Camp Constitution’s Nine Month Report for 2019
Our Annual Family Camp: While our attendance was down slightly, we had an incredible camp this year. We had an excellent line-up of instructors. Actress Janine Turner’s classes were a big hit with the campers and staff. One of our new instructors was 92-year old Bill Glenny-one of the last of the Nuremberg prison guards- who related his experiences guarding the likes of Rudolph Hess and Hermann Goring. Instructor Debbie Bacigalupi launched the Agenda 21 Challenge offering camp scholarships to campers who worked to expose Agenda 21 in their communities. She already has raised $5,000. Numerous campers took her up on the challenge and are planning projects in their communities. James Jaeger, director of the documentary “Unsustainable” filmed parts of his movie at camp with interviews of Rev. Steve Craft, Professor Willie Soon, Debbie Bacigalupi. Lord Monckton, John McManus, and me. Camp Constitution will be credited in the documentary.
YouTube Channel: We have over to 1.25 million views and averaging over 500 views per day with 5,000 subscribers. Debbie Bacigalupi’ s class from last year’s camp has received close to 60,000 views.
The Sam Blumenfeld Archive: Over 1.6 million hits. 88,000 Alpha-Phonics downloaded, 14,000 Alpha-Phonics Instructions Workbook downloaded and over 15,000 copies of Sam’s other books. Donations made by folks downloading has been modest but steady. We are pleased to learn that among those who download Sam’s Alpha-Phonics are teachers, and college professors.
Camp Constitution Radio on Podomatic: For the past four years, we have been hosting a 30-minute weekly radio show which airs on WBCQ The Planet. We upload the shows to our Podomatic Page. We have been in the Top 10 most days and got as far as “3” for the “conservative right” category which has about 180 shows. We had 1,681 downloads of our radio show, and 5,150 visits.
Facebook Page: We have over to 2,400 people who like our page and reach an average of 500 per week. Our live Facebook feeds receive an average of 5,000 views. Our two latest live feeds have received over 30,000 views.
Speaker’s Bureau: We had 30 speaking engagements where we conducted power point presentation on Cultural Marxism, the Sam Blumenfeld Archives, Agenda 21, the plastic bag ban, the U.S. Constitution, and the Dangers of an Article V Convention. These presentations were conducted in Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, and Virginia. We also sponsored five showing of Gosnell The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer, and two showings of “Unplanned.”
Information Tables and Outreach We had information tables at numerous events including homeschool conventions in Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the Red Pill Expo in Hartford, CT, and floats in the Dedham, MA Flag Day Parade, and the Pittsfield, MA Independence Day Parade.
Camp Constitution Press: Thanks to one of our supporters, we reprinted Elementary Catechism on the U.S. Constitution with a foreword by Ruth Harper, Color, Communism, and Common Sense and several other titles. We plan to publish Sam Blumenfeld’s School-Induced Dyslexia and How It Deforms a Child’s Brain.
Camp Constitution Book Sales: We raised approximately $4,000 from our sale of donated books on Amazon, Facebook, and information tables. We had numerous books donated to us over the past nine months including over 1,000 from an estate in early September
Camp Constitution Media: We attended and videotaped the annual Lobby Day at the Massachusetts State House hosted by the Massachusetts Family Institute, a Pro-Life press conference at the State House, a presentation on the life of Joseph Warren by historian Christian Di Spina sponsored by the Sons of the Revolution, a press conference we sponsored with Professor Willie Soon, and Joe D’Aleo, co-founder of the Weather Channel, and co-hosted “Save the Persecuted Christians” Banner Display and Presentation at the Massachusetts State House, and on September 29, we attended the Communist China flag-raising at Boston’s City Hall Plaza. Our Facebook live feeds of this event have gone viral with well over 70,000 views in just a day.
Article V Convention: With Norman Tregenza’s help, we organized a group of people to testify in favor of a New Hampshire resolution to rescind its states Article V application. While the resolution was tabled, we got word that we have a good chance of passing it next year. We distributed literature on the problems of an Article V Convention at the Pennsylvania State House and gave a presentation on the subject to a well -attended group in Virginia. We send out E-mail alerts to our supporters around the country, and both on Camp Constitution Radio and the radio shows we guest host, we interview experts on Article V including Robert Brown and Joe Wolverton. Not one state where we had “boots on the ground” had any new Article V resolutions pass.
Camp Constitution in the News: In July, our legal team at Liberty Counsel filed a new lawsuit against the City of Boston due to its discrimination against flying the Christian flag. This generated more media than we have ever received. Dozens if not hundreds of media outlets, newspapers, radio shows, and on-line news sources including Breitbart, the Blaze and World New Daily covered the story. Fox TV did a story that was aired all over the United States. I was interviewed by Fox Online, and appeared as a guest on the Jeff Kuhner Show which is one of the most popular talk show hosts in New England. We discovered that 15 left-wing groups have filed an amicus brief against our lawsuit Thanks to Professor Soon’s influence in the “climate realism” community, a letter to the editor I wrote on Boston’s plastic bag ban, was turned into an article and published on approximately 15 on-line sources including the Heartland Institute, CFACT and Canada Free Press. Our Agenda 21 Cable TV interview in Rutland, Vermont was covered by several media outlets.
Radio and Cable TV: In addition to our weekly radio show, with Tom Moor’s help, we guest hosted 12 radio shows, and appear as regular guests every other week on a radio station in Nashua, NH. We appeared as guest on several radio shows for the first time in Albany, NY, Fall River, and Boston, MA We were interviewed on several cable TV and on-line shows. We had two appearances on the David Knight Show.
Camp Constitution Reading Hour: We launched Library Reading Hour Camp Constitution Reading at public libraries and have received several bookings already. We plan on creating a page on our website with resources and recommended reading. Readers of this report are encouraged to help us with this project.
Camp Constitution Van: Thanks to a donor, we were able to purchase a 2019 Chevrolet Minivan replacing another donated vehicle with over 265,000 miles, Bruce Socha of Socha Signs, a Camp Constitution sponsor, did a wrap of the van which makes it a traveling billboard generating plenty of interest.
A Camp of Our Own? We have become aware of the availability of a facility and are working on a business plan to submit to the owners of this camp sometime early next year.
Camp Constitution’s 2020 Camp: Our 2020 annual family camp will be held at the Singing Hills Christian Camp in Plainfield, NH from July 19-24. Instructors will include Alex Newman, Professor Willie Soon, Catherine White, and Debbie Bacigalupi.
Thanks to all of you who make our camp program possible.
How can you help? Here are a few suggestions:
1, Pray that God will continue to bless our efforts.
2, Become a donor. Donations can be made via our PayPal account accessed from our website https://www.campconstitution.net
3, Attend our annual family camp or help sponsor a worthy young person or family.
4, Sponsor a camp speaker and/or host a “What is Camp Constitution Presentation
5, Subscribe, view and share our videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN7ME18Q1xiqcrPEn5h5FbA
Hal Shurtleff, Director
Camp Constitution
70 Years of Communism in China by Dr. Peter Hammond
Listen to the latest From the Frontline podcast on 70 Years of Communism in China.
What is there to Celebrate?
October 2019 marks 70 years since the Communist Party seized power in China.
What is the true legacy of Communism in the world’s most populous nation?
What we can learn from the Persecuted Church?
How we can best serve the Persecuted?
There are some dramatic developments and encouraging reports of spectacular growth of the Church in China.
…on this rock I will build My Church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18
The Catastrophic Consequences of Communism
As some celebrate 70 years of Communism in China and incredible numbers of Christians in the West identify them as “Christian Socialists”, or even as Communists, it is necessary that we take an objective look at the catastrophic consequences of Communism. We need to be aware of the human cost of Communist economic and social theories and their application in Communist states which espouse the “goodness of man.” “Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Romans 3:13
Revolution in China
The Communist Revolution in Red China, in 1949, was followed by the Great Leap Forward in 1958 and by the Second Phase of the Revolution from 1966 to 1976. This Second Phase of the Revolution, or the Cultural Revolution in China, included massive seizures of property, widespread “Land Reform”, confiscation without compensation, public humiliation ceremonies of religious and cultural leaders, arbitrary imprisonments, torture, hard labour and vast numbers of mass executions. It is calculated that over 69 million people died in this Second Phase of the Revolution in China alone.
The Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution in China also included purging “The Party” of any deemed “disloyal” – which even included the president, Liu Shaoqi and Commander of the Red Army, General Lou Ruiqing. Mao Tse Tung mobilised his Red Guards to sweep into every farm and village of the vast country to purge “reactionaries”, “counter revolutionaries” and all others not deemed sufficiently enthusiastic for the Revolution. The result was the destruction of thousands of years of culture and crippling the country economically. It impoverished China intellectually and culturally. Mao was able to mobilise the young Red Guards for this destructive campaign because they had never known life in nationalist China and had been effectively indoctrinated in the state schools with Marxist propaganda and Mao’s Little Red Book.
The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism, published by Harvard University Press, is a scholarly, detailed account of the crimes of Communism starting with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and continuing through Eastern Europe, Red China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola and Afghanistan. The Black Book’s exhaustive indictment of Communism is all the more compelling because all 6 of its authors were once communists, or “fellow travellers” with communism, researchers, professors and journalists associated with the Paris based Centre for the Study of History and Sociology of Communism. The editor of The Black Book, Stephane Courtois was also the editor of the “Communisme” magazine.
Facing the Facts
“Communism has committed a multitude of crimes not only against individual human beings but also against world civilization and national cultures… during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, priceless treasures were smashed, or burned by the Red Guards… firing squads, hanging, drowning, battering… destruction of the population by starvation, through man-made famine, the withholding of food, or both; deportation, through which death can occur in transit (either through physical exhaustion, or through confinement in an enclosed space)… or through forced labour (exhaustion, illness, hunger, cold)…”
A Harvest of Horror
The Black Book presents a very conservative estimate of the number of civilians murdered by Red China as at least 65 million. “…Communism is… a tragedy of planetary dimensions… the Communist record offers the most colossal case of political carnage in history… Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution…” Communist regimes did not just commit criminal acts; “they were criminal enterprises in their very essence, on principle, so to speak, they all ruled lawlessly, by violence and without regard for human life.” The Black Book concludes that our current history books and social and political judgements are scandalously out of line with the 20th Century’s real balance sheet of political crime. “They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity…” 2 Peter 2:19
Death by Government
“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton.
Although governments are meant to protect their citizens, secular socialist states in the 20th Century murdered over 169 million of their own citizens! This astonishing statistic is the result of decades of research by political science Professor R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii. Prof. Rummel’s shocking research is presented in the 500-page book: Death By Government (2006, Transaction Publishers, New Branswick, NJ). The charts and statistics measuring the life taking propensities of state governments were developed from the Professor’s analysis of 8,200 sources, involved over 4,200 consolidations and calculations, which were organised into appendix tables totalling more than 18,100 rows.
Recognise Political Realities
Prof. Rummel notes that textbooks on Political Science need to be modernised to recognise political realities. While most textbooks refer to the functions of government as: “Law and Order”, “Safety and Security”, “Cultural Maintenance” and “Social Welfare”, the fact is that “We have numerous examples of governments that killed hundreds of thousands and even millions of their own citizens, enslaved the rest and abolished traditional culture… Power kills; absolute power kills absolutely… The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the powers of governments, the more power is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others… totalitarian Communist governments have slaughtered their people by the tens of millions…”
The Greatest Killers in History
The Soviet Union and Red China accounted for most of the deaths by government in the 20th Century. “Death by Government” calculates that up to 105 million people were murdered by the Communist Party of China, from 1949 to 1987. Rummel’s exhaustive documentation in “Death By Government” exhibits the sheer lethality of power. “Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue” Edmund Burke.
Tyrants Prefer Disarmed Victims
Prof. Rummel’s colossal masterpiece “Death By Government” conclusively proves that far from governments being the solution to crime and violence, historically governments have been the prime culprits for crime and violence. Far from governments being the solution, they are more often than not the problem. Most government policies to deal with crime and poverty are counterproductive, creating more crime and more poverty. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the state attempts to disarm civilians. Every genocide of the 20th Century was preceded by gun control and disarmament of civilians. Just as criminals prefer unarmed victims, tyrants prefer disarmed citizens. A government that does not trust its citizens with weapons cannot be trusted with power. Freedom is when the government fears the people. Tyranny is when the people fear the government. No government can be trusted with a monopoly of force. Decentralisation of power, the rule of law and armed citizens are essential foundation for freedom.
Atrocities and Persecution
Red China may now be practising a version of capitalism, but there are still over a million Christians in concentration camps for their Faith, many are slaves and organ harvesting for transplants are often done using prisoners, many of whom are Christians.
The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail
Notice how people in Hong Kong are protesting against the communist threats to their freedoms there. The survival and growth of the Christian Church in China is an incredible answer to prayer. Despite vicious persecution and oppression by a brutal atheistic regime, the Church in Red China is now over 100 million strong. Operation World reports that there are over 1,119,000 congregations, 75 million Church members and over 105 million adherents, or affiliates, in China.
Mobilise Prayer and Support for the Persecuted
Mobilise your family and friends and congregations to pray for these persecuted.
“Remember the prisoners as if chained with them…” Hebrews 13:3
10 November is International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted.
For resources to mobilise your congregation to serve the suffering, visit www.IDOP-Africa.org.
Dr. Peter Hammond
Frontline Fellowship
P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725
Cape Town South Africa
Tel: 021-689-4480
Email: mission@frontline.org.za
Website: www.FrontlineMissionSA.org
See also:
The Heart and Soul of Karl Marx.
Going Through and Going On by Rev. Bill Bathman
The Greatest Killer, available on Sermon Audio as an audio.
Cuba, Castro and Communism, available as an audio.
KGB, Active Measures, Disinformation and Subversion, available as an audio.
How Marxists Subvert Churches and Society, available as an audio, as well as an Interview on Marxism.
The Failure of Atheism and the Triumph of Faith in Russia, available as a video and audio.
Flag of Communist China Raised on Boston’s City Hall Plaza
Today, the Chinese Progressive Association of Boston sponsored a Communist China flag raising ceremony on Boston’s City Hall Plaza to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the communist takeover of China. On hand to help celebrate an event that led to genocide and the continual persecution of millions of people was City Councilor Ed Flynn.
Along with the supporters of Communist China were an equal number of people who did not share Ed Flynn’s support of this murderous regime. Falon Gong practitioners, whose members have been viciously persecuted by the brutal communist regime, organized a peaceful but loud protest. Also on hand were students from Hong Kong-some of them wearing masks to hide their identity fearing reprisals by the communists, Camp Constitution, and Super Happy Fun America members which, like Camp Constitution, was denied a permit to fly their flag.
Boston was once known as the Cradle of Liberty but has become a Cradle of Tyranny. Thankfully, there was plenty of outrage over this event. Readers are urged to share this video with members of the corporate media which failed to cover this event, and contact Mr. Flynn letting him know that elected officials who take an oath to defend the Constitution should not be supporting a murderous regime. Mr. Flynn’s contact info: 617-635-3203 ED.FLYNN@BOSTON.GOV
The Weekly Sam: Faith and Education by Sam Blumenfeld
It can be said that education tells us a good deal about the faith of a nation or the lack of
it. Theoretically, education is what the past generation wants the future generation to
know, believe in, and do. That was the sort of education I got back in the 1930s in the
public schools of New York City. At assembly our principal read the 23rd Psalm, so we
all knew that God existed as concretely as the magnificent city around us. He was there
to protect us, and He certainly protected me during my time in the Army in World War II.
In those days faith and education were clearly inseparable. Life without God, education
without the acknowledgment of God, were simply unheard of. Yes, there were atheists
and humanists and communists among the public educators, but the culture itself strongly
adhered to biblical faith, and most of the school personnel were believers. There may
have been talk of the separation of church and state among the progressive elite. But, as
everyone knew, the public school’s exhibition of faith had nothing to do with a federal
establishment of religion. It was a faith that came down to us through history, through
tradition, through the Bible, and was considered an indispensable component in the
raising of the next generation.
We knew of the faith of the founding fathers. We read of faith in the works of English
poets. We read of faith in the biographies of great men. We learned of faith in dissecting
a frog in the biology lab. Darwin had not quite erased faith from the bio lab. (I had
watched my mother “dissect” a chicken in preparation for the Sabbath dinner.)
We sat in orderly rows behind desks bolted to the floor. Learning required order and
silence, and the mind responded by absorbing knowledge, honing skills, observing the
world, developing an independent mind with independent intelligence.
One of the most salient points that John Taylor Gatto makes in his remarkable book, The
Underground History of American Education, is how today’s schools do everything in
their power to make and keep the students childish, indeed, so childish that they cannot
engage in an adult conversation with anyone.
Jay Leno, the TV comedian, provides enormously entertaining interviews with today’s
youth, some of whom are in college. Their ignorance is so appalling that it is really more
tragic than comic. “Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?” gets responses so absurd as to
make one wonder. A high-schooler was asked, “Who wrote Handel’s Messiah?” and he
answered, “I don’t read books.” He didn’t even know that Handel’s Messiah was a piece
of music, not a book.
But the simple truth is that most young people today don’t read books. They don’t read
because either they can’t or that it is simply too difficult, too much work, too painful.
And the schools have done that to these poor victims of progressive mis-education. And
yet we spend more money on education than ever, the students spend more time in school
than ever, and teachers are supposedly more professional than ever. But Dr. Rushdoony
explained what happened in his masterful study, The Messianic Character of American
Education. The humanists took over the schools and replaced Christianity with their
atheist religion.
Thus, faith in God has been replaced by a nihilism that Satan uses to destroy minds and
souls. Faith has been removed. God has been removed, and thus we no longer have
education, we have the mutilation of the mind, the retarding of growth, the spread of
ignorance, the enslavement of the soul. We have barbarians living in a hi-tech
civilization. And all of the hi-tech toys are used to provide more awesome spectacles of
fiery destruction than the human race has witnessed since the Creation.
When I was growing up, it was assumed that the future generation would know more than
the previous generation. They would be better informed, wiser, more skillfull more
talented. And indeed some of the young in our time have been able to achieve some
wonderful things. But they are a small minority in a nation of over 270,000,000 people.
Without faith our education system has become a destructive, nihilist force.
Faith is the backbone of true education, for you cannot understand the world or the nature
of man until you know the nature of God. John Calvin wrote in The Institutes of the
Christian Religion, “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid
wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”
And today’s public schools deny both. Thus we get ignorant atheists.
But even so, some of these ignorant nihilists and atheists find their way to God, for as
Calvin observed, man is by nature deistic. He wrote: “That there exists in the human
mind, and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity, we hold to be beyond dispute,
since God himself, to prevent any man from pretending ignorance, has endued all men
with some idea of his Godhead, the memory of which he constantly renews and
occasionally enlarges, that all to a man, being aware that there is a God, and that he is
their Maker, may be condemned by their own conscience when they neither worship him
nor consecrate their lives to his service.”
But faithless education has given us so many crippled minds and souls that one is
saddened by the prospect that so many of them will spend their lives wandering in an
empty landscape with no hope of redemption, for they cannot read and are trapped in a
web of emotion, superstition and ignorance.
The tragedy for them is beyond calculation. If faith is for all of life, then it must begin in
the womb, and grow within us in the various stages of life. For we are all programmed to
go through these stages. In modem America, schooling has become a twelve-year prison
sentence in which the individual is manipulated, twisted, bored, propagandized, and
reduced to animal status in order to fulfill an evil progressive agenda sustained by billions
of dollars in taxes. The public has been persuaded by politicians and the education
establishment that what goes on in the schools is worthy of their support. And the
majority of our citizens not only send their children to these schools, but actually believe
that they are being “educated.”
Deuteronomy 6 tells us what is entailed in education. Faith can only be passed on by
faithful parents to their children in need of the knowledge of God. It cannot be passed on
by faithless schools or by the U.S. government. In a rational society, the knowledge of
God would be the first and foremost reality that children would be confronted with. In
fact, that is the way it was in the early days of this country when children were taught the
alphabet by such statements as: A-In Adam’s Fall We sinned all; B-Heaven to find,
The Bible Mind; C-Christ crucify’d For sinners dy’d; D-The Deluge drown’d The
earth around; E-Elijah hid By ravens fed; F-The judgment made Felix afraid; etc. In
fact, the entire Primer was a simple, straightforward catechism in the Christian religion.
That Primer contained instruction in the Ten Commandments and such verses for
children as:
Though I am young a little one
If! can speak and go alone,
Then I must learn to know the Lord,
And learn to read his holy word.
Today, Christian schools and Christian homeschoolers are the only ones in America who
make it a point to catechize their children. They may use modern, watered down texts,
but at least the children are taught that they were made in the image of God and have a
duty to live up to God’s estimation of them. Life is a gift that must be cherished, and that
it is God who gives our lives meaning and purpose.
The public school nihilist has no idea why he or she is alive. Their soul has been
removed and replaced with nothing. Materialist fulfillment and sensual satisfaction
become their only purpose. The nihilist is a digestive tract on legs with an inner yen for
self-destruction. There is no intellect, no love of life, no appreciation of beauty. Several
years ago the subways of Montreal were plagued by gangs of nihilistic youths with much
time on their hands. The city officials came up with an ingenious way of getting rid of
them: they played classical and operatic music through the subway’s speaker system, and
before you knew it, the gangs were gone. They simply could not tolerate beauty. The
music these nihilists enjoy is totally barbaric and satanic.
The deliberate effort of the public schools to destroy religious faith in their students must
be considered the most destructive aspect of our culture. A culture without faith can only
lead to madness. But there is a growing underground of Godly sentiment that has risen in
America since the terrible events of September 11, 2001. More and more Americans are
beginning to realize how dependent we are on God’s mercy and forgiveness for our well
being. God has made us the strongest and richest nation in history because of our
original faith in Him. That was our beginning, and it must be renewed in the next
generation if we are to survive as a nation blessed by Him.
The above is from the Sam Blumenfeld Archives. This is a free on-line resource maintained by Camp Constitution:
https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/
Is Property in the United States a United Nations’ Compound?
Camp Constitution instructor and Agenda 21 expert Debbie Bacigalupi attended the 68th Civil Society Conference held at the Salt Lake City Conference Center August 26-28, 2019 and made this short video of United Nations police telling a women that the convention center was a “U.N. compound and she could not film on U.N. territory.
UN Policeman: Uh, mam…
UN Policewoman: I ask you to turn off your camera when we speak
Mother of 4: Oh, turn off the camera? Do I not have a right to have a camera?
UN Police woman: I do not give you permission to film
Mother: Are you a public servant?
UN Policewoman: I’m a United Nations Security Officer
Mother: Ok, this is my city and so I have a right to film
UN Policewoman: This is a United Nations Compound
Mother: Uhh a United Nations Compound?
UN Policewoman: Yes
Mother: This is a compound?
UN Policewoman: Since Sunday evening we took the convention center over and it is international territory. When you step outside it’s USA… In here international United Nations Compound
UN Policewoman: We need to close up now
UN Policeman: Kindly just Pick up the blankets that are in the way of passage
Mother: Elevator is not in use
I already agreed to do that so I don’t know why you are I agreed do that. You have one of our cards
UN Policewoman
Yah. You have beautiful children. I have children too.
Photos and Newspapers from Camp Constitution’s 11th Annual Family Camp
The 2019 Camp Newspapers are now in the archive:
Use the “Camp Items” Menu and select “Camp Archive”
You’ll see a Gold Colored Link entitled: “Camp Journal Archives”. Click it.
The 2019 Newspapers are in the right most column.
You should be able to download them as pdf files in color.
Print as needed. Link to the papers: http://s3.amazonaws.com/camppictures/CampArchive/index.html
This year the newspaper staff collected 780 photos from several cameras during the course of publishing the daily camp newspaper. Campers and staff interested in downloading choice photos should go the menu above: “Camp Items” | “Camp Pictures”. There you will find slide shows by category for each of our eleven camps. There are also 12 video files as well. There is a download widget on each slide if you wish to acquire a local copy. Many thanks to all of you who came into the office and offered to share your pictures. Here is the link to the pictures: http://s3.amazonaws.com/camppictures/2019/index.html
— Editor
PS: If you were unable to obtain a group photo, feel free to download the hi-res version and have it printed by your local pharmacy or grocery store. Most of these local outlets have an option that will allow you to upload the photo and they will print it for you. You can also bring a memory card into some outlets and print on demand. If you have any difficulties with this procedure, contact Hal and we will make arrangements to get a photo to you for cost plus postage.
Constitution Day 2019
Today September 17, marks the anniversary of the approval of the U.S. Constitution by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
Camp Constitution salutes the Founding Fathers who gave us this incredible document. Here is a link to our recent radio show on the subject: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2019-09-16T15_06_02-07_00
And our 10 Question Quiz on the U.S. Constitution: https://campconstitution.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Camp-Constitution-U-S-Constitution-Quiz.pd
Since our inception, we have distributed approximately 20,000 pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution. We are just getting started.
A Call to Action:
Why not man a table in your area offering our 10 Question Quiz and pocket U.S. Constitutions. This can be done in malls, in front of post offices, on town and city commons as we do in Boston. If interested, please contact me. Can’t man a table but would like to help get more copies of the U.S. Constitution distributed? Make a donation to help make that possible. We purchase our copies from the National Center for Constitutional Studies-1,000 for $300. Donations can be made via our PayPal account accessed from our website’s homepage: https://www.campconstitution.net
Hal Shurtleff, Director
Camp Constitution
History’s Greatest Libels: An Interview with Steve Byas
Camp Constitution Radio had the opportunity to interview Mr. Steve Byas, author of History’s Greatest Libels: A Challenge to Some of the Great Lies of History. In his excellent book, Mr. Byas takes on 11 of History’s libels including the faith of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, and the truth about Christopher Columbus. Here is what we find on the back cover of the book:
George Orwell said, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” Liberals understand that they win victories today by distorting the record of our past. For all their devotion to the merits of tradition, conservatives think a great victory, such as the confirmation of Clarence Thomas, is the end of the battle. Liberals never concede the historical record, and neither should those who believe in limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty.
In History’s Greatest Libels, Steve Byas takes the battle to the Left, challenging head-on their politicized distortions of the past.
Steve Byas is a professor of history at Hillsdale Free Will Baptist College in Moore, Oklahoma, editor of the Oklahoma Constitution newspaper, and a regular contributor to New American magazine.
He has written a high school government textbook, two mystery novels (Digging Up Bones and Sooner Dead), and his work has also appeared in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly.
He lives in Norman, Oklahoma, with his wife, Donna.
A link to the interview on Camp Constitution’s Podomatic Page in MP3 format: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2019-09-10T06_48_50-07_00
And on our YouTube Channel:
The Weekly Sam: What’s Wrong With Government Education? by Sam Blumenfeld
(This was published in 1998.)
The enormous failure of our government school system was nicely
summed up by a Boston high school teacher in a recent issue of Education
Week (12/9/98). He said:
“I have about 30 kids in my U.S. history class. They come from nine
different countries; most of them can’t read. Even if they can read the text,
they don’t know what it means. How am I supposed to teach U.S. history to
kids who can’t read? I could come in here every day for 20 years and still
not figure out how to do it.”
Obviously, this particular teacher had no idea how these kids got into
high school without knowing how to read. He had no idea what goes on in
primary school that prevents these children from learning to read, and he
had no idea what to do with older students who are functionally illiterate.
Clearly, the teacher himself is part of the problem. His ignorance of how the
system functions prevents him from helping his students get through it in
one piece. In other words, the compartmentalization of teachers explains
why so many of them have no idea of how the total system works and why
the system can lurch from crisis to crisis without any effective change taking
place.
The real blame for the system’s dysfunction, however, must lie with the
professors of education, the state departments of education, and the
administrators who have all conspired to create the functional illiteracy that
plagues the public schools of America — once considered the most literate
and advanced nation on earth. Deliberately induced illiteracy among
students is a vital part of the plan to dumb down Americans so that they will
be unable to resist the imposition of social and political control by an
arrogant universitarian elite determined to create a new world order based
on humanist-socialist values.
This “education” plan is part of the utopian socialist agenda set down
by the progressives at the turn of the century. The progressives were
members of the Protestant academic elite who no longer believed in the
religion of their fathers. They put their new faith in science, evolution, and
psychology. Science explained the material world (matter in motion),
evolution explained the origin of life (organisms crawling out of the
primordial ooze), and psychology explained human nature and provided
the elite with the scientific means of controlling human behavior.
These men were also socialists. Why? Because they had to deal with
the problem of evil. The Bible tells us that evil is the result of man’s innate
depravity, his innate sinful nature. But since the progressives did not
believe in the Bible, they decided that evil was caused by ignorance,
poverty, and social injustice. And what was the cause of social injustice?
Why, it was this horrible capitalist system with all of its inequities. Socialism,
it was believed, would remove these inequities and thereby solve the
problem of evil. By the way, the progressives did not get their model of
socialism from Karl Marx. They got it from an American by the name of
Edward Bellamy whose book, Looking Backward, published in 1888,
projected the fantasy of a socialist America in the year 2000.
And so, the progressives, dedicated to their utopian ideal, decided to
do all in their power to change America from an individualistic, capitalist,
and religious society into a socialist, collectivist, humanist or atheist society.
How were they to accomplish that? Through the education system. They
would change the curriculum and teaching methods in the public schools so
that American children would emerge as young socialists willing to change
our way of life into a socialist one.
The socialists realized that the transformation might take as much as a
hundred years to complete. In fact, John Dewey wrote in 1898: “Change
must come gradua.lly. To force it unduly would compromise its final success
by favoring a violent reaction .” Dewey then outlined the long-range strategy
which the progressives were to adopt:
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.
Educators should also frankly face the fact that the New Education, as it exists today, is
a compromise and a transition: it employs new methods but its controlling ideals are
virtually of the Old Education. Wherever movements looking to a solution of the
problem are intelligently undertaken, they should receive encouragement, moral and
financial, from the intellectual leaders of the community. 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 the new
curriculum,–finding the right place for language-studies and placing them in their right
:5.
perspective,–the problem of the more general educational reform will be immensely
simplified.
One hundred years later we can see how successful the Dewey plan
has been in transforming our educational system into one that serves the
needs of the atheist socialist state. Dewey was aided and abetted by a
cadre of reformers that included such luminaries as Edward L. Thorndike,
James McKeen Cattell, Elwood P. Cubberly, George D. Strayer, Charles
Judd, James R. Angell and a host of others. Thorndike, Cattell, and Strayer
ra~ an educational mafia out of Teachers College (Columbia), Cubberly
reigned at Stanford, and Angell became president at Yale.
Change in the curriculum of public education has happened so
gradually that most parents haven’t the faintest idea what is happening to
their children, four million of whom are being drugged daily with Ritalin so
that they can sit in their classroom seats and be socialized without
resistance.
What is truly amazing is the coherence and continuity of the
progressive agenda which is as much alive today at it was when Dewey and
company were pontificating. For example, The Whole Language Catalog, a
sort of bible of the whole-language movement published in 1991, has 15
entries for John Dewey in its index. After citing his debt to Dewey, Kenneth
Goodman, the leading guru of whole-language philosophy, writes:
Whole language picks up where the progressives left off . … [It] takes the
philosophy and positive, child-centered view of the progressive educators and adds
the knowledge of language, of learning, of child development, and of teaching, and
builds a strong scientific base under them . It is this combination of science and
humanistic educational and social philosophy that forms the foundation for whole
language curriculum . … We use the psychological concepts of Piaget and Vygotsky to
underscore Dewey’s concept of learning as transaction: pupils making sense of their
world and being changed themselves in the transactions. (p. 281)
In the early days, the progressives were mainly supported by the major
philanthropic foundations. Today the reforms are being underwritten by
federal and state governments. Three recent federal programs are funding
the massive restructuring of American education in accordance with the
progressives’ plans: Goals 2000 (enacted 3/31/94), School-to-Work
Opportunities Act (enacted 5/4/94), and the Improving America’s Schools
Act, a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965 (enacted 10/20/94). Thus, the Congress of the United States has
become an accomplice in the progressive plan to restructure American
education in the socialist mold.
Apart from needing the funds to carry out their plan, the progressives
also realized that coherence and continuity of their agenda over a hundred
years was vitally necessary if the plan was to be successful. Thus, in 1901
they created the National Society for the Study of Education, wherein the
progressive leaders would be able to formulate their programs of reform,
debate their effectiveness, and pass on the baton to their loyal disciples. By
studying their yearbooks, the first of which was published in 1902, one can
follow the inexorable progress of the socialist takeover of American
education.
All of this was accomplished by tenured professors of education and
behavioral psychologists, working within a maze of well funded professional
organizations, publishing journals, writing textbooks, holding hundreds of
conferences, seminars, and conventions each year. None of this has been
visible to the average parent who puts a child in a public school. Parents
assume that their schools are run by local school boards, superintendents,
principals, and teachers. What they don’t see is the invisible hand behind
this constant pressure for reform that keeps recreating the curriculum .
The average teacher may feel that there is some kind of invisible hand
at work, but teachers would rather blame failure on cultural trends,
excessive television viewing, dysfunctional parents, and such student
disabilities as attention deficit disorder and dyslexia.
Obviously, this is a system of education that cannot be supported by
any Christian. Local control no longer exists. It was inevitable that a
government education system would become a federal system controlled
by those who have been leading us toward totalitarian socialism. Do I
exaggerate? To be convinced that the end goal is a totalitarian system, all
one has to do is read the Student Data Handbook for Early Childhood,
Elementary, and Secondary Education (NCES 94-303). This is the official
guidebook for the computerized data-gathering system dreamed up by our
totalitarian bureaucrats. The data will include massive information on
health, family, religion, attitudes, psychological assessments, etc. For
example, the attitudinal test is described as: “An assessment to measure
the mental and emotional set or 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.”
All of this sensitive, personal data will be housed in a central computer
in Washington making it easy for “educators” to control just about everyone.
But the question is simply this: does the government of a free people have
the right to collect this kind of information on all of its citizens for its own
political or social purposes? Should the government of a free people record
the attitudes and opinions of its citizens so that it can engineer thei r
personal adjustment?
The time has come for Christians to realize what has become of the
“land of the free and the home of the brave.” If Christians want to restore
the full measure of our freedoms, they will have to do what they are
reluctant to do: remove their children en masse from the public schools.
What is needed now is not accomodation to the plans of the American
Pharoah but a full-fledged exodus of Christian children. That’s the easiest
and most peaceful way to put an end to the socialist agenda and return
America to its basic constitutional principles. Will Christians have the
courage to do what must be done? That test will be upon us sooner than
anyone anticipated.
(Please visit the Sam Blumenfeld Archives https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/
There is NO climate emergency! Lehr & Harris commentary:
Climate activists claim we face a global warming emergency that demands we replace dep
There is NO climate emergency!
Climate models predict disaster – but real world evidence shows no such thing
Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris
Speaking at the 13th International Conference on Climate Change, held July 25 in Washington, DC, Dr. Roy W. Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville said: “There is no climate crisis. Even if all the warming we’ve seen in any observational dataset is due to increasing CO2 (carbon dioxide), which I don’t believe it is, it’s probably too small for any person to feel in their lifetime.”
And yet, that same month, Democrat Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Earl Blumenauer and Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a non-binding resolution that demands a “national, social, industrial and economic mobilization” – to “halt, reverse, mitigate and prepare for the consequences of the climate emergency, and to restore the climate for future generations.” Six Democrat presidential candidates immediately supported the resolution, as a way to spur “sweeping reforms” to stem a “dangerous rise in global temperatures.”
In their view, apparently, asserting a climate emergency makes it a reality and justifies national or even global control and transformation of our energy, social, industrial, economic, legal and social systems.
Thus, in an effort to drum up support for its costly “carbon tax,” the Liberal government of Canada has also declared a climate emergency. So has Britain’s Parliament, to back up a call by opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for “rapid and dramatic action” to protect the environment , following weeks of protests by the Extinction Rebellion climate movement, the Reuters News Agency reported.
The Climate Mobilization group proclaimed that “Over 790 local governments in 17 countries have declared a climate emergency and committed to action to drive down emissions at emergency speed.”
In considering whether this makes any sense, let’s take a page out of Blumenauer’s book and, as he put it, “tell the truth about the nature of this threat.”
The so-called emergency is based on nothing but the over-active imaginations of activists who put too much faith in computer model forecasts, while ignoring historic records and observational data that tell us nothing extraordinary or unprecedented is happening – and demonstrate that the models are wrong.
NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies asserts that between 1880 and 2017 there has been only slightly more than 1 degree C (1.8 F) rise in the so-called global average temperature, despite a supposed 40% rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) database of state-wide extreme weather records, arguably the best of its kind in the world, shows that so far in 2019 only one weather record has been set: the lowest temperature in Illinois history.
In 2018, the only records set were: the largest hailstone in Alabama history; the most rainfall in a 24-hour period in Hawaii; and the most precipitation in one year in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia. Many of these records broke, sometimes barely, records that had stood for many decades.
In 2017, the only record set was for the fastest wind gust in California. No records were set in 2016. In 2015, only two records: the most precipitation in a year in Arkansas and the largest hailstone in Illinois history. In 2014, only one record: the most rainfall in a 24-hour period in New York.
And so it goes, year after year, as we move into the past with the occasional state record set, as one would expect due to natural climate variability. In the first 18+ years of the 21st century, only two states recorded their maximum temperatures: South Carolina in 2012 and South Dakota in 2006. Contrast that with 1936, when 15 states set their all-time maximum temperature records.
Meanwhile, NOAA’s updated coastal sea level tide gauge data for 2016 show no evidence that the rate of sea level rise is accelerating. Seas are rising no faster than they have for many decades.
NOAA’s hurricane records go back to 1851. The data show that for almost 12 consecutive years – October 24, 2005 (after Wilma) until August 25, 2017 (Harvey) – not one major or moderate (Category 3-5) hurricane made landfall in the continental United States. That is the longest such period in history. In 2018, for the first time ever, not one “violent” (F4-5) tornado touched down in the United States.
To the great frustration of climate alarmists, the real-world instrumental record clearly shows that, not only is no climate emergency underway, but today’s climate is actually quite stable. Aside from the drive for world socialism, the climate scare is based on only one thing: computer model forecasts of what some say could happen someday if we do not restrict our use of fossil fuels to reduce CO2 emissions.
However, the models do not work. That’s because they focus predominantly on greenhouse gases, and because scientists do not understand planetary climate processes well enough to know what mathematical equations to program into the models. Observations demonstrate that the actual rate of warming between 1979 and 2017 is one-third of what the average of 102 different climate models predicted. In fact, that climate model average is now almost one full degree Fahrenheit above what satellites have measured!
It is also important to realize that your own local weather forecasts just one week ahead are accurate only half the time. Let’s drill a bit deeper into this scandal.
For the better part of three decades, governments have financed more than one hundred efforts to model our planet. They continue to do so even though none of the models has been able to recreate (hindcast) the known past, or after a decade of study accurately predict what was to happen just ten years later.
People are led astray, because generally speaking, the public has no clue what mathematical models actually are, how they work, and what they can and cannot do. To provide a simple insight into this complex subject, before we build airplanes or buildings, we make small scale physical models and test them against the stress and performances that will be required of them when they are actually built.
When dealing with systems that are totally beyond our control, we try to describe them with computer programs or mathematical equations that we hope may give answers to questions we have about how the system works today and in the future. We attempt to understand the variables that affect the system’s operation. Then we alter the variables and see how the outcomes are affected. This is called sensitivity testing and is the very best use of mathematical models.
Historically, we were never foolish enough to make economic decisions based on predictions calculated from equations we think might control how nature works. Perhaps the most active area for mathematical modeling is the economy and stock market. No one has ever succeeded in getting it right, and they have far fewer variables than Earth’s climate, which is governed by many powerful natural forces.
Yet, today, in the climate sphere, we are doing just that – and using the models to justify massive changes in our energy and economic systems. While no one knows all the variables affecting climate, there are likely hundreds of them. Here are some important factors for which we have limited understanding:
1) seasonal, annual and decadal changes in solar irradiation; 2) energy flows between the ocean and atmosphere; 3) energy flows between the air and land; 4) balance between Earth’s water, water vapor and ice; 5) the impacts of clouds, both trapping heat below and preventing solar radiation from reaching Earth; 6) understanding the planet’s ice; 7) changes in mass among ice sheets, seal levels and glaciers; 8) our ability to factor in hurricanes and tornadoes; 9) the impact of vegetation on temperature; 10) tectonic movements on ocean bottoms; 11) differential rotation between Earth’s surface and its core; and 12) solar system magnetic field and gravitational interactions.
Despite this vast uncertainty, today’s modelers claim they can forecast our planet’s climate for decades or even a century in the future – by looking primarily or solely at “greenhouse gases.” And they want our leaders to manage our energy, economic, agricultural, transportation and other systems accordingly.
Yes, there is a climate-related emergency. It is the threat to our way of life in the free democratic world – imposed on us by climate alarmists, many of whom do not really care about climate change, people or the environment. It is an assault no less frightening and damaging than the wars that have plagued mankind since the dawn of time. It’s time for people and governments to stand up to the power-hungry alarmists.
Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Advisor with of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute, in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Tom Harris is Executive Director of ICSC and a policy advisor to Heartland.