a priest. Then the Soviet Union took over Poland and he resisted them too, ultimately smashing their rule with the help of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The Soviets sent an assassin who shot him twice in 1981, but he survived. Joseph Stalin once asked, famously: “How many divisions does the pope have?” A thousand years ago, popes had many. John Paul II, however, had none. As it turned out, he didn’t need any. Being the Vicar of Christ on earth was enough to defeat the Evil Empire.

John Paul II’s example was fresh in my mind when visiting Jerusalem and it helped me understand what Jesus did there there two thousand years ago.

First Days in Israel

“What the heck are you going there for?” That was the usual reaction when I told people my wife and I were going to Israel for ten days. “Aren’t you afraid?” Truth be told I was, a little, but the perceived danger only made the trip more exciting. My wife went seven years ago and I promised to go with her some day. We planned a tour for last October, but it was postponed when Hezbollah attacked and Israel retaliated in late summer.

After landing in Tel Aviv, we took a bus for our hotel in Jerusalem. Our first guide was a Palestinian Christian who used a microphone to explain what we were seeing out the bus window. I saw wreckage of olive-green military equipment next to the highway, including the wreckage of a 1940s era aircraft. I knew them to be purposely left as a reminder of Israel’s 1948 War For Independence but our guide didn’t point them out. He was an Israeli citizen - one of over a million Arabs who are - but evidently he didn’t feel any patriotic pride in that phase of Israel’s history. It was a pattern I was to notice among other Israeli Arabs over the next few days. Can’t blame them, I guess.

There were small groups of young Israeli soldiers here and there along the highway. Most carried automatic rifles resembling M16s. Some were women who looked like teenaged girls. All Jewish citizens of Israel, male and female, must serve two years of active duty and about twenty in the reserves. Arabs are exempt, but they may volunteer. Of seven million Israelis, one million are Arab.

Our hotel, the Notre Dame Center, was built by the French in the 1880s and is owned by the Vatican today. Two popes, including John Paul II stayed here. It’s just outside the “New Gate” of the wall around the Old City. This wall - Jerusalem’s newest, was built by the Turk Suleiman five hundred years ago in preparation for another European Crusade that never came. Earlier walls mostly failed to keep out invaders because Jerusalem was destroyed seventeen times over its three-thousand-year history. Our hotel had been used as an Israeli bunker during the Arab invasions of 1948 and 1967 when fighting was intense. According to the hotel’s brochure: “The south wing, facing the Old City, became uninhabitable as a result of bomb explosions . . .” There were still pock marks of bullets in the limestone exterior, especially around windows.

We were warned not to go into the city alone and I needed sleep, but I was too excited just to be there. While my wife took a nap, I went through the gate into the old city looking for a bottle of wine. Walking the old, narrow, stone streets, I saw men sitting around and checking me out as I walked by - it was obvious I wasn’t a native. I found an old hotel not too far in and bought a nice bottle of red from Bethlehem. Back in our room I drank a glass and went to bed. I was woken up around 4:00 am Israeli time by a Muslim call to prayer from just inside the old city across the street. It went on for about fifteen minutes and I went back to sleep.

Wednesday morning, we took the bus into Bethlehem’s arid hill country, a few miles south of Jerusalem. It’s an Arab town inside the West Bank and under control of the Palestinian Authority. We had to pass a checkpoint through the large fence constructed by Israel to seal it off from the rest of Israel. Our guide disdained it. He said we should be building bridges, not fences. The Palestinian side was covered with graffiti, but in Arabic. I wished I could read it.

In Bethlehem there are twice as many Muslims as Christians. A few years ago it was just the opposite and I wondered why the change. There was little evidence of prosperity. Every dumpster overflowed with trash. Graffiti showed on most walls at street level. One was a spray-painted symbol with crossed automatic rifles which I think represents Hamas. Not wanting to ask, I decided to look it up when I get home.

The bus pulled into a parking garage next to a poster of Yassir Arafat. That was near Shepherd’s Field, where an angel appeared to them and announced the birth of Jesus Christ. You remember the carol: “Where shepherds watched their flocks by night . . .” There was electricity but the water wasn’t on to the restrooms. We met our new guide, I asked him why Christian Arabs were leaving. He said it was “the situation” and because they went away looking for jobs. I asked why Christian Arabs were moving away in greater numbers than Muslims but he didn’t want to talk about it. One of the first things he told us was that we could ask him questions about anything but politics. My question was demographic but, increasingly in Israel, as in Europe and in the United States, demographics is politics.

My first days in Israel, I learned about politics and people. During the next two, my religion was to come alive.

Lonely Grave

It’s a lonely grave. Most are of course, but this one is all by itself on a wooded hillside. A stone wall surrounds the gravestone and an old oak tree. You can tell the tree grew there when the hillside was a pasture. Massive limbs came out its trunk horizontally before heading skyward because sunlight was available all the way around for most of the tree’s life. Now, however, the sky is crowded with branches of taller white pines that choke out sunlight. Whoever made the cemetery likely planted the oak tree. Most of its limbs are dead now and the tree won’t live much longer. The gravestone shows a weeping willow etched on top of the dark, gray slate and one can still read the words clearly unlike inscriptions on the more popular marble stones which have disintegrated with acid rain over the years. It reads:

OLIVE W.
wife of Jacob Stiles
died August, 1848
AE 51 yrs 7m

Around the little cemetery beautifully-made, double stone walls snake over and around the steep forested knolls on what’s left of the old farm where Olive lived. Someone obviously took pride in their construction because they’ve held up well for more than a century and a half, but the cemetery enclosure is falling apart. I doubt it was built by the same person(s?) who made the others.

Down the wooded hillside and across an old road is a cellar hole. I assume it once held up the Stiles house, but I can’t be certain because roads on the old maps don’t always agree with what I could see on the ground, and I know why. There was a big wind in early December, 1980 that blew down a lot of timber in the area which is now mostly National Forest. The federal government built a new road through its holdings (which now include the old Stiles place) to salvage what timber it could. The government road doesn’t always follow the older roads on my maps.

The Stiles place was abandoned, probably after 1850 I’m guessing, and nobody hayed the hillside anymore. White pines and hardwoods took it over. The 1858 Stoneham Map is badly smudged in this area of Stoneham close to the Lovell town line near Horseshoe Pond and the nearest discernible house was then owned by someone named Stanley. There’s another home owned by someone named Gray further in toward the Stow town line. Both were gone on the 1880 map which shows fewer homes in that vicinity.

However, an eyewitness account was supplied to me by Lovell Historical Society’s Cathy Stone whose uncle, Arthur Stone, visited Olive Stiles’s grave in 1890 and again in the late 1930s. Stone describes the Stiles place as a cellar hole at “the end of the road.” In 1890, he’d hiked a road leading from near where Cold Brook goes into Kezar Lake westward toward Horseshoe Pond. The road is still discernible but not passable for vehicles of any kind. It comes out perpendicular to another road going from Joe McKeen Hill in Lovell northward over the Stoneham line to the new government road mentioned above where there’s a locked gate today. Stone said it was pasture all along this route in his day and still being grazed by cattle. It’s all woods now, however.

“Here on a rocky hillside farm . . . Jacob Stiles had lived and raised his family of eleven children” he wrote. “. . . . The Stiles farm stretched from the mountain top [Styles Mountain on the USGS map] down to the shores of Horseshoe Pond. . . . and Jacob Stiles doubtless named [the pond]. . . . About a half mile further out in the pasture there was a square lot enclosed on all four sides by a stone wall [containing] a slate grave stone . . .”

Remember, Stone was writing probably just before 1940 about both an 1890 trip and the more recent one: “Fifty years ago a small oak sapling was the only vegetation within the enclosure except the wild flowers that covered the ground. . . . Today, the oak sapling is a sturdy tree but otherwise nothing is changed.” Stone, also, called the grave lonely and “high on a hillside looking out over the pond and over miles of woodland to where in the south a low blue mountain wall stopped the vision.”

That view is gone in the 21st century, and can only be imagined. It must have been stunning. The 1941 USGS map confirms the area was still pasture.

Stone seems to have obtained information about the Stiles family from locals between his first visit and his second. “Olive was the second wife of Jacob . . . [she] brought up the first wife’s brood,” he wrote. Imagine stepping into that situation? Raising eleven children on the last farm at the end of the road in this remote corner of Maine? Olive Stiles must have been quite a woman.

“She undoubtedly won the affection of her [eleven] stepchildren,” wrote Stone. “The grave proves it. During her life she used to walk out along the cart path to the pasture and look out over the pond. Perhaps she and Jacob used to go out there in the long summer evenings after the chores were done. She thought the place was beautiful and told her family that when she died she hoped she could be buried there.” Stone suggested her stepsons built the stone wall around the grave. and that would fit with my observation. They didn’t build walls as well as their father did.
Stone owned a cabin on Horseshoe Pond and could look across toward the hillside pastures of the old Stiles farm. He dreamed of taking a moonlight stroll up there to sit near the grave in case Olive had something she wanted to whisper to him. We don’t know if she ever did, but perhaps she and Stone have communicated in some other place and time.

Hate Crime Absurdity

Our media is hypersensitive when it comes to reporting perceived insults to Muslim students in our schools, but downright obtuse when it comes to whatever may trouble Christian or Jewish students.

It was big news in Lewiston, Maine when a kid left a bag containing a piece of ham on a table in the lunch room where a group of Somalian immigrant students were sitting. The story made front page headlines in the Sun Journal, the city’s daily newspaper. It also ran on WMTW, the local TV station. The Boston Globe picked it up too. The April 19th Sun Journal reported:

One student has been suspended and more disciplinary action could follow a possible hate crime. Lewiston police are investigating, and the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence is working with the school to create a response plan. . . . Placing ham where Muslim students were eating was "an awful thing" said Stephen Wessler, executive director of the Center for Prevention of Hate Violence. "It’s extraordinarily hurtful and degrading" to Muslims, whose religion prohibits them from being around ham. It’s important to respond swiftly, Wessler said.

There have been no reports I know of about how Muslims may be offended by classes teaching that homosexual behavior is normal and natural. Several public schools sponsor assemblies in which homosexual and transgender behaviors are natural too. Certainly there have been no front page headlines. Jews and Christians may be offended by such material also but our media is virtually silent about it. They must know that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality itself is “intrinsically disordered” and homosexual behavior is sinful. Under Islam a homosexual act is punished with death by stoning. Orthodox Jews consider it an abomination. None of this comes up to leaving a bag containing a piece of ham on a table though.

Christian, Muslim and Jewish students must accept homosexuality in the schools even though it offends their religious beliefs. It’s legal in Maine and every other state since the recent Supreme Court ruling in “Lawrence vs Texas.” Muslim (and Jewish) students have to accept students in the lunch room who eat ham sandwiches even though it offends their religious beliefs because it’s legal too and always has been. The boy who left the bag with ham on the table was suspended because he was flaunting his dietary behavior around students who considered it offensive. It was “an awful thing . . . extraordinarily hurtful and degrading,” and the Sun Journal strongly suggested his suspension didn’t go far enough and more punishment was warranted because of an alleged “hate crime.”

A week after the ham incident, over five thousand public schools across the country observed a “Day of Silence” in support of homosexuality. Students at all these schools were encouraged to be silent for a day to protest purported harassment of gay and lesbian students. They were also encouraged to wear T-shirts and buttons supporting homosexuality. Events of this nature have been sponsored by public schools for more than ten years. Though no homosexuals were harassed that day, Christian students who were offended by the school’s orchestration of homosexual propaganda were. After peacefully expressing their opposition to what they consider brainwashing, dozens were suspended in several districts around California. In the Sacramento area, more than three thousand students stayed home to avoid exposure to pro-homosexual indoctrination. According to the Catholic news service lifesitenews.com:

Other students concerned about the one-sided messages determined to wear clothing and distribute literature which peacefully highlighted the dangers of homosexuality. Dozens of religious students were disciplined for expressing their viewpoints at Inderkum, Rio Linda and San Juan high schools.

Did you hear anything about this anti-Christian harassment? Probably not. The same media outlets that trumpet “hate crimes” involving their pet minorities ignore similar incidents involving groups of which they disapprove. None of this comes up to leaving a piece of ham on a table, I guess. Anything that would make a particular group feel uncomfortable is a possible “hate crime” - unless that group is Christian.

American students have been disciplined for using the word “gay” as a pejorative. Our media regularly trumpets so-called hate crimes, many of which are later discovered to have been staged. The new Democratic Congress is pushing a beefed-up “hate crimes” bill adding sexual orientation to the list of potentially aggrieved minorities. Attempted enforcement of similar laws in the UK illustrate their absurdity. An 11-year-old boy, for example, was visited in his home by two policemen for calling another boy “gay” in an email. He was using the word to mean “stupid” as many children do, but in the UK it’s a hate crime. In another case, the Daily Mail reported last October:

14-year-old Codie Scott was arrested and thrown in a police cell for almost four hours after she was accused of racism for refusing to sit next to a group of Asian pupils in her class. Teachers reported the youngster . . . after she claimed it was impossible for her to get involved in the class ‘discussion’ because only one of the Asian pupils spoke English. She had her fingerprints and DNA taken but was eventually released without charge.

Mark Steyn, in his recent book American Alone reported on a UK homosexual charging a Muslim cleric with “homophobia” for preaching against homosexuality and the Muslim countercharging the homosexual with “Islamophobia” for criticizing Islam. UK Thought Police were having a difficult time sorting it out.

I can’t help but wonder what George Orwell would say about all this.

Students Discuss Guns

The first day back from spring break, I asked students what news stories they heard while they were gone.

“All those shootings in Virginia,” said a boy. Others nodded and several side conversations started, each about a detail of the story.

“I’d like to hear all your comments about it,” I said, “but only one at a time and let’s be systematic about it. First we’ll summarize what happened, then discuss why it happened, and finally how to prevent shootings like this in the future. So, who can sum up what happened?”

“An Asian guy killed two people in a dorm, then shot a whole lot more people a few hours later in another building,” said the boy.

“Okay. Any other details?”

“He had two guns and a lot of clips for them, and he just kept on shooting,” added another boy. “He sent a DVD of himself and all his guns to NBC too.”

“He bought the clips on Ebay,” said a girl.

“A teacher blocked the door so his students could jump out the window, and the guy killed himself when the police showed up,” said another student from the back of the room.

“All right. Why did he do it?” I asked.

“He killed a girl he had been dating,” said another girl, “and someone else who was in the dorm with her. Then he just went crazy and killed all those other people.”

“His teachers reported him when he wrote some papers that scared them.” said another. They said he needed counseling. He went away for a while when he was in high school, but it didn’t do any good I guess. He was really quiet. He didn’t talk to people.”

“Anything else about why he did it?” I asked.

“He was crazy,” said a boy.

“Obviously,” said a girl.

“How can we prevent shootings like this in the future?”

“Don’t let people like him have guns,” said the girl. “He was obviously crazy and he shouldn’t be able to buy guns.”

“Nobody was allowed to have guns at that school,” said a boy, “but he had them. You can’t stop people from getting guns.”

“The gun store has to check on people who want to buy guns, don’t they Mr. McLaughlin?” said the girl.

“States make gun laws and they’re different state to state,” I said. “Maine, for instance, is lenient about guns. Other states like Massachusetts or New York are stricter. Virginia is a lenient state, but the Virginia Tech campus was a ‘gun-free zone.’ The federal government has gun laws that all states must obey and an FBI check is necessary for anyone who wants to buy a gun at a gun shop. They check on whether the customer has committed a serious crime. I think Virginia checks his past for mental illness.”

“The guy was mentally ill though,” said a girl. “Why didn’t they find that out?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Maybe because he was in an institution when he was a minor child under eighteen and records are private. I’m not sure.”

“So, people can carry guns in Virginia, but not at Virginia Tech?” asked a boy.

“Nobody was allowed to bring guns onto the campus but the police and the school has its own police force.”

“They didn’t do much good, did they?” said a boy.

“Evidently not.”

“He shouldn’t have been a student at that school. Colleges shouldn’t let mentally ill people in.” said the girl.

“Many people struggle with emotional problems and mental illnesses and recover from them with medication or counseling or both. A lot of college students and a lot of professors do too, but it’s a private thing and you don’t hear about it. Most are not dangerous,” I said.

“If Virginia had tougher gun laws, he wouldn’t have been able to buy the guns,” said the girl, “and none of this would have happened.”

“He could still have bought the guns from someone else, just not a store,” said a boy. “Most people get guns that way and if the school let people have their guns in class, that guy would have been shot before he killed thirty-two people.”