The Weekly Sam: The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection
While the late Sam Blumenfeld decidcated most of his adult life to warning the American people of the delebarate dumbing down of America and promoting intensive phonics, he long believed that Christopher Marlowe was the author of the plays of Shakespeare. While we at Camp Constitution don’t a position on the subject, we think Sam made a good case for it in his book:
http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Books/Marlowe-Shakespeare%20Connection%20(editor).pdf
Constitution Day September 17, 2022 “A Republic If You Can Keep It.
Constitution Day September 17, 2022 “A Republic If You Can Keep It.
At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention September 1787, Mrs. Elizabeth Powel, a friend of George and Martha Washington, asked Benjamin Franklin, the oldest delegate to the convention “Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy.” Dr. Franklin replied, “A republic if you can keep it.” How well have we done in keeping that republic. A glance at the current occupant of the White House as well as the majority of members of Congress leads me to conclude that we have done a poor job of it.
Is the U.S. Constitution an outdated relic?
Critics and detractors of the United States Constitution believe that it is an outdate relic of our agrarian past which may have served us well 200 years ago but needs to be replaced. Back in the mid-1990s, I was a guest on the Al Diamon Show- a talk show in Portland, Maine. Mr. Diamon, and the vast majority of his audience did not share my worldview to say the least. I had a very interesting conversation with one of his college age callers. This young man told me, in no uncertain terms, that the U.S. Constitution was outdated, and should be replaced. I asked him if it was written in 1848, would it also be an outdated relic. He replied in the affirmative and I told him that the Communist Manifesto was written in 1848 but oddly we never hear people on the Left demand that it be repudiated. I then asked him if he believed that the 1st Amendment-the one that protects the right of free speech, the press, and the right to peaceable to assemble among other things be abolished. He said that he wasn’t in favor of its repeal. I followed up with asking him about the 4th Amendment that protects us against unlawful search and seizure, the 5th that protects an accused from self-incrimination the 6th that guarantees us a speedy trial judged by impartial jury and the 8th that protects us from being drawn and quartered. He didn’t think that these amendments be repealed either. This caller, like too many American like him are victims of a clique-potentially a dangerous one, that if enough Americans believe, could lead to the end of the liberties we take for granted.
I contend that the U.S Constitution which granted few, defined and specific powers to the United States Government is just as relevant today than when it was first ratified. As King Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun.” While we went from horse and buggy to the space age and the quill pen and the broadside to Twitter and Facebook, human nature stays the same. Our Founders were learned men who knew history and understood man’s sin nature. This is why they gave us a constitutional that granted limited powers to the U.S. Government.
The U.S. Constitution has a preamble, seven articles and 27 amendments.
Article 1 established the legislative branch, qualifications for office of members of Congress, and grants certain powers including the power to borrow money and declare war.
Article 2 concerns the executive branch which grants very few powers and duties to the president. Being “the most powerful man in the free world” is not one of the duties granted to the president. Nowhere in Article 2 do we read that the president is the most powerful man in the free world.
Article 3 concerns the judicial branch which established “one supreme Court” and gave Congress the power to regulate it. The Supreme Court may be the highest court in the United States, but it is not the highest law of the land.
Article 4 concerns the states. Article 4, Section 4, guarantees every state a “Republican Form of Government and shall protect them against Invasion. Today, it is the official policy of the U.S. Government to aid and abet invasion.
Article 5 concerns the amending process which a made difficult for good reason.
Article 6 makes “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof…. shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”
Article 7 calls for the ratification of nine state before the Constitution will be established. New Hampshire was the 9th state to ratify the Constitution on June 2, 1788, making it the law of the land.
The Constitution has 27 amendments but one-the 21st canceled out another-the 18th. The first ten, known as the Bill of Rights were ratified on December 1791. The 27th Amendment, which concerns Congressional pay raises, would have been part of the original Bill of Rights but wasn’t ratified until 1992.
Keeping this republic begins with us. As is my habit, I am offering free pocket copies. If interested in one, Email me at campconstitution1@gmail.com
What to learn more about this incredible document? Why not attend our weekend retreat which runs from Friday September 30 to Sunday October 2 at Camp Sentinel in Tuftonboro
Constitutional Minute: Are we a democracy? NO!! Absolutely not!
Misconceptions
Let’s clear a common misconception which we have been led to believe in the past.
Are we a democracy? NO!! Absolutely not!
But this is propagated daily in the media by reporters and politicians.
Just listen to the daily news! Nary has a day gone by when we are not bombarded in the media about our “democracy”.
A democracy can be compared to two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” Yes, you get to vote, but that’s little consolation to the sheep! Our founders did everything in their power to keep us from being a democracy and they said so in the Federalist Paper #10 (Madison) and in personal journals.
Source here: https://publiushuldah.wordpress.com/category/basic-concepts/
We are a Republic. A Republic is “a state in which the exercise of the sovereign power is lodged in representatives elected by the people…” (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary ). A “constitutional republic” is a state in which the representatives (and other officials) are limited and restricted by a constitution. This country was established as a constitutional republic.
“Federal” refers to the form of our government: An alliance of States with close cultural and economic ties associated together in a “federation” with a national government to which is delegated supremacy over the States only in specifically defined areas. All other powers are left to the States or the People!
James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45 (9th paragraph):
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those that are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people….
Read the above again slowly and weep for your country!! Our federal government was never intended to regulate energy, health, labor, education, transportation, agriculture, housing, etc., etc. Those were the powers “reserved to the several States”.
Bob Hilliard
A feast of innocent merriment By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
It’s Us
One of the many virtues of my late seventh cousin twice removed (on the wrong side of the blanket, via the Second Duke of Portland) was Her Majesty’s seven decades of dedicated silence. A constitutional monarch, like a child, should be seen and not heard, and should adhere to the ancient Chinese proverb to the effect that “Those who speak do not know: those who know do not speak”.
With fitting reluctance, Her Majesty was induced by the Johnson administration to attend the 26th Gabfest of the Parties in Glasgow last winter (amusingly, Glasgow has not warmed in several decades). There, she let slip a rare indication of her thinking, when she pointed out the hypocrisy of those who preach about the imagined catastrophe of unabated global warming but do nothing about it personally. Think Gore and his private jets.
In private, Her Majesty was famous for her sense of humor (which she needed – just look at her last few Prime Ministers). At Balmoral, her favorite royal residence deep in the Aberdeenshire countryside at the foot of the Highland scarp below Lochnagar, she was prone to drive herself around in a Land Rover. She used to tell the story of a tourist who had lost her way in the hills. The tourist rapped on her window to ask for directions.
Balmorale, as Her Majesty loved it and called it
Her Majesty wound the window down and the tourist, suddenly recognising her, jumped and let out a shriek of astonishment. When visitors to Balmoral (or “Balmorale”, as she called it, for it cheered her up to be in her beloved Scotland) asked Her Majesty to tell the story, she would perform the jump and the blood-curdling shriek for them at the dinner-table.
Her Majesty’s humor – a gentle and always kindly exercise of statecraft – won her the devotion of all who were close to her. Here are a couple of examples.
By tradition, a regiment of the Guards is always stationed at the Victoria Barracks, just below Windsor Castle. Every night, one of the young officers was Captain of the Guard at Windsor Castle and was obliged to take up residence in the Captain’s Quarters just to the left of the main gate.
In the late 1970s, the Irish Guards were on public duties. From time to time, if an extra man was needed to make up numbers at the Royal dinner-table, the Queen’s Equerry would telephone the guardhouse and order the Captain of the Guard to attend. All of the young officers had thus been invited to dinner at least once, except one, who – by an accident of statistics – had never received the call and was known to be upset about it.
My old friend the late Captain Nigel (Nosher) Morgan, a.k.a. Football-Face, a Boris Johnson lookalike, was the regimental jester. He was wickedly good at imitating accents, including the icily snotty accent of the then Equerry to the Queen. One evening, the officer who had not yet dined with the Queen had just settled into the Captain’s Quarters when the phone rang.
The Equerry, in his customarily peremptory voice, said that Her Majesty was short of a man for dinner that night; that the officer should get into his mess kit at once, and should present himself at the door to the Maiden’s Tower, where a footman would be waiting to take him up to the Drawing-Room. “If not, just carry on up the helical stair to the drawing room and help yourself to a drink.”
[Architectural footnote: The Royal Household does not perpetrate the transatlantic solecism of describing a helical stair as a “spiral stair”].
The delighted officer struggled into his Gilbert & Sullivan mess kit and went to the Maiden’s Tower. No footman being in sight, he carried on up the helical stair to the drawing room, where Her Majesty’s guests had not yet begun to assemble. After a few minutes, Prince Edward came in with a catapult and began to play Ping the Ming, long a favorite game of the young Royals.
Shortly thereafter, the Duke of Edinburgh arrived and chased Ginge away. He saw the officer and said, “What the *!?= are you doing here?” The officer explained that he was under the Equerry’s orders to make up numbers at dinner. By then, the guests were beginning to gather.
The Duke hissed: “Well, you’re not on the list. Somebody (I can guess exactly who, and so can you) has played a practical joke. So Go. Away. Now!”
Faced with that direct order, the disconsolate Captain of the Guard returned to his quarters, where an unaccountably large number of his brother officers were waiting to console him by helping themselves to his whisky.
A few days later, the officer was Captain of the Guard again. The phone rang. The Equerry’s cut-glass tones shivered the instrument: “A man short … Gilbert & Sullivan … Maiden’s Tower … footman … helical stair.”
The officer replied: “Morgan, you prize ass, you can’t work the same trick twice!”
There was a curt, frosty silence at the other end, following by the shattering of over-stressed Bakelite as the telephone disintegrated [the Royal Household does not use plastic]. “This is Her Majesty’s Equerry. You will attend, or you will face a Court Martial!”
The officer duly attended as ordered and found that he was not there merely to make up numbers. The Duke of Edinburgh, who had told the Queen the story, personally introduced him to Her Majesty, who sat him at her right hand at dinner and regaled him with a string of anecdotes, and he gave as good as he got. She enjoyed his company so much that she went on to invite him and his belle to attend the annual Summer Ball at Buckingham Palace. None of his brother officers had ever attended that swankest of cotillions.
The second story also concerns the regimental jester. Football-Face had written a spoof article for The Soldier, the Army’s monthly magazine for the troops. His men, who adored him, had selected the handsomest four to attend a local barber’s shop, where they sat in a row in the chairs to have their bearskin hats trimmed, while a photographer took pictures.
The article duly appeared in the April edition of The Soldier, under the authorship of “Colonel I.A. Prylle”, who explained in scientific detail that bearskins contained so much natural sebum that the hair on the Guards’ bearskin bonnets continued to grow for up to 25 years. Therefore, before every State occasion, it was necessary to arrange for those on public duties to have not only their own locks but also their bearskins trimmed, for which each Guardsman received a special allowance, voted annually by Parliament, to pay the barber’s extra charges.
The Commanding Officer of the Irish Guards, affectionately known to those under his command as the Plank (thick as two short), immediately on seeing the article, put Football-Face on Part One Orders (disciplinary action, for the use of).
When the Regimental Sergeant-Major marched Football-Face in, the Plank, bright red in the face and seething with fury, hollered: “This latest Billy Bunter jape is the vewwy last stwaw. You do wealize, don’t you, that Her Majesty personally weads evewy issue of The Soldier fwom cover to cover evewy month, and she will be FUWWIOUS!”
At that pwecise instant (so goeth the tale, and who are we who were not there to argue with Tradition?) the telephone on the Plank’s desk shattered. The Plank picked up the receiver from among the pieces, went down on one knee (for it was indeed the Queen’s Equerry in person) and went even redder in the face.
“Yes, sir, I’ve got the perpetwator wight hewe in fwont of me. Yes, Part One Orders. I’ve told him Her Majesty … Er, … Eh? What? Her Majesty is delighted? Indeed, fwilled? She says it’s the funniest fing she’s wead in a vewwy long time? And that it’s bally good for mowale? Yes, yes, I’ve already congwatulated Captain Morgan. Yes, him.”
I once had a taste of Her Majesty’s humor myself. On the 25th anniversary of the Queen’s Jubilee, I wrote a leading article for the Yorkshire Post recalling the last speech addressed by Queen Elizabeth I to the Speaker and Members of Parliament, all of whom she had invited to Whitehall Palace a few months before her death:
“Mr Speaker, We perceive your coming is to present thanks to Us. Know, then, that I accept them with no less joy than your loves can have desire to offer such a present, and do more esteem it than any treasure or riches; for those we know how to prize, but loyalty, love and thanks, I account them invaluable.
“And though God hath raised me high, yet this I account the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves. This makes me that I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a Queen, as to be a Queen over so thankful a people, and to be the means under God to conserve you in safety and to preserve you from danger.
“It is not my desire to live or reign longer than my life and reign shall be for your good. And though you have had, and may have, many mightier and wiser princes sitting in this seat, yet you never had, nor shall have, any that will love you better.”
The leading article ended with the heartfelt statement that the second Elizabeth, like the first, might justly say that she reigned with our loves. The BBC World Service cited it in its review of the British Press. The Queen’s Equerry heard the broadcast and put the leader before Her Majesty, who bade him invite the Editor of the Yorkshire Post to lunch tête-à-tête at Buckingham Palace.
The Editor picked his way though the shards of plastic where his telephone had once stood and came to find me at the leader-writers’ station. He plonked himself into a chair and groaned, “Oh, God, Monckton! Now look what you’ve dropped me into.”
“Not to worry, chief,” I responded cheerily, “I’ll go in your place.”
The Editor wasn’t having that. He muttered darkly about the need to preserve the last shreds of the Yorkshire Post’s reputation. He sighed and said that he had been summoned and it was his duty to go.
He thought for a bit and said, “Christopher, the problem is this. You toffs know just what to say, but we horny-handed sons of toil don’t. What happens if we’ve done the weather and we’ve done the cricket and she looks at me and I look at her and neither of us can think of anything to say to the other?”
“Oh,” I said cheerily, “That’s easy. Just explain to her that your leader-writer is her seventh cousin twice removed” [I thought it tactful not to mention the wrong side of the blanket].
He groaned and tottered off to get the train to King’s Cross.
That evening, he returned and re-plonked himself into the chair. “Oh, God, Monckton!”
“How did it go? Tell all!”
“Well, we did the weather, and we did the cricket, which she knows a lot about. But then she looked at me and I looked at her and we couldn’t think of a thing to say to each other. So, I blurted out the one thing I’d sworn I wouldn’t say. I said, ‘Ma’am, do you know that my leader-writer is your second cousin twice removed?’”
He swears that Her Majesty replied: “Oh, really? Well, kindly have him removed a third time!”
And who are we who were not there to argue with Tradition? How sorely we shall miss her, and how fondly we shall remember the feast of innocent merriment she laid before us, as the reign of the Climate King begins.
The Heir, the Climate King and the Spare at Balmoral
Constitutional Minute #2 Do you need a law degree to understand the Constitution?
Think NOT that you must have a law degree to understand the Constitution of the United States; or that the lawyers, law professors and black-robed judges are the ones who understand it best.
They are the ones who perverted it.
To restore constitutional government, We the People must learn the basic concepts of “government”; and we must learn the Constitution, elect representatives who will honor their oaths to support it (Art VI, clause 3), and remove from office those who don’t.
The Constitution is a short document which anyone – who makes a reasonable effort – can understand quite well. The only way you can avoid being misled is to find out for yourself what it says.
You need only
(1) The Declaration of Independence,
(2) The Constitution, and
(3) The Federalist Papers.
The latter is a collection of 85 essays written for the public by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, and published during 1787 and 1788, in order to explain the proposed Constitution to the People and to induce them to ratify it.
They did just that.
Accordingly, The Federalist Papers are considered to be the most authoritative explanations for the meanings in the Constitution, not the courts! We do not need the media, the politicians, or judges to tell us. We can read them for ourselves in the founders own words.
Bob Hilliard
Buffalo, Texas
wethepeoplehandbook@gmail.com
The Weekly Sam: What’s Wrong With Government Education by Sam Blumenfeld
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 gradually. 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
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 their
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 accommodation 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 and sign up for the Samuel Blumenfeld Archives: https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/
Constitutional Minute #1 What if the NFL did not hire referees?
(Camp Constitution is happy to announce that we will be posting The Constitutional Minute by Mr. Bob Hilliard on a weekly basis)
Presently, the NFL makes the rules for professional football. They train and hire the referees to keep the players within those established rules and the rules are uniform throughout the country.
For example, every team must advance the ball ten yards to keep possession of the ball. That’s the rule. It’s not nine yards for one team and twelve yards for another.
This keeps the game consistent for everyone throughout the country…not only for the teams, but for the fans as well.
But…what if the NFL did not hire the referees? Instead, what if the fans voted to elect the referees?
Would you, as a voting fan, want (and need) to have a working knowledge of the rules so that you could make the most informed vote? And wouldn’t an informed vote mean better referees?
Of course it would!
The same principle holds true for the election of our government officials at all levels.
Think of the voters as those whose job it is to elect representatives to keep the government within the rules WE established.
The rules WE established for the federal government are in the US Constitution.
We are starting with a series of very short posts with the hope to stir the reader’s curiosity and an interest in acquiring a “working knowledge” of our Constitution.
Some say our Constitution is broken. Our Constitution isn’t broken! Our Constitution isn’t outdated. The problem is that WE – who Alexander Hamilton said are “the natural guardians” of the Constitution – didn’t bother to learn it. Since we didn’t bother to learn it, we elected representatives who also hadn’t bothered to learn it. And so everyone ignores it.
WE THE PEOPLE need “fixing”. Restoration of our religious and moral foundation and our Constitution is the answer to the healing of our Land.
Let the restoration begin with you.
About the Author
Bobby Hilliard spent most of his life in the foodservice business. First, he worked with his father in the family restaurant. Later as a foodservice design consultant. Retirement was to be filled with days on the golf course, but it did not work out that way.
February 2009 began protests all over the country as a manifestation of discontent of We the People of too much government spending, bailouts signed by President George W. Bush, and the many other federal government programs that were considered to be beyond the federal government’s authority. There seemed to be no end to it.
In order to find out where we have gone wrong, Bobby started searching websites to find like-minded friends. One website in particular had a constitution study group, so he joined. It was eye-opening! It was not hard to realize that the federal legislators’ failure to adhere to the limits in the Constitution was the problem.
After years of study on strict construction of the Constitution under his mentor, he collated 70 of her papers into the book The Handbook for We the People. The book is intended to be used as a supplemental text at the 11th and 12th grade levels in private high schools. The long-term goal is to start filling the pipeline with constitutionally literate students, teachers, candidates, legislators, and voters.
Bobby graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches in 1971 with a BBA in Business and married his girlfriend, Marilyn the same year. He spent his college summers manning the family shrimp boats in Galveston Bay catching shrimp for the restaurant. At the same time, he took flying lessons, and obtained his Private Pilot Certificate. Later, he built and flew his own homebuilt aircraft. He is 75 years old and never too old to learn.
Camp Constitution’s 1st Annual Weekend Retreat Less Than One Month Away
Camp Constitution’s 1st Annual Family Weekend Retreat is less than one month away. It will run from Friday September 30 to Sunday, October at Camp Sentinel in Tuftonboro, NH: https://www.campsentinel.org/
Instructors include Barbara from Harlem, author of Escaping the Racism of Low Expectations, Rev. Steve Craft, author of Morality and Freedom America’s Dynamic Duo, Pastor William Levi, author of The Bible or the Axe: One Man’s Dramatic Escape from the Persecution in the Sudan, Professor Willie Soon, one of the world’s top atmospheric scientists, and Mrs. Catherine White of the Constitution Decoded.
Topics include Celebrating the U.S. Constitution, America’s Godly Heritage, and Refuting the Climate Alarmists. We have a program for junior campers 5-11 taught by Mrs. Edith Craft. Recreation activities include volleyball, basketball, canoeing, and an optional field trip to the Wright World War II Museum.
Cost is $150. per person which includes two nights of lodging, and six meals. A link to the camp application: https://campconstitution.net/2022-weekend-camp-release-form-2/
For more information, please call me at (857) 498-1309 or E-mail campconstitution1@gmail.com
The Weekly Sam: The Great American Math Disaster by Sam Blumenfeld
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.
Semi-Fascist–The Great Unifier Strikes Again
Joe Biden, “The Great Unifier” recently called Trump supporters “semi-fascists.” At a recent Democratic National Committee fundraising event in Bethesda, Md, Biden said: “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism,” Biden said.
The term “fascism” is one of most misunderstood term in politics. Fascism is an economic system in which the state has control over the economy. Private property and private ownership of the means of production is allowed in a fascist economic system but it is highly regulated. Biden, his handlers, and the Democrat Party have more in common with fascism or semi-fascism that their political opponents Pictured below is a 14-page article from the February 1977 “American Opinion” magazine that properly explains Fascism and its close relative National Socialism. Copies are available for $5. postage included from our on-line shop: https://campconstitution.net/product/fascism-and-national-socialism/ Readers who would like a free PDF version, may E-mail me at campconstitution1@gmail.com
