Free Republic

In his introduction to The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, the 1999 update of Ayn Rand’s early 1970s anthology originally titled The New Left, Peter Schwartz, the editor of the new edition, wrote: Primitive, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means: “Of or belonging to the first age, period or stage; pertaining to early times …” With respect to human development, primitivism is a pre-rational stage. It is a stage in which man lives in fearful awe of a universe he cannot understand. The primitive man does not grasp the law of causality. He does not comprehend the fact...

This will make you puke. Reading, writing and arithmetic are out – Communist indoctrination is in! The radical left is indoctrinating FIRST GRADERS in communist doctrine disguised as educational tools for first graders. The indoctrination is part of the Common Core curriculum for elementary students. Creating young radicals – one child at a time. Why wait until they’re in high school? They’re after the babies now. Via Utahns Against Common Core:

As I noted in a previous post (see here), the Diocese of Worcester has some sort of animus against men who feel called to the priesthood but who accept, promote and defend the Church's Magisterial teaching. There really is no denying this. Candidates such as Jonathan Joseph Slavinskas are entirely welcome within the diocese (see here), but I am not permitted to even apply as part of a discernment process. This is most unfortunate. Dr. Germain Grisez explains that, "Since the ordained priesthood and diaconate provide the necessary ministries of the word and sacraments to the whole Church, every member...

A couple of Michigan charter public schools are facing the harsh realities of being held accountable for performance. The Academy of Flint and Lansing's Learn, Live, and Lead Entrepreneurial Academy are being shut down, because their authorizers determined they are failing to meet their contractual obligations. The schools are closing for different reasons, but both highlight the extra level of accountability built-in to Michigan's public charter schools. According to MLive.com, Central Michigan University is not renewing the Academy of Flint’s charter because the school has failed to meet its prescribed student achievement goals. This is certainly unfortunate for the 400-some...

Michigan Education Association President Steve Cook blames the deficit problems at the Pontiac and Buena Vista school districts on a cut in state funding, according to a recent editorial he wrote for the Detroit Free Press. "The true culprit in these scenarios is state policy that puts business tax cuts ahead of our kids and leads to massive underfunding of public education in Michigan," Cook wrote. But total spending and recent contract agreements suggest that the fiscal problems for those two districts can be laid at the feet of the local school boards and unions. In Pontiac, the district spends...

WHAT'S AN INFIDEL ? The author, Rick Mathes, is a well-known leader in prison ministry. The man who walks with God always gets to his destination. If you have a pulse you have a purpose. The Muslim religion is the fastest growing religion per capita in the United States , especially in the minority races. Last month I attended my annual training session that's required for maintaining my state prison security clearance. During the training session there was a presentation by three speakers representing the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faiths, who each explained their beliefs. I was particularly interested...

Perhaps the best thing state legislators could do for Michigan moms would be to allow more educational options for children — at least according to the latest poll from the Friedman Foundation. Mothers polled supported all varieties of school choice, including providing students with resources to attend public, private or religious schools. Mothers of school-age children were surveyed by phone and asked whether they supported specific school choice programs. Nearly 70 percent of moms said that they support tax credit scholarships for students. When asked about school vouchers, 66 percent of surveyed moms said that they supported them, with just...

Guns are Tightly Controlled, but The U.S. Virgin Islands has one of the Highest Homicide Rates in the WorldNot counted as a state or a city, the U.S. Virgin Islands is often missed in statistics about gun control in the United States. Gun ownership is tightly regulated, with permission to own a gun only granted by the Police Commissioner upon application, and subject to the Commissioner's discretion. Even antique firearms, which are not regulated under U.S. Federal law, are not allowed unless they are inspected and "rendered useless". 476. Collections of antique firearms; certificates of uselessness. No provision hereof...

Do those who want the Boy Scouts to allow openly homosexual boys to participate understand why it's the Boy Scouts rather than the Boy and Girl Scouts? Do they think boys and girls should share tents on camp outs? Male homosexuals claim they look at other males the way males look at females. If that is true than they sometimes look at other males as potential sexual conquests. They sometimes invade the sexual privacy of other males by imaging sexual contact with them. I don't know if the claim is true or not. I only know that scientific research indicates...

It’s safe to say not too many zeroes are handed out to students who have actually completed their assignment and have handed it in. Most flat-line marks are due to, as seen in the Dorval case, required work the student failed to do. If there is nothing to grade, it stands to reason no grade is given.

Though the Highland Park School District spent $19,634 per pupil in 2010-11, which was the highest in the state, district schools were so mismanaged that they had rodents in the classrooms, holes in the ceilings and walls, and horrendous filth in the bathrooms. "I [saw] it in the media center," DeCarlos, a junior at Highland Park Community High School, said of a mouse he saw running along the floor from a nearby room. He wasn't alone. "It was terrible," said Delshon, a senior at HPCHS. "We had to worry if something was going to crawl on us; worry if the...

A new set of rules imposed on educational institutions by the US Departments of Justice and Education threaten to make every student vulnerable to charges of sexual harassment. The new rules condemn “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” Examples of offenses include Joe asks Sue for a date. Sue regards this request as unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. Mike overhears two classmates privately denigrating homosexual behavior. Mike regards this as unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. Persons engaged in this unwelcome conduct are liable to be penalized. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan acknowledged that “such a broad...

The feast of Pentecost is the celebration of one of the most important moments in church history. It commemorates the day when, after the Resurrection of the Lord, the Holy Spirit gave the Faithful a special ability to speak to crowds of different nationalities in their own languages. Now, we don’t know exactly what happened that day – whether the Apostles instantly learned other languages, or their audiences instantly learned to hear them in their heads as if they had. All we know is that the leaders of the Church were suddenly, miraculously, able to reach people, and this was...

You know what the IRS is really great at? Breaking its own laws. In addition to targeting conservative groups, the corrupt government agency has also been singling out disabled veterans. They do this by using banks to launder and then stealing the veterans’ disability checks. Shameful. The Veterans Disability Act of 2010 exempts VA disability from withholding of any sort. But the IRS has been stealing disabled veterans’ money anyways. Kevin Lake is a 60% disabled veteran of the Iraq War. A few months ago, he noticed that his VA disability check had not been deposited, and that his bank...

West Ottawa Public Schools teacher Dan Dennis bemoans “life in a right-to-work state” in a story in the recent issue of the Michigan Education Association magazine. In the story, Dennis wrote about how in 1999 he went from making $40,000 a year in Michigan to $30,000 a year when he moved to and taught at a high school in North Carolina, which already was a right-to-work state. Dennis lamented in the story about the cost of living, which he said was slightly higher in North Carolina and complained about not having an all-encompassing health care plan. He wrote: I was...

An appeals court ruling that school districts can no longer automatically withdraw union dues from paychecks will be "devastating" to the Michigan Education Association, said a union president whose teachers left the MEA to start a local union. "They will have to recalculate their loss projections," said James Perialas, president of the Roscommon Teachers Association, which decertified from the MEA last year. "Most union members don't think twice about paying their dues because with payroll deduct options they don't even receive the amount they are paying — it's taken out before they get it. With this decision, members will receive...

The Buena Vista School District saw an alarming drop in enrollment in 2010-2011. The fall head count had 888 students while the spring count just a few months later had 773, a 13 percent drop. At that time, the Saginaw County district was $51,593 in debt, the first time it had overspent in years, according to the Michigan Department of Education. Nonetheless, in June 2011 — in the midst of red ink and falling enrollment — the Buena Vista Education Association and the school board agreed to a three-year union contract deal that continued the practice of taxpayers paying 100...

SNIPPET: "A genuinely inspiring issue of AQAP's flagship English language publication. This is what pages 1, 2, & 3 look like:" SNIPPET: "The remaining pages were rendered intentionally blank by person or persons unknown."

If right-to-carry concealed carry laws are deemed so dangerous by gun control proponents, letting anyone who is not a criminal carry a gun with no other regulations should be really bad, right? Well, on June 9th, if Illinois hasn't adopted a concealed handgun law by that point in time, it will be legal to carry a concealed handgun in Union county and probably effectively in the rest of the state. The problem for gun control advocates is the same as it is each time that states pass right-to-carry laws: they have made predictions about impending disaster that never occur. In...

A fourth-grade student in Henderson County (corrected since original post) received the following worksheet, which qualifies as an “informational text” under the Common Core State Standards:

When it’s “public health,” lead by meddling doctors: To pediatricians, gun control is a public health issue, not a political one. But they’re treading a fine line, and they know it.The American Academy of Pediatrics has begun a renewed push to try to get Congress to pass gun control measures, sending more than 100 pediatricians to Capitol Hill earlier this month. Gun control is always political. Doctors should focus on healing patience, not butting their noses in where they don’t belong. Miller’s done research on gun deaths using what CDC data he could get — dating from before Congress cut its funding.He divided...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced that households continued to improve their finances during the first three months of 2013 (for the most part). Outstanding household debt declined approximately $110 billion from the previous quarter, due in large part to a reduction in housing-related debt and credit card balances. Meanwhile, delinquency rates for each form of household debt declined, with about 8.1% of outstanding debt in some stage of delinquency, compared with 8.6% the previous quarter. Here is the report: DistrictReport_Q12013 Mortgages, the largest component of household debt, fell in the first quarter of 2013. Mortgage balances shown...

Before explaining why conservative groups seem to have been targeted by the IRS, an agency official explained to congressmen why colleges and universities got a pass on taxes that they did owe. “On April 25, 2013, the IRS released the final report of its Colleges and Universities Compliance Project. Based on responses to a questionnaire distributed to over 400 tax-exempt colleges and universities, the IRS audited a sample of 34 colleges and universities identified as at risk for noncompliance,” the U. S. House Ways and Means Committee revealed on May 1, 2013. “The report focused on compliance rates among colleges...

The Pentagon held internal talks on declassifying sensitive missile defense technology that it plans to share with Russia as part of the Obama administration’s efforts to assuage Moscow’s opposition to European defenses. Republicans in both the House and Senate plan to block any technology declassification for missile defense technology in the current defense authorization bill and other legislation. Legislative mark up on the authorization bill begins this week. Critics say giving Russia classified data would undermine the effectiveness of missile defenses, which have cost taxpayers more than $100 billion since the 1980s. Vice Adm. James Syring, director of the Pentagon’s...

“A Dude From The Rainy Left Coast” asks if I would prefer to live in a world with no gun controls or one with reasonable gun controls, and why. We had a world with no gun controls, once. A world in which you could hop a coastwise trader in New Orleans, and get off in any port north of Guyana. With your life preserver hanging on your belt, and without as much as a raised eyebrow from anyone. A world where wide areas of the world had four or five murders a year for every million population. Most as a...

By an overwhelming two-to-one vote of 76-38, the North Carolina state House passed a bill allowing permitted concealed handguns on college campuses.  As with other states, private universities will be allowed to post signs that ban permitted concealed handguns.  Disappointingly, it would also not allow concealed handguns in classes, which means it would ban guns to and from student's cars.  With 44 Democrats in the state House, not even all the Democrats voted against the bill.  From WRAL television: State House lawmakers voted late Monday night to allow concealed weapons on college campuses, state property, greenways, bike trails, at sporting...

Common Core is an educational curriculum being forced upon the states by the Obama administration, which is scheduled to be mostly implemented this year in the 45 states that have adopted it. Common Core eliminates local control over K-12 curriculum in math and English, instead imposing a one-size-fits-all, top-down curriculum that will also apply to private schools and homeschoolers. Common Core was has been promoted in a manner that sounds good and commendable – “States working together to create national standards for education… standards that are designed to be robust and relevant in the real world.” Common Core describes itself...

This Tuesday, May 14, the Education Committee is taking up the major pro-family (and anti-family) bills affecting public school curriculum and programs. On one side is the Planned Parenthood and homosexual lobby that wants to push more of their skewed materials and make the "health curriculum" (as they define it) a legal requirement. On the other side is MassResistance and pro-family allies who want to stop this and give parents the control. At issue is the current Parental Notification Law (Ch. 71 Sec 32A). This law was written by MassResistance (known at that time as Parents' Rights Coalition) wrote, and...

This post is based in large part on an article titled Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally IllIs there a current tendency to consider those who cherish and seek to preserve our rights, including those under the First and Second Amendments, mentally ill for that reason? Interesting for the focused question it poses directly, the article should raise broader but similar questions about the current nature of academia in general. I have had no direct contact with academia since my years in undergraduate school (1959 - 63) and in law school (1963 - 66). "Back in the good old days," we were encouraged...

Here is an excellent YouTube video by Bill Whittle of PJTV Afterburner.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7BSgwtNNS8?feature=player_detailpage] video linkMr. Whittle makes quite valid points and we -- as well as the Grand Obsolete Party (GOP) -- should take them (and him) seriously. Will the GOP do so, or simply continue doing more of what hasn't worked and won't work again? I expect the latter but would very much like to be pleasantly surprised. Tip of the hat to Geneb527.

Someone stopped by searching for “gun use in self defense.” They did not find it where they were sent, because firing a gun in self defense is not the same thing as crimes prevented by a gun. Since most crimes prevented by the presence or the possible presence of a gun are only known to the perpetrator, the place to start is with criminals. Who are hard to pin down unless they are already in prison. From the standpoint of an inmate being surveyed on how often he, or sometimes she, committed a crime, how they selected victims and so...

Stonewall Jackson was shot by one of his own men at about 9:00 p.m. on the evening of May 2, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville. After Jackson’s accidental wounding, his body servant and friend, Jim Lewis was one of his constant companions and comforters as he faced his final enemy. By 2:00 a.m., May 3, Jackson was . . .

‘Serious intellectual & mental problems’: Another USC prof caught on video slamming Bush, berating conservatives By Oliver Darcy and Josiah Ryan, on May 07, 2013 A second professor at the University of Southern California (USC) has been caught on video using his political science class as a platform for bashing conservatives. In the video, Political Science Professor Richard Dekmejian claims former President George W. Bush suffered from mental instability and stupidity during his time in office. Bush was bound by “serious intellectual and mental problems,” he said before going on to claim Bush must have been “stupid or lying”...

Some students at Evergreen Middle School got a very one-sided presentation (according to multiple reports from parents) on energy on Friday, May 3, watching a live “What the Frack” rap that told students natural gas and coal “poisoned the water, poisoned the air, poisoned the people, do you think that’s fair?” The rap was delivered by a pair of children who call themselves “Earth Guardians.” (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Full version at the end of the post. CompleteColorado.com has been investigating this matter since Tuesday. We are aware that numerous parents made complaints to the principal, Kristopher Schuh. Schuh sent the following response...

Mixed in with the multi-pronged attack Progressives are staging on society is their takeover of our education system. As America battles with left-wing ‘educators’ and their agenda of indoctrination, Canada’s school system finds itself deeply ensconced in the New Age muck. Canadians know the tribulations of one Jessie Sansone, the Ontario father who unexpectedly found himself in handcuffs when he tried to pick his daughter up from school. His home was ransacked by cops, his child taken away by Protective Services, his wife interrogated, all for an inexcusable crime: his daughter drew a gun in class. The fallout caused even...

(snip) "The Founders left us the keys to a system of self-government," he went on, "the tool to do big and important things together that we could not possibly do alone." And what "big and important things" cannot be done except through government? On the president's list are railroads, the electrical grid, highways, education, health care, charity and more. One imagines a historical vision reaching as far back as the New Deal. Americans "chose to do these things together," he added, "because we know this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition."Notice...

You may have missed it this weekend, but President Obama gave the commencement address at Ohio State. Here’s the memorable line: PRESIDENT OBAMA: Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems…They’ll warn that tyranny’s always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted. That’s interesting, because the people who actually began this “brave...

School boards are sometimes held as shining examples of democracy at its finest — where constituents’ and children’s best interests are truly represented. This is in contrast to the simplistic narrative of what happens in Lansing and Washington, D.C., where rich lobbyists and power-hungry politicians rule the day. A recent story from a mid-sized Michigan school district, however, demonstrates that even at the local level, political self-interest can and does drive decision-making. The Oakland Press reported that the board of the Brandon School District decided to demolish a vacant school to prevent a local group of residents from buying the...

He calls the new President of the NRA, Jim Porter, "bats**t crazy" due, ostensibly, to his referring to the War for Southern Independence (aka, the Civil War, aka the War Between the States) as "the War of Northern Aggression." Really? That term is used tongue-in-cheek at just about every non-academic WBTS event I attend - Civil War Roundtables, Reenactments, SCV meetings, etc, etc. Big deal.

Heresy: An Introduction to Combat Riflecraft (The following article is the first in a series that will discuss the Combat Rifle POI as I teach it.) –J.M.) “Shattering illusions, and crushing misconceptions…It’s just what I do.” –Me, to my mother-in-law recently. The purpose of the combat rifle is to allow the combat rifleman to engage and kill, directly or indirectly, armed enemy combatants with precision aimed rifle fire. The rifleman’s ability with his weapon is one of the most fundamental measures of his effectiveness and survivability in combat. If the expects to function effectively in combat, he must be both willing to, and...

SNIPPET: "A new report called "The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society" from the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life has found that the majority of the 38,000 Muslims surveyed in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa favor the implementation of sharia law, among other things. The report incorporates results from a two-stage survey: 15 sub-Saharan African countries with substantial Muslim populations were surveyed in 2008-2009; and 24 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa were surveyed in 2011-2012. Those hoping for the development of peaceful democratic societies in Muslim-majority countries may be dismayed...

Many things are possible between now and 2016. Will Dr. Carson become our next President? I hope so. This post at Dancing Czars called to my attention an interview with Dr. Carson. It seemed that it might help to pull my spirits out of the pit where they had been trying to survive since last November so I watched. It did.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onhpqWsneAo?feature=player_detailpage] Video linkI also noticed this new video at PJTV and also found it on YouTube. Presented largely by Bill Whittle, it covers some of the same ground but is no less inspiring. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWsqghorkog?feature=player_detailpage] Video linkOur presidential choices...

It has been clear for decades that those who wish to restore Second Amendment rights have the facts on their side. Note this comment by NOFAN in Crosscut, an apparently left-leaning publication in Washington State. What is obvious is something that I have observed repeatedly: If an honest person looks at the facts about "gun control" they either become neutral or pro-Second Amendment. A person cannot be anti-Second Amendment, informed, and honest, all at the same time, unless they become an honest totalitarian, which is self-defeating and therefore, inconsequential. Of course, as George Orwell noted, statists are particularly good at...

A group of charter public school advocates, private-sector business people and state employees have been meeting to come up with ideas on how to provide better public education at a lower cost through technology and competition. The group hopes to provide a “value school” model costing about $5,000 per pupil, reports The Detroit News, which broke the story. If it works, this would mean an education at substantially less than the $13,000 school districts receive now in per-student revenue or even the roughly $7,000 per pupil they receive strictly from the state. Most of the criticism of the program has...

Friday, May 03, 2013 "The Golden Apple" - A Socialist Fairy Tale Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 0 Comments Once upon a time there was a street fair. It had striped awnings and bright colors and from far and near, farmers came with wagons full of produce to sell at the street fair. The produce was plentiful and cheap and the crowds it drew were huge which created all sorts of concerns for the government. So the government created a Ministry of Street Fairs which it funded by taxing the produce sold at the fair. At...

Today is now officially “Loyalty Day”, where all of the tax slaves of the United States can celebrate their obedience to government. In recent memory Mayday is associated with workers protests and things of that nature, but it is important to remember that people in various culture have been celebrating Mayday for most of recorded history. Far before the middle ages, pagan cultures in Europe would celebrate mayday, and even they drew their traditions from older astrotheological cultures. This point on our calender now means many different things to many different people, and now you can add another one to...

During a law school debate on April 15, New York University professor of social and cultural analysis Judith Stacey argued against the nuclear family and monogamous relationships, and for decriminalizing polygamy. The debate, sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society and between Ms. Stacey and the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Ryan T. Anderson, was on “the defense of marriage.” Among Ms. Stacey’s wicked smart musings: “I say why should there be marriage at all;” “What should limit it to two and why should it be monogamous? Nothing in view gives the state that particular interest;” and “So I would agree that we...

Michigan legislators are considering a bill to rework the school pension underfunding problem but the legislation will do nothing to stop the state from continuing to improperly fund the system. Indeed, the bill represents just another pension gimmick, and a harmful one at that. Lawmakers should instead consider real pension reform. House Bill 4190 would change the way that the state apportions the costs of catching up on years of school pension system underfunding. The $22.4 billion gap between what has set aside to cover future employee retirement benefits and what the system expects to pay out in pensions must...

Here's the question: why wasn't this woman ID'ed when she went into the school and took this little 5-year-old girl? Because she was wearing a burka? Even children are sacrificed in deference to Islam. We see it in Boston media coverage as well. The excuses, the fawning, the "poor wittle jihadis" that blew mothers and children to bits on the streets of Boston. Has America lost her soul? "Philadelphia woman charged with kidnapping girl from school, raping her" CNN, April 30, 2013 (hat tip Pressbox) Philadelphia (CNN) -- A Philadelphia woman was indicted this week, accused of abducting a 5-year-old...

As Bill Clinton might put it, it’s in the math. In the lead up to the November 6 election last fall, CalWatchDog.com ran several articles on Proposition 30 and pensions. We warned that the $7 billion tax increase would go not to schools, as advertised by Gov. Jerry Brown and others in TV ads, but to teacher pensions and other spending. I’ll quote some below. The news now is that this is exactly what is happening. David Crane, a Democrat who was a budget adviser to Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has the facts in a Bloomberg article: “Most Californians would...