Adjusting

“Enjoying your retirement?”

Having taught more than 3500 students for more a third of a century in the same small community, many people know me and I hear that question many times a day.

I smile and shrug. “It hasn’t sunk in yet,” and that’s true. It’s been more than a week since I cleaned out my classroom and got an engraved glass plaque from MSAD 72 thanking me for my years of service. Early summer feels about like it always has, however - going around the the properties I manage, shooting red squirrels, making sure everything works, reminding contractors about various repairs and maintenance. It’s only when I walk by the boxes of books and files from school on the floor of my garage where I unloaded them from my truck on the last day of school. That’s when I remember I’m a former history teacher now. I’ve got to update the profile on my web site this week to indicate that.

The academic calendar has ruled my life for more than fifty years. Early on, we Catholic school kids got out more than a week before the public school kids did. I’d ride my bike around the neighborhood but the others in a neighborhood filled with young baby boomer kids were still in school. I remember feeing good realizing that I had no more homework for a few months. I could slip out of the house with my fishing rod before my mother could think of something else for me to do and have Round Pond all to myself. Digging worms and fishing alone was different though. With no one to talk to, I was much more aware of the sound of wind, birds and insects and the feel of the sun on my body. I enjoyed all that up to a point. I was alone with my thoughts and feelings. If I caught a good-sized bass or pickerel there was nobody to share the experience. By mid-afternoon I’d find myself waiting at the bus stop for my public school friends to come home and try to get a baseball game going. When they finally got out for the summer I wouldn’t think of school again until those first cool days in August.

Later, as a teenager and then as a college student and teacher, I’d work summer jobs and savor the weekends. After I was married and with a growing family, I’d have building projects, the honey-do list, and planned recreational activities. I was very aware that there were about ten weeks to get everything done. Each week that was counted off, I’d measure against what there was still to do. Come August, I’d have to triage because I’d never get done all I planned before school started again. This year, one week is already in the can but I don’t feel that pressure. Though I’m just as busy as I’ve always been in late June, I feel more relaxed because my schedule will remain flexible for the foreseeable future and I won’t feel the crunch come Labor Day weekend. School will start for others, but not for me, I won’t have to jam work on unfinished chores into weekends in the fall. This time, I’ll be able to get all my work done before the weekends come, maybe even before.

Juggling three jobs for so many years put me in hurry-up mode most of the time and it became an almost permanent state of mind. Bumping into friends and acquaintances at the post office or the store, I’d have to be aware of the time because I was usually hurrying from one job to another. I’d drop off my briefcase and my car, change clothes, put things in my truck and go off again. When home, I was dealing with phone calls and emails. As my wife would put it: “You’re a human doing - not a human being.” That stuck in my mind when mulling the decision to retire last February.

As I said, my first week of summer was busy as usual, but I’m getting caught up. I should have it all current soon and then I’ll again become a human being, if I can remember how.

Correction: In my June 16th column I referred to the author of “The Forgotten Man” as Emily Schlaes. Her name is Amity, not Emily. My apologies.

Teaching the Dismal Science

Attitudes toward President Obama have changed drastically since last year here in western Maine. I just finished correcting my final batch of about six dozen elderly interviews which I’ve been assigning to students around here for thirty years. There will be no more since I’ll become a former history teacher after Friday. Students select someone seventy years old or older. ask the twenty questions I give them, and then ask ten they make up themselves. One assigned question asks who their favorite president was and why. The other asks who their least favorite president was and why.

Answers to the first question have always varied widely with no president getting a majority. However, a plurality each year for the entire thirty years has gone to Franklin Roosevelt. As for why, the typical answer has always been that “He got us out of the Depression.” Last year, President Obama got quite a few endorsements for favorite president - about fifteen or so if I remember correctly. Most people said things like: “He’s turning the economy around,” or “He’s going to help the little guy,” or “He’s very smart.” This year, however, only three people indicated that Obama was their favorite president. Instead, he got about fifteen votes for least favorite - second only to Richard Nixon.

For the past three years or so, George W. Bush was selected by about fifteen people for least favorite president but he was only mentioned three times this year. Evidently people in western Maine hold Obama responsible for our weak economy, even though he’s has been blaming Bush for nearly three years now. The bloom is definitely off the Obama rose if my informal annual polling is any guide.

One lesson from all this is that James Carville’s “It’s the economy, stupid” advice to his client Bill Clinton in the 1992 campaign sustains today. More recent histories like Amity Schlaes’s “The Forgotten Man,” question the enduring myth that President Roosevelt “got us out of the Depression.” She makes a strong case that his New Deal policies worsened and prolonged the Great Depression rather than ended it. Roosevelt surrounded himself with big-government control freaks who were fervent believers in the ideas that came to be known as Keynesian economics after the late British economist John Maynard Keynes. They borrowed and spent with the notion that they were priming an economic pump, or jumpstarting an economic engine which would rev up under their hyper-regulatory direction. They went off the gold standard and set the value of money by fiat. The Federal Reserve went along, just as it is going along with Obama’s new-New Deal now.

None of it worked, but Roosevelt seemed to be doing something. He convinced enough people in his fireside chats that happy days were here again, even if they weren’t. President Obama and his economic team are using the same tactics and getting the same results. Keynesian economics didn’t work for Roosevelt and they didn’t work for Johnson, Nixon, Ford, or Carter either. What’s it called when someone tries the same thing over and over, expecting a different result?

Reagan, by contrast, believed in the ideas of Frederick Hayek, who suggested that government should stay out of business affairs and let markets work things out. My students studied the conflicting economic ideas of Keynes vs Hayek this year and how they’ve played themselves out in the 20th century. John Papola and Russ Roberts put together a clever rap video outlining the conflicting ideas of the two economists, the refrain of which states: “They’ve been going back and forth for a century. ‘I want to steer markets [says Keynes];’ ‘I want them set free [says Hayek].’”

My students loved it so much they were singing it in the hallways by their lockers after class and showed it to their parents on Youtube. Then last month, an equally clever Round Two was produced. Lots of ideas were packed into the lyrics and imagery in each and both moved very fast, but they were great motivators in my quest for students to learn principles of what many refer to as the “dismal science” of economics.

My hope is that at least some of my charges will go away with a conceptual understanding of what government’s role in the economy should be. Maybe that will at least partially offset the enduring myth that Keynesian economic policies worked under Franklin Roosevelt.

Voters, meanwhile, are trusting their own judgement on how those ideas are working out under President Obama. Let’s hope that’s reflected in the 2012 election results.

Gender-Bending Lesson

After studying the 1960s, including themes of the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation movement, I gave follow-up lessons on legacies of those and other issues in American culture today. This is one.

“Feminists and homosexual activists use the words ‘genders’ and ‘sexes’ almost interchangeably. They’ve been pushing an idea that there are more than two genders since at least the 1990s,” I told them. “They’ve been trying to pass a United Nations resolution that instead of two genders, there are five.”

“What would those be?” asked a girl with an incredulous look.

“They claim that male and female are out on the edges of a spectrum,” I explained as I wrote on the board. “That inside the female on the extreme right are lesbians. That inside the male on the extreme left are homosexual men, and than in the middle are ‘transgender’ people who go either way.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “A lesbian is still female. She’s not another gender.”

“That’s crazy,” said a boy.

“To them,” I explained, “it’s another battle in the Sexual Revolution.”

“Well I hope they lose,” another girl said.

“Remember last month when a speaker came in to discuss bullying at an assembly in the gym?” I asked.

There were nods all around. “Last year it was a football player,” said a boy.

“Yes,” I said. “What did you think of those lectures?”

“They were good,” he said.

“What do the rest of you think?”

Most indicated the lectures had been interesting.Joel Baum Fox News

“Well, in Oakland, California, students get different kinds of bullying lessons,” I said, wheeling the LCD projector into position and plugging in my laptop. “Watch this.”

It was a “bullying” lesson on “gender diversity” in which the lecturer told fourth grade students they could be a girl or a boy or both. Joel Baum told students: “They can feel like girls. They can feel like boys. They can feel like both, and they can feel like, as I said, kinda like neither.”

Baum is educational director for Gender Spectrum, an activist group pushing the idea that the two sexes - male and female - are too rigid. Students can move around on the “gender spectrum” depending on how they feel. They can change whenever they want.

“They’re way too young to be listening to that stuff in the fourth grade,” said another girl.

“They shouldn’t teach that stuff,” said a boy. “It’s crazy. Those kids are going to believe it now. They believe anything the teacher tells them.”

“Would you think it was all right to teach this,” I asked the the girl, “if the students were older?”

“Yes,” she said.

“At what age then?”

“I don’t know - high school maybe.”

“It’s mandatory for all students in Oakland to take it from kindergarten to twelfth grade,” I said. “Mandatory means they have no choice.”

“That’s brainwashing,” said a the boy. “Those schools shouldn’t be doing that. It hasn't got much to do with bullying.”

“What if it were taught only in high school and students could choose to take the 'gender spectrum' course or not to take it?”

“That would be okay,” he said.

“The California Teachers’ Association, the CTA, is paying for this. That’s the teachers’ union,” I explained.

“Why?” he asked.

“Teachers’ unions all over the country are very left-wing,” I said. “They think this stuff is wonderful, and teachers’ unions are the most powerful groups in the Democrat Party.”

“You’re not left-wing,” said a girl.

“I’m unusual,” I said. “There are very few conservatives in this profession.”

“And you’re retiring.”

“Yup.” “This kind of gender-bending stuff is happening all over the country,” I explained. “The Maine legislature, for example, is about to vote on a bill that would prevent males who claim to be females from suing when they’re not allowed to use the ladies’ room in middle school or in a restaurant. In two cases, a boy’s parents and a man have sued a school and a restaurant and the Maine Human Rights Commission has agreed with them. Now the Orono Middle School is being forced to allow a boy to use the girls’ bathroom. A Denny’s Restaurant was forced to allow a man dressed as a woman to use the ladies’ room there.”

“In both cases here, the newspaper article refers to the boy and the man with the personal pronouns of ‘she’ and ‘her’ as if they were indeed females,’” I explained. “I don’t do that.”

“If you were in the Maine Legislature, how would you vote?” I asked. “How many of you would vote ‘yes,’ which would allow schools and restaurants to prevent males from using female bathrooms or locker rooms?”

Five or six hands went up.

“Who would vote ‘no’?”

Two hands.

“Who isn’t sure?”

Another five or six hands went up.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll see what the legislature does.”


Clueless Commander

Israel’s enemies and our enemies are the same. Why doesn’t President Obama know this? This guy is supposed to be brilliant? Either he’s clueless or he’s conspiring to turn our biggest ally in the Middle East over to our mutual enemies. I cannot think of any other reason why he would make a major speech saying Israel must return to its 1967 borders. Doesn’t he know this would invite still another invasion of Israel by the hostile, Arab-Muslim countries which surround it? They’ve already invaded three times: First in 1948, then again in 1967, and still again in 1973. These countries didn’t want peace with Israel. They wanted Israel gone.The Amin al-Husseini, Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, cooperated with Hitler during WWII, recruiting Muslims to serve in Himmler’s SS to kill Jews during the Holocaust. During their attempted 1948 Arab invasion of Israel, Nazis were recruited to kill Jews again. At least some Palestinian Muslims were advised to get out of the way because the invaders intended to kill Jews and it would be nasty, so thousands left for Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt lest they get in the way. They expected to return when the Jews were all killed, but it didn’t work out that way. Those pesky Jews, with their backs to the wall and fighting for the first time in two millennia for their own homeland, prevailed over much larger invading Arab armies whose humiliation was intense. Afterward, they had all those Palestinian Arab refugees in their home countries to whom they’d bragged about their military prowess. These hapless Palestinians were now homeless and unwanted even by their fellow Arabs. Arab Muslim humiliation was so intense they invaded again in 1967, but again were defeated by scrappy Jews. This time though, Israel retained the West Bank from the invading Jordanians, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from invading Egyptians, and the Golan Heights from the invading Syrians. Even though those countries invaded Israel again in 1973, Obama wants Israel to give those strategic lands back to the invaders as a way to “achieve peace” in the region? What planet does he live on?Yours truly at the Temple Mount (taken from Palestinian East Jerusalem)

After 1967, Jews were in possession of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount - their holiest place - for the first time in 2000 years. Constructed on top, however, was the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, as an “in-your-face” gesture to Christians and Jews more than 1200 hundred years ago. Nonetheless, Israeli allowed Muslims to maintain control over their shrines on top, and were content to worship at the Wailing Wall below the Temple Mount in the back - all that remains of Herod’s Temple. Now President Obama expects Israel to give it all over to the radical Muslims in Hamas who are dedicated in their very charter to destroy the Jews. Is he crazy?Church of the Nativity

If Israel went back to the pre-1967 borders as Obama insists, not only would Israel become indefensible, Hamas would also control the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Old Jerusalem. Those are the holiest sites in Christendom, where Christ was born, where he died and where Christians believe he rose from the dead - sacred places for 1.5 billion people around the world. What could we expect with radical Muslim control of these sacred sites if it becomes a Palestinian state?Church of the Holy Sepulcher

In 2002, Muslims assaulted the Church of the Nativity - oldest Christian Church in the world and held it for 39 days. It is located in Bethlehem, of course, which is in the West Bank. Radical Muslim Palestinians shot it up, ransacked it, urinated and defecated inside and held Christian clerics hostage. When I was there in May, 2007, it still hadn’t been completely cleaned up.

Israelis know what their Muslim enemies have planned for them even if President Obama doesn’t, and they won’t go like sheep to the slaughter as they did under the Nazis. Radical Muslim Iran is building nuclear weapons to “wipe Israel off the map,” but Israel has had its own nukes for fifty years. Does Obama really think Israel is going to lay down and die to appease Muslim pride?

If he does, he truly lives in La-La Land. His proposals won’t lead to peace in the region. Instead, they’ll make a wider, more devastating war more likely. It’s time for Obama to become our former president.

Borrow, Spend, Collapse

Gas prices are going up. Food prices are going up. Unemployment is going up. The national debt is going up. Earnings for most Americans are either going down or are stagnant. There are fewer and fewer high-paying manufacturing jobs because the federal government has allowed companies to move factories overseas where people work for less, then ship their products back without paying protective tariffs. Nice for them, but tough for working people here. At the same time, feds look the other way while millions of illegal aliens pour over our southern border to either work cheap and drive down wages, or to go on every form of public assistance and drive up government spending still further.From Gateway Pundit

This is serious. Most people know it cannot go on much longer or everything will collapse. Some voted for President Obama because they believed the “hope and change” rhetoric, but regret it now. Many formed into Tea Party groups all over the country and took over the US House of Representatives. They’re looking for a 2012 presidential candidate who has courage enough to tell the American people that we have to put all this into reverse and that it’s going to be painful for millions of us, but that there’s no other way to avoid complete collapse.

Trouble is, there are millions of other Americans who have allowed themselves to become dependent on government handouts of one form or another. Some of them know the gravy train cannot go on forever and entitlements must be cut, but they’ll only support cutting the programs other people use, not the ones they use. Few would support politicians who would cut across the board. Do these government addicts comprise a majority? It’s close, and we’ll just have to see. If they do, America as we’ve known it will cease to exist. The country our children and grandchildren grow up in will be vastly different. The “can-do” America will have irreversibly transformed into the “I-can’t-do-it” America that expects government to do it instead.From Joshua Kennon

The federal government spends three dollars for every two it gets in taxes. It has already borrowed so much that interest payments are about as high as our defense budget, and most of those in Congress want to raise the debt limit and borrow still more. When our Chinese creditors balk at lending any more money, government just prints it. The US Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke has increased the money supply by well over a trillion dollars in the past few years. Every dollar it prints makes the ones in all of our wallets and in all of our bank accounts less valuable. This “quantitative easing” as Bernanke calls it, is just another way government takes money from us - and from everyone else in the world whose assets are in dollars. That’s why other countries want to abandon the dollar and use some other as a base currency.From Washington Post

At supermarkets and gas stations, most people use credit cards. If they can’t pay off their balances each month, they realize they’re going further into debt and they have to cut back in some way or the interest will kill them. Either it’s driving less, getting a smaller vehicle, changing the way they eat, or whatever - they must cut back or their household will eventually collapse.

We’ve all known irresponsible relatives and neighbors who have ignored this reality and fallen apart. Now we see our government - and many of our states - doing the same thing and taking us all down with it. If a credible candidate shows up on the scene with the courage to run on a platform of drastically cutting government - including entitlements - he or she will move into the White House.

If not, we’ll continue on the road to ruin.

Gutsy Decision?

“This is a Viet Cong captive being waterboarded,” I said to the class after fast-forwarding through a videotape from Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam: A Television History.” We were studying the Vietnam War in the context of the Cold War.

“You can see that South Vietnamese intelligence officers have placed a cloth over the captive’s face and are pouring water on it. This gives the captive the feeling that he is drowning as the water goes into his mouth and up his nostrils when he tries to breathe.” After viewing the whole clip, I asked: “Does this look like torture to you?”

Each had watched intently but none would offer an opinion. Then I explained that after we captured the third-highest-ranking official in al Qaeda, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, he was waterboarded and gave up information that eventually led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. “And,” I told them, “Khalid Sheik Mohammed planned the September 11th attack for Osama Bin Laden.”

I waited for that to sink in and said, “Is this torture?”

“It was worth it if it led us to Bin Laden,” said a boy.

“Okay,” I answered, “But is it torture?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, Khalid Sheik Mohammed wasn’t a prisoner of war. He was a terrorist, so I don’t think the Geneva Conventions apply to him,” said another boy.

“Is it torture?” I repeated.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

“Left-wing journalist Christopher Hitchens agreed to be waterboarded to see what it was like,” I explained. “He said it doesn’t simulate drowning: ‘You are drowning, or rather being drowned. . . . Believe me, it’s torture.’”
I played the Hitchens clip from Youtube.

“So what do you think?” I asked. “Is it torture?”

“It’s all right if it was done on the guy who planned the September 11th attacks,” said a girl. “He killed 3000 people.”

Back in September I’d shown them a “Today Show” recording of the events of that day to give them a feel for what happened in 2001 when they were only four years old. “The Bush/Cheney Administration called waterboarding one of their ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’” I explained. “Is that a euphemism for torture?”

“It’s all right if it’s against terrorists,” said another boy.

“Is it torture?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Open your books to page 885,” I said. “Look at the Eighth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.” I asked a girl to read it.

Dutifully, she read: “‘Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.’”

“Thank you,” I said. “The part where it says, ‘nor cruel and unusual punishments imposed’ is what I wanted you to see. Our country has a long tradition of outlawing torture, but that would be against American citizens.”

“Yeah,” said the boy. “These people were not citizens and they weren’t prisoners of war either. They were terrorists. They had no rights. It was all right to waterboard them to get information that would be useful in fighting them.”

“Obama’s CIA Director, Leon Panetta, said the information about who Bin Laden’s courier was - someone who carried messages back and forth between him and others in al Qaeda - came from Khalid Sheik Mohammed while he was being waterboarded during the Bush Administration,” I said. “With that information, the CIA tracked him down and began following him. He led them right to the house where Osama Bin Laden was living with three of his wives. Without waterboarding, the USA might never have gotten Bin Laden. Other officials in the Obama Administration, however, deny that.”

“So, who thinks it was all right to waterboard KSM?” I asked.

Half raised their hands.

“Who things it was wrong?”

Three hands went up.

“Eric Holder, Attorney General in the Obama Administration, is investigating our CIA agents who waterboarded KSM and two other terrorists while Bush was president. He’s trying to build a case against them for war crimes,” I explained. “That might be one reason other officials in the Obama Administration deny that waterboarding had anything to do with discovering where Osama Bin Laden was hiding.”

President Obama was interviewed about killing Bin Laden on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, but Steve Croft didn’t ask him any tough questions,” I continued. “However, Obama’s National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon was interviewed on “Fox News Sunday,” and Chris Wallace asked him, ‘Why is shooting an unarmed man in the face legal and proper . . . but [waterboarding] Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is just as bad an operator, isn’t?’”


“Donilon said, ‘[Waterboarding] is not consistent with our values.’”

“Then Wallace said, ‘But shooting an unarmed man in the face is consistent with our values?’”

“Donilon said, ‘We’re at war with Osama Bin Laden.’”

“Wallace said, ‘We’re at war with Khalid Sheik Mohammed.’”

I played the above exchange for the class and asked, “Did Donilon answer Wallace’s questions to your satisfaction?”

“Not really,” said a boy.

Other students shook their heads.

“Another thing,” I continued. “Generals appointed by President Obama made new ‘rules of engagement’ for our soldiers fighting in Afghanistan - many of them former students from this classroom - under which our guys can’t shoot until they’re shot at first. And, if they’re shot at from a group of civilians, they can’t shoot back at all.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said another boy. Others nodded agreement.

“And now, even in cases where they capture Taliban terrorists who they’ve videotaped planting IEDs or ‘Improvised Explosive Devices,’ or ‘roadside bombs’ as they’re sometimes called, which have killed hundreds of our soldiers, and these terrorists have been tested to reveal explosive residue on their hands, they have to be released after 96 hours. Our soldiers know they’re going to plant more bombs and still they have to release them! This is discouraging to say the least, and it makes it much more risky our our guys.”

“Our Commander-in-Chief is putting our soldiers at risk with these rules of engagement,” I continued, “but his staff is telling us what a ‘gutsy decision’ Obama made by approving a strike on Bin Laden from the comfort and safety of the White House.”

Time To Leave

Time to leave teaching. It’s been thirty-six years - two in Lowell, Massachusetts teaching juvenile delinquents and thirty-four in Maine public schools. I’m going to miss it because I love teaching US History and current events to fourteen-year-olds, most days. They can be trying sometimes. When I tell people what age I’ve taught, they often say, “God bless you. I could never do that.”

What I’d come to like about fourteen-year-olds is that they’re capable of learning virtually anything and most of what I teach they’re hearing about for the first time. They don’t have many biases or preconceived ideas about the wider world and they’re very bright. Each year I’ve realized that many are brighter than I am. But I’ve been around longer. I’ve had more time and opportunities to learn, often the hard way. When I teach them classic concepts, they ask extremely perceptive questions I never hear in discussions with jaded adults. Their questions have forced me to consider fresh perspectives on ancient enigmas and those have been my biggest rewards in this work. When I didn’t enjoy teaching, it was often because of some fault of my own - usually my attitude.

Never did expect to be at it so long, but that’s how it unfolded. There were times I wanted to do something else but circumstances prevented career change. Twenty-five years ago, I was diagnosed with a medical condition for which I needed several expensive surgeries, each requiring about six weeks of recovery. With a young family, a mortgage and a pre-existing condition, no other insurance company would take me on. So, for a while, I felt stuck in the job. That wasn’t good for me or for my students until I managed to I change my attitude by counting my blessings - of which there have been many.

For the past few years I’ve met with a retired history teacher to chat about the trade. I asked him how he knew when to give it up. “When the time comes, you just know,” he said, but it didn’t feel right the last time we had lunch. My five-year teaching license was due to expire in July and I went through the process to renew it.

Soon after doing that, however, I went to CPAC - the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, for the fifth time. I renewed contacts and new opportunities opened up. I decided to call the Maine Public Employees Retirement Service and inquire about what my pension would look like if this were my last year.

The numbers didn’t point to a cushy life with medical insurance looming as the biggest expense. The economy doesn’t look promising for the foreseeable future either, but I could be dead by the time that changes. My wife and I are physically in good shape right now and we have no debts. She’s gotten her counseling practice down to a manageable pace, and I’ve been the one who is too busy. I’ve maintained a small property-management business for the past twenty-six years and written a regular weekly column for twenty, and I intend to continue with both. My income will diminish. I won’t be able to travel as often, but I’ll have time to pursue other interests which I expect to enjoy more than teaching.

There’s at least one book in me about what it’s been like as a controversial columnist in the same community where I’ve taught. Early in my career I was a liberal and I annoyed conservatives. Then I morphed into a conservative and annoyed liberals, who have been by far the most intolerant of opposing views. Public education is a very liberal profession which doesn’t abide conservatives well, so it’s been lonely. I started writing the book a few years ago but my life has been just too busy to make any progress. I’ve saved most of the paperwork generated by adversaries - most of it in the form of letters to various principals, superintendents, the school board, the state licensing board, and so forth. There are angry letters to the editor from various newspapers in which my column has appeared, and they number well into the hundreds. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sell the book to a publisher once it’s written, but hey: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.There’s been no shortage of people who have publicly declared me unfit to teach and who have tried to have me dismissed over the years, but I’ve weathered it. I’m leaving now because I want to. I expect I’ll have a few pangs when I see school busses roll by in September and I’m not part of it anymore, but I’ll get over it.

Right To Life

Friday, April 8th I was involved in a debate with Shenna Bellows, executive director of the MCLU (Maine Civil Liberties Union), which is Maine’s chapter of the ACLU. The moderator chose three “set piece” questions for us including this one: “Are reproductive rights guaranteed by the Constitution?” Following are my abbreviated remarks:

The US Constitution is silent on reproductive rights, except for an indirect reference in the Preamble which proclaims that the Constitution is ordained “to secure the blessings of liberty to . . . our posterity.” Until 1973, government involvement with reproduction, as such, was handled at the state level, and that’s where the Constitution meant for it to stay. If there were any doubt lingering about that, I would refer you to the 10th Amendment, which states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

The only example I know of when reproductive rights were denied to Americans is when citizens designated “feeble-minded” or “immoral” were - by state government authority - sterilized against their will in states like New Hampshire, Maine, and many others in the early to mid 20th century. One venue for this was about fifty miles west of here at the Laconia State School in New Hampshire. Another was about 25 miles east of here at the Pineland Center in New Gloucester, Maine. It’s estimated that somewhere around 65,000 people were forcibly sterilized around the United States up until 1963.

All this resulted from the Eugenics movement, begun by people who called themselves “Progressives.” They formed groups like the American Eugenics Society and others. Eugenicists were among the first social engineers of the twentieth century, deciding who should reproduce and who should not - and they used the power of state government to enforce those decisions.Progressive eugenicists included Democrats and Republicans such as Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, radical right wingers like the KKK, and radical left-wingers like Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger, who went on to establish Planned Parenthood, leader of the abortion industry in America today - federal funding of which is heatedly debated in Congress right now, not because they disseminate birth control, but because they kill our posterity.

Adolph Hitler admired the American eugenics movement.

Goldman and Sanger pushed dissemination of birth control to women but were thwarted by state laws. It’s ironic that states forcibly sterilized people but disallowed dissemination of temporary birth control methods. It wasn’t until Griswold vs Connecticut was adjudicated by the US Supreme Court in 1965 that a “constitutional right to privacy” was declared which negated state laws outlawing dissemination of birth control. In his minority opinion, Justice Potter Stewart said:

“We are not asked in this case to say whether we think this law is unwise or even asinine. We are asked to hold that it violates the United States Constitution. And that I cannot do.” He would let Connecticut citizens persuade their legislature to repeal the law. Griswold vs Connecticut was the basis for Roe vs Wade.

While our constitution is silent on reproductive rights, our Declaration of Independence declares a “right to life,” along with rights to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Our Constitution designed a government to manifest its principles and here I refer you back to that phrase in the succinct Preamble declaring that one purpose is to “secure the blessings of liberty to . . . our posterity.” Killing our posterity in the womb would obviously go against that, not to mention violating their “right to life” - which is “endowed by our Creator.” Those are four words that stick in President Obama’s throat. He purposely omits them when quoting that section of that famous document. That our rights are “endowed by our Creator” - and not by our government - will remain in the Declaration of Independence until the ACLU sues to have it removed. Would it surprise anyone they did?

Every state had laws against abortion until the 1960s when New York legalized the procedure, followed soon after by other states until the US resembled a patchwork quilt of legality and illegality. Into this waded the US Supreme Court in 1973 with Roe V Wade.

The majority decision in that case which claims a “Constitutional right to abortion” is based on the afore-mentioned Griswold vs Connecticut birth control case. Progressive justices in both cases claimed rights to birth control and abortion under a “right to privacy.” Trouble was, the word “privacy” doesn’t exist in the Constitution, so they claimed that it emanated from the penumbra of an implied right to privacy in the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments - none of which mention the word! To call this an exercise in gymnastic nomenclature is an understatement. They wanted it to be there so they insisted it was there, even though it wasn’t there.

If progressives wanted to establish a constitutional right to privacy or abortion or birth control, there was the Amendment process outlined in Article 5. It’s a cumbersome process and it was purposely designed to be so by the founding fathers because it requires a widespread debate in Congress and in all the states for ratification. Instead, seven progressive Supreme Court justices usurped that process. They usurped powers delegated to the states as well. Seven men produced a right to abortion out of whole cloth.

Said Justice Hugo Black of the process: “I like my privacy as well as the next one, but I am nevertheless compelled to admit that government has a right to invade it unless prohibited by some specific constitutional provision.” [Should the court continue this] “shocking doctrine,” he said, [it will wind up as] “a day-to-day constitutional convention.”

Planned Parenthood and the ACLU deny that a human life - our posterity - which has the right to life endowed by our Creator - is killed in an abortion. That’s why they work so vehemently against state laws requiring mothers to see ultrasound images confirming that what they’re carrying is a human baby before they choose to kill it.

Progressive justices imposed their will. They usurped the amendment process in Article 5. As a result of Roe vs Wade, abortion has been the most divisive issue in America ever since 1973.

Affirmative Action: Euphemism For Discrimination

Last Friday night, I was involved in a debate with Shenna Bellows, executive director of the MCLU (Maine Civil Liberties Union), which is Maine’s chapter of the ACLU. The moderator chose three “set piece” questions for us including this one: “Are Affirmative Action programs constitutional?” What follows are my remarks.

Affirmative Action is a euphemism for government-required policies that discriminate on the basis of race, sex and national origin. The very same discrimination that government legislates against in some areas of public life, it mandates in other areas. It’s a kind of schizophrenia.

From the ACLU web site:

The [ACLU] Racial Justice Program supports affirmative action to secure racial diversity in education settings, workplaces and government contracts to remedy continuing systematic discrimination against people of color, and to help ensure equal opportunities for all people. As part of this commitment, we are working to defend affirmative action in states that are threatened for a civil rights rollback.

Hmm. Systematic discrimination against people of color? Where? It’s been illegal for two generations. The ACLU claims:

Affirmative action is one of the most effective tools for redressing the injustices caused by our nation’s historic discrimination against people of color and women, and for leveling what has long been an uneven playing field. A centuries-long legacy of racism and sexism has not been eradicated despite the gains made during the civil rights era. Avenues of opportunity for those previously excluded remain far too narrow. We need affirmative action now more than ever.

Hmm. Injustices caused by our nation’s historic discrimination against people of color and women. What injustices? Where? Students at our colleges and universities are 60% female. If there’s any evidence of discrimination, it’s against men, not women.


Professor Russell K. Neili summarized a study by two sociologists at Princeton of the admissions process at ten elite private colleges and universities:

To have the same chance of gaining admission as a black student with a SAT score of 1100, a Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have 1230, a white student a 1410 and an Asian student a 1550.

Is this what the ACLU means when it cites “the gains made by the civil rights era”?

When the ACLU says “we are working to defend affirmative action in states that are threatened for a civil rights rollback, they’re talking about initiatives like those proposed in several states like this one in California called the California Civil Rights Initiative:

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.

What the ACLU objects to are the five words “or grant preferential treatment to” of course, because those words shine the light on what affirmative action actually does. By lowering the bar for some groups like the aforementioned “people of color,” they must raise it for other groups with whom the preferred “people of color” are competing for employment, college admissions or contracts. To the ACLU, treating everyone equally regardless of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin is “a civil rights rollback.” That is what you call distorted thinking. Orwell called it “Doublethink.” What the ACLU wants to hide is that affirmative action does not preserve civil rights - it discriminates against whites, males and Asians by its very nature.
If one of my loved ones needed brain surgery and I wanted the best possible surgeon to do it, I’d have to consider what affirmative action has done with our medical schools. I’d have to look around for an Asian neurosurgeon and avoid black ones who could get admitted with the lowest scores. Wouldn’t you? I don’t like it, but this is the legacy of Affirmative Action.

People tolerated it back in 1965 when the Civil Rights Bill passed, but it been almost forty years - two generations. The ACLU insists we need it now more than ever. I don’t think so. Affirmative Action is racist and sexist. It should be abolished immediately in all its forms.

Early Old

Most of you are reading this in a newspaper on Thursday, April 7th which is my 60th birthday. My sister, Jane, sent me a card saying: “We spent our entire youth laughing at old people.” Inside, it said: “We are SO screwed.”It’s actually my 61st birthday if you count the first in 1951 at the end of which I was one day old. A year later, when I was one year old, would have been my second birthday, and so on. Today is the first day of my 61st year. I’m not just 60 - I’m “in my sixties.” I’m beginning my seventh decade. A friend reached this milestone last year and when asked how old he was, he’d say “Fifty-ten."Our newest granddaughter, Lila

The way we measure time is relative and this was best exemplified by a small sign I saw on the outside of a bathroom door once which read: “How long a minute is, is relative to which side of this door you’re on.” When I was about ten, a year seemed a very long time because it was one-tenth of my life. Now it’s only one-sixtieth and goes by quickly. I formulated a scale for age when I was ten: Up to twelve, you’re a kid. Then you’re a teenager until age twenty. After that you’re a young adult from twenty to forty. Forty to sixty you’re middle-aged and from sixty on, you’re old.

I finished “late middle age” yesterday. Today I’m “early old.”

I’m not sure how sixty is supposed to feel, but so far it’s pretty good. I’m in good shape, but I haven’t as much stamina. I can still do everything, but I prefer shorter intervals. I can deal with that, but mentally there are other effects. Sometimes I can’t recall the name of something until ten or twenty minutes after the conversation has ended or shifted to another subject. It’s in my head somewhere, but it’s as if it were on a slip of paper and buried under stacks of other paperwork on the desktop of my mind.

My hair is thinning, but it’s still mostly brown. Students ask me if I dye it and it bothers me that they’d think I would. If it were gray, I definitely wouldn’t dye it. That’s okay for women, but vain for a man. Why? I don’t know. That’s what I feel about it. My wife is a year younger than me and her hair is mostly silver. I’m glad she leaves it that way because it’s attractive. There’s a certain strength I sense in women who take care of themselves and allow their hair to age naturally.

Another thing that makes me feel older is when guys in their thirties call me “Sir.” It’s not when they’re trying to sell me something either. It’s happening when I meet them socially. I’ve never been in the military and to be addressed as “sir” is unfamiliar. Students have been calling me “Mr. McLaughlin” for decades but that’s different. The “Sir” thing is going to take some getting used to.

Softball season starts soon. It’ll be my thirty-fourth year playing Thursday nights at Westways in Lovell. I’m one of the older guys now, but last year there were still some showing up who were older. This year, we’ll see. Some younger than me have stopped playing already and come just to watch and drink beer.For about ten or twelve years now, I haven’t had a strong urge to hunt deer - and it used to be overpowering. I’ve been thinking maybe it’s due to diminished testosterone levels because I’d rather go into the woods and shoot pictures. So, I buy chuck-eye steaks at Hannaford’s Supermarket, which I like better than venison anyway. It might not be testosterone though because I still get the urge to punch some someone in the head once in a while. I haven’t actually done it for about thirty years, but it has crossed my mind, and that’s a testosterone thing too. Maybe the urge will diminish someday or go away entirely, but I don’t think so. There’s no shortage of people around still who desperately need a punch in the head, and they still cross my path.

An old priest once told that “As I get older, I care more and more about less and less.” I took that to mean he didn’t sweat the small stuff anymore. He accepted things he could not change and he tried harder to change the things that mattered most - and upon which he could have some effect. I’m pondering his words more lately and it’s helping me make decisions about what to do with whatever time remains for me on this earth.