The Founding Father's Real Reason for the Second Amendment
And remember the words of Thomas Jefferson "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." See Video of Suzanna Gratia-Hupp’s Congressional Testimony: What the Second Amendment is REALLY For, below (u-tube HERE).
The Leaders Are Here... Palin, Cruz, Lee, Paul, Chaffetz....
T'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
Can You Really Still Believe That None of These People Would Have Done a Better Job???
Fury is brewing at Rocky Mountain High School, in Colorado, after a multicultural student group were encouraged to recite the Pledge of Allegiance over the loudspeaker in Arabic - replacing 'one nation under God' with 'one nation under Allah'.
Following Monday's pledge, Principal Tom Lopez has been inundated with complaints from outraged parents concerned that saying the Pledge in any language other than English is unpatriotic.
Standing by his controversial decision, Principal Lopez has said that despite the irate telephone calls and emails, he is not in any way or form trying to push an Islamic agenda at the Fort Collins school.
Rocky Mountain High School in Colorado was hit by controversy on Monday when a student group recited the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic
'These students love this country,' said Lopez to Fox News.
'They were not being un-American in trying to do this. They believed they were accentuating the meaning of the words as spoken regularly in English.'
At the school, the Pledge of Allegiance is recited once a week and on Monday, a member of the Cultural Arms Club at Rocky Mountain High School read out an Arabic version.
The pupils sought the permission of Principal Lopez, who previously had allowed the Pledge to be read out in French and Spanish.
However, the backlash began from students hours after the recital and has continued through the week as angry parents have waded into the controversy.
'We understand not everybody would agree with the students’ choice,' said Danielle Clark, communications director of the Poudre School District to Fox News.
Pictured are members of the Cultural Arms Club at Rocky Mountain High School
'We’ve heard there are some who are upset.'
Clark said though, that the club has a history of reading the Pledge in different languages and some parents have emailed to say it 'was a great thing'.
And she added that the students had asked permission from the principal.
'We deferred to the students because it’s their deal,' she said to Fox News.
Students at the school rushed to the classmates defense, keen to highlight the motto of the Cultural Arms Club which seeks to 'destroy the barriers, embrace the cultures.'
'No matter what language it’s said in, pledging your allegiance to the United States is the same in every language,' student Skyler Bowden told The Coloradoan.
The issue for some parents and pupils at the school is that in an Arabic translation of the Pledge of Allegiance, 'one nation under God' is replaced with 'one nation under Allah'.
Rocky Mountain High School Principal Tony Lopez has been stunned by the level of vitriol directed at him and the students for the Arabic pledge
'Obviously in Arabic, you would use the word Allah, but Christian Arabs would use the word Allah,' said Ibrahim Hooper, of the Council on American Islamic Relations.
'It’s not necessarily specific to Islam and Muslims.'
Principal Lopez has borne the brunt of the criticism of the decision to allow the recital - and some have gone as far as to label him as a traitor.
'They claim they are outraged that this is blaspheming a real major tenet of our patriotism – which in their mind the Pledge of Allegiance is only in English,' said Lopez.
Other parents have accused him of 'pushing a Muslim Brotherhood agenda - to push Islam into the school.'
Solemn Duty: Young students recite the Pledge of Allegiance at a school in America
'How on earth is it un-American to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in another language,' said Hooper to Fox News. 'It doesn’t make sense unless the people complaining are anti-Muslim or anti-middle eastern bigots.'
Indeed, the embattled head is becoming wary at the number of complaints and level of abuse he has received. 'I’ve been shocked with prejudicial statements that have been made,' said Lopez.
'I’ve been shocked with the lack of seeking understanding. There’s definitely suspicion and fear expressed in these people’s minds. There’s some hate.'
Lopez says the school is a place of inclusion where one message can be communicated in many different ways.
'When they pledge allegiance to United States, that's exactly what they're saying,' Lopez said. 'They're just using another language as their vehicle,' he said.
Write this principal and the district with your outrage!!!! We MUST stand for America and our rights and against this outrageous trashing of what we hold dear!
We definitely should call and/or write this principal and ask questions like… what the heck is going on in Ft. Collins? But, perhaps the bigger question is: What the heck is going on in Washington, D.C.?
Michelle Obama Visiting Saudi National in the Hospital After Boston Bombing Right Before Allowing Him to Leave County
Michelle Obama visited the Saudi National “Person of Interest” in the hospital as the POTUS met with the Saudis and the Syrians… wanting to deport him as soon as possible. Why? He is related to Osama Bin Laden and was involved in the Boston Bombing! Huge News is coming. Sounds like one of those conspiracy theories? See: HAMZA IS KNOWN AS THE “CROWN PRINCE OF TERROR.
This topic hits home because I am a product of the California public school system and of the UC college system… And most of my friends and our children went to school and college in California as well. I was a college student in the early 1970’s, when Berkley radicalism was in its hay day and Angela Davis was teaching at UCLA. (Even in the 1970’s the focus was on politics and for the professors to publish… not on teaching the basics. I once had an English professor, who regularly said, “Once you are our of college and have time to get a real education, you should read this book…”) It was a time when all things radical were cool with the young and most parents thought it was just an unsettling fad… that would pass. Instead it was the first open test of the modern American Progressive Movement that changed America forever. But as the turbulent 1960’s and 1970’s drew to a close and the radicals went to work underground to promote their progressive ideas to eventually become mainstream enough to ‘become the man’, mainstream middle-America went back to sleep believing that it was just a minor flare-up.
The radicals of the 1970’s who were inspired by Saul Alinsky and his writings and Cloward & Piven and their strategies are still politically active and are still working to overthrow Capitalism and the American system as we know it. They are teaching in our universities where they have trained several new generations of radicals and are teaching them to agitate using the same techniques they used… to reach the planned endgame.
The next generation, inspired by these ‘60’s radical progressives, included the Clintons (Video: Remember Hillary’s famous debate comment in 2007: “I prefer to think of myself as a Progressive!”, after being asked if she was a liberal.) and Barack Obama and his Team in the White House. The newest generation are out in the streets as Occupy Wall Street or Occupy all over America and all over the world, being manipulated by Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, the Radke brothers, Andy Stern, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and many progressives in our government, including in the White House… and their disciples, people like Van Jones.
William Ayers, in a pep talk to an Occupy Wall Street gaggle, said he (still) wakes up every morning thinking about how he's going to end capitalism -- though he acknowledged he goes to bed "every night disappointed."
The co-founder of the radical, Vietnam-era Weather Underground was videotaped chatting up what was identified as an Occupy Union Square group this past week in New York City. He was out checking on the seeds of his American Bolshevik Revolution.
For anyone who missed it, Barack Obama started his political career in Bill Ayer’s home and now it seems that Ayers’ family helped Obama with college, as well as Ayers’s being involved in the writing if not the actual author of Obama’s 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father. Yet Obama tells us he hardly knew him?!?
Berkowitz’s findings confirm what most non-progressives who have spent anytime on a college campus, in California or most anywhere else in the United States, or with college students already figured out. The universities (the UC system) are hot beds for radicals: Progressives, Communists, Marxists who generally proselytize their beliefs in the classroom and at activities on and off campus… and are encouraged to do so. (Conservative ideas, critical and free thinking and individualism are pretty much non-existent and not taught… if even tolerated.)
The politicization of higher education by activist professors and compliant university administrators deprives students of the opportunity to acquire knowledge and refine their minds. It also erodes the nation's civic cohesion and its ability to preserve the institutions that undergird democracy in America.
So argues "A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California," a new report by the California Association of Scholars, a division of the National Association of Scholars (NAS). The report is addressed to the Regents of the University of California, which has ultimate responsibility for governing the UC system, but the pathologies it diagnoses prevail throughout the country.
The analysis begins from a nonpolitical fact: Numerous studies of both the UC system and of higher education nationwide demonstrate that students who graduate from college are increasingly ignorant of history and literature. They are unfamiliar with the principles of American constitutional government. And they are bereft of the skills necessary to comprehend serious books and effectively marshal evidence and argument in written work.
Hoover Institution fellow Peter Berkowitz on the politicization of higher education by activist professors:
This decline in the quality of education coincides with a profound transformation of the college curriculum. None of the nine general campuses in the UC system requires students to study the history and institutions of the United States. None requires students to study Western civilization, and on seven of the nine UC campuses, including Berkeley, a survey course in Western civilization is not even offered. In several English departments one can graduate without taking a course in Shakespeare. In many political science departments majors need not take a course in American politics.
Moreover, the evidence suggests that the hollowing of the curriculum stems from too many professors' preference for promoting a partisan political agenda.
National studies by Stanley Rothman in 1999, and by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons in 2007, have shown that universities' leftward tilt has become severe. And a 2005 study by Daniel Klein and Andrew Western in Academic Questions (a NAS publication) shows this is certainly true in California. For example, Democrats outnumbered Republicans four to one on University of California, Berkeley, professional school faculties; in the social sciences the ratio was approximately 21 to one.
The same 2005 study revealed that the Berkeley sociology department faculty was home to 17 Democrats and no Republicans. The political science department included 28 Democrats and two Republicans. The English department had 29 Democrats and one Republican; and the history department had 31 Democrats and one Republican.
While political affiliation alone need not carry classroom implications, the overwhelmingly left-leaning faculty openly declare the inculcation of progressive political ideas their pedagogical priority. As "A Crisis of Competence" notes, "a recent study by UCLA's prestigious Higher Education Research Institute found that more faculty now believe that they should teach their students to be agents of social change than believe that it is important to teach them the classics of Western civilization."
Some university programs tout their political presuppositions and objectives openly. The mission statements of the Women's Studies program at UCLA prejudges the issues by declaring that it proceeds from "the perspectives of those whose participation has been traditionally distorted, omitted, neglected, or denied." And the Critical Race Studies program at the UCLA School of law announces that its aim is to "transform racial justice advocacy."
Even the august American Association of University Professors—which in 1915 and 1940 published classic statements explaining that the aim of academic freedom was not to indoctrinate but to equip students to think for themselves—has sided with the politicized professoriate.
In 1915, the AAUP affirmed that in teaching controversial subjects a professor should "set forth justly without suppression or innuendo the divergent opinions of other investigators; he should cause his students to become familiar with the best published expressions of the great historic types of doctrine upon the questions at issue."
However, in recent statements on academic freedom in 2007 and 2011, the AAUP has undermined its almost century-old strictures against proselytizing. Its new position is that restricting professors to the use of relevant materials and obliging them to provide a reasonably comprehensive treatment of the subject represent unworkable requirements because relevance and comprehensiveness can themselves be controversial.
On the boundaries, they can be—like anything else. However, it is wrong to dismiss professors' duty to avoid introducing into classroom discussion opinions extraneous to the subject and to provide a well-rounded treatment of the matter under consideration. That opens the classroom to whatever professors wish to talk about. And in all too many cases what they wish to talk about in the classroom is the need to transform America in a progressive direction. Last year the leadership of AAUP officially endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Excluding from the curriculum those ideas that depart from the progressive agenda implicitly teaches students that conservative ideas are contemptible and unworthy of discussion. This exclusion, the California report points out, also harms progressives for the reason John Stuart Mill elaborated in his famous 1859 essay, "On Liberty": "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that."
The removal of partisan advocacy from the classroom would have long-term political benefits. Liberal education equips students with intellectual skills valued by the marketplace. It prepares citizens to discharge civic responsibilities in an informed and deliberate manner. It fosters a common culture by revealing that much serious disagreement between progressives and conservatives revolves around differing interpretations of how to fulfill America's promise of individual freedom and equality.
It is certainly true that not all progressive professors intrude their politics into the classroom, but a culture of politicization has developed on campus in which department chairs and deans treat its occurrence as routine. "UC administrators," the California report sadly concludes, "far from performing their role as the university's quality control mechanism, now routinely function as the enablers, protectors, and even apologists for the politicized university and its degraded scholarly and educational standards."
In California, this is more than a failure of their duty as educators. It is also a violation of the law. Article IX, Section 9, of the California state constitution provides that "The university shall be entirely independent of all political or sectarian influence and kept free therefrom."
It is incumbent upon the UC Board of Regents, not to mention the governing bodies of other institutions of higher education across the country, to begin the long and arduous work of depoliticizing our universities and renewing liberal education.. and critical thinking.
Our daughter attended Chapman University, a small private college in California and went off to Semester at Sea as part of her college experience, a fabulous adventure of traveling around the world and studying along the way that we managed to provide for her. They even had Desmond Tutu join them onboard for one leg of the journey where he lectured and the students had one on one access to him. I think the vicarious journey was as exciting, if not even more exciting, for us as it was for her. The professors and staff onboard were rotational from all over the United States and in some cases the world. When our daughter returned home from her sail, she was full of exciting stories but our somewhat apolitical artsy daughter also came home espousing all that is wrong with America, our free-market system and an over-night expert on all that horrors and ills of the world either caused or not fixed by the country that her parents loved, gave her the opportunity to make this amazing journey and that her maternal grandparents sacrificed and left everything behind for to bring their families to the land of freedom and opportunity.
While mainstream America went back to sleep, was hypnotized by the left-controlled media and worked tirelessly to send their children to college, the likes of George Soros, the Rockefellers, Bill Gates and other wealthy progressives funded the radical transformation of America from college campuses to the White House that culminated in the election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 and has been working in overdrive ever since.
Ask Marion~
April's Whistleblower magazine, "THE COLLEGE ILLUSION," this almost sacrosanct belief in college is currently disintegrating before our eyes. It talks about why chasing a degree so often ends in financial and educational chaos. In light of this new study and what those of us paying attention realize, it seems they are right. Unless your child wants to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer or something that absolutely requires a specialized college education skills looking at trade school, entrepreneurship or working yourself up from the bottom and volunteering for internships may be better and definitely cheaper alternatives. And if college is the path, while the college system rebuilds itself, check out the institution you are sending your child off to. Hillsdale College is a good place to start.
It is time that Americans put aside their other activities and interests (including and especially TV) and take a stand. The subscribers to the Progressive Movement have been busy since the early 1900’s and even more so since the end of the open revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s, now infiltrating every aspect of our lives… from media to education, to control of the food we eat to the White House and Congress… all the while dumbing us down generation by generation… radicalizing and sexualizing our kids. It is time for us all to stand and work or we will surely fall as we sit on our couches watching the hypnotic screen(s)… TV, computers, games…
The rights of the American People and the U.S. Constitution have been under attack for a long time and the war on personal freedoms was dramatically increased after 9/11 with the passing of the Patriot Act in the name of security. And under the Obama administration the onslaught has continued at a frightening pace. Big brother is watching and monitoring us all from Onstar in your car, to everything you write and post on the Internet, to cameras on street corners and the box on your TV, to SmartMeters on your homes and the increased push for chips and biometric information in our bodies and on all our ID.
“He who trades freedom for security usually gets neither!” …Benjamin Franklin
Yet through the planned process to grind America down including the dumbing down of America and purposeful distraction of the masses, the average American is suffering from either the Sheeple Shuffle or Ostrich Syndrome.
Amazon Gets Big Brother Patent That Could Track Your Mall Movements
The Blaze There is a new player in the ever controversial location tracking game. Amazon gained a patent for a program that would track where users go with mobile devices and use such information to predict where they’ll go next in order to best target them with personalized ads and coupons, according to CBS MoneyWatch (via CNET).
Erik Sherman for CBS reports that Amazon joins Google, Apple and Microsoft with its patent that went through last week. Sherman has more on what Amazon’s program would do:
The system calculates a path and then predicts a set of likely next destinations. Then the system takes bids from third parties that want to send marketing messages to displays along the route the person takes, probably monitoring speed and direction to time displays for maximum chance of visibility.
Additional claims make clear that the ad could also go to the mobile device — including a message to tell the person to look over at a particular display. Shades of a science fiction story (or Minority Report), where personalized ads follow and appear on public displays wherever you go.
Sherman reports that in tracking location, this could mean specific stores inside of a mall. (Earlier this year two malls tracked smartphone signals to evaluate customers movement through the mall and what they seemed to like/dislike.)
Amazon’s patent states “mobile device users’ current and past travel patterns may be analyzed to determine a predicted next destination. For instance, by analyzing the recent movements of a mobile device user among stores in a shopping mall, it may be determined that a particular store is a predicted next destination for the mobile device user.”
Amazon gives the example of providing coupons, or the like, if the program senses a person is in a certain store. As Sherman sums it up, here’s where it gets a bit creepy:
Location ties to function. If you know what sort of establishment is at a spot, you can start to make more intelligent guesses of what a person is doing. The more stops, the more chances of putting together a picture of what a person is doing. And if you store this data over time, you might build a more complete picture.
Now consider where the ads might show up. It’s not hard to imagine Amazon trying to partner with retailers that have TVs, computer monitors, digital signs, or other ways of displaying advertising.
Amazon’s approach is more sophisticated than the usual proximity marketing, where a person’s location would trigger messages for nearby businesses. Maybe GPS provides the location, or maybe cell tower triangulation, according to the patent.
Sherman reminds us that this is just in a patent stage and that there is the possibility that the company may never decide to create and use the program.
Across the Web and around the world, your face is being detected and recognized. It’s creepy and a violation your Constitutional rights!
CNNMoney Looking at digital advertisements has become commonplace in malls and bus stops around the world. A growing number of those signs are now looking back at you.
Intel's AIM Suite digital signs use facial detection cameras and software to determine a consumer's age and gender, and then tailors their ads. If an 23-year old woman walks by the sign, it might display an ad for a hair product. But if a 53-year old man strolls past, a BMW ad may be displayed.
AIM Suite is designed to detect broad age ranges: 18 and under, 18-34, 34-59 and 60 and over. It can also determine gender -- typically by checking out the ears. If ears are showing, there's an 85% chance the subject is male, according to Intel. The software cannot, however, record images or recognize specific faces.
But it does send data back to the advertisers, including how long a consumer engages with a particular ad and how far away they're standing from the sign. That can help advertisers understand the appeal of their on-screen content for different groups and decide how frequently they should change it. Static posters can't do that.
The technology has been on the market for just three months, but advertisers have been quick to adopt it. Brian Huseman, senior counsel for Intel, estimates that of the "millions" of digital signs around the world, AIM Suite is in a "low single-digit percentage" of them.
Congress Authorizes Pentagon to Wage Internet War
The ancient art of war is coming to the internet.
The House and Senate agreed to give the U.S. military the power to conduct “offensive” strikes online — including clandestine attacks, via a little-noticed provision in the military’s 2012 funding bill.
The power, which was included in the House version but not the Senate version, was included in the final “reconciled” bill that is all but guaranteed to pass into law.
Congress affirms that the Department of Defense has the capability, and upon direction by the President may conduct offensive operations in cyberspace to defend our Nation, Allies and interests, subject to–
(1) the policy principles and legal regimes that the Department follows for kinetic capabilities, including the law of armed conflict; and (2) the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1541 et seq.).
While “offensive” action isn’t defined, that’s likely to include things like unleashing a worm like the Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, hacking into another country’s power grid to bring it down, disabling websites via denial-of-service attacks, or as the CIA has already done with some collateral damage, hacking into a forum where would-be terrorists meet in order to permanently disable it.
The conferees recognize that because of the evolving nature of cyber warfare, there is a lack of historical precedent for what constitutes traditional military activities in relation to cyber operations and that it is necessary to affirm that such operations may be conducted pursuant to the same policy, principles, and legal regimes that pertain to kinetic capabilities.
The conferees also recognize that in certain instances, the most effective way to deal with threats and protect U.S. and coalition forces is to undertake offensive military cyber activities, including where the role of the United States Government is not apparent or to be acknowledged. The conferees stress that, as with any use of force, the War Powers Resolution may apply.
Despite mainstream news accounts, there’s been no documented hacking attacks on U.S. infrastructure designed to cripple it. A recent report from a post-9/11 intelligence fusion center that a water pump in Illinois had been destroyed by Russian hackers turned out to be baseless — and was simply a contractor logging in from his vacation at the behest of the water company.
Over the last few years, there’s been a drumbeat from D.C. and security contractors about the possibility of “cyberwar,” and the military has been pushing for, and largely receiving, increased funding for internet security research and more power to monitor and operate on the civilian internet.
Chinese hackers, perhaps affiliated with the government, have targeted large U.S. corporations, defense contractors and human rights groups with data-stealing trojans, something Bloomberg News trumpeted Tuesday as an “undeclared global cyber war.”
However, spying isn’t an act of war — just ask the NSA and CIA, who spend billions of dollars a year spying on other countries by intercepting communications and persuading foreign citizens to give the U.S. valuable intelligence. It’s certainly an aggressive state action, and a diplomatic issue. But if spying was an act of war, every CIA agent hiding under diplomatic cover would count as cause for a country to attack the U.S.
After perfunctory votes in both the House and Senate, the spending measure — and the cyberwar green light — will go to the President for his signature.
The Montross Tea Party in Virginia just sent out the following:
Every Breath You Take, Every Move You Make – 14 New Ways That the Government Is Watching You
If you live in the United States today, you need to understand that your privacy is being constantly eroded. Our world is going crazy, government paranoia is off the charts and law enforcement authorities have become absolutely obsessed with watching us, listening to us, tracking us, recording us, compiling information on all of us and getting us all to spy on one another. If you doubt that we are rapidly getting to the point where the government will monitor every breath you take and every move you make, just read the rest of this article. The truth is that the government is watching you more closely than ever, and they are spending billions upon billions of dollars to enhance their surveillance capabilities even further. If our society stays on this current path, we will eventually have zero privacy left. At this point, it is not too hard to imagine a society where we will not be able to say anything, buy anything, sell anything, assemble with others or even leave our homes without government permission. We truly are descending into a dystopian nightmare and the American people had better wake up.
Sadly, most people living in the United States and in Europe do not realize what is happening. Most of them think that everything is just fine. The "Big Brother control grid" that is being constructed all over the western world squeezes all of us just a little bit tighter every single day, and most people don't even feel it.
But when you step back and take a look at the big picture, it truly is horrifying.
The following are 14 new ways that the government is watching you....
#1 In many areas of the United States today, you will be arrested if you do not produce proper identification for the police. In the old days, "your papers please" was a phrase that we used to use to mock the tyranny of Nazi Germany. But now all of us are being required to be able to produce "our papers" for law enforcement authorities at any time. For example, a 21-year-old college student named Samantha Zucker was recently arrested and put in a New York City jail for 36 hours just because she could not produce any identification for police.
#2 The federal government has decided that what you and I share with one another on Facebook and on Twitter could be a threat to national security. According to a recent Associated Press article, the Department of Homeland Security will soon be "gleaning information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook for law enforcement purposes".
Other law enforcement agencies are getting into the act as well. For example, the NYPD recently created a special "social media" unit dedicated to looking for criminals on social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
#3 New high-tech street lights that are being funded by the federal government and that are being installed all over the nation can also be used as surveillance cameras, can be used by the DHS to make "security announcements" and can even be used to record personal conversations. The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson for Infowars.com....
Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.
#4 More than a million hotel television sets all over America are now broadcasting propaganda messages from the Department of Homeland Security promoting the "See Something, Say Something" campaign. In essence, the federal government wants all of us to become "informants" and to start spying on one another constantly. The following comes from an article posted by USA Today....
Starting today, the welcome screens on 1.2 million hotel television sets in Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Holiday Inn and other hotels in the USA will show a short public service announcement from DHS. The 15-second spot encourages viewers to be vigilant and call law enforcement if they witness something suspicious during their travels.
#5 The FBI is now admittedly recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States. The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com....
If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.
The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.
The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.
Potential evidence of what?
This is very creepy. Why is the FBI so interested in what is being said during Internet talk radio programs?
#6 TSA VIPR teams are now conducting random inspections at bus stations and on interstate highways all over the United States. For example, the following comes from a local news report down in Tennessee....
You're probably used to seeing TSA's signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).
"Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate," said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.
Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.
#7 Thermal imaging face scanners are becoming much more sophisticated. Law enforcement authorities in the western world are getting very excited about "pre-crime" tools such as this that will enable them to "prevent crimes" before they happen. The following is from a recent BBC News article....
A sophisticated new camera system can detect lies just by watching our faces as we talk, experts say.
The computerised system uses a simple video camera, a high-resolution thermal imaging sensor and a suite of algorithms.
Researchers say the system could be a powerful aid to security services.
But face scanners are not just a tool that will be used in the future. The truth is that face scanners are being used all over the United States right now. The following comes from an article posted on Singularity Hub....
Law enforcement continues to adopt new technologies in an effort to make their jobs easier and keep us safer. The latest gizmo attaches to officers’ iPhones and turns them into biometric face scanners. The scanners have already been street tested in Massachusetts. Pretty soon cops all across the US will be using them to ID suspects.
Before long, technology like this will be all over America. In fact, the FBI has announced that it will be activating a "nationwide facial recognition service" in January.
#8 Another "pre-crime" technology currently being tested by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is The Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) program. The following description of this new program comes from an article in the London Telegraph....
Using cameras and sensors the "pre-crime" system measures and tracks changes in a person's body movements, the pitch of their voice and the rhythm of their speech.
It also monitors breathing patterns, eye movements, blink rate and alterations in body heat, which are used to assess an individual's likelihood to commit a crime.
The Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) programme is already being tested on a group of government employees who volunteered to act as guinea pigs.
Do you want government officials to pull you aside and interrogate you just because you are feeling a little bit nervous one particular day?
#9 Sadly, "pre-crime" technology is even being used on our children. The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it will begin using analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents and will place "potential offenders" in specific prevention and education programs.
How soon will it be before this type of things is applied to adults?
#10 Our children are being programmed to accept the fact that they will be watched and monitored constantly. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending large amounts of money to install surveillance cameras in the cafeterias of public schools all across the nation so that government control freaks can closely monitor what our children are eating.
#11 The U.S. government is also increasingly using "polls" and "surveys" as tools to gather information about all of us. In previous articles, I have noted how government authorities seems particularly interested in our children. According to Mike Adams of Natural News, the CDC is starting to call parents all over the U.S. to question them about the vaccination status of their children....
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which has been comprehensively exposed as a vaccine propaganda organization promoting the interests of drug companies, is now engaged in a household surveillance program that involves calling U.S. households and intimidating parents into producing child immunization records. As part of what it deems a National Immunization Survey(NIS), the CDC is sending letters to U.S. households, alerting them that they will be called by "NORC at the University of Chicago" and that households should "have your child's immunization records handy when answering our questions."
You can see a copy of the letter that the CDC has been sending out to selected parents right here.
#12 As I have written about previously, a very disturbing document that Oath Keepers has obtained shows that the FBI is now instructing store owners to report many new forms of "suspicious activity" to them. According to the document, "suspicious activity" now includes the following....
paying with cash
missing a hand or fingers
"strange odors"
making "extreme religious statements"
"radical theology"
purchasing weatherproofed ammunition or match containers
purchasing meals ready to eat
purchasing night vision devices, night flashlights or gas masks
Do any of those "signs of suspicious activity" apply to you?
According to a report on WorldNetDaily, this document is part of a "series of brochures" that will be distributed "to farm supply stores, gun shops, military surplus stores and even hotels and motels."
#13 In some areas of the country, law enforcement authorities are pulling data out of cell phones for no reason whatsoever. According to the ACLU, state police in Michigan are now using "extraction devices" to download data from the cell phones of motorists that they pull over. This is taking happening even if the motorists that are pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong.
The following is how a recent article on CNET News described the capabilities of these "extraction devices"....
The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.
#14 The government can spy on us and record our conversations seemingly without any limitation, but in many areas of the country it has become illegal to watch them or record them in public. For example, one 21-year-old man down in Florida was recently arrested for trying to document a confrontation that he was having with police on his iPhone. But if we can't record them, how can we prove our side of the story in court?
America is becoming a much different place.
Our privacy is being eroded in thousands of different ways.
National governments and big corporations know far more about you than you probably ever would imagine.
Yes, there will always be "security threats", but we should not have to throw away any of our rights in order to be "safe".
America is supposed to be about liberty and freedom.
America is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
If given the choice between living in "1984" and living in "1776", I know what my choice would be.
I would choose 1776.
I would choose liberty and freedom even if it meant that the world around me was a little bit less "safe".
What about you?
What would you choose?
Reprinted with permission from End of the American Dream.
A reader on my blog wrote earlier this week that Americans are slow to rally, but when they finally rise up they are fierce. My question is have the Sheeple been too brainwashed, drugged, poisoned, diverted and dumbed down that they won’t awaken this time… or will it just be too late?
“Parsons was Winston’s fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms—one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the thought police, the stability of the Party depended.”
“Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.” “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.”
Not content with the massive government growth since Obama came into power, Comrade Pelosi wants even more. This time she’s campaigning for federal child care which is a true Communistic principle:
Just as housework withers away, so the obligations of parents to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.
The parental care of children in the family could be divided into three parts: (a) the care of the very young baby, (b) the bringing up of the child, and (c) the instruction of the child. Even in capitalist society the education of the child in primary schools and later in secondary and higher educational establishments became the responsibility of the state. Even in capitalist society the needs of the workers were to some extent met by the provision of playgrounds, kindergartens, play groups, etc. The more the workers became conscious of their rights and the better they were organized, the more society had to relieve the family of the care of the children. But bourgeois society was afraid of going too far towards meeting the interests of the working class, lest this contribute to the break-up of the family. For the capitalists are well aware that the old type of family, where the woman is a slave and where the husband is responsible for the well-being of his wife and children, constitutes the best weapon in the struggle to stifle the desire of the working class for freedom and to weaken the revolutionary spirit of the working man and working woman. The worker is weighed down by his family cares and is obliged to compromise with capital. The father and mother are ready to agree to any terms when their children are hungry. Capitalist society has not been able to transform education into a truly social and state matter because the property owners, the bourgeoisie, have been against this.
Communist society considers the social education of the rising generation to be one of the fundamental aspects of the new life. The old family, narrow and petty, where the parents quarrel and are only interested in their own offspring, is not capable of educating the “new person”. The playgrounds, gardens, homes and other amenities where the child will spend the greater part of the day under the supervision of qualified educators will, on the other hand, offer an environment in which the child can grow up a conscious communist who recognizes the need for solidarity, comradeship, mutual help and loyalty to the collective. What responsibilities are left to the parents, when they no longer have to take charge of upbringing and education? The very small baby, you might answer, while it is still learning to walk and clinging to its mother’s skirt, still needs her attention. Here again the communist state hastens to the aid of the working mother. No longer will there be any women who are alone. The workers’ state aims to support every mother, married or unmarried, while she is suckling her child, and to establish maternity homes, day nurseries and other such facilities in every city and village, in order to give women the opportunity to combine work in society with maternity.
The masks are coming off the Progressives. They don’t even try to hide their Marxist agendas any more. Pelosi wants to be reinstated as Speaker of the House (she must dearly miss the power that position has) and as her primary campaign topic, she is going all out for national child care.
Last week, the California congresswoman hit five cities in five days, barnstorming for money to try to win the 25 more seats it would take to regain control. And if that happens — or when, according to her — at the top of her to-do list, she says, will be “doing for child care what we did for health-care reform” — pushing comprehensive change. …
Of the need for child-care legislation, she says, “I could never get a babysitter — have five kids in six years and no one wants to come to your house. . . . And everywhere I go, women say the same thing” about how hard it is to find the kind of reliable care that would make their family lives calmer and work lives more productive. When it comes to “unleashing women” in a way that would boost the economy, she says, “this is a missing link.”
Congress did pass such a bill, in 1971, but President Richard M. Nixon vetoed it because he thought it would undermine families and force them to put children in government-run centers.
Tell me that doesn’t sound exactly like the Marxists in 1920′s Russia. They never, ever give up and have been pushing the destruction of the central family unit along with complete government involvement in child care for a long, long time. The Communists wanted women to have to work, so the government would get to step in with national child care and an iron grip on citizens from cradle to grave. She wants to resurrect the bill form 1971 that Nixon vetoed as her next big goal. Pelosi is just the corrupt, Marxist Progressive to get it done too. She is incredibly dangerous and evil.
Pelosi is an elitist and very, very bitter over being replaced as Speaker of the House. But true to her nature, she learned everything she knows from Daddy and will never give up getting her power back. From She’s The Boss:
Pelosi’s mastery of the insider game most definitely took place beyond the classroom walls. Indeed, Pelosi possesses the political street smarts of a party boss harking back to the days of Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall or the Daley Machine in Chicago. And that’s not surprising, since her father, “Big Tommy” D’Alesandro, Jr., ran his own well-oiled machine. She saw precinct party politics up close where the means to power was deal making, backroom bargains and, when necessary, strong-arm tactics and intimidation. New York Times reporter David Firestone writes, “The ability to make merry while reaching for the jugular is an essential characteristic for politicians, and friends say Ms. Pelosi learned it from one of the classic political bosses and characters of an earlier era, Thomas J. D’Alesandro, Jr., a congressman, mayor of Baltimore and doler of favors for Northeastern Maryland for 40 years.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking she is incompetent or crazy. Pelosi is anything but. She is aggressive, brutal and power hungry. She crushes anyone who gets in the way of her agenda. Now she is coming after our children. Parents, it’s crunch time. You need to get your children out of the government controlled school system and now. You need to find a way to NOT let the government take care of your child as well. They are masters at propaganda, thought policing and brainwashing. The government and our elites are the ultimate bad man offering our children candy and many parents are nudging their children right into the government’s loving arms. God help us all.
If indeed Pelosi achieves her goal and the government does for child care what it did for healthcare, it might look something like this:
· A childcare mandate requiring all parents to buy childcare for their children and enter the workplace.
· A national electronic database of all parents and their parenting habits, ostensibly to determine and enforce the use of “best practices” for raising children.
· Forcing all private-sector child care professionals out of business, creating a single-caregiver government monopoly subjecting impressionable young children to government indoctrination in everything from climate change to illegal immigration and abortion.
1984 comes knocking on our doors and our children are the price of government oversight. Makes you all warm and fuzzy doesn’t it? More likely, it chills you to the bone and there is fear in the pit of your stomach for your family and children. You have to ask yourself, “Once they own your kids, what’s left?”
h/t to @michellemalkin for the photo: I wanted to share this REFRESHING sign. I love this hardworking kid, whoever he/she is!
When other major stories are not crowding it out, the media occasionally gets around to a story or two on student loan debt. The college graduates of the last ten years or more are drowning in student loan debts. There is a radical solution to this problem.
What is it?
Abolish the student loan program.
Liberals will immediately scream that I am anti-education. I want to see the great masses of Americans stuck with 6th grade educations, forced to work the fields and flip burgers or hit the highlight of their career by being able to say, “Welcome to Wal-Mart.”
Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. I do object to state funded colleges and universities being used to indoctrinate students in liberalism and I do object to stupid programs like gay studies. But I believe the state university and college secondary education system is one of the best things that state government does. I believe the state college secondary education system should do what it was designed to do, namely provide a reasonably affordable college education to the tax paying residents of a state.
The unwashed liberals, in the case of Occupy Wall Street, that is literally true, just want student loans forgiven. There is irony in Bill Clinton endorsing the Occupy Wall Street anarchy and their demands for complete forgiveness of student loans. He was the President who signed the law making student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.
In wanting student loans forgiven, the left is focusing on the symptoms and not the cause of the problem. Student loans are the problem. The easy access to student loans distorts and destroys the free market. Students to not realize the cost of what they are getting. They don’t write the check. They just fill out the paperwork. Sometimes instead of writing a check, they get a check back. The money they receive back is then spent on, hopefully living expenses. Back in the day when I was a college student, pizza and beer were considered living expenses. Somehow I doubt that has changed.
For colleges, the student loans take the sting out of the market place. Who cares if they have to raise tuition by twenty percent? Instead of students talking about alternatives to State U., they just ask for more student loans.
The student loan program is probably one of the worst programs for encouraging bad behavior. Since the federal government guarantees loans, it is a no lose proposition for banks. They can make the loans and make a profit when people pay them back and if they fail to pay them back, the government covers the loss.
What if banks made those loans without the government guarantee? For one thing, there would be many fewer loans. That is not a bad thing, as the banks would be asking some important questions.
For example, if someone wanted to borrow $100,000 to get a nice Ivy League degree, the bank might ask, what are you going to major in and what are you going to do after college and how much will you make? If the student said, well I am going to major in social work, become a social worker and probably make about $30,000 a year, the bank is going to turn that student down. With guarantees, the bank doesn’t care whether the risk is good or not. After all, the taxpayer will pay the bank back if the loan defaults.
The state college systems have a lot of affordable options. Maybe a student wants to go to State U., but does not have the money. Every state has affordable regional junior colleges where someone can start. Students can work and help pay for their college. There are many options if we abolish this really bad program.
One of the other benefits of abolishing Guaranteed Student loans is, it will deflate the education bubble and tuition will come down. Market factors will start to play a role in the cost of education again.
The Guaranteed Student Loan program is the classic case of a well intentioned government program that has destroyed the market, cost the tax payers a lot of money and is now hurting the very people it was intended to help.
Ronald Reagan was right when he said the most feared words in the English language are, “I’m from the Government. I’m here to help.”
For decades, governments have been promoting school as being necessary. Celebrities, probably thinking they are doing the “right thing,” often promote the message “stay in school,” from people like Mr. T. and NBA players and rappers.
No one ever thinks to ask, “Hey, Mr. T., did you learn to be an actor and how to work out and grow a mohawk in school?” Nor do they ask the same questions of a bunch of multi-millionaire basketball players and rappers. Did Michael Jordan learn to play basketball “in school”? For the rappers, I don’t remember there being Hip Hop 101 in college.
All public schools in the U.S. today are prep camps for jail or for being a cubicle rat for the rest of your life.
THE SCHOOL “SYSTEM”
Jim Rohn said, “formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.”
Today, however, formal education, often, does not even make you a living, as the cost of schooling has increased dramatically ever since the government subsidized it with grants, loans and tax benefits.
But education is not the real goal of the education system. As William Torrey Harris, U.S. commissioner of education in 1906, said, “Education… scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, head of philosophy and psychology at Prussian University in Berlin, said it even more clearly: “Education should aim at destroying free will, so that after pupils are thus schooled, they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished.”
THE 99% HAVE HAD THEIR FREE WILL DESTROYED
The saddest thing I have seen in a long time is the “We Are the 99%” page.
And it’s not necessarily sad because of the tough situation these thousands of people have found themselves in.
What is sad is that you can see how broken they are as individuals. How they bought into a system and have had all their free will drained from them. This is particularly shown by the fact that thousands of people would take the time to write out on a piece of paper all of their concerns and unhappiness with the expectation that this will CHANGE anything!
I estimate over 90% of the people on that site appear to be in rough shape due to student loans. But not one of them sees the truth. They’ve all been brainwashed to think a college education is not only a good thing, but is a guarantee of having a great life.
One starving artist had $175,000 in student loans. $175,000 in student loans? To become an “artist”? But he sounds as though it is the system that let him down. He takes no responsibility for his massive error in judgment.
Another 99 Percenter is 47, penniless and in debt after her “college education,” yet what does she want for her daughters? To put them through the same system! She has been brainwashed to believe that a “college education” is a necessary and good thing despite all the evidence in her own life that has provided that it was not.
Rather than realizing their errors, many of these people figure that writing their problems on a piece of paper on the Internet may help! Or by chasing down rich Wall St. bankers (a symptom of the problem) with pitchforks while admonishing the government (the real problem) to play a bigger role in the economy.
STUDENT LOANS ARE SLAVERY
Rather than hoping the government helps them, many of these people with student debts should be looking at ways to get out of the country.
Why? First of all, student debt is the only debt in the U.S. that is not able to be defaulted on in a bankruptcy. In other words, the starving artist above with $175,000 in debt will never be able to remove that chain from his neck as long as he lives in the country. If he were to expatriate, he could at least start fresh somewhere else.
And now the U.S. government has dropped many hints that in order to get a passport in the future, you will need to have your government debts (taxes, loans, etc.) up-to-date.
It is not much of a stretch of the imagination for the U.S. government to demand that all those behind on their student debt will be ordered to report to duty with the military. Any opposition will be met with unlimited prison sentences.
There are plenty of opportunities in the world. Look for employment in places like the Canadian oil sands, where they can’t even find enough employees. Or in booming places such as the Middle East (try Qatar) or in Asia (plenty of finance-related jobs in Hong Kong — and a 15% income tax rate).
But remember, in life, there are no “sure things” or guarantees. The government fooled you into thinking there are, but there aren’t. In real life, you just have to get out there and do it.
KEEP YOUR KIDS OUT OF SCHOOL
For those with children, keep them out of school. Any school.
Real education, today, is all free and can be done via the Internet from anywhere. All you have to do is ensure your child can read and from there they can self-educate.
MIT’s entire curriculum is available online for free via MIT’s OpenCourseWare. As well, University of the People is a tuition-free online university. Not to mention there is a YouTube video or a Wikipedia article on any subject matter you’d ever want to know.
BE A COLLEGE DROPOUT… OR DROP-IN
I am not a college dropout. I’m a college drop-in. I dropped in to college, at the behest of my mother, for a few days and quickly got out of there. Consider doing the same.
Jeff Berwick, a self-described financial freedom fighter, is the founder of Canada’s largest financial website, Stockhouse.com. He now writes the libertarian, Austrian-economics based newsletter, The Dollar Vigilante and is a regular speaker at many of the world’s most important investment, resource and freedom-focused conferences where he is known as the most dangerous man in finance.
**Glenn Beck produced a personal preparedness and solution list and did a show based around it last week that he feels was given to him (divinely) as a warning. One of the things on it was Apprenticeships. We need to get back to having an apprenticeship system for the trades and stop pushing every child who really has no need, can’t afford it or isn’t college material to want, expect or feel they must attend college. Most of us are for or letting our kids go into major debt for a college degree that will never compensate them in salary or job status for the debt or cost and have allowed our kids to become indoctrinated in anti-American if not down right Marxist doctrine.
Under the school/education section of Beck’s list was:
COLLEGE/SCHOOL
APPRENTICESHIPS ARE THE FUTURE. DISCUSS THE VALUE OF SCHOOL FOR WHAT YOU CAN EARN. DO NOT LOOK FOR LABELS THEY WILL BECOME MEANINGLESS (YALE, HARVARD, Stanford…) FIND OTHER FORMS OF SCHOOL. ON LINE, JR COLLEGE, STATE SCHOOLS TEACH YOUNG CHILDREN NOW THAT COLLEGE IS NOT A GIVEN DEMAND MERIT FROM SCHOOL AND STUDENT OR PULL YOUR TIME AND $ EDUCATE YOURSELF AT ALL TIMES. ALWAYS READ. HAVE A HARD COPY OF IMPORTANT BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS LEARN OLD AND OR LOST PRACTICES. MENDING/CANNING/FARMING/ LEARN TO FIX AN ENGINE RE-LEARN READING A PRINTED MAP KNOW WHATS IN THE NEWS (AND WHAT’S BEHIND IT). LIFE CAN CHANGE QUICKLY. BE ABLE TO DEFEND YOUR POSITIONS BY KNOWING THE OTHER SIDE
Excellent Show if you missed it! Audience members were college students who have had problems with their professors. This is also a story of indoctrination in our schools.
Video: CLICK HERE- College Students Under Fire and Standing Up Part 1
Video:CLICK HERE - College Students Under Fire and Standing Up Part 2
Video:CLICK HERE - College Students Under Fire and Standing Up Part 3
Video:CLICK HERE - College Students Under Fire and Standing Up Part 4
Video:CLICK HERE - College Students Under Fire and Standing Up Part 5
College Students Sign Petition to ‘Ban’ Rush, Beck From Radio – But Love Free Speech
Oliver Darcy is doing his part to expose liberal ideas and hypocrisy on college campuses. Last month he produced two videos showing students willing to redistribute wealth but not grades and also refusing to pay their share of the national debt. Now he (along with his colleagues Michael Fincher and Maurice Lewis) is back, and this time he’s showing how college students who say they support free speech are willing to sign a petition to “ban” Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and other conservatives from the airwaves.
In the video, the students are not only willing to sign the petition, but some even offer their thoughts on Beck and those like him.
“That guy’s a douchebag,” one guy says of Beck. “He’s an a**.”
There was a report out this week that only 22% of 8th graders passed a basic civics test. The conclusion? Millions of young Americans will be unprepared to be informed and engaged, which is required in a healthy democracy. When the news last Sunday came out of Osama (Usama) Bin Laden’s death, the number five search on Google was “Who is Usama or Osama Bin Laden?”. 25% of all searches overall came from those under 24.
Beck held a live audience discussion with 35 to 40 teachers. This is an important watch for anyone who is concerned about the education in America. Even if you are not a Beck fan, it is an important watch. Don’t miss the message just because you don’t like the messenger!!
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 89)
". . . whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 88)
The above quotes were the cornerstones of Jefferson's interest in education and the franchise. He placed education as the foundation of democracy and a prerequisite to vote.
Ignorance and sound self-government could not exist together: the one destroyed the other. A despotic government could restrain its citizens and deprive the people of their liberties only while they were ignorant.
Jefferson could never completely separate education from government. With the fullest faith in the ability of man to govern himself, Jefferson nonetheless realized the responsibility of self-government could be assumed successfully only by an enlightened people.
The habit of thinking of public education in essentially political terms, as an auxiliary of free government, naturally suggests a common father for both. In associating manhood suffrage with education, Jefferson was in the forefront. It was his belief in universal suffrage that made necessary the accompanying idea of universal education.
Only popular government can safeguard democracy. . . . Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. And to render them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree. . . ." (as cited in Koch and Peden, 1972, p. 265)
The preparation of the voter so that he might express his opinion by means of the ballot, thus insuring political liberty, was one of the main goals of Jefferson's plan for education which asserted four basic principles:
"that democracy cannot long exist without enlightenment.
that it cannot function without wise and honest officials.
that talent and virtue, needed in a free society, should be educated regardless of wealth, birth or other accidental condition.
that the children of the poor must be thus educated at common expense." (as cited in Padover, 1952, p. 43)
Jefferson felt so strongly about education that he, as a strict constitutional constructionist, submitted to congress an amendment to the constitution to legalize federal support for education in his State of the Union Address, December 2, 1806. "Education is here placed among the articles of public care. . . " (Honeywell, 1964, p. 63).
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree. . . . An amendment to our constitution must here come in aid of the public education. The influence over government must be shared among all people. (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 87)
The amendment was never considered, so, Jefferson turned his efforts to his beloved state of Virginia. He developed a comprehensive plan for education which encompassed elementary, secondary, and university levels.
I think by far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness. (as cited in Padover, 1952, p. 87)
Jefferson believed the elementary school was more important than the university in the plan because, as he said, it was "safer to have the whole people respectfully enlightened than a few in a high state of science and many in ignorance as in Europe" (as cited in Peterson, 1960, p. 241). He had six objectives for primary education to bring about this enlightenment and which highlighted what he hoped would make every person into a productive and informed voter:
"To give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business;
To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts, and accounts, in writing;
To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;
To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either;
To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment;
And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed." (as cited in Peterson, 1960, p. 239)
Omitted from the Bill for Virginia's school system, for political reasons, was the provision requiring literacy for citizenship. Jefferson felt strongly that society could rightfully disfranchise those who failed to avail themselves to free education (Malone, 1981, p. 270).
Jefferson expressed this view in a letter to his friend du Pont in 1816:
. . . in the constitution of Spain as proposed by the late Cortes. . . that any person born after that day should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the administration of the government, constant reliance to the principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the progressive advances of the human mind, or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual. Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. . . . the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to be effected. (as cited in Mapp, 1991, p. 266)
The omission of the provision tying literacy and the rights of citizenship did the bill little good. All that the Virginia Assembly basically passed was Jefferson's plan for a university, which became the University of Virginia. But, the issue of education and the franchise brought forth a dichotomy in Jefferson's own thinking. Jefferson knew that a democracy could only exist with an educated and informed electorate. Yet, he, who abhorred any restrictions or shackles of the mind or body, was proposing such a stricture by melding education with franchise.
Thomas Jefferson on education:“Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity. I have no fear that the result of our experiment, the Great American Experiment, will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master! But to ensure that outcome and educated, informed and involved citizenry is necessary, for information, education and participation are the currency of democracy.”
thecommunists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.
Then they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.
Then they came for the trade unionists, I did not protest; I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, I did not protest; I was a Protestant.
Then they came for the Jews, I did not speak out; I was not a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
Election 2014 - What Is Really At Stake
Help Stop Voter Fraud!! Stand for the Constitution and God
Time to remember that: "We Surround Them", not the other way!
Stand Up Against Voter Fraud... Demand Re-Counts and Verification Until It is Right!! A Little Ink Goes a Long Way Toward Honesty... 1 Person 1 Vote... No More Mickey Mouse or Dead People Voting
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about IT! --Albert Einstein
Call Congress Today and Tell Them To Vote Against Cap and Trade
The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality -- Dante Alighieri / Often Quoted by Mark Twain
Thanks for calling the Congressional switchboard. Keep up the pressure: "NO on Cap and Trade"!!! "NO Vote on Obamacare", NO on another Stimulus Bill, NO to the never ending parade of "Power Grab Bills", and ABSOLUTELY NO on the Climate Change Treaty in Copenhagen!!
"No" on Cap and Trade and "No" on Government Controlled Healthcare!!! And Keep up the good fight! Keep up the Pressure on both the House and Senate! These are 2-fights the American People cannot afford to lose!!!
If you choose not to go this route… call and fax your Senator and as many of them on the list yourself, but don’t sit idly by!!
United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121
We apologize in advance for any Videos or links that are not functioning in these or other older posts. Internet information... like 'true' history in our student's textbooks are under constant attack by the Progressive Movement and even more so under the present administration. Try to save what you can to your own computer.
"...there comes a time, ladies and gentlemen, when ideology can cause death. I am so tired, so tired, of zealots, primarily on the left, putting their insane personal agendas above the safety of fellow Americans. Do you think the brave soldiers and Marines operating in dangerous areas right now want [unreleased photos of alleged abuse of prisoners] all over al-Jazeera and the terror websites? So let's look out for the military, OK? Nancy Pelosi has an obligation to get the loons in her party under control. If the Speaker can't do that, she doesn't deserve her position." ... Bill O'Reilly
Updated:If you'd like to contact Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, here's the contact information that you'll need.
translation of the Pledge of Allegiance, 'one nation under God' is replaced with 'one nation under Allah'.
