The Weekly Sam: The Great American Math Disaster By Samuel Blumenfeld

Published March 11, 2023 | By campconstitution

One of the reasons why Americans are so confused about the large numbers being tossed
around by our leaders in Washington these days, is because of how poorly they’ve been
taught mathematics in the public schools they attended. Numbers in the millions,
billions, and trillions are almost impossible to visualize as anything more than just strings
of numbers. Most Americans can barely deal with thousands, let alone trillions.

The basic problem is that American children are no longer being taught arithmetic. They
are taught math, which includes more than our simple counting system. Arithmetic deals
with quantity. Math deals with relationships and uses complex symbols. When you
submerge arithmetic in mathematics, without making sure that the children have mastered
their counting skills, you get math failure. And this is nothing new. Back in 1991
Newsweek magazine reported (6/17/91):

How bad are eighth graders’ math skills? So bad that half are scoring just above
the proficiency level expected of fifth-grade students. Even the best students did
miserably; at the top-scoring schools, the average was well below grade level.
Hardly any students have the background to go beyond simple computation, most
of those kids can add but they have serious trouble thinking through simple
problems….

What’s really frightening about these results is that the alarm has been ringing
since the 1983 publication of “A Nation at Risk,” the federally sponsored study
that highlighted vast problems in the public schools. Yet despite years of talk
about reform–and genuine efforts of change in a few places–American students
are still not making the grade and remain behind their counterparts in other
industrialized nations.

All of those kids who did miserably in math in 1983 and 1991 are today’s voting adults in
their thirties and forties. And let us not forget the disaster called the “New Math” which
swept through America’s elementary schools like a hurricane during the 1960s and ’70s,
creating today’s math illiterates among Boomers in their fifties and sixties.
The educators blame the problem on traditional arithmetic, which hasn’t been taught in
years, but is a perfect scapegoat. They complain that too much time is wasted practicing
adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. The solution? More calculators and
computers. The real problem is that our educators really don’t know the difference between
arithmetic and mathematics, and if you don’t know the difference, you will not know how
to teach either.

Our arithmetic system is an ingenious method of counting, keeping track of quantity. It
uses 10 symbols and place value for all of its notations and operations. As such it is one
of the greatest achievements of the human intellect, an invention that permits human
beings to perform any counting feat with mere pencil and paper.

But the key to its proficient use is memorization of the basic arithmetic facts. If you
don’t memorize the facts, then you are stuck with unit counting and you might as well
learn to use an abacus. Memorization requires rote drill, which is forbidden in today’s
schools, even though it is the easiest way for a child to learn anything. When educators
think that children can learn to compute without memorizing the arithmetic facts, they are
deluding themselves and cheating the children.

Why is it important for children to memorize the arithmetic facts? Because
memorization will give them mastery of the system. And once the arithmetic facts are
memorized through drill and practice with pencil and paper, they will later be able to use
calculators and computers with accuracy, spotting errors when they make them, always
able to do the calculations on paper if necessary.

Why did eighth graders do so poorly even in wealthy suburban schools? Because of bad
teaching. Obviously, when even the richest and brightest fail, one cannot blame it on
rote memorization when we are told that memorization is what makes the Japanese
student so much better than the American. If teachers do not even know how to teach
simple arithmetic effectively, how can we assume that they know how to teach algebra,
geometry, trigonometry, or calculus effectively?

Besides, very few of us will need to use algebra, geometry, trigonometry or calculus, but
all of us will need to use arithmetic–in doing tax returns, figuring out mortgages,
balancing our checking accounts, using credit cards, making change, planning our
retirement. So if everyone must use arithmetic in order to survive economically, why
don’t the educators emphasize the need to develop good arithmetic skills?

Back in 1983, John Saxon, the celebrated author of superb mathematics textbooks used
by home-schoolers and private schools, wrote:
“For the last twenty years, these [mathematics] experts have worked unwittingly to bring
matters to a point where only the brilliant can learn mathematics. They have tried to
teach advanced concepts and a general overview before the student has learned the
basics….In an important sense, these authors are experts neither in mathematics nor in
education. They do not know which mathematics topics must be mastered at which level
and have no understanding of the capabilities of the average student. Their books are
visible proof that they do not know how children learn and assimilate abstractions.”
(National Review, 8/19/83)

Until rote learning is restored in our primary schools in the teaching of arithmetic, we can
expect math failure to plague American public education for the foreseeable future.

(Sam Blumenfeld created a basic arithmetic course and it is available on his archive:  https://campconstitution.net/blumenfelds-math-tutor/

Repent Congressman Jamaal Bowman Says Camp Constitution’s Chaplain Rev. Steve Craft

Published March 10, 2023 | By Hal Shurtleff

Rev. Steve Craft, Chaplain for Camp Constitution, calls Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York to repentance. Bowman is a socialist who promotes the racist and Marxist Critical Race Theory. Rev. Craft pointed out that the “we have a sin problem not a sit problem. Like all of the black Democrat members of Congress, Mr. Bowman supports abortion and Planned Parenthood. Rev. Craft points out that Planned Parenthood is a racist organization whose founder hated blacks. In the video, Rev. Craft recommends several books written by black authors that refute the Marxist narrative including two by Vince Ellison titled 25 Lies: Exposing Democrats’ Most Dangerous, Seductive, Damnable, Destructive Lies and How to Refute Them, and The Iron Triangle Inside the Liberal Democrat Plan to Use Race to Divide Christians and America in their Quest for Power and How We Can Defeat Them

 

Boston’s Harbor Blockaded, Virginia’s Day of Fasting, & the “shot heard round the world” – American Minute with Bill Federer

Published March 8, 2023 | By campconstitution

Britain was almost bankrupt after the Seven Years War, 1756-1763, which was called in America the French and Indian War.
This led Parliament to tax the colonies.
Resistance to taxes prompted a long list of Acts intended to bring colonists into submission, culminating in the Boston Massacre.

At the same time, the British East India Company, which had taken control of Bengal and large areas of India, was facing bankruptcy.
The Bengal Famine of 1770 killed an estimated 10 million people – a third of Bengal’s population.
It was the first of several major Bengal famines during the era of British rule.
Administrative costs skyrocketed while Bengal’s labor productivity plummeted.
This was all occurring as an economic downturn in Europe caused a depression in trade.
To avoid bankruptcy, the British East India Company directors appealed to Parliament, which passed the Tea Act in 1773.
The Tea Act gave the Company an exemption from paying duties on Tea imported to the American colonies, but kept duties on tea from competitors, thereby undercutting local merchants and putting thousands out of work.
It was viewed as the camel’s nose under the tent, for if colonists acquiesced, they would implicitly be accepting Parliament’s right to directly tax the colonies anytime it wished.
Colonists objected because they had no representation in Parliament — “No taxation without representation.”
The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773.
Samuel Adams led a band of patriots, the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Mohawk Indians, from the South Meeting House toward Griffin’s Wharf.
There they threw 342 chests of British East India Company tea into Boston’s harbor.
Furious at the Boston Tea Party, the King decided to punished Boston.
Britain imposed the Boston Port Act, MARCH 7, 1774, effectively closing Boston’s harbor till the cost of the tea was repaid.
It was the first of five Punitive Acts, also called Coercive Acts or Intolerable Acts, which were designed to punish colonists by stopping all commerce from coming in and out of Boston.
These Acts ruined Boston’s economy, causing stores to close and putting thousands out of work.
This was similar to modern-day Big Tech censorship, Internet deplatforming, shadow-banning, and canceling.
The situation soon became a test of wills between the King and his colonists.

James Otis wrote in “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved,” 1764:

“The grant of GOD Almighty,
who has given to
all men a natural right to be free … The colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed all men are, white or black.”
In enforcing the Boston Port Act, the British Commander-in-Chief in America, General Thomas Gage, effectively ruled through martial law.
He prevented citizens of Massachusetts from electing their own leaders.
Gage dissolved Massachusetts’ Provincial Congress.
He forbade town hall meetings without his permission:
“Calling such meetings … the inhabitants … pass many dangerous and unwarrantable resolves: for remedy whereof, be it enacted … no meeting shall be called … without the leave (permission) of the governor.”
Britain’s Prime Minister, Lord North, told Parliament these Acts were necessary “to take the executive power from the hands of the democratic part of government.”
It was the memory of Gage’s actions that later led the writers of the Bill of Rights to insist on “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Massachusetts’ citizens refused to stop their town hall meetings and passed more resolves against the King.
Surrounding colonists rallied by sending food to Boston.
William Prescott, who later commanded at Bunker Hill, wrote:
“If we submit to these regulations, all is gone …
Our forefathers passed the vast Atlantic, spent their blood and treasure, that they might enjoy their liberties, both civil and religious, and transmit them to their posterity …
Now if we should give them up, can our children rise up and call us blessed?”
Upon hearing of the Boston Port Act, Thomas Jefferson drafted a Day of Fasting & Prayer resolution, to be observed in Virginia the same day the blockade was to commence in Boston.
It was introduced in the Virginia House of Burgesses by Robert Carter Nicholas, May 24, 1774.
It passed unanimously, being supported by Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee and George Mason:
“This House, being deeply impressed with apprehension … from the hostile invasion of the city of Boston in our Sister Colony of Massachusetts Bay, whose commerce and harbor are, on the first day of June next, to be stopped by an armed force,
deem it highly necessary that the said first day of June be set apart, by the members of this House, as a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine interposition, for averting the heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our civil rights …
… Ordered, therefore that the Members of this House do attend … with the Speaker, and the mace, to the Church in this City, for the purposes aforesaid;
and that the Reverend Mr. Price be appointed to read prayers, and the Reverend Mr. Gwatkin, to preach a sermon.”
On the appointed Day of Fasting, June 1, 1774, George Washington wrote in his diary:
“Went to church, fasted all day.”
Virginia’s Royal Crown-appointed Governor was Lord Dunmore.
He was finishing up fighting Dunmore’s War against the Shawnee and Mingo tribes in the Ohio River Valley of western Virginia, as they had tortured and massacred settlers, including Daniel Boone’s son, James.
Dunmore was so upset by Jefferson’s Day of Fasting and Prayer resolution that he dissolved Virginia’s House of Burgesses.
Virginia’s legislators, instead of going home, went down the street and gathered in Raleigh Tavern.
There, in a back room, they decided to form a Continental Congress, to meet in Philadelphia three months later.
Meanwhile in Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage continued to tighten his grip by removing gunpowder from the storage magazine near the town of Somerville in September of 1774.
Thousands of American militiamen rapidly confronted them in what was referred to as the Powder Alarm.
Shocked by the colonists’ quick and firm response, Gage wrote:
“If force is to be used at length, it must be a considerable one, and foreign troops must be hired, for to begin with small numbers will encourage resistance, and not terrify; and will in the end cost more blood and treasure.”
The next Spring, April of 1775, General Gage sent troops to confiscate the arms and gunpowder at Lexington and Concord.
They were also going to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, who was President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and President of the Continental Congress.
Gage had received an order from Lord Dartmouth “to arrest the principal actors and abettors in the Provincial Congress whose proceedings appear in every light to be acts of treason and rebellion.”
Hancock was staying in Lexington at the home where he grew up, which was now the home of his cousin, Lucy Bowes Clark, and her husband, Pastor Jonas Clark.
Warned ahead of time by the midnight ride of Paul Revere and William Dawes, American militiamen were armed and waiting for the British at the Lexington Green, led by Pastor Jonas Clark, who stated:
“I have trained them for this very hour; they would fight, and, if need be, die, too, under the shadow of the house of God!”
That day, April 19, 1775, British Major Pitcairn shouted, “Disperse, ye villains! Ye rebels, disperse! Lay down your arms! Why don’t you lay down your arms and disperse?”
Then was fired the “shot heard round the world,” and the war of Independence officially began.
Driven back, colonists regrouped at the Concord Bridge. This time they did not retreat.
The colonists fought back, joined by more militiamen, and chased the British all the way back to Boston.
The British suffered 273 casualties.
Pastor Jonas Clarke declared:
“From this day will be dated the liberty of the world!”
General Gage offered a pardon to anyone who would abandon the patriot cause, with the specific exception of John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
On May 3, 1775, Patrick Henry led the Hanover militia to seize the gunpowder in Williamsburg, Virginia.
British Governor Lord Dunmore, fled Williamsburg and issued a proclamation against “a certain Patrick Henry … and a Number of deluded Followers” who organized “an Independent Company… and put themselves in a Posture of War.”
Dunmore sent raiding parties to plunder plantations along the James River, York River and Potomac River, which only served to make colonists resent him more.
George Washington wrote:
“I do not think that forcing his lordship (Dunmore) on shipboard is sufficient. Nothing less than depriving him of life or liberty will secure peace to Virginia, as motives of resentment actuate his conduct to a degree equal to the total destruction of that colony.”
Lord Dunmore eventually sailed back to Britain and Patrick Henry became Virginia’s first post-colonial governor.
The situation in Boston escalated with the British bringing thousands of additional troops, led by Admiral Samuel Graves and Generals William Howe, John Burgoyne and Henry Clinton.
General Thomas Gage, who had been Commander-in-Chief in America since Pontiac’s War, was recalled to Britain after the Battle of Bunker Hill and replaced with General William Howe.
On May 31, 1775, citizens of Charlotte Town, North Carolina, passed the Mecklenburg Resolves, officially rejecting allegiance to Britain’s King and Parliament:
“Whereas by an Address presented to his Majesty by both Houses of Parliament in February last, the American Colonies are declared to be in a State of actual Rebellion, we conceive that all Laws … derived from the Authority of the King or Parliament, are annulled and vacated …
All Commissions, civil and military, heretofore granted by the Crown, to be exercised in these Colonies, are null and void,
That whatever Person shall hereafter receive a Commission from the Crown, or attempt to exercise any such Commission heretofore received, shall be deemed an Enemy to his Country …
That these Resolves be in full Force and Virtue, until Instructions from the General Congress of this Province … shall provide otherwise, or the legislative Body of Great-Britain resign its unjust and arbitrary Pretentions with Respect to America …
… That the several Militia Companies in this county do provide themselves with proper Arms and Accoutrements and hold themselves in Readiness to execute the commands and Directions of the Provincial Congress.”
Reposted with permission of American Minute  http://www.AmericanMinute.com

Camp Constitution Mails Liberty to Socialist Congressman Jamaal Bowman After He Sends Marxist Books to Governor DeSantis

Published March 7, 2023 | By Hal Shurtleff

 

Recently, Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a member of the Democrat Socialists of America who wants to defund the police, sent Governor Desantis some Marxist, and racists books including White Fragility.  Bowman made a video placing the books and mailing the box in a post office.  In the video, he made some outrageous accusations against Desantis who signed a bill banning Critical Race Theory in the state’s high schools and is working to ban it in public colleges.

(Congressman Jamaal Bowman D-NY

After watching the video, I thought that we would make our own video and send Mr. Bowman a few liberty books which include The Law, Cliches of Socialism by Frederic Bastiat, Color, Communism and Common Sense by Manning Johnson, and a copy of Sam Blumenfeld’s Alpha-Phonics.

 

Are You Familiar with the Shurtleff Case? Senator Josh Hawley to Colleen Shogan, Nominated to be National Archivist

Published March 7, 2023 | By campconstitution

Last week, the US. Senate Judiciary Committee held a confirmation hearing for Colleen Shogan nominated by Joe Biden to be National Archivist.  Senator Hawley exposed her as a far-left anti-Christian bigot which is the norm for a Biden nominee for any position in his administration.  She refused to acknowledge her ranting on social media.  In this short clip of the hearing, Hawley asks Shogun if she has heard of the “Shurtleff case?”  Hawley takes her to task for offering legal advice to a friend who complained of religious flags on federal property.

 

Since the 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court decision “Shurtleff v Boston”, Camp Constitution’s lawsuit against the City of Boston, dozens of towns and cities across the United States have banned third party flags which include the Rainbow flag.  USA Today recently ran a story on the subject:  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/02/24/pride-flag-ban-lgbtq-symbol-vanishes-more-cities-schools/11325450002/

 

The Weekly Sam: John Dewey’s Plan to Dumb Down America by Sam Blumenfeld

Published March 3, 2023 | By Hal Shurtleff

in 2013, Camp Constitution Press, at the recommendation of Sam Blumenfeld, reprinted John Dewey’s article from May of 1898 titled “The Primary-Education Fetich” (sic) in which the life-long socialist and enemy of Christianity how he and his fellow socialists would dumb-down America.  Sam wrote the preface and we include a link to the a PDF version of the entire reprint:

 

Preface to John Dewey’s Plan
to Dumb-Down America
By Samuel Blumenfeld
The dumbing-down of America is no accident. It is not the result
of uncontrollable natural forces floating in the air we breathe or the
water we drink. It is the result of a planned scheme launched in 1898
by Progressive-in-Chief John Dewey outlined in an article titled “The
Primary-Education Fetich” (sic). Dewey was a diehard socialist with
a deep hatred of capitalism, individualism, and orthodox Christianity.
He, and his small army of academic followers, were determined to
turn America into a humanist collectivist society and he figured out
that the best way to separate Americans from their constitutional
freedoms and individualism was to dumb them down.

And the easiest way to do this was to change the way children were
taught to read in their primary schools. Get rid of intensive phonics,
the foundation oflanguage mastery and independent intelligence, and
put in its place a “sight” or “look-say” method that teaches children
to read English as if it were Chinese. Have them memorize a sight
vocabulary so that they develop a whole-word reflex and cannot see
the phonetic structure of our alphabetic words. Thus, they will become
reading disabled, dyslexic, or simply low-level readers.

Need proof? Look no further than what happened to the four
Rockefeller boys back in the 1920s when John D. Rockefeller Jr.
put his four sons-Nelson, Laurence, Winthrop, and David-in the
Progressive Lincoln School in New York. As a misguided admirer of
John Dewey, Rockefeller donated three million dollars to the school
which then turned his four sons into dyslexics. Mr. Rockefeller’s
ignorance condemned his sons to lives ofliterary frustration. Yes, they
had plenty of money, but their life-long reading handicap deprived
them of the great pleasures of reading.

Dewey’s vision of an egalitarian, socialist America was based on
a novel written by Unitarian journalist Edward Bellamy, Looking
Backward. The novel is a fantasy of America becoming a socialist
paradise in the year 2000. Economic planning replaced free-market
competition, and Americans became members of a regimented
industrial army, all paid by the government.

Of course, Dewey knew that Americans would not voluntarily give
up their economic and individual freedoms, so he told his colleagues:
“Change must come gradually. To force it unduly would compromise
its final success by favoring a violent reaction:’ And so, wholesale
deception became the modus operandi of the progressive movement.

We are reprinting Dewey’s article because it is important for
Americans to understand how they’ve been deceived by their so-called educators. The plan to deliberately dumb down the nation
has been hidden from the public for almost 100 years. Reading it
today is to become finally aware of the deceit and treachery behind
this treasonous conspiracy to destroy the intellect of millions of
Americans behind the benign fa<;:ade of Progressive education.
When you consider the misery, frustration, despair and humiliation
these teaching methods have caused in millions ofAmerican children,
it becomes clear that the professional educators behind all ofthis were
diabolically inspired.
Can we repair the damage done by Dewey’s plan? Only if the will
is there and Americans are willing to face the fact that they have been
betrayed by their educators.
Dewey, of course, is long dead, but his disciples control American
public education, and whether they know it or not they are continuing
to implement Dewey’s plan. And we see the results every day. In
2007, the National Endowment for the Arts released its report on the
decline of American literacy. Its chairman, Dana Gioia stated:
“This is a massive social problem. We are losing the majority of
the new generation. They will not achieve anything close to their
potential because of poor reading:’

The only way to reverse this situation is to make sure that every child
in every American school is taught to read with intensive, systematic
phonics. We know how to restore high literacy to America. But is
there the will to do it? Many parents are doing it by homeschooling
their own children. But will it be done in the schools? It will be
done only if there is enough of an outcry from concerned parents and
citizens. That is why we urge readers ofthis article to distribute copies
of it to as many people as possible. If this article is read by millions of
Americans, it will have an impact that the educators and politicians
will not be able to ignore.

A link to a PDF version of our 2013 reprint:  https://campconstitution.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/The-John-Dewey-Plan-to-Dumb-Down-America.pdf

Global Warming Mostly Human Caused or Mostly Natural:Camp Constitution Instructor Dr. Willie Soon’s February 2023 presentation at ICCC15, Florida (USA)

Published March 3, 2023 | By campconstitution

On February 24th, 2023, CERES co-team leader, Dr. Willie Soon presented a talk at the Heartland Institute’s 15th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC15). His talk was entitled, “Global warming: Mostly human-caused or mostly natural?”

In this talk, he summarized some of the key findings of two of CERES’ recent scientific publications:

  1. P. O’Neill, R. Connolly, M. Connolly, W. Soon, B. Chimani, M. Crok, R. de Vos, H. Harde, P. Kajaba, P. Nojarov, R. Przybylak, D. Rasol, Oleg Skrynyk, Olesya Skrynyk, P. Štěpánek, A. Wypych and P. Zahradníček (2022). Evaluation of the homogenization adjustments applied to European temperature records in the Global Historical Climatology Network dataset. Atmosphere 13(2), 285; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13020285. (🗄️)

  2. R. Connolly, W. Soon, M. Connolly, S. Baliunas, J. Berglund, C. J. Butler, R. G. Cionco, A. G. Elias, V. M. Fedorov, H. Harde, G. W. Henry, D. V. Hoyt, O. Humlum, D. R. Legates, S. Lüning, N. Scafetta, J.-E. Solheim, L. Szarka, H. van Loon, V. M. Velasco Herrera, R. C. Willson, H. Yan and W. Zhang (2021). How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate. Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 21, 131. https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/21/6/131. (🗄️) Supplementary Materials available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7088728.

He also discussed the implications these studies have for the findings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s recent 6th Assessment Report (AR6, 2021).

The slides for his presentation can be downloaded here in either Powerpoint or PDF format:

Soon23-Feb24-Heartland ICCC15 Talk
.pptx
Download PPTX • 25.29MB
Soon23-Feb24-Heartland ICCC15 Talk
.pdf
Download PDF • 9.95MB

For details on the latest ICCC conference, see https://climateconference.heartland.org/. For access to an archive of all the ICCC conferences since 2008, see https://climateconferences.heartland.org/.

Dr. Soon’s talk can be viewed at the following YouTube link:

(The above article originated on the CERES Science blog https://www.ceres-science.com/post/iccc15
Professor Soon will be  an at Camp Constitution’s 15th Annual Family Camp July 16-21:  https://campconstitution.net/camp-registration/
 

Childish beliefs drive lethal energy and agricultural agendas

Published February 28, 2023 | By Paul Driessen

Biden and environmentalist policies would destroy agriculture, habitats, products and nutrition

Paul Driessen

Many eco-activists (and too many legislators, regulators, judges and journalists) have trouble thinking beyond slogans. They apparently believe declaring ecological emergencies, repeating clever mantras, and issuing proclamations and mandates will create a fossil-fuel-free, organic farming utopia. In their dreams.

Since 1950, American farmers increased per-acre corn yields by an incredible 500% – and other crop yields by smaller but still amazing amounts, while using less land, water, fuel, fertilizers and pesticides. Their exports helped slash global hunger and malnutrition. Farmers in Brazil, India and other countries worldwide have likewise enjoyed record harvests in recent years. Their success has many “roots.”

Hybrid seeds combine valuable traits from different plants. Biotech seeds protect crops against insects and viruses and reduce water and pesticide demand. Nitrogen fertilizers (synthesized from natural gas) join phosphorus and potassium in supercharging soils. School and online programs offer libraries of agricultural success tools. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) further spurs plant growth.

Long-lasting herbicides control weeds that would otherwise steal moisture and nutrients from crops, while enabling farmers to utilize no-till farming that avoids breaking up soils, reduces erosion, further retains soil moisture and preserves vital soil organisms. Israeli-developed drip irrigation delivers water without the evaporation characteristic of other irrigation methods.

Modern high-tech tractors use GPS systems, sensors, cameras and other equipment to steer precise courses across fields, while constantly measuring soil composition, and injecting just the right kinds and amounts of fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, along with seeds, to ensure optimal harvests.

Imagine the bounteous crops for humanity if all these technologies could spread across the globe.

Instead, this planet-saving, life-saving progress is under assault – by well-meaning or ideologically driven, ill-advised or ill-intended … but all well-funded … organizations that demand natural gas bans, “more Earth friendly” agriculture and a return to “traditional farming lifestyles.”

Their hatred of biotech crops is intense and well-documented, but they also despise hybrid seeds. They want modern herbicides and insecticides banned, in favor of “natural” alternatives that are often toxic to bees, animals and people; may actually be synthetic (eg, neurotoxic pyrethrins); and are rarely tested for residues on produce or long-term toxicity to humans. They demand “natural” fertilizers, which often provide a tiny fraction of nutrients that modern synthetic fertilizers do.

They want to teach only “traditional” (ie, subsistence) farming, especially in Africa. They prefer to call it “food sovereignty” – which they claim is the “right” to “culturally appropriate” food produced through “ecologically sound and sustainable methods,” in accord with AgroEcology policies. In other words, millions more people (ruling elites and their kids?) doing back-breaking stoop labor, dawn to dusk.

Tractors? Why not horses, oxen or human labor, they ask? At least get rid of gasoline and diesel tractors and trucks, in favor of electric models. Never mind that EV tractors and combines would require several tons of battery modules, and still wouldn’t be able to do a full day’s work without hours-long recharges.

They want oil and gas locked in the ground. “We don’t need petrochemical products, especially synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.” Or tractor tires, paint, windows, GPS/computer housings, and more.

Have these illiterati looked at their own clothing, food, homes, offices or world? Synthetic fabrics, cosmetics, cell phone and computer housings, pharmaceuticals, tapes and adhesives, protective gear, eyeglasses, car bodies, detergents, wind turbine nacelle covers and blades, medical devices, car bodies – practically everything around them and in their lives exists because of oil, gas and petrochemicals.

But we can just use biofuels to replace feed stocks for products we really need, they proclaim. Right.

Banishing oil, gas, petrochemicals and internal-combustion engines would certainly mean no more ethanol as a gasoline additive. That would eliminate the need to grow corn on 36,000,000 acres (equivalent to Iowa), and that land could be used for food crops or wildlife habitat. Except it won’t be.

Organic farms have significantly lower crop yields per acre and require far more land than conventional agriculture. Worse, ending oil and gas production means tens of millions of acres would have to be planted with biofuel crops, to provide feed stocks for thousands of now-petrochemical products.

That means vastly more tractors or human labor – and more water, fertilizers and pesticides – to cultivate and harvest sugar and oilseed crops (and algae). And then all those simple biofuel molecules would have to be transformed into much more complex hydrocarbons to provide the necessary feed stocks. That would require even more energy, from even more wind turbines and solar panels – on top of doubling or tripling our existing electricity needs, to transform the U.S. and global economies to all-electric systems, and repeatedly recharge the grid-balancing and power backup batteries those systems would require.

Or perhaps Team Biden plans to simply import all those petrochemicals and/or products – as it seems to be planning with regard to wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transformers and other “green” energy equipment. America will not be able to produce any of it, because Team Biden and its allies oppose mining and drilling in the USA (even for raw materials essential for their utopian “renewable” energy transformation – and we won’t even have affordable, reliable electricity to operate factories.

How can these “best and brightest” decision-makers and advisors be so ignorant, inept and clueless – so unable to connect even two or three dots? They’re destroying our planet, habitats and wildlife, to “Save the Earth” from a computer-modeled “climate crisis” that President Biden absurdly insists is “a greater threat than nuclear war.”

They base critical policies that deeply affect lives and livelihoods everywhere on childish beliefs in Santa Claus and Harry Potter. They think we can banish today’s energy and agricultural resources and technologies – and amazing replacements will just be there … via some mystical, mythical process called Materials Acquisition for Government-mandated Infrastructure Change (MAGIC).

Some of them know this cannot possibly happen, but promote the policies anyway. They seem to believe they can mandate that “common folks” will just have to live austerely, under nineteenth or early twentieth century living standards, in 700-square-foot apartments, using electricity when it’s available (not when they need it), and subsisting on bug burgers and larvae milk.

They think Africa would be “the perfect laboratory” for testing new foods, like “crackers, muffins, meat loaves and sausages” made from lake flies. If all that fails, they’ll just impose forced rationing.

Others would go even further. Obama science advisor John Holdren advocated “de-development of the [United States and other over-developed countries] and semi-development of the under-developed countries, to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between.”

Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau once said, “in order to stabilize world populations, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.” Environmental Defense scientist Charles Wurster said “People are the cause of all the problems…. We need to get rid of some of them, and [banning DDT] is as good a way as any.”

Environmental and racial justice? Campaigns, policies government actions to eradicate fossil fuels and modern agricultural practices and technologies go well beyond callous and imperious. They go well beyond eco-imperialism, eco-colonialism and eco-Apartheid. They drive eco-manslaughter on a global scale via energy, farming and climate policy. They impose systemic, systematic racism.

These ideas, and these policy proponents, are what should be banished from government, media and academic institutions. Not the wondrous technologies that make modern life possible.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights.
Contact me: pkdriessen@gmail.com

The Constitutional Minute #17: Does the federal government need a budget?

Published February 27, 2023 | By Bob Hilliard

Not if we elected folks who would abide by the Constitution! The federal government does not provide for a budget because the enumerated powers are the budget! It’s all so simple. Only the government can muck up such simplicity.

Congress is to appropriate funds to carry out the handful of delegated powers, and then it is to pay the bills with receipts from taxes.

Our Constitution doesn’t permit the federal government to spend money on whatever they want. If Congress obeyed our Constitution, they would limit spending to the enumerated powers listed in the Constitution.

Since the Constitution delegates to Congress only limited and narrowly defined authority to spend money, excessive federal spending (and regulation) is not the result of a defective Constitution, but of our federal government disregarding the existing constitutional limitations on federal spending.

Various factions are now telling us that the only way to stop out of control federal spending is with an amendment, specifically a BBA (Balanced Budget Amendment), but we must look at the interactions of one part of the Constitution with the other parts to get a complete picture and to prevent unintended consequences! How many of those have we had in the past?

An amendment is not a stand-alone document. Its parts are wonderfully interwoven with other parts of the Constitution. Once an amendment is ratified, it now becomes part of the Constitution. Now, look at Art. III, Sec. 2 where it says the judicial power shall extend to all cases “arising under this Constitution”.

If a Balance Budget Amendment creates a budget (and it does) and defense spending is part of the budget (and it is), defense spending now “arises” under the Constitution, yes?  Is defense spending now possibly subject to judicial determination? How would you like to see defense spending differences end up in federal courts? What could possibly go wrong?

Still think amendments are a good idea?  We must not let desperation sideline our critical thinking skills!

wethepeoplehandbook@gmail.com

www.buildingblocksforliberty.org

Evolution’s Racism defended by Clarence Darrow: The Monkey Trial & William Jennings Bryan – American Minute with Bill Federer

Published February 26, 2023 | By campconstitution

The Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 pitted EVOLUTION against CREATION.

Clarence Darrow was the attorney who defended EVOLUTION.
Darrow had previously defended Leopold and Loeb, the teenage homosexual thrill killers who murdered 14-year-old Robert “Bobby” Franks in 1924 just for the excitement.
Darrow obtained a pardon for antifa-type anarchists in 1886 who blew up a pipe bomb in Chicago’s Haymarket, Square, killing 7 policemen and injured 60 others.
A Haymarket Statue was dedicated to the fallen policemen.
The policemen’s Haymarket Statue was blown up by the socialist anarchist group Weather Underground on October 6, 1969, prior to the “Days of Rage” protests.
The statue was rebuilt, but the Weather Underground blew it up again on October 6, 1970.
The Weather Underground’s leaders had a lasting effect, as two of them, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, hosted a meeting in 1995 to launch Barack Obama’s Illinois State Senate Campaign; and another, Eric Mann, trained Patrisse Cullors, a founder of Black Lives Matter.
Clarence Darrow defended the “mentally deranged drifter” Patrick Eugene Prendergast in 1894 who confessed to murdering Chicago mayor Carter H. Harrison, Sr.
Darrow defended socialist organizer Eugene V. Debs, who was prosecuted for instigating the Pullman Railroad Strike which caused 30 deaths, 57 wounded, and $80 million in property damages in 27 states.
Debs founded the Socialist Party of America, which branched off the Communist Party USA in 1919.
Clarence Darrow represented the Western Federation of Miners leaders charged with the 1905 murder of former Idaho Gov. Frank Steunenberg.
In 1911, the American Federation of Labor arranged for Darrow to defend the McNamara brothers.
The McNamara brothers were charged with dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building which killed 21 employees.
Implicated in bribing jurors, Darrow was banned from practicing law in California.
In 1925, Darrow unsuccessfully defended John Scopes, a Tennessee high school biology teacher who taught the theory of origins called “evolution.”
The attorney defending CREATION was the Democrat Party’s three time candidate for President, William Jennings Bryan.
Bryan objected to a tooth being presented as proof of humans evolving from apes.
Later the tooth was found to be that of an extinct peccary (pig).
William Jennings Bryan won the Scopes case on JULY 21, 1925.
Though Darrow lost the trial, a pro-evolution propaganda film was produced in 1960 titled Inherit the Wind.
Professor Alan M. Dershowitz wrote on “The Scopes Trial” in his book America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles that Transformed Our Nation (eBook Edition: May 2004):
“The popular perception of what transpired in the courtroom comes not from the transcript of the court proceeding itself, but rather from the motion picture … Inherit the Wind.
The William Jennings Bryan character, Scopes’s prosecutor, was a burlesque of know-nothing religious literalism …
… The actual William Jennings Bryan was no simple-minded literalist, and he certainly was no bigot.
He was a great populist who cared deeply about equality and about the downtrodden.
Indeed, one of his reasons for becoming so deeply involved in the campaign against evolution was that Darwin’s theories were being used – misused, it turns out – by racists, militarists, and nationalists to further some pretty horrible programs …”
Dershowitz continued:
“The eugenics movement, which advocated sterilization of ‘unfit’ and ‘inferior’ stock, was at its zenith, and it took its impetus from Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
German militarism, which had just led to the disastrous world war, drew inspiration from Darwin’s ideas on survival of the fittest.
The anti-immigration movement, which had succeeded in closing American ports of entry to ‘inferior racial stock,’ was grounded in a mistaken belief that certain ethnic groups had evolved more fully than others …
… The Jim Crow laws, which maintained racial segregation, were rationalized on grounds of the racial inferiority of blacks.
… Indeed, the very book – Hunter’s Civic Biology – from which John T. Scopes taught Darwin’s theory of evolution to high school students in Dayton, Tennessee, contained dangerous misapplications of that theory …”
Dershowitz added:
“Indeed, its very title, Civic Biology, made it clear that biology had direct political implications for civic society.
In discussing the ‘five races’ of man, the text assured the all-white, legally segregated high school students taught by Scopes that ‘the highest type of all, the Caucasians, (are) represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.’
The book, the avowed goal of which was the improvement of the future human race, then proposed certain eugenic remedies.”
Eugenic laws, based on evolution, were passed in many states.
Virginia’s eugenic law, in 1924, allowed for the state to sterilize its first victim, Carrie Buck, who was a patient in the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-minded.
A case was brought which went to the Supreme Court.
There, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., gave his infamous Buck v. Bell decision (1927), which continued to allow the sterilization of people without their knowledge or consent, stating: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Because of Holmes’ decision, Virginia continued to sterilize more than 8,000 people until the practice was stopped in 1974.
Holmes also applied evolution to his decision-making philosophy, calling it “legal realism,” letting judges alter laws to adapt to changing social and economic conditions.

Professor Alan Dershowitz continued his critique of the high school textbook used by John Scopes, Hunter’s Civic Biology:
After a discussion of the inheritability of crime and immorality, the author proposed an analogy: …
‘Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society.
They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money …
They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites …'”
Dershowitz added:
“From the analogy flowed ‘the remedy’:
‘If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading.
Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.
Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.’
… These ‘remedies’ included involuntary sterilizations, and eventually laid the foundation for involuntary ‘euthanasia’ of the kind practiced in Nazi Germany …”
Dershowitz continued:
“Nor were these misapplications of Darwinian theory limited to high school textbooks. Eugenic views held sway at institutions of higher learning such as Harvard University, under racist president Abbot Lawrence Lowell.
Even so distinguished a Supreme Curt justice as Oliver Wendell Holmes upheld a mandatory sterilization law on the basis of a pseudo-scientific assumption about heritability and genetics.
His widely quoted rationale – that ‘three generations of imbeciles are enough’ – was later cited by Nazi apologists for mass sterilization …
… It should not be surprising, therefore, that William Jennings Bryan … would be outraged – both morally and religiously …
The textbook Scopes wanted to teach was … a bad science text, filled with misapplied Darwinism and racist rubbish.”
After the trial, William Jennings Bryan wrote in his summary of the Scopes trial of how science tells us what we can do, religion tells us what we should do:
“Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine.
It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessel.
It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endanger its cargo …”
Bryan continued:
“In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before.
Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane, the earth’s surface.
Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times as bloody as it was before;
but science does not teach brotherly love.
… Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide;
and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future …”
Bryan concluded:
“If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene.
His teachings, and His teachings alone, can solve the problems that vex the heart and perplex the world.”
Bryan’s 1925 statement was echoed by Winston Churchill, who stated in 1941:
“But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States … will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”

William Jennings Bryan had been a Colonel in the Spanish-American War, a U.S. Representative from Nebraska and U.S. Secretary of State under Democrat President Woodrow Wilson.
Bryan edited the Omaha World Herald and founded The Commoner Newspaper.
Dying five days after the Scopes Trial, William Jennings Bryan was so popular that his statue was placed in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall by the State of Nebraska and the Post Office issued a $2.00 stamp in his honor.
Bryan gave over 600 public speeches during his Presidential campaigns, with his most famous being “The Prince of Peace,” printed in the New York Times, September 7, 1913, in which he stated:
“I am interested in the science of government but I am more interested in religion …
I enjoy making a political speech … but I would rather speak on religion than on politics.
I commenced speaking on the stump when I was only twenty, but I commenced speaking in the church six years earlier-and I shall be in the church even after I am out of politics …”
Bryan reasoned:
“Tolstoy … declares that the religious sentiment rests not upon a superstitious fear … but upon man’s consciousness of his finiteness amid an infinite universe …
Man feels the weight of his sins and looks for One who is sinless.
Religion has been defined by Tolstoy as the relation which man fixes between himself and his God …
Religion is the foundation of morality in the individual and in the group of individuals …”
Bryan added:
“A religion which teaches personal responsibility to God gives strength to morality.
There is a powerful restraining influence in the belief that an all-seeing eye scrutinizes every thought and word and act of the individual …
One needs the inner strength which comes with the conscious presence of a personal God …”
Bryan stated further:
“I passed through a period of skepticism when I was in college …
The college days cover the dangerous period in the young man’s life; he is just coming into possession of his powers, and feels stronger than he ever feels afterward-and he thinks he knows more than he ever does know.
It was at this period that I became confused by the different theories of creation.
… But I examined these theories and found that they all assumed something to begin with …
A Designer back of the design – a Creator back of the creation;
and no matter how long you draw out the process of creation, so long as God stands back of it you cannot shake my faith in Jehovah …
We must begin with something – we must start somewhere – and the Christian begins with God …”
Bryan continued:
“While you may trace your ancestry back to the monkey … you shall not connect me with your family tree …
The ape, according to this theory, is older than man and yet the ape is still an ape while man is the author of the marvelous civilization which we see about us …
This theory … does not explain the origin of life.
When the follower of Darwin has traced the germ of life back to the lowest form … to follow him one must exercise more faith than religion calls for …”
Bryan explained:
“Those who reject the idea of creation are divided into two schools, some believing that the first germ of life came from another planet and others holding that it was the result of spontaneous generation …
Go back as far as we may, we cannot escape from the creative act, and it is just as easy for me to believe that God created man as he is as to believe that, millions of years ago, He created a germ of life and endowed it with power to develop …”
He added:
“But there is another objection.
The Darwinian theory represents man as reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate – the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak …
I prefer to believe that love rather than hatred is the law of development …”
William Jennings Bryan concluded:
“Science has disclosed some of the machinery of the universe, but science has not yet revealed to us the great secret — the secret of life.
It is to be found in every blade of grass, in every insect, in every bird and in every animal, as well as in man.
Six thousand years of recorded history and yet we know no more about the secret of life than they knew in the beginning …
If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless heart of the buried acorn and to make it burst forth from its prison walls, will he leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, made in the image of his Creator? …
The Gospel of the Prince of Peace gives us the only hope that the world has.”

Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated in an address at the Memorial to William Jennings Bryan, May 3, 1934:
“No selfish motive touched his public life; he held important office only as a sacred trust of honor from his country …
To Secretary Bryan political courage was not a virtue to be sought or attained, for it was an inherent part of the man.
He chose his path not to win acclaim but rather because that path appeared clear to him from his inmost beliefs.
He did not have to dare to do what to him seemed right; he could not do otherwise …”
Franklin Roosevelt continued:
“It was my privilege to know William Jennings Bryan when I was a very young man.
Years later both of us came to the Nation’s capital to serve under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson …
It was Mr. Bryan who said: ‘I respect the aristocracy of learning, I deplore the plutocracy of wealth but I thank God for the democracy of the heart.’
Many years ago he also said: ‘You may dispute over whether I have fought a good fight; you may dispute over whether I have finished my course; but you cannot deny that I have kept the faith.’
We who are assembled here today to accept this memorial in the capital of the Republic can well agree that he fought a good fight; that he finished his course; and that he kept the faith.”

—

American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate.
(Camp Constitution reposted this with permission from American Minute)

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