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What They've Thought
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What They Thought December 11, 2005 Alan
Caruba Click here for columnist bios |
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Some of the most prolific letter writers to my local weekly newspaper are the folks for whom the Sixties and Seventies were a period of intense meaningfulness in their lives. It was all peace, love, and rock’n roll, followed by their rejection of the war in Vietnam. The reality, of course, was that we were still hip-deep in a Cold War that started the day World War II ended. Proxy wars in places like Korea and Vietnam were fought as Soviet-style Communism tried to replace the freedom that Americans knew could only be protected with blood and money. The stakes were high. The stakes are high again as the entire world slowly concedes that a whole new war must be fought. This time the enemy is Islamofacism and the enemy is not polite enough to put on a uniform. This time the enemy blows up people in trains, buses, and, yes, the World Trade Center. So, while I normally just try to ignore the pathetic bleating of the anti-war protesters, telling myself they have no sense of history and often no sense of decency as regards the sacrifices of good men to defend America, my eye was caught by the typical letter crying about the horrid treatment of “several members of (the) Committee to Stop the War” who stood outside the local high school last week to hand out leaflets. These folks were approached by a police officer and asked to stand across the street because “the Principal didn’t want us there.” Well, good for the Principal! One can only hope that the history courses in the local high school teach about the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean conflict, the Vietnam War, and, who knows, maybe even Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom gets discussed too. “It is now well-reported how military recruiters give children false promises to recruit them. Legalities aside, it is misguided when salesmen for the military are allowed into the lunch room to try to convince students to kill and be killed in an immoral war, while those offering a different view are prevented from talking to students in front of the school.” Get out your crying towels! First of all, I haven’t read anything of late about military recruiters except that, in the midst of a war in a faraway place, they still seem to be able to find enough courageous and patriotic young men and women to join up for the cause of freedom. When they talk to students, presumably those students, raised on television shows and movies about war, understand it involves combat and that combat involves killing the enemy and possibly being killed. The military does not want to recruit idiots. Lastly, who except the letter-writer thinks it is “an immoral war”? Was it immoral to remove Saddam Hussein from power, along with his Baathist regime that had filled the sands of Iraq with mass graves, had prisons with rape rooms and torture chambers, gassed a city filled with Kurdish men, women, and children? Wasn’t that immoral? Or was it moral to restore a nation to the thousands who came out to vote for the rule of law despite the threat of death? And here at home, were the anti-war protesters clubbed, shackled, and hauled off to jail? No. They were asked to do their protesting across the street from the front of the school. Across the street! This benign request that they do their protesting across the street was the direct result of the sacrifices of those who lie in graves in the Arlington National Cemetery, in a vast cemetery near Normandy Beach in France, and elsewhere here at home and around the world where the forces of evil wanted to deny the right to protest and blow out the flame of freedom. Those graves are filled with men and women in the military. Some volunteered, as is the case with today’s all-volunteer military, and some were called by the nation as conscripts. Either way, they summoned their courage, they examined their values, and they gave their last full measure of life to insure that those protesters could protest. And these protesters still just don’t get it. They think they can talk reason to people who kill the innocent, behead “unbelievers”, blow themselves up in Jordanian wedding parties, in mosques, and in a school house in Beselan, Russia, to kill children. These protesters think they are doing something good when they tell our children there’s nothing worth fighting or dying for. |
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Quite a few years back there were two seemingly unrelated incidents within the Soviet Union that made little sense for quite a few years. Omni magazine wrote about the fact that our intelligence services were trying to figure out what the significance of this activity might be. The Soviets pulled out a missile and launched it during a period of forty-five minutes. The capsule was then was maneuvered into three separate positions over the United States: over the northeast, the mid-south and the northwest. The capsule was later recovered, but nobody could figure out what they were up to (or so they said). Several years later an unrelated article came out in Scientific American magazine regarding the fact that a nuclear weapon detonated over the northeast, northwest, and the mid-south would shut down our power grid, our communications, etc. I’m sure there were a lot of people that absolutely freaked over the fact that nobody was doing anything about any of this. But in time it became obvious that somebody was doing something. They were researching what the Soviet actions might mean. Since the research in Scientific American was even released, that told me it was old information and that we had already researched it. It said we were on the ball. It was around this time that Reagan said if we suspected their intentions we would bounce their rubble first and ask questions later. That caused them to back off a little and change their approach. They next began their phony attempts at making nice-nice with us in the West. One of the Soviet fears had always been the German problem and they needed to find a way to neutralize Germany which had already given them fits. By taking down the wall and allowing the reunification of Germany, they neutralized it by flooding the country with voters who had become more pro-Communist. This is one of the reasons we see the rapid fluctuations in national opinion over there. The formerly conservative base was diluted and replaced with enough left-leaning thinkers to throw them into chaos. France looks the way it does because that’s just the way that France has always looked. They have a national mentality of forgetfulness and don’t seem to be capable of getting away from it. I read an intercepted communiqué from Gorbachev to one of the many satellite-states heads that was quite interesting. I haven’t been able to relocate it so I’ll have to wing it on memory here, but Gorbachev said that they were going to have to go back to the old model of dealing with the west. He said they were going to be forced to undermine us through our children. He said that trying to beat us at the technical game wasn’t working. So when you hear a Ward Churchill or John Daley talking the good ol' leftist "Death to America" talk, know that it isn’t an accident. It is planned. They are not necessarily in direct communication with the CPUSA, but they are its tool. In the world of Intelligence and propaganda, it is always best if the asset isn’t aware that he or she is an asset. If an asset manages to get themselves caught it can get pretty messy, which is why they usually use secondary methods and channels for taking a total loser and elevating them. Their real ties become somewhat obscured. People like those that George Soros rescues for "other purposes" at the bottom of the world’s barrel are rescued for a specific purpose. Cindy Sheehan is a classic example. She has unfortunately been photographed several times with the head of the CPUSA revolutionary party. Not that they have anything to worry about: The ACLU and leftist media will protect both of their identities and hide their ties. People will be unaware of what both of them really are unless they are willing to go out and look. Many of these elevated losers tend to live existences of self-fulfilling prophecy. John Daley is worried about his position as an untenured professor after he made all of his anti-American comments. He doesn’t have to worry about his position as an untenured professor because at the rate he’s going no matter where he is. That’s what he’ll always be (not that there aren’t a few universities who are more interested in diversity than common sense). For those of you who don’t think any of the above can be true, Yasser Arafat started as a crappy engineer and the leader of an unknown terrorist group that just couldn’t seem to get its act together. That is, until he was helped by the KGB. His original name was Mohamed Yasser Abdul Raouf El-Qudwa El-Huseini. He was born on August 4, 1929 in Jerusalem. Look at what he later became. You might be asking how they kept control over him. Simple: He liked little boys and they had the pictures. I sure would love to know what they have on all of these other useful idiots. Especially McCain. The point is this though. It isn’t over yet. Barbara Streisand hasn’t started to sing. Reference Links: R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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Last week, I wrote a column in which I implored the State of California not to execute convicted murderer and Crips co-founder Stan “Tookie” Williams. I’ve been getting some pretty interesting responses to that column. Well, maybe “interesting” isn’t the right word. Most of the responses have been pretty standard. Few have been thought-provoking. But I guess it’s just the overriding sentiment — amongst my critics anyway — that I find interesting. A lot of people seem to think that, by being anti-death penalty, I inherently support convicted murderers. That’s a tremendous leap in logic. The point of the column was that I’m against killing people. That being the case, how could I possibly justify Tookie Williams killing four of them? That doesn’t make sense. I’m just saying he’s the one who’s about to be killed here, and I don’t condone it. The victims are already dead; if they were still alive and about to be murdered, I wouldn’t condone that, either. Somehow, some folks don’t believe this. Ordinarily, I’d say they’re just reading what they want to read, but it’s more than that. Not only are they reading what they want to read, but they’re insisting I support Tookie’s actions whether I admit it or not. You can’t really argue with these people. Whatever you say, they still won’t believe you. That’s what I find intriguing about some of the emails I’ve been getting. They’re not really responses to my article; they’re responses to preexisting opinions on the capital punishment debate. For instance, a number of people have told me that because I don’t support executing Tookie, I must not “care” about the victims and their families. Several of these responses went on to describe the grizzly murders for which he was convicted, as if to guilt me into changing my stance on the death penalty. If I “cared,” people told me, I would see that failing to execute Tookie is “another bullet” through his victims’ families’ hearts. Do you want to know the honest truth here? You’re right. I don’t care about the victims. I don’t care about their families. But I don’t care about Tookie, either. I don’t care about any of these people. I care about my wife. I care about my family. I care about my friends. I care about my cat. But I don’t “care” about anyone in this Save Tookie drama. I’ve never met them. They frankly mean nothing to me. In fact, the only people I even mildly “care” about are Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Foxx, and Snoop Dogg. That’s because I’ve developed some sort of connection to them after watching them on TV for so many years. But even then, it’s a stretch to say that I “care” about them. I’m mostly just interested in how they’re involved. That said, if the point is that I value Tookie’s life over the lives of his victims, nothing could be further from the truth. I was hesitant to write this follow-up column because I didn’t want it to come off as defensive. I decided to take my chances with that, though, because in spite of some of the self-righteous responses I’ve been getting, I don’t really have anything to defend. I just want to reiterate my original point because it amazes me how many people missed it or simply chose to skip it over the first time around. I’m trying to look at this situation from a universal perspective, which is something some people are either unwilling or unable to do. If the reason we’re upset about the murders is that human lives have value, then it only stands to reason that every human life has value. And if every human life has value, then executing Tookie is no more justified than ruthlessly murdering four innocent people — even if those people didn’t deserve to be killed and Tookie quite obviously does. On the other hand, if every human life doesn’t have value, which is what support for the death penalty indirectly indicates, then why get so worked up about those murders in the first place? Tookie thought his victims were worth murdering, and you think Tookie is worth murdering. Aren’t we’re really just looking at a difference in opinion here? The way I see it, either every human life is worth something or no human life is worth anything. I can live with whichever consensus opinion we reach; I’d just like us to reach it already. To say that I support Tookie Williams is kind of silly (this is where the part about not wanting to sound defensive comes in). If I supported him, I’d be talking up a storm about how he was framed. You’ll notice I haven’t done that. I wasn’t privy to the things the jury was privy to 25 years ago. I’m not going to make up my mind on the validity of his imprisonment based on reviewing a few selected materials from the case. If the jury convicted him, and if his conviction was upheld by the courts, then I have no problem with it. I will assume he was truly responsible for those murders, and I will support keeping him behind bars till the day that he dies. I don’t want a brutal murderer walking the streets anymore than anyone else does. I agree he deserves to be punished for killing people. I’m just not sure we ought to be punishing him the same way he punished his victims. I don’t see how that makes me a Tookie Williams supporter. It just makes me someone who’s trying like hell to be humane. The reason I’m saying all this instead of just letting it go is because I think people need to understand how I’ve arrived at my anti-death penalty conclusion. A lot of readers wrote to me and asked how I would like it if it was one of my family members that Tookie had killed. The answer to that is entirely obvious: I wouldn’t like it at all. And if you want to know what I would do in that situation, the answer is: I don’t know. Would I support killing him as retribution? Probably. Would that make it right? Probably not. Let’s take this a step further. What would I have done if I had been there the night Tookie committed those murders? Would I have tried to subdue him? If I didn’t chicken out, of course I would. And while I’d like to believe I’d show him as much mercy as possible, I doubt I would do that. If I had a chance to subdue him, I would probably subdue him and then crack his skull open with my Size 11 Timberland boot. I’m not a very reasonable person when I’m angry. But in a roundabout way, that’s my overall point. On a practical level, the death penalty makes perfect sense to me. I very much want to believe that killing someone who killed someone else is the answer. Really, I do. Because that sort of punishment frees me up from having to weigh the other issues involved here—such as the costs of keeping a convicted murderer alive in prison, or what to do about stopping them from killing again. So I don’t blame people for thinking the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for a murderer. Instinctually speaking, I agree that it feels right. I’m just not sure that’s the right way to feel when I take a step back and look at the situation. It would be one thing if you killed Stan Williams while trying to stop those murders. But that’s not what you’re trying to do now. You’ve got him locked up in a prison cell. At this point, killing him is essentially… well, overkill. You’re basically doing it out of spite. The point is, our backs aren’t against a wall here. We’ve got Tookie Williams right where we want him: In jail. Treating an inhumane person humanely doesn’t make sense on a situational level. It just doesn’t. In fact, the very idea of giving a murderer due process doesn’t make sense situationally, either. Nor does the idea of giving due process to a suspected terrorist. But a lot of things don’t make sense situationally (which is probably why I never pass up unhealthy food). Sticking with the biblical theme I raised in last week’s article, you’re supposed to treat others how you’d like to be treated. That’s not always easy to do. And in real life I don’t always do it. I can be a terrible person sometimes. But regardless of how well I follow it, I still believe “do unto others...” is a pretty good rule. I look at it like this: If I were convicted of murder (knock on wood), I’d like to believe I’d take my punishment like a man. However, I know that I wouldn’t — guilty or not. I would cry like a little baby and pray 69 times a day for the state not to execute me. So as much as it may seem counterintuitive — or even counterproductive — for me to extend Tookie Williams that same courtesy, when I sit down and think about it, I feel like I have to. That doesn’t mean I like it, and it certainly doesn’t mean a convicted murderer deserves humane treatment. It just means that if I expect to get anything good out of this world, I realize I can’t in good conscience give him anything less.
Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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Our country faces major problems. No longer can they remain hidden from the American people. Most Americans are aware the federal budget is in dismal shape. Whether it’s Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or even the private pension system, most Americans realize we’re in debt over our heads. The welfare state
is unmanageable and severely overextended.
In spite of hopes that supposed reform would restore sound financing
and provide for all the needs of the people, it’s becoming more apparent
every day that the entire system of entitlements is in a precarious
state and may well collapse. It
doesn’t take a genius to realize that increasing the national debt by
over six hundred billion dollars per year is not sustainable.
Raising taxes to make up the shortfall is unacceptable, while
continuing to print the money needed will only accelerate the erosion
of the dollar’s value. Our foreign policy
is no less of a threat to us.
Our worldwide military presence and our obsession with remaking
the entire Middle East frightens a lot of people both here and abroad.
Our role as world policeman and nation builder places undue burdens
on the American taxpayer. Our
enormous overseas military expenditures-- literally hundreds of billion
of dollars-- are a huge drain on the American economy. All wars invite
abuses of civil liberties at home, and the vague declaration of war
against terrorism is worse than most in this regard. As our liberties here at home are diminished by the Patriot
Act and national ID card legislation, we succumb to the temptation of
all empires to neglect habeas corpus, employ torture tactics, and use
secret imprisonment. These domestic and foreign policy trends reflect
a morally bankrupt philosophy, devoid of any concern for liberty and
the rule of law. The American people
are becoming more aware of the serious crisis this country faces.
Their deep concern is reflected in the current mood in Congress.
The recent debate over Iraq shows the parties are now looking
for someone to blame for the mess we’re in.
It’s a high stakes political game.
The fact that a majority of both parties and their leadership
endorsed the war, and accept the same approach toward Iran and Syria,
does nothing to tone down the accusatory nature of the current blame
game. If we hope to pursue
a more sensible foreign policy, it is imperative that Congress face
up to its explicit constitutional responsibility to declare war.
It’s easy to condemn the management of a war one endorsed, while
deferring the final decision about whether to deploy troops to the president.
When Congress accepts and assumes its awesome responsibility
to declare war, as directed by the Constitution, fewer wars will be
fought. Sadly, the acrimonious
blame game is motivated by the leadership of both parties for the purpose
of gaining, or retaining, political power.
It doesn’t approach a true debate over the wisdom, or lack thereof,
of foreign military interventionism and pre-emptive war. Polls indicate ordinary
Americans are becoming uneasy with our prolonged war in Iraq, which
has no end in sight. The
fact that no one can define victory precisely, and most American see
us staying in Iraq for years to come, contribute to the erosion of support
for this war. Currently
63% of Americans disapprove of the handling of the war, and 52% say
it’s time to come home. 42%
say we need a foreign policy of minding our own business.
This is very encouraging. The percentages
are even higher for the Iraqis.
82% want us to leave, while 67% claim they are less secure with
our troops there. Ironically,
our involvement has produced an unusual agreement among the Kurds, Shiites,
and Sunnis, the three factions at odds with each other. At the recent 22-member Arab League meeting in Cairo, the three
groups agreed on one issue: they all want foreign troops to leave.
At the end of the meeting an explicit communiqué was released:
“We demand the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with a timetable,
and the establishment of a national and immediate program for rebuilding
the armed forces… that will allow them to guard Iraq’s borders and get
control of the security situation.” Since the administration is so enamored with democracy, why
not have a national referendum in Iraq to see if the people want us
to leave? After we left Lebanon
in the 1980s, the Arab League was instrumental in brokering an end to
that country’s 15-year civil war.
Its chances of helping to stop the fighting in Iraq are far better
than depending on the UN, NATO, or the United States. This is a regional dispute that we stirred up but cannot settle.
The Arab League needs to assume a lot more responsibility for
the mess that our invasion has caused.
We need to get out of the way and let them solve their own problems. Remember, once we
left Lebanon suicide terrorism stopped and peace finally came.
The same could happen in Iraq. Everyone is talking
about the downside of us leaving, and the civil war that might erupt.
Possibly so, but no one knows with certainty what will happen.
There was no downside when we left Vietnam.
But one thing for sure, after a painful decade of killing in
the 1960s, the killing stopped and no more Americans died once we left.
We now trade with Vietnam and enjoy friendly relations with them.
This was achieved through peaceful means, not military force.
The real question is how many more Americans must be sacrificed
for a policy that is not working?
Are we going to fight until we go broke and the American people
are impoverished? Common
sense tells us it’s time to reassess the politics of military intervention
and not just look for someone to blame for falling once again into the
trap of a military quagmire. The blame game is
a political event, designed to avoid the serious philosophic debate
over our foreign policy of interventionism. The mistakes made by both parties in dragging us into an unwise
war are obvious, but the effort to blame one group over the other confuses
the real issue. Obviously
Congress failed to meet its constitutional obligation regarding war. Debate over prewar intelligence elicits charges of errors,
lies, and complicity. It
is now argued that those who are critical of the outcome in Iraq are
just as much at fault, since they too accepted flawed intelligence when
deciding to support the war. This
charge is leveled at previous administrations, foreign governments,
Members of Congress, and the United Nations-- all who made the same
mistake of blindly accepting the prewar intelligence.
Complicity, errors of judgment, and malice are hardly an excuse
for such a serious commitment as a pre-emptive war against a non-existent
enemy. Both sides accepted
the evidence supposedly justifying the war, evidence that was not credible.
No weapons of mass destruction were found.
Iraq had no military capabilities. Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein
were not allies (remember, we were allies of both Saddam Hussein and
Osama bin Laden), and Saddam Hussein posed no threat whatsoever to the
United States or his neighbors. We hear constantly
that we must continue the fight in Iraq, and possibly in Iran and Syria,
because, “It’s better to fight the terrorists over there than here.”
Merely repeating this justification, if it is based on a major
analytical error, cannot make it so.
All evidence shows that our presence in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and
other Muslim countries benefits al Qaeda in its recruiting efforts,
especially in its search for suicide terrorists.
This one fact prompts a rare agreement among all religious and
secular Muslim factions; namely, that the U.S. should leave all Arab
lands. Denying this will not keep terrorists from attacking us, it
will do the opposite. The fighting and
terrorist attacks are happening overseas because of a publicly stated
al Qaeda policy that they will go for soft targets-- our allies whose
citizens object to the war like Spain and Italy. They will attack Americans who are more exposed in Iraq.
It is a serious error to conclude that “fighting them over there”
keeps them from fighting us “over here,” or that we’re winning the war
against terrorism. As long
as our occupation continues, and American forces continue killing Muslims,
the incentive to attack us will grow.
It shouldn’t be hard to understand that the responsibility for
violence in Iraq-- even violence between Iraqis-- is blamed on our occupation.
It is more accurate to say, “the longer we fight them over there
the longer we will be threatened over here.” The final rhetorical
refuge for those who defend the war, not yet refuted, is the dismissive
statement that “the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.”
It implies no one can question anything we have done because
of this fact. Instead of an automatic concession it should be legitimate,
though politically incorrect, to challenge this disarming assumption.
No one has to like or defend Saddam Hussein to point out we won’t
know whether the world is better off until someone has taken Saddam
Hussein’s place. This argument was
never used to justify removing murderous dictators with much more notoriety
than Saddam Hussein, such as our ally Stalin; Pol Pot, whom we helped
get into power; or Mao Tse Tung.
Certainly the Soviets, with their bloody history and thousands
of nuclear weapons aimed at us, were many times over a greater threat
to us than Saddam Hussein ever was.
If containment worked with the Soviets and the Chinese, why is
it assumed without question that deposing Saddam Hussein is obviously
and without question a better approach for us than containment? The “we’re all better
off without Saddam Hussein” cliché doesn’t address the question of whether
the 2,100 troops killed or the 20,000 wounded and sick troops are better
off. We refuse to acknowledge
the hatred generated by the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens
who are written off as collateral damage. Are the Middle East and Israel better off with the turmoil
our occupation has generated?
Hardly! Honesty
would have us conclude that conditions in the Middle East are worse
since the war started: the killing never stops, and the cost is more
than we can bear-- both in lives and limbs lost and dollars spent. In spite of the
potential problems that may or may not come with our withdrawal, the
greater mistake was going in the first place. We need to think more about how to avoid these military encounters,
rather than dwelling on the complications that result when we meddle
in the affairs of others with no moral or legal authority to do so.
We need less blame game and more reflection about the root cause
of our aggressive foreign policy. By limiting the
debate to technical points over intelligence, strategy, the number of
troops, and how to get out of the mess, we ignore our continued policy
of sanctions, threats, and intimidation of Iraq’s neighbors, Iran and
Syria. Even as Congress
pretends to argue about how or when we might come home, leaders from
both parties continue to support the policy of spreading the war by
precipitating a crisis with these two countries. The likelihood of
agreeing about who deliberately or innocently misled Congress, the media,
and the American people is virtually nil. Maybe historians at a later date will sort out the whole mess.
The debate over tactics and diplomacy will go on, but that only
serves to distract from the important issue of policy.
Few today in Congress are interested in changing from our current
accepted policy of intervention to one of strategic independence:
No nation building, no policing the world, no dangerous alliances. But the results
of our latest military incursion into a foreign country should not be
ignored. Those who dwell
on pragmatic matters should pay close attention to the results so far. Since March 2003
we have seen: Death and destruction;
2,100 Americans killed and nearly 20,000 sick or wounded, plus tens
of thousands of Iraqis caught in the crossfire; A Shiite theocracy
has been planted; A civil war has
erupted; Iran’s arch nemesis,
Saddam Hussein, has been removed; Osama bin Laden’s
arch nemesis, Saddam Hussein, has been removed; Al Qaeda now operates
freely in Iraq, enjoying a fertile training field not previously available
to them; Suicide terrorism,
spurred on by our occupation, has significantly increased; Our military industrial
complex thrives in Iraq without competitive bids; True national defense
and the voluntary army have been undermined; Personal liberty
at home is under attack; assaults on free speech and privacy, national
ID cards, the Patriot Act, National Security letters, and challenges
to habeas corpus all have been promoted; Values have changed,
with more Americans supporting torture and secret prisons; Domestic strife,
as recently reflected in arguments over the war on the House floor,
is on the upswing; Pre-emptive war
has been codified and accepted as legitimate and necessary, a bleak
policy for our future; The Middle East
is far more unstable, and oil supplies are less secure, not more; Historic relics
of civilization protected for thousands of years have been lost in a
flash while oil wells were secured; U. S. credibility
in the world has been severely damaged; and The national debt
has increased enormously, and our dependence on China has increased
significantly as our federal government borrows more and more money. War reflects the
weakness of a civilization that refuses to offer peace as an alternative. This does not mean
we should isolate ourselves from the world.
On the contrary, we need more rather than less interaction with
our world neighbors. We
should encourage travel, foreign commerce, friendship, and exchange
of ideas-- this would far surpass our misplaced effort to make the world
like us through armed force. And
this can be achieved without increasing the power of the state or accepting
the notion that some world government is needed to enforce the rules
of exchange. Governments
should just get out of the way and let individuals make their own decisions
about how they want to relate to the world. Defending the country
against aggression is a very limited and proper function of government.
Our military involvement in the world over the past 60 years
has not met this test, and we’re paying the price for it. A policy that endorses peace over war, trade over sanctions, courtesy over arrogance, and liberty over coercion is in the tradition of the American Constitution and American idealism. Rep. Ron Paul Web Site Back to Top |
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Education in the United States has gotten off track. Evidence of this unfortunate twist in the road abounds in news reports about inappropriate sex surveys being given to students, education curriculum for middle school which eliminates great works of literature for magazines with articles about how to flirt and French kiss, and math curriculums that don’t challenge kids to use pencil and paper to perform basic operations or test mathematical formulas. Without a doubt, there are many areas of education that need a second look because a failure to do so is to look the other way as generations of kids pass through school not learning about the basics and instead getting indoctrinated in the agenda of a minority in this country who believe that gender neutral washrooms are of greater concern than the founding documents of our country. But there is a program helping students to learn about, “Where the ideas about liberty, equality, and justice come from and what they meant to the nation’s Founders and to the Framers of its Constitution.” (vii, WTP) The Center for Civic Education’s “We The People: The Citizen And The Constitution” series of textbooks exist to help our students to learn about the basic principles of government intended to protect our rights and what it means to be a citizen. WTP is a comprehensive program which goes into great detail about the historical and philosophical foundations of our country’s Constitutional government, the creation of our constitution, the organization of our national government, the development of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, expansion of rights, and roles of citizens. The best thing about it is that schools can implement it at no cost. Teachers are provided free institutes to learn more about our system of government and how to use the book. In each state a set number of classroom textbooks are made available to schools free of charge with only the expectation that the program will be implemented with fidelity. Then why is it that
there is a select group of detractors who want to destroy the reputation
of this great program by propagating lies about the curriculum? Recently
I read an article called, “We the Proletariat” written by
Malcolm Kline in which he states that the program is remiss in its goal
to deepen adherents’ understanding of the American Constitutional
system and its development. | |||||
