Remembering what we've been forgetting about September 11th, 2001

What we've forgotten to remember
Something a little different to begin marking the 20th year since September 11th, 2001. My usual remembrance will be down below, but I'm not willing to pretend that our present circumstances don't matter in relation to it.

Two things we've forgotten about September 11th, 2001: the day before, and the day after, and the worst constant between them.

On the day before, I could take the kids to the airport, walk in and stroll on up to the gate with them to wait for their mom to come out of the plane. No TSA, or any of the other measures that have followed since the day after.

On the day after, there were flags flown everywhere you looked, everyone was thinking about America and what it meant to them, and to how we'd destroy those who did 9-11 to us.

Those aspects of the day before, and the day after, have all but vanished.

What has remained constant from the day before, and the day after September 11th, 2001, and every day from then to now, is the sense of political fury, recrimination, and partisan obstruction, directed towards 'the other side' - the day before, it was over the Bush v Gore election of 2000, the day after it was about the day before and what we did about it afterwards. From then to now, every imaginable excuse for partisan disagreement has been embraced by all sides. 

IOW, what it is that we are unified in as Americans, is our opposition to each other.

That's not a good sign.

What has remained far too constant from then to now, is that people have given too little thought to thinking about what is important about what America is, and what it depends upon.

20 years later, what's remained constant between the day before, and the day after, is not only our anger at the political opposition, but that people have given so little thought to understanding what it was that caused us to be attacked, as if it doesn't really matter what America is, and depends upon, in order to be America.

And the people who We The People have put in our government today exemplify our lack of understanding of who we are, who we should be, and why.

I've spent the last several weeks reading even further into what those that We The People have put in charge of our children's educations, which has in fact gone into educating the generation that has grown up since September 11, 2001, about who they are and why.

It's been a disgusting experience. But there's little mystery as to why so few care, or care to remember.

We have people in our schools and government today, that hate what America is and means, every bit as much as those who killed thousands of Americans on September 11th, 2001. And they were there long before September 11th, 2001, and they've only intensified their positions and numbers, since then.

Almost worse than that, we have many, many, more people in and out of our government, who care very little about that. In a nation founded upon a set of ideas, they don't think that those ideas matter much at all.

That's unacceptable. It should be noted that what can't continue, won't.

If you remember September 11th, 2001, and forget what you, and America, are, and what each requires - it doesn't much matter what you remember about this day, or any other.

The chaos surrounding our schools and education today, is an indication that people might be beginning to realize that it does matter what we know about who we are, and what America is and depends upon, and the importance of our taking care in putting the right people into our schools and government.

On September 11th, 2001, nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered. It is right and proper that we commemorate that. But for what happens to America to really matter, We The People, have to take the time to understand what it means to be Americans. 

It's up to us. It's up to you. And it's that which is needed for the memory of September 11th, to be as meaningful as it should be, to those living in America and should be Americans.

Make it matter. Make it worth remembering. Because it was and is most assuredly a day to remember. And now, back to then:

Remember, Remember the 11th of September
And now it is September 11th once again, and once again it is time to remember. We remember September 11th because of what happened upon September 11th, 2001. September 11th is not 'Patriot's Day', and it's damn sure not 'a day of service' (other than military service). September 11th, 2001 is a day to remember that the full brutality and destruction that man is capable of was deliberately visited upon America in New York City, Washington D.C. and Shanksville Pennsylvania. We should remember. We should reflect. Those responsible should have been and should be destroyed, and those whose negligence had enabled it, and those who excuse it, and those who minimize it, should be despised and reviled by all who remember. We must remember so that the horror of September 11th, 2001 is confined to the past and is not allowed to slip past us and out into another clear blue sky in the future.

Screw healing.

We should pick at the wound, keep it burning. Remember the parents on the plane heading in to strike the Towers, their child sitting next to them... remember the people in the Tower on the phone to 911, crying, scared, burning from the heat, and then screaming as the impossible happened, the tower collapsed beneath them into nothingness. Remember the wives, husbands, children, of those who just went to work that day, and had their lives and world stolen from them by islambie thugs.

Remember that no matter what idiot politician or educationista prattles... we are a people who have known, and still know freedom and liberty and law, a people who believe it is good to live a moral life and pursue our happiness where we see fit to choose to. Remember that there are alleged human beings who wish nothing more than to destroy that possibility.

Remember Sept. 11, 2001. Be angry, feel hatred, seek the destruction of those who seek yours. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do so, and remember that those who lost their lives, and those who have since given their lives in this cause, have hallowed this day far beyond and above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say today, but History - in reflection and action - will remember what happened, and it will take note of whether or not we remember. It will take note of whether or not we take note of those who had taken, and those who have given, the last full measure of devotion -- and it will judge whether or not we here are highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain; whether or not this nation, shall continue to give birth to, and stand up for and defend freedom, and it shall judge from that, whether or not government of the people by the people for the people, shall, or shall not perish from the earth.

And it will judge and act accordingly.

Remember September 11, 2001.

In remembering what happened on September 11th, 17 years ago, I've patched this post together from a number of memories and posts and comments I've made from then to now. Where they began, of course, was on the morning of September 11th, 2001, when my wife, who was a flight attendant with TWA, called me as I was driving into work on I-70, just passing through Earth City, to tell me a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.

I was thinking a Cessna, but she said it sounded like it was larger, the impact too large. I knew a plane had once hit the Empire State building on a stormy night, but she said the weather looked clear, how could that be possible? As we were talking, another jet hit the other tower.

That made it clear what was going on, we decided that she'd pick the boys up from school and bring them home.

I continued on into work, and news came that another plane had hit the Pentagon.

A blue streak of horror and animal fury blasted back at my radio as the news came that one of the towers was collapsing. As I walked into work, 7th floor of A.G. Edwards, people were crowded around the T.V. in the lobby and the second tower came down.

I went to to my desk, one of the guys there was trying to get a hold of his son who worked in one of the World Trade Center towers. I to our project coordinator and told him I wouldn't be working that day, and headed for home.

I told the boys the obvious as we watched the news, that the world had just changed, we were at war, and nothing would be the same.

To those who want to think of this day as a time for healing or a day of service, Fuck You. We are not going back to the reflexive evasion of reality which is what made this day possible.

Political Correctness began its well deserved death that day ten years ago today, it may be a long, agonizingly slow death, fitting perhaps for the cancer that it is, but it was the beginning of the end of the view that it is in any way good or proper to pretend a lie can pretty up the truth.

The lie is nothing but darkest evil, and the light of Truth chases, confines and obliterates it... as we have, and will do, to those who did this evil – you are nothing, and to nothingness you will be returned.

And yet there are those who will shake their head and ask "How do you kill an idea?"

How do you kill an idea? If it is an idea that people are not open to discussing, an idea that will not tolerate reasonable alternatives, an idea that requires your death or your submission, then the answer to that question is a very simple one:

You cannot defeat an idea.

All you can do is make physically certain that those of the enemy who might survive a war with you, would live in constant fear and dread at the thought of that idea ever again being in their head, let alone upon their lips. You cannot defeat an idea, you can only make people determined to no longer entertain them, because of the memory of the war they fought with you over it, and the fear of the possibility of such a conflict ever happening again, is too painful to think about

How do you kill an idea? By killing its hosts, and causing everyone else to fear and dread the thought of thinking it.

Screw healing.

We should pick at the wound, keep it burning. Remember the parents on the plane heading in to strike the Towers, their child sitting next to them... remember the people in the Tower on the phone to 911, crying, scared, burning from the heat, and then screaming as the impossible happened, the tower collapsed beneath them into nothingness. Remember the wives, husbands, children, of those who just went to work that day, and had their lives and world stolen from them by islambie thugs.

Remember that no matter what idiot politician or educationista prattles... we are a people who have known, and still know freedom and liberty and law, a people who believe it is good to live a moral life and pursue our happiness where we see fit to choose to. Remember that there are alleged human beings who wish noting more than to destroy that possibility.

Remember Sept. 11, 2001. Be angry, feel hatred, seek the destruction of those who seek yours. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do so, and remember that those who lost their lives, and those who have since given their lives in this cause, have hallowed this day far beyond and above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say today, but it will remember what happened, and it will take note of whether or not we remember.

A proper foreign policy is "Mind your own business & we'll mind ours. Mess with us or ours, and we'll destroy you. Period."

Anything less, reasoning with those who are unreasonable, giving measured responses in reply to savagery, etc., are concessions and only serve to enable those who wish us harm.

Perhaps more than anything else, remember that forgetting how and why the attacks of 9-11 were made possible, guarantees that its horrors will be revisited upon us, courtesy of our willful inability to recognize their approach, and the cost of that will be history rhyming itself once again, as the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more:

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Please, try to remember 9/11 as the lesson we won't have to learn once more.

Reality will not be denied, and Evil will not be turned aside because you choose to turn away from it. Deny that, and the Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return. Please. Just face the facts and learn the lesson so we don't have to learn it once more.

PAIR Presentation on Understanding Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

 I'll be giving a presentation this Tuesday, Sept 7th, on understanding what Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is, what it presents itself as, how the scientific basis it claims squares with reality, and what you should understand about it as you realize that it is operating in your school system right now.

If you're in the South County area, I hope I'll see you there. 

Doors open at 6:00, presentation begins at 6:30

South County Bible Church
4111 Von Talge Road
St. Louis, MO 63128

Signup link: HERE

Why waste words: Come on man - Resign

I'm not seeing the need to waste too many words:

Joe Biden brings a dishonorable end to America’s longest war

Ex-military officers call for Austin, Milley to resign over Afghanistan debacle

resign
[rəˈzīn]
VERB

1. voluntarily leave a job or other position.
   "he resigned from from the company in protest of the treatment of his co-workers"
   synonyms: leave · go · hand in one's notice · give in one's notice · give notice · stand down · step down · bow out · walk out
   
   

   • give up (an office, power, privilege, etc.).
     "four deputies resigned their seats"
     synonyms: give up · leave · vacate · stand down from · retire from · demit · [more]
   • chess
     end a game by conceding defeat without being checkmated. "he lost his Queen and resigned in 45 moves"

2. (be resigned)
   accept that something undesirable cannot be avoided.
   "she resigned herself to a lengthy session" · [more]
   synonyms: reconcile oneself to · become resigned to · become reconciled to · [more]

Gov. Parson: Stay the course on anti-American indoctrination

MO Gov. Parson gave a speech to MO education administrators recently, which has me feeling a tad ranty. In it, he spoke glowingly of his friend 'Margie', director of DESE (MO Dept of Elementary and Secondary Education), and encouraged MO's poor public school administrators to buck up against the tide of parents who're outraged over their kids being exposed to those ideas that flow out of the sewage of Critical Race Theory, and to 'Stay the course!'. The question to ask, of course, is what course is it that Gov. Parson wants us to stay upon - the American, or the anti-American, course?

We can answer that by looking at the course he's knowingly asking MO's educational system to stay upon, not only what he 'has their back' over, but who he's defending their backs against. He made it very clear that 'stay the course' was the theme of his speech, repeating it over, and over, and over again. And he also made it clear who it is that he's defending their backs against, at the 19:53 mark, telling MO's school administrators that they needn't concern themselves with the concerns of Missouri's parents, whose kids are still (inexplicably) attending public schools in Missouri:

"...Ya stand up, ya do your job, you do what's best for your kids, and you do what you signed up to do, and you're gonna be just fine, people will respect ya - whether they agree with you sometimes or not, but stay the course, stay the course, and the main deal you should be thinking of is what's best for that kid out there, because that's your job, your job's not to make all the parents happy, you're jobs not to get another contract, your job is to take care of those kids in the environment you're in, I think that's the important thing you do..."

Gov. Parson's message to his administration to 'Stay the course!', almost seems to have anticipated the words of the former Governator of California, in saying to parents 'Screw your freedom', because for DESE & the school administrators, '...your job is to take care of those kids in the environment you're in...', and that environment that those kids are in, is one which 'Margie', and DESE, and the various BOE's, have set up so as to advance their woke concerns of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, antiracism, SJW, SEL, CRT, Trauma-Informed Schools, etc, for the kids - of course - and if parents don't like it - screw them - stay the course.

To make this clearer, and without my fingers marathoning out a 10,000 word blast, I'll try and let Christopher Rufo do the talking, from his speech to Hillsdale College which ably, and briefly, summarized what's involved in just a few of those concepts:

"...In contrast to equality, equity as defined and promoted by critical race theorists is little more than reformulated Marxism. In the name of equity, UCLA Law Professor and critical race theorist Cheryl Harris has proposed suspending private property rights, seizing land and wealth and redistributing them along racial lines..."

Rufo notes that Ibram X. Kendi, who directs the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, says of 'Antiracism', that:

“... In order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.” In other words, identity is the means and Marxism is the end..."

, and Kendi has advocated for a new federal department, that:

"...would have the power to nullify, veto, or abolish any law at any level of government and curtail the speech of political leaders and others who are deemed insufficiently “antiracist.”..."

I've gotta jump back in here for just a second, and suggest that Gov. Parson answer the pop-quiz I sprang the other day:

Gov. Parson: Do you understand that these two statements are saying the same thing?:

"Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist."
John Adams, 'Discourses on Davila', following his 'A Defense of the Constitutions of the Governments of the United States of America'

"In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."
Karl Marx, 'Communist Manifesto'

To the parents of MO: Do you understand that that is the course that your Governor is telling his school administrators to stay the course upon?!

But of course, there's more - back to Christopher Rufo, who notes

"...Diversity trainers will make an outrageous claim—such as “all whites are intrinsically oppressors” or “white teachers are guilty of spirit murdering black children”—and then when confronted with disagreement, they adopt a patronizing tone and explain that participants who feel “defensiveness” or “anger” are reacting out of guilt and shame. Dissenters are instructed to remain silent, “lean into the discomfort,” and accept their “complicity in white supremacy.” "

, and that:

"Conservatives in both the federal government and public school systems have told me that their “equity and inclusion” departments serve as political offices, searching for and stamping out any dissent from the official orthodoxy."

Sorry, I can't stay out of it, it needs to be pointed out that there is no common course that can exist between the course of "All men are created equal" and "all [insert scapegoat here] are intrinsically oppressors".

There is no common course to stay upon between the course of "equal rights before the law", and "...An equity-based form of government would mean the end not only of private property, but also of individual rights, equality under the law, federalism, and freedom of speech...".

There is no common course that is conceivable between educating for the purpose of freeing minds from ignorance and preparing them for the responsibility of living in liberty, and believing that teachers should utilize students to be activists for hate-filled partisan ideological propaganda, which those in power believe to be winning propositions for them to 'stay the course' upon.

The governor, who as the head of Missouri's 'Ship of State', does have to choose a course, and rather than choosing one that is reconcilable with a constitutionally American course, he is instead supportive of staying the course of the left turn into radical Pro-Regressivism, socialism, communism, and an unavoidable barbarism, that Missouri has been sailing upon for so very many years now.

Gov. Parson seems like a guy who can count to twenty twice in a row, so the 'too stupid to understand' excuse is off the table for him. Neither is ignorance an option - these policies that are being implemented in his authority are his job to understand, and it's also his job to investigate when his constituents, Missouri's parents, let him know that they have serious concerns over those policies that he is 'staying the course' on. Gov. Parson has told Missouri's parents, that their satisfaction with his policies aren't his concern, and they're not 'Margie's concern, and they're not the administrator's concern. Gov. Parson has instead told his administration that they need only stay the course of the Critical Insurrection being waged upon America, and that it need not be any concern of theirs that doing their job entails pushing100% anti-American and anti-human ideas into the minds of 'their kids' (not the parent's kids, 'their kids').

At the end of his speech, Gov. Parson ramped up his folksy banter by reaching back to the opening of the 20th Century for a presidential quote, appropriately grabbing one from a speech that squares well with the anti-American course that he has determined to stay upon, 'The man in the arena' speech, given by Republican President Teddy Roosevelt. If all you know of T.R. is what you learned from your 'educators', then you should probably educate yourself, yourself, on him, and an excellent place to start is the the speech of his which President Obama celebrated the 100th Anniversary of, T.R.'s "New Nationalism" speech, which made very clear how little he thought of our Constitution, and of our Bill of Rights, and how highly he thought of the socialist-progressive-communist course which is the very same dream of the Pro-Regressive Right that Gov. Parson still wants us to stay the course on today.

Perhaps you think I'm being too harsh. Hardly. Those concepts noted above, such as 'Equity', are bald-faced Marxist obscenities which cannot be implemented without unleashing untold death and destruction, and would in America entail more corruption than a Stalin could ever dream of - and those are but a few of what DESE is busily rolling out and over you and your children today. And to that, Gov. Parson says "Stay the course!".

Perhaps even more telling than the speech he chose to quote from, is the speech of another turn-of-the-century American Republican President that he did not turn to for inspiration from, Calvin Coolidge (perhaps the last president to whom that (R) had real meaning to), and one very good reason why he did not, is because his speeches, such as the 'Inspiration of the Declaration of Independence', are 100% incompatible with the course that Gov. Parson has chosen to stay the course of.

The course that Calvin Coolidge hoped that America would stay upon, was one which understood that:

"...About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers..."

That is most definitely not a course that Gov. Parson, or 'Margie', or most of Missouri's school administrators, or a great many of its teachers, want to school you and your kids on.

Parents - why would you not get your kids out - do you really want them to 'stay the course'?!

/rant

What a Govt that prioritizes Sensitivity Training looks like in action

What more needs to be said: A government that's focused upon 'Sensitivity' training and Critical Theories as their top priorities, looks like what's happening in Afghanistan in practice.

Similar results quite possibly coming soon to a border near you! 

In other news: This would be a timely book to buy: Matthew Lohmeier's: Irresistible Revolution: Marxism's Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military 

More timely information on my 'Behind CRT' page.

Americans have property in America. Or not.

Why have I not had anything to say about the 'Infrastructure Bill' (which considers requiring Breathalyzers in new cars, to be part of 'infrastructure') or Biden's CDC '60-day eviction moratorium' (AKA: elimination of private property)? Why bother pretending that supporting either one is anything other than deciding against 'the American way', to choose between whichever flavor of tyranny - socialism, marxism, communism, fascism - it is that you prefer? There is no way to read either of these, and pretend that isn't what they are about, and I just have no interest in helping anyone pretend there's something legitimately debatable in either one.

"...gradual and silent encroachments..."

I've gone over the ideas and principles involved here, way too many times, and the reality is that the issue really is as simple as what James Madison laid it out in his essay on Property, back in 1792. Fortunately, with the level of literacy and understanding that was the norm in America at that time, those who didn't already understand the nature of private property, could read his essay, and both understand his point, and the importance of it.

The issue that is being decided with these two... 'measures' today, is really whether a century of 'modern *education*' was enough to eliminate Americans from America, or if it still requires a few more semesters to complete the process. 

Pop-Quiz: Do you understand that these two statements are saying the same thing:

"Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist."
John Adams, 'Discourses on Davila', following his 'A Defense of the Constitutions of the Governments of the United States of America'

"In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."
Karl Marx, 'Communist Manifesto'

If not, then the answer is that in your case, a century of 'modern *education*' was enough for you - you've either made your choice, or abandoned the effort altogether. 

For the rest of us, there's this:

James Madison, Property
29 Mar. 1792Papers 14:266--68

This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual."

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.

In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.

According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just securing to property, should be sparingly bestowed on a government which, however scrupulously guarding the possessions of individuals, does not protect them in the enjoyment and communication of their opinions, in which they have an equal, and in the estimation of some, a more valuable property.

More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man's religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed by a hierarchy. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellations proverbial of the most compleat despotism.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called. What must be the spirit of legislation where a manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen shroud, in order to favour his neighbour who manufactures woolen cloth; where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the oeconomical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of buttons of other materials!

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.

If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence [inference?] will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.

If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.

The Founders' Constitution
Volume 1, Chapter 16, Document 23
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s23.html
The University of Chicago Press

The Papers of James Madison. Edited by William T. Hutchinson et al. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1962--77 (vols. 1--10); Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977--(vols. 11--).

Fighting the Hydra requires more than just fighting back - The Critical Insurrection

When fighting a Hydra, don't just fight back - The Critical Insurrection
Given the nature of the pro-regressive insurrection (see previous post) being waged against America - not the one being charged by Nancy Pelosi & the House Democrats, but the one they've been waging upon us through weaponized ideologies such as CRT (Critical Race Theory) - I urge a word of caution, that when fighting a Hydra, you have to do more than simply fight back. Because if you only cut off a head, like Common Core, while the other heads distract you into fighting them, each stump will grow two even more vicious heads, as with SEL & CRT. Most of all, the heads seek to distract you from discovering that as you cut one off, and cauterize its stump, it can't grow even one back, and continuing to do that, until you've severed the last head, and cauterized its' stump as well, then the immortal beast will actually die. All the distractions are there to keep us from realizing the actual target.

For instance, years ago when we were battling against Common Core, we began to be told that America needed to wage a campaign against bullies, because there were bullies, bullies everywhere around us, when in reality, other than those in Congress, bullying was no more of an issue then, than it ever had been before. But that distraction did enable SEL (Social Emotional Learning, an astonishingly flawed and ignorant concoction of 1990's educratic thinking), to grow into prominence through federal, state & local legislation, such as,

"...Federal policy has begun to incorporate social, emotional, and behavioral factors into education accountability metrics (e.g., ESSA: Every Student Succeeds Act), and school climate initiatives, antibullying work, positive behavior supports (e.g., PBIS), and discipline reform are increasingly influencing the day-to-day practice of schools and communities...."

, and as SEL became fully implemented as the central 'lens' of 'Critical Pedagogy', it helped CRT to grow into the very real threat which it has become today. So as you see the hydras writhing its several heads of 'Whiteness', 'diversity', and even 'Marxism' in our faces to distract us, remember that while those do need to be fought, we have to remember to finish the job, and that until we do that with each one, they will not only regrow, but multiply.

I'm going to keep these first few posts as short and to the point as my feeble powers of restraint can manage (I know, too late... sorry, best I can do), and as there are many excellent sources available either free online, or for minimal expense in books (I've added a page of links to books, online resources and videos, to the top of my blog 'Behind CRT'), I won't attempt to recreate the detail-wheel here, but I do want to highlight what I see so often being missed, because as important as those details are, the particular issues of the moment, aren't the revolution that's being waged against us, and missing that is why every apparent 'victory!' that the Right has celebrated over the last century, has resulted in its being replaced by at least two more fearsome heads in our culture and institutions, and as the creature now has us backed up to the edge of the cliff, if we fail to finish each fight, our 'victories' will end up flipping Reagan's dictum around to 'they win, we lose'.

I urge you - look beyond what is being waved around to distract us into still another fight. Focusing only on CRT is not enough. Focusing only on SEL, is not enough (do that, and you'll miss the Trauma-Informed Schools that are preparing to strike. H/T Marilee). Focusing on Marxism is not enough either, as any one thing which causes us to focus in too narrowly on only one particular or another, is keeping us from taking in the full nature of the beast, and without a good grasp of either the particular issue's nature, nor the full scope of its reach, those who're adept at using detailed definitions to evade and deny inconvenient facts, will find it exceedingly easy to dismiss the concerns we raise ('CRT?! That there's a college course, this is High School! We don't teach no college courses here! Ya'll need to git educated!').

We're like hunters walking along with our eyes on the ground following an unfamiliar set of tracks, thinking that the strange leathery tree trunks we keep bumping into, are isolated and random oddities, and it isn't until we begin looking upwards that we finally begin noticing that they're not as isolated as they seemed, and as we're looking up, and up, and up at what each one is tending towards, we finally begin to see them all as being legs of the gargantuan beast standing over us, with its multiple heads ready to strike at us, or perhaps just to flatten us under its weight.

The Hydra's wokery is not just in the schools, it's in the foundations and NGO's, it's in the 'Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Officer's that are popping up like weeds throughout the corporate world.. it's in the military, in the media, sports, entertainment, our churches, it's even in medicine now - can you name me a single institution or walk of life that it doesn't infest? Please? No, focusing on each issue as separate things is going to get us crushed. We need to see the bestial nature that's present in them all, we need to develop the ability to perceive that presence no matter what façade it's hiding behind, and then decisively confront it.

The good news is that there are telltale traits that help us to recognize and identify its presence and track its progress, whether the current head before us is CRT, SEL, Common Core, Marxism, or one of the many others. Someone that I've been fortunate enough to work with in the effort to halt this systemic madness, Dr. Mary Byrne, has been crisscrossing Missouri, speaking out against CRT - her presentation is full of substance, well presented, and I highly recommend your attending. There are three particular points which are actually in, or are at least implicit in her presentation, which I think are critically (ahem) important in recognizing, defending against, and combatting the 'tentacular monstrosity' we're facing:

1. Every Politically Correct and Woke effort that shocks and outrages you, while leaving you feeling that you shouldn't or can't respond to it, is intended to demoralize you.
2. Mis-identifying what America is and originally was, removes the restraints of Truth from those who seek to undermine your confidence and destroy it, which is their mission.
3. “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” - IOW: Divide and Conquer

So let's look closer at these points.

1) Demoralizing - This first point is one which is served by all of the 'critical theories' and the various '[race, sexuality, etc.] Pride!' & 'Spirit Murder!' type campaigns associated with Critical Race Theories, and they are intended to instill a sense of guilt in everyone else. Shelby Steele identified that point here, in how to push back against those in power who're promoting it,

"...“I think they have to begin with the understanding that Critical Race Theory is a device designed to capture white guilt. It has no other meaning, no other purpose, no other function than that. It wants to capture, to once again accuse whites of racism,” Steele said.

Steele went on to explain that once CRT was used to convince everyone that structural racism had bled into every aspect of American life, the goal was to use the guilt it created to advance black Americans by creating entitlements for them. “It’s a structural systemic society-wide problem and to the extent of its breadth, it owes us as blacks entitlement,” he added.
“What bothers me most is that the whites — we have been doing this now for 70 years, and whites still don’t get the point,” Steele continued. “You are being had. You are being shaken down over a history that you had nothing to do with, and there has to be some standing up there.”

As those who brainwash captives know all too well, if you can get someone to repeatedly feel guilt for something they had no hand in, they become demoralized. Pay special attention to the point of that word, of the 'moral' being removed from you - there's far more to being demoralized than the superficial appearance of being depressed. Without the moral certainty of being aligned with what is right & wrong, a person is left with nothing more than the sensations of the moment to be guided by, the materialist and animalistic pleasure & pain, which leaves you with no sense of having anything that's worth aspiring to or defending. The notion that all values are of equal 'value', means that all of our values - that which we actively pursue or try to hold on to - are only of physical sensations and tastes with no higher element of truth or wisdom to raise them above what is false and foolhardy. That materialistic notion is not an 'ideal' of Tolerance, it is the viciously intolerant means of wiping out three thousand years of slow and painful progress in the West, so as to return us to the life and rule of brute force. When we even innocently accept that premise, and are repeatedly being hit with that 'ideal', the person who accepts that, cannot help but lose their respect for themselves and for others as they have already lost their respect for the nature of being Human. Not surprisingly, such a person as that is far more easily manipulated into doing whatever it is that 'those who know best', want them to do, for this or that shallow 'benefit' or reward.

Note: Anyone claiming to be an 'expert' who tells you that no value is of more value than any other value, has just told you that their expertise is of no value - treat them accordingly.

What Shelby Steele puts as "...You are being shaken down", a P.T. Barnum might've put more like this: 'You can't cheat a moral man, so... get him to feel immoral, and that sucker is all yours.' .

Don't accept the guilt that they're handing out - and don't make the mistake of thinking that it's easy to refuse it. Most decent people are inclined to politely defer to others - how often have you said "Oh, sorry, excuse me", over something such as reaching for the same item on a shelf, or having gotten to a door first? As you did nothing wrong, you don't actually sorry, it's simply a common means of demonstrating politeness and minding your manners. There's of course not only nothing wrong with that, but it's a vital habit which demonstrates your presumption that the other person is worthy of being treated respectfully, and such civility is exceedingly important as a societal norm. It's difficult for most decent people to practice what in normal situations would be seen as bad manners. The proponents of CRT and its like count on our reflexive use of manners, and as a polite response is extended to those who are truly unworthy of that respect, it will be maliciously twisted by them into a chokehold of obligatory guilt, and they know that they can count on your not withdrawing from it, out of fear of appearing rude.

You've seen that scenario playing out across the flaming summer of 2020, in something like this:

BLM: "Black Lives Matter!"
You: "Well of course they do, I certainly agree, and I'm very sorry that you've been treated so badly. Every life is valuable, and..."
BLM: "That's racist!"
You: "Oh! I'm so very sorry, I didn't mean..."
BLM: "You 're inherently racist and promoting 'whiteness' and..."

IOW, while empathy is laudable, and in some contexts, sympathy, if you permit yourself to be beaten up with it, as Shelby Steele put it, "You are being had. You are being shaken down..." Don't allow your decency to be flipped into a chokehold against you.

2) Mis-Identification -The second issue, is to get you to go along with misidentifying what America and Western Civilization are, which requires dividing, if not atomizing, the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian nature of that which it developed through. I noted in a post way back in 2006, that although America didn't begin with the very religious minded Pilgrims, America absolutely was and still is the fruit of the Greco/Roman & Judeo/Christian marriage which joined those ideals into one flesh, so to speak; each complements the other, and it's through their union that the nature of Western Civilization emerges.

It is ludicrous to say that America was not founded on Judeo-Christian principles, as those principles were explicitly used, studied, and implemented by those who founded it; but neither is it possible to say that America is a Judeo-Christian nation while then trying to minimize or ignore its Greco/Roman nature. The Greco-Roman philosophers and political figures that I typically focus on, share more than a hyphenated relationship of historical happenstance with our Judeo/Christian half - the Bible contains numerous passages that echo the fundamental Roman dictums of law, such as 'hear the other side', and the Greek's love of wisdom ('Philosophy' is the love of wisdom), such as Proverbs 8-9, and much more that is central to the nature of our Western understanding of Natural Law and Justice. Western Civilization isn't simply a patchwork of parts awkwardly tacked together, but is the result of the union of its parental sources, and it is that one flesh that the forces arrayed against us are focused upon putting asunder.

Out of that union came what first became known as Liberalism (not what typically goes by that name today), which in part grew out of the ideas that Thomas Hooker used to form history's first written constitution from (Solon, the Spartans, Rome's tables, were of a different matter), in the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which was implemented around 1639:

"...the Connecticut founders did something different from their Puritan ancestors: the British monarch was not acknowledged as the authorizing agent of the document, as he was in the Mayflower Compact. There is no mention of the monarch anywhere in the agreement. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut lists a fundamental right – and one that was not an Englishman’s right – the right to create the form of government under which one shall live...."

, ideas which were later expanded upon in John Locke's 2nd Treatise on Civil Government, which amounted to efforts to translate the West's Judeo-Christian religious ideals of what is good and true - that every individual is of equal value before God, valuing even their power to choose to disobey God - into a framework of practical Greco-Roman political philosophy, which required subordinating power to rational systems of law, steadied by ethical and moral understanding, and anchored around Property as an objective result of our ideas in action.

That system, our system, requires the influence of both halves of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian traditions - their ideals inform the mechanics, and the mechanics lose their cohesion & purpose without the defining limits of those ideals - the whole cannot function properly without all of its parts.

These are critically important points for us to remember... which is why they are dismissed, ignored and/or ridiculed by those we've foolishly entrusted to teach them to us.

A prime example of what results from excluding one or more of those 'parts', is on display in the evil twin of that original Liberalism, which I collectively refer to as Pro-Regressivism, which is what our modern Left is the rotten fruit of. Through multiple waves of influence from Rousseauism, Utilitarianism, Positivism, Marxism, Pragmatism, Progressivism & Economics (and not a little bit of Libertarianism) they each seek to alter, exclude, or replace one or more parts of our whole, and the resulting mutation seeks to divide the West's ideals through a twisted reflection of them. That mutant is hell bent on rationalizing the use of power over others 'for their own good', or 'for the greater good'', which conveniently entails reducing property to a status of mere physical possessions, severed from those rights that are inherent in our nature, and which can then only be secured by the power of force alone, as directed by those experts 'who know best'.

It is also critically important to recognize the pivot of foundational ideals which CRT is a culmination of, that of turning away from the traditional Western pillar of Truth, to the modernist pillar of Power. If you look past their superficial virtue signaling, you'll see that power centric ideology in action - and always inciting action - which is behind every 'value' which they've been instilling into the minds of students, especially of college students, since at least the 1990's. That pivot is what you can see has just been performed in this, from Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, first edition (2001), by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic:

"... critical race theory calls into question the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and the neutral principles of constitutional law.” pg 3,
, and that
“...Crits [Critical Race Theorists] are highly suspicious of another liberal mainstay, namely, rights....”p. 23.

This is an attack on the heart and soul of America, and the West, and it is nothing short of a progressive insurrection. See:Critical Race Theory: A Two-page Overview

And finally,

3) The issue is never the issue - The third, and in some ways the most important point (at least as concerns fighting back), comes from what former Communist activist, David Horowitz, pointed out as being a central mindset and tactic of the Left, in relating this anecdote, that:

“Saul Alinsky, the radical organizer and mentor of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, used to ask his new followers why they wanted to become community organizers. They would respond with idealistic claims that they wanted to help the poor and oppressed. Then Alinsky would scream at them like a Marine Corps drill instructor, “No! You want to organize for power!” That’s the way the SDS radicals at the University of Texas approached the abortion issue—as a means to power, or, in Margaret Sanger’s words, to remake the world. As a writer in the 1960s radical SDS publication New Left Notes put it, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”

, and what 'the issue is never the issue' means, is that we need to be aware that when, for instance, we are told that men can identify as women, or that all whites are racist, neither transgenderism nor whites are the issue, but are only a tactic that's being used to sow division, and to prevent reasonable discussions between those who might recoil at those thoughts, and those others who might see some aspect of it that they'd like to discuss - and preventing that discussion, is the point of phrases such as 'Black Lives Matter!', 'Men can have periods!', 'Believe all Women!'. That is the revolution that is always the issue, and driving that forward, severing one person from another as bitterly as possible, is their preferred manner of employing that tactic which was already old when Caesar made it famous as:

"divide and conquer"

, and it's the tactic which Marx made central to his misosophy (the hatred of wisdom, as opposed to Philosophy, which is the love of wisdom), which in his hands was class conflict, and in the Critical Racist's is racial conflict, but in all of their hands, they seek division by fundamental conflict, so as to conquer.

As mentioned above, the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' was not chosen to support the lives of blacks. The founders of the group, 'trained Marxists' that they admittedly are, sought to sow division into our lives by choosing words that were sure to draw sympathy from most, while pitting them against those who'd rationally affirm that sentiment by extending it more broadly into all of our lives. The moment that happens, a tripwire is triggered and any attempt at having reasonable discussion, are framed as either 'All lives Matter' or 'Black Lives Matter', which they've spun into mutually exclusive & opposing positions which are deliberately insulting to the other, which at least one side of which will eagerly find great offense in. 

Through the expert fanning of those rhetorical flames over the last year, our divisions have been magnified beyond all measure to the point firestorms of destruction having flowed abundantly from. BLM and the other profa ('antifa' & BLM are Pro-Fascists) have exploited the misery that was certain to follow from the conflicts they so carefully arranged for, and that is who they are.

Summing up and taking aim

So to restate the three points from above into something to keep in mind, and to look for:

1. Every outrageous PC & Woke statement of relativism & toleration, of 'diversity, equity & inclusion', demands your acceptance and 'allyship' of them in order to demoralize you.
2. America is a nation of ideas that are rooted in the pursuit of Truth; its Pro-Regressive opponents (including many nominally on The Right), are rooted in & upon the pursuit of Power, and as such Lies are seen as useful tools for undermining your confidence, and ultimately bringing America and Western Civilization to an end.
3. Always remember that this is active in every issue, and that: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” - IOW: Divide and Conquer

It's not enough to only fight back against them, we have to strike it at its root and cauterize the stump to prevent it from re-growing, and that requires actual arguments, not just the returning of insults & smackdowns. To do that we need to know, and be able to have and hold, an ideal that we can look up towards, one which is worth fighting for, and anything which undermines that, furthers the Pro-Regressive revolution. Leftists are at their most effective when they hit upon a word or phrase of bait that everyone leaps at, and any and every repetition of it divides us into being for or against it, and the more effective bait are those which trumpet a virtue that they're designed to destroy.

In just one or two shallow words as those mentioned above, they seek to hit propagandistic gold of satisfying superficiality, that leaves most people either uninterested in, or fearful of, looking beneath the surface for any further argument or deeper meaning. As they deploy a phrase as "The issue", it distracts and diverts all opposition into one rhetorical dead-end alley after another, where having already spun the most likely objections to make dissenters sound foolish, the Left is able to keep all opponents boxed up and arguing on and on over their superficial labels, and as its opponents never quite grasp the nature of the issues that have been arrayed against them, the revolution continues to advance.

There's something about our modern way of thinking that has made us susceptible to this strategy, even to the point of most otherwise sensible people assisting the radical left in peddling their activism as if it were education, and that is what is enabling them to bury us under layers and layers of 'diversity, equity & inclusion'. 

There's more involved in holding onto our ideals while engaging with and fighting the hydra, and it needs to be identified in order to be able to secure America within American's minds, and that includes recognizing the means by which our minds are sometimes changed for the worst by the very methods that we've assumed will improve us for the best. We need to relearn how to reach into the depths, even as we're being urged to hurriedly skate across the surface of all that we're being told.

Over the next few posts we'll get into that, and how to start turning issues like CRT back against those who're baiting us with them.

Behind the Actual Insurrection - Critical Race Theory and Beyond

Despite obvious appearances and its heated denunciations of 'White' this & that, it's not Whites that the proponents of CRT (Critical Race Theory), SEL (Social Emotional Learning), & their associated EIEIO's are primarily targeting. That may be hard to swallow, especially for those who've personally taken arrows from the target they've painted on their backs, but as I'll get into below, the issue becomes less, well... black & white... as you take notice that you don't have to be white to be considered by them to be a white supremacist. Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter, Andy Ngo, and others of Black, Hispanic or Asian ancestry, are all condemned as being or furthering white supremacists - even MLK's 'will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character', is now frowned upon for enabling 'Whiteness'. 

If that seems odd to you, wait until you take a closer look at the sorts of thinking which proponents of CRT will tell you amounts to spreading 'White Culture':

Smithsonian Wokery

• being on time
• thinking linearly (you know, like insisting that 2+2=4)
• valuing the nuclear family - Mom & Dad and kids living in one home
• thinking that freedom of speech is valuable
• thinking that race is and should be unimportant
• thinking that a man does not actually become a women by choosing to identify as one, and that surgically altering their appearances doesn't transforms the substance of one gender into another. Ditto for a women identifying as a man.
• thinking that Justice is not served by acting unjustly
• ... and so on, etc., etc., etc.

Being guilty of thoughts such as these, is what the rabid leftists say are traits of 'Whiteness' and are therefore furthering the cause of White Supremacy. Obviously, these traits are not exclusive to 'whites', but are habits, observations & ideals (of what?) that are open to all - so where's the sense in labeling them as signs of 'Whiteness'? Yes, the notion is bigoted, and yes, most who say such things self-identify as being racists, but while racism is their means, it is not their ends. 'Whiteness' is just the latest euphemism for what they are targeting, and they use that because it is the simplest, most inflammatory, and divisive means available, for the Pro-Regressive left to sow dissension and division amongst us. What their actual ends are, is ending what 'Whiteness' & 'White Culture" refer to, which is Western Civilization in general, and America in particular, and they are deliberately targeting, subverting, and actively working to bring them down - and the only thing new about any of this, is how open they have recently become about it.

America was the first nation in history formed from and based upon ideas; ideas of limited government dedicated to upholding freedom of speech and our other essential individual rights, and the understanding that for all individuals to be treated equally before the law, Justice must be blind to their wealth, creed, race and status. Not surprisingly, America, having established the highest ideals ever set for a nation to live up to, hasn't succeeded in living up to them all, but if you can be honest and take your eyes off of our very human failures for a moment, it soon becomes apparent that because those have been our ideals, The West in general, and America in particular, have succeeded in lifting ourselves and the world up higher than ever before in history, and as long as we hold to these ideals, the sky's the limit... and yet every one of those ideals are under direct attack today.

Since the summer of 2020, supporters of CRT, and others of the Pro-Regressive Left have been cancelling and spewing hatred towards those who've either dared support or behave respectfully towards those ideals, or towards the American flag which represents them, or our Constitution which supports them, America itself which implements them, and the Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian culture which preceded and enabled them. 

This week, the democrat party led by Nancy Pelosi in our House of Representatives, began bringing about formal proceedings to charge that a group of sightseers and confused cos-players with little more than a single stun-gun and a buffalo hat to share between them, began a riot that amounts to an insurrection:

By their own words,
the Left is insurrectionary

Insurrection: "A rising or rebellion of citizens against their government, usually manifested by acts of violence"

If that is the case, then what shall we call our political and academic leaders on the Left who openly led others in shouting that they wanted to 'burn it all down!'. These leaders, smiled and made condescending comments, encouraging their followers, so that when they weren't able to seize, occupy, or destroy private property, they'd burn it down in 'peaceful protests' with firebombs, and brutal assaults in riotous mobs armed with clubs and guns, even our monuments have been violently pulled down and torn up - is there no House Hearing on those incidents? If what a random group of demonstrators without a plan or clue between them can be charged with insurrection, and warrant a full House investigation into their lives, then what of what the leaders of the Democrat Left who have been engaged in doing that, and far worse, for well over a year?

That is infuriating, isn't it? Whether you're outraged by it, or outraged by my outrage over it, you're infuriated either way, right? Take note of that.

Because this too, in typical Pro-Regressive Leftist fashion, is a distraction, a mere sideshow in comparison to the real insurrection that they have been waging against America for well over a century, not in our streets, but in our schools, and within the minds of its teachers and our children.

Those who're aligned with what is now being identified as CRT, and the notions of Social Justice and its like which they grew out of, are waging a far more deadly, virtual insurrection, against the culture and history of America, and they are waging it on all fronts in our nation today, and in doing so they have come to occupy vast territories within our children's minds.

What's worse, far too often these insurrectionists are being given aid & comfort, enthusiastically so, by those who they are intentionally attacking.

To truly and effectively fight back, we've first got to realize that for a nation of ideas, the real battleground is not in the streets, but within the American mind, and to engage in that battle effectively, across occupied territory, we've not only got to identify and raise a standard for what is right and true, but we've also got to be able to see through their camouflage and flush them out of their hiding places, and we've got to stop making it easy for their falsehoods and lies to advance upon us, and our fellows.

That is, you might say, of critical importance.  And, hopefully not surprisingly, it's going to take several posts to sketch out.

We'll start looking at how to take away their cover and begin reclaiming our lost ground, in the next post.

Of School Board Meetings, CRT, Liars, Fools & Ideologues - AKA: 'Education'

I went to our Francis Howell School Board meeting last night, and like many others who didn't show up an hour and a half before opening, I did not get the opportunity to speak (what I intended to say is posted below). But of those who got there early enough to get their name in, was a lady who claimed that she was 'raised a good conservative', and was shocked, shocked I tell you, when she left the backwoods of Missouri and went away to college and discovered that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. We were also treated to a speech by a student currently in the 12th grade, who also claimed that she never knew that Thomas Jefferson had owned slaves until someone outside of school enlightened her. An even younger child made the same claim. A teacher also rose to inform the hall crowded with parents opposing CRT (Critical Race Theory) in FHSD's curriculum, that 'historical facts' such as these are not taught in school, and that, my dear Crackers, is why we need Critical Race Theory in our curriculum.

These people were either lying, or unintentionally condemning every teacher that they ever had, as well as their entire school system, for deliberately moving students through the grades when they should've been failed. Probably repeatedly. Find me the 'Social Studies' book that doesn't point out, and re-point out, that the author of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. Or that many founders who fought for liberty, owned slaves? That 'Social Studies' book does not exist.

It is just unbelievable the moronic lengths that supporters of CRT will go to, to divert from the actual issue - the teaching of radical left wing ideology in our schools, as if its political and anti-American ideals are 'facts' that We The People just need to 'shut up and accept it'.

What I don't believe that I've seen in any 'Social Studies' book, is one that points out how Democrat President Woodrow Wilson was a seething racist, who deliberately imposed segregation on all federal civil services and the military, or that he told an assembly of high school teachers that:

"...We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks..."

History should be uncomfortable, and yet consistently rather than engage in what the actual issues being raised are - from individual rights, to liberty and justice - The Left instead pretends that "race and/or gender" are the *real* issues. No, they're not. The real issues are that programs such as these are fundamentally unprincipled, they deliberately sow division by treating some unjustly (which deprives all of justice), and ultimately are used to advance the worst of the Left's political agenda, and there is a growing swath of non-conservative America that is now waking up to that fact.

Real History IS and should be uncomfortable, and it is impossible to engage in without seeing the ideals and assumptions and errors made by those we otherwise admire, and yet who we share much with. The history of racism gains nothing by casting the founding of America in the cartoonish light of the '1619 Project' - such cardboard cutout 'bad guys' teach nothing useful to anyone at all, and nothing but misplaced resentment can or will be learned from it. Real value and understanding - and an awakened concern towards our own personal thoughts and assumptions - requires realizing what was involved at the time of our founding in opposing matters such as the institution of slavery, and realizing how difficult (or easy) it was to live amongst. Real History requires realizing that they attempted to end 'the peculiar institution' on many occasions, that one of the litanies of complaints in the draft of the Declaration of Independence had to do with the King George's persisting it upon the colonies despite repeated objections... and honestly dealing with the fact that there was also opposition to pointing that out, and that after debate others demanded it be removed... and shamefully it was. Real History requires inquiring into the fact that although some colonies ended slavery (before Britain, BTW) with their independence, others did not. Real History requires examining and addressing the real difficulties of history, so that our shared past is able to become a History that we can all learn from. But white-washing History in juvenile black & white of efforts such as the 1619 Project, is cowardly, and not a little bit repulsive.

What has people (Conservatives, Libertarians and many on the Left as well) in knots, is what the fundamental nature of CRT is, and is derived from, that being but the most recent and most explicit development of a line of thinking that is fundamentally incompatible with, and in opposition to, the philosophical ideals that America is derived from and founded upon (see anything by Ibram X. Kendi, but especially his proposed "anti-racist" amendment to the U.S. Constitution, for reference).

As such, CRT is but the latest means for facilitating the spread of an anti-American ideology, and The Left is seeking after truly systemic power through it by means dividing people through an obsessive focus upon a racially centric consciousness. Having redefined the meaning of 'racism' into an amorphous term, its adherents brandish their public 'J'accuse!', as an ever-present threat to the civic, business and social relationships of anyone they deem to have failed to demonstrate a sufficient regard for, compliance with, and fealty to, the various tropes of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

It is disingenuous to attempt to affix (and evade) what CRT is and conveys, by saying that '*Aackshually* CRT is only what any one particular person had once proposed.

It is especially heinous that promoters of CRT use people's general desire to be decent and fair to each other, as a conduit to destroy them.

These people don't want history taught, they are liars and fools who want history replaced with ideology. At any rate, here's the speech I would have given, which, if I managed to speak really fast, should have fit into the three minutes allotted (links of course, added):

I'm here to request FHSD drop its BH curriculum, remove it's Resolution of August of last year, and for all board members resign.

1. The recently revealed zoom call between FHSD curriculum writers and the 'education' consultant LeGarret King, and their discussion of how to deceptively inject CRT (Critical Race Theory) ideology into lessons without parents knowledge;
2. The several thousand dollars spent on hiring that consultant, could not have been approved by any competent person, without their knowing of his openly expressed Marxist ideals, which no responsible person would help inject into students minds;
3. FHSD's Resolution of last August, is evidence - either of extreme negligence, or conscious awareness - that FHSD has committed to supporting the essentials of CRT indoctrination, no matter what technicalities might be cited in denial of that.

The first two points speak for themselves, the third may need some explanation. Had the Resolution stopped with the first line, that the Board

"... pledges to our learning community that we will speak firmly against any racism, discrimination, and senseless violence against people regardless of race...."

, the rest might have been overlooked. But these additional points move it beyond the pale:

• "We will promote racial healing, especially for our Black and brown students and families" - Invokes racial division and preferential or exclusionary treatment based upon race - that is not the role of 'educators'
• " creating an equitable and anti-racist system" - Is not a statement of educational ideals, but of ideologically extremist political positions, which at the very least are no more appropriate for FHSD to promote, than any Democrat, Republican or Libertarian party platforms.
• " that honors and elevates all" - There is no honoring or 'elevating all', through concepts which, without cause or evidence, condemn some based upon their racial background, and teach all others that that is acceptable thought & behavior
• "systemic racism

  • "Actual Racism not only deserves to be condemned, but has already been removed from the laws and policies of even the deepest blue Democrat states, and is already illegal in any form.
  • systemic racism, does not refer to objective evidence of racist actions, policies or laws, it is the stuff of subjective ideological assertions, accusations, and presumptions of guilt, based upon a person's race (or other indicators of 'whiteness'), which is both un-American and anti-American. You should all be removed for just that. But wait, there's more.

"the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion" - is pure SEL & CRT

• Diversity - beyond the likes of a 'Greek Food Festival', celebration, *diversity* is a non-value, the American ideal towards diversity is expressed in our motto: e Pluribus Unum, Out of Many, One - to value *Diversity* in and of itself, is irrational, ideological, and contrary to the spirit of America.
• Equity - is a Marxist value which demands that individual responsibility and merit be ignored and forcibly acted against, so as to take what belongs to one, while 'distributing' it to others in order to bring about 'equitable' outcomes (as judged by the few in power over the many).
• Inclusion - Is a collectivist term which is not urging the use of good manners in welcoming and including everyone, it explicitly means recognizing only those traits that are approved of as being representative of a group (which is itself bigotted at best), and entails actively condemning any individual choices that vary from those 'inclusive' identities, and condemns other views and disagreement, as enabling 'whiteness', or worse.

, and finally,

• "commitment to establishing, supporting, and sustaining a culture of anti- racism districtwide" - 'anti-racism' is an explicitly racist term, and racism, is something that an education should lead a student to understand to be a failure of thought and character, it is Not something that our schools should be indoctrinating them into believing and practicing.

• "We see you, we hear you, we are listening, and we are learning." That implied endorsement of BLM - a group has come out in support of Communist Cuba against the Cuban people revolting against it, which is an organization that is avowedly opposed to the nuclear family, has no business being referenced by a school board, to say nothing of the avowedly Marxist and racist nature of its founders

If in their positions as members of the Francis Howell School District School Board, the members did not know this about the nature of the Resolution they posted on behalf of all those living in their district, they show an inexcusable negligence in their duties of overseeing the education of the students in their district. If they did know that, and signed off on it - presumably agreeing with its message - they are unworthy of the positions they hold.

But to borrow the phrase, we too see you, we also hear you, and we are most definitely listening to you and are learning exactly how deplorable your judgement and actions are, and it is my fervent hope that every parent in the FHSD will immediately withdraw their children from your schools, and that every taxpayer will move to see that FHSD is defunded in every manner possible, and will also do their damndest to end your tenure on this or any board.

Thank you.