The Weekly Sam: Devising Your Own Philosophy of Education By Samuel L. Blumenfeld
One of the great freedoms that homeschoolers have is the freedom to devise their own
philosophy of education as well as the freedom to implement it. It’s the most important
freedom we have. It’s what we call educational freedom, which is indispensable to the
maintenance of a free society. The liberals and atheists may succeed in getting the Ten
Commandments removed from a government building, but they have no power to impose
their philosophy of education on you and your children. They can impose it on the
children in the public schools, but they cannot impose it on you. And therein lies the true
freedom of the American people.
Thus, every homeschooler should exercise that freedom so that it becomes an important
part of the homeschool experience. What is a philosophy of education? It is a statement
of principles and beliefs that forces us to defme the word education so that it becomes
something of substance and true meaning and not merely a word tossed around by
politicians, judges, and professional educators.
I remember sitting in a courtroom some years ago listening to an attorney, supposedly
defending homeschoolers, who told the judge that he believed that the “state had a
compelling interest in education.” He never bothered to define what he meant by
education. Nor did the judge ask him what the word meant, since we know that what
goes on in today’s public classrooms could hardly be called education. What takes place
there is brainwashing. So, what is education? That’s the question every homeschooling
parent should ask and attempt to answer.
My own definition is quite simple. To me, education is the process of passing on to the
younger generation the knowledge, wisdom, morals, and spiritual values of the older
generation. That’s how a civilization is maintained from one generation to the next.
People often wonder how was it possible for the Jewish people to survive as a people
despite dispersion and persecution, so that they could go from their expulsion from the
land of Israel by the Romans around 131 A.D. to the restoration of the State of Israel in
1948. How did they maintain their identity, their religion, their hopes and dreams for
over fifteen hundred years, scattered allover the world. The answer is simple: the Bible,
the Five Books ofMoses, the Torah. That sacred Bible was handed down from
generation to generation and its message kept alive to this very day.
And that adherence to the Bible, from which the New Testament is derived, must be at
the heart of the American homeschooler’s philosophy of education. It is all spelled out in
Deuteronomy 6. The American nation was fuunded on that Bible, and that is the reason
why we still enjoy educational freedom in America. And that is why Bible study must be
at the heart of the homeschooler’s curriculum.
The liberals and leftists have been conducting their revolution in America by slowly
weaning Americans away from the Bible. Removing the Ten Commandments from a
state courthouse, where it served to educate the public about the origin of our laws, is one
ofthe more insolent and blasphemous of their actions. But what it teaches us is that we
must renew our efforts to bring up Christian children in the love and admonition ofthe
Lord. And so we must diligently teach our children the Word of God.
If you want your child to be able to read the Holy Scripture with ease and enjoyment, you
must teach your child to read by intensive, systematic phonics. That’s the way it was
done in colonial times, and that is why Americans were so highly literate in those days.
They were taught to read in the correct phonetic manner, which made it possible for small
boys and girls to read the Bible fluently and with understanding.
So, from the start, your philosophy of education will be very different from that
espoused by the public school in your neighborhood, which so many of your neighbo~
children attend. It is very different in concept, since the public schools forbid the
teaching ofthe Bible in their curriculum. It is also different in methodology, since the
public schools teach children to read by the whole-word method, which dumbs them
down and intellectually retards them.
How can one teach American history without reference to the Bible? When John
Winthrop and 700 colonists landed in Massachusetts Bay in l630, he told the
congregation:
“We are a Company, professing ourselves fellow members of Christ, and thus we
ought to account ourselves knit together by this bond of love ….
We shall find that the God ofIsrael is among us, when ten of us shall be able to
resist a thousand of our enemies, when He shall make us a praise and glory, that
men of succeeding plantations shall say, ‘The Lord make it like that of New
England.’ For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hil~ the eyes of
all people are upon us…”
Homeschoolers can teach our true history by making their children aware of the deep
religious faith of the founding fathers. But none of this can be taught in the public
school, which means that the history taught there is distorted and false. They cannot even
quote George Washington who issued a National Day of Thanksgiving Proclamation in
1789, in which he stated:
“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty
God, to obey His will~ to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His
protection and favor. …
Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the twenty-sixth day of
November next, to be devoted by the people of these United States … that we then
may all unite unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and,
protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; … for
the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish
constitutions ofgovernment for our safety and happiness, and particularly the
national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we
are blessed.”
As Christian parents you have the right to imbue your children with these wonderful
statements of our founding fathers, so that your children will know the true religious
origin of our institutions. Our history is rich with such expressions of religious fervor on
the part of statesmen and politicians who understood the source ofAmerican felicity.
Your philosophy of education should help you choose the materials with which to do the
teaching. Some parents want a highly structured program with much discipline in the
educational process. Other parents prefer a more relaxed approach to give their children
greater freedom to choose what they will study, having confidence that their children will
develop interests in subjects which parents may not have thought of.
One homeschooling mother on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, when required by the local
superintendent to submit her education plan for her son, wrote:
“The priorities of our curriculum are daydreaming, natural and social sciences,
self-discipline, respect for self and others, and making mistakes. I encourage an
acceptance of failure so that he will be comfortable taking risks ….My curriculum
was best expressed by Blake: “To see a world in a grain of sand, And heaven in a
wildflower, To hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.”
Not all children can handle so much freedom. I remember reading a letter in a magazine
from a homeschooler who wished that her parents had exerted greater discipline over her
education so that she would not have wasted so much time reinventing the wheel.
In other words, many children want guidance from those who know more than they do.
They look at parents as the experts who can lead them to where they should go. Parents
who are professionals can easily lead their children to take up their profession if that is
what the child finds of interest.
Some parents decide very early what they want their children to become: engineers,
physicians, nurses, lawyers, teachers, military men, politicians, policemen, and other such
well-defined professions. Few parents would urge their children to become poets, actors,
TV anchormen, artists, fashion designers, models, journalists, editors, photographers,
Hollywood stuntmen, etc. Young people take up these professions mainly out of their
own interest, unless they have a parent in that line of work. For example, in Hollywood,
the children of actors, directors, and producers usually go into the same line of work as
their parents because of easy access to the profession and the connections of their parents.
Thus, if you want your child to go into a well-defined profession, you can provide the
kind of education that leads to it. On the other hand, by giving your child greater
freedom in choosing the curriculum, he or she may develop a desire to do what comes
naturally: writing stories, designing clothes, painting pictures, playmg an instrument,
singing, acting, or selling things. But they still have to learn the academic basics.
Many homeschooling moms are happy to maintain warm, comfortable, loving homes for
their families while their husbands provide the means to pay the bills. After all,
housekeeping is a profession as well as a science all its own. Cookillg, cleaning,
decorating, gardening, furnishing, sewing, shopping are tasks that virtually every child
learns by just watching their parents do it. A home is a special place for all of us. It is
where we socialize with parents and siblings and learn how to be civil with one another.
We can all remember the days when we had to share the bathroom, wash the dishes,
make our beds, prepare the meals, set up the decorations at Christmas time. Who would
deny that something is being learned every day at home?
Stay-at-home moms also serve as models for their children who sooner or later will marry
and have families of their own and will have to do all ofthe things that their parents did.
When a stay-at-home mom supervises the education of her children, she raises her status
in their eyes. And when she and her husband develop their own philosophy of education
on top of all that, they become true educators.
The public schools have not only destroyed true education, but they have also destroyed
the teaching profession. In the old days a teacher stood in front of her class and taught
the basics in a way that made sense and produced excellent results. Today, that teacher is
a facilitator who simply walks around the room conferring with students but doing very
little real teaching. The children leave that system woefully uneducated and miseducated.
And so, parents who want their children to be smartened up instead of dumbed down
have been forced to do it themselves. And that is all to the good because it has forced
parents to free themselves from an institution that has become evil and destructive of
religion and morality.
Once the academic basics are taught, you can then decide what is important for your
children to know. They should know about our political system, and take an interest in
the electoral process. It’s the politicians who must protect our freedoms, and
homeschoolers should take an active role in supporting legislators who are on the side of
educational freedom. Taking part in political races may inspire your child to become not
only a legislator but also the President! Why not? Let your child aim high.
History, geography, science, mathematics, economics, a foreign language, and of course
English must all be in your curriculum. Each subject represents a challenge in terms of
how to approach it. Homeschool book fairs offer an exciting array of books on all of
these subjects. The public schools offer dull textbooks that put the students to sleep.
You have the freedom to choose books that will make the subject interesting. A good
way to study history is by reading biographies and autobiographies. History is made by
men and women, and we can learn much by how they lived and influenced the future.
(Sign up for the Blumenfeld Archive to have access to Sam’s work: https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/
Saluting Our Nation’s Veterans by Dr. Dan Eichenbaum
The history of a nation is its National Treasure that must be remembered, studied, respected, and, most importantly, taught to the children of each generation. It is a unique saga that binds us to the heroes of the past, teaches us the moral basis for our laws and our governmental institutions, and instructs us how to approach the challenges of the future. It allows us to celebrate our successes with pride and learn from our failures so we can avoid repeating previous mistakes.
As an example, the Old Testament, the Five Books of Moses, is the story of the Children of Israel’s journey from Genesis to the Promised Land. It originated as an oral history, eventually written down by scribes on holy scrolls. Each Sabbath, a portion was read aloud to the people so that their entire history was taught to all each year. The recitation of that history bound the Children of Israel together so that they could survive centuries of oppression and the Holocaust to return to the Promised Land in our time.
In our digital age, recording history is not the issue. Anyone with a cellphone camera can be a reporter at the scene of the crime. One would think that live videos could be accepted as fact, but the digital wizards have also given us the tools to edit and amend videos to bend the truth to fit anyone’s personal agenda.
We are at the mercy of a giant media empire that feeds us fabricated history filled with propaganda, half-truths, and lies to enforce the compliance and obedience of an apathetic public, ignorant of the facts and incapable of logical thought processes.
More than ever before, it is essential that we use any available platform to teach the true history of America, to speak about the greatness of our nation, and to honor those who have served and fought to protect our constitutional freedoms.
Lieutenant Colonel Bobby Brookshire, a decorated veteran of multiple combat tours in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan, was one of our guest speakers during the Ninth Annual Benghazi-Twin Towers Memorial Ride this year. His speech about the history of Veterans Day and Memorial Day National Holidays, printed below, reminds us of the enormous debt we owe to our nation’s veterans and serves as a lesson all must learn if we are to save the soul of our nation.
Since 1776 more than 40 million American men and women have served in the Armed Forces of the United States, most of them during periods of conflict or war. This number represents less than 1% of America’s total population alive during that same time period. Since the birth of our Nation, no single generation has been spared the responsibility of defending the rights of the human spirit to breathe free from the aggression of enemies both abroad and domestic. From Lexington and Concord to Fort McHenry, from the mountains of Europe and the sands of the Pacific Islands to the deserts of the Middle East, on land, on sea, and in the air, America’s finest have proudly worn the uniforms of United States Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and now most recently, the Space Force.
Freedom is NOT Free. More than 1.4 million of our country’s sons and daughters have given their lives to preserve the dream that was born on July 4th, 1776. To each of them we owe a debt of gratitude for sacrificing all that they had, so that we may enjoy all that we have.
Defending freedom is not just a matter of facing a hostile enemy in time of war or conflict. Every veteran, whether in combat duty or peace time service, is in some measure, a Hero. Heroism is as much a matter of attitude as one of action. Every man or woman who has proudly worn the uniform of one of our military services, by that very action, demonstrated that they were WILLING to pay the ULTIMATE Price to protect the Freedom of all citizens of this great country. As a people, we owe our respect and admiration to all these DEFENDERS OF FREEDOM – OUR VETERANS.
The History of Veterans Day
World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” – officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28th, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. Fighting had ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, a temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied Nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11th, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”
In November, 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11th as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words:
“To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations . . . ”
On May 13th, 1938, Congress made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday – a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as “Armistice Day.”
Armistice Day was primarily a day set aside to honor Veterans of World War I, but in 1954, after World War II had required the greatest mobilization of Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen in the Nation’s history and after American Forces had fought Communist aggression in Korea, the 83rd Congress, at the urging of the veterans service organizations, amended the Act of 1938 by striking out the word “Armistice” and inserting in its place the word “Veterans.” With the approval of this legislation (Public Law 380) on June 1st, 1954, November 11th became a day to honor American Veterans of all wars.
Listen to Dr. Dan https://radio.securenetsystems.net/v5/WJRB
(This article was written in 2021 but we thought it deserved to be reposted) H.S.
Fight Racism. Defund Planned Parenthood
Hal Shurtleff, host of Camp Constitution Radio and Catching Fire News, expose the racist roots of Planned Parenthood. and discusses the plans to publish the correspondence between Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and Dr. Clarence Gamble, heir to the Proctor and Gamble fortune and President of the Eugenics Society.
https://catchingfire.news/2022/11/07/fight-racism-defund-planned-parenthood/
A link to an audio version of the show:
https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2022-11-08T05_13_59-08_00
Order a “Fight Racism Defund Planned Parenthood” yard sign: https://campconstitution.net/product/fight-racism-defund-planned-parenthood-yard-sign/
Christian Flag Case in Boston Settles for $2.125 Million
The following is a press release from Liberty Counsel http://lc.org
Nov 8, 2022
In Shurtleff v. City of Boston, Liberty Counsel represents Boston resident Hal Shurtleff and his Christian civic organization, Camp Constitution. Shurtleff and Camp Constitution first asked the city in 2017 for a permit to raise the Christian flag on the “public forum” Boston City Hall flagpole to commemorate Constitution Day and Citizenship Day (September 17) and the civic and cultural contributions of the Christian community to the city of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, religious tolerance, the Rule of Law and the U.S. Constitution. For 12 years, from 2005 to 2017, Boston approved 284 flag raisings by private organizations with no denials on the flagpoles that it designated a “public forum.” However, the city official denied Camp Constitution’s application in 2017 to fly the Christian flag on Constitution Day.
The policy stated that the flagpole was open to all applicants, but the City of Boston denied Hal Shurtleff’s application for the sole reason that the application form referred to the flag as a “Christian” flag. Had the application used any other non-religious word, Boston would have granted the request.
After four lower court losses, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on May 2, 2022, that Boston’s denial of the flag was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment Free Speech Clause.
The Justices in Shurtleff unanimously rejected Boston’s argument that religious viewpoints must be censored under the 1971 Supreme Court case, Lemon v. Kurtzman. On June 27, in the Coach Kennedy case, Justice Gorsuch pointed to Shurtleff as the basis for overturning Lemon. The so-called “Lemon Test” did considerable damage to the First Amendment Free Speech, Free Exercise, and Establishment Clauses.
The Christian flag finally flew on the Boston City Hall Plaza public forum flagpole on August 3 as an enthusiastic crowd cheered to celebrate the first day free of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “We are pleased that after five years of litigation and a unanimous victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, we joined with Hal Shurtleff to finally let freedom fly in Boston, the Cradle of Liberty. The Christian flag case has established significant precedent, including the overturning of the 1971 ‘Lemon Test,’ which Justice Scalia once described as a ‘ghoul in a late night horror movie.’ The case of Shurtleff v. City of Boston finally buried this ghoul that haunted the First Amendment for 51 years.”
For more information on the case, visit www.LC.org/flag.
Liberty Counsel advances religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, and the family through litigation and education. We depend on your support, which enables us to represent people at no cost. Click here to GIVE NOW.
Camp Constitution in Connecticut
Last Friday, a Connecticut homeschool cooperative led by Lori Langdon sponsored “Camp Constitution in Connecticut.” The event was held at the Newtown Meeting House in Newtown and hosted by New Hights Baptist Church. Pastor Zack Kinsman opened the event with prayer. Hal Shurtleff, the director of Camp Constitution conducted his “Know Your Constitution” presentation, and the camp’s chaplain Rev. Steve Craft gave a presentation exposing Critical Race Theory which he calls “Crazy Racist Trash.” Mrs. Edith Craft and Mrs. Sapphire Giminez ran the program for the younger children.
Many thanks to all that made this event possible. For those interested in hosting events like this, please contact Hal Shurtleff at campconstitution1@gmail.com
The Weekly Sam: How Behavioral Psychologists Have Destroyed American Education Or Many Students Left Behind
How Behavioral Psychologists Have Destroyed
American Education Or Many Students Left Behind
By Samuel L. Blumenfeld
On September 11, 2001, Americans discovered how physically vulnerable we are to the
attacks of our enemies. In just a matter of a few hours the Islamic terrorists destroyed the
two magnificent towers of the World Trade Center in New York, killing almost 3,000
people, destroyed a large section of the Pentagon and its personnel, and destroyed four
airliners with their passengers. Never before had America suffered such a devastating
attack on its own soil at the hands of a fanatic enemy.
However, there is an area of vulnerability, which our enemies are using to destroy our
most important cultural and scientific asset, the American brain. This enemy is so well
disguised that most Americans don’t even know it exists. But we can see the results of
this internal attack all around us: epidemics of drug addiction, learning disabilities,
attention deficit disorders, reading failures, dyslexia.
Over four million children—some say six million—are required to ingest the powerful
drug Ritalin and other similar drugs in order to able to sit in their classrooms and undergo
the process of having their brains crippled by a non-surgical pre-frontal lobotomy. And
this process has been going on for over fifty years. In fact, the public first learned about
it back in 1955 when Rudolf Flesch wrote Why Johnny Can’t Read. In that book, Dr.
Flesch wrote:
“The teaching of reading all over the United States, in all the schools, and in all the
textbooks is totally wrong and flies in the face of all logic and common sense.”
He then explained how in the 1930s the educators got rid of the alphabetic phonics
method of teaching reading and replaced it with a new ideographic method, in which
children are taught to look at each word as a whole configuration, like a Chinese
character. He said that when you impose an ideographic teaching method on a phonetic
writing system, you get reading disability and dyslexia.
Back in the 1970s, when I was trying to find out who the idiots were who dreamed up
this new method, I discovered that it was conceived at the turn of the last century by
educators known as the Progressives. The Progressives were members of the Protestant
academic elite who no longer believed in the religion of their fathers. They now put their
faith in science, evolution, and psychology. Science permitted them to know the material
world, evolution explained the origin of living matter, and psychology permitted them to
study human nature and control human behavior. They were also socialists, because they
believed that individualism and capitalism were the cause of all social evil, and that only
by eliminating them could social utopia be achieved.
It was their philosophical leader, John Dewey, who first argued the need to get rid of high
literacy in order to prepare the children of tomorrow for a socialist society. He wrote, in
an essay published in 1898:
“My proposition is, that conditions—social, industrial, and intellectual—have
undergone such a radical change, that the time has come for a thoroughgoing
examination of the emphasis put upon linguistic work in elementary
instruction…. The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to me a perversion.”
He then outlined a plan whereby primary education would be completely revamped to
conform with the Progressives’ agenda for a socialist America. He wrote:
“Change must come gradually. To force it unduly would compromise its final
success by favoring a violent reaction.”
And that is why the process has been going on for so long with most Americans being
totally unaware of it taking place right under their noses. Even four to six million
children on Ritalin are not enough to wake up America. Yet we know that Ritalin has
caused violent behavior and sudden death among some children. It also causes shrinkage
of the brain.
How was Dewey’s plan implemented? It was carried out by the behavioral
psychologists, notably Edward L. Thorndike and his protégé Arthur I. Gates at Teachers
College, Columbia University. They devised the new whole-word teaching method.
It was one of Thorndike’s students, William Scott Gray, who conceived the Dick and
Jane reading program at the University of Chicago, first published by Scott, Foresman in
1930. Gates’s whole-word reading program was published at the same time by
Macmillan.
Thorndike, by the way, was a strong believer in eugenics and advocated a non-intellectual curriculum for black children because of their racial inferiority. Thorndike’s claim to fame is his discovery that you could train children like animals. He
wrote in 1928:
“Our experiments on learning in the lower animals have probably contributed more
to knowledge of education per hour or per unit of intellect spent, than experiments
on children….The best way with children may often be, in the pompous words of
an animal trainer, to arrange everything in connection with the trick so that the
animal will be compelled by the laws of his own nature to perform it.”
But it was John B. Watson, the most arrogant behaviorist of them all, who revealed the
true contempt that he and his fellow behaviorists had toward their fellow human beings.
In his book, Behaviorism, a textbook for his students, he wrote:
Human beings do not want to class themselves with other animals. They are
willing to admit that they are animals but ‘something else in addition.’ It is this
‘something else’ that causes the trouble. In this ‘something else’ is bound up
everything that is classed as religion, the life hereafter, morals, love of children,
parents, country, and the like. The raw fact that you, as a psychologist, if you are
to remain scientific, must describe the behavior of man in no other terms than
those you would use in describing the behavior of the ox you slaughter, drove and
still drives many timid souls away from behaviorism.”
Watson meant to be shocking, because he had to convince his students that they had to
treat human beings coldly and callously as animals. He wrote further:
“The interest of the behaviorist in man’s doings is more than the interest of the
spectator—he wants to control man’s reactions, as physical scientists want to
control and manipulate other natural phenomena. It is the business of
behavioristic psychology to be able to predict and control human activity.”
In the 1920s, behavioral psychologists in the Soviet Union were also conducting
experiments on predicting and controlling human activity. Ivan Pavlov was
experimenting on dogs to produce conditioned reflexes. He and his helpers were also
experimenting on ways to artificially create behavioral disorganization.
Incidentally, there are two kinds of reflexes: unconditioned and conditioned. An
unconditioned reflex is a natural immediate response to stimuli. For example, when you
are driving a car in daylight and enter a tunnel, your eyes automatically adjust to the
darkness of the tunnel. A conditioned reflex is simply a learned habit. For example,
when the traffic light ahead turns red, your foot automatically steps on the brake while
your mind is on other things. When you learn to drive on the right, you develop all kinds
of learned habits or conditioned reflexes. But when you rent a car in England where they
drive on the left, your right-driving reflexes may kill you. So now you have to think
about every move you make. If you live in England long enough, you may develop a left drive reflex.
Now, getting back to Pavlov and his experiments on artificially creating behavioral
disorganization, why would anyone want to do that? Well, the communists were out to
conquer the world and the power to create behavioral disorganization among your
enemies could be quite helpful.
In 1932, a book was published describing those experiments in great detail. Entitled The
Nature of Human Conflicts, it was authored by Alexander Luria, one of Pavlov’s
colleagues, and translated into English by an American, W. Horsley Gantt, who had spent
six years working in Pavlov’s laboratory in Russia, after which he joined the staff of the
Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins University. Luria wrote:
“We are not the first of those who have artificially created disorganizations of
human behaviour….”
I. P. Pavlov was the first investigator who, with the help of exceedingly bold
workers, succeeded experimentally in creating neuroses with experimental
animals. Working with conditioned reflexes in dogs, Pavlov came to the
conclusion that every time an elaborated reflex came into conflict with the
unconditioned reflex, the behaviour of the dog markedly changed…. Although, in
the experiments with the collision of the conditioned reflexes in animals, it is
fairly easy to obtain acute forms of artificial affect, it is much more difficult to get
these results in human experiments. K. Lewin, in our opinion, has been one of the most prominent psychologists to
elucidate this question of the artificial production of affect and of the
experimental disorganisation of behaviour….Here the fundamental conception of
Lewin is very close to ours.
Now, who is this K. Lewin praised so highly by Luria at being a master at creating
behavioral disorganization? He is none other than the Kurt Lewin who came to America
in 1933 and set up the Research Center for Group Dynamics at M.I.T. and invented
“sensitivity training.” Shortly before his death in 1947, Lewin founded the National
Training Lab at Bethel, Maine, under the sponsorship of the National Education
Association. Think of it. Here you have a communist behavioral psychologist who is an
expert at artificially creating behavioral disorganization—that is, driving people crazy—
being sponsored by the National Education Association.
The importance of Lewin in this story is that he represented the collectivist or communist
mentality in the psychological community, which had its own socio-political agenda.
Lewin’s biographer, Alfred J. Marrow, writes:
“Students of progressive education also saw the need for studies of group behavior.
This was stimulated by the educational philosophy of John Dewey….This called
for the development of leadership skills and collective setting of group goals.”
And, of course, that is what we have in today’s classrooms: group learning, group-think,
outcome-based education. So we have destroyed the ability of children to learn to read
and forced them to be indoctrinated by collectivist means. That’s not education. That’s a
program to destroy the individual independent mind. We know that one of the reasons why children become frustrated in the classroom and act up is because of the way they are being taught. They enter school at age six feeling very
confident that they are intelligent enough to be able to learn to read. After all, they taught
themselves to speak their own language on their own without the help of a certified
teacher. So their confidence in their learning ability is quite justified.
But once in school they discover that they can’t learn to read in the manner they are being
taught. So they become angry and frustrated, doubting their own intelligence. And soon
they join the ranks of the reading disabled, the dyslexic, the ADD or ADHD, and are
given a drug to solve their learning and behavioral problems and make the teacher happy.
It should not surprise you to learn that one of Kurt Lewin’s most significant experiments
was aimed at determining the behavioral affects of frustration on children and how these
affects are produced. Marrow writes:
“The experiment indicated that in frustration the children tended to regress to a
surprising degree. They tended to become babyish. Intellectually, children of
four and a half years tended toward the behavior of a three-year-old. The degree
of intellectual regression varied directly with the strength of the
frustration….Aggressiveness also increased and some children went so far as to
hit, kick, and break objects.”
So what do you do with kids like that? You drug them! And what does this do to the
American brain? It kills it. We see the ramifications of this in our daily lives. For example, have you ever corrected
a teenager on a bit of factual information, or a misspelling, or an incorrect usage of
language, and gotten the response, “Whatever”?
Where does this casual, dumb response come from? It comes from the public schools,
and probably some private schools, where accuracy is no longer an academic value. In
fact, public schools are permeated with a philosophy summed up in the phrase,
“Accuracy is not the name of the game.”
Those are the actual words of Julia Palmer, president of the American Reading Council,
an advocate of the whole-language approach to reading. Palmer said that it was okay if a
child read the word “house” for “home,” or substituted the word “pony” for “horse.”
“It’s not very serious,” she said, “ because she understands the meaning. Accuracy is not
the name of the game.” (Washington Post, Nov. 29, 1986)
But accuracy IS the name of the game if you believe that education is the serious business
of providing the citizens of tomorrow with a basic foundation in knowledge and
academic skills. It was Sir Francis Bacon who wrote: “Reading maketh a full man…and
writing an exact man.” In other words, an accurate reader becomes an accurate thinker,
an accurate speller, and an accurate user of language. An inaccurate reader becomes an
inaccurate thinker, an inaccurate speller, and an inaccurate user of language. (By the way
there are a lot of people who think that spelling is unimportant. Tell that to Dan Quayle,
whose political career was ruined because he misspelled potato by adding an e. He’s
been the butt of comedians ever since.)
A brain that thinks inaccurately is a disabled brain. And we are turning out of our
schools millions of disabled brains, unable to think logically, virtually crippled as
defenders of our civilization. A crippled brain is unable to deal with reality in a logical,
objective way. It relies on emotion, sensual urges, and superstition as its primary way of
knowing and learning. It deprecates accuracy as a threat to its diminished ego.
The cult of inaccuracy is promulgated at the highest levels of our education system. Let
me read to you a definition of whole-language philosophy written by three whole language professors in a book entitled Whole Language: What’s the Difference, published
in 1991:
“From a whole-language perspective, reading (and language use in general) is a
process of generating hypotheses in a meaning-making transaction in a
sociohistorical context. [I’m sure you got that.] As a transactional
process…reading is not a matter of ‘getting the meaning’ from the text, as if that
meaning were in the text waiting to be decoded by the reader.
Rather, reading is a matter of readers using the cues print provides and the
knowledge they bring with them (of language subsystems, of the world) to
construct a unique interpretation.”
Moreover, that interpretation is situated: readers’ creations (not retrievals) of
meaning with text vary, depending on their purposes of reading and the
expectations of others in the reading event. This view of reading implies that
there is no single “correct” meaning for a given text, only plausible meanings.
And what have these psycho-educators done to the American brain? In 1972, the number
of students who scored highest on the SAT verbal test, between 750 and 800, was 2,817.
In 1994, that number was down to 1,438—about half! At the lowest end, the number of
students who scored between 200 and 290 in 1972 was 71,084. In 1994, it was up to
136,841. What more proof do you need that America is losing its brains?
Next September, several million children will enter the primary schools of our nation
with healthy brains. In a year their brains will be disabled.
And this has been done to us not by foreign terrorists, but by behavioral psychologists:
Dewey, Thorndike, Gates, Gray, Watson, Pavlov, Luria, and their loyal disciples. And
there is no escaping them. They own the schools and they have the money. And so,
parents are forced to use their own resources to make sure that their children are educated
as human beings with souls, not as animals. The difference is important. Animals can be
trained but they can’t be educated. Children can be trained, but their training means
nothing unless they are educated.
Which brings us to the question: what is education? The Bible in Deuteronomy 6 spells it
out. In modern terms it means that it is the duty of the older generation to pass on to the
younger generation its knowledge, wisdom, and religious values. And until our public
education system returns to those basic principles, it will be a useless financial burden to
all of us and a terrible abuser of our children.
There is indeed a Ministry of Education in America, and it is called the National Society
for the Study of Education. It was founded in 1901 by John Dewey and colleagues who
were interested in psycho-education and the application of science to educational issues.
The Society publishes an annual two-volume Yearbook filled with discussions of
educational interests. By the way, you won’t find the yearbooks in your local library.
You’ll have to go to a university library to find them.
The NSSE describes itself as “an organization of education scholars, professional
educators, and policy makers dedicated to the improvement of education research, policy
and practice.” On its board of directors is a former president of the NEA, Mary Hatwood
Futrell. The membership list in the 1969 Yeabook is 94 pages long, and you’ve probably
never heard of the organization. The subject for their 2008 Yearbook is “Why Do We
Educate?” It’s a question the educators seem to be totally confused about.
But some of them are not confused at all. One of them is Professor Anthony G. Oettinger
of Harvard University, Professor of Information Resources Policy, and a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations. He said the following at a conference of communications
executives in 1982:
“The present ‘traditional’ concept of literacy has to do with the ability to read and
write. But the real question that confronts us today is: How do we help citizens
function well in their society? How can they acquire the skills necessary to solve
their problems?
‘Do we, for example, really want to teach people to do a lot of sums or write in a
fine round hand’ when they have a five-dollar hand-held calculator or a word
processor to work with? Or, do we really have to have everybody literate—
writing and reading in the traditional sense—when we have the means through
our technology to achieve a new flowering of oral communication?
What is speech recognition and speech synthesis all about if it does not lead to
ways of reducing the burden on the individual of the imposed notions of literacy
that were a product of nineteenth century economics and technology? …
It is the traditional idea that says certain forms of communication, such as comic
books, are bad. But in the modern context of functionalism, they may not be all
that bad.”
Pease visit Sam’s archive: https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/
The Weekly Sam: Let the Counter-Revolution Begin!
Let the Counter-Revolution Begin!
Implementing the Tea Party Agenda
By Samuel L. Blumenfeld
The first American Revolution officially began on July 4th, 1776, when the Thirteen
Colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. And it didn’t end until 1781,
when General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, and the Treaty of Paris was signed
with Great Britain in 1783. In other words it took seven years of hard struggle before
the colonists could become the free and sovereign United States of America.
At first the new government was ruled by the Articles of Confederation, ratified by the
states in 1781, which provided virtually no power to the central government. The leaders
of the new confederation then decided to construct a more efficient and viable form of
government under a new Constitution. The result was a Federal Republic in which power
was effectively separated into three branches: the Executive headed by a President, the
Legislative composed of a Congress with a Senate and a House of Representatives, and
the Judiciary, a federal court system headed by the Supreme Court.
Thus, was formed a government of limited powers in which the basic freedoms of
American citizens were constitutionally protected against encroachment by any branch of
government. All of this worked fairly well until the turn of the last century when
socialists began a long-range conspiracy to change America from a Constitutional
Republic with limited powers into a European style Social Democracy with unlimited
powers, thus abolishing our God-given individual liberties. This was done through
incremental steps that expanded the power of the federal government in all areas
Which brings us to the present. The socialists finally took complete legislative power in
Washington with the election of Barack Obama as President and a Democrat controlled
Congress. Their plan was to end our Constitutional Republic. But what the socialists
didn’t count on was the rising up of the majority of the American people in opposition to
their scheme. That uprising became the Tea Party Movement, made up of ordinary and
extraordinary Americans who are determined to restore America’s form of government to
what the Founding Fathers gave us.
And in November 2010 the Tea Partiers gained control of the House of Representatives,
marking the beginning of their Counter-Revolution. But the socialist revolutionaries
used the lame-duck Congress to push through as much of their agenda as possible.
What should the Tea Partiers do when they take their seats in Congress in January of
2011? First, they must repeal all of the socialist legislation that virtually ended our
Constitutional Republic. This initial effort may be vetoed by our Alinsky-trained
President. But in 1012 the Tea Partiers may be able to get rid of this Marxist
revolutionary at the top. Next, they must begin to dismantle all of those federal
departments and bureaucracies created by previous liberal administrations to expand the
control of government over the lives and activities of the American people. But where
to start? A good place to start is by abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, created
by Jimmy Carter in 1979 via the Department of Education Organization Act, approved by
a liberal Congress.
Actually, a Department of Education had been created in 1867, but a year later was
reduced to a mere Office collecting education statistics, a minor bureau in the Department
of the Interior. In 1939, the bureau was transferred to the Federal Security Agency where
it became known as the Office of Education.
Upgrading the Office of Education into a cabinet level department was opposed by
Republicans who saw the Department as unconstitutional since the Constitution didn’t
even mention education. But when Ronald Reagan became President in 1981 and tried
to abolish the Department, he was prevented by a Democrat dominated House of
Representatives. He was also sabotaged by his own RINO statists.
During the 1980s, the abolition of the ED, as it is now called, was part of the Republican
Party platform, but President George H. W. Bush declined to implement the idea. In
1996, the Republican Party made abolition of the Department a cornerstone of their
campaign promises, calling it an unconstitutional federal intrusion into local, state, and
family affairs.
The GOP platform stated:
“The Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school
curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the
Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family
choice at all levels of learning.”
During Bob Dole’s run for the presidency in 1996, he promised to abolish the ED. And
in 2000, the Republican Liberty Caucus passed a resolution to abolish the Department.
But when George W. Bush became President, instead of initiating an effort to abolish the
Department, he joined with liberal Democrat Ted Kennedy to enact the No Child Left
Behind act, which reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965
passed by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society administration.
It was George W. Bush’s big government Republicanism which disillusioned many
conservatives with the GOP and led to the election of Barack Obama. But what makes
the abolition of the Department of Education much more possible now are two things: the
huge federal debt and the need to cut the cost and size of government; and the fact that
the Department has not improved education. In fact, it has made it worse.
Indeed, it was Charlotte Iserbyt, a former Senior Policy Advisor in the Department of
Education during the Reagan years, who blew the whistle on the ED’s nefarious activities
by writing the Deliberate Dumbing Down of the American People, based on
documentation she found in the Department‘s own files. In her expose she proved that the
Department was financing the dumbing down of Americans through grants to socialist
academics in our universities. In other words, the Department of Education had become
destructive of the American mind, and therefore should have long been abolished for that
reason alone. (Iserbyt’s book can now be downloaded free of charge on the Internet.)
So there is now more than enough evidence that the Department of Education is a
destructive force with power to dictate what goes on in American schools. The sooner it
is gotten rid of, the sooner Americans will be able to achieve one of the Tea Party’s chief
goals: a free nation, enjoying the benefits of educational freedom, without federal control
over our schools.
Yet read the Constitution and you discover a document that carefully creates a national
government with limited and enumerated powers. In contrast to state governments,
federal authority is constrained. Washington does not have general jurisdiction, or the
so-called police power, authorizing it to intervene in any matter not explicitly barred by
law or constitution.
None of the 27 amendments expanded federal power in this regard. The 13th, 14th, and
15th Amendments, passed in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, did transform
federal-state relations: the United States went from being a plural aggregation to a single
unit. National power expanded insofar as it protected individual liberty in the states. The
constitutional changes did not expand Washington’s authority to infringe the liberty of the
same individuals.
John McManus writes:
“For decades, our federal government has annually poured tens of billions into education
and the product continues to worsen. The same elected geniuses started a Department of
Energy when imports totaled 30 percent. The import total is now 70 percent. Federal
housing policies convinced many Americans they could own a home with little or no
down payment and the resulting housing crisis ushered in the current recession. Other
geniuses started providing food stamps for several hundred thousand in the 1960s while
assuring everyone that the number of recipients would never grow larger. Now, over 40
million — one in seven Americans — are on this form of handout. We could go on. But it
has to be obvious that whatever the Federal government undertakes beyond its
constitutionally authorized powers turns out to be a bust.”
What Shall We Cut?
Abortion may soon be more readily available than ever before, thanks to a new
requirement from Planned Parenthood that more of its centers nationwide offer the
service. At least one local chapter so far has decided to withdraw from the network rather
than comply.
A local office of Planned Parenthood in South Texas is dropping out of the nationwide
network of “America’s most trusted provider of reproductive health care” starting
January 1.
According to local news reports, Planned Parenthood is planning on standardizing all of
its agencies, which includes requiring that every single one offer abortion services. The
CEO of the Coastal Bend office, however, said in a media interview that her center has
never provided abortions in the past, and doing so now is unnecessary.
“Our position is that if that is a need in your community, fine,” said CEO Amanda
Stukenberg. “There are far greater needs in our area than abortion. We feel that women
here have options. We don’t need to duplicate services.”
When contacted by The Daily Caller, Lisa David, senior vice president of Health
Services Support for Planned Parenthood, said that the organization is implementing a
broad “new patient services initiative.”
“From well-woman exams to lifesaving breast and cervical cancer screenings, more
patients will now have access to the full range of Planned Parenthood services,” said
David in a statement. “To meet the needs of our patients, Planned Parenthood affiliates
will now offer a unified set of core preventive services.”
In the next year, according to David, Planned Parenthood will expand immediate access
to testing for HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI’s). During the next two years,
all Planned Parenthood centers will begin to “provide the full range of birth control
method options, such as the IUD, in addition to well-woman exams including critical
cancer prevention screenings.”
She went on to say that abortion services will be offered in at least one clinic per affiliate.
However, a waiver may be obtained in the case of “unique local circumstances.”
Some, however, argue that the expansion of abortion services is more about lining
pockets than making women feel safe and secure. “Planned Parenthood claims they’re
concerned with women’s health and family planning,” a spokesperson for the Family
Research Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advances “faith, family and
freedom,” told TheDC.
“We’ve been hearing rhetoric lately that abortion should be safe, legal and rare, but [with
this requirement] we can see the writing on the wall. The bottom line is there is no place
in the U.S. where a woman would have difficulty getting abortion if they want to.”
The spokesperson went on to say, “This is about expanding services and bringing in more
money…they try to create a public image where everything focuses on STD’s, family
planning, etc, but abortion is a profitable endeavor.”
Right now, Planned Parenthood has 817 health clinics throughout the U.S. One hundred
seventy-three of those already perform surgical abortions, and 131 perform chemical
abortions. The Planned Parenthood network is made up of 87 locally-government
regional centers, which then oversee hundreds of other clinics.
Earlier this month, Planned Parenthood released its 2008-2009 Annual Report, revealing
that it received $363 million in federal funding that fiscal year.
Adventures in Home Education by Dr. Peter Hammond
ADVENTURES in HOME EDUCATION
A True School of Discipleship
Parenthood is an adventure. Protestant Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther observed that marriage is the true school of discipleship. He claimed that he learned more in one year of marriage than he had learned in 10 years in the monastery! Luther also observed that there is no love so sacrificial as that of a parent.
Three Decades in Education
For Lenora and I, our adventures in Home Education began 31 years ago with the birth of our first child. Now that we have four children and three grandchildren, we can look back on almost three decades of family adventures in education with awe and gratitude at all that the Lord has taught us and accomplished, in spite of our doubts, fears, frailties and failures.
The Duties of a Parent
The Bible tells us that God seeks “Godly offspring…” Malachi 2:15. As parents, our greatest desires and priorities were to bring up our children “in the training and instruction of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:4. We aimed to “train a child in the way he should go…” Proverbs 22:6. Our greatest concern was that our children would grow up to love the Lord with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their mind and with all their strength. It has been my constant prayer that my children will grow to love, trust, obey, worship and serve God more consistently and effectively than I have done.
Home Education was a Life Altering Lifestyle Decision
Lenora and I counted our decision to Home Educate our children as one of the most important and life altering commitments we ever made. We entered into Home Education with fear and trepidation. Despite Lenora completing a Bachelor of Science in Education and my Seminary training in Theology and Missiology, we were not sure that we would succeed as home educators.
Phenomenal Resources Available
As it happened, our fears proved to be unnecessary. The curriculum providers for home educators have done a phenomenal job in providing some of the finest textbooks, workbooks, assignments, projects and educational resources and support networks available anywhere. We really did not have any reason to worry at all. In fact, parents do not need a college education to succeed as home education parents. The curriculums and textbooks available make home education accessible to most families.
Enjoyable and Empowering Education
Our children took to home education with enthusiasm. We thoroughly enjoyed going through the textbooks and assignments together. I learned a lot as I went through History, Geography and English textbooks with my children. It even inspired me to write a number of History books myself!
What About Socialization, Sports and Accreditation
Many people are concerned about socialization. Others are concerned about sports. For many, accreditation and academic recognition to enable their children to go on to tertiary education is a primary concern.
Extramural Activities for Home Educators
Well, our children were fully involved in the Biblical Worldview Summit camps and Great Commission Courses every year, Girl Guides, Scouts, Ice Skating, Irish Dancing, Art classes, Soccer, Tennis, Music (including competing in the Royal Academy of Music Exams), Guitar and Piano Lessons, Ballet, Horse Riding, regular visits to Museums, Battle sites, national parks and volunteering to help out with the SPCA Horse Unit, Dog Kennels, Catteries, Animal Welfare Society, Animal Anti-Cruelty League, Beauty Without Cruelty, SANCCOB, visits to Eagle Encounter, Cheetah Outreach, neighborhood clean ups, tree planting campaigns, hikes in the forest and so much more. Physical education, sports and socialization were hardly a concern! Our children even participated in team sports at local independent schools who welcomed the involvement of home educated students.
Andrea
Our eldest daughter, Andrea, started with CLASS (Christian Liberty Academy Satellite School) and completed her High School education with the BJU (Bob Jones University) Home curriculum. Andrea completed a SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) at the University of Cape Town and was awarded a full 5-year Scholarship at Arizona Christian University where she graduated with honours, with her majors in Communication with an emphasis in Journalism. Immediately upon graduating, she was offered a position in Western Journalism, where she pioneered a whole new department. Since then, Andrea married and is the mother of three energetic sons.
Daniela
Our second daughter, Daniela, started with CLASS, then later in High School, she used BJU materials and matriculated using the ACE (Accelerated Christian Education) curriculum. She excelled in painting at Frank Joubert Art School which was a private Art School that she would attend several afternoons of each week. Daniela’s Matric results enabled her to enter Varsity College where she graduated with Honours in Graphic Design. Daniela also earned National Colors in Ice Skating and represented South Africa overseas in Synchronised Ice Skating in France, Italy and the United States. She was also part of the Cape Town Youth Choir for many years and sang in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and at the Choir Olympics in Riga, Latvia. Daniela is a highly sought-after designer and earns more than her parents. She is also an Ice-Skating coach in her spare time.
Christopher
Our third child, Christopher, achieved senior Black Belt in Karate, second Dan. He was awarded National Colours and represented South Africa overseas at Worlds in the United States of America, Switzerland and Germany. He brought back two Bronze medals for South Africa. He has graduated from AFDA in Motion Picture Medium, his chosen subjects include Editing, Data Management and Color Grading. Christopher has served in Frontline Fellowship’s Coms office. Numerous of our films were produced by Christopher. He then was granted an Internship with MovieGuide.
Calvin
Our youngest son, Calvin, undertook multiple missions around South Africa, Namibia and Zambia with me, became accomplished in presenting Way of the Master and Evangelism Explosion Gospel presentations to school assemblies, on national TV in Zambia, at pastors’ conferences and in churches. From age 6, he was a confident presenter of EE Gospel presentations. Calvin excelled in Scouts, representing South Africa at the 2015 Jamboree in Japan. He earned Gold in Fencing in a National Tournament. Calvin excelled in Water Polo and Hockey and more recently in long distance running. He represented South Africa in Biathel in Egypt. He is studying Exercise Technology and, even before he completed his GED Matric, was already coaching at a number of schools, in Water Polo, Hockey and long-distance running.
Mission Camps, Courses and Outreaches
All of our children have been fully involved in all of the camps, courses and outreaches of our Mission. They have all been Group Leaders at our camps. Daniela has also led the Women’s P.T. and Calvin has led the Men’s P.T. and sports.
Strengthening Character and Families
While most South African families have the distressing situation of their children being scattered around the globe, we have been blessed with all of our children and grandchildren are living in South Africa, in Cape Town and involved in the Mission. There is no doubt in my mind that this would not be the case had we not chosen Home Education as a lifestyle choice. There is no doubt that Home Education brought our family closer together, deepened our Faith and strengthened the character of each one of us.
Family Goals
From the very beginning, it was a high priority for Lenora and I that our children learn to be brave, to be dependable, faithful, disciplined Christians of integrity; people of their word who can be depended upon to honour their commitments. They needed to learn to be unselfish, to put personal feelings and interests aside in order to do what is right, to care for the weak and needy and for the lonely, to rescue stray animals, to help those who are in greatest need and to serve the Lord sacrificially.
Investment by Example
To teach this to our children, we needed to model these principles by way of example. Our children needed to see these priorities and principles at work in our lives, consistently. Our time is limited. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Investing in our children, in their education and their future has been the very best investment we have ever made. Now we have 3 grandsons to help raise.
Home Education Video Available
In order to encourage those considering the adventure of Home Education, Christian Liberty Books produced a Home Education video. You can view Ndumiso’s 28-minute Home Education video here.
“Therefore, know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps Covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His Commandments.” Deuteronomy 7:9
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To download and print Considering Home Education tract, click here.
To listen to a radio interview with Lenora on this subject, click here.
You can find the Home Educators Network on social media: https://www.facebook.com/HomeEducatorsNetwork
Understanding South African History – Home Educators Seminar, Wednesday 7 September 2022
This Understanding South African History – home educators seminar – will focus on character studies and pivotal events to help one understand some of the most prominent personalities and dramatic events in South African history. The seminar is free for home educators and their children. Please RSVP to: mission@frontline.org.za to confirm your participation. The program starts at 9 AM and will conclude at 1 PM: for more details on this event click here
See also:
Raising God Fearing Children
Education or Indoctrination?
Education in South Africa is a Battleground
Schools and Colleges Harassed by Government
Resist Attempts to Hijack Home Education
Universities: Hijacking our Youth?
Change the Campus – Change the World
Christian Flag Raising Symbolizes Freedom From Viewpoint Discrimination in Boston
The following is a news release from Liberty Counsel:
Aug 4, 2022
BOSTON, MA – After five years of litigation and a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the Christian flag finally flew on the Boston City Hall Plaza public forum flagpole yesterday as an enthusiastic crowd cheered to celebrate the first day free of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
In Shurtleff v. City of Boston, Liberty Counsel represents Boston resident Hal Shurtleff and his Christian civic organization, Camp Constitution. Shurtleff and Camp Constitution first asked the city in 2017 for a permit to raise the Christian flag on the “public forum” Boston City Hall flagpole to commemorate Constitution Day and Citizenship Day (September 17) and the civic and cultural contributions of the Christian community to the city of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, religious tolerance, the Rule of Law and the U.S. Constitution. For 12 years, from 2005 to 2017, Boston approved 284 flag raisings by private organizations with no denials on the flagpoles that it designated a “public forum.” However, the city official denied Camp Constitution’s application in 2017 to fly the Christian flag on Constitution Day.
Yesterday’s historic ceremony included Shurtleff and Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver raising the Christian flag together on the flagpole in Boston City Hall Plaza. Speakers included Shurtleff, Staver, Liberty Counsel Vice President of Legal Affairs and Chief Litigation Counsel Harry Mihet, and Senior Counsel for Governmental Affairs Jonathan Alexandre.
Staver said, “For 12 years prior to 2017, and for five years from 2017 to 2022, up until August 3, your viewpoint was excluded from this flagpole public forum. Every viewpoint was permissible to go on this public forum flagpole except a Christian viewpoint. You were excluded for 12 years before this issue began. For 12 years there were 284 applications, not a single denial, virtually no review and the only reason why Camp Constitution’s request to fly this flag was denied was not because of the flag itself. It was Hal Shurtleff’s view of that flag. It was because of one word in the application––the word ‘Christian’ that preceded the word ‘flag.’ He was told by the city official that if he changed the name of the flag to a non-religious name on the application, that flag could have flown in 2017 if Hal would have lied and called it the Camp Constitution flag. This is not the Camp Constitution flag. It is the Christian flag.”
After Staver argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court on January 18, 2022, the High Court ruled 9-0 on May 2 that the city of Boston violated the Constitution by censoring a private flag in a public forum open to “all applicants” merely because the application referred to it as a “Christian flag.” The High Court stated that it is not government speech, and because the government admitted it censored the flag because it was referred to as a Christian flag on the application, the censorship was viewpoint discrimination, and there is no Establishment Clause defense.
With Justice Breyer writing the opinion, the High Court wrote that “Boston did not make the raising and flying of private groups’ flags a form of government speech. That means, in turn, that Boston’s refusal to let Shurtleff and Camp Constitution raise their flag based on its religious viewpoint ‘abridg[ed]’ their ‘freedom of speech.’”
In addition, the Court wrote, “Here, Boston concedes that it denied Shurtleff ’s request solely because the Christian flag he asked to raise ‘promot[ed] a specific religion.’ App. to Pet. for Cert. 155a (quoting Rooney deposition). Under our precedents, and in view of our government-speech holding here, that refusal discriminated based on religious viewpoint and violated the Free Speech Clause” (emphasis added).
During yesterday’s event, Staver also said, “When I argued this case on January 18, I realized that the city was in deep trouble when Justice Breyer and Justice Kagan asked the city attorney arguing the case ‘why did you not settle this case?’ I knew we had a big win.”
Mihet, who is originally from Romania, said yesterday, “Today is a great day for the city of Boston, for the Christian community in the city of Boston, for freedom itself and for the Constitution. The raising of this Christian flag today symbolizes the fact that the Christian community, the community of faith, across this whole country are not constitutional orphans. They are full heirs to the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and free exercise of religion along with every other American.”
“Having grown up in communist Romania, having witnessed a government that was determined to stamp out religious expression from the public square at all costs, my friends, we need to do everything and anything in our power to make sure that free speech and free exercise of religion always remains free and protected in this great land of ours,” said Mihet.
After the speakers concluded, Alexandre led the crowd in song with a powerful presentation of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
The entire ceremony can be viewed here.
For more information on the case, visit www.LC.org/flag.
Liberty Counsel provides broadcast quality TV interviews via Hi-Def Skype and LTN at no cost.
TAKE ACTION
The French Revolution by Dr. Peter Hammond
To hear the audio lecture of this article, click here.
To view the video presentation of this article, click here.
14 July is celebrated in France as Bastille Day. It commemorates the storming of the Bastille and the launch of The French Revolution.
A Time of Turmoil
The French Revolution was one of the most influential events of modern history. The ten-year period from 1789 to 1799 when France went from a Monarchy to a Republic, to a Reign of Terror, to Dictatorship was one of the most tumultuous times in European history.
Myth and Reality
Much myth and romantic legend has been written on what some politicians would like the French Revolution to have been, but the reality was that the French Revolution was a monstrous horror. In the name of “liberty, equality, fraternity or death!” over 40,000 people lost their heads to the guillotine, 300,000 people were publicly executed by firing squads, drownings and other methods of mass murder and ultimately many millions died in the 25 years of war and upheavals that resulted.
The Prototype Revolution
The French Revolution has been the inspiration and model for all socialist and communist revolutions in modern history. As so many today seem entranced by the deceptive promises of communism, it is vital that we look again at what communism really is and why so many rose up in resistance against it. Over 30 years ago, the Iron Curtain fell, Soviet satellites broke free, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the world rejoiced in a new birth of freedom. Yet, today, there is an entire generation who are apparently ignorant that they are being lied to and used, to advance a failed and evil system, under the delusion that they are working for a better and more just world. Those of us who fought against communism during the Cold War need to remind the younger generation of the reality which destroys the modern propaganda narrative being taught on so many university campuses and broadcast under the guise of news on the mainstream/lame stream media. Communism is the most malicious and destructive system in the history of mankind. God’s Covenant people have beaten it before, and we must defeat communism again. “Who will rise up for Me against the evildoers? Who will stand up for Me against the workers of iniquity?” Psalm 94:16
Deliberate Design
Lord Acton in his Lectures on the French Revolution observed: “The appalling thing in the French Revolution is not the tumult, but the design. Through all the fire and smoke we perceive the evidence of calculating organisation. The managers remain studiously concealed and masked; but there is no doubt about their presence from the first.”
Tools of Revolution
The tools of the French Revolution were dis-information, propaganda, the subversion of language, malice, envy, hatred, jealousy, mass murder and foreign military adventurism as a diversion to distract the masses from the failure of government. These tools have been implemented by more modern revolutionaries: Vladimir Lenin, Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro, Che Guevare, Patrice Lumumba, Nicolai Ceausescu, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh and Robert Mugabe.
Revolutionary Ideas
The power mad and disenchanted have continued to sing the praises of the French Revolution, and to attempt to replicate its ideals in revolutions as far afield as Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola, the Congo and Zimbabwe. Demonic forces and the Enlightenment ideas of humanist philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire prepared the ground for revolution.
Disenchantment and Degeneration
Historian Otto Scott observed: “French intellectuals, middle and upper classes had grown ashamed of their country, history and institutions. Such a phenomenon had never before arisen in any nation or race throughout the long history of mankind. …a great loosening began; the country slowly came apart… for the first time since the decadent days of Rome, pornography emerged from its caves and circulated openly in a civilized nation. The Catholic Church in France was intellectually gutted; the priests lost their faith along with the congregations. Strange cults appeared; sex rituals, black magic, satanism. Perversion became not only acceptable, but fashionable. Homosexuals held public balls to which heterosexuals were invited and the police guarded their carriages… the air grew thick with plans to restructure and reconstruct all traditional French society and institutions.” (Robespierre – Inside the French Revolution, the Reformer Library, New York, 1974.)
The Role of the News Media
“The heirs of the Enlightenment of the late 18th century… launched the first Revolution in all history against the ideas of Christianity, and Christianity’s God. …the press… was spearhead, font, and fuel for these discussions… the journals were mixtures of politics and smut. They admired agitators extravagantly and never discussed the Church without mention of scandal, nor the government without criticism. They relied heavily on tales of sin in high places and high-handed outrages of the court; no name, however highly placed and illustrious, escaped. …through its journals and pamphlets …it could distort, color, plead, argue, lie, report, and misreport the information upon which the balance of the realm depended.” (Otto Scott, Robespierre)
The Debt Crisis
The French involvement in the American War of Independence against Great Britain created an enormous debt for France. This debt added to the financial crises which had started with France’s involvement in the earlier ruinous Seven Years War against Great Britain and Prussia. The colossal debt added to the financial crises which propelled the French state into bankruptcy.
Side-lined from Recovery
King Louis XVI began his reign wisely. He dismissed the large number of corrupt and incompetent ministers inherited from the court of his father, Louis XV and he appointed an excellent economist, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot as Controller General. Turgot proposed drastic solutions to France’s crises: the cancelation of tax privileges for the nobles, the abolition of industrial monopolies, removal of restrictions on free enterprise, and other bold, practical measures. However, the nobles pressured Louis XVI to dismiss Turgot.
Stop Gap Measures to Stave off Economic Collapse
The young banker Jacques Necker was then given the task of managing the unmanageable bankrupt economy. He bravely tried some short-term measures to stave off the inevitable economic collapse. But when he attempted to move towards adopting Turgot’s free market strategies, the privileged nobles and wealthy middle-class forced the king to dismiss him too. This was in 1781. Louis entrusted one hapless man after another with the financial crises, but all to no avail. France’s international credit rating was plummeting, and the country was no longer able to secure loans.
Bankruptcy
By mid-1788, the government had become paralyzed and no longer able to avoid admitting bankruptcy. The king was forced to re-instate Necker and call for a meeting of the Estates-General to be convened in May 1789.
The Estates General
The Estates General consisted of three houses, the first Estate was the Clergy, the second Estate was the Nobles, and the third Estate were merchants and the common people. Although the third house had twice as many people as the other houses, each house was understood historically to have only one vote. Louis’ government failed to specify how the three houses of the Estates-General were to function, nor did he provide them with any Agenda or Constitution.
The National Assembly
The commoners in the third house boldly organized themselves as a self-contained National Assembly. The nobles were outraged and convinced Louis XVI to send troops to blockade the hall where the Assembly planned to meet. The third Estate then met on a nearby tennis court and vowed to continue in session until they could complete a new Constitution for the nation. This was outright rebellion against the authority of the king. Yet, on 27 June 1789, Louis ordered the other two estates to join the commoners in a new combined Assembly.
The Liberals
The National Assembly spent most of its time debating the latest philosophical and political theories. The Marquis de Lafayette, who had achieved fame through his involvement in the American war of Independence, espoused the cause of freedom and rallied the liberal wing of nobles around him. The Count of Mirabeau dominated the Assembly through his eloquent campaign for a constitutional monarchy.
The Fanatics
The most fanatical extremists gravitated to Maximilien Robespierre who was a strong devotee of the writings of radical philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. Rousseau wrote that: “It is necessary to have a cohesive force to organise and coordinate the movements of (societies), members.” Rousseau advocated constant agitation for “equality” in order to maintain an atmosphere of fear where individual differences will not be tolerated. Inspired by the defiance of the Assembly and stirred up by revolutionary pamphlets and speeches, mobs began to roam the streets of Paris attacking and murdering royal officials.
Coordinated Chaos
France’s financial house of cards collapsed. Capital fled the country and economic depression resulted. A series of events combined to create food shortages and hunger. Agitators panned out across the countryside to destroy the grain stores and terrorize the inhabitants. Hired mobs staged “spontaneous” riots in Paris. The powers of government then collapsed. Everything fell apart with astonishing co-ordination.
Reaction
In reaction, some of the nobles persuaded the king to seek to reassert royal authority. Soldiers were ordered into the streets of Paris as a show of strength. The appearance of the soldiers inspired mobs to seize whatever weapons they could find and to storm the old fortress of the Bastille.
Revolution
The French Revolution is officially dated from this point: 14 July 1789. The Bastille had become a symbol of hated tyranny and much legend has grown out of this event. As it so happens, there were no political prisoners at the Bastille at that time, and despite the fact that the Lieutenant Governor of the Bastille, M. De Launay, was guaranteed safe conduct and surrendered the fortress under a white flag of truce, the mob massacred his soldiers, and the governor, cutting off their heads and carrying them on spikes throughout the streets. As body parts of the defenders of the Bastille were paraded through the streets, a mere seven prisoners were found in the Bastille. When the news reached the palace of Versailles, King Louis was astonished: “This is revolt!” He said. The Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt responded: “No, Sire, it is a Revolution!”
Appeasement
The next day King Louis arrived, simply dressed and with no bodyguards or attendants, and spoke at the National Assembly. He had ordered the troops to leave Paris, so that the people would have no reason to fear their king. Louis assured them that he had confidence in the Assembly. The deputies rose to their feet cheering with great fervor. 88 of the deputies gathered at the Paris City Hall and took turns speaking to the enormous crowd from the balcony. The famous 32-year-old Lafayette was elected General of the National Guard.
Deterioration
While many seemed optimistic for the future, Marie Antoinette was filled with foreboding and burned her private papers. Nobles fled the court and the country, with many settling across the border. On the 17 July the king travelled to Paris to identify with the revolutionary mob. In October a mob marched to Versailles demanding that the king transfer his residence to Paris. On 6 October, the royal family were escorted by the rioters to Paris where they could be under the control of the revolutionaries.
Manipulation of the Masses
Otto Scott observed that: “Paris, like the nation, was divided into the politically active and the passive, between the many confused, disorganized and abstracted and the highly concentrated organized and intent few.” (Robespierre).
Radicalization
Two clubs came to dominate the Assembly at this time: The Cordeliers were led by Georges Jacques Danton and Jean Paul Marat. The Jacobins were skillfully manipulated by Robespierre.
The Origin of the Left Wing
It was in the French Revolution that the terms “left wing” and “right wing” were first coined. Those on the left were the Radicals, who proudly adopted the designation as a symbol of their Revolutionary defiance of Christian tradition which always represented those on the right hand of God as saved, and those on the left as damned. (James Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origin of the Revolutionary Faith.)
The Hijacking of the Church
On 4 August 1789, the Nobles and Clergy renounced their privileges in the name of revolutionary equality. On 2 November 1789, the Assembly voted to confiscate church property and issue new paper money, called Assignats. This sparked off rampant inflation. In July 1790 the Assembly nationalized the Roman Catholic Church by enacting the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. The Assembly undertook to pay the salaries of the priests from the National Treasury and to create a French church under the control of the government. Pope Pius VI excommunicated all clergymen who took the new oath demanded by the Assembly. Most of the clergy refused to take the oath and were evicted from their pulpits and parishes. France was divided into 83 Departments (counties).
Declaration of the Rights of Man
The National Assembly produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens. Although this was patterned after the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the American Bill of Rights which had been appended to the United States Constitution, the French Declaration embodied mostly humanistic ideas of the Enlightenment. While attempting to adopt many of the forms of the Biblically orientated Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man failed to recognize the Creator and ignored the Biblical foundations for true freedom. A new Constitution was completed in 1791, with a unicameral legislature elected by “active citizens”. Before Mirabeau died, in April 1791, he predicted that all their well-deliberated efforts at Reform would collapse and be washed away in a bloodbath.
Abolishing the Monarchy
Louis XVI attempted to flee with his family from France on the night of 20 June 1791. When radicals discovered them, they blocked their path and escorted the royal family back to Paris. Danton and Robespierre seized upon this event as an opportunity to proclaim that France was a Republic. As the new Legislative Assembly met, 1 October 1791, the Girondists proposed replacing the just-adopted Constitution and creating a Republic.
War
Deeply concerned for the fate of the royal family, Austria, ruled by Leopold II, the brother of Mary Antoinette, prepared to invade France. The Assembly declared war on Austria in 1792. The French were soon defeated by the Austrians and the Prussians.
Massacre
The mob stormed the king’s residence and massacred the royal Swiss guards. The Assembly voted to depose the king and write a new constitution. On 10 August 1792 the municipal government was overthrown, and Danton became the self-appointed national dictator. The entire male population was drafted for military service and weapons production entered high gear. In September 1792, terrorist mobs swarmed through the prisons and massacred thousands of prisoners including many nobles who had been arrested for no other reason than that they were nobility.
Killing the King
A new National Convention was called on 21 September 1792 to write a new constitution. In December, the Convention summoned the deposed King, Louis Capet as he was now called. On 21 January 1793 King Louis XVI was beheaded on the guillotine.
Coalition Against Revolution
All of Europe was horrified and a coalition was formed against France. Austria, England, Holland, Prussia, Spain and Piedmont prepared to restore order to France and prevent the exporting of revolution to their own regions.
The Reign of Terror
The Jacobins mobilized the mob to invade the Convention and arrest the 31 leading Girondists. This launched the Reign of Terror, which officially began 2 June 1793. Robespierre established the Committee of Public Safety. A policy of mass public terror was unleashed with Revolutionary Tribunals, in which all “enemies of the Revolution” were summarily tried. Mere accusations were tantamount to verdicts of guilt. The trials were abrupt with no real opportunity granted to the accused to prepare or present any defense. The accused were quickly convicted and carted off to the guillotine.
Killing of the Queen
The Queen, 38-year-old Mary Antoinette, was dragged through the mockery of a trial and guillotined on 16 October. Her son, later recognized as Louis XVII, died as a result of inhuman treatment by his revolutionary jailers.
Heads Roll
Twenty-one Girondist leaders, including Madam Roland, were also beheaded shortly after the Queen. The Duke of Orleans who had joined the Jacobins and taken the name of citizen Egaliter, even voting for the death of his cousin the King, was also executed at this time.
Big Bang Social Science
Romantic occultism taught a big bang theory of social science. If one could blow up, or burn down, enough buildings, kill enough people and destroy enough things, you could produce Utopia!
Destruction
The Reign of Terror spread throughout France. When one city sought to resist, it was destroyed. The revolutionaries set up a pillar outside Lyons inscribed: “Lyons waged war with Liberty. Lyons is no more.” Toulon was subjugated under the leadership of a young artillery officer from Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte.
War Against God
The Committee of Public Safety launched a vicious atheistic war against Christianity. They invented a new religion which they called the Cult of Reason. At a festival at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris an actress was enthroned as the “goddess of the French people.” France was renamed “The Republic of Virtue”. Ancient Rome was lifted up as its model. The press and theatres were turned into instruments for state propaganda. Fashions changed to immoral loose Roman robes. Over 2,000 churches were renamed Temples of Reason and hijacked for the promotion of this cult.
A Secular Religion
Historian Arnold Toynbee wrote: “In the Revolution a sinister ancient religion suddenly re-erupted with elemental violence… the fanatical worship of collective human power. The Terror was only the first of the mass-crimes that have been committed… in this evil religions name.” (John Wilson, The gods of Revolution.)
Meltdown
The revolutionaries began to turn on one another. Danton was executed 5 April 1794. On 7 May, Robespierre sought to impose a new religion on France, declaring a new calendar to replace the Christian calendar. 21 September 1792, the day the Monarchy had ended, was declared the First day of year one of their revolutionary calendar. Robespierre appointed himself as high priest of the Supreme Being in this new cult.
Reaping What They Had Sown
On 27 July 1794, Robespierre and 20 other of his henchmen were seized and executed by the survivors of the Convention. More than 40,000 victims had been murdered on the guillotine under the Reign of Terror. Over two-thirds of those victims had been peasants, artisans and workers. As Madam Roland was being ushered up to the platform to be guillotined, she faced the statue of the goddess Liberty and cried out: “O Liberty, Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!”
Unleashing Forces of Destruction
The end of the reign of terror was not the end of the French Revolution. It would be followed by the Directory and by the Dictatorship eventually culminating in Napoleon’s Empire which embroiled all of Europe in ruinous war. Even after the death of Robespierre, the Revolution continued to talk about liberty and equality, to fight against the Christian Faith, and to inspire more communes, voices of virtue and revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse Tung and Robert Mugabe.
Revolutionary Tyranny
The French Revolution was the prototype, which was followed by the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, the Cambodian Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, the Ethiopian Revolution, the Mozambiquan Revolution, the Angolan Revolution, the Zimbabwe Revolution and many others. In every case they proved that yesterday’s revolutionaries become tomorrow’s tyrants and dictators. “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption.” 2 Peter 2:19
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Otto Scott’s Robespierre – Inside the French Revolution is the very best expose of what led up to that cataclysmic event and what really took place during that disastrous revolution. Reading this extraordinary book enables one to understand the revolutionary forces arrayed against Christian civilisation today. It is uncanny the similarities one can immediately recognise to what is happening in our streets, in the media, in education, in entertainment, in churches and in government, available from Christian Liberty Books, Tel: 021-689-7478, Fax: 086-551-7490, admin@christianlibertybooks.co.za, www.christianlibertybooks.co.za.
See also:
Resistance to Revolution
How to Respond to Marxist Bullying Tactics
Marie Antoinette, also available as a PowerPoint.
The French Huguenots, also available as a PowerPoint and translated into Afrikaans.
Reformation or Revolution
Is South Africa Entering the Second Phase of the Revolution?
To listen to a radio interview on The Real Agenda Behind Revolutionaries click here.
Fred Schwarz and David Noble’s You Can Still Trust the Communists to be Communists is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand how to negotiate and deal with Marxist revolutionaries like BLM and ANTIFA.
The Agenda – Masters of Deceit DVD documentary is a brilliant expose of how revolutionaries work and how one can resist their unreasonable and suicidal demands.