Wagon-Pullers Getting Tired

Got an over-the-table job? Paying taxes? Paying for your own health insurance? Well, you’re pulling the wagon. If you’ve been pulling it very long, you’ve noticed that it’s getting heavier. That’s because there are more people riding and fewer pulling. How long can this go on? Not forever, that’s for sure and the load is about to get even heavier - much heavier. How long before the wagon runs into the ditch and everybody falls off?

Do you know people who work, but make make most of their money under the table? Who don’t pay taxes? Don’t pay medical insurance? If you’re like most of us you don’t just know them, you’re related to them. They’re everywhere. They ride the wagon when they get sick or injured, but they don’t take their turn pulling it. They walk alongside and snicker at the rest of us in the harness.

But you get your medical insurance free because your employer pays it, you say? There’s no such thing as free. For those with, say, an Anthem family policy, it costs more than $50 a day and it’s part of your compensation whether you know it or not. Your employer knows it because he figures it into the cost of employing you. He could give you the $50 and let you send the check to the insurance company, but then the government would take some of it too and you’d pay even more. Nothing is free. Somebody pays. The wagon-pullers pay.

How many people do you know who have gone on disability? How many of them are actually disabled and unable to work? How many have grossly exaggerated their ailments to “qualify” with the help of lawyers from Binder and Binder? I bet you’re related to some of them too. Most of us are.

“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money,” said former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The wagon-pullers either quit or collapse in harness and that’s happening already in the UK. It’s nearly bankrupt. With it’s enormous social programs and surging illegal immigrant population, so is California. The whole USA headed down the same road - and with “bailouts” of a trillion here and a trillion there, we’re picking up speed.

The $825 billion “economic stimulus” package is being shaped by the Democrats in control of Congress and the White House as I write. Obama’s chief economic advisor, Robert Reich, testified before Congress, saying: “I am concerned, as I’m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professionals, or to white male construction workers.”

Hmm.

Not only will we have increasingly socialist tax policies, money raised will be spent according to race. I thought the Obama Administration was going to be the first “post-racial” presidency. Did I miss something? Reich went on to say: “Criteria can be set so that the money does go to others - the long-term, unemployed minorities, women - people who are not necessarily construction workers or high-skilled professionals.”

Hmm.

Obama says he wants to build roads and bridges and other infrastructure with all that money. He assures us that there are plenty of these projects “shovel-ready” all around the country, just waiting for the funds to go ahead. I can see myself now - being stopped by a chubby wagon-rider with an orange vest, a walkie-talkie, and a STOP sign on a pole in front of a government work crew standing around, leaning on those shovels and smoking cigarettes.

Later, when I drive over one of those “new-infrastructure” bridges, I’ll remember that there weren’t any “highly-skilled, white professionals” involved in building it and I’ll thank God if I make it to the other side.

President Obama told Joe the Plumber he would “spread the wealth around” by raising taxes on the “rich.” Trouble is, the “rich” are paying most of the taxes already and, if you’ve worked all your life and you’re still alive, you’re one of them. As a teacher with a wife and three kids thirty years ago, I was “poor” - officially under the federal poverty line. I’m still a teacher, but with two additional part-time jobs, a working wife and four grown-and-gone children - but now I’m “rich.” Rich and poor are not static categories and my story is not unusual. The top half of American earners pay 96% of federal income taxes. The bottom half pay less than 4%. If you factor in the “earned income tax credit,” most of that bottom half pay less than nothing; they get paid instead. Yet Obama and Pelosi want to give them a rebate! On what? You have to pay first to get money “back.” Let’s just call it what it is - a massive redistribution of income from wagon pullers to wagon riders.

When Will We Wake Up?

What is it going to take for Europe and America to realize the threat? Radical Muslim terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaida and others won’t stop until the world is under Sharia law. Don’t know what that means? It means stoning to death adulterers, homosexuals and apostates (anyone who leaves Islam), killing sisters, wives, daughters who “dishonor” the family by wearing bikinis or otherwise dressing like most women in the west do, and beating women if they disobey their husbands. Sounds farfetched, you say? Well, according the BBC, no less a person than the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, claims “Sharia law in UK ‘unavoidable’.”

On New Years night a few weeks ago, young Muslims in France rioted. They burned 1147 cars in several French cities. It’s not the first time this has happened and French police were out in force. Still, there were 30% more cars burned this year than last. French media won’t call the rioters Muslims however. Their politically-correct, multicultural denial doesn’t allow them to. Instead, domestic terrorists are simply called “youths.” Car burnings are getting routine for the French. “Even during tranquil periods, an average of 80 vehicles per day are set alight somewhere in the country,” claims the San Francisco Chronicle. “‘Burning cars is rather typically French, said Michel Wieviorka, a French sociologist who has studied the phenomenon.” Uh-huh. Just the usual mischief by those pesky French “youths.” Nothing to do with Radical Islam. Move along folks. Nothing to see here.

In Sweden, rapes by Muslim immigrants and their offspring are skyrocketing, quadrupling in twenty years. Sweden’s liberal immigration policies have allowed huge numbers of unassimilated Muslims to upset their multicultural bliss. It’s getting harder to tolerate intolerant Muslim immigrants when they disdain Swedish women. According to Islam-watch.org, one named Hamid said, “‘It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl. The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably f***** before, anyway. . . . It is far too easy to get a Swedish whore…… girl, I mean,’ says Hamid, and laughs over his own choice of words.”

Such attitudes are common in Europe lately. According to the Copenhagen Post: “An Islamic mufti in Copenhagen, Shahid Mehdi, has sparked political outcry from the left-wing Unity List and right-wing Danish People's Party, after stating in a televised interview that women who do not wear headscarves are ‘asking for rape.’”

“Public outcry,” huh? Not enough of an outcry to call Muslim terrorists what they are though. Just those pesky “youths” again. Is it an unwillingness to admit their embrace of multiculturalism - the idea that all cultures are equal - has been wrong all along? Or is it just plain fear of radical Muslim terror? Both, I suspect, but more the latter. They spend a lot of time patting themselves on the back, claiming to “speak truth to power,” but at bottom, western media simply lack courage.

And the nice schools Europeans built for immigrants to attend? Those mischievous “youths” are burning them. “[W]e are close to the point where a majority of pupils have a foreign background, which is to say that either they or their parents come from a country outside Sweden,” says Alan Widman, member of Sweden’s parliament about the situation in the city of Malmo. Where outside Sweden Mr. Widman? He won’t identify foreigners as Arab Muslims, even when they’re torching schools at the rate of one every other day and shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

The canary in the coal mine for western civilization is Israel. It’s under constant assault from Radical Islam. Yet when they retaliate against rocket attacks from Hezbollah or Hamas, the western media condemn them instead of the radical Muslim terrorists who attack them. Indeed, a worldwide intifada has erupted all over Europe, Canada and the USA - http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=230 (a very scary link). Muslim marchers in Fort Lauderdale called for Jews to go back to the ovens.

If you think our “relations” with radical Islam are going to change with the election of Barack Obama, think again. They’re already burning his posters while shouting “Death to Obama” in Iran.

My fear is that it’s going to take something far more drastic than September 11th to wake up Europe and America - like the loss of a whole city to a smuggled nuclear device. A majority of Europeans and far too many Americans cling to their belief that we must continue to tolerate the intolerable, continue to celebrate multiculturalism and diversity - even if it kills us.

Whither Men?

My wife is apolitical. That’s good, I suppose, because it’s not a source of conflict. She’s simply not interested in politics, and I’m passionately interested. We seldom discuss it but when we do, she can offer insights I cannot see. Once in a while, I’ll call her into the room when someone is speaking on television. I’ll ask her to watch him or her for a few minutes and then tell me what she thinks. I’m not so interested in her thoughts on what the person is saying as much as what she thinks of the man or woman as a person. That’s one of the things my wife is good at: getting clues about what people are like. Never having seen the person before, she’ll suggest personality traits he or she possesses which later turn out to be right on the money. I’ve learned to trust my wife’s instincts about these things. She’s seldom wrong.

Today’s politics is tomorrow’s history. I watch what’s happening now and study what’s occurred throughout the ages. I want to understand it all. I never will, of course, but I won’t give up trying.

I’m the one who picks the movies we rent from Netflix and they include many documentaries and historical fiction because I’m a history teacher. War movies and westerns don’t interest her, but sometimes she’ll watch a film made from an historical novel if it shows good character development. During battle scenes, she’ll often comment about how brutal men are, saying things like, “They’re the ones who start wars. Women don’t do that.”

She’s right, of course, but it bothers me to hear it. Sometimes I take it personally as a representative of manhood, especially if I identify with the character who is fighting in whatever film we’re watching. I think, what choice does he have? The guy finds himself living in a certain time and place, and circumstances pull him into conflict. He’s faced with choices ranging from bad to worse and does what he thinks is right, or whatever is the least wrong. Most often, a man uses violence after another man or group of men crowd him in some way or threaten his family, or his community, or his way of life, or his principles, and he’s forced to do brutal things. Even if he was a gentle, sensitive person beforehand, the circumstances he must work through change him.

Those are my rationalizations at least. Men are brutal, or at least capable of brutality if it becomes necessary. Maybe it’s testosterone. Maybe it’s that Y chromosome. Maybe there’s something wrong with us. Maybe. It has to be considered. If we believe we evolved into the kind of men we are, should we be trying to evolve into some other form of male human who isn’t as prone to violence? Or would that go against our nature and precipitate even more problems? I see western culture attempting to shift away from a martial approach to aggression and toward a conciliatory one and it makes me uneasy. My instinct tells me, strongly, that this is not the way to be. We don’t need any more metrosexuals. We need more warriors. We need a citizenry which recognizes that our country needs warriors and values them.

For example, I’m seeing more “War is not the answer” bumper stickers. I’d like to ask drivers of cars adorned thus: “What is the question?” For some questions, war is most definitely the answer. If the question is: What should we do about several million Radical Muslims who want to make the world Muslim and force us all to live under Sharia law? My answer is: Are you kidding? What if they’re dying to kill us the way they did on September 11th? My reaction is: Kick Radical Muslim ass. Don’t stop kicking until they surrender unconditionally. Root them out from wherever they’re hiding and kill them. After London, Madrid, Bali, Mumbai, Gaza, why is anyone still asking the question?

Over Christmas break, I spent time with several young American warriors. They’re former students, sons of friends, and relatives. They know who our enemy is, they know what has to be done, and they’re willing to risk their lives to do it - all for our sake. It troubles me that we’re becoming a country that doesn’t appreciate them enough. A majority of Americans like this just elected a new president who is about to take over as commander-in-chief. He’s a great talker, but talk is cheap. Does he have what it takes to lead these marvelous young men and thousands of others like them? I’m not confident that he does.

Vice president-elect Joe Biden told us Barack Obama will be tested by our enemies in the first six months. I have little doubt about that. Then he said: “[W]e're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right.”

Based on what I’ve heard those two guys say on the campaign trail, I believe him. It hasn’t ever been apparent to me that they’re right, and I don’t really expect that to change, but I’ll wait and see.

Call Them What They Are

Hamas political poster, West Bank 2007
Vote for us. We'll kill Jews.

Most of the world is condemning Israeli “aggression” in the Gaza Strip. Are they crazy? Looks like it. I’m talking about the rest of the world, not Israel, which is trying to stop Hamas terrorists firing rockets from Gaza which they’ve done every day for years. That’s not crazy. That’s survival. Western media endlessly shows us Palestinian civilians killed by Israelis. They don’t mention that Hamas shoots rockets smuggled from Iran into Israel from Palestinian schools, hospitals, mosques, and civilian homes.

Most of the media won’t even call Hamas terrorists terrorists. Instead, they say “militants,” or civilians, or even “refugees.” Refugees? From where? They live in Gaza, which used to be part of Egypt, but was taken over by Israel when Egypt invaded from Gaza in 1967. Israel also took the Sinai Peninsula, but gave it back. Why? The deal was: Israel gives the Sinai back to Egypt - Egypt accepts Israel’s right to exist. That’s all.

Why doesn’t Israel give the Gaza Strip back too? Easy. Egypt doesn’t want it. Nobody does. Why? Because it’s full of crazed, Radical-Muslim terrorists, that’s why. Egypt would have to be nuts to take back the Gaza Strip. Egypt remembers what happened to their president, Anwar Sadat. He was machine-gunned by Radical-Muslim terrorists after signing the Camp David Accords with President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Manachem Begin and thereby accepting that Israel has a right to exist. He was machine-gunned by Radical-Muslim terrorists just like those who make up most of the population of the Gaza Strip.

Notice that I’m saying “Radical-Muslim terrorists” a lot? I have to, because the alleged “journalists” in the rest of the world won’t call them what they are. Perhaps you think I’m over-reaching by calling most Palestinians terrorists, but a majority of them voted Hamas into power, knowing full-well that Hamas was dedicated to the destruction of Israel - not the peaceful coexistence with Israel as a neighboring Palestinian state - but its utter destruction and killing of its Jews. You want to call them innocent civilians? I don’t. They don’t want a Palestinian state as much as they want Israel gone. You can’t negotiate with people like this. Israel is doing what it must do to survive.

And by the way, Palestinians danced in the streets when they heard about the September 11th attacks, but except for Fox News, western media didn’t want to show you that either.

Why do our alleged journalists refer to Palestinians as “refugees” and not as terrorists? According to Wikipedia: “The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) defines a Palestine refugee as a person ‘whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.’” Yeah, the older ones lost their homes and means of livelihood in that conflict. They chose to leave Israel 60-62 years ago because they knew their fellow Arabs in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt planned to invade and kill all the Jews. Arab Palestinians believed they could return afterward, and get much more than they left if all the Jews were dead, but that isn’t the way it turned out. Invading Arab armies were humiliated by those pesky Jews in their tiny country, who had their own army for the first time in two thousand years. Arabs called it Al Nabka - “The Disaster.” It was as if five strapping high school boys jumped a kindergarten kid and got thrashed. Their self-induced humiliation only made them hate Israel more.

They tried again to destroy Israel in 1967 and in 1973 with the same result. Palestinian Arab “refugees” bet on the wrong horse every time. They’re still “refugees” only because they’ve been supported by the United Nations for the past sixty years. If not for all those billions in refugee relief, they’d be force to really make peace. But they don’t want peace. They want Israel gone. After sixty years, that’s still what they really want. Sure, they want a Palestinian state, but not next to an Israeli state. That’s why they voted Hamas into power. Meanwhile, they want to keep the money flowing in from the UN, the US, and the EU, who all believe they’re helping “refugees” According to ProcCon.org, it’s “the equivalent of $1,330 per Palestinian. By comparison, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II provided $272 per European (in today's dollars).” As long as the money flows, the “refugees” don’t have to worry about supporting themselves. They can concentrate full-time on terrorizing Jews. When I was in the West Bank a year and a half ago, most of the Palestinian men I saw were hanging around smoking cigarettes. The only ones I saw working were a few shopkeepers, cab drivers and waiters. Garbage was everywhere, but I didn’t see anyone picking it up. Why should they? They were second and third generation “refugees” supported by dollars and Euros from the west. Let the west clean up the garbage.

If we support Israel’s right to exist, we must stop subsidizing Palestinian Arab “refugees.” It’s the only way this festering sore will ever heal.

Old and New

It’s been more than twenty years since I sold it, but I miss the old house. It’s only a mile down the hill in the village and it must be something like how it feels to have an ex-wife in town. It was drafty-cold in winter, but when I felt chilled I could warm up by backing up to the wood stove. My new house is warm and tight. There are no drafts and the temperature is even, but I still miss the old place.

That old house drove me crazy sometimes, but most of my memories are good. It will always be part of me because for nine years I crawled all over it inside and out, fixing this and painting that, re-building something else. Nothing was square and all the carpentry took longer, but it was strong, built with posts and beams and tree-nails. The foundation was split granite and hadn’t moved for over a century. There was brick-lined, well just inside the building and water flowed through the partial cellar during spring, coming in from the uphill side and draining out the downhill side. In a dry summer, the well would get low, but we always had enough water if we were careful, even with four kids and two adults. I liked that the house was older than me, more than a hundred years older. When the wind blew hard on winter night, I’d feel uneasy, but then I’d realize that the house had weathered many such storms for more than a century before I was born. There was a certain security in that.

I like my new house too, but it took a long time before I’d done enough to it with my own hands to make it really mine. I bought the land, cleared the trees, and chose a plan with my wife, but I hired carpenters to do most of the actual building. It’s twenty years old now and I’m fifty-seven - much older than the house. The wind blows more strongly here on the windward of Christian Hill. There’s nothing between me and Mount Washington to block it, and on Christmas Eve it was howling worse than I ever remember it. The old house was on the leeward side of the same hill, and I was questioning my judgement about deciding to build here. If anything happened, I’d have no one to blame but myself.

Speaking of the blame game, many in my generation of baby boomers have blamed our problems on the WWII generation for a long time, suggesting they could do a much better job of it. Well, that “greatest generation” is nearly all gone now. The old folks don’t stay around like old houses. They die and we bury them and we become the elders. Most of our current world and national problems are created by guess who? Baby boomers, because we’ve been essentially running things for a couple of decades. Though we still do, we can’t legitimately blame our parents anymore, and soon we won’t be able to ask them for advice either. We’ll have to become fonts of wisdom for those generations following us whether we’re able to or not. I hope they’re more gracious to us than we were to our parents.

Like my new house, our new president-elect is younger than I am. The last two have been only slightly older but I don’t think either one was smarter or wiser - quite the contrary. Obama is on the back end of the baby boomer generation and I’m nearer the front. I’m a whole decade older than he is. Pondering this reminds me of how I felt when I talked to a much younger resident surgeon who was about to do an emergency procedure on me. I had to consent because I couldn’t wait for my own doctor. Now Obama is about to perform emergency surgery on our whole country. He has a Democrat-controlled Congress to pass what he wants and I’m going to have to sit back and watch.

When I go food-shopping, I notice more aisles selling “organic” things, whatever that means. I push my cart past them. If shopping carts had bumper stickers, I would see “Obama/Biden” and “Earth is our Mother” and “Live Simply” down those aisles anyway. Let them pay the inflated prices. In the checkout line recently, a cashier looking for the price of some produce I was buying asked me if it was organic. “I hope not,” I said. “At my age, I need all the preservatives I can get.” I never buy organic produce. It costs more, usually looks wrinkled and misshapen, and doesn’t taste any better. The only way produce tastes better is when it’s fresher, and organic doesn’t mean fresh.

All these are indicators to add to my “You know you’re getting older when . . .” list, which will only get longer until I’m dead - nature’s way of telling us to slow down.

Happy New Year.

Venting

Several things have been bothering me lately, and what good is it to be a columnist if I can’t spout off about them in this space? I’ve been yelling at the television and that’s a sign I need to vent. I’ll start with cliches.

If I use an annoying cliche, someone please - please berate me publicly for it. And if I should ever repeat it, I pledge here and now to make a $100 donation to your favorite charity, even if it happens to be the OJ Simpson or Hot Rod Blagojevich Defense Fund. I’m that serious. Meanwhile, I’m begging people in the media to stop saying “thrown under the bus.” I’ve had enough of that phrase. I’m ready to highjack a bus and drive it into the NBC Headquarters in New York City if I hear it again.

While we’re at it, I’m already sick of “take a haircut,” aren’t you? I heard it for the first time only about a month ago, but it’s gotten to me already. I know we’re in tough economic times and we all have to cut back. I promise to do my share, but please don’t phrase it that way anymore, okay? Let’s resurrect “tighten our belts” for a while, and when that wears out, I’ll come up with something else. There must be a thesaurus for worn-out phrases out there somewhere. I’m volunteering to buy one and list alternative ways of trying to sound hip.

Thank goodness “think outside the box” has gone out of fashion. Though I’ve been attending just as many meetings as I’ve always had to, I haven’t heard that for months now and I’m very thankful. People in sports use cliches the most, but I can forgive them. They don’t claim to be smart. They’re not expected to be gifted at expressing themselves, only doing things. Though most of them don’t seem too bright, politicians pretend to be intelligent. So when they use cliches, it’s much more annoying because they think they sound so snappy when they just sound dumb, especially if it’s Nancy Pelosi.

Speaking of Rod Blagojevich and haircuts, what is it about sleazy Serbs and their hair? It’s pretty clear that whatever time Blagojevich has when he’s not selling Senate seats, shaking down children’s hospitals, or trying to get editorial writers fired, he’s working on his hair. It’s so important to him that the Chicago Sun Times suspected Blago suffered from “Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” He must have stayed up late watching Ted Koppel a lot when he was a kid and made him a role model. Then there’s Radovan Karadzic. Remember him? The guy accused of murdering 7500 Bosnians about twelve years ago just because they weren’t Serbs? It looked to me that, aside from killing people, the thing he cared most about in the world was his hair. In addition to being a mass murderer, he was also a psychiatrist who could have diagnosed himself with Blago’s disorder mentioned above. I don’t know if he has access to hairspray and mirrors while he’s on trial in The Hague for war crimes, but if he hasn’t, that might the punishment that hurts him most. Better put him on suicide watch.

And speaking of liberal politicians from the upper midwest, there’s Comb-over Carl Levin, Democrat Senator from Michigan. I shouldn’t have to spell this out, but look Carl: a lot of guys go bald on top and it’s doesn’t make you a bad person. Invariably, it looks dumb when you grow that side hair long and comb it over your bald dome and then plaster it down somehow. It doesn’t fool anybody and proclaims to the world that “I’m bald and I can’t deal with it!” If it gets too cold up there in Michigan, ask Joe Biden where he got his hair plugs installed or wear a hat.

There now. I feel better already.

Eternal Light

Long hours of darkness here in the northern latitudes focus my attention on light. I like to wake before dawn to starlight, then watch emanations from a still-distant sun displace dark slowly and quietly. First I see branches against a faint sky. Later, direct sun illuminates mountains in the west. Lastly, the sun itself rises over the hill behind me. All of it charms me as I begin the day. I end it watching again as the sun drops behind those western mountains. During its low arc across the winter sky, I’m usually somewhere else - at school or checking things around town. Sometimes I’m home to watch, but it seldom gets very high above the bare hardwoods and sparse evergreens. Much of winter’s sun is like that - filtered through branches or reflecting off something. Seen directly, it’s bright enough to hurt your eye, but not warm enough to heat your body unless you feel it through a window.

We’re used to this up north. We move around when we’re outdoors to stay warm. Indoors we hover around our own light and heat sources. Inside or out, I’m acutely aware of light lately and it’s is related to the beauty visible around me. Since I’ve been traveling the same paths for decades, it means something in me is changing what I see. I’m as busy as ever, but my mind is less cluttered. Eyesight weakens with age but I see more, paradoxically, especially when it’s lit by light from sun or moon.

Traveling in Ireland last summer, I was struck by how the ancients built monuments to the sun’s rhythms all over the island. In August, the sun didn’t set until 9:30, but at this time of year they get little more than seven hours of daylight. Just north of Dublin is a fascinating, five-thousand-year-old structure seemingly dedicated to the winter solstice - that day of the year when sunlight is weakest. Called Newgrange, it’s only one of the several so-called “passage tombs” in the vicinity of the Boyne River valley. Cremated human remains were placed inside the huge mound under a corbelled chamber made of enormous stones decorated with spirals, circles and angular etchings, the meaning of which is unknown. We know little about the people who built them except they pre-date the Celts by 2500 years.

Not much is known about the passage tombs either because they’ve only been studied during the past forty years or so, but I have an idea those ancient ones associated death with absence of light. They put cremated remains in a carved granite bowl in the chamber deep inside the mound. The only access is through a very narrow passageway flanked by huge stones. I had to turn sideways at some points because my shoulders were too wide. It’s pitch-black in the chamber, but at sunrise on the day of the winter solstice, light shines through the narrow, sixty-foot-long passage and into that chamber illuminating the ornate carvings and the human remains for seventeen minutes. It’s as if they believed that first light on the darkest day of the year might spark a resurrection.

The huge stones of the uprights and lintels making up the passageway, of the corbelled chamber, and the 97 kerbstones holding up the mound were hauled from a hundred of miles away. Local stone was available, so why did they go to all that trouble? The far-away stone doesn’t seem especially pretty or have any other obvious advantage. It’s a mystery. It’s estimated that it would have taken over three hundred workers more than twenty years to build it. They display a remarkable knowledge of astronomy, though the site predates both Stonehenge by a thousand years, and the Egyptian pyramids by five hundred years. Other upright stones and mounds are scattered about as they are all over Ireland as well as Britain, Scotland, France and Denmark.

St. Patrick is famous for using the three leaves of the shamrock to explain Christianity’s Holy Trinity. Maybe he knew of the ancient Irish triple spiral motif as well. Sun worship continued up to St. Patrick’s time and he was wise enough to incorporate it into Christianity. That’s why the Celtic cross has the sun’s image circling the point where the vertical and horizontal meet. Apparently St. Patrick emphasized connections between light and Christ. He was born under a star in Bethlehem. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Light,” He said. And, He rose from a stone tomb at first light Easter morning. Celtic crosses predominate in Irish cemeteries, including the ones with remains of my ancestors. Perhaps awareness of light is inherited.

Fourth Estate Failure

Stinking corruption in Chicago has been obvious for years, and President-elect Obama has been nothing but a go-along, get-along guy all during his twenty years there. It’s not a secret. I’m absolutely ripped that our mainstream media didn’t do their jobs and ignored it all during Obama’s two-year campaign - when it was out there for all to see. As an Illinois state senator, Obama was a top advisor to Governor Blagojevich in his first gubernatorial campaign along with Obama’s recently-appointed chief of staff, Congressman Rahm Emmanuel. They’ll claim this extremely corrupt governor is not the Rod Blagojevich they knew, even though he’s been under federal investigation for seven years. Obama said he didn’t know the Reverend Wright had been making those outrageous sermons for twenty years either, even he also said he was there in the pew every Sunday. He didn’t know Blagojevich’s bag man, Tony Rezco, was a crook when they did a shady real estate deal together. He said yesterday that he never spoke to Blagojevich about his Senate replacement, but his campaign manager, David Axelrod said he did. Give me a break.

Now, at a critical point in our nation’s history, our president-elect is tarnished - at the very least - by this scandal. We have him because the media delivered him to us. We’re at war and changing horses in mid-stream. Our economy is on the verge of collapse. We need a strong leader more than ever, but we have to do the vetting that should have been done before the election. I’m squeezing my jaw so hard I’m going to crack a tooth.

In Thomas Carlyle's 1841 book On Heroes And Hero Worship, he wrote: “[British politician Edmund] Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than them all.”

Our Fourth Estate has failed us, big time.

Big Government Fixes

Looks like we’re in for more federal government and that can’t be good. Democrats have convinced most of us that our economic distress results from lack of regulation rather than too much. Whether that’s true or not (and it isn’t) doesn’t matter. That’s how people perceive it and in politics, perception is reality. Political reality won’t change until perception changes and that could take a long time - years, or decades even. That our economic mess is, at bottom, a subprime mortgage crisis - caused by our federal government forcing banks to lend money to people who couldn’t pay it back - doesn’t matter. People believe it was Wall Street business tycoons who caused it all, so government will step in and control them - and continue to lend money to people they shouldn’t.

Big government is the most inefficient way to do anything. That’s why Jefferson said: “That government is best which governs least.” It used to be the mantra of the Republican Party - until the George W. Bush Administration. Under him, government grew faster than it had in any Democrat administration and it’s one of the biggest reasons Republicans got clobbered so badly in the last two elections. Now President Obama wants to be the new FDR and take control of the economy. My professional career has been in public education during a time in which the federal government took control of it, and the results have been dismal.

There weren’t many openings for history teachers in May of 1975 when I finished undergraduate school. A week before school started in September I found a job teaching juvenile delinquents in Lowell, Massachusetts where there were lots of them. Federal special education law had just kicked in though, and delinquents were reclassified as emotionally-disturbed adolescents. Many were no doubt disturbed, but most were junior con men. That ilk I understood, having grown up with many, but federal regulations dictated that we treat them as if they were handicapped. Once the junior cons realized this, they used it to their advantage of course, and lots of the federal taxpayer’s money was spent for little or no gain. A strong case could be made that juvenile delinquency in Massachusetts actually got worse. Federal programs didn’t work because people followed regulations instead of their common sense.

Trained as a history teacher, I wasn’t certified in Special Ed, so I had to take courses - so many that just a few more earned a master’s degree. So I got one, then moved north to take a job running the federally-funded Special Ed and Title I Programs in Maine School Administrative District 72. Our district spent this federal program money to hire ed techs who gave students individual attention. Our superintendent was a WWII US Army vet very familiar with federal regs. When state and federal checkers visited, I’d tell each ed tech whether they were Title I or Special Ed for that day. After showing the checkers around in the morning, our superintendent showed them local trout streams in the afternoon and they went away happy. No federal tax money was wasted.

Regulations and paperwork multiplied however, and I spent most of my time with telephones, filing cabinets and meetings, none of which provided job satisfaction. A new superintendent came in who was picky about paperwork, so when a job teaching history opened up, I took it along with a cut in pay. I’ve liked my job since because I’m left alone in my classroom. Meanwhile, I’ve observed with dismay the increasing union and central government control of public education.

I’m still involved in special education the way every teacher is: I go to lots of meetings and see lots more money spent. Few would begrudge spending for the mentally retarded, physically handicapped, or those with sight, hearing, dyslexia, or other issues. However, some who would have been coded as Educable Mentally Retarded (EMR) thirty years ago, are now classified “low-normal” and dropped from services. Meanwhile, special ed staff spend increasing amounts of time cultivating what some of us call “learned helplessness” in students whose biggest problem is an unwillingness to apply themselves. Schools must abide by federal statutes and ignore their better judgement about which students are served and how. Personnel may be used only with certain students and not others who don’t fit the regs, even though their needs are plainly very great. This waste of resources is worst when power and decision-making is centralized in Washington instead of in local schools. It’s been maddening to watch this trend increase year after year.

Now that Democrats are firmly in control our entire federal government again, and are beholden more to teachers’ unions than any other constituency, we’re going to see more of the same at an accelerated pace. We can look for similar developments in the economy, or in any other area the federal government wants to “regulate.”

To Whom and From Whom

On Thanksgiving Day Americans give thanks to God. Used to be everybody knew that but the multiculturalists among us have done their damnedest to hide it, so it’s become necessary to state it up front. When I ask my students about who is to be thanked on this national holiday, they look puzzled. “Indians?” they guess. That’s a clue about what we’re becoming in the 21st century. Only after discussing it some will a student say, “Wait a minute. Isn’t it God?” Those of us fortunate enough to have extended family members in their eighties can ask them the question as a kind of experiment. My prediction is that they, too, will look puzzled, but not because they don’t know the answer. They’ll be puzzled that anyone would even ask the question.

Americans face uncertainty this winter, but not the kind we thought we’d be facing. Just a few months ago we were worried about high fuel costs when gas prices and heating oil prices were around $4 per gallon. Those costs are back down to manageable levels, but now the economy itself is uncertain. People are being laid off. Nearly all of us know someone who has either gotten a pink slip or whose business has slowed dangerously. The stock market is doing a slow-motion crash. Corporations and banks are failing left and right and few economic advisors are predicting that bottom will be reached anytime soon. Unlike his soaring rhetoric during the campaign, our newly-elected president is sending out spokesmen to damper down expectations that he’s going to fix everything next year, the year after, or even in four years.

This year, I’m thankful for basic things like life, health, family, food, clothing, shelter, and heat. After several years of idleness, I’ve dusted off my chainsaws, dropped trees, and worked them up with my splitting maul - and it felt good. I’d almost forgotten how satisfying it can be to work on the woodpile when it’s getting cold. It’s simple and meaningful work in a complicated world. When I moved my young family to Maine thirty-one years ago, that became my routine because I had no choice. Oil was too expensive. The kids pitched in and it was all good. On the woodpile, there’s no disconnect between the work you do and the reason you do it. It’s hard work, there’s no better feeling than looking at a full woodshed when snow starts to fly. For a man whose job is to take care of his family, it’s a labor of love.

Back to basics is good. So is self-reliance. There was a time when Americans depended on themselves for just about everything and wouldn’t think of calling on government unless there were an emergency. There were no such things as entitlements. We were strong then because the only thing we felt entitled to was the opportunity to work. We always believed in helping each other, but that help was direct. It was bringing your tools over to your neighbor’s and working with him. It wasn’t in the form of government shaking you down for taxes to be spent on people you believe should be doing more for themselves. There’s no satisfaction in that.

Thanksgiving Day is uniquely American. It started with ordinary people celebrating the fruits of their own labor, working side by side for their common welfare - their life, their liberty, and pursuit of their happiness, all of which they knew were theirs by right. They also knew where those rights came from - from their Creator, not from their government. A century and a half later, their descendants put it down in writing and sent it to the king. On that day back in 1621 however, they gave thanks to God.

Liberal Racism

Can we finally get rid of “Affirmative Action” now that we have a black president? Barack Obama was freely elected by the votes of more than 63 million Americans with all shades of skin. We know this because our government and our media are obsessed with race. Endlessly, they classify us all even though biologists insist there’s no such thing as “races.” We humans belong to only one race - the human race. Any others are socially-constructed categories based on skin color or other variances within the human species. In other words, they exist only because we insist they do. How many times have you been asked to classify yourself as “White-non Hispanic” or “Black” or “Native American” or “Pacific Islander” or any one of a growing list of “races”?

The Constitution requires our federal government to count us all every ten years for the purpose of apportioning congressional districts according to population. Slave-holding states insisted that slaves be counted so they could have more congressional power. Anti-slavery states didn’t want to count them at all since they were not citizens. A compromise resulted in which only three-fifths of the slave population would count toward seats in Congress. After post-Civil-War Amendments 13, 14, and 15, there was no need to categorize American citizens this way, but it persisted and even expanded nonetheless. Such is the nature of government bureaucracies.

When I was visited by a census taker eight years ago, he sat at my kitchen table and filled out a form as he questioned me. When he got to the part about “race” I watched him as he was about to check off “white.” I said, “Wait a minute,” and insisted that he put me down as human. He said he had to check off one of the categories and there were none for “human.” I said leave it blank then. He said he could see that I was white and he marked it. I let it go, but I won’t in 2010 when census-takers come around again. I’ll refuse to cooperate when my government discriminates on the basis of race. It’s racism, pure and simple, and we have to get off this ludicrous merri-go-round.

For a century after slavery was outlawed, black people (and others) were discriminated against. To remedy that, the Civil Rights Bill was signed into law by President Johnson in 1964. It became illegal to “limit, segregate, or classify his employees in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Yet that is exactly what Affirmative Action does. It classifies people according to the above-mentioned categories and grants them preferential treatment at the expense of others. “Affirmative Action” is a euphemism for racial preferences - the very antithesis of what the Civil Rights Bill intended. It was wrong in principle when white people got racial preferences, and it’s wrong when any other group does also.

When people like Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute moved to eliminate racial categories from the US Census altogether, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) insisted they remain. How else could they use the power of government to “advance colored people” if they were not identified by that government and given preferences in hiring, college admissions, and business contracts? A sort of compromise was worked out in which citizens were allowed to check off more than one of 126 possible classifications of race and ethnicity, but this only made things worse.

Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute has been effective, however, in its efforts at outlawing Affirmative Action in several states including California, Washington, Michigan, and Nebraska through the referendum process. Enacted in 1996, “The California Civil Rights Initiative,” for example, reads as follows:

“The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

For this, Connerly has been attacked as “racist” by fellow black activists. How an initiative that bars discrimination on the basis of race can be called racist is beyond me, but such is the hopelessly skewed thinking of race-baiting activists like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, as well as most members of the NAACP and the Democrat Party.
While there’s still a question of whether Barack Obama got into Columbia and Harvard through Affirmative Action, he won the highest office in the land without it. If that’s not proof that it’s time to eliminate Affirmative Action once and for all, please tell me - what is it going to take?

Objective Pretense

It was a bad week. Couldn’t start my column on Sunday like I usually do because the hard drive on my laptop crashed while I was away for the weekend. Monday morning I got it outlined on my back-up machine before leaving for school, but after school I had to drive a hundred miles (round trip) to drop my main machine off with the nearest Apple-certified technician. Tuesday after school I picked it up and hurried home to vote before the polls closed. Election results were depressing for conservatives like me. Wednesday morning I was pulled over for speeding on the way to school. Been driving that road the same way for thirty-one years, but oh well. I was going 55 in a 45.

Most of my students are Obama supporters. I’m not and they know it. I knew they would be giving me plenty of “I told you so’s” that day and I wasn’t looking forward to it. In the first class, students asked if I’d heard that Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country and not a continent.

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Where did you hear that?

“On television this morning,” said one student and another concurred right away. “She’s pretty dumb,” he said.

“What news show were you watching?” I asked. Neither could tell me, but I learned later that the information came from sources in the McCain campaign and was widely reported in the Mainstream Media. For two months, students had been repeating reports about how ignorant and inexperienced Sarah Palin was. I asked each class that day how many of them had seen reports like that. About two-thirds raised their hands. Several told me Palin spent too much on clothes, thought she could see Russia from her house in Alaska, shot animals from a plane, had a pregnant teenaged daughter, or avoided answering interview questions.

“Hmm,” I said. “Let me ask you a few questions. Did you hear that Obama claimed a few months ago that he’d campaigned in 57 states and still had one more to go?” In five classes with approximately 125 students, only one girl had heard it on the radio.

“Okay, how about this one: When Katie Couric interviewed Joe Biden about comparing our financial crisis to the Great Depression, he claimed President Roosevelt went on television to explain the 1929 stock market crash to the American people. How many of you heard about that?”

Not one had. Several students said television hadn’t been invented then. I told them it had, but televisions weren’t being sold because nothing was being broadcast until the late forties. We’d been studying the Great Depression and several knew that Roosevelt didn’t become president until 1933 - nearly four years after the stock market crash.

Then I told them that during the vice presidential debate, Biden claimed that “Article One of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States” (find it at the 4:00 mark) when actually, the executive branch is defined in Article Two. Not a single student heard about that blunder either.

Many times during September and October I’d had students turn to Article II in their textbook’s copy of the Constitution so they could read about qualifications, duties, and powers of the president and vice president. They’d also read several parts of Article I which outlines the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. “Biden has been a US senator for 36 years,” I said. “Don’t you think he should know this stuff?”

Many nodded gravely.

“So what’s the point I’m making?” I asked each class and waited for them to think it over. “I can show you Obama and Biden saying dumb things on ‘You Tube,’ but only one girl heard any of it. On the other hand, most of you heard plenty to make Palin appear foolish. What’s up with that?”

Students suggested that television stations don’t like to show bad things about Democrats. “That seems like a valid conclusion,” I said. “Our broadcast media had plenty of material on both sides, but only used it against one. Why would they do that?”

“Because they’re biased?” several asked.

“I think so,” I said. “Their reporting has certainly had an influence on you. Do you think it’s had a similar influence on Americans who vote?”

There were nods all around.

“Fox News seems to have a conservative bias, but all the rest have a liberal bias. The worst part, however, is that none of them admit it. They pretend to be objective.”

“You’re taking this too hard, Mr. McLaughlin,” said one boy as class was ending.

“Perhaps,” I said. "Been a hard week."

Turbulent Times?

The times we’re living in are fertile ground for what I do, which is teaching US History since 1901. We’re in the end stage of a presidential election that has riveted most people’s attention, no matter what their political orientation. We’re engaged in a war with people who wish to impose their religion on the entire world and are willing to die in the process. Then, in the midst of all this, we’re faced with a financial crisis almost nobody understands, but is being called the worst since the Great Depression. About 125 different students started filing in and out of my classroom in early September and I’ve been trying to help them understand it all.

Few of us learn history chronologically. Rather, it’s a little here, a little there, and gradually we develop a working hypothesis to understand the dynamics, the cause-and-effect, of those events with which we become familiar. Then something comes along that doesn’t fit and we have to adjust that hypothesis to accommodate it. I’m charged with teaching 20th century US History, weaving in economics, geography, civics, and current events. I can’t teach everything that happened since January 1, 1901 when the 20th century began, so I have to leave out some things and emphasize other things. The choices I make, no matter what they are, will please some and annoy others. This year, I’ve largely abandoned chronology and taken things as they come. I’ve been comparing this presidential election with the 1932 election, for instance. There are many parallels and many differences - and both are helpful.

One parallel is panic. Fear that stock prices would collapse in 1929 and the panic-selling which resulted helped cause the collapse. So began the Great Depression. Then, as Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, fear that banks would collapse caused people to withdraw their deposits - and that caused banks to fail. When teaching these events, I’ve found it helpful to call up from students what they already know. I ask them to tell me the “Chicken Little” story most of them have been told about the stupid chicken who gets hit on the head by a falling acorn and goes running to tell the king that the sky is falling. Panic spreads as he’s joined by Henny Penny, Turkey Lurkey and the rest. Their birdbrained fear is soon exploited by Foxy Loxy and they come to sad end in his lair. The lesson, of course, is that their fear brought about their demise. Then I tell students that they already know part of Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, but they don’t know they know it. When I tell them that, they give me funny looks. Then I say, “There’s nothing to fear but . . .” and gesture for them to finish the sentence, which they do, saying: “fear itself.” Thus they put into context what they already know. Another piece of the incomplete puzzle that represents their understanding of their world goes into place. Their working hypothesis becomes a little clearer.

One difference between the elections of 1932 and 2008 is that things are not nearly as bad today as they were then. The unemployment rate in 1932 was approaching 25% - one out of four people were out of work. Today it’s only around 6%. Also, there were no supports in place for those laid off - no unemployment insurance, no housing or heating assistance, no welfare other than what a municipality or private charity offered. Also, people here in northern New England tended to live on small, subsistence farms, so they were able to provide their own basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, heat, etc. When I’ve sent former students out into the community at the end of each year to interview the elderly, they ask how the Great Depression affected our now-senior citizens. The most common answer goes something like this: “Well, we weren’t poor. We just didn’t have any money.”

That’s not true now. Most of us don’t live on subsistence farms anymore. If there should be another Great Depression as some fear, we’ll have to find other ways to cope.

People sense turbulence ahead and have elected a new president who promises “Change we can believe in.” He’s pretty vague, however, about what that change will be or how he’ll bring it about. His vice president-elect warns us that the new guy will be tested by hostile foreign elements very soon after taking office. He, too, was vague in his remarks, but he indicated that the American people might not be happy about the way the new president responds to this test. Roosevelt had eight years in office before he was tested by hostile foreign elements. It’ll come much sooner for President Obama if we can believe his VP. We know he can give a good speech, but will that be enough to pass the test? We’ll see, I guess.

There’s a Chinese proverb which says: “I’d rather be a dog in peaceful times than live as a man in turbulent times.”

Unsustainable Economics

Disdainful, but dependent. That’s how I would describe the teenagers who seemed cool to many in junior high and high school. Parents, most teachers, and other authority figures were objects of their disdain because they were hopelessly uncool - not as aware of how the world was changing as they themselves were. Most of those teenagers grow up, however, because their parents tolerate their rebellion only up to a point and then cut them loose to fend for themselves. Thus they learn what Margaret Thatcher said: “The facts of life are conservative.”

Others don’t. They never seem to learn the facts of life, probably because they continue to blame something outside themselves for their personal failures. Other people are to blame, or the system is to blame for all the world’s problems as well as their own. They were ostentatious non-conformists who portrayed themselves as “counterculture.” They wanted to bring down the establishment culture, but didn’t have anything plausible to replace it with. Those young people had a vague idea of what they were against, but little idea of what they were for - and they still don’t as “adults.”

A few “cool” teachers indulged the fashionably-alienated teenagers in the old days because they didn’t fit in either. Now, however, they comprise whole faculties. As they do in any time or place in history, these “rebels” believed they knew the ways of the world while their “establishment” parents and teachers did not. But they were dependent for their physical sustenance on the very system they disdained. They needed food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and someone to pay their tuition at the colleges and universities they eventually went to, rebelled against, and ultimately took over. That’s how I understand people like Bill Ayers, his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, and the other pampered radicals from the sixties and seventies who steer the Democrat Party today.

The free-enterprise system they rebelled against is what produced in abundance the material necessities they consumed but didn’t appreciate. Capitalism, and the democratic republic in which it operates and thrives, have long been objects of their disdain. Now, with the impending election of Barack Obama and the bolstering of Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s majorities in the Congress, those cool, disdainful, and still dependent people are about to secure their lock on the establishment. They’re not young anymore, but they haven’t grown up enough yet either to understand what they’re doing. As they expand New Deal and Great Society entitlement programs to an unsustainable level, the system they hate will no longer will be able to provide material necessities. The national debt is over $10 trillion and the dollar is no longer the world’s currency of choice. The hand that feeds them has been bitten and gnawed upon so long and so much it’s getting weak. The goose that laid the golden egg is going into molt. Those overgrown teenagers are about to discover that there’s a limit.

As they go about their Robin Hood redistribution policies over the next two to four years - as they “spread the wealth around” like Obama told Joe the plumber - it’s not going to be “good for everyone.” How much do Democrats think they can crank up taxes on “the rich” who are already paying most of the taxes? And how is Obama going to cut taxes on 95% of Americans when over 30% of them aren’t paying any taxes at all? What will he do with them? Just give them our money? They can call it whatever they want, but the rest of us “Joe the Plumbers” out here know what it really is. It’s Marxism: “From each, according to his ability. To each, according to his need,” with Obama, Pelosi and Reid deciding who is able and who is needy. That’s “Change” all right, but not “Change You Can Believe In.” I sure don’t believe in it.

Those of us who work our butts off aren’t going to keep doing it if government is going to take the fruit of our labor and “spread it around” to those who sit on theirs. That’s the hard reality. A radical leftist Obama Administration with a radical leftist Congress to back it up promise everything. As columnist Mark Steyn puts it: “The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it.” He’s a Canadian who came to the United States and admires us as a last outpost against encroaching European-style socialism. Now he laments what he sees coming if Democrats sweep the election next week: "[For] a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, [an Obama Administration] would be a Declaration of Dependence.”

Wow! Finally some tough, relevant questions

If you haven't seen it already, you simply have to check it this interview of Joe Biden on WFTV Channel 9! (in Florida somewhere, I think)

Better late than never with some tough questions for Democrats.

" 'From each according to his abilities. To each according to his needs,'" quoted newswoman Barbara West from Karl Marx. "How is Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?" she asked Biden.

"Are you joking? Is this a joke?" Biden asks.

"No," she says.

It's about time someone put it to these guys! I love Barbara West. Is it too little - too late? We'll see.

Palin's "Prop"

A local feminist Democrat accused Governor Sarah Palin of using her handicapped infant son as “a prop on late night television.” It caused a fuss and she resigned last week from Representative Carol Shea-Porter’s (D-NH) campaign as a result. It’s not clear whether she was asked to resign or she did it on her own initiative. No matter. The remark crystallizes why Palin drives feminists crazy.

Radical feminists say they’re “pro-choice.” It looks to them like Sarah Palin made a choice when she got pregnant in her forties after being inaugurated the first woman governor of Alaska, but we can’t be sure of that. To make a choice, she would have had to consider an abortion and we don’t know if it ever entered her mind. Only she knows that. Maybe she discussed it with her husband before anybody else knew she was pregnant and made a choice then. We just don’t know.

During the pregnancy, she found out her baby had Down Syndrome. She’s bound to have known families with such children and thought about how difficult it would be to raise her child. Maybe she considered abortion then. Maybe not. Maybe someone else asked her if she thought about abortion. Maybe not. It could be her friends and family believed she would never consider it because she had borne four children already and knew what was inside her was her child. Maybe they knew she believed abortion was murder so they never brought it up. Maybe she and her husband had a private conversation in which they weighed the prospect of living with a Down Syndrome child against the prospect of living with the guilt they would feel for killing it. Maybe they made a choice then. Or, maybe it never came up because each knew what the other would say.

Whatever went on in Sarah Palin’s mind during her pregnancy, she clearly carried a handicapped baby to term and delivered it when she could have had an abortion. She rejected that most prized “constitutional right” feminists believe they “won” for women everywhere in America and has a highly successful political career without it. When Palin’s family is on stage with the older girl holding her handicapped, infant brother, it drives the local feminist mentioned above and all the rest in the “sisterhood” of feminism nuts. She calls the infant boy, whose name is Trig, a “prop” because, although he’s the smallest, he stands out most in her eyes.

Perhaps it would be petty of me to speculate about another thing that annoys feminists about Palin: In addition to all the above, and after bearing five children, she’s attractive. Back in 1987 when Rush Limbaugh wrote that “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society,” I believe he was kidding - mostly. As with all humor though, what makes it funny is that there’s a grain of truth in it. Feminists have long railed against societal standards of female beauty and they’ve made some good points along the way, but many of us have sensed that, as Shakespeare put it, they “protesteth too much.” Do many feminists resent attractive women and the advantage it gives them? I think so. Is there a disproportionately large number of angry, man-hating, homely women in the “sisterhood”? I think it’s pretty obvious that there is. I believe it’s safe to say that jealousy is also a factor in their hatred of Governor Palin.

The feminists favored candidate, Barack Obama, has the most pro-abortion record in the US Senate - indeed the most pro-abortion record of any candidate for president in history - by far. Speaking on sex education and his two daughters during the campaign last April, he said: “I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.” To Obama, babies are “punishment.” While in the Illinois State Senate, he voted against the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” He would rather leave babies born alive after unsuccessful abortions to die on a shelf in another room, alone and unattended, because to recognize them as human beings would threaten the legality of abortion itself. Explaining his vote, Obama said, “I mean, it - it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.” If it’s not a child, Barack, then what the hell is it?

Ignore that crying baby in the other room. We must protect abortion. No wonder feminists love Obama and hate Palin. To them, her baby is a prop, a symbol that she rejects their culture of death.

Criticize Obama? You're a Racist

“If the election were held today who would you vote for: Obama or McCain?” I asked them.

By a margin of greater than four-to-one, my students favored Obama. They indicated their choice enthusiastically - shooting their hands straight up without hesitation. McCain supporters, however, kept their elbows on the desk and shyly showed their palms while pulling their head down into their shoulders and glancing around to see who was watching. When I asked the Obama supporters why they chose him, most told me it was time for America to have a black president. Others said McCain was too old, or that Obama was cool.

That was last spring when my current students were finishing seventh grade and were in my classroom on “Step-up Day” to meet their future teachers. I asked why they thought it was time America had a black president and they said it would be proof that Americans are not racists. In September I asked them again with the same result. It’s very clear that they chose their favorite candidate on the basis of race and style over substance. Not one of the Obama supporters mentioned any of his positions on the issues as a basis for their choice. When I pointed this out, most just shrugged. A few then said they liked Obama because he would bring American soldiers home from Iraq. That was all they knew about what he planned to do if elected.

These, of course, were fourteen-year-olds and we don’t expect them to discharge their civic responsibilities maturely. Until I teach them, they’re not likely to understand many of the challenges facing our country. Very few understood differences between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, or left-wing and right-wing political philosophies. After learning a few of those things, some of their choices have changed. Most still support Obama over McCain, but only by a two-to-one margin or less.

My circle of friends is mostly conservative, with a few liberals. The political philosophies of people in my wider circle of aquaintances is unknown to me for the most part, but most seem to be Obama supporters if I were to extrapolate based on overheard snippets of conversation or seeing their bumper stickers. When meeting new people, I avoid bringing up politics, but it comes up often in this election year. When it does, I usually listen rather than talk. If I’m drawn in, I prefer to ask questions rather than state my positions. What I’m learning dismays me.

Perhaps it was always thus, but I’m noticing that many adult voters are not very different from my fourteen-year-old students in that race and style are much bigger factors in their considerations of whom to vote for than substance. They’re excited about the prospect of a President Obama because he’s black, or says he is. That his mother was white and his father was mixed Arab and black (they’re both dead) is immaterial. Obama has chosen to think of himself as black and presents himself thus. That choice is a major subject of his two auto-biographies and it’s working well for him so far if opinion polls are any indication. Spoken or unspoken, it looks like the biggest single dynamic in the presidential campaign. Many voters who think of themselves as white are troubled by the notion that, if they were to vote against Obama, others may think them racist for doing so.

This notion is strongly encouraged. According to a Washington Post article last Sunday by Anne Kornblut: “In Youngstown, Ohio, last month, two Democratic state legislators accused swing voters who were not backing Obama of being racist. ‘Race - that's the only reason people in the Valley won't vote for him,’ state Rep. Thomas Letson said.”

Is that so, Representative Letson?

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Fatimah Ali wrote: “If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!”

A “race war,” Ms. Ali?

According to the New York Times, Georgia Democrat Congressman John Lewis accused McCain and Palin of “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” for their criticism of Obama’s close association of terrorist Bill Ayers. Lewis said it could lead to racial violence like the 1963 Alabama church bombings that killed four girls. Apparently, that Obama is black should insulate him from criticism of any type in Lewis’s view. “Senator McCain and Governor Palin are playing with fire,” he said, “and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all.”

Really, Congressman Lewis?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Obama stoked it himself in a speech last summer, saying: “What they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know: ‘He’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name.’ You know, ‘He doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.’ ” He made similar remarks in three different speeches.

Who is “they,” Senator Obama? Anybody who criticizes you?

In The Tank

They’re not even embarrassed about how obviously they’re in the tank for Obama. Rather, they seem to feel righteous about it. Our media elite are so smug and insular in their world view, they don’t realize or care about how out of touch they’ve become with ordinary Americans - how we live or how we think. Paradoxically, our media elite see themselves as champions of the oppressed, of “minorities,” and other “victims” of “American oppression.” They’re embarrassed when ordinary Americans express our patriotism or our faith in God, considering it childlike and unsophisticated. Their friends are far too sophisticated to look at the world that way.

They know Obama goes to church and professes love of country, but they figure he does those things because he has to in order to get elected. And they want to see him elected because he’s one of them. He pronounces words as they do and he went to Ivy League school as they did. And like them, he sees the world from a hard left perspective. If we wonder why they don’t go after Obama’s William Ayers connection, that’s why. It doesn’t alarm them. Ayers fits with mainstream Democrat politics in Chicago. And why not expose racism in the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? Because they’re not alarmed by him either. He fits in with their world view too - way better than Justice Clarence Thomas does. Wright and Obama profess a belief in God, but it looks as if Thomas actually has one and lives his life accordingly. To our elitist media, that qualifies him as an intellectual lightweight and not qualified to serve on the US Supreme Court.

Seldom, if ever, do they question Barack Obama’s qualifications to be president, though his is the thinnest of resumes. Most of his career was as a “community organizer.” What the heck is that? And he served in the state senate? Big deal. He avoided nearly every controversial vote that came up when he was there, voting “present” instead of yes or no. US Senate? If ever there was a club for political prima donnas, it would be the US Senate and Obama did only two years there before running for president full-time.

Obama wants to be our chief executive, but his only executive experience was as Chairman of the Annenberg Challenge - a position Bill Ayers secured for him. Obama cited his Annenberg tenure in an unsuccessful congressional campaign, but has hidden it since and no wonder - it was a $50 million boondoggle which purported to raise standards for Chicago schools, which showed no measurable change when the money was all spent. Most of the money was authorized by Obama and spent by Ayers and his radical friends to push Chicago’s educational establishment further to the left than it already was. I remember getting $25,000 of Annenberg Challenge Grant money here in Fryeburg around the same time. A few other teachers and I trained students in the use of digital imaging technology and local history. I’m proud of what we did with just a tiny fraction of what Obama spent. The Chicago Democratic establishment, however, is trying to block reporters from investigating records of where Obama’s and Ayers’ $50 million went.

Then there’s Obama’s purchase of his Chicago mansion with convicted felon Tony Rezco - possibly using money from Iraqi/British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, implicated in the infamous Iraqi “Oil For Food” debacle, the biggest financial scandal in world history until the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Obama is tangled up in that one too through his close associations with infamous Fannie Mae executives James Johnson and Franklin Raines (who, as CEO, took $90 million in bonuses). Johnson headed Obama’s vice presidential search committee and Raines advised his campaign on housing issues.

Since McCain selected Sarah Palin for his VP running mate, however, investigative reporters have swarmed over Alaska looking for dirt. Palin’s got at least as much experience as Obama, but all we hear about is her lack of it. She epitomizes ordinary Americans and the elite media’s contempt for her is sickeningly obvious. When she galvanized the GOP’s conservative base, they declared relentless, all-out war on her. They dug into her private life and even hung out her seventeen-year-old daughter to dry. They seemed to have Palin on the ropes until the debate with Biden last week. They were expecting Biden to knock her out, but instead, she took control and spoke directly to the American people, even looking into the camera and winking.

I’ve been watching presidential politics a long time from both sides of the spectrum and I’ve never seen the media go as softly on a candidate as they have on Obama. Nor have I ever seen them attack anyone as vociferously as they have gone after Palin. The elite media’s power is waning, but possibly still powerful enough to deliver a radical leftist into the oval office in January.

Teaching the Crisis

I’m responsible to teach economics and current events to eighth graders - woven into a 20th century US History course - and this sub-prime mortgage crisis is the biggest story of the year. It’s complicated, charged with politics during election season, and nobody seems to understand the big picture. I plowed ahead anyway and started by asking my students how many of them had money in the bank. Nearly all did. “Do you know what banks do with the money you put in there?” I asked. Most realized that banks lend that money so people can buy houses, cars, businesses, and so forth. We discussed how banks make money by charging people more interest on loans than they pay to depositors like them.

Then I told them of the three houses my wife and I purchased or built, how much of a down payment we put on each, how much we borrowed for them - how we fixed up the first two, sold them, and used profits to pay for much of building our present house. I told them about our employment history, our credit rating, and the factors that made our mortgage contracts examples of “prime mortgages” because we never borrowed more than we could afford to pay back and never missed a payment. Then I explained that the economic crisis was caused by “sub-prime mortgages” - banks (encouraged by government) lend money to people who can’t or won’t pay it back, either because they borrowed too much, because they were unreliable, because they fell on hard times, or because they didn’t put any of their own money down and can walk away from their payment without losing anything.

Then I wrote on the board and explained that what sound like names for people are actually crude attempts to phonetically pronounce the acronyms for FNMA - the Federal National Mortgage Association, and FHLMC - the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, respectively. I explained that local banks negotiate mortgage contracts such as mine but have limited money to lend, so Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy those contracts. Mine was for $95,000 at 6% for fifteen years with monthly payments of $801.66 and my house was worth way more than that. My contract can be sold - and has been twice, to Bank America and again to Wells Fargo Bank. My contract is worth more than $95,000 because of the interest I pay. By selling it, my local bank made a profit and got more money to lend so others around here can buy and build houses. That keeps carpenters, plumbers, electricians, excavators, dry-wall contractors, and others busy, giving us a healthy economy.

Most students understood this much. Then it got more complicated.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created by government, I explained. Together, they control $6 trillion in mortgages - half of all American mortgages. When they buy a mortgage, they guarantee it - like a parent cosigning a loan for a teenager to buy a car. If the teenager doesn’t make payments, the parent must. When Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac wanted to sell sub-prime mortgages, few wanted to buy because they were such a bad risk by nature. So, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bundled sub-prime mortgages with prime mortgages. Those packages became “Mortgage-backed Securities” which could be sold and re-sold because buyers believed that if they failed, government would fix everything - be the parent making payments for delinquent teenagers, so to speak. Wall Street jumped on and rode the ensuing boom. So long as house prices continued rising, sub-prime mortgagees could flip their properties and even profit, but as soon as prices leveled off and then fell as they inevitably do, foreclosures skyrocketed and it all caved in. Businesses most heavily invested caved with it, including the allegedly private Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Neither the Republican Congress nor the Democrat Congress saw it coming and they should have. Neither Clinton nor Bush saw it either. Some individuals did, but they didn’t blow the whistle loudly enough. Anyway, nobody listened.

Who is responsible for sub-prime mortgages at the root of all this? There’s plenty of blame to go around, but it started with the Carter Administration’s “Community Reinvestment Act” in the seventies. Standards to screen bad borrowers were relaxed. Buyers flooded the market and prices went up in the 1980s housing boom. Then President Clinton ordered standards lowered still further in 1995 so more “minorities” and other low-income people could own homes. Welfare payments qualified as “income.” Even illegal immigrants got mortgages with no money down. Uncle Sam became Jolly John. All this triggered a second housing boom now gone bust. Trouble is, this bust is so big,“experts” predict it may bring us all down with it unless the federal government solves the mess it created. Are they Chicken Littles and Henny Pennys warning us the sky is falling? Government wants us to buy back those dubious securities for up to $700 billion and sort out good from bad, claiming taxpayers will get their money back and more. Others doubt it.

Nearly every student learned something about the problem, but none understood it all. Neither do senators, congressmen, or voters. Neither do I. Not fully. Still, many think government must do something. If we do, hopefully we won’t make things worse.