campconstitution

The Weekly Sam: How I Became a Christian by Sam Blumenfeld

First, the question is: what is a Christian? To me the answer is quite simple. A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, who was sent to this earth to save men from their sinful natures, to offer them salvation and eternal life after death. God’s purpose was to extend the covenant he had made with Abraham and, through Jesus, extend it beyond the Jewish people to the rest of mankind. That is why Christ’s mission was so important: to bring to the rest of pagan mankind a knowledge of God and, for each human soul, a personal attachment to God through Jesus, his son. Many Christian scholars and theologians have written thousands of pages to explain what Christianity is. And so, I don’t know if my definition of a Christian would coincide with theirs.

I am not a theologian and therefore cannot give any explanation beyond my own personal understanding. That is my humble conviction, and it has provided me with an intellectually and spiritually satisfying way to explain my beliefs. I believe that all important philosophies can be explained simply or summed up in a simple paragraph. If they can’t, they are not true. The truth does not hide behind an impenetrable curtain of verbiage, but falsehood always does. All of my life I have had a tremendous respect for truth, for reality, for fact. I have never avoided reality. I love it too much, even when it is cruel. But I can understand those who would love to escape it. How I, a Jew, came to accept Jesus Christ was part of an intellectual journey that started in high school, continued in the Army during World War II, and continued in college. In the Army, my closest buddies were Catholics. At the City College of New York my friends were Christians and Jews.

After college, I studied in France for two years. Most of the friends I made in Paris were Christians, or I should say, non-Jews. They were American expatriates of a secular persuasion. The Europeans I got to know were typically non-religious. In Europe I visited the Cathedrals and was awed by their grandeur and beauty. During my stay in the army in Italy I had visited the Vatican and climbed the stairs in St. Peter’s Basilica right into the ball at the very top of the dome under the cross. Christianity was, of course, full of Old Testament references. Michelangelo had carved that great marble statue of Moses in St. Peter’s and the breathtaking statue of David in Florence. With my Christian friends I attended Christmas mass at both Notre Dame de Paris and at Santa Maria Maggiori in Rome. Catholic priests officiating at the Mass in their splendid dress never looked particularly holy to me. The men who looked holy to me were the old men in the synagogue, covered by their prayer shawls, swaying quietly in prayer. In other words, despite my visits to cathedrals and attendance at Masses, I was not attracted to Jesus. I simply ignored Him.

As an American Jew, I had become quite secularized and hardly practiced my own religion let alone the religion of my Christian friends who for the most part were as secular as I was. For me, Christianity provided the esthetic enjoyments for a lover of the arts. I had no interest in Christian theology or any other theology for that matter. There was a brief period, shortly after my father’s death in 1958, when I was an atheist. I wasn’t proud or happy to be an atheist, I simply believed, much to my sadness, that God did not exist. I had undergone psychoanalysis during that period, trying to understand myself, and I probably adopted Freud’s atheism. Most New York intellectual Jews were atheists or agnostics, practitioners of modernity and the secular lifestyle. Jews took a liberal view of the dietary laws, ate bacon and lobsters, and the synagogues were sparsely attended on the Sabbath. It was only on the Jewish holidays that secular Jews celebrated their heritage. And it was more cultural than theological.

After Freud, I got to know Ayn Rand. At the time, I was an editor at Grosset & Dunlap, and a literary agent had brought a manuscript by Isabel Paterson to me for possible publication. Paterson, a great believer in individual freedom, had inspired Ayn Rand in her early days as a writer, and the agent suggested that perhaps Rand might be willing to write an introduction to the book. Paterson had died, and an introduction might be a tribute to a friend. I called Rand and invited her to lunch. It was a delightful occasion. We discussed our mutual love of laissez-faire capitalism. I was a libertarian, and she was an Objectivist. She suggested that I attend a series of lectures on Objectivism given by her protege Nathaniel Branden at a midtown hotel. Objectivism was a new pro-individualistic philosophy which Rand had formulated, with the assistance of Branden. I attended the lectures and was delighted with Branden’s well-reasoned and rational opposition to Socialism and collectivism.

The only problem with Objectivism was Rand’s strident atheism. While my atheism was of the sad variety, Rand’s was unrelenting. I truly wished that God existed, while Rand rejected anything resembling “mysticism.” But it wasn’t until the 1970s that reality posed so many problems in my life, that I finally had to call on God for help. Both Freud and Rand had failed to provide the spiritual certainty I needed. But how do we find God? By simply crying out to Him whenever life’s burdens seem unbearable. We cry out to our Father in Heaven when no one on earth can help us. And God, in some way, answers the prayers of the wretched and bewildered and suffering.

It is said that Charles Darwin rejected God because he could not believe in a deity that would permit his favorite child to die. But what would life be like if God suspended all-natural phenomenon, including illness and disease? We would be living in an unnatural, supernatural state which Darwin’s theory of evolution says does not exist. Darwin preached natural selection. His daughter died because of the process of natural selection. In other words, Darwin simply used the death of his daughter to justify his rejection of God, when in reality it was his intellectual pride that was behind it.

I never had that kind of intellectual pride. So, when I turned to God, it was in the way that men seek a lifesaver when shipwrecked. You float in a hostile sea hoping to survive. It is not a very rational nor dignified way to seek God. It is more like a child’s way. But atheists are more like petulant children than mature seekers of the truth. And slowly but surely, I found my way onto dry land with a new belief in the mysterious power of the Creator of the universe. But I was still not a Christian and knew very little about Christianity. I could not really tell the difference between a Methodist and a Presbyterian. To Jews, all Christians are alike, and all Christian denominations are essentially alike. They all profess to believe in Jesus Christ. In the early 1980s I began to write a book about the origins of public education. As a libertarian I wanted to know why and how the American people gave up educational freedom so early in our history and opted for a government owned and controlled system of education. And it was through that process of research that I became a Christian.

(The above is from the Sam Blumenfeld Archives- a free on-line resource containing the works of the late Sam Blumenfeld  http://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

Labor Day, Railroad Strikes, Grover Cleveland, Eugene Debs, Socialist Party of America, Outsourcing – American Minute with Bill Federer

  Eugene Debs  Grover Cleveland  Labor Day  Outsourcing  Railroad Strikes  Socialist Party of America

 
To appreciate Labor Day, one needs to know the history preceding it.
At the time the United States was founded, most people were self-employed, working as either farmers or in trades, such as:
  • baker,
  • butcher,
  • carpenter,
  • cabinetmaker,
  • upholsterer,
  • tailor,
  • milliner – clothes merchant,
  • cobbler – shoe maker,
  • chandler – candle maker,
  • cooper – barrel maker,
  • wheelwright – wheel craftsman.
  • blacksmith,
  • gunsmith,
  • printer, and
  • apothecary.

Then, the Industrial Revolution began in the late 18th century.
Where Ireland burned peat from bogs, Britain burned coal from mines.
A problem was that mines kept filling up with water.
Scottish inventor James Watt came up with an invention to pump water out of mines – a steam pump.
Steam was soon harnessed in the early 19th century to not just power pumps, but railroad steam engines, steam boats, and textile manufacturing machines.
This led to the creation of factories which could mass produce items inexpensively.
European manufactured products were imported into America.
Soon, Americans built their own factories.
Originally, there was no Federal Income tax.
The Federal government was financed primarily from:
EXCISE TAXES on items like salt, tobacco, liquor;
and
TARIFF TAXES on imports from European factories.
Tariff taxes made European products more expensive, motivating consumers to buy products manufactured in America.
Most of America’s factories were located in Northern states.
The tariff taxes that helped the Northern states hurt the Southern states, as the South was predominately agricultural and had few factories to protect.
At one point, nearly 90 percent of the Federal budget came from tariff taxes collected at Southern ports.
This fueled animosity between the states leading up to the Civil War.
After the Civil War, the North passed even more tariff taxes which successfully allowed Northern factories to grow enormous.
Manufacturers produced items like clothes, glass, dishes, and farm tools for a fraction of the previous costs.
Machines freed women up from tedious daily tasks, such as hand-weaving thread, hand-sewing cloth, and hand-washing clothes.
Instead of carrying water from a well, pumps and pipes brought water directly into homes.
New ways of making stronger iron and steel led to the building of bridges, skyscrapers, steamboats, and mining machinery.
Railroads began taking people safely and inexpensively across the entire nation, opening up unprecedented mobility and opportunity.
Inventions and advances in manufacturing made more goods available at cheaper prices.
This resulted in Americans experiencing the fastest increase in the standard of living of any people in world history.
Factories had a continual source of workers from the millions of immigrants, who not only got a job, but learned the language and trade skills.
President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in 1886 to welcome immigrants.
Immigrants were anxious to assimilate, learn the English language, and swear allegiance to their new country.
Immigrants were known for their hard work.
This is described in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, written by German sociologist Max Weber, 1904-1905.
It is a foundational textbook in economic sociology, listed as the 4th most important sociological book of the 20th century in by the International Sociological Association.
Weber documented how modern capitalism evolved out of the Protestant Calvinism in Northern Europe, which emphasized asceticism, self-discipline, hard work, frugality, thrift, and avoidance of all forms of indulgence for religious reasons.
He described Calvinists, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, traditional Lutherans, pietist Lutherans, and Moravians, particularly Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf’s Herrnhut community.
Religious adherents established private secular enterprises, engaged in trade, and accumulated wealth for both investment and for the support of charitable missionary activity.
A popular literary genre developed of “rags-to-riches” stories, where individuals exhibiting hard work, honesty, and strength through adversity, achieved success.
In 1867, Horatio Alger began publishing a best-selling series of novels, such as:
  • “Ragged Dick”;
  • “Strong and Steady, Or, Paddle Your Own Canoe”; and
  • “Shifting for Himself: Or Gilbert Greyson’s Fortune.”
These were stories were about immigrants, impoverished orphans, or homeless street boys, who demonstrated the Protestant work ethic and rose from humble beginnings to have great purpose and achieve outstanding accomplishments.
In 1894, Orison Swett Marden wrote Pushing to the Front, and in 1897, founded SUCCESS magazine, publishing inspirational stories of success in life through common-sense principles and well-rounded virtues.
Immigrants were not a financial burden on the government, as there were no government welfare programs.
Extended family members, churches, and individuals giving charity, provided the welfare net.

Some immigrants brought with them from Europe socialist and anarchists ideas and exacerbated labor tensions to further their larger goal of tearing down the capitalist system in order to set up a socialist economy.
Though no one was forced to work in factories, some laborers began to organize for better working conditions.
Organizing flyers were written in the English and German languages.
In May of 1886, a protest in Chicago near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant. turned into the Haymarket Riot.
A “peaceful protester” threw a dynamite bomb at the police.
The blast and subsequent violence resulted in seven police officers and four civilians killed, along with dozens wounded.
To commemorate the incident, they chose May 1st to be an annual International Workers Day.

Another incident was a railroad strike in 1894.
An ideal factory setting was created by George Pullman, who founded the Pullman Railroad Sleeping Car Company just outside of Chicago, Illinois.
Pullman saw that workers needed a place to live, so he built them houses in a safe little village around the factory, with rent deducted from paychecks.
To save them the trouble of traveling to the markets, he located stores on site.
Workers were paid company “scrip,” similar to food stamps, which were redeemable at the company-owned grocery stores.
It was considered to be a type of utopian workers’ paradise community, in the same vein of Sir Thomas More’s Island of Utopia, published in 1516; and Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, published in 1626.
The Pullman community worked for over a decade until something happened.
There was a nationwide economic depression in 1893 and orders for railroad sleeping cars suddenly dropped off.
To keep the company afloat, George Pullman had to make cuts in wages and lay off hundreds of employees, though, for the time being, rent and groceries stayed the same price.
Some immigrants from Europe spread Karl Marx’s idea of critical theory, dividing the nation up into groups and pitting them against each other in a class-struggle.
Employees were distraught, as they had grown completely dependent on the company.
Some employees walked off their jobs, demanding higher pay and lower rents, being unaware that the reason for the cuts was that the company needed to stay in business during the national economic crash.
A leader of the strikes was Eugene V. Debs. A high school drop out, Debs got a job cleaning grease from freight engines.
He was promoted to locomotive fireman and rose in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman. He briefly served as a Terre Haute city clerk and one-term Indiana state representative.
When the nation experienced the financial crisis, Debs agitated and organized a strike of railroad workers in 1894.
Soon, railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars.
There was rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars, destroying an estimated $80 million worth of property in 27 states.
A New York Times editorial, July 9, 1894, called Debs “a lawbreaker at large, an enemy of the human race.”
“Debs’ Rebellion” became a national issue when it interrupted the trains delivering mail.
President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 U.S. Army troops to break up the strike.
More violence erupted, and two men were killed.

After the devastating riots and shut-downs, Americans were discontented with the Democrat Administration.
Democrat advisor Francis Lynde Stetson warned Cleveland regarding the upcoming mid-term elections of 1894:
“We are on the eve of very dark night, unless a return of commercial prosperity relieves popular discontent with what they believe is Democratic incompetence to make laws, and consequently with Democratic Administrations anywhere and everywhere.”
Cleveland thought it might improve his Party’s chances if workers were given a day off, so support grew for a national “LABOR DAY.”

Cleveland intentionally did not chose May 1st as it was the anniversary of the bloody Chicago’s Haymarket Riot and the “International Workers Day.”
Instead, Grover Cleveland chose the FIRST MONDAY in SEPTEMBER to celebrate LABOR DAY.
As far as the 1894 elections went, it did not help. Cleveland’s Democrat Party had the biggest mid-term loss in decades.

Patriotic Americans, in opposition to socialists, began celebrating May 1st as “Loyalty Day,” which was officially recognized by the U.S. Congress in April 27, 1955, and proclaimed by President Eisenhower, being made an annual holiday with Public Law 85-529.

Strike-organizer Eugene Debs was arrested for mail obstruction and put in prison for six months.
 While in prison, Debs “ravenously” read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.

Demands by socialist progressives to redistribute wealth led to the passage of:
  • the corporate income tax, 1894;
  • the personal income tax, 1914; and
  • the inheritance estate tax, 1916.
Eugene Debs and the rioters were defended by the attorney Clarence Darrow.
Darrow later defended evolution in the Scope’s Monkey Trial.
After six months in prison, Eugene Debs was released and founded:
  • the Social Democracy of America, 1897;
  • the Social Democratic Party of America, 1898; and
  • the Socialist Party of America, 1901.
Debs ran five time for U.S. President on Socialist Party of America ticket. As he won zero electoral votes, he opposed to the electoral process.
When World War One started, Eugene Debs urged resistance to the draft.
Russia’s Socialist leader Vladimir Lenin referenced Eugene Debs in “An Open Letter to Boris Souvarine,” published January 27, 1918, in La Vente, No. 48:
“Look at America—apart from everything else a neutral country. Haven’t we the beginnings of a split there, too: Eugene Debs, the ‘American Rebel’, declares in the socialist press that he recognizes only one type of war, civil war for the victory of socialism, and that he would sooner be shot than vote a single cent for American war expenditure ” (see Deb’s Appeal to Reason, “When I Shall Fight,” No. 1032, September 11, 1915)
One of those who followed Debs’ call to be a draft-dodger was Roger Baldwin, who later founded the A.C.L.U. to help defend those who were accused of being a communist agitators.
Roger Baldwin wrote:
“I am for socialism … I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”
In 1918, Debs was charged with ten counts of sedition and sentenced to ten years in prison.
In protest of his sentence, unionists, anarchists, socialists, and communists marched in support of Debs in a May Day parade in Cleveland, Ohio.
The peaceful parade broke out into Antifa-style violence — the May Day Riots of 1919.
When Debs’ attorney asked for a Presidential pardon, Woodrow Wilson wrote “denied” across the paperwork, and stated:
“While the flower of American youth was pouring out its blood to vindicate the cause of civilization, this man, Debs, stood behind the lines sniping, attacking, and denouncing them …
This man was a traitor to his country and he will never be pardoned during my administration.”
The next President, Warren G. Harding, also did not pardon Debs, and the White House released the statement:
“There is no question of his guilt … He is … a dangerous man calculated to mislead the unthinking and affording excuse for those with criminal intent.”
In 1979, Bernie Sanders produced a documentary praising Eugene Debs. He hung a portrait of Debs in the City Hall of Burlington, Vermont, and dedicated a plaque to him in his Congressional office.
After Vladimir Lenin organized the Bolshevik Revolution overthrowing Russia’s government, he formed the Communist International in 1919.
This persuaded some members of Eugene Debs’ Socialist Party of America to break off and form the Communist Party USA.
The Communist Party USA ran candidates for U.S. President every year from 1920 till they decided to support Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War Two, as Roosevelt had allied himself with the U.S.S.R.’s Josef Stalin.
Chicago’s statue dedicated to the police officers who were killed in the 1886 Haymarket Riot was blown up on October 6, 1969, by Bill Ayers and Eric Mann’s militant group “Weatherman Underground” during their Days of Rage.
The Haymarket statue was rebuilt, only to be blown up again by the Weatherman Underground on October 6, 1970.
Weatherman member Bill Ayers later helped launch the political career of a young Illinois State Senator Barack Obama.
Bill Ayers stated:
“I am a radical, leftist, small ‘c’ communist … Maybe I’m the last communist who is willing to admit it … The ethics of communism still appeal tome. I don’t like Lenin as much as the early Marx.”
Weatherman member Eric Mann helped train Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matters.
Cullors stated in 2015:
“Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers … We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.”

In America, laborers worked hard for wages with which they could buy trucks, houses, cars, boats, guns, and other personal possessions.
They could also be moved upon to give of their possessions to those in need, which is called charity.
Reagan stated in 1988:
“I believe God did give mankind unlimited gifts to invent, produce and create.”
Booker T. Washington founded the National Negro Business League.
He stated:
“Anyone can seek a job, but it requires a person of rare ability to create a job … What we should do in our schools is to turn out fewer job seekers and more job creators.”
In socialist countries, laborers were forced to work hard, but could own no possessions. The government took them all away.
People with no possessions have nothing with which to be charitable.
Socialists believe that when the government finally finishes taking away everyone’s possessions, then the world will arrive at a imagined ideal utopia called communism.
The term “communism” comes from the Latin word “communis,” meaning everything held in common.
There will be no private ownership of anything. There will be no privacy. People will not even have control over their own children.
The government will control everything, on both production side and consumption side.

In 1971, John Lennon and his second wife, Yoko Ono, co-wrote the song “Imagine,” with socialist-themed lyrics: “Imagine no possessions … And no religion too.”

Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum stated that by 2030 “You will own nothing but be happy.”
The term “socialism” was coined by French political philosopher Henry de Saint-Simon, 1760–1825, as the opposite of the “individual.”
Use of the term socialism was popularized by mid-to-late 1800s by European theorists, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Leon Trotsky, and Antonio Gramsci, where power is taken away from individuals and concentrated into the hands of the state.
One of the significant contributions of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization is the concept of you having a worth and an identity as an individual, apart from any group.
Gramsci, who founded the Italian Communist Party, wrote in his Prison Notebooks, 1929-1935:
“Any country grounded in Judaeo-Christian values can’t be overthrown until those roots are cut …
Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity …
In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”

During Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, “socialism” became identified as a distinct transition phase between capitalism and communism.
The most opportune time to transition is in crises.
Marx and Friedrich Engels explained (Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 318):
“Conspirators by no means confine themselves to organizing the revolutionary proletariat – working class. Their business consists in … spurring it in to artificial crises …
For them the only condition required for the revolution is a sufficient organization of their own conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution.”
The term “capitalism” is the where individuals, with their own money, or capital, could invest and have a business providing goods or services – the production side.
Individuals could then earn a profit which they could decide how to spend – the consumption side.
Karl Marx wrote in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, Part IV:
“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation.”
Lenin considered socialism as the transition phase from capitalism to communism, stating:
“The goal of socialism is communism.”
Karl Marx explained:
“The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
Author Ayn Rand wrote:
“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end:
communism proposes to enslave men by force; socialism – by vote.
It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

Unions did help to bring about:
  • the 8-hour work day,
  • a 40-hour work week,
  • minimum wages,
  • safer working conditions, and
  • more benefits for workers.
Henry Ford’s Motor Company was one of the first to implement these benefits.
An account circulated that Henry Ford met a Yemeni sailor at port and told him about auto factory jobs that paid five dollars a day.
The sailor spread the word, leading to chain migration from Yemen and other parts of the Middle East.
ArabAmerica.com reported, September 5, 2020:
“The origin story of how the Yemeni community in Michigan is an interesting one.
Way back in the early 1900s, Henry Ford started recruiting Yemeni workers to work at Ford’s factories.
After a few years, Ford sent for more workers and the Yemeni American community began to grow.
People who gained citizenship during their time working for Ford brought family over and started lives in Michigan while remaining close to their family back in Yemen.”
It is speculated that Ford’s motive in initiating immigration of Middle Eastern Muslims to Dearborn and Hamtramck, Michigan, was to counter growing union strength.
Unions were anti-immigrant, as cheaper labor of immigrants undercut their wages.
As unions grew in size, another situation developed, where top leadership tended to hold values different than rank-and-file union workers.
Many members supported the Second Amendment, traditional marriage, biological definitions of sex, and protection of the unborn, yet some in union leadership funneled union dues to support candidates who advocated opposing views.
One of the unanticipated consequences of workers’ benefits improving was the increase cost of doing business.
Companies, in order to stay competitive in the increasingly global marketplace, had to find ways to lower costs, which meant replacing jobs with “automation” and “out-sourcing.”
After World War Two, America helped rebuild Germany and Japan with new factories.
These overseas factories, with their cheaper labor costs and newer machinery, produced items for less and took a larger part of the global market.
They hired lobbyists to push for lowering tariffs so they could bring less expensive products in, gaining a competitive advantage over American factories.
Issues that increased the cost of doing business in America included:
  • Higher wages;
  • Increased taxes;
  • Expensive lawsuits;
  • Burdensome regulations;
  • Environmental restrictions;
  • Crony capitalism, globalist capitalism, vulture capitalism, and big tech monopolies, where career politicians provide subsidies, contracts, and relaxed regulations for companies supporting their political agendas and reelection campaigns; but companies not supporting them are put at a disadvantage, some being faced with the choice of either going out of business or going out of the country.
As American-made products became more expensive in comparison to foreign-made products, consumers bought fewer of them, resulting in American factories needing fewer workers.
“Squeeze the sponge and the water goes out” – as manufacturing costs in America rose, manufacturers moved with their jobs to other countries.
To personalize this, if you needed gas for your car, and the gas station on your side of the street sold it at $4.50 a gallon, but the station on the other side of the street sold it for just $1.99 a gallon, would you cross the street?
Just as water seeks its own level, individuals and businesses are motivated to save money.
Bringing jobs back to America is as simple as making it more profitable for factories to be located here than there.
But coalescing the political will in Congress is an uphill battle.
Another by-product of companies leaving the country was their loss of patriotism, creating what became termed “globalists.”
Globalists are international big businesses whose patriotism is to their profits.
Globalists are happy to work with socialist and communist governments as a means secure monopolies and guarantee profits.
Capitalism effectively split in two, with “individual” capitalism being patriotic, supporting the country that gives equal opportunities for advancement;
and “globalist” capitalism which squelches competition by supporting one world government socialist politicians who return the favor with profitable government contracts, exception of regulations, and insider trade deals.
Politicians receiving money from globalists are pressured to enact discretionary regulations and burdensome COVID responses which put smaller competitors out of business.
Additionally, socialist political strategies include intentionally raising unemployment rates so more unemployed workers will sign up for welfare benefits.
Once unemployed workers become dependent on government benefits and entitlements, they are inclined to vote for the candidates who promise to continue them.
Tragically, for some political strategists, increased unemployment means an increased voter base.
If entitlements are threatened, some are even inclined to be organized into revolutionaries.
Socialist thinker Friedrich Engels wrote in 1844 (London: W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 1976; Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844):
“Every fresh slump must ruin more small capitalists and increase the workers who live only by their labor.
This will increase the number of the unemployed and this is the main problem that worries economists.
In the end commercial crises will lead to a social revolution far beyond the comprehension of the economists with their scholastic wisdom.”
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushschev reportedly told Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture, in 1959:
“We won’t have to fight you; We’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”
Among American workers, union membership since 1950 has declined from 50 percent to currently less than 12 percent.
Instead of addressing the need to attract manufacturers, with their jobs, back to America, many unions have focused their efforts to increase membership by recruiting from other occupations, such as government, education, medical professionals, sports, service industry, and retail.
Warning American workers of the hidden danger of “social justice” movements, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had spent 11 years in Union of Soviet Socialist Republics labor camps, stated, June 30, 1975:
“I … call upon America to be more careful with its trust …
Prevent those … who are attempting to establish even finer … legal shades of equality — because of their distorted outlook … short-sightedness and … self-interest – from falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road …
… They are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat …
I call upon you: ordinary working men of America … do not let yourselves become weak.”
A spiritual encouragement is found in First Corinthians 15:58: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
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The Weekly Sam: How to Qualify as a Tutor

(The article below is an excerpt from Sam’s book How to Tutor.  A link to an PDF version:  http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Books/How%20To%20Tutor.pdf )

The art of tutoring is as old as education itself. In the early days,
before the Industrial Revolution, before there was such a thing as
mass education, children were taught the basic educational skills
by tutors, or in very small schoolhouses. The wealthy hired tutors
not only to instruct their children in the necessary skills of
reading and writing, but also to provide a proper moral up bringing. The hiring of a tutor was considered a very important
business. John Locke, the English philosopher and educator,
writing in the 17th century, described the difficult problem of finding a good tutor who, he insisted, should have “sobriety, temperance, tenderness, diligence, and discretion,” qualities he considered as “hardly to be found united in persons that are to be had
for ordinary salaries nor easily to be found anywhere.” He explained further:

The great difficulty will be where to find a proper person. For
those of small age, parts, and virtue are unfit for this employment; and those that have greater will hardly be got to undertake such a charge. You must therefore look out early and enquire everywhere, for the world has people of all sorts …. If
you find it difficult to meet with such a tutor as we desire, you
are not to wonder. I only can say, spare no care nor cost to get
such an one. All things are to be had that way, and I dare assure
you that if you can get a good one, you will never repent the
charge but will always have the satisfaction to think it the
money of all other the best laid out.

Of course, the kind of tutors John Locke wrote about (the tutors
who served the aristocracy of preindustrial times) are not the
kind needed today. The tutoring we need is of a much more
limited kind, resembling the situation of a person who gives piano
lessons. Yet, even tutors on this limited scale must have certain
qualities which make them successful in their tutoring. If you intend to tutor children you should be fond of children, have enormous patience, be affectionate, and understand the young mind:
its eagerness, its curiosity, its tendency to wander from the difficult problems at hand, and its resistance to required effort. So, it
does take considerable skill to teach a child. The three most important ingredients of good tutoring, however, are patience, an
understanding of the young mind, and a knowledge of the subject
you are teaching.

Children also have very strong egos. Their desire to succeed is
very great, and success in learning is important to their self-esteem. Therefore, they must be taught in very gradual steps, so
that success is assured by the simplicity of what is taught. Never
show impatience if the child does not catch on. There may be
something in the way you are presenting the subject, or some distraction on the part of the child, or some slowness in the child’s
ability to understand what you are driving at. Perhaps the child
has not fully digested the previous lesson. It may even be
necessary to go one step backward before you can take the next
two steps forward.

The child’s self-esteem is as fragile as his constitution. You
would not expect him to carry a heavier weight than his physical
strength permitted. Likewise, you must not expect him to understand something too complex for his young mind to grasp. And
you must not expect him to learn easily or well if the methods you
use are illogical, confusing, or poorly thought-out. We teach the
complex by breaking it down into smaller, simpler parts. That is
the method we have used in the program of instruction in this
book. We start with the simplest and most elementary parts,
make sure the child learns them, and proceed from there. In each
section of the book you will find more precise instruction for the
subject to be taught.

Who is qualified to be a tutor? Anyone willing and able to do the
job can tutor. If you are a parent with a high school education, you
are eminently qualified to teach the basic program in this book to
your own child-provided you have the time and patience to do so.
If you are a high school or college student you may also qualify if
you can follow the instructions in this book, relate well to
children, and understand their learning problems. Retired
teachers, of course, make excellent tutors, adapting their years of
schoolroom experience to the tutoring situation. And finally,
there is that large category of married women with college educations who, for one reason or another, do not pursue full-time
careers, but have the time, the energy, and the desire to offer
tutoring services at home for a few hours a day. For such women,
tutoring can indeed be an excellent way of supplementing the
family income as well as performing a valuable, needed service
for the community.

If you charge five dollars an hour and tutor
four children a day, that will provide you with one hundred
dollars for a five-day week. That one hundred dollars can be used
to pay a lot of bills. Of course, you must declare that income on
your income tax return, but you can also deduct all the expenses
involved in earning that money. Such expenses would include advertising, materials, books, pencils, paper, blackboards, phone
calls, postage, and other expenses incurred in earning that money,
including, incidentally, the cost of this book. If you set aside a
small room in your house for tutoring, you can deduct all the costs
of maintaining that room, namely electricity, heat, and a portion
of your total rent.

It is not necessary to have had formal teaching experience to
become a good tutor. If you have enjoyed reading to children and
answering their questions, then you should enjoy tutoring. With
the proper instructional materials, anyone who enjoys children
can become a good tutor.
How do you find children who need tutoring? In a small community, word of mouth is the best way. A small sign in front of
your house, a short, classified advertisement in the local paper, or
a notice on the bulletin board of a laundromat or supermarket are
some of the ways to make your services known to the community.

Also, if you have done school teaching in the past, your friends in
the school system (teachers, advisors, administrators) might be of
some help in locating children who need tutoring. You might even
type up a promotional letter explaining that you specialize in
tutoring preschoolers. Have it multilithed and mail it out to
families and schools in the area. You might make your services
known to women’s clubs, or parent-teacher associations in the
area. And, of course, there are the “yellow pages.”
How much to charge depends on how great the demand is for
your time and the parents’ ability to pay. An hourly fee of
between three and ten dollars can be charged. You might start at
the lowest practical fee until your tutoring skills are perfected
and your reputation established. By then you should have more
requests for your services than you can handle. You might then be
justified in charging a higher fee. If you find that you can success fully tutor more than one child at a time, you might still charge
the same fee but increase your income by tutoring more than one
child in one hour.

 The Art of Tutoring

The art of tutoring, like any other art, is learned in the doing. To
be really good at it requires some special personality traits, skills,
and sensitivity. The one-to-one relationship brings you into direct,
personal contact with the pupil. There is always some tension,
some anxiety in a relationship of that proximity. The way you
relieve that tension and anxiety is to make the child feel that he or
she is liked. You might start out by saying something nice about
the child’s appearance. You should also let the child know that he
is in for an interesting time, that both of you are going to enjoy
the hour you spend together. If you are tutoring in your home,
choose a well-lighted, bright part of the house for the instruction
area. Treat the child with courtesy, helping him (or her) off with
his (or her) coat. Show that you are glad to see him. All of this is
to make the child receptive to your instruction and to put him at
ease.
Since you both will be sitting together, have two chairs and a
table on which you can spread out the instructional materials.
You should also have an upright blackboard. You might
sometimes find it easier to explain things by the use of such a
blackboard in conjunction with side-by-side instruction. Be flexible. The instructional materials in this book can be used with as
much flexibility as the situation requires. See what works and see
what doesn’t. Each child is different, and you will find that an approach that works with one child may not work with another. The
most important point to remember is that each child is an individual and that you will have to work with him in order to find
the approach that suits him best. Each child brings to the tutoring
experience a different amount of knowledge, a different attitude
toward learning, and a different attitude toward the tutor. The
expert tutor knows how to adapt himself to the personality of the
child.

In the tutoring situation the child is relieved of the problem of
competing with others in the classroom. But at the same time, he
wants to make a good impression with the tutor. Anyone who
comes for instruction, whether it be a child or an adult, is sensitive to the fact that he is inferior to the instructor in the area of
knowledge in which he is to be instructed. The child who does not
know how to read may not think of himself as an illiterate, but he
does know that he lacks a skill which every child slightly older
than him already has. He is sensitive about his intelligence and his
ability to learn. He badly wants to succeed and can be easily disappointed if he falters. Therefore, it is important to pace your instruction according to the child’s ability to learn. It is also important to give him a pat on the back when he learns well. In feeling
out the child’s abilities and general understanding, be patient,
affectionate, and maintain a sense of humor. Never scold, never
show anger, never show impatience.

Plan each lesson in advance. Know the material you are going
to cover. Get to the instruction once the child has settled down. Do
not waste time. Get the child absorbed in the learning process so
that he does not have a chance to be distracted. After you explain
something to him, have him do it, write it, or read it. This gives
him a chance to absorb what he has been taught and to use his
hands and fingers or express his thoughts verbally. If, during the
lesson the child seems overly restless and inattentive, try to find
out the cause. Are you going too fast or too slow? Is your approach
too dry? Perhaps a short break for a drink of water might be
helpful.

In order to maintain the appropriate pace of instruction, you
will have to be sensitive to the child’s rate of learning. It is better
to give him a little more of what you think he can learn than less.
By giving him more, you don’t give him a chance to be bored. In
addition, by giving the child a little more to learn than his present
capacity, he becomes accustomed to the process of exerting mental effort. This is important, for although we should try to make
learning as interesting, exciting, and as pleasant as possible, there
is no escaping the fact that learning requires mental effort-mental work-and the sooner the child becomes accustomed to the
process of mental work, the sooner he will understand, appreciate and enjoy the whole process of intellectual mastery. Therefore, maintain a pace that requires the child to exert some mental
effort.

However, do not require efforts which are clearly beyond
his capacity. Reading, writing, and arithmetic require the child to
master a good deal of symbolic abstraction. Such mastery does
not occur effortlessly. But once the mind is put to work, it begins
to expand its capacity to handle even greater abstractions.
The mind works in a very remarkable way. It has the power to
integrate a great deal of new knowledge with what it already
knows, and the result is a greatly expanded understanding. The
mind seems to have a limitless ability to absorb knowledge over a
long period of time, and this ability expands with use-just as a
muscle will grow larger if it is required to lift heavier loads.

Muscle building by weightlifting is probably a perfect example
of a similar process which goes on in the brain, namely, the expansion of capacity through greater exertion and use. If a weightlifter lifts the same light weight a thousand times, it will not expand his muscle. He can only achieve this by lifting a much
heavier weight to the limits of his capacity. To go beyond his present limit requires an exertion that is painful but necessary if his
capacity is to grow to meet greater demands.
The brain’s capacity expands in the same way. It requires mental exertion of a comparable intensity to reach a higher level of
ability. No one likes mental exertion any more than he likes
physical exertion, and this is true of adults as well as children.
But such exertion, unfortunately, is necessary if the child is to
achieve any degree of mastery of the subject matter at hand.

Thus, the child should be led slowly, patiently and gradually to
understand how he must exert mental effort to acquire the skills
and knowledge necessary for him to advance scholastically. Of
course, like the muscles of the body, the brain becomes tired and
requires periods of rest and recuperation-especially after great
exertion. The tutor should be able to sense when the child’s mind
is tired and that he can learn no more during that period.
The tutor can be greatly instrumental in teaching the child the
most efficient ways of using his mind by guiding its use step by
step. The instruction in this book has been designed to give the
child a sense of order in what is being learned. The approach has
been to reduce the complex to its simplest parts, so that the child
can be led to grasp simple concepts before moving on to the more
difficult.

Once the child sees the logic behind the symbolic
systems he must work with, he has taken a giant step toward intellectual development. Most of the “work” in mental exertion
consists of understanding concepts. The rest consists of either
pure rote memory, or repeated use of concepts until they become
automatic responses.

Teaching a child the basic skills of reading, writing, and calculation is like teaching him how to swim or play the piano. The skills
to be learned require lots of practice. There is not much difference between mastering a physical skill and mastering a mental
skill. Both require effort and practice. Both use up energy. Both
have to be taught in an organized, logical way. Both can be made
exciting or dull, depending on the approach of the teacher. But the
process of mastering a physical or mental skill is an exciting one
for the student, for he looks forward to mastery with great anticipation. Swimming and playing the piano will afford him many
years of enjoyment and pleasure. Reading, writing, and calculation will afford him years of enjoyment and rewarding activity,
increasing his capacity to earn money and providing the kind of
life for himself that he will want. Thus, in teaching any basic skill
to a youngster, one must see it in terms of long-range, life-long
use. One must see it as contributing to the child’s future adult
happiness. To be concerned simply with the child’s present enjoyment of what he is doing is to shortchange him in the future. His
ability to master a skill will contribute greatly to his own self­-esteem, his own sense of self-worth, and his ability to make his
way in the world with confidence. That is why it is worth taking
the time to make sure that the child masters the basic skills.

A good tutor can easily earn the everlasting gratitude of a
youngster who is having trouble learning in a crowded classroom
where his special needs and problems are ignored. But it takes
time to identify the pupil’s learning difficulty. You do this first by
finding out what the pupil actually knows. Some children are
afraid to admit that they don’t know what they think they should.
They don’t want to appear stupid. The fear of being thought
stupid or of actually being stupid is very real, and is in itself a
learning handicap. The child must get rid of this fear, and the
tutor can help him remove this fear by showing him that he can
learn.

Children who cannot learn via the deficient instruction in
school classrooms tend to blame themselves for not learning. They
are in no position to question the instructional methods being
used by their teachers. Thus, if they fail to learn they think it is
because of their own deficiency, not the instructor’s. The schools
tend to reinforce this view by insisting that there is something
wrong with the child, not the instructional methods. Books have
been written listing all the things wrong with children who cannot
learn to read via the prevalent methods being used in the classrooms of America. There are, fortunately, a few books listing the
things wrong with the methods, not the children. In The New
Illiterates    http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Books/New%20Illiterates.pdf    I analyzed the teaching methods which have been used
to teach millions of children how to read, and I showed how deficient these methods were. I also showed how tenaciously so
many educators have clung to these methods (despite tremendous
criticism) and how detrimental they were to the children exposed
to them.

It is, of course, possible to undo the damage done by faulty
teaching methods, but it can be an extremely difficult task. Any
bad habits learned in the first and second grades are very hard to
displace with good ones. In some cases it is impossible. Some
children simply cannot unlearn these bad habits. That is why it is
so important to start the child off on a sound footing with sound
instruction. The fear of failing is the greatest handicap to learning, and a
child gets this fear only when he begins to see that he cannot cope
with the material being given him in the classroom. As a tutor,
you need never arouse the fear of failing for the simple reason
that you are free to use any method which will enable the child to
learn the concepts and skills he is being taught

If the child is normal and has an adequate vocabulary, he can learn all of the basics
with no problem at all. If the child comes to you because he is having difficulties in the classroom, try to get to the heart of the
problem. To do so you must find out the following: the methods to
which the child has been exposed in the classroom, how much he
has learned, what he knows and what he doesn’t know, and if
the child is physically normal as far as eyesight and hearing are
concerned.

is important to have this preliminary information about the
child if you are to tutor him successfully. You can find out what
methods he has been exposed to by visiting the school he attends
or has attended, by talking to the teachers he has had, and by
examining the textbooks used. In the Appendix to The New
Illiterates, I listed and evaluated the most widely used reading instruction programs in this country. Check that list to see if the
child has been taught by one of the methods evaluated. If he has
been exposed to one of the deficient methods, you will have to
devise a way to overcome the bad habits learned.

The instructional materials in this book start from the beginning. They start with the assumption that the child has not as
yet been instructed in these subjects. But they can also be used
with children who have already been taught something. That is
why it is important to find out how much the child knows. You
can pace your instruction accordingly.

Before taking on the child,
you should question the parent sufficiently, so that you have an
idea of how to proceed. Here is a suggested list of questions which
will elicit the information you should have:

What is the child’s age?
What schools has he attended?
What grade is he in?
What textbooks is he using in school?
Has he had any instruction at home in the subjects to be
tutored?
What instructional methods has the child been exposed to in
school and at home?
What are his present skills?
Does the child have any specific learning problem which the
tutor should be aware of?
Does the child have normal hearing and eyesight?

With that basic information, you will be in a much better position to tutor the pupil successfully.
Why Tutoring Can Succeed Where Classroom Teaching Does Not
Perhaps the most important advantage tutoring has over the
classroom situation is that the tutor can much better guide the
attention of his pupil than can the classroom teacher. He can
direct the pupil’s attention to the particular idea or knowledge to
be mastered. In a large classroom a child’s attention can easily
wander.

There are a hundred potential distractions around him.
Focusing attention requires the effort of self-control, an effort
which many children fail to make. The tutor helps the child focus
his attention by being right there beside him. He does this mainly
through dialogue, by talking directly to the pupil and eliciting
responses. In this way the tutor can assess immediately whether
the child is grasping the concepts being taught. Conversely, it
might take weeks in the classroom before the teacher could discover whether the pupil has learned what he was supposed to
learn.

If the pupil is particularly clever in hiding his ignorance, or
if the teacher is indifferent to a child’s understanding of the subject, the child’s ignorance may never be discovered. Some children
manage to get through high school completely ignorant of concepts they should have learned in the early grades-concepts
which teachers in later grades assume the child knows. Children
are often too embarrassed to admit that they lack fundamental
knowledge in some subject areas. They pretend to know when
they really don’t.
These hazards are eliminated in tutoring. The tutor keeps a
close tab on what the child knows and he does not proceed further until the child firmly grasps the ideas and knowledge he must
have in order to go on. Why is the classroom situation so non-conducive to learning? Distractions, fear of appearing ridiculous
in the competitive situation, lack of teacher attention, and the
teacher’s tendency to want to control and manipulate a whole
class rather than understand the individual student are among
the principal reasons. The teacher must teach as if all students
learn alike when it is obvious they do not. In a classroom where
children are deadly afraid of appearing stupid, they tend to give
the answers they think the teacher wants to hear. They do not
think in terms of what is objectively correct, but what will please
the teacher.

In tutoring, the teacher must not be interested in merely
eliciting so-called right answers, but in seeing that the pupil understands the concepts being taught. The interaction between
tutor and pupil is so close and so dynamic, that the tutor can sense
when a child has grasped a concept and when he hasn’t. If the
child doesn’t fully understand what he is being taught, the tutor
does not mark the child wrong, or score him a failure. He simply
continues to work with the child until the child does grasp the concept to be learned. The classroom teacher, however, because of the
distance between him and the pupil, has no way of knowing
whether the child has learned anything. He can only find out by
way of a test given a day, a week, or a month later-if at all. The
child sees the test as an arbitrary judgment of his intelligence. If
he fails, he feels stupid and incompetent.

In tutoring, this entire process of measuring intelligence is
avoided. The child simply does not proceed to anything more complex until the tutor is satisfied that the child has mastered the
material taught up to any given point. This is why tutoring can be
so effective. The tutor works directly with the mind of his pupil
and can sense when the pupil is learning and when he is not.
When the pupil is not learning, the tutor can immediately find out
why, make whatever adjustments are necessary, or explain things
in different, more comprehensible terms until the pupil learns.
The moment of learning comes when the pupil integrates in his
own mind the concepts or knowledge the tutor imparts. The tutor
can see if the pupil understands what he is learning by a process
very much like instant replay. Sometimes understanding does not
come all at once, but in bits and pieces. Eventually the bits and
pieces fall into place and become a comprehensible whole. This is
the learning process, and the tutor becomes intimately aware of
how it works by seeing it operate in the child right next to him.

In this process the child’s motivation is directed not merely
toward pleasing the teacher, but to pleasing himself and proving
to himself that he can master a skill, understand a concept, and
also absorb knowledge. The pupil, of course, wants the tutor’s approval, but the tutor must be clever enough to make the child feel
that important sense of satisfaction which comes from mastery of
the subject rather than from the tutor’s praise alone. Satisfaction
with self is far more important in building self-esteem and self-confidence than teacher approval. The former comes with a pleasing knowledge that one knows how to use one’s mind; the latter,
merely from an acknowledgement of good behavior.

John Holt contends that children fail in the classroom “because
they are afraid, bored, and confused.” He explains:
“They are afraid, above all else, of failing, of disappointing or displeasing the many anxious adults around them, whose limitless
hopes and expectations for them hang over their heads like a
cloud.”

They are bored because the things they are given and told to
do in school are so trivial, so dull, and make such limited and
narrow demands on the wide spectrum of their intelligence,
capabilities, and talents.
They are confused because most of the torrent of words that
pours over them in school makes little or no sense. It often flatly
contradicts other things they have been told, and hardly ever has
any relation to what they really know-to the rough model of
reality that they carry around in their minds.

The tutor can eliminate all three causes of failure. First, he can
eliminate the fear of failure by simply proceeding according to the
child’s own learning pace; by making sure that the child understands the concepts imparted to him, by sensing when the child is
having difficulty, and by sometimes taking one step backwards in
order to take the next two steps forward. The tutor’s sensitivity to
a child’s learning behavior permits him not only to catch the child
when he is not learning but, through an intimate, constant
dialogue between tutor and pupil, permits the child to catch
himself as he be:::ins to understand how the learning process takes
place. All learning is inner dialogue, and the tutor-pupil dialogue
is an externalization of this process. That, alone, makes tutoring a
superior learning experience because the learning process is learned,
as well as the subject matter.

The tutor can also eliminate boredom by making the process of
intellectual mastery as exciting and exhilarating as it actually is.
Nothing is more satisfying to the human being than intellectual
mastery, for the simple reason that the mind is man’s special tool
for survival, his most distinguishing feature when compared to
the other species. His mind is what has made him superior to
other species. Therefore, when the mind masters a skill it
provides deep psychic satisfaction to its owner-a metaphysical
and existential satisfaction related to his special place in the universal scheme of things. When a child masters an elementary intellectual skill, he derives a real feeling of efficacy, competence,
and independence-all of which increase his self-esteem and self-confidence. In a tutoring situation, the pupil is too busy mastering
a skill to get bored.

The tutor can also eliminate the confusion that besets children
in today’s classroom. If his instructional methods are consistent,
rational, and sound, there will be no confusion. The instruction in
this book has been prepared to eliminate the kind of contradictory, senseless instruction which is so much a part of
modern elementary pedagogy. We have written this book specifically to make it possible for the child to circumvent the confusion to which he will be exposed in the classroom. Since tutoring,
at this time in our educational history, can only supplement the
classroom, we realize that children will be exposed to our contemporary pedagogical confusion no matter what they learn from a
tutor.

However, the tutor can so fortify the child with good learning
habits. with an understanding of basic concepts, with a mastery of
elementary skills, that no amount of classroom confusion will hamper
the child’s continued progress.

Thus, we see in tutoring an essential alternative to the classroom situation, an alternative more and more parents will turn to
as more and more qualified tutors offer their services to a public
which desperately needs them.

The Weekly Sam: Dyslexia: What Every Parent Should Know About Its Cause By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

For years I have been telling parents and educators that the kind of reading difficulties
afflicting perfectly normal children in our schools today are being caused by the teaching
methods and not by any defect in the children themselves. The educators have been
telling us for years now that the reason why so many children are having problems
learning to read is because of a learning disability they’ve been born with. In fact, the
official position of the federal government on this issue is summed up in the 1987 Report
to the Congress of the Interagency Committee on Learning Disabilities which defined
“Learning Disabilities” as follows (p. 222):

“Learning disabilities is a generic term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders
manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking,
reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities, or of social skills. These disorders
are intrinsic to the individual and presumed to be due to central nervous system
dysfunction. [Our emphasis.] Even though a learning disability may occur concomitantly
with other handicapping conditions (e.g., sensory impairment, mental retardation, social
and emotional disturbance), with socioenvironmental influences (e.g., cultural
differences, insufficient or inappropriate instruction, psychogenic factors), and especially
with attention deficit disorder, all of which may cause learning problems, a learning
disability is not the direct result of those conditions or influences.”

In other words, according to government researchers, all learning disabilities are due to
“central nervous system dysfunction,” regardless of all other factors, including teaching
methods. In fact, the federal government is pumping millions of dollars into research on
the genetic causes of dyslexia.
But what if we are able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that dyslexia is caused by
the teaching methods? Would that alter the course of government research? Probably not,
for there is a private researcher in North Carolina by the name of Edward Miller who has
already offered such proof to the government, only to be rebuffed by officialdom. After
all, if what Miller says is true, then millions of dollars of research money will have been
wasted.

Are there people who are born dyslexic? Yes, but they are afflicted with so many other
problems that their inability to learn to read is simply only one of them. There are
children born with all sorts of handicaps and defects that are recognized at birth or soon
after. Some of these handicaps reflect neurological problems. But many of these children
are quite educable.
However, the dyslexia we are talking about is the kind that afflicts children who have
come to school with perfectly good speech, hearing, eyesight, equilibrium, etc. In fact,
some of these so-called dyslexics are some of the brightest and physically healthiest
students in their classes. Miller calls their reading problem “educational dyslexia,” that is,
dyslexia, or reading disability, caused by the teaching method.

Some parents will ask: how is it that my Johnny began to show signs of dyslexia in the
first grade, before he had had any formal reading instruction? Miller has found the
answer to that question. It all starts at home with preschool readers. Miller discovered
that when preschoolers memorize as sight words the entire texts of such popular books as
Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, they develop a block against
seeing the words phonetically and thus become “dyslexic.” They become sight readers
with a holistic reflex rather than phonetic readers with a phonetic reflex. A holistic reader
looks at each word as a little picture, a configuration, much like a Chinese ideograph, and
tries to think of the word it represents. A phonetic reader associates letters with sounds
and sounds out the syllabic units which blend into an articulated word.
What this means is that parents should teach their children to read phonetically before
giving them the Dr. Seuss books to read. They should avoid having their children
memorize words by their configurations alone, because once that mode of viewing words
becomes an automatic reflex, it will create a block against seeing the phonetic structure
of the words.
.
In other words, failure to teach a child to read phonetically, but requiring the child to
memorize hundreds of sight words produces educational dyslexia. Incidentally, a sight
word, by definition, is a word learned without reference to the sounds the letters stand
for. Nowadays, publishers are selling books for preschoolers with audio tapes so that the
child can learn to read by the sight method without the help of his or her parents. Thus,
the child will develop a reading handicap without the slightest idea that what he or she is
doing is harmful.

How do we know it’s harmful? By what happens when the child enters school and
proceeds upwards to the third grade. In kindergarten and the first grade, all will seem
satisfactory, for most schools now use the sight method, and a child who enters school
having already memorized a large number of sight words will be ahead of those students
who haven’t. Everybody will be pleased by the child’s performance. But as the child
moves into the third grade where the reading demands are much greater, involving many
new words which the child’s overburdened memory cannot handle, the child will
experience a learning breakdown.

But the problem, as we have indicated, can also show up in the first grade where the
teaching method is phonics-based. This is often the case in many private and religious
schools where reading is taught phonetically. If a child enters the first grade in such a
school after having already memorized several hundred sight words from preschool
readers, that child will most likely have already developed a block against learning to
look at words phonetically. That’s why we see “dyslexia” among some first graders.

In other words, there are two ways of looking at our printed or written words: holistically
or phonetically. If you are taught to read phonetically from the start, you will never
become dyslexic, for dyslexia by definition is a block against viewing words in their
phonetic structure. Phonetic readers become good, independent readers because they have
developed a phonetic reflex. To them literacy is as natural and effortless as breathing. A
holistic, sight reader, on the other hand, must rely on memorization of individual word
forms and use all sorts of contextual strategies to get the word right.

Edward Miller has devised a very simple word-recognition test that dramatically
illustrates the difference between a holistic and a phonetic reader. The test consists of two
sets of words: the first set consists of 260 sight words drawn from Dr. Seuss’s two books,
The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, and the second set consists of 260 equally
simple words taken from Rudolf Flesch’s phonetically regular word lists in Why Johnny
Can’t Read. Both sets of words are at a first-grade level.

A child who is already a phonetic reader will sail through both sets of words without any
problem. But a holistic reader might sail through the sight words at high speed with no
errors, but then slow down considerably and make many errors in the phonetic section
even though these are simple first-grade words.
That the words in the two Dr. Seuss books were to be read and learned as sight words
was confirmed by Dr. Seuss himself in an interview published in Arizona magazine in
June 1981. He said:

“They think I did it in twenty minutes. That damned Cat in the Hat took nine months until
I was satisfied. I did it for a textbook house and they sent me a word list. That was due to
the Dewey revolt in the Twenties in which they threw out phonic reading and went to
word recognition, as if you’re reading Chinese pictographs instead of blending sounds of
different letters. I think killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the
country. Anyway, they had it all worked out that a healthy child at the age of four can
learn so many words in a week and that’s all. So there were two hundred and twenty-three
words to use in this book. I read the list three times and I almost went out of my head. I
said, I’ll read it once more and if I can find two words that rhyme that’ll be the title of my
book. (That’s genius at work.) I found ‘cat’ and ‘hat’ and I said, ‘The title will be The Cat
in the Hat.’”

Thus, even Dr. Seuss knew that “killing phonics” was a cause of illiteracy in America.
But somehow that insight, made by America’s most famous writer of children’s books,
has escaped our educators.
Holistic readers are indeed handicapped by the way they are taught to read. They are
taught to look at words as whole pictures, which means that they are not bound to look at
a word from left to right. They simply look for something in the word-picture that will
remind them of what the word is. Thus they may actually look at a word from right to
left, which accounts for the tendency of dyslexics to reverse letters and read words
backwards. Also, holistic readers are encouraged by their teachers to substitute words, as
explained by a whole-language advocate quoted in the Washington Post of Nov. 29,
1986. The headline reads, “Reading Method Lets Pupils Guess; Whole-Language
Approach Riles Advocates of Phonics.” The article states:

“The most controversial aspect of whole language is the de-emphasis on accuracy.
American Reading Council President Juli a Palmer, an advocate of the approach, said it is
acceptable if a young child reads the word house for home, or subtitutes the word pony
for horse. ‘It’s not very serious because she understands the meaning,’ said Palmer.
‘Accuracy is not the name of the game.’”

When does accuracy become the name of the game in Ms. Palmer’s system of education?
Probably, never, for if you teach children in primary school, through invented spelling
and word substitutions, that accuracy is not at all important, they may never acquire a
sense of accuracy, unless forced to do so by the demands of the workplace.

What we do know is that when you impose an inaccurate, subjective ideographic teaching
technique on a phonetic-alphabetic writing system which demands accurate decoding,
you create symbolic confusion, cognitive conflict, frustration and a learning breakdown.
In addition, I strongly suspect that attention deficit disorder, otherwise known as ADD, is
a form of behavioral disorganization created by a teaching disorganization. It is the
symbolic confusion, cognitive conflict, learning blocks and frustration caused by holistic
teaching methods that literally force children to react physically to what they instinctively
know is harming them. They may not know exactly what it is the teacher is doing that is
harming them. But they certainly know that they are being harmed. How? By the simple
circumstances of their position.

When they entered school at the age of 5 or 6, these children felt very confident, very
intelligent. After all, they had all taught themselves to speak their own language very
nicely without the aid of teachers or school. And when they enter school, they expect to
be able to learn to read with the same competence. And, normally, this is what happens
when they are taught to read phonetically and begin to master our alphabetic system.
If children they are taught to read holistically, mastering our alphabetically written words
becomes a superhuman task. And because the teaching method seems to defy all logic
and common sense, their minds react against such teaching just as their stomachs would
if some sort of poison were eaten. The stomach throws up, rejecting the poison, and I
suspect that ADD is a form of mental rejection of pedagogical poison.

What other defense does the child have against pedagogical poisoning? What Ritalin does
is lower the defense against such poisoning. The child becomes a docile, defenseless
victim of whatever nonsense the teacher is inflicting on the child. And the child is usually
dumped into Special Education for the rest of his or her academic career.

According to Lori and Bill Granger, authors of The Magic Feather: The Truth About
“Special Education”:
“Parents of children in Special Education classes have noticed that their kids become
more and more passive and dependent the longer they are in Special Education. . . .
Special Education teaches kids how to be failures and to live with being failures. It
segregates kids from “normal” kids by putting special labels on them, putting them in
separate classrooms, putting them in separate schools, and making certain that not too
much is ever asked of them or expected of them. . . .
“Evidence for a “neurological” basis for LD is vague at best. . . . Some of the more
revered books in this field, which purport to convey “facts” on the “neurological” basis of
learning disabilities, are nothing more than wishful thinking. . . . Education trade journals
are full of debates about learning disabilities that would shock parents of children who
have been routinely labeled LD.”

Fortunately, homeschoolers are in the best position to guard their children against the
kind of pedagogical poisoning that is turning millions of normal children into LDs. They
can begin teaching their children to read phonetically as early as the child wishes. Above
all, they must avoid having their preschoolers memorize words holistically without any
knowledge of the letter sounds. If you tell children that letters stand for sounds, they will
begin to understand what our alphabetic system is all about.
Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of six books on education, including How to Tutor
and Alpha-Phonics, which are widely used by homeschoolers in teaching their children to
read phonetically. His book on the reading problem, The New Illiterates, revealed for the
first time the true origin of look-say: Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet’s method of teaching the
deaf to read. Dr. Blumenfeld has spoken at many homeschool conferences and is a
frequent guest on radio talk shows. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the City
College of New York, an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Bob Jones University,
and publishes the monthly Blumenfeld Education Letter.  (Sam passed away in 2015 but his vital work lives on.)

The Weekly Sam: George Washington: Our First President By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

The new government of the United States under the new Constitution got underway in the first
week of April 1789 when the new Congress achieved its first quorum. Their initial duty was to
pass the Bill of Rights, as promised.

Earlier that year, on January 7th, electors were chosen for the first Presidential election in
United States history. The electors, chosen by the eligible voters in the various states, were
free to cast their ballots for whomever they wished. On February 4th, they cast their ballots as
follows: 69 for Washington; 34 for John Adams, who therefore became Vice President. This
method of selecting a Vice President was changed by the 12th Amendment in 1804.

On April 6th, the ballots were counted in the Senate, and George Washington was informed that
he had been elected the First President of the United States. The inauguration took place on
April 30th in the Senate Chamber of Federal Hall, New York City, the temporary capital of the
nation.

Washington immediately got to work organizing his administration, which would set precedents
for future Presidents. He would demonstrate that the new government under the new
Constitution would be what the citizens hoped it would be: a prudent and benevolent
instrument of governmental power in keeping with the precepts of the Declaration of
Independence and strictly limited in its powers.
In September, Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury,
General Henry Knox as Secretary of War, Edmund Randolph as Attorney General and Thomas
Jefferson as Secretary of State.

As in any organization that is new, every step had to be taken in strict conformity to the
guidelines set out in the Constitution. On September 29th, the United States Army was created,
consisting of the forces already on hand during the final months of the Confederation. In all, it
consisted of only 1,000 men.

On November 26th, President Washington proclaimed the nation’s first Thanksgiving Day, in
humble recognition of the great blessings that God had bestowed on the new nation.
The year 1790 saw the first Census of the United States, as called for by the Constitution. There
were 4,000,000 inhabitants in all thirteen states. Negro slaves accounted for 19.3 percent of
the total population. Many of the Founding Fathers hoped that slavery would be abolished, but
the economics of the South made that impossible. A West Jersey Quaker wrote: “This trade of
importing slaves is dark gloominess hanging over the land; the consequences will be grievous to
posterity.”

Patrick Henry stated in 1773, “A serious view of this subject gives a gloomy prospect to future
times.” And Jefferson wrote: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His
justice cannot sleep forever.”
Madison held that where slavery exists “the republican theory becomes fallacious. Slavery is
the greatest evil under which the nation labors—a portentous evil—an evil, moral, political, and
economical—a blot on our free country.”

It had been Washington’s hope that Virginia should remove slavery by a public act; and as the
prospects of a general emancipation grew more and more dim, he, in utter hopelessness of the
action of the State, did all that he could by bequeathing freedom to his own slaves.

In August 1790, the Capital was moved from New York to Philadelphia. In June Hamilton had
convinced Congress that the Federal Government should assume the states’ debts. He won the
support of the Southern States by promising to move the nation’s capital to the South. It
demonstrated how compromise and promises would become major tools in crafting and
enacting legislation.

In 1791, two major philosophies of government began to emerge, polarized around Hamilton
and Jefferson, which set the stage for the creation of political parties. The Hamilton faction,
known as the Federalists, advocated a strong central government and the development of
industry. Jefferson’s followers, the Democratic-Republican faction, favored a weaker central
government and stronger local control befitting a democratic agrarian society.
The Hamilton-Jefferson debates became the fodder of rival newspapers, which became either
pro Federalist or pro Democratic-Republican. Thus, one can say, that the two-party system got
a very early start in our political history. Of course, President Washington remained above the
fray, maintaining the upmost cordiality among his cabinet members. He was more of a referee
than a partisan.

On April 2, 1792 Congress passed the Coinage Act, authorizing the establishment of a mint and
prescribing a decimal system of coinage. The U.S. dollar was to contain 24.75 grains of gold or
371.25 grains of silver, in a fixed legal-tender ratio of 15 to 1.

On August 21, 1792 the Federal government levied an excise tax on whiskey and on stills, which
provoked strong protest in Western Pennsylvania. Whiskey was the chief transportable and
barterable Western product. The Whiskey Rebellion was the most serious insurrection to face
the newly established Federal government. In 1794, President Washington was finally forced to
call up the militia army to end it. The result of the insurrection was simply to strengthen the
political power of Hamilton and the Federalists.

Washington’s Second Administration began on March 4, 1793. We shall devote our next
column to the Second Term of our First President.

(The above article came from Sam’s archive.  We do not have an article on the second term of Washington. Please visit the archives:

http://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

 

(A link to Washington’s “Farewell Address”:  George-Washington-Farewell-Address.pdf (campconstitution.net)

A Trip to Camp Constitution–Happenings on the Way to Heaven by Kathryn van der Pol

 

Happenings on the Way to Heaven

Copyrighted by Kathryn van der Pol

July 23, 2023

#38

 

Last week I told you that Sybren and I were headed to New Hampshire. By the time you read this, we’re settled back in Washington, mowing our meadows, weeding the gardens, and readjusting to Texas’s habanero heat.

 

We drove through seventeen states: Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and, of course, Texas, driving a “great circle” of over 4,000 miles. It’s good to be home.

 

The primary purpose of our trip was to attend Camp Constitution in New Hampshire. It was funny to hear the campers complain about it being “hot” when it was only 85 degrees. It also rained a good bit. How I wished I could have bottled up the rain clouds and delivered them to Washington.

 

Hal Shurtleff is the founder of Camp Constitution. He started it 15 years ago for families, most with children, to learn about the founding fathers, current events, the Declaration of Independence the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

 

Shurtleff is a Constitutional celebrity in his own right. Last year he won a Supreme Court decision 9-0, involving the free exercise and establishment clause of the First Amendment.

 

In 2017, his camp took a field trip to Boston’s City Hall for a celebration. The City Hall had three flag poles: one for the U.S. flag, one for the Massachusetts flag, and one for citizens to use. Shurtleff had brought a Christian flag which has a white background with a cross in the corner. The clerk at City Hall would not allow him to raise the Christian flag, saying it violated separation of Church and State. So, Shurtleff sued and in January 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously to uphold his and Camp Constitution’s unalienable right to exercise their freedom of religion. The court stated there was no evidence that the state was establishing a religion by allowing the raising of the Christian flag, but by forbidding Hal to raise the flag, the city denied his right to exercise his freedom of religion.

 

I first learned of Camp Constitution years ago watching an online presentation by a Harvard professor who mentioned it in his talk. Curious, I looked at it and thought it was a great idea. Imagine bringing families together for five to camp out in the beautiful outdoors, hear talks on history and current events by talented speakers, go to campfires, play games, and come home relaxed, invigorated, wiser and a better citizen.

 

The camp is designed for children ages five to infinity. There is one program for 5-to 11-year-olds and another for everybody else. So, moms and dads have time to learn, too.

 

From what I’ve experienced since Sybren and I moved to Washington, there is momentum to strengthen leadership in all areas of government, business, education, and our churches. One of the great blessings of living here is the community’s widespread appreciation of traditional Judeo-Christian values. Yet, in the past couple of years, we’ve seen efforts to undermine those values, too.

 

Earlier, I wrote about the Education Pillar that the Texas Leadership Summit held in Brenham. At that event, nationally recognized journalist, Alex Newman, was one of the speakers. He mentioned to me that he was part of Camp Constitution, so this brought back all my earlier research, and my imagination raced into high gear.

 

That prompted me to think, could we do Camp Constitution here? Is there interest in a program that involves parents, grandparents, and children all learning together? Can we start Camp Constitution in Washington County or close by?

 

Most of us who have common sense and lived long enough realize that the only long-term solution to turn around the country is education. The only way to resist the secular, atheistic, socialist, communist agendas of our enemies is to practice our faith publicly. Live it out in the public square. Do the things that encourage and strengthen families. Do the things that give people hope for a better life. Do the things that encourage civil discourse and respect for differences. Do the things that promote citizen participation in all branches of government.

 

When I emailed Hal and asked him if we could expand Camp Constitution to Texas, he said, “Yes! Absolutely, but why don’t you come up here and see it?” So, we did.

 

The rest is history.

 

We took classes titled, “The Declaration of Independence,” “Philosophical Worldview of the Constitution,” “Communist China and the New World Order, “The American View of Law and Government,” “Global Societal Crises of the 17th Century: The Sun-Earth Connection.”

 

Interspersed with these talks, two pastors gave sermons, and we prayed for our country on our knees.

 

The little children had classes on the first amendment. They made root beer and tie-dyed t-shirts. They created an Independence parade. They sang patriotic songs and memorized the Preamble to the Constitution.

 

All the children went swimming, hiking, and played tournament games. Each morning began with a flag ceremony and Reveille and ended with a flag ceremony and Taps, played by one of the older boys on his trumpet. Every night adults and children participated in campfire, guitar playing, singing old ballads, performing skits, and telling jokes. It was fun seeing people be joyful, playful, and respectful.

 

Sybren and I made wonderful new friends and had great conversations. It was exciting to experience America, still the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

Questions or comments? Write Kathryn@TexasHeritage.net

This article was originally published in the Brenham Banner Press Washington County Texas.  Mrs. van der Pol is Sunday columnist for their paper and writes about matters of faith and history. (Editor)

  The Weekly Sam; The New Education Reform: Will It Work?  from John Dewey to Marc Tucker in One Hundred Years By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

You cannot really understand the nature and scope of the present education reform
program coming out of Washington unless you understand that it is the culmination of
plans initiated by the progressives about a hundred years ago. In other words, what
we have today emanating from the U.S. Department of Education and the education
establishment in general is the same master plan mapped out by John Dewey and his
colleagues at the turn of the century to change America’s social order. True, there
have been twists and turns, arguments and debates among the educational elite, but
all in all the basic plan of the progressives remains intact.

Who were the progressives? They were a new breed of educator, members of the
Protestant academic elite who no longer believed in the religion of their fathers. They
rejected Biblical religion as myth and legend and put their faith in science, evolution,
and psychology. Science explained the nature of the material world, evolution
explained the origin of living matter — our original soma emerged from the primoradial
ooze and through a remarkable series of accidents ended up with us — and
psychology provided the means to study human nature scientifically and to control
human behavior. What more could an educator possibly want?

Now the progressives were also socialists. Why? Because they had to deal with the
problem of evil and they refused to accept the Biblical view. The Bible tells us that man
is a fallen creature, having disobeyed God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, and that as a result, man is the cause of his own misery. In other words,
the origin of evil is man’s heart, not the environment or the ozone layer or the stock
market. John Calvin characterized fallen man as being innately depraved. Catholics, of
course, call it original sin.

What Calvin meant is that when man departs from God he is capable of any depravity
he can think of. But the Bible provides a happy solution for all of this. Which means
that man can still have a happy, productive and long life provided that he live in
accordance with God’s law. Indeed, his sins can be forgiven, he can be saved and
have eternal life after death if he accepts Jesus Christ as his Savior. In other words,
the Bible presents us with the problem of man’s sinful nature, but also provides the
solution.

However, the progressives rejected all of that as myth and legend. But they still had to
deal with the problem of evil. What caused it? Since they believed that there was no
God, there could be no such thing as sin — which is an offense against God. So where
did evil come from? They decided that it came from ignorance, poverty, and social
injustice. And what caused social injustice? Why it was this terrible capitalist system
of ours, this dog-eat-dog world of economic competition, private property, and
individualism which created selfish people. The solution: socialism, which would
replace individualism with collectivism, get rid of private property or at the very least
bring private property under the control of government, and finally get rid of religion
with its ridiculous notion of sin that so terribly undermined man’s self-esteem.

The question then became how do you change America from a capitalist system to a
socialist one? The answer was simple: change the curriculum in the education
system so that it would produce little socialists instead of little individualists. The
progressives realized that adult Americans were not about to give up their
individualism or private property or free enterprises or religion. And so they realized
that they would have to educate children in such a manner that they as adults would
usher in the new socialist utopia through democrattic means.

And so, beginning in about 1898 the progressives began their messianic crusade to
reform American education in order to bring about socialism. The reason why I call the
progressive movement a messianic crusade is because of the spiritual aspects of the
crusade. You see, the reason why the crusaders had to bring about socialism is
because that was the only way they could prove that they were right and the Bible was
wrong. They were convinced that once we had socialism, it would be seen that man
was not a fallen creature but was instead imbued with overwhelming benevolence and
good will.

These progressives all came from good Christian homes, and they all knew the Bible.
If the Bible was right and they were wrong, they knew where they’d be going. And so
they were driven by a strong messianic motive to prove their rightness. Incidentally,
the progressives for the most part did not get their vision of socialism from Karl Marx,
but from an American by the name of Edward Bellamy who wrote a book entitled
Looking Backward, published in 1888. In that book Bellamy projected the fantasy of a
socialist America in the year 2000. If you want to know what that vision was like, read
the book.

One can say that this crusade began in earnest in 1898 because that was the year in
which John Dewey wrote his influential essay, “The Primary-Education Fetich,” in
which he singled out high literacy as the great obstacle to socialism because it tended
to produce individuals who could stand on their own two feet and think for themselves.
(Unstated, but clearly known by the progressives was the fact that high literacy was
also a prerequisite for Biblical literacy.) What we needed in the primary grades,
Dewey argued, was less emphasis on literacy and more emphasiS on socialization. In
effect, what he was saying was that the masses had to be dumbed down in order to
make it easy for the ruling elite to impose socialism. And he outlined a strategy
whereby all of this could be done with the public hardly noticing. He wrote:
Change must come gradually. To force it unduly would ccmpromise its final success by favoring a violent
reaction.

That’s an interesting statement. If the reforms he proposed were so great, why would
they provoke a violent reaction? Obviously, Dewey and his colleagues knew that their
reforms would go against the grain of American tradition. Dewey goes on:
What is needed in the first place is, that there should be a full and frank statement of conviction with regard
to the matter from physiologists and psychologists and from those school administrators who are
conscious of the evils of the present regime.
So there you already see in 1898 what the role of the psychologists would be. They
were to use scientific arguments to discredit the traditional curriculum. On the crucial
matter of primary reading instruction, the first psychologist to answer Dewey’s call was
Edmund Huey, whose book, The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, published in
1908, became the bible of the look-say, whole-word advocates. They used Huey’s
book to provide a pseudo-scientific justification for getting rid of alphabetic phonics
and instituting whole-word instruction in its place. Dewey continues:

There are already in existence a considerable number of educational “experiment stations,” which
represent the outposts of educational progress. If these schools can be adequately supported for a
number of years they will perform a great vicarious service. After such schools have worked out carefully
and definitely the subject-matter of a new curriculum,–finding the right place for language studies and
placing them in their right perspective,–the problem of the more general educational reform will be
immensely simplified and facilitated.
And so, what Dewey was saying to his progressive colleagues was that they needed
to try all of their new ideas in private experimental schools to see what kind of results
they would get before implementing them wholesale throughout the public school
system.
Incidentally, one of the experimental schools that was used for this purpose was the
Lincoln School at Teachers College of Columbia University, New York. John D.
Rockefeller Jr. gave the school $3 million in 1917 and put four of his five sons in that
school. Alvin Moscow, in his book The Rockefeller Inheritance, writes:
Unlike private schools of its time, Lincoln was co-educational and non-segregated. The Rockefeller boys
mixed with children from all walkS of life …. Boys studied sewing and cooking with the girls, and the girls
took shop courses with the boys. Reading, writing and arithmetic were introduced only when a child was
ready and eager to leam. He was expected to pick up these fundamentals out of natural curiosity and
desire to learn …. Nelson never did learn to spell or master his numbers … Laurence … encountered
trouble with his three R’s. However, he did make Princeton, where, in his freshman year, facing written
examinations for the first time, he almost flunked out. Winthrop had the most trouble. He floundered in
the freedom and lack of discipline at Lincoln and in the tenth grade was transferred to the Loomis School,
a more formal prep boarding school … in Connecticut. … Unprepared for the higher scholastic standards
at Loomis, at the first marking period, where D was the lowest passing mark, Winthrop earned two E’s and
three F’s. But he liked Loomis and was saved there by his high marks for effort.

David, the youngest son was the only one that did well at the Lincoln School.  He had no trouble with the three R’s and eventually went to Harvard, He then went on to become
a leader of the internationalist movement leading to world government. Nelson, who
was severely dyslexic, hired Henry Kissinger to do his reading and thinking for him.
And Winthrop went on to become Governor of Arkansas. In any case, by the 1920’s, it
was already known by the progressives that their kind of education had great
academic drawbacks, and they had the Rockefeller boys to prove it. But that didn’t
faze them because that’s what they actually wanted.

Now the reason why I have gone back to the origins of the progressive education
movement is because it is important to know the false premise on which the movement
was founded, the premise that evil is caused by ignorance, poverty, and social
injustice. Twentieth Century history has proven beyond any doubt the falsehood of
that premise. Let me give you proof. One of the most evil men of the century was Dr.
Mengele, the Nazi doctor at the Auschwitz death camp who performed horrible
medical experiments on live human beings. Was he ignorant? No, he had the best
education Germany could provide. Was he the victim of poverty? No, he was born in
a wealthy family with a silver spoon in his mouth. Was he the victim of social injustice?
To the contrary, he was a member of Germany’s privileged elite. So where did his evil
impulses come from? From his innate sinful nature. He put his faith not in God but in
Satanic Adolf Hitler, who gave him the freedom to be as evil as his heart desired.
So we know that the premise of our education reform movement is false. But there is
also a second false premise on which the education reform movement is built, and that
is the belief that public educators have the moral right, indeed the moral duty, to
change the values and beliefs of the children in their charge without the knowledge or
consent of their parents. That was very clearly spelled out in Prof. Benjamin Bloom’s
famous Taxonomy of Educational Objectives published in 1958 in which he wrote:
By educational objeclives, we mean explicil formulations of the ways in which students are expected to be
changed by the educative process. That is, the ways in which they will change in their thinking, their
feelings, and their actions ..

The evidence points out convincingly to Ihe fact that age is a factor operating against attempts to effect a
complete or thorough-going reorganization of attitudes and values.
The evidence collected thus far suggests that a single hour of classroom activity under certain conditions
may bring about a major reorganization in cognitive as well as affective behaviors. We are of the opinion
that this will prove to be a most fruitful area of research in connection with the affective domain.
Thus, when American educators speak of subjecting children to a thorough-going
reorganization of their attitudes and values what they really mean is getting children to
shed their Biblical values in favor of humanist values, to shed their belief in absolute
moral values in favor of moral relativism and situational ethics.

America was founded by people who believed that God was sovereign over our nation
and that His law prevailed over the laws of man. Indeed, the U.S Constitution is a
perfect example of man’s law being completely compatible with God’s law. However,
once you reject God, then God’s sovereignty and law is replaced by State sovereignty
and law. T he State, then, becomes God, and the public educators can claim that they
now represent the public good and have the moral duty to train children to serve the
secular state whose compelling interests override all other interests.

By the way, it is not at all difficult to trace the history of this reform movement from its
very beginning to the present, for the reformers have kept very good records of their
progress in the annual yearbooks of The National Society for the Study of Education.
The first yearbook was published in 1901. If you study the names of the society’s
officers, you will find among them the best known advocates of humanism and
socialism, including Harold Rugg, William H. Kilpatrick, Ernest Horn, George S.
Counts, John Goodlad, Ralph Tyler, Benjamin Bloom, and many others.

What is impressive about the reform movement is its meticulous attention to detail, its
continuity, and the way the baton has been passed from one generation to the next so
that there is no change in ideology or ultimate goal. What you find out in studying
these yearbooks are the names and associations of the individuals who have been
working behind the scenes to effect these reforms over many decades. One of the
most prominent among them is a professor by the name of Ralph W. Tyler who spent
70 of his 92 years engaged in the ongoing process of education reform. He died in
1994. An article paying tribute to Tyler in Phi Delta Kappan of June 1994 states:
An activist — with a profound belief that demonstration and example are more powerful than ideas that are
merely scripted — he harnessed his theorems to social engineering and participated in an astonishing
number of watershed events: his monumental Eight-Year Study, his founding role in the National
Academy of Education. his creation and 14-year directorship of the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. his part in the formulation of the Association for the Evaluation
of Educational Achievement, his attainments as university examiner and dean of social sciences at the
University of Chicago, and his service as consultant to five U.S. preSidents. In Tyler’s calculus, social
fragmentation was a challenge education could meet only through collective accomplishments.

That last sentence sums up a very important concept held by the progressives, that
reform must be organized in a collective manner so that it is carried out uniformly
throughout the entire nation, in all the schools. If reform were left to the localities, it
would be fragmented, and fragmentation, although healthy for freedom and local
control, would be bad for those who want to reshape the nation according to their own
social vision. The article continues:
Intermixed with these achievements, moreover, were his famous rationale on curriculum development.
translated into five languages; his advisory work with the Spencer Foundation; his labors on the Armed
Forces Testing Program; his tenure as president of Systems Development Foundation; his 15 years as
chairman of the National Commission on Resources for youth.

You can see what one dedicated reformer can do to advance the progressive agenda.
The article continues:
increasingly energized by an abiding concern for comity, rectitude, and the public weal, and he sought to
serve education — whether in a formal lecture or in an informal conversation — in disparate ways ..
A minister’s son, Tyler saw bettering the common good as a calling. Over the years, I think, he was
A typical week might include a Monday morning meeting in New York with the Ford Foundation, a banquet
speech that evening in Chicago, and then the “redeye” to San Francisco. Tuesday might be spent at the
center in Palo Alto. followed by dinner on the evening flight to Denver. Wednesday might begin with
national assessment meetings, continue with a lunchtime talk to Colorado school superintendents. and
end with another dinner flight back to Chicago — in order to spend Wednesday evening with the Spencer
Foundation Board. By catching the 10:00 p.m. flight to Washington, he could sleep at the Cosmos Club.
breakfast with the NEA president. and attend the Tri-Lateral commission meetings on Thursday …. He kept this
up week after week.

When you understand the kind of obsessive drive these men have to carry out their
humanist agenda, you then realize why they couldn’t care less about the clamor of
parents who want to get back to basics. Who do these parents think they are? The
article continues:

One of the less frequently recognized human virtues is that of unfettering talents in others. Here, too,
Tyler made a monumental contribution …. He aided and abetted the careers of Robert Havighurst,
Herbert Thelen, David and Frank Riesman, Benjamin Bloom, Lee Cronback, Philip Jackson, David
Krathwohl , Allison Davis, Jacob Getzewls, Nathan Gage, Edgar Friedenburg, Hilda Taba, Thomas James,
Louis Raths, Ernest Boyer, John Goodlad, and a host of others.
These are just some of the faceless educators responsible for giving us the education
system we have today.

I’m sure that each one of them helped by Tyler would be able to tell a similar story of
dedication to education reform. All of them, I suppose, think that they are doing good.
Yet, we look at the state of public education today with all of its problems and failings
and I doubt that any of these reformers feel responsible for any of this. They don’t
even take responsibility for the reading problems caused by the look-say method. In
fact, they use the failings of public education as the pretext for generating more
reforms. They also talk a lot about democracy and freedom, and yet their reforms are
inevitably leading us to a more socially controlled, politically correct SOCiety. In other
words, they are masters of what Orwell called “doublespeak,”

These men lead a kind of schizoid existence. They live in the ivory tower of the
graduate school, financed by government and private grants, totally insulated from
parental pressure, writing books, reports and dissertations for one another, attending
professional meetings all over the country and the world, not at all concerned that what
they are doing makes no sense to the average citizen and certainly no sense to the
. parents who put their children in public schools.
And because there is this deafness on the part of this educational establishment,
parents are now opting out of the system and putting their children in private schools
or homeschooling them. Ninety-six years of committees and yearbooks from the
National Society for the Study of Education are totally irrelevant to parents who are
truly concerned about the education of their children

Nevertheless, these reformers are now so powerful that, with the assistance of the
White House, they can get the Congress to pass laws mandating lhese reforms. For
example, in 1994, with the help of Pres. Clinton, the US. Congress passed Goals
2000, the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, and the Improving America’s Schools Act.
Goals 2000 is raw social engineering, intended to restructure all of American society
and not just the schools. The School-to-Work Opportunities Act establishes a formal
partnership between the U.S. Departments of Educatron and Labor. The grant money
for this education-labor linkup is tied to compliance with requirements outlined in
Goals 2000. It also mandates transforming public education into a glorified voc-ed
system, more in line with a planned economy than a free economy. The Improving
America’s Schools Act is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act of 1965 through which the Johnson administration opened the
floodgates of the U.S. Treasury to the educators. Since then, the educators have been
able to extract more and more money from the taxpayers by asserting that money will
solve our education problems, while the simple truth is that the more money the
educators get, the worse education becomes.

If you think that the Republican victories in November 1994 have changed anything,
I’m terrible sorry to disappoint you. In September 1995, the U.S. House of
Representatives passed the Consolidated and Reformed Education, Employment, and
Rehabilitation Systems Act, more simply known as the Careers Act (H. R. 1617), by a
vote of 345 to 79. In October, the Senate passed its version of the bill, the Workforce
Development Act of 1995 (S. 143) by a vote of 95 to 2. Both bills would federalize
public education and bring it under the kind of centralized control that has been the
dream of the reformers.

Fortunately, a small group of conservative activists who had read both bills got to their
Congressmen in time and were able to temporarily stop their progress in committee.
During the last few months the bills have undergone revision, but we are not sure what
the Republican Congress will finally give us. One thing we do know is that instead of
working to get the Federal government out of the education business, the Congress
will no doubt get it more deeply in.
What will be enacted is a Human Resources Development System, authored by one of
the latest crop of messianic reformers, Marc Tucker, chairman of the National Center
for Education and the Economy, an offshoot of the Carnegie Foundation. Tucker is the
Ralph Tyler of today, close friend of Bill and Hillary, coordinating the imposition of a
Soviet style education system on America with the help of Congress, a dozen
Republican governors, and some of America’s largest corporations. Mr. Tucker
describes his vision of American education as “a seamless web of opportunities to
develop one’s skills that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system
for everyone–young and old, poor and rich. worker and full-time student.” When he
says it’s a system for everyone, he means it, for his vision of America is socialist
egalitarianism.

It’s easy to trace the growing power of the education reformers from John Dewey to
Marc Tucker. Dewey had no access to the White House nor did he need one. What he
did need was access to the big foundations and their money to finance the early
experiments. But Tucker understands that for the reform program to be imposed
universally on American education requires more money than all of the foundations
can muster. Therefore, he needs the mandates of the federal government because
that’s where the billions are.
In a famous letter Tucker wrote to Hillary Clinton in November 1992, he described in
detail his concept of what the newly elected president could do to promote education
reform. He wrote:

The object is to create a single comprehensive system for professional and technical education that meets
the requirements of everyone from high school students to skilled dislocated workers, from the hard core
unemployed to employed adults who want to improve their prospects. Creating such a system means
sweeping aside countless programs, building new ones, combining funding authorities, changing deeply
embedded institutional structures, and so on. The question is how to get from where we are to where we
want to be. Trying to ram it down everyone’s throat would engender overwhelming opposition.

Now where did we hear that before? Wasn’t it Professor Dewey who said in 1898 that
“change must come gradually” because “to force it would compromise its final success
by favoring a violent reaction?” Mr. Tucker continues:

Our idea is to draft legislation that would offer an opportunity for those states–and selected large cities-­
that are excited about this set of ideas to come forward and join with each other and with the federal
government in an alliance to do the necessary design work and actually deliver the needed services on a
fast track. The legislation would require the executive branch fo establish a competititive grant program for
those states and cities and to engage a group of organizations to offer technical assistance to the
expanding set of states and cities engaged in designing and implementing the new system.
Radical changes in attitudes, values and beliefs are requried to move any combination of these agendas ..
. . At the narrowest level, the agenda cannot be moved unless there is agreement among the governors,
the President and the Congress.

And so, what is required to implement the new education reform is a radical change in
attitudes, values and beliefs, just what Prof. Benjamin Bloom and Ralph Tyler
recommended beck in the ’50s. With Tucker’s program, we shall also get a massive intrusion of government into our
private lives through the federal computer data-gathering system developed by the
National Center for Education Statistics. The system will gather detailed personal data
on every student and teacher in America. To standardize data collecting, the U.S.
Department of Education has published handbooks for local use. The first handbook
was published in 1964, a second in 1974, and the latest version in 1994 bearing the
title Student Data Handbook for Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary
Education (NCES 94-303). It runs to about 300 pages. A similar handbook has been
prepared for staff.

What kind of information will they be gathering? Under identification, apart from name
and address they will want to know your driver’s license number, health record
number, Medicaid number, school-assigned number, Selective Service number, Social
Security number, College Board/ACT number, local education agency number, state
education agency number, U.S. Dept. of Education number, etc.
Under religious background the government will want to know if you are: Amish,
Assembly of God, Baptist, Buddhist, Calvinist, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Episcopal,
Friends, Greek Orthodox, Hindu, Islamic, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jewish, Latter Day
Saints, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Other Christian
denomination, Seventh Day Adventist, Tao, None, Other.

What business is it of the federal government to collect data about your religious
affiliation? What about the separation of church and state? What about the right to
privacy? What use are they going to make of this information?
In the category of assessments, students will apparently be required to take a whole
battery of tests that will reveal just about everything there is to know about you. These
tests include an Achievement test, Advanced Placement Test, Aptitude Test, Attitudinal
Test, which the handbook describes as “An assessment to measure the mental and
emotional set of patterns of likes and dislikes or opinions held by a student or a group
of students. This is often used in relation to considerations such as controversial
issues or personal adjustments.”

What business is it of the federal government to collect data on your attitudes? Who
will have access to this information, and for what reason? There is also a Personality
Test, a Psychological Test, a Portfolio Assessment, and a dozen other tests. All of
these tests will have been devised by the nation’s leading behavioral psychologists
whose theoretical goal is the control of human behavior. In fact, what we have in this
data-gathering system is an instrument for total social control in the making.
The handbook also calls for extensive medical information on each individual. For
example, concerning the individual’s oral health, the government will want to know:
Number of Teeth, Number of Permanent Teeth Lost, Number of Teeth Decayed,
Number of Teeth Restored, Occlusion Condition, with subcategories Normal
Occlusion, Mild malocclusion, Moderate malocclusion, Severe malocclusion; Gingival
Condition, with subcategories Normal, Mild deviation, Moderate deviation, Severe
deviation; Oral Soft Tissue Condition with subcategories Normal, Mild deviation,
Moderate deviation, Severe deviation; Dental Prosthetics, and Orthodontic
Appliances.

Anyone reading your dossier will get a very graphic picture of what’s in your mouth!
Why should the government, or anyone else beside your dentist, know if you have
false teeth, or a bad bite, or once wore braces?
Incidentally, in the new education system, every student will have an Individual Health
Plan. In other words, Hillary Clinton will get her socialized medicine plan in through
the back door of compulsory public education. Also, there will be a small army of
health nurses, social workers, psychologists, and counselors to help any student who
has a problem. By the way, the counselor is described as, “A staff member responsible
for gUiding individuals, families, groups and communities by assisting them in
problem-solving, decision-making, discovering meaning, and articulating goals related
to personal, educational, and career development.”
Do we really need a paid government employee to “discover meaning” for us? Have
Americans become that helpless?

By the way, the only information the public school wanted to know about me back in
1931 when I entered kindergarten was my name, address, date of birth and my
parents names and address. That was it, and it was all written down by hand on a
card. In those days the idea of limited government still had meaning.
But we and the reformers have come a long way since them. The federal government
and the state departments of education are imposing School-to-Work all over the
United States. The reform movement marches on and the idea of limited government
has gone the way of the gold standard. The government will now plan your life for you,
from cradle to grave, and most Americans, ignorant of history, will probably accept the
new social order.

Meanwhile, only the homeschoolers seem to know what to do. As for the future of
America, it’s a big question mark. Will we finally get the socialism that Dewey and his
associates longed for? If the data-gathering system doesn’t convince you that our
government is up to no good, nothing else will. But it certainly should convince
concerned parents that they’d better get their kids out of this Human Resources
Development System before it reduces them to helpless dependents who can’t make
a decision without the friendly assistance of a government official. What do you call
such a government? Socialist, fascist, communist, totalitarian? Your lesson for today
is to think up a fitting label. Thank you.

Camp Constitution’s 15th Annual Family Camp Report

Camp Constitution’s 15th annual family camp which took place at the Singing Hills Christian Camp in Plainfield, NH ended Friday.  “We had another full house with attendees coming as far as Texas, Florida and Michigan”, said Hal Shurtleff, the camp’s co-founder and director.

Camp instructors included Professor Willie Soon, one of the world’s top atmospheric scientists, who attended with his family, Pastor David Whitney of the Institute on the Constitution, Rev. Steve Craft who serves at the camp chaplain, Mrs. Catherine White of the Constitution Decoded, and, also attending with his family, Alex Newman, author of several books, who did live shows of his program The Sentinel Report which airs on Frank Speech   https://frankspeech.com/shows/sentinel-report-tv-show-alex-newman

Vince Ellison, author of the book 25 Lies: Exposing the Democrats’ Most Dangerous, Seductive, Damnable and Destructive Lies and How to Refute Them and producer of the documentary Will You Go to Hel For Me. conducted a class via Zoom, and campers were given the opportunity to vet a U.S. Presidential candidate when Vivek Ramaswamy paid a visit to the camp on Thursday. Videos of the classes and activities were taped by Mr. Mert Melfa and uploaded to both the camp’s Rumble and YouTube channels:  https://rumble.com/v31ctai-communist-china-model-for-the-new-world-order-with-alex-newman-at-camp-cons.html

A full day at Camp Constitution starts with optional run or swim, flag rasing and morning devotional with a rendition of Reville by veteran camper Franklin Soon.

After a hearty breakfast, the camp conducts three 45-miniute classes with 15-minute breaks in between.

During the first class, Head Counselor Chris Kalis conducts room inspection where both cleanliness, and a Patriotic theme will give those in the room points towards the room inspection contest where the occupants of the winning room get treated to free pizza on Thursday after campfire.

Our junior campers -ages 5-12- also attend classes taught by Mrs. Edith Craft, Mrs. Kathy Mickel who also serves as our nurse and Mrs. Roberta Stewart.

After lunch, campers and staff engage in numerous recreational opportunities including swimming, basketball, volleyball, and marksmanship:

After dinner, two more classes are held followed by evening campfire. led by Mrs. Paulie Heath, a Christian recording artist.    Campfire ends with a Bible reading, prayer and the playing of Taps.  Campers pick up a copy of the daily camp newspaper edited by Mr. Mark Affeck  before heading back to their rooms for the night.

On Wednesday afternoon, some campers and staffers took advantage of an optional  field trip to Fort Number 4 in nearby Charlestown, NH:

On Thursday evening   the camp held its closing ceremony where the Super Camper and Super Staffer awards are presented.  Mrs. Roberta Stewart was awarded the Super Staffer award, and campers Marley Newman and Elizabeth Krutov were awarded the Super Camper awards which includes a free tuition for next year’s camp. Runners up were Franklin Soon and Collette Chu.

Thanks to all of you who, with your support, time, and prayers, helped make this unique camp program possible.

 

Next year’s camp will run from Sunday July 14 to Friday July 19 and held at Singing Hills.    And, we will be holding our 2nd Annual Weekend Family Retreat at Camp Sentinel Tuftonboro, NH Friday September 29 to Sunday October 1.  A link to the application: http://campconstitution.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Weekend-Camp-Application-and-Release-2023.pdf

The Weekly Sam: How Insane Is America? By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

(This article was written in 2011.)

Michael Savage asserts that liberalism is a form of insanity, and I agree with him.
Considering the reaction of liberals to the attempted assassination of Congresswoman
Gabrielle Giffords, it is obvious that liberals are out of touch with reality and prefer to
live in a fantasy world of their own making. They devoutly wish that conservatives were
violent and murderous and that the Tea Party was run by a group of Nazis. But alas
conservatives and Tea Partiers are just ordinary patriotic citizens who believe in a
Constitutional Republic and that, in a free society, the ballot box is the way to change
things.

But what is insanity? My college dictionary defines insane as “mentally deranged,
crazy; utterly senseless.” Insanity is defined as “extravagant folly,” with synonyms like:
“dementia, lunacy, mania, frenzy, madness,” and many more. Which means that there are
insane people both inside and outside insane asylums. But, I would define insanity as
lacking logic, rationality, and common sense, the inability to put two and two together.
From that point of view, liberalism is indeed a form of insanity.

Let’s look at the liberal policies of our government that, from any viewpoint, can be
considered insane. For example, the liberal Congress and our ultra-liberal president
enacted a highly complex, 2000-page National Healthcare Bill, which few of the
legislators actually read. Indeed, it was Speaker Pelosi who said that the Bill had to be
passed so that we could see what was in it. That’s crazy. How many citizens have
access to this 2000-page monster? Is it being freely distributed to each household like
the Income Tax forms? Obviously, 99 percent of Americans will never know what‘s in
that law. Ms. Pelosi also characterized the Tea Party Movement as Astroturf. Another
sign of an unbalanced mind.

Then our government promoted a policy of forcing banks to provide mortgages to poor
people who would be unable to make their monthly payments. The liberals’ rationale?
Poor people should be able to own homes. Sounds nice, but it’s insane. And the nation
is suffering its consequences.

Another act of insanity was committed when the liberal lame-duck Congress voted to
scrap the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and permit homosexuals to serve openly in the
military. Why would anyone want to join the military and advertise something as
private as one’s sexual preference? Why? To openly solicit sexual propositions? Is
that now legal? And will openly gay enlistees be required to take tests, just like other
enlistees, to see if they are HIV positive or have a sexually transmitted disease? And
will gay enlistees complain that these tests are discriminatory? When you pass insane
laws you get more problems than you can logically deal with.

Our new airport security policies are also a form of blatant insanity. The new policy
assumes that an 80-year-old Jewish male, a 60-year-old Catholic nun, a 45-year-old
businessman on his way to a conference, a 20-year-old college student on Spring Break,
and a 10-year-old Little Leaguer are all potentially suicidal and are boarding their planes
in order to blow them up in service to Islamic Jihad. That’s totally insane.
We know who the potential terrorists are: young male Muslims with one-way tickets and
no luggage. So why must every air traveler in America be subjected to a search for a
bomb in his or her underwear? And why do we now need thousands of airport security
employees to spot the few actual suicidal terrorists who want to blow up planes?
Any junior psychologist or intelligent layman should be able to pick out a suicidal
terrorist from among a group of passengers boarding a plane. I think I could do it. The
average air traveler does not spend big money to commit suicide on a plane. Yet the
government actually believes that anyone who buys an airline ticket and shows up at an
airport is a potential suicidal maniac serving Allah.

Another foolish idea was the creation of the Federal Reserve System by a group of
secretive New York bankers on the premise that it would prevent bank failures,
depressions, recessions, and inflation. Yet, under the Fed we had the longest and
deepest depression in American history, we’ve had inflation to the point where a hotdog
that cost five cents in 1938 now costs $2.50 in lots of sports venues. We’ve also had
many more bank failures than before the Fed was created. Yet the idea of doing away
with the Fed is unthinkable, as if there were no banks or currency before the Fed was
invented.

Another massive form of insanity is our public education system that is dumbing down
the nation and costing billions of dollars. Everyone in Congress ought to be required to
read Charlotte Iserbyt’s well-documented indictment of the U.S. Department of
Education, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, as well as John Taylor Gatto’s
masterpiece of historical research, The Underground History of American Education. If
this nation does not bring sanity back to the education of its youth, it will have a very
gloomy future.

Indeed, public education has become a criminal enterprise. First the schools actually
create dyslexia and thereby deform the brains of our children by using the sight method
to teach reading. Brain scientists have shown through brain scans what a child’s brain
looks like when he or she is dyslexic. Our schools no longer teach cursive writing, which
actually helps a child learn to read. They let our kids hold pens with as many fingers as
they want so that their handwriting resembles chicken scratches. As for spelling, kids
are encouraged to spell any way they want. It’s called “creative spelling.”

Our educators have also become drug pushers by forcing millions of children to take such
mood-altering drugs as Ritalin and Adderall to relieve the symptoms of ADD or ADHD,
both created by the frustration of reading failure. Some kids have dropped dead or
committed suicide because of the long-term effects of these drugs.
Then our schools destroy the religious beliefs of the children by evicting God from the
school house. As a result the kids become humanists, atheists or nihilists. The
educators then contribute to the delinquency of minors by teaching pornographic sex ed
which encourages sexual experimentation, promiscuity, and risky alternate life-styles. They also contribute to teenage suicide by teaching death ed–a depressing, scary subject.

And yet, we keep financing this insane horror show as if there were no better way to
educate our children. In fact, homeschoolers have found a better way: education at home
by parents at no cost to the taxpayer.
Then we have an insane government energy policy which bans drilling for oil in Alaska
even though gas prices continue to rise and our dependence on foreign oil increases. We
pour money into windmills and solar panels which cannot be used to drive cars. And we
pour billions into making Ethanol so that ranchers have to pay higher prices for corn, thus
increasing the cost of food in the supermarket. None of this makes sense.

We also have hundreds of laws and regulations restricting property owners on how they
can use their own property. We have an insane system of taxation that requires every
individual to either be an accountant or hire a professional accountant to figure out the
rules of the system. Attempts to simplify the system have been met by political inertia.
The American people are now so totally mesmerized by their government’s insane
liberalism that they now consider the abnormal to be normal and the normal to be
abnormal. They can no longer distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, or
the beautiful and the ugly. Religious belief is considered hokey, and cynical nihilism is
the mindset of the intellectual elite.

Yes, we do have some islands of sanity in America: the homeschool movement, a few
good conservative colleges and think tanks, some patriotic commentators on television, a
handful of rational news publications, and a small group of sane economists like Thomas
Sowell who are willing to provide us with cogent analysis of our present situation. And
not much else. It takes a lot of courage and moral honesty to remain sane in America.
A sort of bleak way to start 2011. Can the Tea Party Movement begin to set things
right? We hope so.

 

This article came from the Sam Blumenfeld Archive.   For free (donations accepted) and unlimited access to this resource visit http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/main.htm

Happy Father’s Day! “America needs heroes on the battlefield of everyday life”-U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall – American Minute with Bill Federer

  Father’s Day! “America needs heroes on the battlefield of everyday life” -U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall

U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Center for Disease Control, and other agencies report that children from fatherless homes are:
  • Five times more likely to live in poverty;
  • Nine times more likely to drop out of school;
  • Twenty times more likely to go to in prison;
  • Higher risk of drug and alcohol abuse;
  • Increased incidents of internalized and externalized aggressive behavioral problems;
  • Greater chance of runaways and homelessness;
  • Twice as likely to commit suicide.

In an effort to recognize the importance of a father in the home, the several “Father’s Day” services were celebrated.
One was organized by Grace Golden Clayton, who on July 5, 1908, arranged a church service to honor all fathers, in memory of her father who was a Methodist minister in West Virginia.
Another event was celebrated June 19, 1910, in Spokane, Washington.
Sonora Louise Smart Dodd heard a church sermon on the newly established Mother’s Day and wanted to honor her father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, who had raised six children by himself after his wife died in childbirth.
Sonora Louise Smart Dodd drew up a petition supported by the Young Men’s Christian Association and the ministers of Spokane to celebrate Fathers’ Day.
In 1916, Woodrow Wilson spoke at a Spokane Fathers’ Day service.
On December 6, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt addressed Congress:
“No Christian and civilized community can afford to show a happy-go-lucky lack of concern for the youth of to-day;
for, if so, the community will have to pay a terrible penalty of financial burden and social degradation in the to-morrow …”
Roosevelt continued:
“The prime duty of the man is to work, to be the breadwinner; the prime duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife.
All questions of tariff and finance sink into utter insignificance when compared with the tremendous, the vital importance of trying to shape conditions so that these two duties of the man and of the woman can be fulfilled under reasonably favorable circumstances.”
In 1972, President Nixon established Father’s Day as a permanent national observance (Proclamation 4127), stating:
“To have a father — to be a father — is to come very near the heart of life itself.
In fatherhood we know the elemental magic and joy of humanity.
In fatherhood we even sense the divine, as the Scriptural writers did who told of all good gifts corning “down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17)—symbolism so challenging to each man who would give his own son or daughter a life of light without shadow … “
Nixon added:
“Our identity in name and nature, our roots in home and family, our very standard of manhood—all this and more is the heritage our fathers share with us …
It has long been our national custom to observe each year one special Sunday in honor of America’s fathers; and from this year forward, by a joint resolution of the Congress approved April 24, 1972, that custom carries the weight of law …
Let each American make this Father’s Day an occasion for renewal of the love and gratitude we bear to our fathers, increasing and enduring through all the years.
Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby request that June 18, 1972, be observed as Father’s Day.”
On May 20, 1981, in a Proclamation of Father’s Day, President Ronald Reagan stated:
“‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’ Solomon tells us. (Proverbs 22:6)
Clearly, the future is in the care of our parents. Such is the responsibility, promise, and hope of fatherhood. Such is the gift that our fathers give us.”
Dr. Ben Carson explained:
“The more solid the family … the more likely you are to be able to resist peer pressure …
Human beings are social creatures. We all want to belong, we all have that desire, and we will belong, one way or another …
If the family doesn’t provide that, the peers will, or a gang will, or you will find something to belong to.”
On Father’s Day, 1988, Ronald Reagan said:
“Children, vulnerable and dependent, desperately need security, and it has ever been a duty and a joy of fatherhood to offer it.
Being a father requires strength … and more than a little courage … to persevere, to fight discouragement, and to keep working for the family …”
Reagan ended:
“Let us … express our thanks and affection to our fathers, whether we can do so in person or in prayer.”
Genesis 18:19 records one of the reasons God chose Abraham:
“For I know him (Abraham), that he will teach his children … (to) keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment.”
Deuteronomy 4:9:
“Teach them to your children and grandchildren.”
Deuteronomy 6:7:
“And you shall teach them diligently to your children.”
Williams Jennings Bryan gave over 600 public speeches during his Presidential campaigns, with his most famous being “The Prince of Peace,” which was printed in The New York Times, September 7, 1913:
“Christ promoted peace by giving us assurance that a line of communication can be established between the Father above and the child below.”

A warning from Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic, 380 BC, was that democracy is in the process of collapsing when the younger generation disrespect their fathers:
“Can liberty have any limit? Certainly not … By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses …
The son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom …
Citizens … chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority … they will have no one over them … Liberty overmasters democracy …
The excess of liberty, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery …
And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty …”
Plato added:
“By heaven … the parent will discover what a monster he has been fostering in his bosom; and, when he wants to drive him out, he will find that he is weak and his son strong.
Why, you do not mean to say that the tyrant will use violence? What! beat his father if he opposes him?
Yes, he will, having first disarmed him … Then he is a parricide, and a cruel guardian of an aged parent; and this is real tyranny.”
George Orwell wrote in the book 1984 of what socialists do when they take over a country:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.
And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.
Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
U.S. Senate Peter Marshall commented on Marxist social deconstruction (20 Centuries of Great Preaching Vol. 12 Waco: Word, 1971 p. 11-19):
“The history of the world has always been the biography of her great men …
There was a time in these United States when youth was inspired by (heroes) … when a picture of Washington or Lincoln adorned every school room wall …
Along with the ponderous Family Bible on the Victorian table and the hymn books on the old-fashioned square piano, there looked down from the walls the likenesses of our national heroes …
Those were the days of great beliefs – belief in the authority of the Scriptures, belief that prayer was really answered, belief in marriage and the family as permanent institutions, belief in the integrity and worth of America’s great men.
These beliefs laid the groundwork for producing more great men, for many a boy figured, “If that man could do it, get an education, make his life count for something, then I can too …'”
Marshall continued:
“Then there dawned the day when the pictures of Washington and Lincoln did not fit in with our concept of modern décor … The old Family Bible looked embarrassingly out of place … So the pictures and the Bible were often relegated to the Attic of Forgotten Things.
There went with them some of the most stabilizing influences of American life.
We had become a more sophisticated people, somewhat cynical of the cherished beliefs of our ancestors, rather blasé, frankly skeptical of old-fashioned sentimentalism.
Along with our higher education came a debunking contest. This debunking became a sort of national sport … It was smarter to revile than to revere … more fashionable to depreciate than to appreciate.
In our classrooms at all levels of education, no longer did we laud great men – those who had struggled and achieved. Instead, we merely took their dimensions and ferreted out their faults.
We decided that it was silly to say God sent them for a special task … They were merely … products of their environments …
The Constitution, that hitherto cherished charter of American liberties, was drawn up by men who never spoke on a telephone or flew in a plan, therefore, we should change the Constitution to suit modern ways.”
Marshall’s concerns were echoed by others.
Thomas Sowell, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, stated:
“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.”

In writing for The Federalist, June 12, 2020, Katy Faust and Stacy Manning reported:

“NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, when asked if white racism or the absence of fathers posed a greater threat to black Americans, replied without hesitation, ‘The absence of black fathers.'”
Senate Chaplain Marshall added that sons and daughters need courageous fathers to defend them against predatory agendas:
“We failed to realize that when we were denying the existence of great men, we were also denying the desirability of great men.
So now, many of our children have grown up without the guiding star … holding in their hands only a bunch of … question marks, with no keys with which to open the doors of knowledge and life.
The young no longer had any particular ambition to become heroes.
Their ambition now was to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, in whatever way was most convenient …
Thus, our debunking is … a sign of decaying foundations of character to the individual and in the national life …
We who are Christians, believe that God gives the world a few great men to lead the rest of us closer to Him, that to depreciate or to deny their greatness is to deny one of God’s revelations of Himself to mankind.
The heroes the Christian cherishes … were (or are) human .. They have their weakness … Their faults are well-known to their friends, better known to themselves. But the point is that with God and His guidance, they can provide the moral leadership that our nation so sorely needs.
America needs heroes on the battlefield of everyday life … in our homes, in our schools, on college campuses, in offices and factories, who can lead us towards a return to idealism. For time is running out for us …”
U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall concluded:
“The call today is for Christian heroes and heroines … who are willing to speak a good word for Jesus Christ … who are willing to live by the undiluted values of Christian morality in the pagan atmosphere of our society surrounded by lewdness, pornography, and profanity.
This may be a higher bravery than that of any battlefield: to face ridicule, sarcasm, sneering disdain for what one believes to be right.
To fight for goodness and right … fighting the battle first in our own hearts and souls … seeking God’s help to overcome our particular temptations for the sake of peace .. for the sake of America … for our own sake … for God’s sake.”
In 1942, General MacArthur was named Father of the Year. He stated:
“By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder — infinitely prouder — to be a father.
A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life.
And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still.
It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battle but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, ‘Our Father Who Art in Heaven.'”
MacArthur composed “A Father’s Prayer”:
“Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.
Build me a son whose wishes will not take the place of deeds; a son who will know Thee — and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge.
Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail …
Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.
And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously.
Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, and the meekness of true strength.
Then, I, his father, will dare to whisper, ‘I have not lived in vain.'”
President Reagan ended his Father’s Day message:
“With God’s grace, fathers find the patience to teach, the fortitude to provide, the compassion to comfort, and the mercy to forgive.
All of this is to say that they find the strength to love their wives and children selflessly.”
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Happy Father’s Day for Camp Constitution.