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January 3, 2018 • 5:16 pm 0
A mom's/teacher's experience shows big bureaucracy usurps the will of the people
original article: How Common Core Taught Me Bureaucrats Will Always Win Unless We Slash Big Government
January 3, 2018 by Jenni White
During summer 2010, while researching an article to address yet another tax-and-spend initiative to fund public schools, I stumbled upon a 33-page state law passed that spring titled "Schools; relating to teacher incentive pay plans; modifying requirements."
Although a portion of the legislation did address teacher incentive pay, the bulk was used to establish a state longitudinal database, a "Teacher/Leader Effectiveness Evaluation" (TLE) system, a way to "turn around" low-performing schools, and institute something called the "Common Core State Standards" into Oklahoma policy with a single sentence.
A Google search led me to discover that cementing these four programs into state law increased the likelihood of our state receiving Race to the Top grants from the Obama administration. As a former public school teacher, the change in educational landscape represented by even one, let alone four, of these programs concerned me. As a small government gal and a parent with kids in public school, I wanted to know why our state would institute a whole raft of new, untested, educational programs just to get federal funds.
In June 2011, after months of investigation aimed at answering these questions, I published a paper with 179 references entitled "Common Core State Standards and Race to the Top; An Introduction to Marxism 101."
Oklahoma's Common Core Repeal
From 2011 to 2014, the Common Core Four, as National Review dubbed us, fought Common Core and student data collection in the Oklahoma legislature. We logged hours and hours of travel across the state and country, showing up anywhere we were invited—mostly Republican women's clubs—where I talked about Common Core. Eventually I found myself on radio and news shows from Utah to Florida, including national media programs like Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, and NPR, discussing my research.
Finally, and many thanks to the Herculean efforts of state Sen. Josh Brecheen and state Rep. Jason Nelson, a law repealing Common Core and requiring the state to develop new "Oklahoma standards" was passed the last day of the 2014 legislative session. Following a state Supreme Court ruling denying a lawsuit to scuttle the bill, from Common Core supporters including four State Board of Education appointees, Gov. Mary Fallin signed the bill June 5.
By the time school started in the fall, we were fielding question after question through our Facebook page akin to, "They're still teaching Common Core at our school! What do I do?"
I was not surprised that schools would continue to use Common Core curricula, but was surprised it was so blatantly done and with so little regard for the law. This turned out to be the least of my surprises. After an exhaustive search for an answer, the biggest shock we got was that we'd overlooked the most important part of House Bill 3399—an enforcement mechanism.
Unfortunately, our hard-fought, hard-won Common Core repeal bill was little more than a suggestion at best. Nowhere in its endless legalese did it address punitive action for continued use of Common Core. Other than contacting their local district attorneys (which several parents did and were ignored, with replies of "Why would we spend money going after Common Core 'law breakers' when we've got meth labs on every corner?") we were told parents should run for local school boards to keep it out of their schools.
After licking our wounds from this setback, we pulled up our big girl panties and prepared to watchdog the curriculum mandates re-write process, thinking we'd see Common Core end there.
Oklahoma's Common Core Standards Re-Write Saga
The standards re-write process began in earnest in January 2015 under direction of a new state superintendent. In February, Dr. Sandra Stotsky—an education policy powerhouse and member of the Common Core State Standards Validation Committee who refused to sign off—and Dr. Larry Gray, a math professor at the University of Minnesota, were among four experts asked to testify before the Standards Process Steering Committee about how Oklahoma's new academic standards (OAS) could advance beyond Common Core.
Very long story short, after producing critiques of all four subsequently released standards drafts, Reclaim Oklahoma Parent Empowerment, the grassroots organization I help lead, asked the legislature to grant more time to the re-write process before officially making OAS the state's new curriculum and testing mandates. From that moment on, the Oklahoma education establishment (#oklaed) engaged in a series of social media attacks against ROPE, and me personally, to marginalize us as "tinfoil hats" for suggesting any overlap between OAS and Common Core, and me as a hater of public education.
Leo Baxter, a state school board member who sued to stop the Common Core repeal, was especially vocal, taking to social media every moment he could, at one point calling Stotsky an "arrogant miscreant" (while misspelling Massachusetts).
Rather than stand their ground against a vocal, largely uncivil, minority of Oklahoma teachers, the Oklahoma senate gaveled out of session rather than vote on Oklahoma's new "Oklahoma Academic Standards" (OAS). On March 28, 2016, OAS became law through administrative processes written in the bill, leaving Oklahomans who fought desperately for better education standards with nothing for all our years of citizen advocacy.
Oklahoma and Common Core Today: One Teacher's View
Emotionally spent after years of fighting government for better education opportunities only to end up very publicly attacked, I wrote a blog post detailing all the ways I'd come to believe Common Core had beaten us despite Oklahoma's repeal. I stand behind every observation today, but I wanted to know if others had the same pessimistic conclusions, so I interviewed several.
Sandy Harrell, an Oklahoma math teacher who participated in the "Common Core Is Not OK" pushback, at first assured me, "Common Core is not gone from Oklahoma classrooms," before telling me how unclear the new mandates are, echoing a common complaint about OAS. The thing that frustrates her most however, is the fact that, "Some teachers and administrators thought adopting CC was a step in the right direction. There are teachers who still use CC in their classrooms because they think it superior to OAS."
An April 2015 article in the Hechinger Report called "Gone but not forgotten? Common Core lingers after Oklahoma's repeal" reinforces Sandy's point. Here, the author interviews several Oklahoma teachers including Oklahoma teacher of the year (2009) Heather Sparks, who admits that not only does she use Common Core-aligned teaching materials, she also writes Common Core-aligned lesson plans for a teaching website.
Harrell told me many of her fellow teachers are "grasping at straws" to satisfy OAS with limited budgets and outdated resources. This often leads them to reach for curricula from outside suppliers, which correlate OAS and CC math standards.
"I'm curious how Smith Curriculum and Consulting can equate each OAS and CC standard to provide teaching resources if the two sets of standards are not closely related, as some OSDE employees have claimed," Harrell said. "As a teacher, I have to be able to justify every lesson and method I teach. I have yet to hear anyone justify why CC is superior to PASS [Oklahoma's previous academic standards]."
Oklahoma and Common Core Today: A Legislator Responds
Josh Brecheen, the Oklahoma state senator responsible in great part for HB3399, told me, "It's a teacher by teacher decision as to whether they are bringing Common Core aligned curriculum into the classroom. It's my hope teachers continue to honor the wish of Oklahomans who voiced their opposition to the Common Core State Standards through their elected officials."
For Brecheen, the biggest threat to Common Core independence in Oklahoma has to do with the new state superintendent's desire to have taxpayers pay for every high school junior to take the ACT, a college entrance exam controlled by a private company.
"ACT is known to be aligned to the Common Core and if a teacher uses Common Core curriculum, rationalizing it will prepare students for the ACT exam, this undermines HB3399 and ultimately, the voice of parents in our state," Brecheen said.
Interestingly, the information regarding ACT's alignment with Common Core has since been scrubbed from its website. Thankfully, my experience with disappearing pages from the Common Core webpage taught me to take lots of screenshots.
The senator also believes using the ACT in such a way "puts private companies in charge of what is being taught in our state and not teachers and parents," yet most Oklahoma lawmakers, as well as those in many other states, seemed largely content to mandate ACT for all juniors. "National curriculum uniformity driven by company profits and a national marketplace for their goods and service offerings will stagnate educational improvement long term as well as threaten each state's traditional values," Brecheen says.
Oklahoma and Common Core Today: A Parent's Take
Like many Oklahoma parents, Melissa Wilkins watched her third grader, Ashlyn, turn into someone she didn't know during the 2014 school year.
"We started every morning with a fight because she constantly complained of a stomach ache and cried because she didn't want to go to school," she said. "We would finally get her around and out the door to catch the bus, and then I would catch myself almost dreading her walking back in the door after school. It wasn't uncommon for her to walk in the door, hit or kick her baby brother for no reason, and then run back to her bedroom where she would yell or cry, again for no reason I could understand."
After talking to another parent, she found her daughter's school was implementing Common Core math and English just in time to take the state's new third-grade reading test, the results of which could keep her from moving to fourth grade. While taking part in Common Core repeal activities, she also met many times with Ashlyn's teacher, wondering why her daughter had slipped from a fifth-grade reading level to barely above third grade.
When she saw her daughter's practice tests, "I was appalled," she said. "Not only was the content immoral, but the questions were so subjective that there simply could be no right or wrong answer."
After fighting so hard for her kids' education, Wilkens' life changed once Common Core was repealed. Through her advocacy on Common Core, she became interested in "alternative means" of education, because her four children "all have very different approaches to learning."
Wilkens homeschooled her other two children for a year, after which she enrolled them in an Oklahoma online charter school. Wilkens continues to be frustrated by numerous reading assignments given to her oldest son, who was required to read graphic, anti-Christian literature in his senior English class.
"Is Common Core dead in Oklahoma? I would say no," Wilkens says. "Am I better prepared to lead my children through the challenges posed by this toxic set of standards? Yes! Being a political activist cannot be my primary role, but I will never again be scared to dig deeper when my gut tells me something isn't right."
Oklahoma and Common Core Today: A Teacher of Teachers
Barbara McClanahan is an associate professor of educational instruction at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Early in our fight, we were asked to give a presentation in the far southeast part of the state, where we met this diminutive powerhouse who had done all her own research on Common Core and come to the same conclusions. Until Common Core was repealed, she spent her time like we did: testifying before government committees, writing, and traipsing about talking to anyone who would listen.
Barbara says, "In the fall of 2011…I began to have my teacher candidates attempt to apply the new CC standards to the lesson plans they were required to write for 1st-3rd grade students. We began to discover that the standards components for these age groups and grade levels simply did not match the developmental concepts they were learning about in their textbooks. I became quite frustrated and began looking outside my institution, which seemed to have no answers, for an explanation."
To her the Common Core victory was hollow, she says, in part because both Oklahoma City Public Schools and Tulsa Public Schools loudly proclaimed their continued use, but also because the standards don't help children learn to read well. In the end, she says, her position on standards changed.
"Whereas I used to feel that standards were a useful tool, the fact that they have been co-opted in the service of high-stakes standardized tests makes their usefulness highly questionable. Standards, in the end, lead to standardization, which is fine for widgets, but not for children," Barbara says.
And What About Me?
I learned through this process that education policy in this country simply can't be shifted by citizens anymore because there are too many moving parts and entrenched policy makers tied to progressive education methods to have any real impact. So I quit fighting for public education.
Part of me hates that, but I was beginning to look a bit like the Elephant Man from banging my head into unmovable walls, and my husband and kids deserved more of my attention. Today, I help run our small farm, teach three classes at our homeschool co-op, and drive my kids' studies like a good natured tyrant.
If I learned anything from Common Core, I learned that local is the answer to nearly every government problem, and I turned my attention to my tiny Oklahoma town of 2,700 where, in April, I became mayor. Now I fight battles largely winnable, in a picturesque little town on a plot of land where I can see both the sunrise and sunset, and pray that national public education will get better despite the near impossibility of parents and local voters to significantly affect it.
bureaucracy, children, culture, education, government, indoctrination, legislation, legislature, marxism, nanny state, politics, public policy, reform, tragedy
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November 1, 2017 • 4:21 pm 0
Antifa are more than 'anti-fascists.'
original article: Antifa Is Not Fighting For Freedom, But For Communist Revolution
November 1, 2017 by Joseph D'Hippolito
In the immediate aftermath of the Charlottesville violence, several prominent figures—including CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic—equated left-wing "Antifa" activists with the thousands of Allied soldiers who stormed Normandy's beaches to invade Adolph Hitler's "Fortress Europe" on D-Day.
A more appropriate equation would be with the thousands of soldiers in the Red Army, who brutally marched toward Berlin, where they would establish Soviet hegemony in the so-called German Democratic Republic after defeating Hitler.
Antifa returns to the news this week. On Tuesday night, former Breitbart.com editor Milo Yiannopoulos spoke at California State University, Fullerton in a program sponsored by that university's College Republicans. Seven were arrested amid reports of head-punching and pepper-spraying. Protesters of the event chanted "Cops and the Klan go hand in hand!" and held signs reading "Only socialist revolution can defeat capitalist reaction." In February, Antifa militants committed such mayhem while protesting Yiannopoulos' appearance at the University of California at Berkeley that university officials cancelled his speech at the last minute.
On Saturday, Antifa will join other leftist groups in massive nationwide protests designed to force President Donald Trump's administration out of office. Organizing those protests is "Refuse Fascism," which declares that "in the name of humanity, we REFUSE to accept a Fascist America!"
Despite antiseptic portrayals throughout American media, Antifa are more than "anti-fascists." Antifa represent the chaos of Germany's Weimar Republic and provide the violent complement to academic neo-Marxism. Like their philosophical comrades, Antifa seek to destroy the American emphasis on liberty under law and to impose a revival of one of history's most repressive ideologies.
Antifa Is Anti-West and Anti-Capitalist
Bernd Langer, whose "80 Years of Anti-Fascist Action" was published by Germany's Association for the Promotion of Anti-Fascist Literature, succinctly defined the rhetorical subterfuge. "Anti-fascism is a strategy rather than an ideology," wrote Langer, a former Antifa member, for "an anti-capitalist form of struggle."
Short for the German phrase, "Antifaschistische Aktion," Antifa served as the paramilitary arm of the German Communist Party (KPD), which the Soviet Union funded. In other words, Antifa became the German Communists' version of the Nazis' brown-shirted SA.
The KPD made no secret of Antifa's affiliation. A 1932 photo of KPD headquarters in Berlin prominently displayed the double-flagged Antifa emblem among other Communist symbols and slogans. In a photo from the 1932 Unity Congress of Antifa in Berlin, the double-flagged banner shared space with the hammer and sickle and with two large cartoons. One supported the KPD, the other mocked the SPD, Germany's Social Democratic Party.
Today's Antifa embrace those roots. During February's protest in Berkeley, masked Antifa agitators caused nearly $100,000 in damage by starting fires, breaking windows, assaulting bystanders with pepper spray and flagpoles, painting graffiti on nearby businesses, and destroying automatic teller machines. "Refuse Fascism," the group organizing Saturday's protests, is controlled by the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, which seeks to create a Marxist United States through violent revolution.
Law and Order Are Among Antifa's Enemies
Antifa's goal to suppress "fascism" reflects the views of neo-Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. "A policy of unequal treatment would protect radicalism on the Left against that on the Right," Marcuse wrote in "Repressive Tolerance," his 1965 essay. "Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left" extending "to the stage of action as well as of discussion and propaganda, of deed as well as of word."
Marcuse dismissed the idea of individual liberty protected by law in favor of a Marxist society favoring ostensibly oppressed groups at the expense of everybody else. Such a society, Marcuse wrote, would demand "the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements" that not only "promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion" but also "oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc." and "may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions."
Marcuse even justified violence: "there is a 'natural right' of resistance for oppressed and overpowered minorities to use extralegal means if the legal ones have proved to be inadequate," Marcuse wrote. "Law and order are always and everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy; it is nonsensical to invoke the absolute authority of this law and this order against those who suffer from it and struggle against it … for their share of humanity. If they use violence, they do not start a new chain of violence but try to break an established one."
In expressing his contempt for "the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for 'the other side,'" Marcuse maintained in 1968 "that there are issues where either there is no 'other side' in any more than a formalistic sense, or where 'the other side' is demonstrably 'regressive' and impedes possible improvement of the human condition."
Elements of Today's Left Embrace Marcuse's Ideas
K-Su Park, a University of California at Los Angeles law fellow, reflected Marcuse's thought when in an op-ed in The New York Times she challenged the American Civil Liberties Union to reconsider its approach to the First Amendment. The ACLU represented Jason Kessler, who organized the "Unite The Right" rally and sued the City of Charlottesville for revoking his permit for the protest.
The ACLU's approach "implies that the country is on a level playing field, that at some point it overcame its history of racial discrimination to achieve a real democracy, the cornerstone of which is freedom of expression," Park wrote. "Other forms of structural discrimination and violence also restrict the exercise of speech, such as police intimidation of African-Americans and Latinos. The danger that communities face because of their speech isn't equal."
Park's fellowship is with UCLA's critical race studies program. Critical race studies comes from critical theory, a sociological approach developed by Germany's neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, where Marcuse was a leading thinker. Johns Hopkins professor N.D.B. Connolly blended Marcuse's philosophy with Antifa's militancy in a Washington Post op-ed, where he compared the United States' racial history to a game of rock-paper-scissors.
"For a long while, we've been throwing a lot of 'paper,'" Connolly wrote. "Liberalism — our paper — preserves our country's long commitment to contracts. Under liberalism, citizens stand in contract with their government. The government's job, in turn, has been to enforce contracts between individuals and groups. Truly, when people ask for rights, be they women's rights, gay and transgender rights, or rights as people of color, they are asking for contract rights."
'Rock Breaks Scissors'
But racism, Connolly argued, serves as scissors: "Right at the country's founding, racists cut black and indigenous people out of liberalism's contract. Black bodies and Native American land did not deserve the protection of contract. They deserved bondage and expropriation."
The solution? "No matter its form, rock breaks scissors," Connolly wrote. "A half-century ago, nothing less than radical anti-racism could reduce white supremacy to an outlaw religion. … In April 1968, amid a flurry of other 'rocks,' riots shook American cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It took that rolling unrest … to spur President Lyndon Johnson and Congress to action. Within a week they had passed the Fair Housing Act."
Connolly concluded by advocating similar measures. "Segregationists have again assumed their pedestals in the Justice Department, the White House and many other American temples," he wrote. "Paper alone won't drive them out. Start throwing rocks." In slandering those who hold opposing views, and in essentially calling Martin Luther King Jr. a failure, Connolly reflected the true "Antifa" spirit: Neo-Marxism über alles.
culture, Democrats, extremism, government, history, ideology, left wing, liberalism, marxism, political correctness, politics, progressive
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Students taught government is a caretaker that should be obeyed
original article: Students taught that government is 'family;' a caretaker that should be obeyed
September 1, 2013 by Police State USA
(Source: lannomworldwide.com)
SKOKIE, IL — A homework assignment was given to children at a public school which revealed the true nature of this nation's education model: to condition impressionable young people to accept the paternal role of the state; trusting, accepting, and obeying the state's wishes as you would your own family. This familial role of the state has been formally advocated since the onset of public education in America.
Fourth-graders at East Prairie School in Skokie, Illinois, were distributed an assignment titled, "What is Government?"
The assignment was prefaced with a statement that caused a stir with some parents. The worksheet stated:
"Government is like a nation's family. Families take care of each other and make sure they are safe, healthy, educated, and free to enjoy life. Families encourage children to be independent, hardworking, and responsible. Families make and enforce rules and give appropriate punishments when rules are broken. Government does these things for its citizens, too."
The worksheet goes on to make a series of analogies between the state of families in the form of questions. It can be viewed below.
Assignment given to children in compulsory government schools. (Source: TheBlaze)
This worksheet, while shocking to some, is completely in line with the foundation and intent of the American public education system. To illustrate this, we must review some forgotten (buried) history.
Few people realize that the American Public Education System was directly imported from Prussia (modern day Germany). This model of "free and compulsory" education was designed by the Prussian Emperor, in order to generate obedient workers and soldiers who would not question his authority.
The man most directly credited for the system we now know so well was an educator and lawmaker by the name of Horace Mann. He is often titled the Father of American Public Education.
In the 1830's, Horace Mann visited Prussia and researched its education methodology. He was infatuated with the emperor's method of eliminating free thought from his subjects and designed an education system for Massachusetts directly based on these concepts. The movement was then eagerly spread by statists across the country.
John Gatto — a notable two-time winner of New York State's "Teacher of the Year" award — has written some remarkable articles speaking out against the current education system. In one analysis titled, The Prussian (German) Educational System, Gatto informs us of the model America adopted:
The educational system was divided into three groups. The elite of Prussian society were seen as comprising 0.5% of the society. Approximately 5.5% of the remaining children were sent to what was called realschulen, where they were partially taught to think. The remaining 94% went to volkschulen, where they were to learn "harmony, obedience, freedom from stressful thinking and how to follow orders." An important part of this new system was to break the link between reading and the young child, because a child who reads too well becomes knowledgeable and independent from the system of instruction and is capable of finding out anything. In order to have an efficient policy-making class and a sub-class beneath it, you've got to remove the power of most people to make anything out of available information.
Harmony, obedience, freedom from stressful thinking, and how to follow orders. These are the pillars of the Prussian — now American — public education system. Its American founder, Horace Mann, said, "The State is the father of children."
It should come as no surprise when that same system blatantly promotes the government as some kind of paternal entity that cares about your health, safety, and education. And of course, something that makes rules that should always be obeyed.
children, culture, education, elitism, government, ideology, indoctrination, left wing, liberalism, marxism, nanny state, pandering, political correctness, progressive, propaganda, socialism
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How Intellectuals Cover for Evil
original article: How Intellectuals Cover for Evil: Deconstruction
March 18, 2017 by Thomas McArdle
Alongside its unprecedented mass violence, the 20th century saw the rise and reign of the secular intellectual as false prophet and would-be führer. For such men, as historian Paul Johnson wrote:
The collective wisdom of the past, the legacy of tradition, the prescriptive codes of ancestral experience existed to be selectively followed or wholly rejected entirely as his own good sense might decide.
Enter the villain of Stream columnist Jonathan Leaf's powerful new play, Deconstruction, running through March 25 at the Theatre at Grand Hall (St. Mary's Parish), 440 Grand Street, New York, N.Y., produced by Storm Theatre.
The Antwerp-born Paul de Man came to America after the Second World War and Blitzkrieged the study of literature by pioneering the postmodern theory of deconstruction — which, among other things, put morally-relativistic modern man in the place of a murdered God.
Pretending to be a Hero of the Anti-Nazi Resistance
De Man ultimately reached the zenith of academic prestige at Yale, becoming the single most influential literary critic in America — whose theories still deeply influence English classes at colleges today. But at the outset of Deconstruction, it's summer 1949. He holds a menial job at a Grand Central bookshop, and finds himself the pitied guest of Catholic-turned-Marxist novelist and critic Mary McCarthy in her Rhode Island beach cottage.
Leaf's drama speculates about the two married academics' rumored affair. McCarthy would secure de Man his first academic post at New York's Bard College, an hour's drive north of Vassar, where she was teaching. De Man doesn't quite seduce McCarthy; it's mutual. As she later admits, "anyone who strokes my ego after a few drinks too often can stroke other places." He compliments her literary talent. She praises his conversational cleverness, and his brave service in the Belgian Resistance – except that, as we discover, the latter was a lie. Quite the contrary.
Jed Peterson as de Man is a fascinating near-reincarnation of Paul Henreid playing the sly, covert Nazi in Carol Reed's 1940 thriller Night Train To Munich. De Man apes sincerity quite effectively, as he professes shame for seducing other women, then dwells on his tragic youth. At 17, he found his mother hanged on the anniversary of his brother being struck dead by a train. Yet soon after telling the tale, he does indeed lead McCarthy to bed.
In Leaf's telling, McCarthy would eventually find herself expecting de Man's child, leaving her third and current husband to think the child is his. After her miscarriage it would be her husband, not de Man, at her side. De Man would by this time be busy with a 21-year-old Bard student whom he had also impregnated.
No, de Man had not fought in the Resistance. In fact, he had served the Nazis.
Inventing New Forms of Relativism to Explain Away His Crimes
But this is the tip of the iceberg. No, de Man had not fought in the Resistance. In fact, he had served the Nazis. Some four years after de Man's 1983 death, a Belgian scholar would discover more than 100 pro-Nazi articles de Man had published under his own byline in occupied Belgium during the war in the country's leading newspaper, Le Soir. In one, he recommended a forced exodus of the Jews, remarking that Europe "would lose, in all, a few personalities of mediocre value" then continue in greatness.
De Man's legion of deconstruction disciples would proclaim the revelations overblown. Literary scholar James Atlas noted in the New York Times in 1988, while the truth about de Man was still hitting the fan, that de Man's Yale colleague Geoffrey Hartman minimized de Man's offenses because they "didn't begin to compare with the 'vulgar anti-Semitic writing' in other newspapers of the day."
De Man would quit the pro-Nazi paper, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Two months after de Man's departure Le Soir's other literary critic was assassinated by the Resistance for being a Nazi collaborator.
Interrogated by Hannah Arendt
The play twists the knife when Leaf's last character arrives — McCarthy's friend, political theorist Hannah Arendt. A German Jew who grew up in Koenigsberg, she'd escaped death in the Holocaust thanks to falsified papers from a U.S. diplomat. To an audience, Karoline Fischer's stern, straight-talking Arendt may be the least enchanting of the three characters, but that suits her harsh message of truth.
"That I managed to get out of Germany, then out of a detention camp — it's because I'm not cowed. By anyone." So she informs de Man in an unwelcome visit to his Bard office. "I want to know: who are you?"
But this far-and-away more honest intellectual already knows, having "made some inquiries in Belgium."
"Tell me, did you deliver bombs for the Resistance? Is that true or a lie?" Arendt demands of de Man.
"If we cannot prove God's existence or the moral laws taken from antiquity, then what place is there for traditional morality?"
His blood-curdling response: "As a student of Heidegger, you of all people should know that the notion of objective truth is a philosophical concept. An abstraction. Neither more, nor less."
De Man was taunting Arendt, aware that she'd once been both Heidegger's student and his lover. (Heidegger's blatant, public support for the Nazis even after the war has since dimmed his intellectual star a little.)
If there is no real truth, then why be good? Or, as de Man earlier asked McCarthy, "If we cannot prove God's existence or the moral laws taken from antiquity, then what place is there for traditional morality? You do see the logic at least?"
The logic she sees – indeed keenly feels – is the soul-destroying vacuum of love and beauty that de Man leaves in his wake. As Mary McCarthy, Fleur Alys Dobbins, in the performance of the night, shifts jarringly from a feathery hedonism to ravaged victimhood.
"You know, Paul, I spent hours thinking of baby names, painting the child's room different colors in my mind. Wondering: a girl or a boy, which would you like?" she cries in her pain. When de Man claims, "I'm ashamed," Arendt counters, "You have no shame," then reveals, "one of the inquiries I made told me something that didn't entirely surprise me: you wrote for a Nazi newspaper."
The real difference between de Man and McCarthy? She admits, "I know I'm a fraud," but "I want to be good."
The year he died, de Man would write, "'I am not given to retrospective self-examination, and mercifully forget what I have written with the same alacrity I forget bad movies … although, as with bad movies, certain scenes or phrases return at times to embarrass and haunt me like a guilty conscience." Atlas noted that, writing on Rousseau, de Man had even claimed we can never distinguish between "fictional discourse and empirical event," which "makes it possible to excuse the bleakest of crimes."
Leaf's deconstruction of the de Man myth ends with McCarthy ("some Marxist, I am!") repeating aloud a prayer to the Virgin Mary. In the words of Whittaker Chambers, the Communist spy who turned Christian, Deconstruction's audience discovers that "man without mysticism is a monster."
abuse, anti-religion, atheism, culture, education, elitism, ethics, history, ideology, left wing, liberalism, marxism, philosophy, progressive, relativism
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February 23, 2017 • 10:43 pm 0
Student whistleblower: Diversity class presents multiple 'isms' as fact without allowing debate
February 10, 2017 by NATHAN RUBBELKE
What does a fictional "Normal University" look like?
It's a place full of racism, homophobia, toxic masculinity, white privilege and sexism, according to a diversity class currently taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
At UMass Amherst, students are required to take two "social justice" classes to earn diploma, and this course — Education 115: Embracing Diversity — fulfills one of those requirements.
In it, students must act out examples of racism to prove America is racist "from A to Z." Students must also read about how society is dominated by "white privilege" and discuss ways to combat that. They're charged with creating a mock sexual assault awareness campaign and taught U.S. society pushes male "domination" over women. Another assignment has them coming up with ways to make a university more welcoming to a low-income black lesbian majoring in engineering. New vocabulary words thrown at students include "internalized classism" and "cultural imperialism." And a "Man Box" assignment teaches students that when men try to prove their masculinity it ends up "with frequently disastrous consequences."
'It was just these are the facts and that was it'
The class is led by Professor Benita Barnes, who has a definite liberal bias, a student who took the course told The College Fix.
"She really thinks that everyone [in the United States] is inherently racist or sexist, and I think she just thinks that the school is a subset of that," said the student, who requested anonymity to speak freely on the course.
Barnes, both a professor and Director of Diversity Advancement, did not respond to a request for comment.
The student described the course as a "hostile" environment where the professor and some students would get agitated when comments were made pointing things out that might be false or when ideas were questioned.
"There were no real discussions. There [were] no debates or anything like that. It was just these are the facts and that was it," said the student, who provided to The College Fix a stack of assignments from the course, which he took last fall.
According to the syllabus, "Embracing Diversity" is designed for first-year students and dedicated to how students can better see themselves and others "through an appreciation of attending college as a cultural experience, with its own unique set of rules, biases, and expectations." The course, the syllabus adds, pushes to move "the discourse of diversity beyond mere tolerance, celebration, or appreciation."
'Embracing Diversity'
One reading assignment in the class, "Normal University and the Story of Sam," tells the story of Sam, a low-income black lesbian who attends "Normal University," an Ivy League-like university whose namesake had a role in the slave trade. Sam faces all sorts of oppression during her freshman year.
Her roommate's friends make racist remarks, funds are diverted from the campus LGBTQ organization and a protest over the use of bathrooms remind her of stories shared "about the Jim Crow era." To top it all off, she studies in a "male-centric" engineering department where a woman has never been promoted and tenured.
At the end of the reading, students in the course are tasked with choosing an option to make the university more welcoming for Sam.
This is one of many course assignments obtained by The College Fix that were included in the course and purport a society of racism, sexism and oppression.
The course, according to the syllabus, used a "team-based learning" strategy and included numerous in-class activities that pertained to the class's five modules.
Here's a few examples:
Module 2: 'Men have domination over women thus they (women) become their property'
Covering "Inequality and Oppression," module 2 included a reading about "Social Justice University." The case study explained four "folk beliefs" regarding sexual assault and, at the end, tasked students with creating a mock sexual assault awareness campaign for the fake university.
Expanding on one of the four "folk beliefs," the reading stated "our society has socialized both men and women to believe that men have domination over women thus they (women) become their property as well as are required to bend to their wants and wishes."
The document goes on to say that when a man acts aggressive or possessive towards a significant other, "women internalize this (bad) behavior as acceptable and end up feeling 'loved' as opposed to harmed."
Module 3: Racism 'from A-Z'
Dubbed "Race, Racism, and (White) Privilege," the course's third module included readings titled "What is Racial Domination?," "Understanding White Privilege" and "White Institutional Presence: The Impact of Whiteness on Racial Campus Climate."
An in-class assignment told students "examples of racism can be found in our society from A-Z." To prove it, students were given 15 letters and had to "identify an act, behavior, law, practice, etc., past or present, that exemplifies racism."
Module 4: 'Internalized classism,' 'privilege,' 'cultural imperialism'
Dealing with "Class and Classism," a Module 4 class activity required students to define terms like "internalized classism, "privilege" and "cultural imperialism."
At the end of the assignment, students were asked "what are the possibilities and restraints of what students can do to create a less classist environment on campus?"
The assignment also called for students to apply five of the defined words to the stories of Emily and Matthew, two Amherst College students profiled in the book "Speaking of Race and Class: The Student Experience at an Elite College."
Emily came to campus unsure how to talk to black students and was once called "White Trash." However, she forms a diverse set of friends but begins to see people back home as close-minded and judgmental.
"I would never want to bring my gay friend home or my black friend," she said in her account.
Conversely, Matthew came from an affluent family but also broadened his social group in college.
"He embraced the exposure, the learning, and the people he met and liked, all the while while increasing the awareness of his relative privilege," the book states.
Module 5: The 'Man Box'
The course's final module dealt with "Gender and Sexism" and students watched the film "Guyland: Where boys become men."
According to a class assignment, the 36-minute film "maps the troubling social world where boys become men" and shows how men try to prove their masculinity "with frequently disastrous consequences for young women and other young men."
Following the movie, students created a "Man Box," which the assignment described as "a figurative box made up of acceptable qualities for men to possess and society's expectations of how men must act."
Terms inside the box included "objectifies women, emotionless, aggressive and dominant." The assignment forced student to either pull six traits from the box or add six from a separate list of positive traits. Words on the latter included "honest," "open minded" and "ambitious."
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February 15, 2017 • 4:50 pm 0
What happens to societies that embrace a right to die?
Holland has been on the bleeding edge of the "right to die" movement (please forgive the pun), a movement employing Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS). Most people supporting this supposed right have never actually thought through the long term consequences on a grand scale, and that is true of such supporters in the U.S. as well as Europe.
Just last month the DailyMail reported a Dutch doctor killed an elderly patient, a woman over the age of 80. The patient at some earlier time expressed a wish to be euthanized, but later (several times) expressed her desire to live. When the doctor decided it was the "right time" to perform the medicalized killing she drugged the patient without the woman's knowledge. But the patient unexpectedly awoke during the lethal injection and struggled and resisted so much the doctor asked the family to hold her down. The patient's right to change her mind seems to have been entirely ignored. Or does the patient even have such a right?
During the court proceedings, the panel charged with handling the matter wanted the case to go to court not to prosecute the doctor, but to have "greater clarity" on the rights of the physician who engages in medicalized killing. Read the full article to see the horrific reasoning used to justify the situation. Those of you who didn't have your head buried in the sand during the Obamacare debates may remember warnings of "death panels" and other dangers that corrupt health care by allowing elitist government bureaucrats to interfere. Keep in mind, the right to die movement is already here in the U.S. and is growing with the help of various left wing groups.
This is by no means the first incident of PAS where the patient was euthanized against their wishes. But when a society embraces the right to die, with not only the approval but also with the assistance of the state, any person capable of thinking past their own nose should see the obvious problems that will arise. In the name of a persons's "choice" to die we are seeing government endorsement of medicalized killing without the patient's consent.
How does government-endorsed medicalized killing go so wrong? Ryan T. Anderson examines this important question in his report Always Care, Never Kill: How Physician-Assisted Suicide Endangers the Weak, Corrupts Medicine, Compromises the Family, and Violates Human Dignity and Equality from March, 2015. It's a lengthy report but touches on very important issues such as:
changing how society deals with the marginalized
fundamentally altering the doctor-patient relationship
compromising the nature of the family
damaging the essential premise of human dignity
It might be funny if this weren't so serious hearing people pretend to be well informed on this issue while they insulate themselves from the anti-euthanasia side of the debate. When "thinking for yourself" involves intentionally avoiding a view you disagree with (which implies you may not actually know what you disagree with) it becomes a euphemism for not thinking at all. If you claim to care about people you should read the full report. And while you do, think about how compassionate a health care system is when the state is run by enlightened people who think overpopulation is one of the greatest dangers the world faces.
abuse, corruption, culture, elitism, eugenics, extremism, freedom, government, health care, hypocrisy, ideology, left wing, liberalism, marxism, medicine, nanny state, oppression, philosophy, political correctness, progressive, propaganda, relativism, scandal, socialism, tragedy, unintended consequences
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Poop Nazis
original article: Poop Nazis
Dec 14, 2015 by Mike Adams
Matt Walsh is among the best conservative writers in America. I appreciate his insights on a number of issues. I was especially happy when he wrote about the recent race debacle at the University of Missouri (Mizzou). However, I think his correct observations about the veracity of certain alleged hate crime claims were supplemented with an incomplete analysis of their causes. I write today to offer some additional insights, if not incites.
First, as Walsh points out, if someone made a swastika out of fecal matter, it would not have been an example of anti-Semitism. Just as someone covering an American flag in fecal matter would have been expressing anti-American sentiment, a poop swastika would have been a statement against Nazism. In other words, the rise of a Turd Reich would have been a statement against the Third Reich. Of course, people who write messages with their own poo are seldom led by reason. The same is true of those who concoct stories about non-existent poop crimes.
Second, none of this is relevant to the Black Lives Matter movement. Black civil rights leaders – all the way from Farrakhan to Jackson to Sharpton – have long been openly anti-Semitic. It's been that way ever since Martin Luther King was assassinated. In fact, Black Lives Matter should apologize for attempting to build a phony civil rights movement on the foundation of a very real Holocaust.
Given their obvious illegitimacy, what can be said about the causes of these contrived incidents? Matt Walsh believes the cause is simply immaturity. But I think immaturity is just another effect from a common cause. That common cause is better described as narcissism. It is a growing narcissism that I have been dealing with for 45 semesters as a college professor.
When I first became a professor in the early nineties, the universities had just started implementing speech codes. These codes promised students they had a right to be free from being offended. It didn't take long for the most self-absorbed students to demand that the university make good on the promise of an offense-free environment. I'll share just one early and salient example.
In 1993, the first time I taught Introduction to Criminology, a black student was offended by my explanation of Social Disorganization Theory, which is a theory of juvenile delinquency. She thought the theory was anti-diversity because it implied that ethnically diverse neighborhoods were less cohesive and thus more likely to experience crime. She announced in class that I had offended her and demanded I stop teaching the theory. It was a harbinger of things to come.
In more recent years, our university administration has supplemented the speech codes with campus "safe spaces." They have also printed up "ally" stickers for faculty members to put on their doors. That way, if the KKK suddenly appears on campus attempting to lynch blacks, feminists, and homosexuals, the students have a place to run and hide.
But that hasn't happened. Instead, leftist students have started trolling Facebook pages looking for comments they deem "offensive" or that make them feel "unsafe." Some actually file complaints with the Dean of Students about faculty and student speech expressed on social media. In other words, students actively seek out dissenting opinions made off campus, pretend to be offended and threatened, and then use the false claims to get authorities to intervene and restore their sense of comfort and safety on campus.
Like their Marxist professors, they seek global domination. They want to turn the entire world into one giant safe space where only their ideas are disseminated. If Matt Walsh had it right and all of this was simple immaturity we could expect students to grow out of it. But none of these students ever contemplated feigning offense in order to silence dissent before going off to college. In other words, it is not something they failed to grow out of (like ending sentences with prepositions). It is something they grew into with the help of campus leftists.
The combination of this new generation's narcissism and the old generation's ideology is potent. The only good news is that leftist students have started going after the jobs of leftist administrators who refuse to accede to their demands.
Hopefully, some day history will be revised to say that one Marxist consumed many.
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A Truly Honest Leftist Says Our Incomes Are the "Rightful Property" of Government
original article: A Truly Honest Leftist Says Our Incomes Are the "Rightful Property" of Government
In a perverse way, I admire leftists who openly express their desire for bigger government and less liberty.
That's why I (sort of) applauded when Matthew Yglesias wrote in favor of confiscatory tax rates while admitting the government wouldn't generate any revenue.
And I gave Katrina vanden Heuvel credit for openly admitting her desire to redefine "freedom" so that it means a claim on other people's income and property.
Both are proposing horrible policy, of course, but at least they're honest about their goals and motivations. Unlike politicians, they're not trying to disguise their intentions behind poll-tested platitudes.
We can now add another person to our list of honest leftists. The new leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn, is a British version of Bernie Sanders, except he really is a socialist who believes in government ownership and control of business. And the chief economic adviser to Corbyn is Richard Murphy.
And, as reported by the U.K.-based Sun, Mr. Murphy openly says everyone's income belongs to government.
Chartered accountant Richard Murphy, 57, is the brains behind the "Corbynomics" strategy of renationalisation, higher taxes and printing millions of pounds in "new" money. …his bizarre ideas have already sparked fears among Britain's top economic experts… One of Murphy's strategies was revealed in August 2014… The dad-of-two claimed taxpayers' money was NOT their own – and was instead the state's "rightful property". Murphy said: "I would suggest that we don't as such pay taxes. The funds that they represent are, I suggest, in fact the property of the state."
To be fair, sometimes people mangle their words. To cite one hypothetical example, accidentally omitting a word like "not" might totally change the meaning of a sentence and give a journalist an opportunity to make a speaker look foolish.
So maybe Mr. Murphy didn't really mean to say that the government has first claim on everyone's income.
But if you continue reading, it becomes apparent that he really does believe that government is daddy and the rest of us are children who may be lucky enough to get some allowance.
"…if we give the state the power to define what we can own, how we can own it and, to a very large degree, what we can do with it – and we do – then I would argue that we also give the state the right to say that some part of what we earn or own is actually its rightful property and that we have no choice but pay that tax owed as the quid pro quo of the benefit we enjoy from living in community. Murphy went on: "Well let me inform you that there is no such thing as 'taxpayers' money': it is the government's money to do what it will with in accordance with the mandate it has been given and for which it will have to account.
Wow, this truly gives us a window into the soul of statism.
Though let's be fair to Murphy. He's simply stating that untrammeled majoritarianism is a moral basis for public policy, even if it means 51 percent of the population ravages 49 percent of the population. And that's an accurate description of how economic policy works in the United States ever since the Supreme Court decided to toss out the Constitution's limits on the power of the federal government.
Moreover, Murphy's view is basically reflected inthe "tax expenditure" concept used in Washington and the "state aid" concept in the European Union.
None of this justifies Murphy's poisonous ideology. Instead, I'm simply making the grim point that statists already have achieved some of their goals.
But maybe it will be easier to counter further attacks on economic liberty now that Murphy has openly said what his side wants.
P.S. There are two types of honest leftists. Richard Murphy, like Matt Yglesias and Katrina vanden Heuvel, are honest in that they openly state what they really believe, even when it exposes their radical agenda.
Some other folks on the left have a better type of honesty. They're willing to admit when there is a contradiction between statist ideology and real-world results. Just look at what Justin Cronin and Jeffrey Goldberg wrote about gun control and whatNicholas Kristof wrote about government-created dependency.
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August 4, 2015 • 7:55 pm 0
Is feminism anti-human?
Feminism is far from a monolithic single-minded entity. There is vast diversity of thought within feminism, and not all denominations of the movement agree with one another. Some wings of feminism are not even acknowledged by others. Part of the problem is that, while all feminists at least seem to be fighting for equality for women, not all of them actually are fighting for that goal.
Among the nuance one might have noticed 3 primary schools of thought within feminism: the pro-equality school, the pro-women school, and the anti-male school. The latter has a fairly bad reputation in western culture with the most extreme flavors of feminism falling into this category. That reputation, sadly, is well earned. It should not have to be said that an anti-male attitude is not the same as a pro-woman attitude, and certainly not a pro-equality one. This radical brand presumes to be the primary voice for women in the world. This ultra-left flavor of feminism gives all feminism a bad name and it should be called out for what it is. So what is it exactly that needs to be called out?
First, not all brands of feminism are inherently Marxian, as is the ultra-left anti-male feminism. Marxism teaches, among other things, that life can be understood as a contest between oppressors and the oppressed. The problem with this mentality is that it is tragically reductive, over simplifying life to a simple equation utterly dependent on fomenting anger and bitterness. In the anti-male feminist school this amounts to treating men as inherent, inevitable enemies of women. To understand life in these terms is not to understand life at all. While plenty of evidence can be found to support this rabid view of life, to maintain such view the believer must ignore most of life's experiences or distort them in a way as to confirm the predetermined bias. Any confirming evidence is treated as the norm (i.e., "rape culture"), and conflicting evidence treated as an aberration, if acknowledged at all. This is how confirmation bias works, but it is not how understanding (or intellectual honesty) works.
Second, the anti-male school of thought unintentionally ends up being anti-woman. Think about it. What are the most common ways extreme feminists advocate to empower women? By urging women to act more like men! Women are denigrated for living a lifestyle which militant feminists would ridicule as "gender stereotypes". Motherhood is often treated as a form of slavery, marriage as a form of oppression. The maternal instinct is regarded as something like a disease that must be educated out of a women in order to free them. In this way womanhood itself is denigrated and shunned. Women are instead encouraged to abandon traditional hallmarks of womanhood and instead become aggressive, like men. On the one hand we have the feminization or Oprahfication of men and the masculinization of women, both of which are designed to reduce men and women to a politically correct delusion where the sexes are the same. Not equal, mind you – the same. Treating people equally is one thing, trying to make them the same is quite another. You are not the same as other people in the world, you are a unique person. You are more than your sex organs or life choices. But the militant wing of feminism has made it seem they reduce women to mere tools, politically viable weapons and force women into a victim mindset. Whether that was the intent of this brand of feminism, this is in fact how it makes itself appear.
Which leads us to a third issue with militant feminism: it is anti-freedom. We are not allowed to think for ourselves regarding militant feminism. If these feminists see a situation as the oppression of women, even falsely accusing men of rape is blindly accepted as truth, where there is no need to verify any evidence. If something is deemed sexist we are not permitted to view the situation is any other way. (Some feminists insist the tradition form of narrative (story telling) is sexist because it models the male sexual experience – as if that were the only legitimate way to think of narrative).
Ruling in Twitter harassment trial could have enormous fallout for free speech
July 14, 2015 by Christie Blatchford
Likewise, women find militant feminism attempts to control them by pushing for some choices and denigrating others. A woman who has a college degree is often pressured into following a career, as if she has an obligation to womanhood to do this. If such a woman instead, of her own will, chooses to be a home maker and mother, that same woman can expect to be treated as a traitor to her sex or as a blind zombie mindlessly falling into a patriarchal trap. Women are encouraged to treat sexuality with the same selfish, consequence-free fantasy (and childish) attitude men are often criticized for. With bully tactics like this (telling other people what to think) we find militant feminists constructing a way of womanhood while claiming to abhor social constructs.
At the end of the day it seems modern feminism (the anti-male type) is intent on destroying anything feminine in women, even the freedom to make their own life choices.
On the other hand there are women who fight for equal rights for women without devoting their lives to attacking men. Such women have the misfortune of being attacked by extremist feminists but they also offer a far better picture of empowering women. These women fight an uphill battle against a hyper-politicized and well funded extreme left wing brand of feminism.
One such woman is Christina Hoff Sommers of The Factual Feminist. Sommers is an academic who does not allow falsehoods and fraudulent augments to pass for truth in feminist circles. She challenges bogus data and politically motivated bunk because feminist fraud doesn't help women, it harms real efforts to help them.
Another woman fighting against bogus feminism is the infamous Phyllis Schlafly. I say "infamous" because Schlafly is often accused of being anti-woman. I've seen Schlafly in person and read numerous criticisms of her. I can't help but notice a deliberate effort to misconstrue and mischaracterize her work by those who accuse her of being against women. Besides, Schlafly's experiences show she didn't need a militant feminist movement to earn her education or establish her career – she did all that before most modern feminists were even born (let alone "helped her" achieve what she has achieved). I'll let her tell her own story:
abuse, bias, bullies, corruption, culture, elitism, extremism, feminism, fraud, hypocrisy, ideology, indoctrination, intolerance, left wing, liberalism, marxism, pandering, philosophy, political correctness, progressive, propaganda, relativism, sex, sexism, socialism, victimization, video
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Unraveling the Poverty Myths Obama Is Promoting
original article: Unraveling the Poverty Myths Obama Is Promoting
May 18, 2015 by Stephen Moore
Our class warrior in chief was at it again last week complaining about our "ideological divides that have prevented us from making progress" in solving problems like poverty. Just when you thought you'd heard it all.
Our most ideological president perhaps ever is arguing that there is too much ideology in Washington. Wow. Apparently an ideology is a firmly held belief that is held by other people—especially those on the right.
In a discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, the president managed to blame the slow-growth economy and stagnant wages on everything from Ayn Rand (who promoted "cold hearted policies" and classified everyone as a "moocher") to California's Proposition 13 (which is responsible for the Golden State's dreadful schools). Everything has contributed to our current malaise except for his own failed policies.
Here's a brief truth squad examination of Obama's mythologies and misstatements of fact.
President Obama: "The stereotype is that you've got folks on the left who just want to pour more money into social programs, and don't care anything about culture or parenting or family structures … "
After more than $22 trillion spent on the War on Poverty since 1964 (in inflation adjusted dollars)—how is it a stereotype to say the left only wants to pour money at programs?
Just a few weeks ago the president blamed the Baltimore riots on Republicans for not spending and borrowing even more money on his social programs. He sounded like a parody of himself.
If the left really wants to advance cultural values like work, why do they oppose reforms to a welfare system that requires able-bodied adult Americans to work in exchange for receiving welfare benefits like food stamps?
Obama: "It is a mistake for us to suggest that somehow every effort we make has failed and we are powerless to address poverty. That's just not true. First of all, just in absolute terms, the poverty rate when you take into account tax and transfer programs, has been reduced about 40 percent since 1967."
There are two problems with this defense of the welfare state. First, the official poverty was falling before 1965 and at a faster rate than after the Great Society got rolling in the mid-1960s. This official poverty rate has remained virtually stagnant since the War on Poverty began.
Second, the decline in poverty that Obama is boasting about is only after taking into account tax credits and government handouts and welfare benefits. When excluding these programs there has been little progress at all.
Redistribution may have raised the material living standards of some of the poor. But it has not increased self-sufficiency.
The original purpose of the welfare state was to lift people into self-sufficiency, not to create a permanent underclass dependent on taxpayers. Lyndon Johnson told us when he started these programs that "the days of the dole are numbered." We have passed day 18,000.
Obama also wants it both ways. He says over and over, even in this speech, that the biggest problem with the economy is income inequality because the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. So if the poor are getting poorer, how have his social programs worked to reduce poverty?
Obama: "In some ways, rather than soften the edges of the market, we've turbocharged it."
Wait, we've turbo-charged the free market? When? Where?
Obama: "There are programs that work to provide ladders of opportunity … but we just haven't figured out how to scale them up."
Hold on. One of the few programs that has proven to provide "a ladder of opportunity" is the Washington D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program for roughly 1,500 kids each year to attend private schools. They are all poor and almost all black. The graduation rates for these kids have improved in some cases markedly.
But guess who doesn't want to "scale up" this successful program (which is, by the way, one of the few programs that would actually be appropriate for the federal government to scale up)? In every budget Obama has submitted, he has proposed eliminating the program.
It's more than a little hypocritical for a president who sends his own daughters to private schools that cost $30,000 a year to prevent poor children in Washington, D.C., from attending those same schools.
Obama: "And so over time, families frayed. Men who could not get jobs left. Mothers who are single are not able to read as much to their kids."
The president acts as though "families frayed" by accident. No, there were major cultural shifts that contributed to the major decline in marriage and rise in unwed births, not to mention the introduction of a massive government welfare system that financially took the place of the father.
In 1960, not even one in four black children were born without a father in the home. By 2013 that number had soared, tragically, to nearly three of every four black children being born outside of marriage. As economist Thomas Sowellhas put it: "the black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state."
Obama: "You look at state budgets, you look at city budgets, and you look at federal budgets, and we don't make those same common investments that we used to. … And there's been a very specific ideological push not to make those investments."
In 1950 total state, local and federal government spending was just over $500 billion (in constant 2015 dollars) and 22.2 percent of our GDP. Today it is nearly $6 trillion and 33 percent of our GDP. Under Obama federal spending will reach $4 trillion next year and borrowing to finance these "common investments" will have risen by $8 trillion over his tenure.
The only thing that has been underfunded over the last decade is middle-class family incomes, which have stagnated.
Obama: "We don't dispute that the free market is the greatest producer of wealth in history—it has lifted billions of people out of poverty. We believe in property rights, rule of law, so forth."
No, you don't. And that's the whole problem.
bias, Democrats, economics, economy, elitism, family, government, hypocrisy, ideology, indoctrination, left wing, liberalism, lies, marxism, nanny state, pandering, philosophy, political correctness, politics, poverty, president, progressive, propaganda, spending, welfare
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It's canning season: spiced seckel pears, tangy mid-winter companions to rich meals.
October is fast approaching & already the nights are cooler and the prospect of long slow-cooked meals is looking more attractive. This week, boeuf bourguignon... can cassoulet and choucroute garnie be far behind?
Our latest book, Sausage: A Global History, is finally out, so we published an article to provide a kind of back-story: "A Vegetarian Unmade," at Roll Magazine.
Regular subscribers to our updates newsletter receive these updates from our blog, Just Served, directly—but there is much more at the blog that isn't delivered automatically. For example, Dr Sanscravat continued his idle speculations in essays, "We Are What We Ate," and "Thinking About Lunch." The blog also welcomed a guest poster: Becky Libourel Diamond, author of the new book The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America's First Great Cookery Challenge.
The Resource Guide for Food Writers, Update #180 is protected by copyright, and is provided at no cost, for your personal use only. It may not be copied or retransmitted unless this notice remains affixed. Any other form of republication—unless with the author's prior written permission—is strictly prohibited.


The addition of service records is requiring a considerable amount of research: as well as expanding and correcting, where necessary, the records in the official Rolls of Honour and Service, we are creating links to Jerripedia family trees and relevant articles on the site. Several thousand records are involved.
We believe that the inclusion of these war records in Jerripedia is of vital importance, because, spanning a period of five years in the wake of the last available census (1911), they can provide a valuable bridge across a generation for family researchers.
Our lists of those who served in the forces during the Great War and those who lost their lives in the conflict are based on the Rolls of Honour and Service compiled by the States of Jersey in 1919, and the updated digital version on the website of the Channel Islands Great War Study Group, with additions to both rolls uncovered by our own research.
The listings include not only those who were born in, or lived in Jersey before the war, but those with Jersey-born parents, and others whose connections with the island are much more tenuous. Others have long-established Jersey surnames and a connection with the island is often assumed with no records to justify that.
We have excluded some of those for whom no local connection has yet been established, but included others for whom the list's compilers appear to have accepted a local connection, without actually giving any details, beyond a parish of origin. The Roll of Service includes many whose only connection with Jersey was that they had married Jersey women, but where no family connection is identified and little or no further information is available, we have not included them in our lists.
Soldiers from England were sent to Jersey to supplement the numbers of the Royal Jersey Garrison Batallion, which replaced the disbanded Militia. After many Militiamen left to join the Armed Services, either individually or as part of the Jersey Company of the Royal Irish Rifles, insufficient trained men were deemed to remain to defend the island in the event of an enemy attack. Those who were seconded to the RJGB but have no other connections with the island have largely been excluded from our lists.
The Roll of Service also includes a significant number of French nationals who were living in Jersey before the start of the war and left to join their country's armed services. Where they have no family connection with the island and details of their service and deaths are lacking, we have not included them in our listings.
It should be noted that the Roll of Service includes many whose participation in the war was not of a military nature, but involved, for example, working on the steamships which continued to ply between Jersey and the English coast throughout the conflict.
The Rolls also include officers in the Indian Army, although they were not strictly participants in the Great War, unless they left the sub-continent with their regiments to serve in Europe.
The records assembled by the group seem excessively concerned with the disciplinary records of some of the servicemen, almost to the exclusion of their bravery in action. Presumably because these details are readily available in service records, disciplinary matters often take priority over the courageous actions of others, with few or no details about many awards as conspicuous as the Military Cross (second only to the Victoria Cross) available on the website. We are working to discover the stories behind these important citations.
The digital Roll of Service shows a number of records with the reference 'assumed' in the comments column. It is usually unclear what has been assumed, and we have tried to confirm all relevant details for these records with our own research. In line with our operating policies, we have tried not to make assumptions.
Our lists of casualties and service differ from those in the Great War Study Group's rolls in a number of respects. We are less interested in service numbers and career details than individuals' family background, place of birth and the most important elements of their military service. On our family page listings we show major gallantry awards but not the ordinary service medals for which most participants qualified. All medals are included in our A-Z of miscellaneous families.
We show parishes of birth or baptism wherever possible, rather than where individuals were living before joining up.
In some cases the dates of birth we have found in church records or census returns differ from those shown in the group's lists, which are drawn from service records and newspaper reports.
It was quite common for those who served to give inaccurate birth dates to persuade recruiting officers to allow them to join up. Most importantly, we have referenced baptism and birth records, whereas the compilers of the Rolls appear to have relied more on census returns, which are frequently much less accurate.
We have carried out often lenghty further research to identify parents and wives of many of those who appear in our lists. These relationships have been researched in our own database of baptism and marriage records, in census returns and, if necessary, in online trees in whose accuracy we have confidence.
In keeping with our policy for all Jerripedia content, we have tried only to include information which we are confident is accurate. We have not made guesses, and where there is any doubt that we have identified the correct date and place of birth and parents for an individual, we say so.
The Great War Study Group's site includes pages with more information on most of those who lost their lives during the conflict and our family page listings include direct links to these pages, We also provide direct links to a number of more detailed articles on participants in the war.
There is website dedicated to the Jersey Pals – members of the Jersey Company who left the island together in 1915 to join the Army as part of the Royal Irish Rifles. We provide links from our family page listings to the individual articles on the members of the company.
The Roll of Honour and the Roll of Service are being continuously updated and enlarged and we will attempt to do the same with our listings.
OV denotes a former pupil of Victoria College.
This page was last modified on 30 December 2017, at 14:45.


This Confirmation class is for adults who are interested in taking a step of commitment and participation in God's global church. Confirmation by the Bishop will take place during morning services on Sunday May 12. Attendance at this class is required for confirmands, but taking the class does not obligate you to undergo confirmation. Participants are required to read Fr. Cliff's article "On Being Anglican" and Thomas McKenzie's book The Anglican Way before the class. Contact Tori Yee (tori@christchurchofaustin.org) for more info. Register here; the deadline is Monday March 25.


text:
Send Flowers for Ron
Ron Helgesen
April 22, 1933 ~ January 19, 2021 (age 87)
Ronald Eugene Helgesen, age 87, died at his rural Kendallville home on Tuesday, January 19, 2021. Mr. Helgesen was born in Elgin, Illinois on April 22, 1933 to Arthur Otto and Mildred Amelia (Theis) Helgesen. He graduated from Churubusco High School in 1952 and entered in the United States Navy where he honorably served his country until 1954 during the Korean Conflict. Ronald married Marceille Shively on October 31, 1953 at the Blue River Church of the Brethren near Tri Lakes in Whitley County. Ron was employed with General Electric in Fort Wayne. He loved hunting and fishing. He also enjoyed doing yard work, mowing the grass in summertime and cutting wood for the winter. Ron was a strong, independent man but he had stubborn side and could be set in his ways. Ron was deeply loved by his family. He will be greatly missed.
His wife of 67 years, Marceille Helgesen of Kendallville.
Son, Kevin and Cindy Helgesen of Fort Wayne.
Son, Mike and Stephanie Helgesen of Auburn.
Daughter, Julie Handshoe of Kendallville.
7 grandchildren: Lisa (Brandon) Kope of Fort Wayne; Carrie (Tyler) Shea of Fort Wayne; Todd (Katie) Helgesen of Lowell; Chad Helgesen of Auburn; Sara (James) Collins of Kendallville; Dylan Handshoe of Avilla and Hailie Handshoe of Kendallville.
10 great grandchildren: Jonathan Kope, Mason Shea, Treyson Shea, Leigha Shea, Jaxon Shea, Oscar Trevino, Michael Helgesen, Scarlett Helgesen, Isabella Helgesen and Chloie Handshoe.
Ron was preceded in death by his parents; son, Kerry Helgesen in 1979; brothers, Arnold, Leslie, Art and Gene Helgesen.
There will be a gathering of family and friends on Saturday, January 23, 2021 from 3:00 – 6:00 PM at Hite Funeral Home.
Burial will take place at a later date at Wolf Lake Cemetery.
Memorial donations may be made to Parkview Noble Hospice.
To send flowers to Ron's family, please visit our floral store.
Gathering of Family and Friends
Hite Funeral Home
Kendallville, Indiana 46755

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Community colleges and some small private and public institutions experience unpredictable student enrollment behavior. With students frequently enrolling just before class start or even the first day of class, such institutions must matriculate these students as quickly as possible.However, mired in paper-based processes, all too often Admissions and Registrar's offices struggle to keep up with the demand.
By managing application files electronically, Hyland solutions for student onboarding optimizes application processing operations. The solution pulls in online applications, e-transcripts and scanned supporting documents (e.g., tax forms, paper transcripts), automatically matching and indexing the information to create a complete file for admission decisions. As it does so, it also updates checklists in the student information system (SIS) and captures line item course and grade data from transfer transcripts, posting the information to the SIS or degree audit system. For schools with entirely open or non-selective enrollment policies, Hyland solutions also support straight-through admissions processing.


At last! Reveries are over – the research vessel R.V. FLORA has anchored and is welcoming all curious fantasts!
From September 14th through October 5th each Friday the Schlingermarkt is becoming a research vessel and the marketstalls are turning into cabins, galleys and laboratories, accompanied by the sound of the ocean surf and chanties.
Five tool talks (Werkzeuggespräche) on the upheavals of living and working environments in urban areas in cooperation with SOHO in Ottakring.
Work is a central concept of humanity, which has changed fundamentally in the course of history. There ins hardly any other term, where have been so many controversial theories, discussions, models. At present, our working world is undergoing rapid progress: a clear separation between work and leisure is becoming more and more blurred, "stable" employment biographies are becoming more brittle and industrial work is increasingly disappearing from urban everyday life.
Within each tool call, we invite all to supplement our little culinary offer within the meaning of Potluck with delicacies. A potluck has a lot to do with sharing and mutual appreciation. Potlach is regarded as one of the ideas for this Potluck. An event of North American Indians of the Pacific coast. In this ritual gifts are distributed and distributed. We are looking forward to the culinary surprises brought along. A covered table is waiting to be filled.
Thinking about democracy – how does it work?


The School Council helps children to have a greater say over matters that affect their school and their wider lives. It enables pupils who have a positive attitude to have a positive influence in the life of the school. It encourages children to listen to others and to recognise their own right to be heard. There are two representatives in each class from P3 to P7. They communicate between their classes and the School Council. The School Council meets regularly throughout the school year.