Valediction

24 Sunday May 2015

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

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As I type this bit up I am listening to several of my friends discuss the graduation of their several children from high school. It’s that time of year. All across America eighteen-year-olds are preparing to say goodbye to lifelong friends, to embrace college, to join the workforce, and to become adults. It is a joyful time.

The local fish wrapper ran, today, a separate pictorial section dedicated to our young people, their early accomplishments and their future plans. In particular the paper dwelt upon the lives and missions of the valedictorians and salutatorians of local schools. These are young men and women who are poised to go far in life.

The news calls them the “best and brightest.” By the popular measure of educational achievement, this moniker fits. However, these words are today minced in a somewhat incorrect manner. “Valedictorian” and “salutatorian” come from Latin roots – valediction and saluation. The former is a farewell, the latter a greeting.

At ceremonies coast to coast these meanings serve a justifiable purpose. The valedictorian speaks first to bid the class farewell to the sheltered academic lives the members have known. The salutatorian then speaks to the promise of the coming years. Or, something like that.

Those acquainted with the works of John Taylor Gatto or who have children of school age, surely understand the decline of quality in American public education. Gatto was formerly New York’s teacher of the year (State and City). His distinguished career spanned decades. Now he speaks and writes of the critical need for drastic school reform. His writing is frequently published at lewrockwell.com. He is the author of The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling (2000).

Gatto has related the American model of public education to Soviet-era brainwashing:

Two years before I ran across that Atlantic broadside, I encountered a different analysis in the financial magazine Forbes. I was surprised to discover Forbes had correctly tracked the closest inspiration for school psychologizing, both its aims and its techniques, to the pedagogy of China and the Soviet Union. Not similar practices and programs, mind you, identical ones. The great initial link with Russia, I knew, had been from the Wundtian Ivan Pavlov, but the Chinese connection was news to me. I was unaware then of John Dewey’s tenure there in the 1920s, and had given no thought, for that reason, to its possible significance:

The techniques of brainwashing developed in totalitarian countries are routinely used in psychological conditioning programs imposed on school children. These include emotional shock and desensitization, psychological isolation from sources of support, stripping away defenses, manipulative cross-examination of the individual’s underlying moral values by psychological rather than rational means. These techniques are not confined to separate courses or programs…they are not isolated idiosyncracies of particular teachers. They are products of numerous books and other educational materials in programs packaged by organizations that sell such curricula to administrators and teach the techniques to teachers. Some packages even include instructions on how to deal with parents and others who object. Stripping away psychological defenses can be done through assignments to keep diaries to be discussed in group sessions, and through role-playing assignments, both techniques used in the original brainwashing programs in China under Mao.

The Forbes writer, Thomas Sowell, perhaps invoking the slave states in part to rouse the reader’s capitalist dander, could hardly have been aware himself how carefully industrial and institutional interest had seeded Russia, China, Japan, and the Pacific Islands with the doctrine of psychological schooling long ago, nearly at the beginning of the century, and in Japan’s case even before that. All along we have harvested these experimental growths in foreign soil for what they seem to prove about people-shaping.

– Gatto, The Empty Child, Chapter 13 of The Underground History of American Public Education (2000).

“Slaves,” “people-shaping,” and “brainwashing” are alarming and damning. However, from my experience I find them succient and apt discriptions of American education.

I was lucky growing up. I had a slew of teachers, older and steeped in the traditions of real education – the old school way, who actually dared and cared to teach. I remember them fondly. Also, in high school, college and graduate school I possessed a hard-headed resilience and independence which plagues me to this day. You may sense in my writing.

Today schools are little more than prisons crossbred with day care centers. Our children are marched around like cattle by overweight nitwits. They are subjected to communist indoctrination and cultural immorality. State-worship is everywhere. Rules must be obeyed perfectly. Freakism of every strip is revered. God is banned from the building.

In all this idiocy the one thing missing is teaching – learning and educational experiment are vacant in our public schools. They are unwanted qualities among the people. As George Carlin used to say, the system wants people just smart enough to operate the machines and file the paper – they do not want educated people capable of free thought or consideration.

By the grace of God Almightly the “best and brightest” are often times exempted from this nonesense. Many possess those rebellious traits I hold dear. Many are allowed to pursue real studies in real academic subjects. These are statistical outliers. The other children, the majority, are treated like sheep and criminals.

A boy in West Virginian was recently ARRESTED for wearing a t-shirt which expressed support for the NRA and the Second Amendment. No-one was bothered by the shirt. The lad harmed none. However, the Second Amendment representing the last hope of freedom for oppressed people (like students), the shirt had to be banned and demonized. In an overreaction typical of modern schools administrators, the teacher and principal called the local Gestapo. The child was led away in handcuffs – for wearing a shirt.

The charges were later dismissed by an honest judge. However, great damage has been done. The boy’s mother is suing the school for violating her son’s civil rights. Go mama!

Long ago, public schools had civics classes. In those classes the Constitution, its traditions and foundations were taught. This included the second amendment and the necessary right and obligation of rebellion against tyranny. Revolution was celebrated. Today, as best I can gather, such thought or instruction would constitute a criminal offense. Our babes are taught the government is the end all and be all of human existence. Its supremacy and place must never be challenged.

This is a crime, in and of itself, equal with all the positive modern instruction concerning dependence, homosexuality, death culture, etc. Anything goes and is okay, our children are taught, so long as it does not make any sense. I imagine that math, being completely based on absolute truth, is completely absent from the new schools. Robots and foreigners can always add for us. This subtracts from the ability of our people to independently endure. It cries out for vengeance. Most ears are deaf to that cry.

Back to our new graduates … the fish-wrapper relayed to its readers how a valedictorian and salutatorian of a local high school treated their classmates to the verse and wisdom of Dr. Seuss. This is a commonality in schools these days. Oh, the places you’ll go… This small child’s book was read, in part, in one of my law classes. Maybe it was at our graduation. It was foolish and inappropriate.

(Dr. Seuss, keeping children and adults shit stupid since 1937. Google.)

What kind of world is it when the words of Jesus, Jefferson and Cicero are absent and replaced by the sophomoric rhymes of the kindergarten? Seuss is the level of the new school – childish, pointless, and optimistically vacuous.

Were I permitted to address a graduating class I too would present a Seuss book. I would introduce the Cat in the Hat. I would then rip it in half, throw it on the floor and proceed to tell the children that they were, that day, freed from one form of government oppression. I would congratulate them for surviving without arrest records. I would then extol them of the crucial importance of real learning. Never let schooling interfere with education. Never let education interfere with learning. Question everything. Accept no mastery. Put down with brutality that slavery prepared for your adult lives. I would never be invited back again.

Before I wrote about my experience in college and in law school. I ridiculed myself for opportunities lost and the system for lack of substance. Schooling is what one makes of it. I hope our future generations grasp this. I hope they reject the new theories of dumbed-down complacency. I hope they prosper. Congratulations to the Class of 15.

Interposition, Nullification, and Secession

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by perrinlovett in Uncategorized

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Last year I started this humble blog with a short column on the unGodly ObamaCare decision from the Supreme Court, https://perrinlovett.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/the-shared-responsibility-tax-obamacare-a-hit-with-the-supremes-4/. ObamaCare is not about healthcare for anyone. It is merely an Insurance Company welfare scheme with taxes that no-one knew were taxes (not even Obama) and bankruptcy-inducing mandates.

At the end of that early missive I promised to cover possible solutions to the mounting problem of federal tyranny. Specifically, I named interposition, nullification, and secession as possibilities. Let’s talk about those now, briefly.

Well, first let’s see how the Republicans did with reversing the law as they boasted they would. I recall some GOPer saying they would overturn the nightmarish law before the Supremes even got to rule on it. Didn’t happen. After the ruling they said they would eliminate the massive tax act before their chosen man, Mittens Romney, the founder of the ObamaCare School of Medicine, won the election. None of that happened either. With the nation staring down the barrel of a potentially economy-wrecking gun, they said they would stop the law before it took effect on January 1st of this year. Having proven themselves to be lying, delusional idiots, we can write off the buffoons of the Elaphantitis party.

Back to my proposals – I’ll take them in the order I first set forth, as that seems to be the hierarchy from least to most extreme.

Interposition

Interposition is a process whereby a State of the American Union declares an Act of Congress or some other federal action to be UnConstitutional and positions itself as a shield between the feds and the citizens of the State. Wikipedia says that the federal courts have held this an illegitimate theory and that only they have the power of Constitutional review – “Judicial Review.” See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interposition. Wiki doesn’t mention it by name, but the theory of Judicial Review originated, federally speaking, in the case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803). Maybe you’ve heard of this landmark case, students of “Constitutional Law” are taught to revere it. I was never impressed.

First, this was one of a shady series of early Supreme Court cases concerning personal profits unfit for court review at all. Second, if this case did deserve formal investigation and resolution, then such should have been undertaken by the political branches whom the matter concerned anyway. Third, and most importantly, judicial review by the federal courts is a legal fiction. Nowhere in the Constitution is the right granted the courts to rule so authoritatively on our laws. Had the Framers intended such power, they would have written it in; several State Constitutions do grant this power to State Courts (Georgia, for example).

I do not withhold the ability of any court to say a law is UnConstitutional. Courts should point such out when discovered. In fact, any branch may make that determination. President Bush, the Dimmer, said that the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance law was UnConstitutional, then signed it anyway. Before that, obviously, Congress had deliberated on the law and must have sensed its illegality. Bush remarked that the Supreme Court would have to make the ultimate determination. They did. Ironically, the Court essentially said (and rightly) the law concerned only the political branches and since both had approved the measure, they would too out of deference. I had an outrageously humorous “discussion” about this fiasco with a political celebrity in 2004; I’ll relate that in a future post. This was a case of government gone wild. Of the three branches, law-making is the art of Congress; correcting bad laws is also.

Anyone who can read and think can declare a law within or without the bounds of the Constitution. I do it all the time. However, my power of enforcement is rather weak to say the least. The theory of interposition, and that of nullification, comes from the ability of the States to so declare a law. Their power is greater than mine and their authority is a bit more grounded than that of the Courts. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” U.S. Const., Amendment 10. UnConstitutional laws are those based in authority which is not among those very few expressly Constitutionally delegated powers of the national government ,and thus, are within the purview of the States to affect. The Tenth Amendment’s reference to “the people” is as fuzzy a concept as anything else in man’s law. Ultimately, under our form of republican government, the people have the final say on authority as exercised by their voting. The people prove time and again to be useless guardians of their own liberties.

Interposition was made famous long ago by the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (1798), which declared the States’ ability to invalidate federal law. The practice was used to various effect in the 1800’s. Times have changed dramatically (for the worse) since that Century, with the States giving away a great deal of their former power. There was also the matter of the war between the States which decided by force and murder, rather than by law, some of these issues.

Nullification

Nullification is essentially Interposition but with an added declaration by a State or States they will not enforce a federal law or allow enforcement within their territory. This theory was set forth also by the afore-noted Resolutions. It has been erroneously dismissed by the courts. And, it would seem to reside in a previous time. The theory has raised its head recently though, as it does from time to time. A few States have begun to void federal laws in principle at least. Montana, for example, has decided that certain federal firearms laws do not apply within the Montana state lines. It remains to be seen whether Montana or other modern States will actually take any action necessary to give life to their declarations.

In the old days, States did just that. The 19th Century was repeat with State and local agents boldly denying the federal government on certain matters. When a federal agent or officer appeared to enforce a particular objectionable action, the locals would run the fellow out of town on a rail, literally sometimes. A great read on the subject is Thomas Woods’s Nullification (2010), http://www.amazon.com/Nullification-Resist-Federal-Tyranny-Century/dp/1596981490.

Again, with the demise of State power and authority in general (see the 16th and 17th Amendments, etc.) the plausibility of nullification seems a dim prospect.

Secession

Dimmer still, is the ultimate practice of State dissent. The original 13 colonies of England, once they had declared their independence from the King, became 13 independent nations. They joined together to fight the Revolutionary War and then entered into a Federation for mutual benefit. A federation is a group of sovereign entities which come together for some purpose; they remain sovereign. The Constitution changed none of this. No language therein makes the federal union permanent and eternally binding upon the member States.

Should a State find itself at unacceptable odds with the central government, it has the power to dissolve its connections and become a completely separate nation again. Several State assemblies expressly said so when they ratified the Constitution. This is in complete keeping with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, just substitute U.S.A. for King George, III.

Again, and again and again, the States have not only given up power to Washington over the years, they have also become somewhat dependent on D.C. and tend to exhibit a slavish loyalty thereto. This all renders the prospect of a State succeeding in the 21st Century remote. There are secessionist movements in some States, like the Free Vermont Republic. The FVR even has its own flag, but little chance of success.

There is also the specter of Mr. Lincoln’s illegal war. The war decided nothing formally or legally. Wars are not rational undertaking, just pure contests of military power. Since 1865 the several States have all but abandoned their military power while Washington has assembled the most awesome and dreaded arsenal in the history of mankind. While secession remains a perfectly legal option, the odds of success do not favor the States.

Where We Are

In today’s political climate none of these three solutions are likely to receive formal discussion by the several States, let alone action. Deprived of legal and political solutions, what then are we to do?

Some people with means are beginning to leave the United States for smaller, freer countries. I do not begrudge them their decisions. However, I do not like the idea of being run out of my homeland and into a foreign country where, as history dictates, anything can and will happen. In a way, I would rather stay and face the devil I know here.

There is always the ability of the States or of Congress to call for a new Constitutional Amendment or even a Convention wherein objectionable laws might be remedied. Amendments are hard to pass these days. It’s hard to get Congress or the legislature of any State to act productively or intelligently. Honestly, the idea of a new Constitutional Convention scares me. While one could hypothetically end with great advances in Liberty, such as returning to the Articles of Confederation or just eliminating the national government completely, I fear, given the weakness of the people and their representatives, we could end up with something far worse. Imagine 1984, Farenheit 451, Nazi Germany and the old Soviet Union all rolled into one!

Every two years or so the citizens of the States have the opportunity to turn out at least a third of the federal government’s elected morons. The power to change the government lies with the people by their dismissing representatives who do not do their bidding. The people must not be aware of this authority or else, they must approve of their government as is. Options grow thin.

Time will eventually change everything. 5,000 years from now most people living won’t remember the United States. Given the self-destructive tendencies of our government, it is likely we need not wait that long. Either way, awaiting the inevitable collapse of leviathan, like expectations of the end of days, is tedious at best.

I’ll see if I can come up with something else more actionable. You work on it too.