I'm impressed.

DePaul’s “1984” Moment
By Nicholas G. Hahn III

If you were to tour DePaul University’s campus asking students about free speech, you would notice the hesitation in their answers. For the past couple of years, the DePaul administration has earned a reputation as a foe of controversial ideas, especially those that offend or challenge the status quo. This has tarnished DePaul’s academic standing as a quality institution. To remedy this problem, President Rev. Dennis Holtschneider created a Free Speech and Expression Task Force and charged it with creating a policy for free speech that would hopefully rebuff any claims that DePaul isn’t a friend of the free marketplace of ideas.


I was appointed to this Task Force as the only conservative, in part because my student organization, the DePaul Conservative Alliance, tested the limits of free speech on this sensitive, politically correct campus, a number of times. Many of the Alliance’s events, such as an Affirmative Action bake sale which was shut down by the administration, provoked questions as to whether the University sufficiently allowed all ideas to be heard.


When the Task Force met, we thankfully opted not to create speech codes. Instead we drafted a document called Guiding Principles of Free Speech and Expression. The language of the draft document seemed to open the doors of the University to all ideas––as it should have. It respected “open discourse and robust debate” and at the same time remained “open to a broad range of ideas and opinions” as a way to “create the best conditions for discovering the truth.” Most importantly, it was not patronizing and it respected the “right of listeners to respond with their own expression, or choose to turn away.”


Before releasing the document to the University community, however, the Task Force wanted to hear preliminary feedback on its work. The President’s Diversity Council––a bureaucracy that oversees racial correctness on campus––jumped at the opportunity to tell us our Principles were worthless because no “person of color” was involved in drafting the document. The bullying worked. We decided to add members to our Task Force who were “of color” so we could head-off any future run-ins with the Diversity Council.


Our new members promptly argued for a serious departure from the model of free speech the Task Force had previously drafted, and just as quickly succeeded in their efforts. I was witness to the undoing of our Principles and the idea of a university itself. I was told that skin color mattered more than ideas in a discussion concerning free speech, and that ideas which offended persons of color “silenced” them and thus curtailed their free speech. I was told that the word “truth” is “offensive” and would “alienate” members of the DePaul community. The idea that human dignity is “God-given” was too “excluding.” Those who are excluded or “marginalized” should be given a “third option” to express their feelings because they may feel uncomfortable “speaking in a public forum or not satisfied with walking away.”


A university, in other words, should make everyone feel as comfortable as possible, perhaps a return to the Haight-Ashbury experience these professors miss dearly––no disagreement, no argument, no reasoning, no thinking, no responsibility. Their concept of “free speech” is meant to “protect those without power.” This model of free speech, of course, is not free at all. It is an ideological weapon which is regularly used to further the diversity agenda. A model of “free speech” which involves controlling speech in order to correct perceived injustices of the past is Orwellian to say the least.


Last week, in an article published here on FrontPageMag, I told this story of how the high priests of diversity rejected truth and God at what is billed as the “Largest Catholic University in America.” My article was published as the Task Force released its Guiding Principles of Free Speech and Expression, now scrubbed clean of anything “offensive.” In a university-wide email, the Task Force told students, faculty, and staff that it was “actively gathering input on the draft Guiding Principles from the broadest possible spectrum of voices within the university community.” I chose to publish my input on FrontPageMag.com.


As soon as my article appeared, the Diversity Council held a meeting with the president of the University and the Task Force. They demanded that something be done about the troublemaker, namely me. I pointed out that there had been no confidentiality agreement and the Guiding Principles had already been released. But they argued that members would no longer feel comfortable participating out of fear that whatever they say may be published. It was apparently inappropriate for me to hold these individuals accountable for their ideas. I could have been given a warning not to publish anything in the future without consent of the Task Force, which would have protected their sensibilities. But just as the race card helped to derail the Guiding Principles themselves, so now it sealed my fate. I ought to be ashamed, they told me, because the members of the Task Force named in my article were people of color. In other words, people of color are above criticism and my concern for free speech and the betrayal of its principles was essentially racist.


For President Holtschneider this was all he needed to hear. Each and every time an incident like this occurs, the administration buckles to the pressure of the diversity agenda; this time was no exception. Under apparent duress from the Diversity Council, I was informed that I would no longer be welcome on the Free Speech and Expression Task Force. So much for free speech.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/NicholasGHahnIII

Is that lying douchebag posting rightwing trash without a link again?

thanks Nome I will be looking for him at townhall from now on.

Finkelstein v. Dershowitz debate, Part 1

Finkelstein v. Dershowitz debate, Part 2

What are they debating?

Stuff.

Hmmmm....

Sad (hardly an adequate word) to know the US is not alone in failure to teach the history of our nation to its citizens.

An article from The Daily Mail in the UK says a survey of 3000 Britons reveals a quarter of them are sure that Sir Winston Churchill, Richard The Lionhearted, Field Marshall Montgomery, Florence Nightingale, the Duke of Wellington, and Charles Dickens were fiction (along with a few foreigners such as Cleopatra, Mahatma Ghandi, and Queen Boadicea), made up for movies and TV. Worse yet, Robin Hood, Biggles, Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur, Eleanor Rigby, and The Three Musketeers were believed to have been real.

We have only ourselves (on both sides of the Atlantic) to blame.

My Unsolicited Thoughts on N.C. State

Townhall.com

By Mike S. Adams

Monday, February 4, 2008

Recently, North Carolina State University celebrated the opening of its new Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) Center. Located on the first floor of the Talley Student Center, it is supposed to focus on “educating” the university community and serving as a “support system” for people of different “sexual orientations” and “gender identities.” This is presumably because GLBT people (whom I refer to as Gilberts) are emotionally fragile and need psychological support and constant affirmation by straight liberals.

Dr. Jose Picart, NC State's vice provost for diversity and African-American affairs, recently admitted that diversity is not always “harmonious.” So, he – just like other supporters of the GLBTs - is trying to force something on the university that does not come naturally. I think that’s a pretty appropriate philosophy given that the gay rights movement really is about forcing things that are not natural.

Dr. Deb Luckadoo, director of NC State's Campus Activities unit, and Justine Hollingshead, director of the GLBT Center, will be in charge of scheduling activities for the new center. Among those activities will be a "brown bag" lunch on the last Thursday of each month. Among those topics will be the creation of “transgender awareness” as well as the creation of GLBT "allies" - those people who are more than just “tolerant” of Gilberts. Allies will be accepting of Gilberts, too.

Dr. Luckadoo says that the center also plans to invite speakers who focus on combating hate and discrimination. One such event will be the showing of "Journey to a Hate-Free Millennium," a nationally recognized documentary. The showing will be followed by a facilitated discussion. I plan to drive up to Raleigh for that discussion on Feb. 18 at 7 p.m.

When I arrive at NC State on the 18th of February, I will have some pointed questions for Dr. Luckadoo. Most of those questions will focus on NC State’s policies towards Christians wishing to share the Gospel on the public university campus.

Last semester, Dr. Luckadoo approached two pastors who were handing out Biblical literature on campus and asked them to stop. She said they needed a permit in order to engage in solicitation. One of the pastors pointed out that they were not “soliciting” anything. They were simply handing out something free of charge.

Luckadoo responded to the common-sense retort by saying that the pastors were “soliciting thoughts” and, therefore, would need to confine their activities to certain areas and to obtain a proper permit in advance. I would argue that the pastors were engaging in protected First Amendment religious expression which, when not otherwise disruptive, should be free from government intrusion, especially on a public university campus.

Dr. Luckadoo recently referred to GLBT Center programs as a “support system” that “benefits everybody” at NC State. But certainly she must be aware that many in the NC State community disapprove of the new GLBT Center. Indeed, numerous Wolfpack alums sent me information from the NC State website when the Center’s opening was announced. To my knowledge, all who did so were Christians who were understandably upset about the use of tax dollars to teach people to be “allies” who are more than just “tolerant” of Gilberts.

Besides managing the GLBT Center, Justine Hollingshead will conduct diversity training across campus. Perhaps at her next session, she could mention that the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion predates the constitutional right to sodomy found in the … say, which Amendment was that based upon?

The fact that Justine Hollingshead founded the university's "Project SAFE" program - which has already trained more than 300 faculty, staff and students to be GLBT allies – shows something rather obvious: NC State does not need a Gilbert Center in order to teach the masses that the Old and New Testaments are both wrong about homosexuality.

Nor is there any evidence that Gilberts are being harassed in any significant way. But the same cannot be said about Christians wanting to share the Gospel at NC State. They are running into troubles that should be addressed if Justine Hollingshead was at all serious when she said "Creating a place that is a safe, non-judgmental environment for all people - including members of the GLBT community - is one of the university's priorities." I read that quote from the university website so I guess she must have been serious.

Many of my friends want to see the new GLBT center abolished. But I disagree. At NC State University, we should allow the gay community to have its own resource center. But, in exchange, we should demand that the administration rescind speech zone and permit policies that have been used disproportionately against Christians sharing the Gospel.

In a free and open marketplace of ideas, we can best show Wolfpack students the truth of the Christian message via its juxtaposition with the falsity of moral relativism.



Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts "Womyn" On Campus.

Be the first to read Mike Adams' column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox.

Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=85989

Why not have all the boys to just sit to pee and no one will know the difference!



Blister his ass and send him to school and tell him to shut the hell up!

What a crock!

Teaching Young People to Hate America First............


Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa
Advocate of Hawaii’s independence from the U.S., and of the state’s deportation of all non-ethnic Hawaiians
“The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.”

Haunani-Kay Trask is Professor of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii. She was born in San Francisco in 1949 and received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1981. Her thesis was on “The Promise of Feminism.”

Although lacking any scholarly publications, Trask is a well-known “Hawaiian activist” and poet, the author of works like “Racist White Woman,” which reads:

Racist White Woman
I could kick
Your face, puncture
Both eyes.
You deserve this kind
Of violence.
No more vicious
Tongues, obscene
Lies.
Just a knife
Slitting your tight
Little heart.
For all my people
Under your feet
For all those years
Lived smug and wealthy
Off our land
Parasite arrogant
A fist
In your painted
Mouth, thick
With money
And piety.

Trask contends that the Hawaiian people have been subjugated by the “racist, colonialist United States of colonial America.” She insists that “disease-laden racists ... took our government and imprisoned our queen” and continue to forcibly subjugate Hawaii through military occupation and institutionalized racism.

At a January 1993 protest rally commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of Hawaii’s monarchy, Trask explained: “Hawaii is presently a colony of the United States, not because we Hawaiians chose that status, but because the American government overthrew our Hawaiian government in 1883 [the actual year was 1893], and forcibly annexed our islands in 1898. With the overthrow, things Hawaiian were outlawed and things haole [derogatory word for ‘white’] American were imposed.”

In the same speech, Trask expressed her view that white people are irredeemable racists who share the “common characteristic” of “not understand[ing] racism at all.” She elaborated: “Racism is a system of power in which one racially-identified group dominates and exploits another racially-identified group for the advantage of the dominating group.... That’s what the so-called ‘founding fathers’ of the United States intended, and that’s how American society operates today.... The hatred and fear people of color have of white people is based on that ugly history.” Finally she declared, “I am NOT an American. I will DIE before I am an American.” (emphasis in original)

Professor Trask is part of a movement of Hawaiian ethnic nationalists and racial separatists who seek to establish a system of Hawaiian racial supremacy. They contend that Hawaiians are indigenous people who are entitled to political and economic supremacy over all the non-indigenous inhabitants of their islands.

Trask’s view of September 11 accords with that of Ward Churchill, who received a warm welcome from Trask and her colleagues when he visited the University of Hawaii campus at the height of the controversy he had recently ignited (with his assertion that the 9/11 attacks were America's "chickens coming home to roost," and that the victims who had perished in the World Trade Center were "little Eichmanns" who deserved their awful fate).

Apropos the 9/11 attacks, Trask said: “Chickens have come home to roost.... What it means is that those who have suffered under the imperialism and militarism of the United States have come back to haunt in the 21st century that same government.... Why should we support the United States, whose hands are soaked with blood?... We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.”

Children's Book About Same-Sex Penguin Couple Causes Flap in Virginia

FOX News, by Staff

2/18/2008 2:32:08 PM

LEESBURG, Va. — A children's book about two male penguins that hatch a chick together has been pulled from school library shelves in Loudoun County, Virginia. Parents complained that the book has a gay agenda and have called for its removal. But supporters say the book's removal is censorship. The decision by Superintendent Edgar Hatrick is being criticized by many parents and gay rights advocates.

Yes what a crock LP> Liberalisms impact on Education.........................


TransYouth Family Advocates
National Center for Transgender Equality


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9NEWS is not responsible for content on any 3rd party website


Boy wants to return to school as a girl. 9NEWS at 5 p.m. 02/07/08

HIGHLANDS RANCH – The issue of being transgender usually pops up with students in high school. However, a 2nd grade biological boy wants to dress as a girl and be addressed with a girl's name.


"As a public school system, our calling is to educate all kids no matter where they come from, what their background is, beliefs, values, it doesn't matter," said Whei Wong, Douglas County Schools spokesperson.

Wong says the staff at one of Douglas County's schools is preparing to accommodate the student and answer questions other students might have. In order to protect the child as much as possible, 9NEWS has chosen not to reveal his school or other names that might identify the child.

"I see this as being a very difficult situation to explain to my daughter to explain why someone would not want to be the gender they were born with," said Dave M.

His daughter will be in the same class as the student.

The student had attended this same school in years prior, but had left to go to classes in another district for about two years. The transgender student will be returning to what is the child's home school. Dave M. thinks classmates will recognize the change.

"I do think that there's going to be an acknowledgement that 'Why are you in a dress this year when you were in pants last year?'" said Dave M.

Wong says teachers are planning to address the student by name instead of using he or she. The child will not use the regular boys or girls bathroom. Instead, two unisex bathrooms in the building will be made available. The school is handing out packets to parents who have questions. The packets contain information about people who are transgender.

"I think it is unusual," said Wong. "It's something we haven't had discussions about before. It's something that we haven't maybe really had to think about before, but now we will."

Family Therapist Larry Curry hopes the child and the child's parents are seeing a counselor just to be safe.

"I am very concerned because with the guidelines in place, this is a very early age," said Curry. "I don't know too many parents who are equipped to answer that kind of question or deal with it without some other support."

Kim Pearson says the family is getting support. She is the executive director of a national organization called TransYouth Family Advocates. The group has been working with the family and Douglas County Schools.

"Initially there was a lot of resistance," said Pearson. "Now, their position is they want this child to be safe in their school."

Pearson says their group is working with an increasing number of families nationwide who have elementary age transgender kids.

"We know that families are more comfortable talking about this," she said. "There was no place for parents to go."

Pearson says children as young as 5 years old are realizing their true gender identity and her group wants to help parents who may be resisting the acceptance of this.

"Parents are likely to think this it's a phase, but how long do phases last?" said Pearson. "With these kids, it's something that's very consistent."

That thought is not comforting to Dave M., who believes his daughter is not ready to think about the issue of being transgender.

"I don't think a (2nd) grader does have the rationale to decide this life-altering choice," said Dave M.

He is also unhappy with the way the school is handling this. The district has been preparing for the child's return to this school for months. Dave M. thinks other parents should have been made aware of this sooner.

"I just find it ironic that they can dictate the dress style of children to make sure they don't wear inappropriate clothing, but they have no controls in place for someone wearing transgender clothing," said Dave M.

Curry says parents like Dave M. should not bring the issue up to their students until they ask. However, he says parents should be ready to answer tough questions from the student's fellow third graders.

"I think reassuring them and letting them know that they'll be alright. Their classmate is alright," said Curry. "This is something their classmate has chosen to do. It is not contagious."

Pearson says the most important thing is to make sure the transgender student does not become the target of bullying or verbal abuse which can lead to suicide.

"These children are at high-risk," said Pearson. "Our number one goal is to keep kids safe."

Wong says mental health professionals will be available if students, staff, or parents have any concerns at all. She says the district views this as just another diversity issue and hopes everyone can accept and respect the student's wishes.

"Our staff has been briefed and trained to look for concerns," said Wong.

The family of the transgender student did not want to comment.

Wed Feb 27, 5:10 AM ET



PARMA, Ohio - A kindergarten student with a freshly spiked Mohawk has been suspended from school.

ADVERTISEMENT


Michelle Barile, the mother of 6-year-old Bryan Ruda, said nothing in the Parma Community School handbook prohibits the haircut, characterized by closely shaved sides with a strip of prominent hair on top. The school said the hair was a distraction for other students.

Bad hair is not a crime. If it was Marines would be in trouble.

Parma is a bastion of yards with chrome balls and pink flamingos. Old Polish immigrant settlement.

Home-school Germans flee to UK

A 1938 law designed to ensure state control of all children has provoked a family exodus to Britain
Charlie Francis-Pape and Allan Hall in Berlin
Sunday February 24, 2008
Observer


Families are fleeing to the UK from Germany to escape a law introduced by Hitler that could lead to their children being taken into care if educated at home. One father, who arrived in Britain with his wife and five children last month, has told The Observer that his family had no choice after being warned that their children would be taken into foster care unless they enrolled them at local schools. Another, who fled in October, said he believed the 70-year-old law was creating hundreds of refugees and forcing families into hiding to protect their children.

Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since it was outlawed in 1938. Hitler wanted the Nazi state to have complete control of young minds. Today there are rare exemptions, such as for children suffering serious illnesses or psychological problems. Legal attempts through the courts - including the European Court of Human Rights - have so far failed to overturn the ban.

Klaus Landahl, 41, who moved in January from the Black Forest in Germany to the Isle of Wight with his wife, Kathrin, 39, said they had no option but to leave their home, friends and belongings in order to educate their five children, aged between three and 12, legally and without fear. 'It feels like persecution,' he said. 'We had to get to safety to protect our family. We can never go back. If we do, our children will be removed, as the German government says they are the property of the state now.'

The family now live in Shanklin, surviving off savings while Landahl seeks work to support them. His wife said they chose home-schooling to spare their children from bullying and to allow them to focus on their individual interests. 'In school in Germany they expect you to be like everybody else; you cannot be different,' she said. 'If you don't have the correct clothes, like Nike and Adidas, or if you wear the wrong colour, other children will not accept you.'

Jonathan Skeet, who is British-born, said that he, his wife and five children, aged between two and 11, were driven from Lüdenscheid after the authorities froze their bank account, removed money from it and confiscated their car. The former aid worker fled in October and chose the Isle of Wight because of its large home-education network. In Germany, he said, the family were blackmailed and threatened with the loss of their children in an attempt to force them back into mainstream school education.

'It was crippling,' he said. 'When we lived in Germany we wanted to live a very inconspicuous and quiet life. But instead we ended up in direct confrontation with a very powerful state.'

The 43-year-old nursing home worker said they wanted to home-school because they were worried about the state of the German education system. 'We were concerned that the atmosphere in schools in Germany had become very rough and ready. We thought our children were too young to deal with that. '

About 800 families are believed to educate their children at home illegally. Stephanie Edel, who runs the Schulbildung in Familieninitiative, a German organisation that aims to support those who educate at home, said that last year some 78 home-schooled children fled Germany with their parents. 'It is very dangerous to home-educate here,' she said. 'Home-educators have to learn to expect anything and have to be ready to leave overnight.'

In 2006 the UN sent a special rapporteur to assess Germany's education system. He reported that necessary measures should be adopted to uphold parents' rights to educate children at home where necessary and appropriate.

Last year, in an extreme example, 15-year-old Melissa Busekros was removed from her family. Her mother, Gudrun, said more than 15 policemen took her to a psychiatric unit for psychological tests. After refusing to be tested, Melissa was placed in a foster home. She escaped on her 16th birthday and has since been left alone by the authorities.

Her mother said: 'All of the supposed independent experts are paid by the government, so they say what the social workers tell them to say in court.'

Both domestic and EU courts have ruled in the German state's favour on numerous occasions in recent years.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/st...2259509,00.html

Schools must grow more gay friendly

Detroit News, by Deb Price


3/3/2008 2:59:59 PM


Kindergartner Jacob Parker brought home a "diversity" book bag that included a picture book called "Who's in a Family?" The book shows a variety of families, including a mom-dad family, a family headed by a grandmother, an animal family and a family headed by lesbian moms. "Who's in a family? The people who love you the most!" the book ends. In the same Massachusetts elementary school, second grader Joey Wirthlin listened as his teacher read from another picture book, "King & King."

Just how friendly do they want to be?

Next on school agenda:
Teaching communism
Driving more people to Home schooling...................


Family advocate: 'Just when we thought
indoctrination couldn't get any worse'
Posted: March 04, 2008
10:47 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily





(IMG:http://www.worldnetdaily.com/images2/fidelcastro.jpg)
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who led his nation through decades of communism

A new plan by a California lawmaker would allow schools to be used to promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, and let teachers in public district classrooms "inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism," according to a traditional values advocacy organization.

"Just when we thought the indoctrination in California's public schools couldn't get any worse, state lawmakers introduce bills that will further brainwash innocent children," said a statement from Capitol Resource Institute, a traditional values and family advocacy organization based in California.

"We're in California. Of course it has a chance of succeeding," CRI spokeswoman Karen England told WND. "These people get bolder and bolder every year."

Her organization, along with several others, already has been battling over lawmakers' orders, already placed in law, that public schools in the state teach nothing but positive messages about homosexuality, transsexuality, bisexuality and other alternative lifestyles.

Those plans are being challenged in court, by citizens' attempts to place the issue on the 2008 election ballot and by family advocates who say the best option is for families to abandon public schools for private schools or other alternatives.



Now comes the plan, SB 1322, from state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat elected from the state's 27th District, including the towns of Artesia, Avalon, Bellflower, Cerritos, Downey, Lakewood, Long Beach, Lynwood, Paramount, Signal Hill, South Gate and others.

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/07-08/bill/s..._introduced.pdf

Actually checking out the proposed law helps, doesn't it?

Are taxpayers footing bill for Islamic school in Minnesota?

By KATHERINE KERSTEN, Star Tribune

March 8, 2008

Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) -- named for the Muslim general who conquered medieval Spain -- is a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Its approximately 300 students are mostly the children of low-income Muslim immigrant families, many of them Somalis.

The school is in huge demand, with a waiting list of 1,500. Last fall, it opened a second campus in Blaine.

TIZA uses the language of culture rather than religion to describe its program in public documents. According to its mission statement, the school "recognizes and appreciates the traditions, histories, civilizations and accomplishments of the eastern world (Africa, Asia and Middle East)."

But the line between religion and culture is often blurry. There are strong indications that religion plays a central role at TIZA, which is a public school financed by Minnesota taxpayers. Under the U.S. and state constitutions, a public school can accommodate students' religious beliefs but cannot encourage or endorse religion.

TIZA raises troubling issues about taxpayer funding of schools that cross that line.

Asad Zaman, TIZA's principal, declined to allow me to visit the school or grant me an interview. He did not respond to e-mails seeking written replies.

TIZA's strong religious connections date from its founding in 2003. Its co-founders, Zaman and Hesham Hussein, were both imams, or Muslim religious leaders, as well as leaders of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MAS-MN).

Since then, they have played dual roles: Zaman as TIZA's principal and the current vice-president of MAS-MN, and Hussein as TIZA's school board chair and president of MAS-MN until his death in a car accident in Saudi Arabia in January.

MAS-MN came to Minnesotans' attention in 2006, when it issued a "fatwa," warning Muslim taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that transporting passengers with alcohol in their baggage is a violation of Islamic law.

Journalists whom Zaman has permitted to visit TIZA have described the school's Islamic atmosphere and practices.

"A visitor might well mistake Tarek ibn Ziyad for an Islamic school," reported Minnesota Monthly in 2007. "Head scarves are voluntary, but virtually all the girls wear them." The school has a central carpeted prayer space, and "vaguely religious-sounding language" is used.

According to the Pioneer Press, TIZA's student body prays daily and the school's cafeteria serves halal food (permissible under Islamic law). During Ramadan, all students fast from dawn to dusk, according to a parent quoted in the article.

In fact, TIZA was originally envisioned as a private Islamic school. In 2001, MAS-MN negotiated to buy the current TIZA/MAS-MN building for Al-Amal School, a private religious institution in Fridley, according to Bruce Rimstad of the Inver Grove Heights School District. But many immigrant families can't afford Al-Amal. In 2002, Islamic Relief -- headquartered in California -- agreed to sponsor a publicly funded charter school, TIZA, at the same location.

TIZA claims to be non-sectarian, as Minnesota law requires charters to be. But "after-school Islamic learning" takes place on weekdays in the same building under MAS-MN's auspices, according to the program for MAS-MN's 2007 convention. At that convention, a TIZA representative at the school's booth told me that students go directly to "Islamic studies" classes at 3:30, when TIZA's day ends. There, they learn "Qur'anic recitation, the Sunnah of the Prophet" and other religious subjects, he said.

TIZA's 2006 Contract Performance Review Report states that students engage in unspecified "electives" after school or do homework.

Publicly, TIZA emphasizes that it uses standard curricular materials like those found in other public schools. But when addressing Muslim audiences, school officials make the link to Islam clear. At MAS-MN's 2007 convention, for example, the program featured an advertisement for the "Muslim American Society of Minnesota," superimposed on a picture of a mosque. Under the motto "Establishing Islam in Minnesota," it asked: "Did you know that MAS-MN ... houses a full-time elementary school"? On the adjacent page was an application for TIZA.

In addition to the issues raised by TIZA's religious elements, there are reasons to be concerned about the organizations with which it is connected.

Group linked to Hamas

Islamic Relief-USA, the school's sponsor, is compared to the Red Cross in several TIZA documents. In 2006, however, the Israeli government announced that Islamic Relief Worldwide, the organization's parent group, "provides support and assistance" to Hamas, designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist group.

Meanwhile, MAS-MN offers on its web site "beneficial and enlightening information" about Islam, which includes statements like "Regularly make the intention to go on jihad with the ambition to die as a martyr."

At its 2007 convention, MAS-MN featured the notorious Shayk Khalid Yasin, who is well-known in Britain and Australia for teaching that husbands can beat disobedient wives, that gays should be executed and that the United States spreads the AIDS virus in Africa through vaccines for tropical diseases.

Yasin's topic? "Building a Successful Muslim Community in Minnesota."

TIZA has improved the reading and math performance of its mostly low-income students. That's commendable, but should Minnesota taxpayers be funding an Islamic public school?

Katherine Kersten • kkersten@startribune.com Join the conversation at my blog, Think Again, which can be found at www.startribune.com/thinkagain.

© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

The government has no business funding religious schools.

Homeschoolers' setback sends shock waves through state


Bob Egelko, Jill Tucker,
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writers

Friday, March 7, 2008

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.

The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.

"At first, there was a sense of, 'No way,' " said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. "Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation."

The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching credential.

The parents said they also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy in Sylmar (Los Angeles County), which considers the Long children part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year.

The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home.

Some homeschoolers are affiliated with private or charter schools, like the Longs, but others fly under the radar completely. Many homeschooling families avoid truancy laws by registering with the state as a private school and then enroll only their own children.

Yet the appeals court said state law has been clear since at least 1953, when another appellate court rejected a challenge by homeschooling parents to California's compulsory education statutes. Those statutes require children ages 6 to 18 to attend a full-time day school, either public or private, or to be instructed by a tutor who holds a state credential for the child's grade level.

"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. "Parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling under the provisions of these laws."

Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.

"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare," the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue.

Union pleased with ruling

The ruling was applauded by a director for the state's largest teachers union.

"We're happy," said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. "We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting."

A spokesman for the state Department of Education said the agency is reviewing the decision to determine its impact on current policies and procedures. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell issued a statement saying he supports "parental choice when it comes to homeschooling."

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which agreed earlier this week to represent Sunland Christian School and legally advise the Long family on a likely appeal to the state Supreme Court, said the appellate court ruling has set a precedent that can now be used to go after homeschoolers. "With this case law, anyone in California who is homeschooling without a teaching credential is subject to prosecution for truancy violation, which could require community service, heavy fines and possibly removal of their children under allegations of educational neglect," Dacus said.

Parents say they choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons, from religious beliefs to disillusionment with the local public schools.

Homeschooling parent Debbie Schwarzer of Los Altos said she's ready for a fight.

Schwarzer runs Oak Hill Academy out of her Santa Clara County home. It is a state-registered private school with two students, she said, noting they are her own children, ages 10 and 12. She does not have a teaching credential, but she does have a law degree.

"I'm kind of hoping some truancy officer shows up on my doorstep," she said. "I'm ready. I have damn good arguments."

She opted to teach her children at home to better meet their needs.

The ruling, Schwarzer said, "stinks."

Began as child welfare case

The Long family legal battle didn't start out as a test case on the validity of homeschooling. It was a child welfare case.

A juvenile court judge looking into one child's complaint of mistreatment by Philip Long found that the children were being poorly educated but refused to order two of the children, ages 7 and 9, to be enrolled in a full-time school. He said parents in California have a right to educate their children at home.

The appeals court told the juvenile court judge to require the parents to comply with the law by enrolling their children in a school, but excluded the Sunland Christian School from enrolling the children because that institution "was willing to participate in the deprivation of the children's right to a legal education."

The decision could also affect other kinds of homeschooled children, including those enrolled in independent study or distance learning through public charter schools - a setup similar to the one the Longs have, Dacus said.

Charter school advocates disagreed, saying Thursday that charter schools are public and are required to employ only credentialed teachers to supervise students - whether in class or through independent study.

Ruling will apply statewide

Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said the ruling would effectively ban homeschooling in the state.

"California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home," he said in a statement.

But Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles, which represented the Longs' two children in the case, said the ruling did not change the law.

"They just affirmed that the current California law, which has been unchanged since the last time it was ruled on in the 1950s, is that children have to be educated in a public school, an accredited private school, or with an accredited tutor," she said. "If they want to send them to a private Christian school, they can, but they have to actually go to the school and be taught by teachers."

Heimov said her organization's chief concern was not the quality of the children's education, but their "being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety."

Online resources

The ruling: To view the ruling by the Second District Court of Appeal, go to links.sfgate.com/ZCQR.

E-mail the writers at begelko@sfchronicle.com and jtucker@sfchronicle.com.

Feminism and the English Language

Can the damage to our mother tongue be undone?

by David Gelernter

03/03/2008, Volume 013, Issue 24


How can I teach my students to write decently when the English language has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Academic-Industrial Complex? Our language used to belong to all its speakers and readers and writers. But in the 1970s and '80s, arrogant ideologues began recasting English into heavy artillery to defend the borders of the New Feminist state. In consequence we have all got used to sentences where puffed-up words like "chairperson" and "humankind" strut and preen, where he-or-she's keep bashing into surrounding phrases like bumper cars and related deformities blossom like blisters; they are all markers of an epoch-making victory of propaganda over common sense.

We have allowed ideologues to pocket a priceless property and walk away with it. Today, as college students and full-fledged young English teachers emerge from the feminist incubator in which they have spent their whole lives, this victory of brainless ideology is on the brink of becoming institutionalized. If we mean to put things right, we can't wait much longer.

Our ability to write and read good, clear English connects us to one another and to our common past. The prime rule of writing is to keep it simple, concrete, concise. Shakespeare's most perfect phrases are miraculously simple and terse. ("Thou art the thing itself." "A plague o' both your houses." "Can one desire too much of a good thing?") The young Jane Austen is praised by her descendants for having written "pure simple English." Meanwhile, in everyday prose, a word with useless syllables or a sentence with useless words is a house fancied-up with fake dormers and chimneys. It is ugly and boring and cheap, and impossible to take seriously.

But our problem goes deeper than a few silly words and many tedious sentences. How can I (how can any teacher) get students to take the prime rule seriously when virtually the whole educational establishment teaches the opposite? When students have been ordered since first grade to put "he or she" in spots where "he" would mean exactly the same thing, and "firefighter" where "fireman" would mean exactly the same thing? How can we then tell them, "Make every word, every syllable count!" They may be ignorant but they're not stupid. The well-aimed torpedo of Feminist English has sunk the whole process of teaching students to write. The small minority of born writers will always get by, inventing their own rules as they go. But we used to expect every educated citizen to write decently--and that goal is out the window.

"He or she" is the proud marshal of this pathetic parade. It has generated a cascading series of problems in which the Establishment, having noticed that Officially Approved gender-neutral sentences sound rotten, has dreamt up alternatives that are even worse. So let's consider "he or she." In some cases the awfulness of a feminist phrase requires several paragraphs to investigate systematically. Such investigations are worth pursuing nonetheless; our language is at stake.

When the style-smashers first announced, decades ago, that the neutral "he" meant "male" and excluded "female," they were lying and knew it. After all, when a critic like Mary Lascelles writes (in her classic 1939 study of Jane Austen) that "no reader can vouch for more than his own experience," one can hardly accuse her of envisioning male readers only. In feminist minds ideology excused the lie, and the goal of interchangeable sexes was a far greater good than decent English. Even today's English professors have heard (I suppose) of Eudora Welty, who wrote in her 1984 memoirs--just as the feminist anti-English campaign was nearing total victory--that every story writer imagines himself inside his characters; "it is his first step, and his last too." Was the author demonstrating her inability to write proper English? Or merely letting us know that there is no such thing as a female writer?

E.B. White was our greatest modern source of the purest, freshest, clearest, most bracing English, straight from a magic spring that bubbled for him alone. With A.J. Liebling and Joseph Mitchell, he was one of a triumvirate that made the New Yorker under its great editor Harold Ross a thing of beauty and a joy forever. The Elements of Style, White's revision of a short textbook by his Cornell professor William Strunk, is justly revered as the best thing of its kind. In the third edition (1979), White lays down the law on the he-or-she epidemic that was sweeping the country like a bad flu (or a bad joke).

The use of he as a pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English language. He has lost all suggestion of maleness in these circumstances. The word was unquestionably biased to begin with (the dominant male), but after hundreds of years it has become seemingly indispensable. It has no pejorative connotations; it is never incorrect.

(Warning: White died in 1985; a later edition of Elements published after his death is a disgrace to his memory.) In his 1984 White biography, Scott Elledge tells a remarkable story about "he or she":

The New Yorker rejected [in 1971] a parable White had written about the campaign of feminists to abolish the use of the pronoun his to mean "his or her." He told Roger Angell [his wife's son by a previous marriage] that he was "surprised, but not downhearted, that the piece got sunk. .  .  . To me, any woman's (or man's) attempt to remove the gender from the language is both funny and futile."

For the New Yorker to have rejected a piece by White, its darling and its hero, the man who did more than anyone but Ross himself to make the magazine the runaway, roaring success it became, and (by the way) a thorough-going liberal, was a sure sign that feminism had already got America in a chokehold.

The fixed idea forced by language rapists upon a whole generation of students, that "he" can refer only to a male, is (in short) wrong. It is applied with nonsensical inconsistency, too. The same feminist warriors who would never write "he" where "he or she" will do would also never write "the author or authoress" where "the author" will do. They hate such words as actress and waitress; in these cases they insist that the masculine form be used for men and women. You would never find my feminist colleagues writing a phrase such as, "When an Anglican priest or priestess mounts the pulpit .  .  . " You will find them writing, "When an Anglican priest mounts the pulpit, he or she is about to address the congregation." Logic has never been a strong suit among the commissar-intellectuals who have bossed American culture since the 1970s. True, "he" sounds explicitly masculine in a way "priest" doesn't, to those who are just learning the language. Children also find it odd that "enough" should be spelled that way, that New York should be at the same latitude as Spain, that 7 squared is 49, and so on. Education was invented to set people straight on all these fine points.

He-or-she'ing added so much ugly dead weight to the language that even the Establishment couldn't help noticing. So feminist authorities went back to the drawing board. Unsatisfied with having rammed their 80-ton 16-wheeler into the nimble sports-car of English style, they proceeded to shoot the legs out from under grammar--which collapsed in a heap after agreement between subject and pronoun was declared to be optional. "When an Anglican priest mounts the pulpit, they are about to address the congregation." How many of today's high school English teachers would mark this sentence wrong, or even "awkward"? (Show of hands? Not one?) Yet such sentences skreak like fingernails on a blackboard.

Slashes are just as bad. He/she is about to address the congregation" is unacceptable because it's not clear how to pronounce it: "he she," "he or she," "he slash she"? The unclarity is a nuisance, and each possibility sounds awful. Writing English is like writing music: One lays down the footprints of sounds that are recreated in each reader's mind. To be deaf to English is like being deaf to birdsong or laughter or rustling trees or babbling brooks--only worse, because English is the communal, emotional, and intellectual net that holds this nation together, if anything can. Occasionally one sees "s/he," which shows not indifference but outright contempt for the language and the reader.

And it gets worse. At the bottom of this junkpile is a maneuver that seems to be growing in popularity, at least among college students: writing "she" instead of neutral "he," or interchanging "he" and "she" at random. This grotesque outcome follows naturally from the primordial lie. If you make students believe that "he" can refer only to a male, then writers who use "he" in sentences referring to men and women are actually discussing males only and excluding females--and might just as well use "she" and exclude males, leaving the reader to sort things out for himself. The she-sentences that result tend to slam on a reader's brakes and send him smash-and-spinning into the roadside underbrush, cursing under his breath. (I still remember the first time I encountered such a sentence, in an early-1980s book by a noted historian about a Jesuit in Asia.)

Here is the problem with the dreaded she-sentence. Ideologues can lie themselves blue in the face without changing the fact that, to those who know modern English as it existed until the cultural revolution and still does exist in many quarters, the neutral he "has lost all suggestion of maleness." But there is no such thing as a neutral "she"; even feminists don't claim there is.

"The driver turns on his headlights" is not about a male or female person; it is about a driving person. But "the driver turns on her headlights" is a sentence about a female driver. Just as any competent reader listens to what he is reading, he pictures it too (if it can be pictured); hearing and imagining the written word are ingrained habits. A reader who had thought the topic was drivers is now faced by a specifically female driver, and naturally wonders why. What is the writer getting at? To distract your reader for political purposes, to trip him up merely to demonstrate your praiseworthy right-thinkingness, is a low trick.

White's comment: "If you think she is a handy substitute for he, try it and see what happens."

Sometimes a writer can avoid plastering his prose with feminist bumper-stickers and still not provoke the running dogs of the Establishment by diving into the plural whenever danger threatens. ("Drivers turn on their headlights.") White's comment:

Alternatively, put all controversial nouns in the plural and avoid the choice of sex altogether, and you may find your prose sounding general and diffuse as a result.

But the real problem goes deeper. Why should I worry about feminist ideology while I write? Why should I worry about anyone's ideology? Writing is a tricky business that requires one's whole concentration, as any professional will tell you; as no doubt you know anyway. Who can afford to allow a virtual feminist to elbow her way like a noisy drunk into that inner mental circle where all your faculties (such as they are) are laboring to produce decent prose? Bargaining over the next word, shaping each phrase, netting and vetting the countless images that drift through the mind like butterflies in a summer garden, mounting some and releasing others--and keeping the trajectory and target always in mind?

Throw the bum out.

It's a disgrace that we graduate class after class of young Americans who will never be able to write down their thoughts effectively--in a business report, a letter of application or recommendation, a postcard or email, or any other form. Our one consolation is that the country is filling up gradually with people who have been reared on ugly, childish writing and will never expect anything else. But the implications of our spineless surrender go deeper. We have accepted, implicitly, a hit-and-run vandalizing of English--the richest, most expressive language in the world. Languages such as French are shaped and guided by official boards of big shots. But English used to be a language of the people, by the people, for the people. "The living language is like a cowpath," wrote White; "it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs." We have allowed our academic overlords to plow up White's cow-path and replace it with a steel-and-concrete highway, hemmed in by guardrails and heavily patrolled by police.

Of course all languages change. A feminist might say that he-or-she is merely the latest twist in our ever-changing cowpath; that he-or-she was the will of the people. But this too is a lie, and in fairness to my opponents I have never heard them deploy it. They know that Americans of the late 1960s were not struck en masse by sudden unhappiness over the neutral he or the word "chairman." Such complaints never did rank high on the average American's list of worries. (Way back in the 1970s, "chairperson" was in fact a one-word joke: an object lesson in the ludicrous places you would reach if you took Feminist English seriously.) In fact the New English was deliberately created and pounded into children's heads by an intellectual elite asserting its control over American culture. The same conclusion follows independently from a language's well-established tendency to simplify and compress its existing structure (like a settling sea-bed) to make room for constantly arriving new coinages. Words like "authoress" would almost certainly have disappeared with no help from feminists. But "he" transforming itself into "he or she" is like a ball rolling uphill. It doesn't happen unless someone has volunteered to push.

The depressing trail continues one last mile. What happens to a nation's thinking when you ban such phrases as "great men"? The alternatives are so bad--"great person" sounds silly; "great human being" is a casual tribute to a friend--that it's hard to know where to turn. "Hero" doesn't work; "Wittgenstein was a great man" is a self-sufficient assertion, but "Wittgenstein was a hero" is not. Was he a war hero, a philosophical hero? (Yes and yes.) "Wittgenstein was a great heart" (also true) can't be rephrased in hero-speak, and can't substitute for "great man" either.

We happen to know also that the idea of "great men" has been bounced right out of education at every level. Nowadays students are taught to admire celebrities and money instead. We might well have misplaced the "great man" idea anyway, but losing the phrase didn't help. Civilization copes poorly with ideas that have no names.

And what should we say instead of "brotherhood"? "Crown thy good with siblinghood"? "Tolerance" is no substitute for "brotherhood"; it's passive and bland where "brotherhood" is active and inspiring. "Brotherhood" has accordingly been quietly stricken from the list of good things to which Americans should aspire.

We allowed ideologues to wreck the English language. Do we have the courage to rebuild?

David Gelernter, a national fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is a professor of computer science at Yale.

Wow. That was a waste of time.

and it can't be undone

NS. You can't unread it.

Almost perfect irony...LP's post immediately criticized by an "effeminate" and two ranters who can't rub togeter any words on their own.

you said it

Feminism and the English Language

Can the damage to our mother tongue be undone?

Must have bothered some people!

Covering Education in 2008


AIM Column |

By Bethany Stotts |

March 6, 2008

The influence of the education lobby on the 2008 election may not be as low as advertised.

Although a compelling issue in the 2000 elections, educational issues have been eclipsed by security concerns in the War on Terror and growing fears about America's global competitiveness. "In a July 2007 Harris poll, [2000 polling] had fallen from 25% to 7%, naming education as one of the top two issues they wanted the federal government to address," noted American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick Hess at a March event. Hess pointed out that the percentage of Americans considering education the most important election issue dropped from 16% in March 2007 to 4% in October of the same year.

Another speaker, Chester Finn, author of Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik, attempted to explain why the American populace is disaffected from Presidential education policy. "If the country is at war and is heading into recession, those things swamp everything else, and nothing else compares," he said. He added, "Additionally, people are weary of education talk and you add that to the fact they're interested in these other issues, and I think it's not hard to understand why education might sort of take the sidelines."

However, the influence of the education lobby on the 2008 election may not be as low as advertised. "The goal of engaging the candidates to understand the risk proposition about not continuing education is the real target, and the fact is that we have had some degree of discourse-and smart discourse," said Ed in ‘08 Executive Director Mark Lampkin. He argues that education needn't be a primary topic in order to affect the election.

Differences in education policy priority may simply differ by party. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama provide detailed legislative agendas on their campaign pages. Hillary Clinton's online issue section lists "Improving Our Schools" five spots down out of 14 total issues, and Obama's website places education in fourth place out of more than 20 issues.

In contrast, John McCain's website lists education near the bottom, ranking 11 out of 15. His web page emphasizes the importance of teacher excellence, school choice, and accountability, but provides no specific policy agenda. McCain's issue brief is decidedly vague, stating that "As president, John McCain will pursue reforms that address the underlining cultural problems in our educational system-a system that still seeks to avoid genuine accountability and responsibility for producing well-educated children."

The media has not been granting education policy the seriousness it deserves this election cycle, argues Lampkin. He noted that 21 presidential debate questions have involved education. "You know, one question on education has been about who's your favorite teacher. That is the mainstream media asking the people that want to be President of the United States a question about something that affects tens of millions of kids in this country-who's your favorite teacher?," he said. Lampkin also argued that Americans have "let the presidential candidates devolve into ‘nothingdom' about all issues."

One of the more surprising-and inscrutable-educational developments on the campaign trail has been Obama's Milwaukee statement in favor of school vouchers. Elizabeth Green, reporter for the New York Sun, quotes Obama as telling the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that "If there was any argument for vouchers it was, all right, let's see if this experiment works, and then if it does, whatever my preconceptions, my attitude is you do what works for the kids." Green's February 15 article also noted that Obama had indicated to two national teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in 2007 that he opposed school vouchers.

On February 20, the Obama campaign issued a statement declaring that his alleged pro-voucher stance is the product of "misleading reports" which take his statements "out of context." They write that "Senator Obama has always been a critic of vouchers, and expressed his longstanding skepticism in that interview...[he] has laid out the most comprehensive education agenda of any candidate in this race-an agenda that does not include vouchers, in any shape or form."

In early February, Obama told Politico that he prides himself on contradicting the party line on charter schools. "I've consistently said, we need to support charter schools," reads the February 11 transcript. Echoing his Milwaukee statements in favor of "experimentation," Obama says "I think it is important to experiment, by looking at how we reward excellence in the classroom." But, as with school vouchers, no mention of charter schools makes it into Obama's $18 billion K-12 legislative agenda. A single line alludes to the possibility of "public school choice options for students" in coordination with school-family contracts.

This may exemplify a disturbing trend of Obama's continued and often unchallenged policy flip-flopping. A recent article by Family Security Matters exposes Obama's hypocrisy on NAFTA. According to Jonathan Strong, an Obama aide told Canada's CTV News that Obama's anti-NAFTA posturing was "merely campaign speak, and should not be taken seriously." The original comment, attributed to University of Chicago professor (and Obama advisor) Austan Goolsbee, sparked controversy in both nations. CTV reports Goolsbee as saying the memo was a "pretty ham-handed description of what I answered" and "in no possible way was that [statement] a reference to NAFTA."

If the CTV News memo holds true, however, it highlights that Obama is a candidate more than willing to tell his voters whatever fits their preconceived notions of "change"—and then pursue an alternate agenda as president.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer for Accuracy in Academia, and can be contacted at bethany.stotts@academia.org

Buggie as an anthill.

Who's the "effeminate" who criticized LP's re-post?

Ya got choices of Innocent, Inyer, and Davis....I'll give ya three guesses.

He is trying to insult me. It didn't work.

he really wants your leg

I'll give you three chances to actually answer.

Boom Goes the Ego

Weekly Standard, by Kevin Kusinitz


3/20/2008 5:12:21 AM


IF THE AMERICANS WHO lived through the Depression and won the Second World War were the Greatest Generation, then the Baby Boomers would have to be the Greatest Ego Generation. Pampered like no others before them , free to explore their own interests while their parents worked hard to put food on the table, the Boomers eventually pursued pop culture as their time killer of choice.

The Greatest Generation created the Geneva Conventions, the worse destroyed them. Thanks LP, you are part of both.

The circle is complete.

Nomarchy, you have an opinion on this one?

American Thinker <----Here
March 20, 2008

Obama's Anger

By Ed Kaitz

"The anger is real. It is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."
- Barack Obama

Back in the late 1980s I was on a plane flying out of New Orleans and sitting next to me was a rather interesting and, according to Barack Obama, unusual black man. Friendly, gregarious, and wise beyond his years, we immediately hit it off. I had been working on Vietnamese commercial fishing boats for a few years based in southern Louisiana. The boats were owned by the recent wave of Vietnamese refugees who flooded into the familiar tropical environment after the war. Floating in calm seas out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, I would hear tearful songs and tales from ex-paratroopers about losing brothers, sisters, parents, children, lovers, and beautiful Vietnam itself to the communists.


In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population.

They did however have strong families, a strong work ethic, and the "Audacity of Hope." Within a generation, with little or no knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the top SAT scores in the state.

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:


"We're owed and they aren't."


In short, he concluded, "they're hungry and we think we're owed. It's crushing us, and as long as we think we're owed we're going nowhere."

A good test case for this theory is Katrina. Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and assorted white apologists continue to express anger and outrage over the federal response to the Katrina disaster. But where were the Vietnamese "leaders" expressing their "anger?" The Vietnamese comprise a substantial part of the New Orleans population, and yet are absent was any report claiming that the Vietnamese were "owed" anything. This is not to say that the federal response was an adequate one, but we need to take this as a sign that maybe the problem has very little to do with racism and a lot to with a mindset.


The mindset that one is "owed" something in life has not only affected black mobility in business but black mobility in education as well. Remember Ward Churchill? About fifteen years ago he was my boss. After leaving the fishing boats, I attended graduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I managed to get a job on campus teaching expository writing to minority students who had been accepted provisionally into the university on an affirmative action program. And although I never met him, Ward Churchill, in addition to teaching in the ethnic studies department, helped to develop and organize the minority writing program.

The job paid most of my bills, but what I witnessed there was absolutely horrifying. The students were encouraged to write essays attacking the white establishment from every conceivable angle and in addition to defend affirmative action and other government programs. Of the hundreds of papers that I read, there was not one original contribution to the problem of black mobility that strayed from the party line.

The irony of it all however is that the "white establishment" managed to get them into the college and pay their entire tuition. Instead of being encouraged to study international affairs, classical or modern languages, philosophy or art, most of these students became ethnic studies or sociology majors because it allowed them to remain in disciplines whose orientation justified their existence at the university. In short, it became a vicious cycle.

There was a student there I'll never forget. He was plucked out of the projects in Denver and given a free ride to the university. One day in my office he told me that his mother had said the following to him: "M.J., they owe you this. White people at that university owe you this." M.J.'s experience at the university was a glorious fulfillment of his mother's angst.


There were black student organizations and other clubs that "facilitated" the minority student's experience on the majority white and "racist" campus, in addition to a plethora of faculty members, both white and black, who encouraged the same animus toward the white establishment. While adding to their own bona fides as part of the trendy Left, these "facilitators" supplied M.J. with everything he needed to quench his and his mother's anger, but nothing in the way of advice about how to succeed in college. No one, in short, had told M.J. that he needed to study. But since he was "owed" everything, why put out any effort on his own?


In a fit of despair after failing most of his classes, M.J. wandered into my office one Friday afternoon in the middle of the semester and asked if I could help him out. I asked M.J. about his plans that evening, and he told me that he usually attended parties on Friday and Saturday nights. I told him that if he agreed to meet me in front of the university library at 6:00pm I would buy him dinner. At 6pm M.J. showed up, and for the next twenty minutes we wandered silently through the stacks, lounges, and study areas of the library. When we arrived back at the entrance I asked M.J. if he noticed anything interesting. As we headed up the hill to a popular burger joint, M.J. turned to me and said:


"They were all Asian. Everyone in there was Asian, and it was Friday night."

Nothing I could do, say, or show him, however, could match the fire power of his support system favoring anger. I was sad to hear of M.J. dropping out of school the following semester.

During my time teaching in the writing program, I watched Asians get transformed via leftist doublespeak from "minorities" to "model minorities" to "they're not minorities" in precise rhythm to their fortunes in business and education. Asians were "minorities" when they were struggling in this country, but they became "model minorities" when they achieved success. Keep in mind "model minority" did not mean what most of us think it means, i.e., something to emulate. "Model minority" meant that Asians had certain cultural advantages, such as a strong family tradition and a culture of scholarship that the black community lacked.

To suggest that intact families and a philosophy of self-reliance could be the ticket to success would have undermined the entire angst establishment. Because of this it was improper to use Asian success as a model. The contortions the left exercised in order to defend this ridiculous thesis helped to pave the way for the elimination of Asians altogether from the status of "minority."


This whole process took only a few years.


Eric Hoffer said:

"...you do not win the weak by sharing your wealth with them; it will but infect them with greed and resentment. You can win the weak only by sharing your pride, hope or hatred with them."

We now know that Barack Obama really has no interest in the "audacity of hope." With his race speech, Obama became a peddler of angst, resentment and despair. Too bad he doesn't direct that angst at the liberal establishment that has sold black people a bill of goods since the 1960s. What Obama seems angry about is America itself and what it stands for; the same America that has provided fabulous opportunities for what my black friend called "hungry" minorities. Strong families, self-reliance, and a spirit of entrepreneurship should be held up as ideals for all races to emulate.

In the end, we should be very suspicious about Obama's anger and the recent frothings of his close friend Reverend Wright. Says Eric Hoffer:

The fact seems to be that we are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about. Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own.

You appear to be a one/single issue guy, grow up!

Wow. You mean like the Iraq war?


This is a great description of damned near every decision made by the Bush administration.

I have no use for forking war criminals, many which inhabit your party.


The greatest generation? You are redefining that too.

CNN Features Only Anti-War Websites on Iraq War Anniversary

NewsBusters.org, by Matthew Balan


3/20/2008 7:14:37 AM

Wednesday’s "The Situation Room" featured three anti-war grassroots websites during a short segment, without including any from the opposing viewpoint. Host Wolf Blitzer introduced the segment by talking about the anti-war protests marking the 5-year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war. "Hundreds of anti-war protesters gathered in Washington for this, the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq. At least 31 people were arrested today, according to the organizers.



The HAU/BAF at work as you enjoy! Anything that is anti-American!

Yawn. I'll compare my predictions of the war and occupation with any of you rightwing dittoheads. My hands are clean. Yours are not.