Posted on 10/18/2001 5:18:58 AM PDT by sendtoscott
I’ve already been accused by some of my newspaper readers of being a coward and a traitor because I can’t get too excited about the Endless War on Terrorism. So I might as well go for the gusto and say what I really think.
First, despite the truly grievous attacks on innocent people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, I still fear my own government far more than I fear Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaida network, and whatever foreign governments may have aided and abetted his terrorist plots. In my mind, the FBI is far more frightening than anthrax, and John Ashcroft isn’t much better than the Ebola virus.
Second, while America’s foreign policy – i.e., starving Iraqi children for 11 years because Washington no longer supports the dictator it helped prop up – doesn’t condone terrorism, it explains why some people are supportive of it.
Third, Americans have more to fear from the ideas expressed in a recent neoconservative tirade in The Weekly Standard than they do from the frothing U.S. flag-burners in Pakistan. Last week’s cover story, written by Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal, was titled, The Case for American Empire, and is something well beyond satire. Read it yourself for final proof that the neocons are insane.
Fourth, if I have to hear one more commentator prattle about America being targeted by bin Laden because of our nation’s freedoms, I am going to run into the streets of Santa Ana (where I work) yelling nasty things about our government. Don’t worry, no one will bother me given that English isn’t widely spoken around these parts.
As part of my quiet protest against the jingoism and war-mongering, most of my columns since the Sept. 11 attacks are dedicated to this proposition: America ain’t nearly as free as everyone seems to think it is.
On Sunday, I wrote about how the local children’s services agency has taken a young girl out of the care of her loving grandmother and placed her with a foster parent who, according to court records, owed $31,000 in back child support to his own kids, had a restraining order placed on him so he couldn’t see them, and was accused in a sworn statement of swimming nude with his foster children.
I was reminded that government bureaucrats can take anyone’s kids at any time for any reason, and they needn’t even tell the parent where the kid has been placed for 72 hours. Proceedings take place in a special kangaroo court where what the bureaucrats say is taken for gospel, and what parents and responsible adults say often is ignored. After my column ran, I’ve been inundated with calls from readers relaying similar tragic dealings with these agencies.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about eminent domain abuses. In California, most cities have what are called redevelopment agencies, whose officials can declare any residential or retail area as blighted, and then exert broad powers of eminent domain to take properties from owners and hand them over to big developers. The real goal isn’t blight removal, but the creation of new shopping centers and hotel complexes that bring in more tax revenues than the current residents or business owners bring in.
Cities are supposed to pay fair-market value for the properties they take, but they try to outright steal them by making lowball offers, backed by intimidating tactics worthy of the mafia. I wrote about how the city of Garden Grove took a thriving multimillion-dollar car rental business run by Korean immigrants, and offered them the whopping sum of $16,000 for the enterprise. Small entrepreneurs are routinely forced out of business by the government, and deprived of their livelihoods – making it difficult to find the resources needed to fight back in court. These aren’t anomalies, but everyday occurrences in California and other states.
In another column, I wrote about Catholic school boosters who raised funds and started building a privately funded school on one of the few sites zoned specifically for schools in San Juan Capistrano. Although the local public school district can legally build on most any piece of property zoned in most any way, the public school officials didn’t like the idea of competition. So once they saw the private school effort, they decided to try to use eminent domain to take the site for their own school.
These are just a handful of stories from one small, albeit rather loony, corner of America over the last few weeks. After each article was published, I received calls from other people telling about even more egregious incidents of government abuse. These include developers who have the total value of their property stolen from them after officials discover some endangered bug on the land, property owners who are forced to make their homes conform to bogus historical standards, a city that is forcing some privately owned motels to shut down because they cater to poor long-term residents rather than tourists, and lots and lots of unfair takings examples. Sometimes people are protected in the courts, but only after years of fighting.
We live in a land where the government taxes more than half your income, where officials can take your children or your property on a whim and leave you little recourse, where government agencies have complete power over what you can do on your own private property and when you can do it. Yet we’re supposed to be so proud of our free country that we go around the world liberating other people with our Tomahawk missiles. God bless America, my eye. God save it, is more like it.
I would prefer that we use all means necessary, including military force, to insist that they abide by the resolutions that were instituted at the end of the Gulf War. Why did we let them off the hook in the first place? I believe that we must finish the job.
That's right, I forgot you guys were opposed to government spending on education. Where do I start?
Your vision of shadetree education just doesn't cut it for an advanced society. Kids aren't often going to learn advanced subjects under the tutelage of their Mom and Dad. (I say this because we home-schooled our daugther until we realized we couldn't go any farther).
We wouldn't have the hospital, medicine, transportation, and quality scientific systems and environment we enjoy today. People who are able, come to the U.S. for serious medical problems, for example. It is the envy of the world. It must be awfully difficult for you to hold such positions in such a successful country. If we ever become a really lousy country, you might get more than your current .01% support.
Isn't it amazing then that we see so many examples of home schooled children with such superior academic achievement. Now studies are begining to appear reporting that these are not isolated cases but are typical of home schooled children. Of course, just for starters, parents home schooling their children put their childrens best interest first. The teachers unions and the Department of Education do not.
However - the system does allow people to become educated IF THEY WANT TO. The problem is all motivation in my opinion. A person can become an advanced scientist in the same system that others claim "failed" them.
The problem at home is what you should be working on. The "system" is much, much more capable in my opinion then you guys are willing to give it credit for.
You must have spent many, many years at one or more of the 'public' schools.
Your faith must be truly inspiring to your fellow snufflers at the public trough.
I have known many teachers and many students over a period of many years. From this empirical base of evidence, I have no difficulty concluding that the chief aim of state education is the social conditioning of the children under their control, and the chief means is the bounce-proof gubmint checkies thousands, nay millions, of workshy 'public servants' run to their bank with every month.
Go to DU, you socialist shyster!
I am familiar with the stats, and agree that they are accurate. And I support home schooling when a family has the ability and will to do so. But let's face it, there is a point in the education process where most parents cannot match 5 instructors with Masters or Phd.'s in five different fields. It seems very, very clear that institutions of learning are the only way to go. And the government makes sure they have MONEY.
Now, if you want to discuss improvements in the schools - yes - there are major problems. Teaching quality is a problem. Teacher unions are a problem. But the biggest problem is homes - trust me - I know this from first hand real world experience. For whatever reasons, a large percentage of parents aren't getting the job done with motivation etc. 50% of kids are dropping out in Florida now. That's mostly a home and a society problem, because the schools are sending a large percentage of the others on to University and professional careers.
That's why I think you guys are not addressing the biggest problem first. We all need to be focusing on the lack motivation of parents and children in about 1/2 of the homes in the country.
Yeah I did. I was brainwashed in math. I was brainwashed in Spanish. I was brainwashed in English - especially in the diagraming sentence chapter.
I do remember saying the Pledge of Allegiance everyday, however. I guess that's where they "got me".
Any or all of them would be a better choice than leaving it to the slime who make the decisions now. Any. Wendy Dennis in her "The Divorce From Hell" suggests flipping a coin. An even better choice. Just keep the children out of the hands of the jackboots.
Anyone who wants to see how the Government is worse than Anthrax should spend a few hours watching how the divorce industry works over innocent families. Rule: the more absolute the government monopoly over any industry, the worse it functions and the less it achieves its supposed goals. The government monopoly over the justice industry is absolute consequently any ressemblance between its workings and fairplay is purely coincidence.
Applause.
How can we get it up to 100%?
Secondly, you totally ignore the FACTS concerning public education. It is NOT public education, which has contributed to our success -- it IS the free market. Government does not create the need for skilled workers. The free market creates this demand.
Thirdly, all relative measures of education, show that the US lags greatly behind other industrialized nations, which further enforces my contention that government has less to do with our success, than our ability to foster a free market. That is to say, if it were "government education" as you believe, then we would be BEHIND the rest of the developed world in economic measures, relative to the lag in educational test result. We are not behind economically. We are in fact ahead because of the free market; NOT education.
Finally, all measures within the US show that private education (regardless of socio-economic status) is far, far superior to anything socialized education can muster.
There are many other facts I could post on this subject, but I fear you'd have a hard time dealing with FACTS. Socialist ALWAYS do.
If you are truly interested, then check out this link on the free market. In that site you will not ONLY find out how the free market has created our wealth, but you will also see the fallacy of your argument. You must maintain an open mind however.
Of course it is -- I mean, like, you know, they've been trying to "fix" education for years and years -- and you know what? Just like social security, it's STILL broken. Get a clue!
In 1991 when we were deciding to let Hussein survive or not we should've considered first and foremost the potential threat that he was given that he had an ongoing biological/chemical weapons research program that employed thousands of Russian scientists. We allowed an extremely dangerous enemy to survive and perhaps recover and then kill us simply because the elites in our nation were not really concerned about the American interest. We should admit that we failed to prevail over Hussein and leave him alone at this point as further harassment only has the potential to harm us severely and will do no good.
To even say publicly that the American interest should be our highest priority in international affairs is to identify yourself as an unacceptable person to the elites of our nation. The elites in our nation are drunk with power, they have contempt for the old American values of freedom and respect for property just as this article says. They lust after the power of a world-wide empire. Witness their efforts to dictate to poor nations in this world that if they're to participate in the world economy even as a trading partner, then they must allow American corporations into their nations to do what the people in those nations do not want. We should not attempt to dictate to these poor nations, if they don't want our corporations in them, then we shouldn't tell them that we won't trade with them. It is perfectly reasonable for us to trade with them without our corps in their country if that's what they prefer.
The author in this article is a bit extreme in some of his statements, but he's generally on the money with his complaints IMHO.
No, our Founding Fathers were winners, not "whinners."
And that's because they were not libertarians.
ROFLMHO!
They did not call themselves Libertarians, but they were far more Libertarian than they were of the Republican and Democratic persuasion.
Personally I don't care if they called themselves "Green Martians", as long as they support individual liberties.
The idea of the feds controlling vice is a relatively new creation -- one which had been advocated by many socialists and communists, but which was soundly rejected by our founding fathers and most politicians up until the early 1900's.
It is a fact that those who support the drug war are Socialists and Communists. We are a "collective" in their minds -- we are ripples in a pond and it takes a village of armed thugs to raise a child.
ONLY communists, fascists, and socialists advocate controlling people's peaceful private lives.
Marbury vs Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176, (1803)
"An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no right; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed."
Norton vs Shelby County118 US 425 p.442
"The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and the name of law, in in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it.
No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it."
16th American Jurisprudence 2d, Section 177 late 2nd, Section 256
If it is contrary to the Constitution it doesn't exist. PERIOD. This is not a war. PERIOD. The president can respond, but he cannot declare war.
Let's do this. I'll give $50.00, every other family in the country can put up $10.00. We will offer a reward for the perpretrators of the 9/11 attack. Somebody will want to be a millionaire! There's lots of ex-KGB guys that would like a new Dacha on the Moscow River, or Mafiosos, maybe you'd do it for a few hundred million! We can bring the troops home, save the Billions of Ferns (dollars) and nobody, except the perpretrators will suffer.
Boonie Rat
MACV SOCOM, PhuBai/Hue '65-'66
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