An Education Bureaucrat Accidentally Spills the Beans

Bruce Deitrick Price has another great piece today at the American Thinker on the plight of our young students as they try to learn to become adults.  The piece is entitled K-12 Parent X Takes On Principal Zero Here is Price's money quote, pulled from the letter written to Price by Parent X:

Finally the principal, aggravated and arrogant, told me schools no longer believe in academic excellence because demanding subjects no longer appeal to the mainstream student or to his parents.

He proclaimed that his program, his syllabus, his teachers were all fully in compliance with local, state, and federal standards, and he wasn't going to change a single thing to accommodate me or my daughter.

He said proudly he is a "Progressive," he has a Ph.D., and he had "helped" develop and design many of those standards, and he believed in them. He said any kid who wants a higher-level education for a professional career will have to get it somewhere else.

He was emphatic that neither I nor the school board member could change anything.

Many teachers today believe that the average person sits around all day drinking beer and watching NASCAR races. Such people believe that the average person has no knowledge or experiences that may pertain to what a student might need, or how to impart this to them.

I recently came across a "teacher" of English in one of our local High Schools. Having just gone down Six Forks Road and noting the cross streets, I noted that there were a number of English and American authors, particularly Coleridge, Barrett and Browning memorialized by naming streets after them. When I met her, I pointed this out to her, and learned that she did not know of Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or Samuel Coleridge. She was also not familiar with William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, or Ezra Pound. She had heard vaguely of T. S. Eliot and Alfred Lord Tennyson, though Robert Frost and Walt Whitman might as well have been neighbors at the beach. So, what did this person learn herself at school, and what, if anything of use, can she impart to her students?

My Granddaughter recently entered a local Christian school because the County would not place her in a school with a decent academic record.  Rather, for their own convenience they want to scatter students like my Granddaughter around to help raise the otherwise poor academic results of their school system.  The public schools had not been teaching cursive writing, leaving students with stick and ball printing skills only.  Fortunately, the Christian school does teach cursive, and my Granddaughter is picking it up fast.  I worry though that she may already have succumbed to cruel punishment they inflicted on her in an attempt to teach basic arithmetic.

More from Price:

What does this principal do all day? Put another way, what is his real job? I think the best word is enforcer. His job is to lay down the law to irritating parents who are slow to get the message. If they or their kids still have any dreams, they should give them up. Accept average.

My impression is that all the bureaucrats in education, such as this principal, make $50,000 more than they could make in the real world. His main skill is not technical, professional, or educational. His main skill is bamboozling parents. He tells the community how much education they can have. He has to deliver this message: You want education? You can't handle education. You're peasants. Mediocrity is good enough for you. Eat cake"

...snip...

But let's look even deeper. What is a Progressive? That's just a fancy word for Socialist or Communist. They set low goals, especially in education. Apparently, they want people to be permanently weak and controllable. They don't want to educate people who might replace them or compete with their own children. Progressives always seem to be training an underclass who will be happy to stay at the bottom, so that Progressives can 00rise to the top.

Just so.

VCDL sues Katie Couric and Stephanie Soechtig

You may remember several months ago, Katie Couric produced a deceptive "documentary" along with Stephanie Soechtig about gun violence in America.  A number of news sources, including the Virginia Citizens' Defense League  (VCDL), claimed they had proof that the film had been edited to make members of VCDL appear to be a bunch of bumbling fools when asked about the latest thing on the gun grabbers wish list, Universal Background Checks (UBC).

Well, now the VCDL is suing Couric and Soechtig.  Matt Vespa has the story over at Townhall.com entitled See You in Court: Gun Rights Group Files Lawsuit Against Katie Couric Over Deceptive Edits in Documentary. Note that I am a former member of VCDL, and once held a Virginia Concealed Carry permit. It's good to see that there are occasional cosequences for such behavior.

So, just to recap, why are gun rights people so adamantly against the idea of UBC?

 First and foremost, the current background check system does not work as it was intended.  Remember, when it was first proposed the idea was that criminals would not be able to get hold of a gun.  Predictably, (and predicted) the criminals simply went black market, and bought stolen guns, or stole them themselves.  Universal background checks wouldn't improve the situation, because criminals would still just go around the background check system.  So, what is it that the politicians who are pushing UBC want to achieve?  Remember that the politicians actually know these facts.  Keep in mind that the politicians won't actually say why they want UBC, but in other countries a UBC has usually been turned into a registrations scheme that allows the government to know where every firearm is located, and then allows them to seize them at will.  This usually precedes a tyrant taking over.

Well, but what about the guns held by criminals?  The government will not know where their guns are held.  True, but then the criminals are not likely to resist the tyrant.  More likely they will go along in hopes of reaping some of the spoils.  No, it is the citizen, the salt of the earth, law abiding types, who have been betrayed in the most cynical ways, who are most likely to resist.  Without guns, however, their resistance is largely futile.

Second, on a more philosophical note, but just as important, for laws have to be based on a philosophical foundation, background checks represent a prior restraint on a civil right..  Unlike your other civil rights, you must prove to the satisfaction of some unelected bureaucrat that you are worthy to exercise a right that all people have by virtue of being born human.  This is petty tyranny in its own right, never mind what the gun grabbers want.  After all, the unelected bureaucrat is supposed to be a public servant, not your master.  What master allows his servants to be better armed than he is?  Then there is this little inconsistency in the law:  one must show a photo identification to buy a gun, but the Supreme Court has just said that it is racist to do so, since it won't overturn an appeals court ruling to that effect.  Is the background check law then racist?  Should it also be struck down?  One wonders at the tangled web that is being created here.

As Matt Vespa says, "...good on VCDL for recording the audio of their interview as an insurance policy..."  I do hope they win.

Deplorable is as Deplorable does.

Hillary's claim that half of Trump supporters are a "basket of deplorables" was just too much for me. The more I thought about it, the madder I got.  Again, Mr. Trump is not my ideal candidate, but at least he seems to be a real American, and he at least says the things most real Americans feel need to be done.  Hillary, on the other hand, seems almost like some kind of "pod person" from an old science fiction show, and Obama seems positively alien. Jesus said you will know them by their fruits.  Deplorable is as deplorable does, and it is a badge of honor to be despised by the despicable.

Christopher Chantrill has an article over at the American Thinker today entitled Hillary's "deplorables" ain't the half of it.  The heart of Chantrill's piece is here:

But really. Let’s have a reality check about the -isms and the -phobias.

Racism is a problem? You mean in the country that went to war to free the slaves, that passed the civil rights acts? That elected a black president? Sexism? You mean the country that gave women the vote, that has encouraged women, indeed, has mandated that women get preference at the university and the workplace? Homophobia? You mean the country that doesn’t riot in indignation when elite gays get to harass the little people for not wanting to bake a gay wedding cake? Islamophobia? You mean the country in which a supermarket checker gets to wear the hijab, a defiant statement of separation and act of segregation in my book, and gets to live to tell the tale?

You know what I think? I think that the ordinary white middle class has shown the most amazing patience and sturdiness as they have marked time for the last 50 years while liberals deployed government force to help blacks, women, gays, Hispanics, Muslims at their expense.

Out of an abundance of Christian love, and a realization that we are all God's children, we have tolerated all of these "deplorables" in our midst, in the hope that they would each, in their turn, come to realize that they had been fortunate enough to have found themselves in the best of all (earthly) circumstances.  Is the United States perfect?  Certainly not, and never was, nor will it be.  But if you measure the United States against Utopia, you are using the wrong yardstick.  The proper measure of the US, is against every other system of government that exists, or has existed, in the world.  Perfection awaits the Kingdom of God.  But, for those not born here, perhaps if you feel your life was better where you came from, it would behoove you to return there.  For those who were born here, unlike the old Soviet Union, or North Korea today, you can leave for a better world.  No one is holding you here, and we would be much better off without your constant condemnation.

My Moral Compass Is Intact

I don't read as many other columnists as, say, Jonah Goldberg reads, and unfortunately, I can not follow the news like he can, because I have other things to do.  It is not my life, or rather, it may be, but no one is paying me for my opinions.  So, when I say I don't know of any conservatives who have been defending the moral equivalence statements made by Trump, as stated by an outraged Goldberg at Townhall.com in Trump Smashes the Moral Compass of Conservatism. I mean that. No one I know is defending Trump's statements about Putin. Another thing, though, where was Goldberg s moral outrage when Bush 43 said similar things?

Understand, Goldberg is one of my favorite writers. I have been following him since the early 1990s, when he was having conversations with his couch. So, Please go and read it for yourselves, as I don't have time today to pull a bunch of quotes.

Read it?  Good.  Let me just say that like a lot of folks, I don't trust Mr. Trump.  He was not my guy.  Here's what I have come, reluctantly, to realize.  We know what Hillary will do.  We already don't like what Obama is doing, and Hillary will do far worse because Obama has laid the groundwork for her to do far worse.  On the other hand, we don't know what Trump will do.  But there is a chance that Trump will do more of the right things.

There really is no other hand.  Neither Gary Johnson, nor Jill Stein has a snowball's chance.  I know many libertarians who have thought long and hard about voting for Johnson.  The election, for better or worse, is between Trump and Hillary.  Any vote not for Trump is, unfortunately, viewed by the voting system as a vote for Hillary. Hillary will certainly view it that way, and claim a mandate.  And here I come back to this:  You know what Hillary will do, and it ain't good.  Hillary views us as "enemies" rather than as people with different views, whose views need to be weighed into the whole.  Trump, on the other hand, seem to want to solve the problems of all Americans.  Given our choices, it seems worth taking a flyer on him.

  

Keeping and Bearing Arms as a Civil Rights issue

Jenn Jacques over at Bearing Arms has a post that points to another post by Dom Raso at the NRA entitled Too Many Americans Don't View Second Amendment as a Civil Rights Issue. I get it. Being raised on the notion of racism and minority rights as civil rights, we don't here to much about the older universal rights. But the universal rights were the first civil rights. The right to speak, the right to spread your ideas in print, which is the freedom of the press, the right to practice your religion, all free from Government interference (not the interference of the people). Among those rights, of course, is the right to defend yourself when attacked.

I have on occasion noted that if the current administration treated the right to keep and bear arms as it does the right to healthcare, then every individual would be required to obtain and train with an M4 Carbine, which would of course handily do away with the "assault weapon" debate that currently distracts us from real issues.  But, what is a "right?"  The term is loosely bandied about and many things are said to be "rights," of which the Government must get into the middle, and usually must pay someone or other something, all of which is designed to get "free stuff" for some at the expense of everyone else. Here is one definition of a right provided by The Free Republic

A right is the sovereignty to act without the permission of others. The concept of a right carries with it an implicit, unstated footnote: you may exercise your rights as long as you do not violate the same rights of another—within this context, rights are an absolute.

A right is universal—meaning: it applies to all men, not just to a few. There is no such thing as a "right" for one man, or a group of men, that is not possessed by all. This means there are no special "rights" unique to women or men, blacks or white, the elderly or the young, homosexuals or heterosexuals, the rich or the poor, doctors or patients or any other group.

A right must be exercised through your own initiative and action. It is not a claim on others. A right is not actualized and implemented by the actions of others. This means you do not have the right to the time in another person’s life. You do not have a right to other people’s money. You do not have the right to another person’s property. If you wish to acquire some money from another person, you must earn it—then you have a right to it. If you wish to gain some benefit from the time of another person’s life, you must gain it through the voluntary cooperation of that individual—not through coercion. If you wish to possess some item of property of another individual, you must buy it on terms acceptable to the owner—not gain it through theft.

The emphasis is mine. That last, "not gain it through theft" includes not gaining through the actions of Government to tax one person and give it to another-or in other word, redistribution of wealth.

Where there is a right, there is also a concurrent responsibility.  You can exercise your rights only so far as you do not interfere with the rights of others.  So, while I have the right to bear arms, which means carrying them in public, I do not have the right to endanger innocent others.  The mere carrying of a gun does not endanger others.  The mere knowledge that I am carrying also does not endanger others, no matter what they may say. (No one has the right to restrict another based solely on their own internal feelings, real or imagined.)  But I may not brandish my weapon without being under threat of attack.  And I may not fire my weapon in such a way as to endanger another.

Criminals will always disobey the law, as well as steal the rights of others.  That is what makes them criminals.  But we don't have a problem with the normally law abiding citizen brandishing their weapons and shooting up the place.  No, the problem is that certain members of Government wish to steal our right to keep and bear arms (remember what I said about criminals.)  More Americans need to assert their civil right to keep and bear arms.  It is not truly a Constitutional right, because it exists prior to, and independent of that document.  But it is a civil right.

Ever since man has walked the earth, he has been at a disadvantage relative to the other beasts.  Man has no natural weapons,  Instead, what man has is the ability to shape weapons from the items he finds around him.  As such, he has always carried some sort of weapon, whether it be a stone knife and spear, a bow and arrows, or, as today, a gun.  Whether you personally feel the need to exercise this fundamental civil right is entirely your choice, based on your evaluation of your risks and your situation.  But your situation may change, and you should not be willing to give up any of your civil rights.  If you happen to be one of those who want to tell everyone else what to do, you might want to think about that.

The Racism at the Heart of Democrat Politics

I am told constantly by white liberals "you just don't understand.  Thousands of poor blacks can't even get down to the DMV to get a photo identification card, let alone get a drivers licence!"  Really?  Thousands? Apparently Samuel Tolley doesn't agree. He writes at the American Thinker a piece entitled Court Ruling Against Discrimination Discriminates Against African Americans Tolley:

Since the court ruled that African Americans disproportionately lack the ability to obtain proper ID, why should they need proper identification at all? If the court’s logic is fully applied, African Americans should be exempt from obtaining driver’s licenses, or any other government-approved form of ID necessary to purchase; alcohol, tobacco, medication, or perform any function which requires proper ID.

The court all but stated that African Americans are inferior and in need of special benefits; therefore, all us black folks can thank the Democratic Party for saving us once again

Exactly.

Except that isn't really what the court, or the lawyers who brought the suits were really saying.  That was, as the "liberals" like to say, code.  They couldn't tell us what they were really up to, because the American people, would be up in arms.  If they were speaking honestly, here is what the lawyers' brief might have sounded like:

"Look, your honor, we Democrats have so mucked up the Great State of North Carolina, in the hundred years we were in control, that in all probability, the voters won't give us another chance for another hundred years.  But North Carolina has become a battleground State for National elections. We desperately need to win here to win for Hillary.  So, we need resurrect as many voters from the cemeteries as possible, and bring as many ringers in as possible, to skew the vote in our favor.  That's also, your honor, why we keep fighting the new voting districts.  Of course, our districts were also gerrymandered, and race was a factor, a fact we can't admit to in public.  Please, your honor, we can't get around the voters without your help, to get back in power and continue to ruin this great country."

But of course, the lawyers can't say that in open court, and the court has to couch the language of its ruling in politically correct tones, but it is racist to the core, and they should be ashamed.  All of the blacks I know earn a living and pay their own way just like the rest of us.  So maybe the Democrats should stop using poor blacks as an excuse, and maybe Democrats should stop being so racist, since there are more poor whites, and try lifting people up instead.  The first thing in lifting someone up is to set expectations high.  In this case, I don't think it is too much to expect each voter to prove who he or she is.  African Americans have as much to lose from diluting their votes as whites or Asians.

At least a Limerick evokes an honest belly laugh

There was a time when a gentleman read the Bible, could recite great poetry, could shoot a gun straight, and could diagnose and fix his own car.  There was a time when a gentleman was a man first, and reading, writing, and knowing both history and morality were a part of his education.  Great poetry, like music, speaks directly to the heart, and conveys great truths about ourselves, and humanity, that one can not get any other way.  So, it is with a certain amount of regret that I find modern poetry has fallen into such disrepute.  But more, I note that the times of a civilization's greatest works of poetry correlate with the times of a civilization's peak vigor.  Whether there is a causative relationship is for others to decide, but I find it disturbing that our arts have fallen on hard times, whether it is poetry, or painting, or drama.  It is as if a gold mine has played out, and the few remaining residents of the ghost town can only sit about and regale each other of stories of past glory.
  
Bruce Deitrick Price has a great article on the plight of modern poetry that I thought readers here might find interesting. He makes many of the same points I made in the post entitled the Like Everything Else It Destroys, the Left Murdered Art. Price's post is entitled The Plight of Poetry. Price writes with a clarity and a lucidity that I can only hope for, and of course, he is correct. A few quotes should give you the flavor, and I hope, encourage you to check out his blog:

Quick, name a famous living poet. I bet that 99.99% of Americans can’t do this. When I was a boy, they actually interrupted pop music on the radio to say that T. S. Eliot had died. Can you imagine this today? Once the lusty Queen of the arts, Poetry now seems dithering and irrelevant. What happened??

I will save you looking up when T. S. Eliot died by just telling you he died in 1965.

Fifty years ago we still had great and greatly famous poets. But after World War II, the universities swelled in number and size, and professors swelled with ambition. Poetry got kidnapped by publish-or-perish careerists (because universities count poems as “scholarly publications”). MFA programs claiming to teach the “craft” of poetry--never mind that it’s an art--sprouted like mushrooms. Dozens of little magazines, subsidized by university budgets and infused by academic hauteur, claimed to present true poetry. A small group (were there even a thousand of these people?) wrote, published, reviewed, praised, and gave awards to each other’s poems, all the while sniffing disdain at anything from outside their circle.

Robert Frost was also still alive when I was a student. William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and others were still alive, or recently deceased. Only a generation earlier, they had known in a similar way Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Brownings, Ezea Pound, and Walt Whitman, to name a few.

The great poets did not feel the need to reference other poets. Indeed, I suspect the modern habit of referencing other poets is to show that the writer of such poetry has read and studied these other poets. It is like a song about music; nice, but insipid.  But poetry wasn't always an effete and obscure affair, and didn't always mumble like a bad actor with poor enunciation.  Time was when poems, sang of great victories, and bitter defeats, of otherworldly loves, and star crossed lovers.  In short, poems, great poems inspired great thoughts:

Whereas McPoetry is usually tired and gauzy, great poetry is typically energetic and lucid. Opaque poetry? Unless it’s at the level of Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens, let’s not go there. (Billy Collins, a poet laureate, crafts his poems so they can be understood on a first reading; you can guess that McPoets hate this guy.) The language of great poems is generally intriguing on its own; but typically you fall through the language into the story or epiphany. No story or epiphany? Why write? And great poetry almost always gives you a grin or a chill, a sigh or a shudder. They’re emotional. McPoems tend to murmur faintly.

Who today writes with vigor and emotion? Our songwriters may be the exemplars. One of the pleasures of being in a Karaoke bar is to really study the lyrics on the screens, study them as if they are great poetry. Some are. You just know, if they published a book of Recent Poetry That Actually Made Somebody’s Heart Beat Faster, most of it would be by the Beatles and 50 other rock and rollers, Tin Pan Alley wordsmiths, blues and country singers, rappers, and other outcasts.

One finds better writing in a Limerick than in much of modern poetry. At least a Limerick evokes an honest belly laugh.