CPAC 2009

It's exciting down here. No doubt about it. Conservatives are fired up. I desperately needed a right-wing re-charge after 12 months in blue-state Maine.

I was surprised, however, to learn that even though Geert Wilders was in town, CPAC sponsors "couldn't fit him in." Was that it? Or did they run short of courage? Lots of mumbling and speculation about that.

Thankfully, some more gutsy new-media types like David Horowitz, Pam Geller, Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom sponsored a reception for him last night in another part of the hotel - separate from the CPAC function rooms - and I was able to attend.

Surrounded by tough-looking bodyguards, Wilders delivered a stirring speech - the highlight of my visit. He's a brave man.

More later about him.

Pork, Lipstick, and Suckers Like Me

From Gateway Pundit

Don’t know much about economics, but the economists I’ve been hearing lately don’t seem to know much either. To this ordinary guy, it looks like a rough road ahead, so I’m just going to trust my instincts and hang on tight.

A couple of months ago, I paid off my mortgage. For the first time since I was eighteen, I don’t owe anybody anything - no car payments, no student loans, nothing. My old truck still runs, but it’s rusting out underneath - kind of like our country. I’ll drive it until the frame breaks while I save up for another. I don’t feel too bad about junking my old pickup, but it’s hard watching Congress and the President junk my country.

My wife and I have worked long and hard. Can’t remember when I didn’t have at least two jobs. We scrimped, went without, raised four kids, sent them to college, and paid our bills. We still work hard, but we’re playing around some too. We have everything we need and our tastes are modest. Trying to figure out what to do with extra money is our problem now. Nice problem to have I guess, but a problem nonetheless. It’s not a lot but I don’t know where to put it.

Don’t know much about the stock market either. I’m not against putting some there , but like so many others, I’m wondering where bottom will be and it looks like we’re not close to it yet. Gold? Many are buying that and it’s up over $1000 an ounce. Maybe I’ll invest some there, but for now I’m listening, thinking, and worrying.

Obama said last Saturday he has a plan for “restoring fiscal discipline.” Uh-huh. That was a few days after announcing he wants to give $75,000,000,000 to people who can’t make their mortgage payments. We all know someone who bought more house than they could afford and defaulted, and someone else who could make payments until they burned through their equity and can’t anymore. According to CBS.com: “Homeowners in states without significant foreclosures will subsidize those in states like California, Arizona, and Florida. And borrowers who initially had affordable mortgages -- but then refinanced during the housing bubble and used their homes as ATMs -- stand to benefit.”

Now you want wagon pullers like me to pull harder because they’re jumping on? This is “restoring fiscal discipline”? Bailing out speculators and irresponsible borrowers? When the re-default rate on them is over 55% in six months? And sending the bill to people like me, my children, and my grandchildren? We’re not going to take this.

The week before, Obama and his “economists” rammed a $900,000,000,000 “economic stimulus” bill through Congress. He doesn’t have that money either. So where’s he going to get it? With the US debt at over $10 trillion and climbing fast, China is reluctant to lend us any more. So, he sent Hillary over there to try and change their minds. If I were a Chinese leader, I’d give her a firm “No.” I’d like to say no too, but my two “Republican” senators here in Maine voted for the $900,000,000,000. I’ve had it with those two RINOs, but that’s another column. My fingers are cramped typing all the zeros.

Last fall, Obama said, “You can put lipstick on a pig,” as the crowd cheered. “It's still a pig.” You were right then, Mr. President, but that’s what you’re doing now. We know pork when we see it. I’m angry, and so are millions of other ordinary guys just like me.

Looks like President Obama is going to print the money. I suspect he already is. I don’t have to be an economist to know that the value of my money, which is in cash, is going to decline unless I do something else with it. But then I think that if inflation goes up, interest rates will too and I’ll be all right. And, my money will be secured by FDIC - the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. That makes me feel better - except for one thing.

I’m no math genius either, but I can add and subtract. FDIC had about $52 billion to cover deposits of over $4 trillion, and that was a year ago before all those recent bank failures. What happens if there’s a bigger run on banks? Will Obama just print more and give some to me to cover my lost deposits? Won’t that lead to more inflation? Oh, but then there’ll be still higher interest rates, so I’ll be all right . . . Now I feel better . . . No I don’t.

It was simpler when I my problem was not enough money. I didn’t have time to think because I was working too hard to pay my bills. What a sucker I was, huh?

Scarey Court Cases

Two recent court cases on two continents make me very nervous. That they’re even being tried is outrageous. That either may succeed is ominous, and few people know anything about either one.

First is the case of Roger Barnett - an Arizona rancher who has been under siege by illegal immigrants and drug dealers. In the Washington Times, Barnett claims illegals “tore up water pumps, killed calves, destroyed fences and gates, stole trucks and broke into his home.” Now sixteen illegals are suing him in federal court for $32 million, accusing him of “conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch next to the US-Mexico border.” The sixteen illegals claim Barnett caused them emotional distress by holding them at gunpoint and they want $2 million each.

Chief among our federal government’s responsibilities is to protect American citizens from foreign invasion, but it’s done little or nothing to help Barnett. Rather than protecting him, our government instead enables foreign invaders to sue him. That’s how bad it’s gotten.

The US Department of Homeland Security acknowledges virtual anarchy on the border and warns that Mexico itself is on the verge of collapse. That would come as no surprise to Barnett, who must wonder about his own country as well if it cannot, or will not control its borders. The DHS report states: “[Mexico’s] government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. . . . Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.”

Drug cartel power depends on moving drugs across our border. We are their market. I’d say an American response is overdue already, wouldn’t you? USA Today reported in 2005 that: “First [New Mexico Governor] Richardson, then [Arizona Governor] Napolitano, declared a state of emergency this month in portions of their states along the border with Mexico.”

The second case is that of Geert Wilders in Holland: A Member of Parliament, Wilders has been charged with hurting Muslim immigrant feelings in Holland by “inciting racial hatred.” He made a film called “Fitna” comparing the Koran to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” As Dr. Sami Alrabaa reports in Canadian Free Press: “Wilders’ comparison of the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and describing it as a fascist book is not inappropriate. Hitler referred to the Jews as “rats and vermin” and the Koran and fascist Muslims call the Jews “The descendants of apes and pigs.”

When radical Muslims incite racial hatred in Holland, it’s okay. When a member of Holland’s government points it out, it’s a crime.

Dr. Alrabaa also writes that “Muhammad Sayyid Al Tantawi, president of Al Azhar University [established 975 AD in Cairo] also approves of killing and maiming Christians, Jews, and other infidels. He added, ‘This is not my personal view. This what the Shari’a Law says, the law of Allah, the only valid law on the earth.’”

There. I’ve pointed it out. I’m a criminal too.

Geert Wilders was invited by a member of the British House of Lords to show his film there. When he landed in London last Friday, he was promptly deported. The London Daily Telegraph reported: “Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary refused Mr. Wilders entry because his opinions ‘would threaten community security and therefore public security’ in the UK.”

So, when Muslim clerics in the UK preach hatred and violent jihad against the British government, it’s all right. But when Wilders expresses a negative opinion about that preaching, he’s the threat, not them.

This is what Europe, seat of western civilization and democracy, has come to.

Back here, groups like MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) use the US Constitution to bring suit against Americans like Roger Barnett when he tries to defend his property. MALDEF doesn’t recognize the US border. Similar radical Mexican groups like MEChA deny the legitimacy of state governments all across the southwestern United States, calling the area “Aztlan” and claiming themselves as indigenous people not subject to US law. MEChA has chapters in most colleges across the American southwest. If you check out their web site here, you’ll see their symbol: an eagle gripping an Aztec war club in one talon and a stick of dynamite with its fuse lit in the other. Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante are former members.

MEChA receives funding from La Raza (“The Race”). Politicians across America go out of their way to pay homage to “The Race.” President Barack Obama and Senator John McCain addressed the organization during the 2008 campaign, where both virtually promised amnesty for illegals. Two out of three voted for Obama.

Barnett and Wilders are brave men defending western civilization on the front lines. If they go down, watch out.

Demographic Destiny in Blue

Birth rates in New England are among the lowest in America according to The Boston Globe:

U.S. Census Bureau report says that in 2006, New Hampshire's birthrate was 42 babies per 1,000 women of childbearing age. The national rate was 54.9 births per thousand. Vermont had the second lowest rate, at 42.2. Counting Washington, D.C., Rhode Island was third lowest, at 45; Massachusetts had the seventh lowest rate, at 46.1; and Maine the eighth lowest, at 47.3.

New England is also leaning hard left politically, especially New Hampshire. The Granite State had been a conservative outpost in New England, but not anymore. It’s blue as can be now. Is there a correlation? Definitely. Is there a cause and effect thing going on between left-wing politics and low birth rates? I strongly suspect there is.
Four years ago I read accounts by several people who were noticing that liberal areas of the country were not reproducing. Writing about the election of 2004, David Brooks in the New York Times said:

You can see surprising political correlations. As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates. In The New Republic Online, Joel Kotkin and William Frey observe, "Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation - but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas."

The red-state/blue-state map isn’t as revealing as the one divided into counties. Hanging in my classroom are the red-county/blue-county maps from the elections of 2000, 2004, and 2008. After looking at these, anyone can see that Kotkin and Frey’s analysis is dead-on. Densely populated liberal cities like San Francisco, Manhattan, Boston, Seattle and Portland are surrounded by a sea of red with a blue island here and there. The coasts are blue-fringed and the rest of America was almost all crimson. New England on the 2008 map, however, is an exception to this pattern. Maine’s Piscataquis County is the only one in all of New England showing up red. It’s Maine’s second-biggest county in area after Aroostook, but it’s the least populated with fewer than twenty thousand people.

Coincidentally, I happened to be up there just before the election last fall and I noticed a majority of lawn signs with conservative candidates. There were twice as many McCain/Palin signs than there were for Obama/Biden, and the same pattern held for the US House and Senate races.

So why is rural New England so blue now? I’m not sure. It could be continuing in-migration of liberal retirees from Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. It could be that students indoctrinated by ubiquitous left-wing teachers and professors are voting age and going to the polls. It could be that a left-of-center view of the world prevails in the region because it reached a critical mass early in the 21st century.

How long will the trend continue? Hard to say. It depends on three factors, I think. First: Will Republicans return to conservative roots and articulate their message effectively? Second: Will Democrats in control of our federal government rescue our economy with twelve-figure spending bills, or will they bankrupt us all? Third, will conservative families continue to out-breed left-wingers?

As for why leftists don’t have children, I can only take them at their word. They claim a higher calling to preserve a natural environment as if human activity is outside of, and averse to nature, or rather - Nature - since they tend to deify it. So, having children is a violation because more people means more use of Nature’s resources which are better left in their natural state. Other organisms are more noble, more natural, and more deserving of those resources than homo sapiens.

Leftists champion abortion for America, and everywhere else too. One of Obama’s first acts as president was to authorize American tax money to fund abortions around the world. They’re okay with destroying unborn humans, but every other organism must be preserved at all costs. Even though more than ninety percent of organisms that ever existed on earth are extinct due to natural processes, we must spare no expense to prevent any more from disappearing. Remarkably, leftist environmentalists don’t perceive any contradiction here. They believe they know better what life should be preserved and what life should be destroyed.

Whatever motivates them, blue leftists aren’t reproducing. What does that mean for our future? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Bailing The Failing

Similarities between federal government “helping” the economy and “helping” public education haunt me. Government bails out failing businesses now the same way it’s been bailing out failing students and failing schools. Will Democrat Big Government fix our economy? I’ll answer that question by asking another: Has it fixed public schools? I rest my case.

Although math has always been a weakness for me, I’m fairly good at geometry. Why? Because I failed it in 10th grade. I didn’t fail because I couldn’t understand it. I failed because I goofed around in class, didn’t do my homework, and didn’t study. I had to take it again in summer school and I had to pass, so I did. I paid attention. I did my homework. I studied. Failure was good for me.

However, “Failure is not an option” has been a slogan in many public schools for a while now. If students fail courses, it’s the teacher’s fault for not doing enough to prevent it. Even if students goof around, don’t do assigned work, and don’t study, the onus is on the teacher to do more or expect less. Worse, if there’s a discrepancy between a student’s measured intelligence and his actual performance, a student can even be called “Learning Disabled,” or LD, and demand extensive government services. The LD label implies a perceptual difficulty and most lay people understand it that way, but that’s not how government defines it. That the discrepancy exists is enough, even if it’s due solely to lack of effort. There are certainly students with perceptual difficulties and it the LD label was designed for them. They work hard, but they’re forced to share expensive educational resources with the willfully ignorant who are often disruptive, but are enabled by government regulations. When government subsidizes something, we tend to get more of it.

Under our free enterprise system, we should all be free to succeed or fail. However, government is applying the “failure is not an option” philosophy to greedy individual investors who bought more house than they could afford, and to big corporations. Some are banks that squandered their capital on risky investments. Others are automobile companies that design poor vehicles, make them shoddily, and pander to bloated labor unions. They’re failing because they’re lazy, greedy, and out of touch with consumer wants and needs. They don’t like competition and they deserve to fail. What may save them is being forced to face the reasons they failed. Government bailouts only postpone that. Throwing money at the problem doesn’t solve it. Admitting failure and going into bankruptcy reorganization would force the issue.

Trouble is, union contracts would be suspended in bankruptcy court and auto workers would have to compete as individual workers the way their fellow auto workers in American Toyota plants do. Toyota makes excellent vehicles in the United States, and that’s why they outsell Ford, GM and Chrysler. Competition is good for workers, good for corporations, good for consumers. If the big three can’t compete, they should fail. We won’t run out of vehicles.

The federal government didn’t step in when big airlines were going bankrupt in the ’80s and ’90s. They couldn’t compete with newer, low-cost, low-frills airlines that started up after government deregulated the industry. Their bloated labor unions would not accept reduced pay and benefits to help their companies avoid bankruptcy and went out on strike instead. Eastern Airlines and others folded, but we can still fly wherever we want to go.

For decades, public schools have said they need more government money to fix themselves - and they’ve been getting plenty of it. See much improvement? Look around. School systems like Washington, DC that spend the most ($13,446 per student versus $9,138 per student nationally in fiscal 2006), and have the most big-government intervention, produce the poorest results. They’re beholden to bloated teachers’ unions - the biggest unions in the country - and they hate competition. Even the liberal Atlantic Monthly, says: “For decades, an establishment of Democratic politicians backed by union leaders has ruled the Washington public schools, which by almost any measure—test scores, attendance, safety—are among the worst in the country.” No wonder Barack Obama won’t send his kids there. He’ll send them to private schools, but he won’t allow less-fortunate DC residents that option because the teachers’ unions and the Democratic Party would go ballistic. For teachers’ unions, enemy number one is competition in the form of education vouchers or school choice. Obama is the most “pro-choice” politician in Washington, but not when it comes to education.

Success and failure are both good teachers and one cannot exist without the other. If we think we can eliminate failure by spending money on it that we don’t have, we’re all going to fail.

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.”