Obama to College Students: ‘Reject These Voices’ That Warn of Big Government & Tyranny
A year to the day after kicking off his
re-election campaign at Ohio State University, President Barack Obama
returned to the college campus and told graduates that only through
vigorous participation in their “democracy” can they right an
ill-functioning government and break through relentless cynicism about
the nation’s future.
“I dare you, Class of 2013, to do better. I dare you to do better,” Obama said.
In a sunbaked stadium filled with more
than 57,000 students, friends and relatives, Obama lamented an American
political system that gets consumed by “small things” and works for the
benefit of society’s elite. He called graduates to duty to “accomplish
great things,” like rebuilding a still-feeble economy and fighting
poverty and climate change.
“Only you can ultimately break that
cycle. Only you can make sure the democracy you inherit is as good as we
know it can be,” the president told more than 10,000 cap-and-gown-clad
graduates. “But it requires your dedicated, informed and engaged
citizenship.”
Obama also urged the students to “reject these voices” that warn of the evils of government, saying:
Still, you’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule is just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.
We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems, nor do we want it to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government.[...]
The cynics may be the loudest voices—but they accomplish the least. It’s the silent disruptors—those who do the long, hard, committed work of change—that gradually push this country in the right direction, and make the most lasting difference. [Emphasis added]
Invoking the end of the Cold War, 9/11
and the economic recession, Obama said this generation has already been
tested beyond what their parents could have imagined. But he said young
Americans have responded with a deep commitment to service and a
conviction that they can improve their surroundings. He urged graduates
to run for office, start a business or join a cause, contending that the
health of their democracy “requires your dedicated, informed and
engaged citizenship.”
Ohio State also bestowed an honorary
doctorate on Obama, applauding his “unwavering belief in the ability to
unite people around a politics of purpose.”
Obama’s other two commencement
speeches this season will be later in May at the U.S. Naval Academy in
Annapolis, Md., and at Morehouse College, an all-male school in Atlanta.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/05/obama-to-college-students-reject-these-voices-that-warn-of-big-government-tyranny/
Celebrate These Voices
Our grand "Campaigner in Chief" Barack Obama had these words for the graduates of Ohio State University on May 5, 2013.Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted.Had any of these graduates read and understood the words of the founders of the United States of America that afforded them the freedom to pursue their dreams, they would absolutely reject President Obama's admonition to "reject these voices". The voices of the Founders resounded with a muliplicity of warnings against trusting government. Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14 in 1781 warned:
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.Perhaps James Madison in his speech at the Virginia State Conventionon Dec. 2, 1829 said it even better.
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe . . . Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.Reject these voices"? No Mr. President, celebrate these voices, for in them lies the nature of the liberty our forefathers bequeathed this Nation.
The Benghazi Big Lie
...The President suppressed Benghazi for political purposes. He does not believe in the concept of Islamist radicalism, it seems. It is not just the fiasco in handling the attack, for that is what it was. We were warned long beforehand. We even removed a heavily armed security detail put in Libya for exactly the chance of a terrorist attack just weeks prior to Benghazi.
It is that the President of the United States used all of the tools of power and conspired with his colleagues to propagate the Big Lie. It is a clear case of perjury. Of conspiracy. Of obstruction of justice.
In 1972 even Republicans were taken aback as the Watergate conspiracy unfolded before the country. A president was forced to resign. The Senate asked "What did he know and when did he know it?"
Now, confronted with the unnecessary deaths of four valorous citizens, a President stands before us having been responsible for the minimization of the threat from Al Q'aeda; for leaving the helm at 5:00pm as the victims were still fighting for their lives; for blaming an obscure video; for creating a mythology about that video; for altering official documents to cover up the reasons for the attack; and for covering up that attack in the face of all of the facts.
What kind of man does this? What kind of Secretary of State did this? What kind of Administration engages in the most base lies?
And what kind of People accepts this conduct?
Is there anything related to Benghazi that could get the president impeached?
Short answer - not yet. For all the words spread around recently about impeaching Obama over Benghazi, there is a curious ommission made in every single article and blog post I've read that advocates or predicts that Obama will be impeached.They all seem to be missing the words "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Yes, I know - that silly Constitution seems to get in the way of our fun. But in order to impeach a president, you can't just connect a few dots and proclaim conspiracy. There must be proof - hard proof that would stand up in a court of law - and I haven't seen anything yet that remotely reaches that tough standard.
Mike Huckabee disagrees:
"I believe that before it's all over, this president will not fill out his full term. I know that puts me on a limb," the former Arkansas governor said on "The Mike Huckabee Show." "But this is not minor. It wasn't minor when Richard Nixon lied to the American people and worked with those in his administration to cover-up what really happened in Watergate. But, I remind you -- as bad as Watergate was, because it broke the trust between the president and the people, no one died. This is more serious because four Americans did in fact die."
Huckabee, however, said his predication about Obama "will not happen" if the Democrats seize control of the House and retain control of the Senate next year.
"If they're able to get control of the House and maintain the Senate, this will not happen because they won't let it happen," Huckabee said.
"And they won't let it happen not because they're protecting just the president, they're trying to protect their entire political party. If they try to protect the president and their party, and do so at the expense of the truth, their president and their party will go down. Now, here's what I'm going to suggest will happen -- as the information and facts begin to come out, it will become so obvious that there was a concerted and very, very deliberate attempt to mislead this country and its people to lie to Congress, as well as to you."
And as the truth about the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi emerges, Huckabee said, "they will have lost the right to govern."
"The highest levels of people in the United States government all the way up to the president knew that what they did tell us was not true," he said. "And they continued to tell it throughout an election season and beyond, and they've tried to change the subject. And when the facts come out, they will not be able to stand. They will have lost the right to govern."
What happened with Benghazi is not a "political issue" -- "this goes all the way to the heart of the integrity of the United States government," Huckabee said.Impeach a president for lying to the American people? Lying under oath is one thing. But if we impeached a presdient every time he lied to us, they wouldn't last 6 months in office.
We don't yet know what the president was told. Paul Mirengoff at Powerline thinks that Hillary Clinton should be held responsible:
When it first became clear that the CIA's Benghazi talking points had been altered, many of us viewed the White House as the prime suspect. After all, it served President Obama's political purposes to claim, at the height of a political campaign in which he was taking credit for the fall of al Qaeda, that the death of a U.S. ambassador was down to spontaneous outrage over a video, rather than pre-planned terrorism.
It turns out, however, that the State Department was the prime culprit. It was State that pushed back hard against the original talking points. The White House, probably for the political reason cited above, took its side.
Why did State want the talking points changed? Because it had ignored warnings about rising terrorist activity in Libya and had reduced security rather than beefing it up, as our embassy requested.
Under these circumstances, it would not do to attribute the Benghazi killings to the terrorism about which top State Department officials had been warned. Much better to lump what happened in Libya together with the protests that occurred in Egypt, and thereby characterize it as a demonstration that went too far, rather than premeditated terrorism.
Was Hillary Clinton directly involved in this cover-up? It's difficult to see how she could not have been.Indeed, Stephen Hayes' fantastic article on the talking points doesn't absolve the president, but certainly puts the lion's share of the blame on Clinton.
Put simply, there is no legal case for impeachment at this time. We just don't know enough to make any kind of legal determination that would lead to a House impeachment inquiry.
To get to the bottom of this matter, a select committee of both House and Senate members should be convened with subpoena power to compel administration officials to testify under oath. Only after carefully gathering all the facts can any kind of judgment be made about the president.
That's the constitutional way. And that's the way it should be done.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/is_there_anything_related_to_benghazi_that_could_get_the_president_impeached.html#ixzz2ScN61u8O
Teens Decide to Fight Back Against Anti-Christian Bullies
Late last year, a public school teacher in northern Idaho told students to write an essay titled, “I Believe.” But there was one caveat – the students were not allowed to write anything about God in their papers.That act of religious censorship prompted a group of Christian students to start asking questions – and those questions led to the creation of a video that addresses Christian bullying in public schools.
“There is a lot of bullying directed at Christian kids in public schools and the culture at large,” said Gary Brown, founder of Reach America. “So many teenagers are being ostracized for being a Christian.”
Reach America is a national organized based in Coeur d’Alene, Id., that is dedicated to raising up the next generation of Christian leaders. The group is comprised of young people from various churches around the region.
Brown said they decided to produce a video based on the debate that came about after the school teacher refused to allow students to mention God in their papers.
“One of the girls asked why,” Brown told Fox News. “It turned into a video where Christianity is being frozen out of the American culture. These teenagers say it’s time for a thaw.”
The video features teenagers asking basic questions – “Why can’t I pray in school? Why do I Have to check my religion in at the door? Why am I called names because I believe in marriage the way God designed it?”
As one student remarked, “People who do not love our God have stolen our country.” The students proclaim they want to “make America one nation under God – again.”
Last April, a group of Christian teenagers was heckled and reduced to tears after they were publicly berated by “anti-bullying” expert Dan Savage.
Savage was delivering an address at a national student journalism conference when he started attacking the Bible. As a group of Christian teens got up to leave, he called them “pansy-assed.”
“You can tell the Bible guys in the hall they can come back now because I’m done beating up the Bible,” Savage said as other students hollered and cheered. “It’s funny as someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible how pansy-assed people react when you push back.”
It’s that kind of bullying that Reach America is hoping to stop.
Brown said they are genuinely shocked at how a video produced by two dozen teenagers in Idaho has reached a national audience.
“Churches have shown it in worship services and during youth group meetings,” he said. “It strikes a chord.”
Brown said they’ve heard reports from across the country of Christian young people called “bigots” and “close-minded” because of their faith in God. “If you mention anything about Christ or if people know you are a Christian – you get laughed at.”
Brown, a graduate of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, has a long history of working on culture issues. Reach America started in 2006 while he was working on abstinence education on Capitol Hill.
His goal is to create what he calls a “Christ-Centered Counter Culture” – or C4 – to impact their communities and the nation.
“They think they are in a war for the heart and soul of the nation,” Brown said.
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/teens-decide-to-fight-back-against-anti-christian-bullies.html
Term Limits: Enough Is Enough
A libertarian friend, when asked about term limits, replied that if he had to make a choice he would opt against them, regardless of how many years one candidate had been in office. People should have the right, it was his opinion, to elect whomever they choose. It is a worthy sentiment, and was obviously the intent of the founders. But times were different. Public service, in the first years of the Republic, was seen as an avocation rather than a vocation. It was something one did after a successful career in some other field. People did not live as long in those days. Life expectancy in 1800 was about 40 years; though if one survived to 20 one could expect to live into their late 50s. Today, we live twenty years longer. Also, before the advent of the railroad, Washington was a difficult place to get to; thus serving in Congress often meant long absences from home.Nevertheless, a precedent for term limits was established by George Washington when he decided, like Cincinnatus, to give up the Presidency after two terms and return to his farm at Mount Vernon. Keep in mind that Washington, as the nation’s first President, was acutely aware of the precedents he was setting.
Following FDR’s bid for a lifetime Presidency, the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951, limiting any President to two elected terms. Forty states have term limits on governors, while fifteen states limit their state legislators. The fear of elected officials being in office too long is palpable among many. Yale classicist Donald Kagan, in a recent Wall Street Journal interview and quoting Thucydides, said, “…you can expect people whatever they may be to maximize their power.” That is certainly true of Congress today.
Democracy is fragile. It can easily be lost. In fact, there are those like Plato and Aristotle who believed that democracy inevitably leads to tyranny. Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress can bribe the public with the public’s money.” If that is so, we are on a downward slope. With half the electorate no longer subject to federal income taxes and with entitlements consuming almost half the budget, we are in the midst of an enormous wealth transfer. In the Journal piece, Professor Kagan argued that the American will has been weakened by the concept that government will always be our backstop. While many of us believe that some level of entitlement spending is necessary in a compassionate society, it is a question of how much and who are the recipients. Whatever one’s opinion, there should be no doubt in the public’s mind that wealth transfer is underway and what its ultimate consequences may be. The transfer is aided and abetted by politicians who speak of duty and service, but in fact seek sustained personal power.
Democracy respects freedom as a value to be treasured, not as a right to be surrendered in return for the provision of more comforts. The inherent rights of individuals are recognized under democracy, which assumes that people are willing to take responsibility for their actions. Democracy implies self-reliance and a lack of dependency on government, yet the transfer of wealth infers greater dependency. Democracy depends upon the goodwill of the people, the willingness to live within the law, and it assumes leaders recognize that power is ephemeral and that it will be ceded to others when their term in office is up.
British historian and moralist, Lord
Acton once wrote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts
absolutely.” We see that in our country with the two-way street between K
Street and Capital Hill. It is the increasing and demanding role of
money in politics that is the handmaiden of cronyism. Running for
national office requires vast amounts of money, thereby making
officeholders beholden to benefactors. It has always been so, but it has
become more pronounced. There are those who look at the spending and
say we need campaign finance reform. We do, but imposing money limits on
a nation represented by creative, but often slippery, lawyers will
never work. Just look at McCain-Feingold. What we can do is demand more
transparency. Sunshine is an effective disinfectant for money and
politics. The Left blames Citizen United, but the better answer is to
require that individual names be disclosed for any gift in excess of
$1000 from individuals, partnerships, unions or corporations, no matter
whether the gift goes to a candidate, Party or PAC. But, we can also
limit the number of terms anyone may serve in Congress, thereby
neutering the potential for corruption.
According to a recent MSNBC report, the
cost of waging a successful Senatorial campaign in 2012 was $10.5
million, with newly elected Elizabeth Warren the queen of spenders,
laying out $42.5 million! The cost of a House seat was $1.7 million. In
2008, the respective comparisons were $6.5 million and $1.1 million,
reflecting increases far in excess of inflation. Regardless of the fact
that more money is being spent on campaigns, incumbency has been
increasing. According to a 2011 study by Congressional Research Service,
the trend in average service tenures for both Senators and
Representatives has been increasing since the end of World War II.
In the 104th Congress (1995-1996), 14% of Senators had served more than 16 years. By the 111th Congress (2009-2011) 18% had served more than 16 years.
When Democrats passed Obamacare in 2009
they tried repeatedly to exempt themselves and their key assistants. It
was deemed “heretical,” according to the Wall Street Journal,
when Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) suggested politicians should obey the
laws they write. In the past month, Politico broke the story that
Senate leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD) were in hush-hush
talks to exempt themselves and their staff from Obamacare. Caught, the
talks came to naught. Mr. Reid and Mr. Hoyer now claim they just wanted
their staffs to be ensured of receiving the generous subsidies of
current plans. So would we all.
It is beyond shocking, for example, that someone like Anthony Weiner, a pervert of the first magnitude, could be taken seriously as a candidate for Mayor of New York. As a man who was once close to the puppeteers in Washington, he has cashed in on his connections. He claims to be making more money than he ever did. He concludes: “I am a good capitalist.” His very statement is indicative of how distant Washington has become from the real world. A good capitalist is an entrepreneur who starts with an idea that emerges into a thriving business, one that hires people, pays taxes and contributes to society. Weiner has been a taker, trading on the names in his Rolodex. He is neither an entrepreneur nor a capitalist. He is a blood sucker.
One can argue that in politics we get what we deserve. As a compassionate people, we are quick to forgive transgressions. But we should all understand that no politician is entitled to office because of his years in office, his name, or fortune. We have created a class of professional politicians who have become immensely wealthy on the basis of cronyism. Name recognition has allowed sons and daughters to effectively inherit seats. Congressional compensation is not designed to make a member wealthy. According to the Congressional Research Service, Senators and Representatives are paid $174,000 – not enough to keep them in the Armani suits so many wear. Their benefits, however, are very generous. Each Congressman is provided a Members’ Representational Allowance (MRA) that pays for staffing and other expenses. For Representatives that averaged $1,353,205 in 2012, while for Senators the average was $3,209,103. And we all know that lobbyists and various PACs offset other expenses. To pick on Harry Reid once again, the Senate Majority leader has spent all but two of the last 47 years in public office, yet he has a net worth estimated to be about $5 million. Either he is the thriftiest man alive, or he has developed a symbiotic relationship with cronies in Nevada.
The interim Senatorial election in Massachusetts shows a sharp demarcation between two different types and perhaps an indication of the direction the country is headed. After almost forty years in the House, sixty-six year old Democrat Edward Markey wants to top off his first career with a second in the Senate. Opposing him is forty-seven year old Republican Gabriel Gomez. Mr. Gomez is a Harvard MBA, private equity executive and former U.S. Navy Seal, with no previous political experience. He has endorsed term limits. There is little question that tens of millions will be spent determining Massachusetts’ next Senator, with most of it being spent by Mr. Markey.
In a perfect world, term limits would not be the preferred path, but enough is enough. Something must be done to return decency, integrity and civility to politics – to move us away from a cronyism that threatens to snuff out democracy. Limits of six terms in the House and two in the Senate would better serve the American public. Twelve years is roughly a quarter of an adult’s working career, meaning that candidates would more often come from the real world, not the place of fairy tales that sits alongside the Potomac. More people would serve in public office. There would be less time to develop unhealthy relationships that too often breed cronyism. The sense of entitlement that envelops so many in Washington would dissipate.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/06/Term-Limits-Enough-is-Enough
U.S. Spending $100K to 'Increase Knowledge of Ethical Behavior'-- Among ATV Drivers
The federal government will spend $100,000 over five years on a Bureau of Land Management program to "increase knowledge of ethical behavior" among people using off-road vehicles.“The purpose of this project is to increase knowledge of and conformance with the Utah Ride On Campaign message, and reduce incidents involving property and natural resource damage, unsafe practices, visitor conflicts and enhance access to public lands by improving recreationists’ behavior knowledge of ethical behavior among recreationists on BLM lands,” the grant description said.
The main objective of the campaign is to “maintain and enhance access to public lands by improving recreationists’ behavior, increase knowledge of ethical behavior among recreationists on public lands,” and “reduce incidents involving property and natural resource damage, unsafe practices, visitor conflicts.”
Another objective of the grant is to “meet the primary goals identified in the Utah Interagency Off Highway Vehicle Steering Committee Communications Plan, which are promote safe operation of OHVs, promote ethical uses of OHVs, and minimize resource damage from the inappropriate use of OHVs.”
According to the statement of joint objectives/project management plan, partners are expected to decrease the number of resource damage incidents statewide from OHV activities, increase involvement of OHV user groups in trail patrol efforts statewide by 50% by 2017, increase user awareness of authorized riding opportunities statewide by 50% by 2017, and increase user awareness and understanding of the Ride on Designated Routes concept statewide by 50% by 2017.
The grant, which was announced April 5, will close on April 29. The project is expected to run June 1, 2013 to May 31, 2018. Calls to the Bureau of Land Management were not returned at press time.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-spending-100k-increase-knowledge-ethical-behavior-among-atv-drivers
State Department Stonewall
Judicial Watch files suit for State Dept. docs tied to controversial speech
Judicial Watch filed suit against the State Department April 26 in an effort to compel the release of materials related to the potential recruitment of U.S. diplomats through two Muslim-American groups purported to have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist groups.
The suit, which was announced Thursday, alleges that State has failed to comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for detailed documents related to Ward’s speech, in which he discussed “foreign service opportunities for Muslim youth.”
Both MAS and ICNA have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the global Islamist movement that controls the Egyptian government and whose military wing, the terror group Hamas, runs the Gaza Strip. The conference at which Ward spoke featured speeches by at least two Muslim activists who have advocated in favor of terrorism and were involved in a 2009 lawsuit regarding fundraising for Hamas.
Judicial Watch initially filed its FOIA request on Jan. 31. It sought to compel the release of “any and all records regarding the participation of Mr. Mark S. Ward, Deputy Special Coordinator in the Office of Middle East Transition, in the 11th Annual Convention of the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Council of North America in Chicago, IL in December 2012,” according to the lawsuit.
Judicial Watch also requested “any and all records of communication between any official or employee of the Department of State and any official, employee, or representative of the Muslim American Society and/or the Islamic Council of North America.”
The State Department failed to respond to the FOIA by March 7, as the law dictates. It has continued to ignore Judicial Watch’s ongoing requests.
Ward “conducted a seminar focused on career opportunities for Muslim youth” during his appearance at the conference, according to Judicial Watch’s Weekly Update, which published a description on the event on Friday.
“Besides being a citizenship duty, there are benefits that Muslims can add to the American Muslim community and the global Muslim world by joining the U.S. Foreign Services,” according to the event’s description.
“This session will shed light on the different career opportunities for Muslim youth in the US. Foreign Services Department. It will also clear any concerns that many people have feared about pursuing in this career.”
Judicial Watch maintains that Ward’s participation in the event is part of the Obama administration’s wider effort to court the Muslim community while ignoring certain groups’ ties to Islamic extremism.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the Boston Marathon bombings provide a disturbing context for the State Department’s recruitment efforts.
“The Boston Marathon bombing shows why it is dangerous for a high-ranking State Department official to join with terrorist front groups to recruit for government employment,” Fitton said in a statement. “It is a scandal; which explains why we’ve had to sue in federal court to get past the cover-up of what exactly took place at the recruitment conference.”
Ward participated in the 2012 conference with several controversial figures who have ties to radical Muslim groups and Hamas.
One speaker, Kifah Mustapha, has reportedly advocated for violent jihad. He also was cited in a lawsuit as a paid fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a Muslim charity that was shut down by the federal government for funneling money to Hamas.
HLF was ultimately convicted on more than 100 counts of supporting terrorism and funneling millions to Hamas.
“Also at the podium with Ward was MAS co-founder and Muslim Brotherhood leader Jamal Badawi,” who was cited as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF case, Judicial Watch stated in a press release. Badawi in 2009 was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against the HLF and who praised the jihad of Gaza terrorists during a speech titled “Understanding Jihad and Martyrdom.”
“With Ward and Badawi were Ayman Hammous and Oussama Jammal,” Judicial Watch added. “Hammous is the Executive Director of the New York chapter of MAS and Jammal is the president of the Mosque Foundation, an extremist Islamist mosque in Bridgeview, Illinois, that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the HLF and other Islamic charities accused of financing terrorism.”
A State Department spokesman did not respond to a Washington Free Beacon request for comment about the lawsuit.
http://freebeacon.com/state-department-stonewall/
Teacher stomps on an American flag, get $85,000 settlement
How's your outrage quotient today? A teacher in South Carolina who stomped on an American flag to demonstrate freedom in America and subsequently was forced to resign, has agreed not to press a legal challenge in his case in return for a settlement of $85,000.Lexington-Richland 5 paid former Chapin High teacher Scott Compton √ $85,000 to avoid a legal challenge, part of a settlement that led to his resignation after he stomped on an American flag during a class lesson.
The payment is on top of Compton's salary that will be paid through June 7, even though he has been out of the classroom since December. School officials did not provide Compton's salary Monday, but their plan pays teachers with his 12 years' experience $43,340 to $59,647 a year.
Lexington-Richland 5 taxpayers also will foot the bill for more than $31,500 in attorney fees, records obtained by The State newspaper under a state Freedom of Information Act request show.
The $85,000 payment was described as "a compromise and resolution of disputed claims," the records say.
It was not disclosed as part of Compton's resignation, announced March 27, a decision that the settlement says is for "family and personal reasons" not spelled out.
"Prior to his resignation, attorneys for Mr. Compton informed district attorneys that he had prepared a complaint for filing in federal court," Lexington-Richland 5 spokesman Mark Bounds said.
"Based on financial considerations related to anticipated legal fees to defend such a suit, the insurer made the decision to make a monetary (offer) to Mr. Compton. He accepted the offer."Stomping on an American flag is not the way most of us would have demonstrated how free we are in the US. Let's face it - the teacher jumped the shark by doing so. Defacing, burning, or otherwise mutilating the flag is not a criminal act because, as the teacher explained at the time through his lawyer:
Compton's lawyer says he stomped the flag to show the idea of what America stands for is greater than the material objects like the flag that represent it and that the teacher did not intend to show any disrespect to military members to the country.This is true. But there are other ways to demonstrate the concept without the teacher personally disrespecting the flag.
By any measure of justice, the teacher should not have been paid $85,000 just to avoid a legal battle. He's getting his salary anyway so the "settlement" is just gravy.
Maybe he could donate the 85 grand to the ACLU.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/teacher_stomps_on_an_american_flag_get_85000_settlement.html#ixzz2ScLmG2QJ
The Soul Abstracted from Life
Modern civilization willingly consigns almost all of its children to the living hell of forced retardation. Everyone knows the educational establishment is beset with problems, corruptions, and the downward ratchet of lowest common denominator standards. And yet parents continue to send their children to government schools, hoping, perhaps even half-believing, that this will not significantly harm the children's adult lives. They are dead wrong. What follows is an anatomical diagram of mankind's greatest shame.The primary purpose of all government-controlled education -- regardless of how this is expressed by particular defenders of the enterprise -- is to produce the kind of citizens the government sees as best suited to its established form of governance. By "the government," I mean those people and factions within the political infrastructure who are in a position to determine the long-term structure and interests of the community as a whole. Since public education, in the modern sense of government-run schools employing government-trained teachers, is a project that would likely only be undertaken in the first place by people who believe government can manage people's private interests better than they can do for themselves, it is all but inevitable that the kind of citizen such a system will be designed to produce will be one who believes implicitly in the necessity of government as a direct social and moral regulator, and for whom the superior understanding of government in determining the proper course of an individual's life is generally presumed.
Thus far, I am assuming a relatively benign government, with semi-reasonable, if presumptuous, goals. What happens, however, when the political community is infiltrated by men with less noble intentions? -- amoral manipulators who crave more authority than their predecessors considered acceptable, and who seek to establish laws, attitudes and customs designed to expand and perpetuate their control over the power centers of the community: wealth and material production, the permanent regulatory bureaucracy, and the levers of legislative authority. In a community that retained any semblance of its dignity, its moral substance, and its thirst for self-determination, these manipulators would be recognized immediately, and rejected outright, whether by vote or by violence -- unless they conducted their civilizational ambush under the protective cover of rationalizing theory.
Fortunately for Satan, modernity has produced plenty of self-styled "education theorists," men and women of the intellectual class whose minds have become unmoored from what they dismissively label "traditional morality," and who are certain they could design the perfectly ordered community, if only they had the means to universal social control. These education theorists are our real life mad scientists, disregarding all moral and rational limits in pursuit of that self-vindicating, immortalizing moment when they can see their artificial creature in motion and exclaim, "It's alive!"
These pseudo-scientists are the perfect tools of the corrupt ruling class, as their goals are mutually complementary. The wealthy, manipulative power-brokers seek a veneer of "new methods" and "social progress" to mask and justify their urge to control the mind and machinery of society for their own advantage; the intellectuals would happily sell their souls for a chance to see their grand schemes put into practice. This symbiotic relationship is enhanced by the two factions' awareness of a common enemy: the thoughtful, self-reliant man of character. Such an individual is a threat to the power-brokers because he will recognize what is behind their mask, and refuse to submit to their social manipulations. He is a threat to the mad scientists, because their need to be right has overwhelmed their interest in the truth, and hence their greatest fear is the appearance of living counterexamples, whose presence would refute their life's work. Hence, the undermining of such thoughtful, self-reliant men is a central goal of both the power-brokers and their intellectual lapdogs.
What becomes of the always dubious project of government-controlled education in the hands of such ignobly-motivated men? First of all, these men will need to alter the social aspects of the school environment, using every child's most natural learning methods -- imitation and checking for approval -- to inculcate a new mentality, one both useful to, and accepting of, the state's gradual encroachments into the territory previously fenced off for human freedom, privacy, and moral choice. Ethical individualism and intellectual independence are the natural enemies of this system, and must therefore be discouraged in every way.
At the political level, this means government schooling must be compulsory, so that no family's children may escape its influence, and it must tend towards ever-increasing standardization of methods and outcomes, to mitigate the effect of any stray free-thinkers or plain decent human beings who may find their way into the teaching profession, in spite of the various hoops and obstacles set in place to prevent such good people from infiltrating the classroom. At the theoretical level, the goal is to weed out and crush the impulse to individualism, independent thought, and self-reliance from the earliest stages of child development, and to reinforce the child's bondage to the collective, and dependence upon authority, through methods of rearing and schooling so contrary to the true needs of human nature that the entire system would be immediately recognizable as pure evil -- had that system not also raised every person in the community to doubt the ultimate reality of such old-fashioned notions as good, evil, nature, and truth.
But "weed out" and "crush" are mere metaphors. How exactly does the compulsory mass education project of the mad scientists and their political puppet-masters undo individualism, intellectual curiosity, and independence? Adhering to the ancient wisdom of the true philosophers of education, the modern theorists know that the key lies not in verbal rules, lessons, or memorized slogans; those will be spoon-fed later, as reinforcement for the well-laid foundations. Rather, one must begin by educating the feelings -- fostering, or in this case stifling, the natural emotional states that drive children to seek understanding and mastery over themselves and their circumstances.
Children must be taken from the home as early as possible, in order to prevent families from instilling habits of curiosity and enthusiasm for knowledge that would be difficult for the state to undo. (Hence today's constant push for "universal pre-school.") They must spend the bulk of their waking hours throughout their young lives within the government's educational environment, in order to minimize countervailing influences. This environment, the primary influence in every publicly educated child's life -- whatever fairytales parents may wish to believe -- is calibrated on every level to undermine the development of the child's understanding of himself as a separate entity capable of knowing his surroundings, projecting his imagination into the future, and contriving means of applying his growing knowledge to his environment to achieve the goals he has projected.
Where nature gives the child a basic need to begin recognizing the distinction between himself and his surroundings, in order to clarify his sense of being an individual living thing with a mind of its own, the mad scientists of public education lock him in a room full of children, with a teacher whose primary job is to make sure the children move as one, play as one, and study as one. Separating oneself from the group is discouraged. On the contrary, the conditions are designed to foster a desire for "belonging" -- a most apt word, as it plainly designates the child's proper status within the progressive world: he "belongs" to his social group, which, in adult terms, means he is property of the collective. The primacy of the yearning to "belong," so essential to popular progressive psychology, runs counter to every earlier ideal of humanity: the brave hero, the adventurer, the explorer, the theoretical man, the innovative artist, the man of intransigent faith. Against all such archetypes, public education asks the child, "Why risk getting thrown in with the lions, when you could be part of the cheering crowd?"
Where his whole being cries out for mature exemplars of human behavior and understanding, for older children and especially for adults -- in short, for evidence and models of his natural completion -- public school gives him "peers," children his own age, as incomplete and ignorant as he is. Worse yet, the universality of this arrangement and its coercive social dynamic force-feed him the sense that this is as it should be, and that there is something wrong with children wanting to be with adults who behave as adults -- as opposed to public school teachers, who are trained to play to the child's sensibility, as though the purpose of childhood education were to learn how to be a child, rather than how to be an adult. ("Let kids be kids.")
Where nature gives him practical needs, concrete interests arising from his surroundings, and the urge to develop the knowledge required to meet those needs and pursue those interests, the progressive controllers knowingly drag him away from his real world by force, trapping him for years in an abstract world of "preparing" for reality, an artificial realm of learning for real life, rather than from real life. This abstraction from everyday life, lost in the stultifying maze of public school Pretend Land, kills his natural impulse to seek knowledge, by removing him from any normal sense of a practical need to know. That is why children learn less and less, while spending more and more years in public school. This is no paradox, but a simple matter of cause and effect: the further the mind is removed from individual experience of practical needs and "idle curiosities," the less inclined it becomes to try to grasp things. ("Grasping" is one of our most penetrating metaphors for learning; it emphasizes the essential role of active will, of rationally directed desire.) Ignorance, dependency, lack of intellectual initiative, and a dearth of simple human curiosity are the necessary results of raising children in abstraction from the world of natural needs and enthusiasms for their entire lives up to voting age. Is it any wonder that the products of such forced abstraction, if they are allowed to vote, consistently choose the candidates (of whichever party) who promise to take care of them and protect them from the daunting world of personal responsibility? They have rarely seen that world, and hence perceive it only as a threat to their comfort.
Where nature, to use Aristotelian language, fills the potential being with a craving for actuality, i.e., for the fully developed soul of a rational and moral agent, public education deliberately dulls that craving, and ultimately smothers it, diverting him into blind alleys with collectivist social pressures, interminable boredom, and a hundred distractions and amusements intended to heighten the most tyrannical of his emotional drives in detachment from any rational goals or moral considerations. After spending at least the first quarter of his natural life -- the years of his greatest intellectual growth potential and largest reserves of emotional fuel -- in this thought-killing, character-thwarting environment, the normal child emerges exactly as he was intended to emerge: dependent upon the collective, incapable of complex reasoning about concrete human concerns (politics, morality), dismissive and cynical regarding fundamental theoretical questions (God, freedom, immortality), ignorant of all previous human eras, ideas, and art, and incapable of conceiving of any principle or plan of living broader than this moment, or nobler than his ruling desires for physical gratification and an infant's notion of "security."
The great mad scientists, such as Lenin and Dewey, and their acolytes, such as Bill Ayers, have demonstrated that this forced retardation machine may be realized with such a degree of comprehensiveness that only through an unusual combination of natural drives, lucky circumstances, and years of suffering as a fringe-dweller in the public school social apparatus, may a young person have any chance of withstanding the deadening effects of progressive schooling with much of his spirit intact. As for whether anyone may survive this spiritual thresher completely unscathed, my answer -- based on experience, reflection, study, and close observation of hundreds of children from vastly different backgrounds, including those I have taught myself -- is a firm and unequivocal No.
One of the great successes of modern public education is that, being universal and compulsory, it virtually obliterates nature's counterexamples, thereby creating vastly reduced expectations and standards in even the most reasonable parents. It is now, remarkably, a project of theoretical speculation and historical research to discover what a normal human child, having been raised in the real world by his own family, and having learned how to function as a self-reliant person by being one, might look like. That bizarre fact is the measure of our catastrophe, of the triumph of the totalitarian impulse over modern liberty, and of mankind's greatest shame.
It is customary, at this point, for a certain number people to scoff, "This is all well and good, but you don't tell us what to do about it." I, for one, am tired of this response. If you do not know what to do at this point, you do not want to know. For everyone else, it is time to act while you are still legally permitted to do so.
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