Education in America Part IV: The Solution

According to Kyle Olson, founder and CEO of the Education Action Group and co-author of Conform, “there is a secular progressive value set in public schools. And so when that sort of value set is in charge, there is no morality. There is no right or wrong. Everything is gray.”

The only answer to reversing this 180 degree transformation is parent awareness and involvement. Parents can no longer yield their children’s education to the government. They must be the ones in charge. That means finding alternatives to public school like homeschooling, charter schools or private schools, whenever possible. For the majority, though, it means increased involvement in their children’s public schooling.

If parents want more input and influence in the process of educating their children about faith, sex or any subject, they should look into other options and also discuss daily with their children what they learned. Parents should ensure their children are exposed to classic literature, a knowledge and understanding of the United States Constitution and hands-on experience in pursuit of a complete Jeffersonian education. [read more]

I agree. It is up to parents to ensure their children have a decent education. The parents should research thoroughly charter schools or private schools to see if the schools fit their values. The parents shouldn’t completely trust the public educational system either.

Study: Your Smartphone Can Be Hacked By Hidden Voice Commands

From News Max.com (Jan. 24):

Researchers at George Washington University and the University of California, Berkeley, found a way for hackers to get into smartphones and steal information using hidden voice commands that sound demonic.

"The severity of a hidden voice command depends upon what commands the targeted device will accept," reads the study, published last summer. "Depending upon the device, attacks could lead to information leakage [e.g., posting the user's location on Twitter], cause denial of service [e.g., activating airplane mode], or serve as a stepping stone for further attacks [e.g., opening a web page hosting drive-by malware]. Hidden voice commands may also be broadcast from a loudspeaker at an event or embedded in a trending YouTube video, compounding the reach of a single attack." [read more]

I watched the video on News Max’s website. The voice does sound creepy! So, if you hear the voice it could be a hacker or even possibly a demon trying to control your phone (just joking! Then again…who knows. Some of those EVPs on the ghost hunting shows do sound demonic. So, I would be weary of going into haunted places with your phone especially places known be infested by demons. But I digress…)

The article doesn’t mention Windows phones. I wonder if those phones can be hacked the same way? Kind of scary.

The Problem with Wanting to "Change the World"

Commentary by Donald J. Boudreaux on FEE.org:

This “change-the-world” idea is, at best, juvenile. At worst it is downright dangerous.

I’m certain that there’s a great deal in the world that could be changed for the better. But I’m equally certain that no such beneficial change will be achieved by social-engineering performed by politicians and other government officials.

The world changes for the better incrementally, bit by bit, and experimentally. Smith opens a new restaurant in competition with Jones’s established restaurant, and consumers – spending their own money – ultimately decide if one or the other or both is to continue operating or shut down. This competition changes the world very slightly: the restaurant scene in this town is improved. Williams breaks his addiction to alcohol and returns to school to learn a trade; his success at getting a job as a machinist or electrician improves the world. Johnson invents a new app to help birdwatchers keep track of interesting sightings; this advance, too, changes the world.

Quiet Change, or Change for the Worse

With rare exceptions, each world-improving event is too small to be detected in statistics. It’s not sufficiently newsworthy to land its doer’s name in the headlines. It’s one of millions of everyday improvements, each one small, but the sum total amounting to noticeable change indeed over time.

Most people who want to change the world seldom pause to ponder what, exactly, about the world needs changing. After all, much about the world is pretty darn good, and, hence, is likely not an appropriate candidate for the wiles of any “change-agent.” Worse, most people who want to change the world have in mind schemes that involve forcing others to behave in ways that they would not otherwise.

Our world has massively changed, mostly for the better, over the past two or three centuries. And nearly all of this change came in doses so small that the names of those who performed each beneficial change were never widely known, and are today lost forever in the thick mists of history. Most – although by no mean all – of the “change-agents” whose names are known were human butchers (e.g., Hitler and Stalin) or arrogant ‘men of system’ (e.g., Clement Attlee and Franklin Roosevelt) who saddled others with counterproductive burdens and restrictions even if the destructiveness of these efforts is today still largely denied.

The bottom line is that attempts to “change the world” whole – to change it in a way that is noticeable and traceable to one action or small set of actions – is the height of arrogance. No such change, no matter how well-intentioned the change-agent, will be for the better. Beneficial efforts to change the world are almost always small, incremental, and performed in the voluntary sector of society – in the market, in families, in civil society. Not in or through the state. Most beneficial change occurs by adding small drops to the Prosperity Pool. Not by making big splashes in that Pool.  [read more]

Change can be good or bad. If a politician doesn’t know the difference then he/she shouldn’t be changing anything.

The Loathing of Commercial Capitalism Has Ancient Roots

From FEE.org:

The Ancient World

Consider the following examples.

Hesiod, the Greek poet who lived in 8th century BC, believed that human history could be divided into golden, silver, bronze, heroic and iron ages. The defining characteristics of the golden age, he thought, were common property and peace. The defining characteristics of his contemporary iron age were profit-making and violence.

In Homer’s Odyssey, which was probably written in the 8th century BC, the Greek hero Odysseus is insulted for resembling a captain of a merchant ship with a “greedy eye on freight and profit.” According to 5th century BC Greek historian Herodotus, the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great dismissed his Spartan enemies by saying,

“I have never yet been afraid of any men, who have a set place in the middle of their city, where they come together to cheat each other and forswear themselves. Cyrus intended these words as a reproach against all the Greeks, because of their having market-places where they buy and sell….”

Writing in the 4th century BC, Plato envisaged an ideal society ruled by “guardians,” who had no private property, so as not to “tear the city in pieces by differing about ‘mine’ and ‘not mine.’” He observed that “all the classes engaged in retail and wholesale trade...are disparaged and subjected to contempt and insults.” In the ideal state, Plato averred, only non-citizens should engage in commerce. Conversely, a citizen who becomes a merchant should be punished with imprisonment for “shaming his family.” Even the hyper-rational Aristotle agreed that “exchange [of goods for profit] is justly condemned because it involves … profiting at others’ expense.”

……………………..

The Christian Age

The hostility of Roman Catholic theologians to commerce is well known. Consider the Decretum Gratiani, which was the standard compilation of canon law from the time that Gratian published it in the mid-12th century AD until 1917. Accordingly, “Whoever buys something … so that it may be a material for making something else, he is no merchant. But the man who buys it in order to sell it unchanged … is cast out from God’s temple.”

Protestant theologians agreed. According to the economic historian R. H. Tawney, Martin Luther “hated commerce and capitalism.” In Das Kapital, Karl Marx approvingly quotes Luther as saying, “Great wrong and unchristian thievery and robbery are committed all over the world by merchants.” And John Calvin noted that the life of the merchant closely resembles that of a prostitute, for it is “full of tricks and traps and deceits.” [read more]

It’s sad the early Christians held negative attitudes toward the free-market system because Jesus never said anything negative about the free-market system. Yes, He said “love of money is the root of all evil” but a lot anti-capitalists seem to forgot the “love of” part. Money by itself is neither good nor bad. The free-market system like all other social systems isn’t perfect and never will be. Actually, love of power is far worse than love of money if you think about it. And of course, there is the verse that goes “It is easier for a heavy rope to pass through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (That, by the way, is the correct translation. It isn’t “camel.”) Some might say the verse means that the rich never get to heaven. Not true. He just means you can’t buy your way into heaven.

As for Karl Marx quoting Luther, the Left always coopt the Bible and other Christian authors when it suits their purposes. Marx doesn’t really admire Luther or any Christians for that matter. He was anti-Christian. Actually, John Calvin’s quote sound like a politician than like a businessperson.

Education in America Part III: Common Core

Race to the top. No Child Left Behind. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It’s been one gigantic failed federal government educational program after another.

And now, there’s Common Core, a program developed by education elites and financed mainly by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Common Core proponents claim that it’s not a nationalized curriculum, rather a set of standards that has nothing to do with the federal government. They use words like “voluntary” and “state-led.” The reality, however, is that the federal government bribed the states into adopting Common Core standards. Huge amounts of money were given to the states if they adopted Common Core — and withheld if they didn’t go along.

The stated curriculum guidelines of Common Core replace classic teachings with government propaganda. According to the American Principles Project, they “deemphasize the study of classic literature in favor of reading so-called informational texts, such as government documents, court opinions and technical manuals.” Over half of the reading materials in grades 6th to 12th grades consist of informational texts rather than classic literature. Historical texts like the Gettysburg Address are to be presented to students without context or explanation. On the other hand, social advocacy, social respect and social knowledge are top priorities.

Under new Common Core math standards, a child’s participation and effort are more important that correct answers. If a child can explain why three times four equals 11 and show their work, that’s more important than solving the problem correctly. This is not the real world. Education is supposed to prepare us for success in life.

Common Care advocates believe the whole community is responsible for the development of children, not just parents.* According to professor and former MSNBC anchor Melissa Harris-Perry:

We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children: Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of, these are our children.

So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments.

There is a fundamental problem with American education. And the root of that problem is, and always has been, progressivism.

Source: Education in America Part III: Common Core.

The part in italics is just Marxism reused. After all, Common Core is why Karl Marx wanted the gov’t to run education.

 

*This is just a paraphrase of the saying “It takes a village to raise a child.”

5 Ways to Make Health Insurance Great Again

From FEE.org (Jan. 9):

The two major problems with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are that, contrary to its name, it does not protect patients and it is not affordable. This needs to be remedied in the new legislation.

Insurance protects people against large, unpredictable costs. Instead, Obamacare-compliant policies entitle the insured to a free health check-up every year — at a predictable cost — but require them to pay thousands of dollars in deductibles before they can access benefits for unexpected expenses, everything from falling off a bike to getting cancer. For the lowest-priced bronze plan, deductibles in 2017 will average $6,000 per person and $12,000 per family, according to a recent survey by HealthPocket.

The new system needs to be more flexible and consumer friendly. Here are five elements of new healthcare legislation for lawmakers to consider.

1. Allow all plans on the exchange: Health insurance companies should be allowed to offer multiple health insurance choices, including catastrophic health plans for those who want to pay for routine costs out of pocket and insure only against major medical events. People should be able to buy insurance that does not cover birth control, mental health coverage, or kids covered until age 26, to give a few examples.
2. End guaranteed issue: Under Obamacare, insurance companies have to take anyone in any open enrollment period, so people can wait until they are sick to sign up. This is similar to being able to buy auto insurance after a car crash or home insurance after a fire. Naturally, it raises premiums.  People should get a discount if they sign up when they are young and healthy and keep continuous coverage.
3. Give all Americans refundable tax credits for health insurance purchase.
4. Allow plans to compete across state lines.
5. Accommodate pre-existing conditions:  Health insurance companies should not be permitted to raise premiums for pre-existing conditions if individuals have such continuous coverage.

[read more]

A good common sense plan that is not overly complicated unlike the Unaffordable No-care Act which is.

Education in America Part II: John Dewey

American education has radically changed from what the Founders envisioned. Why? How? It began with a progressive named John Dewey and others who altered the vision of America’s Founding Fathers, replacing it with their progressive vision for education.

Dewey’s goal was to transform the educational system away from its foundations of God and religion. In a nation and culture founded on those principles, he had his work cut out for him. Like many other progressives of his day, though, Dewey rejected the original intent of the United States Constitution, believing instead that it was a living, breathing, evolving document. His new focus not only shifted away from God, but from learning.

Dewey and his ilk believed in replacing education with indoctrination:

The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively an individual affair, that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning. There is no clear social gain and success threat.

Advocates of classical education didn’t see it coming until it was too late. It was an infection Dewey planted that took hold in both Democrats and Republicans alike.

Source: Education in America Part II: John Dewey.

The Purpose of Education by Martin Luther King, Jr.

January-February 1947, Atlanta, Ga:

As I engage in the so-called "bull sessions" around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the "brethren" think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.  [read more]

This is pretty much what the founders believed education should be.

Questions for Materialists

1. Is the mechanical worldview a testable scientific theory, or a metaphor?
2. If it is a metaphor, why is the machine metaphor better in every respect than the organism metaphor? If it is a scientific theory, how could it be tested or refuted?
3. Is your belief in the conservation of matter and energy an assumption, or is it based on evidence? If so, what is the evidence?
4. Do you think that dark matter is conserved?
5. If the laws of nature existed before the Big Bang, and governed the Big Bang from its first instant, where were they?
6. If the laws and constants of nature all came into being at the moment of the Big Bang, how does the universe remember them? Where are they “imprinted”?
7. How do you know that the laws of nature are fixed and not evolutionary?
8. Do you believe that your own consciousness is merely an aspect of epiphenomenon of the activity of your brain?
9. If consciousness does nothing, why has it evolved as an evolutionary adaptation?
10. How do you know that there are no purposes in nature? Is this merely an assumption?
11. If there are no purposes in nature, how can you have purposes yourself?
12. Is there any evidence for the materialist belief that the entire evolutionary process is purposeless?
13. If you believe genes “program” organisms, how do you think the programs work?
14. Do you think the mathematical models will eventually explain the inheritance of form and behavior? If so, are organisms “reifications” of mathematics?
15. Do you believe that memories are stored as material traces in brains? If so, can you summarize the evidence?
16. How do you think memory-retrieval systems recognize the memories they are trying to retrieve from memory stores?
17. Have you ever considered the possibility that memory might depend on some kind of resonance rather than on material traces?
18. If the trace theory of memory is a testable hypothesis, rather than a dogma, how could it be established experimentally that memory depends on traces rather than resonance?
19. Do you believe that all your conscious life and all your bodily experience is inside your brain?
20. In quantum physics, electrons are described by wave equations that include all the electron’s future possibilities, which are not material. Do you think that the possibilities among which you choose are more material than those of electrons?
21. If you think telepathy and precognition are theoretically impossible, or very improbable, can you explain why?
22. Have you ever looked at the evidence for physic phenomena? If so, can you summarize it, and explain what is wrong with it?
23. How do you explain the placebo response?
24. How do you think governments and insurance companies should deal with the escalating costs of medicine?
25. Do you think governments should fund comparative effectiveness research on different kinds of therapy, including alternative therapies?
26. Experimenters’ expectations are known to affect the results of research in psychology, parapsychology and medicine, which is why researchers often use blind methodologies. Do you think that experimenter effects could play a role in other fields of science too?
27. Most scientists publish only a small proportion of the their results. Do you think that this is likely to introduce serious biases into the scientific literature?
28. How should scientists deal with ideologically, politically or commercially motivated skepticism?

Source: Science Set Free. 10 Paths to New Discovery (2012) by Rupert Sheldrake.

Leadership Lessons from Fidel Castro

From FEE.org commentary by Robert Maranto (Dec. 13, 2016):

I propose a new book honoring a revered, recently deceased leader, an obscure country lawyer who through hard work and calculation took over and ran a huge privately held firm for a half-century. Here are the key points from Lider Maximo (“Supreme Leader”): Nine Leadership Lessons from Fidel Castro.

Lesson 1: Know oneself. From an early age, Fidel knew the rules didn’t apply to him. That gave him the inner strength to break promises time and time again. For example, while seeking power he promised elections, but on taking power declared “elections, what for?”

Lesson 2:  Learn from others’ mistakes. While the Batista government gave the rebel Castro amnesty after just two years in jail, Castro never made the mistake of mercy. He executed 600 opponents in the months after taking power with 15-17,000 more in the decades after, according to The Black Book of Communism. Still more perished in prison, civil unrest, or seeking alternative employment as boat people, which suggests a third lesson.

Lesson 3: Terminate opponents. You need kill only a few before the supply runs dry.

Lesson 4: Terminate supporters, especially those with talent. Castro sent Che Guevara overseas to fight, where he conveniently died. After wars abroad alienated popular General Arnaldo Ochoa, Castro had him arrested and killed on trumped up charges. Terminating talent keeps them from challenging you, and messages that capable people are safe only if they leave Cuba. 

Lesson 5: Control the means of production. Lider Maximo owned the economy, so only his supporters ate well and got good medical care. Similarly, managed media offered no opposition.  [read more]

Just think the Left thinks this thug is cool. These are some of the leadership lessons of a dictator. There are four more lessons. Granted not all the lessons are bad. The first two are good lessons for any leader.

Lessons 3 and 4 Hitler followed. After gaining absolute power from the German parliament back then, Hitler then proceeded to have his opponents murdered. Like what did the parliament think he would do? They just gave the psycho absolute power. Sometimes politicians can be so stupid. I think they thought they could control Hitler, but you can’t control someone you just gave absolute power too.

As for Lesson 4, Hitler had a follower killed because he became more popular than Hitler even though the victim was a total believer, supporter and a fan of Hitler. Also, King David of the Bible had his brother sent of to war so he could marry his sister-in-law. Absolute power corrupts.

Education in America Part I: The Founders

The Founding Fathers believed whole-heartedly in education. They wanted students to become a learned citizens. They funded every conceivable form of education that existed and believed in school choice. They wanted young citizens who could read and write and had virtue and morality and understood accountability to God.

Most of America’s Founders were homeschooled or self-educated, including Thomas Jefferson, widely considered to be the most intelligent among them, with an estimated IQ well into the genius range at 160. America’s Founders knew the critical importance of educating the populace of their new nation. Without proper knowledge, the republic could not survive. But even so, the Founders did not include public education in the U.S. Constitution, nor did they see fit to set up some sort of national system. Instead, they left education to the states and municipalities.

Source: Education in America Part I: The Founders.

Myths of Big Business

1. MYTH: Big business is bad, small business is good. TRUTH: Every big business began life as a small business, and every small business today yearns for enough success to become a big business tomorrow. For some products like cars or electrical power, little companies can't benefit their workers or customers as reliably as huge corporations.
2. MYTH: Business executives are overpaid and corrupt. TRUTH: Top leaders will always command top dollar, and a company can't limit executive pay without limiting its access to talent. Ferocious, long-term competition in the corporate world ultimately rewards focus and hard work, not short cuts and corruption.
3. MYTH: You can count on better treatment from the government than from business. TRUTH: If a private company deals with you poorly, you can take your business elsewhere.
4. MYTH: When the rich get richer the poor get poorer.
5. MYTH: The current downturn means the death.

Source: The 5 Big Lies About American Business: Combating Smears Against the Free-Market Economy (2009) by Michael Medved.

5 Ways the Feds Might Trip Up Santa Claus This Year

From The Daily Signal.com (Dec. 22, 2016):

While most people know Jolly Old Saint Nick as a friendly figure, he too is not immune from the perils of administrative overreach and overcriminalization.

To get you in the Christmas spirit, here is a list of some of the potential crimes and federal law violations of Saint Nick as he prepares to take flight for 2016.

1. The Reindeer Act

Many have tried finding Santa’s workshop—without success—but children have long mailed letters to the Santa Claus House located at 101 St. Nicholas Drive in North Pole, Alaska. This office location is the first source of trouble for Father Christmas. Under the Reindeer Act, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937, only Alaska Natives are allowed to own reindeer in Alaska.

…………………………….

2. The Lacey Act

Even if Santa gets around the Reindeer Act, he may face civil and criminal penalties under the Lacey Act if his purchase, sale, possession, or use of reindeer—or any other flora or fauna—violates any state or federal law or the law of any foreign nation, no matter what language or code that foreign law is written in.

…………………………

3. Flying Without a License

Despite Santa’s many years of experience, there is no Mr. Claus listed in the Federal Aviation Administration’s pilot certificates database. If Santa is piloting his sleigh without an airman’s certificate, he is in violation of 49 U.S.C. § 46317.

Any pilot who operates an aircraft without a proper license is guilty of a federal crime punishable by three years in prison (the sleigh would almost certainly be deemed an aircraft under 49 U.S.C. § 40102(a)(6)). And that is only for Santa’s role as a pilot. If his sleigh is not deemed airworthy, Santa will be in violation of 14 C.F.R. § 91.7 and subject to additional civil penalties by the FAA.  [read more]

In addition to those violations Santa Claus could be convicted on false statements and subjected to the IRS Gift Tax. Poor Santa. Welcome to the Bureaucracy!

Progressive Liars Part XI: Stuart Chase and System X

You know progressives like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, but you may not know Stuart Chase, the man called the progressive prophet. An American economist born in 1888, Chase was influenced by Fabian socialists, as well as communist social and educational experiments being conducted in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. At the conclusion of his 1932 book, A New Deal, Chase wrote, “Why should the Soviets have all the fun remaking the world?” What sort of government and economic system did progressives like Stuart Chase want to adopt if they considered constitutionalism and the free market passe? A strong centralized government controlling everything — the government, the banking system, education, employment, food, housing, medical care — so the people wouldn’t make poor decisions for themselves.

Chase had just one problem as he envisioned his utopia on earth. He couldn’t come up with a name for it. Socialism, fascism and state capitalism just didn’t seem to fit the bill. Like any good Fabian, he shied away from calling socialism by its name. Instead, he labeled America’s future system “something called X.” And as Chase believed, System X was already displacing the system of free enterprise all over the world.

Source: Progressive Liars Part XI: Stuart Chase and System X.

If you have to keep changing the product or system name then it must not be very good. Basically, System X is just raising taxes, increasing the size of gov’t, and control most of America’s resources. Nothing new than what the alt-Left and socialists have always wanted.

Here are the other parts in the series:

• Progressive Liars Part V: Prohibition
• Progressive Liars Part VI: FDR Part I
• Progressive Liars Part VII: FDR Part II
• Progressive Liars Part VIII: FDR Part III
• Progressive Liars Part IX: LBJ Part I
• Progressive Liars Part X: LBJ Part II
• Progressive Liars Part XII: Barack Obama