Textbook Content Controversy: Tell the TRUTH

from NEW AMERICAN - thanks to DISCOVERY INSTITUTE

A Closer Look at Textbooks

Written by Raven Clabough
Friday, 28 May 2010

In the debate over textbook content, the two major points of contention always seem to be the teaching of evolution, and American history overall. Students are schooled to believe that evolution is a fact, not a theory, and that America is a democracy, when it is in fact a Constitutional Republic, and that the Constitution is a living document that evolves over time.

Perhaps most disturbing is the absolute rewriting of history and blatant falsities that are being presented to the influential young minds in some textbooks, including concepts like “FDR saved America from depression” and “Woodrow Wilson was a progressive hero.”

In light of the recent controversy surrounding the Texas Board of Education, and what may be an improvement on the information taught to America’s youth, I suddenly became curious about the “facts” found in the textbooks in my own state of residence: Florida.

On evolution, Florida’s Holt Science and Technology textbook for eighth graders indicates: “Scientists observe that species have changed over time. They also observe that the inherited characteristics in populations change over time. Scientists think that as populations change over time, new species form. Thus, newer species descend from older species. The process in which populations gradually change over time is called evolution.” When discussing the evidence for evolution, the textbook refers to fossils and fossil records, case studies of whales, and DNA. Of course, there is an entire section dedicated to the greatness that was Charles Darwin, and much of the speculative language disappears. However, the textbook does refer to Darwin’s hypothesis on natural selection as a theory.

The problem with the Holt Science textbook, however, is that even though it was copyrighted as recently as 2006, there is no mention of the alternative discoveries that dispute the theory of evolution. In 2001, the Discovery Institute launched a list of hundreds of scientists who dissent from Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. According to the Institute, “During recent decades, new scientific evidence from many scientific disciplines such as cosmology, physics, biology, “artificial intelligence” research, and others have caused scientists to begin questioning Darwinism’s central tenet of natural selection and studying the evidence supporting it in greater detail.” The letter of dissent states, “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

Of the reasons for the dissent, the Center for Science and Culture indicated that Darwin’s theory of “microevolution,” changes within existing species, is uncontroversial and supported by a plethora of evidence, but that his theory of “macroevolution,” large-scale changes over geological time, was “controversial right from the start.” The Center states, “In the first few decades of the twentieth century, skepticism over this aspect of evolution was so strong that Darwin’s theory went into eclipse.” Dissenting scientists argue that the genetic mutations necessary to account for the theory of “macroevolution” would produce mostly harmful effects, not positive effects like the development of the human eye.

Now, I do not pretend to thoroughly comprehend evolutionary theory, but one thing seems certain. Evidence uncovered after Darwin’s death has created a divide between scientists who do and do not subscribe to the theory of macroevolution, and that it is certainly worth mentioning in the Science textbooks. According to the Center for Science and Culture, “Since the controversy over microevolution and macroevolution is at the heart of Darwin’s theory, and since evolutionary theory is so influential in modern biology, it is a disservice to students for biology curricula to ignore the controversy entirely … it is inaccurate to give students the impression that the controversy has been resolved and that all scientists have reached a consensus on the issue”.

It seems fair to say, unfortunately, that political correctness plays too much of a role in the content of school textbooks. In fact, according to a Rasmussen poll, 55 percent of parents believe that to be the case. If a science textbook even suggests that Darwin’s theory of evolution may be false, the writers are charged with supporting creationism. To avoid that clash, they simply leave out contradictory data.

In the same Rasmussen poll, a mere 31 percent of parents believed history textbooks portray American History accurately. On Glenn Beck’s May 25 episode, he furiously discussed how history is being rewritten to be politically correct. He pointed to a Virginia State McDonald Publishing History textbook that discussed the Declaration of Independence and said, “The declaration expanded these ideas that all men are created equal and they are endowed … with certain unalienable rights.” The words “by their Creator” were removed and replaced by ellipses.

Fortunately, Florida’s McDougal Littell Creating America eight grade textbook does not attempt to remove God’s role from the founding of American independence from British rule.

Where the textbook falls short, unfortunately, is in the discussion of FDR’s presidency. The book accurately asserts that “the New Deal did not end the Depression” and even states that the New Deal did forever change the U.S. government. However, in the half-page mention of the Japanese internment camps, little focus is given to the overall and blatant injustice of the internment program. The program is summed up as follows:

In the days and weeks after Pearl Harbor, several newspapers declared Japanese Americans to be a security threat. President Roosevelt eventually responded to the growing anti-Japanese hysteria. In February 1942, he signed an order that allowed for the removal of Japanese and Japanese Americans from the Pacific Coast. This action came to be known as the Japanese-American internment. More than 110,000 men, women, and children were rounded up. They had to sell their homes and possessions and leave their jobs. These citizens were placed in internment camps, areas where they were kept under guard. In these camps, families lived in single rooms with little privacy. About two-thirds of the people interned were Nisei, Japanese Americans born in the United States.

And that’s it. There is no mention of what happened to the Japanese after the war, no real focus of what life was like in these internment camps, and no discussion of how most of these citizens did not have their properties restored to them upon their release.

Likewise, the textbook does not mention the other prejudiced practices under FDR, including the imposition of restrictions on Italian and Germans living in the United States. According to the German American Internee Coalition, FDR “interned at least 11,000 persons of German ancestry” even though the law stated only “enemy aliens” could be interned. Under FDR, the Department of Justice (DOJ) “instituted very limited due process protections for those arrested.” Also under FDR, “pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act, DOJ created a network of prohibited zones and restricted areas. Enemy aliens were forbidden to enter or remain in certain areas and their movements severely restricted in others.... Pursuant to Presidential Executive Order 9066, the military could restrict the liberties of citizens and aliens, as it deemed necessary.”

Yet none of that information appears in the McDougal Littell textbook. Nor does the textbook discuss FDR’s creation of the Office of War Information, which virtually regulated all information in print, inhibiting freedom of press and speech.

The issue with leaving out such pertinent information is that it lulls American students into a false sense of security about their government. To know history is to avoid repeating it. People who accuse governments’ critics of being “conspiracy theorists” are unaware that much of what people say could “never happen in America” already has.

For these reasons, and many more, it is certainly no wonder the Texas Board of Education felt compelled to investigate the content of the textbooks. It should even prompt other states to take similar actions of scrutinizing textbooks to examine what is being left out or glossed over.

The Alien in the White House

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
JUNE 9, 2010

The Alien in the White House

The distance between the president and the people is beginning to be revealed.

By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president's earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill.

There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama's pronouncements. For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.

Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.

A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.

One of his first reforms was to rid the White House of the bust of Winston Churchill—a gift from Tony Blair—by packing it back off to 10 Downing Street. A cloudlet of mystery has surrounded the subject ever since, but the central fact stands clear. The new administration had apparently found no place in our national house of many rooms for the British leader who lives on so vividly in the American mind. Churchill, face of our shared wartime struggle, dauntless rallier of his nation who continues, so remarkably, to speak to ours. For a president to whom such associations are alien, ridding the White House of Churchill would, of course, have raised no second thoughts.

Far greater strangeness has since flowed steadily from Washington. The president's appointees, transmitters of policy, go forth with singular passion week after week, delivering the latest inversion of reality. Their work is not easy, focused as it is on a current prime preoccupation of this White House—that is, finding ways to avoid any public mention of the indisputable Islamist identity of the enemy at war with us. No small trick that, but their efforts go forward in public spectacles matchless in their absurdity—unnerving in what they confirm about our current guardians of law and national security.

Consider the hapless Eric Holder, America's attorney general, confronting the question put to him by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas) of the House Judicary Committee on May 13.

Did Mr. Holder think that in the last three terrorist attempts on this soil, one of them successful (Maj. Nidal Hasan's murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, preceded by his shout of "Allahu Akbar!"), that radical Islam might have played any role at all? Mr. Holder seemed puzzled by the question. "People have different reasons" he finally answered—a response he repeated three times. He didn't want "to say anything negative about any religion."

And who can forget the exhortations on jihad by John Brennan, Mr. Obama's chief adviser on counterterrorism? Mr. Brennan has in the past charged that Americans lack sensitivity to the Muslim world, and that we have particularly failed to credit its peace-loving disposition. In a May 26 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mr. Brennan held forth fervently, if not quite comprehensibly, on who our enemy was not: "Our enemy is not terrorism because terrorism is just a tactic. Our enemy is not terror because terror is a state of mind, and as Americans we refuse to live in fear."

He went on to announce, sternly, that we do not refer to our enemies as Islamists or jihadists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam. How then might we be permitted to describe our enemies? One hint comes from another of Mr. Brennan's pronouncements in that speech: That "violent extremists are victims of political, economic and social forces."

Yes, that would work. Consider the news bulletins we could have read: "Police have arrested Faisal Shahzad, victim of political, economic and social forces living in Connecticut, for efforts to set off a car bomb explosion in Times Square." Plotters in Afghanistan and Yemen, preparing for their next attempt at mass murder in America, could only have listened in wonderment. They must have marvelled in particular on learning that this was the chief counterterrorism adviser to the president of the United States.

Long after Mr. Obama leaves office, it will be this parade of explicators, laboring mightily to sell each new piece of official reality revisionism—Janet Napolitano and her immortal "man-caused disasters'' among them—that will stand most memorably as the face of this administration.

It is a White House that has focused consistently on the sensitivities of the world community—as it is euphemistically known—a body of which the president of the United States frequently appears to view himself as a representative at large.

It is what has caused this president and his counterterrorist brain trust to deem it acceptable to insult Americans with nonsensical evasions concerning the enemy we face. It is this focus that caused Mr. Holder to insist on holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan, despite the rage this decision induced in New Yorkers, and later to insist if not there, then elsewhere in New York. This was all to be a dazzling exhibition for that world community—proof of Mr. Obama's moral reclamation program and that America had been delivered from the darkness of the Bush years.

It was why this administration tapped officials like Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Among his better known contributions to political discourse was a 2005 address in which he compared the treatment of Muslim-Americans in the United States after 9/11 with the plight of the Japanese-Americans interned in camps after Pearl Harbor. During a human-rights conference held in China this May, Mr. Posner cited the new Arizona immigration law by way of assuring the Chinese, those exemplary guardians of freedom, that the United States too had its problems with discrimination.

So there we were: America and China, in the same boat on human rights, two buddies struggling for reform. For this view of reality, which brought withering criticism in Congress and calls for his resignation, Mr. Posner has been roundly embraced in the State Department as a superbly effective representative.

It is no surprise that Mr. Posner—like numerous of his kind—has found a natural home in this administration. His is a sensibility and political disposition with which Mr. Obama is at home. The beliefs and attitudes that this president has internalized are to be found everywhere—in the salons of the left the world over—and, above all, in the academic establishment, stuffed with tenured radicals and their political progeny. The places where it is held as revealed truth that the United States is now, and has been throughout its history, the chief engine of injustice and oppression in the world.

They are attitudes to be found everywhere, but never before in a president of the United States. Mr. Obama may not hold all, or the more extreme, of these views. But there can be no doubt by now of the influences that have shaped him. They account for his grand apology tour through the capitals of Europe and to the Muslim world, during which he decried America's moral failures—her arrogance, insensitivity. They were the words of a man to whom reasons for American guilt came naturally. Americans were shocked by this behavior in their newly elected president. But he was telling them something from those lecterns in foreign lands—something about his distant relation to the country he was about to lead.

The truth about that distance is now sinking in, which is all to the good. A country governed by leaders too principled to speak the name of its mortal enemy needs every infusion of reality it can get.

Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
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A silly diversion: Spell-check is not satisfied with the spelling of Obama's name; instead it offers the following alternatives: Obadiah, Obadias, Bamako, and Alabama. Mr Posner fared little better. Spell-check instead suggested: Poser, Poster, Posher, Poisoner, Poseur. It offered no alternatives to Churchill's name. Heh.

HOW NOW, MEXICO?

Michelle Malkin, as usual, shines her spotlight on Mexico's oligarchy...

Police state: How Mexico treats illegal aliens
By Michelle Malkin • April 28, 2010 12:36 AM

This is what a “police state” looks like

My syndicated column today responds to Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s demagoguery on Arizona’s immigration enforcement law. Calderon has a long history of bashing the U.S. — and then getting rewarded for it with billions of dollars in foreign aid (see here, here, and here).

I reported on Calderon’s aggressive meddling on behalf of illegal aliens through his government consulate offices in America here. Heather Mac Donald published a thorough investigation of the Mexican government meddle-crats here. Allan Wall has reported on it for years. Mike Sweeney, an Arizona Republic letter-writer underscores my column theme today:

“Having traveled into Mexico last year to various cities on the Baja Peninsula, a distance of more than 1,000 miles round-trip, we were stopped more than 20 times at various checkpoints. At most of those stops, we were told to exit the vehicle and we were subjected to rigorous inspections. Where does Mexican President Felipe Calderón get off with his hypocritical outrage at our Senate Bill 1070?”

Where indeed?

***
How Mexico treats illegal aliens
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has accused Arizona of opening the door “to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement.” But Arizona has nothing on Mexico when it comes to cracking down on illegal aliens. While open-borders activists decry new enforcement measures signed into law in “Nazi-zona” last week, they remain deaf, dumb or willfully blind to the unapologetically restrictionist policies of our neighbors to the south.

The Arizona law bans sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws, stiffens penalties against illegal alien day laborers and their employers, makes it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to complete and carry an alien registration document, and allows the police to arrest immigrants unable to show documents proving they are in the U.S. legally. If those rules constitute the racist, fascist, xenophobic, inhumane regime that the National Council of La Raza, Al Sharpton, Catholic bishops and their grievance-mongering followers claim, then what about these regulations and restrictions imposed on foreigners?

– The Mexican government will bar foreigners if they upset “the equilibrium of the national demographics.” How’s that for racial and ethnic profiling?

– If outsiders do not enhance the country’s “economic or national interests” or are “not found to be physically or mentally healthy,” they are not welcome. Neither are those who show “contempt against national sovereignty or security.” They must not be economic burdens on society and must have clean criminal histories. Those seeking to obtain Mexican citizenship must show a birth certificate, provide a bank statement proving economic independence, pass an exam and prove they can provide their own health care.

– Illegal entry into the country is equivalent to a felony punishable by two years’ imprisonment. Document fraud is subject to fine and imprisonment; so is alien marriage fraud. Evading deportation is a serious crime; illegal re-entry after deportation is punishable by ten years’ imprisonment. Foreigners may be kicked out of the country without due process and the endless bites at the litigation apple that illegal aliens are afforded in our country (see, for example, President Obama’s illegal alien aunt — a fugitive from deportation for eight years who is awaiting a second decision on her previously rejected asylum claim).

– Law enforcement officials at all levels — by national mandate — must cooperate to enforce immigration laws, including illegal alien arrests and deportations. The Mexican military is also required to assist in immigration enforcement operations. Native-born Mexicans are empowered to make citizens’ arrests of illegal aliens and turn them in to authorities.

– Ready to show your papers? Mexico’s National Catalog of Foreigners tracks all outside tourists and foreign nationals. A National Population Registry tracks and verifies the identity of every member of the population, who must carry a citizens’ identity card. Visitors who do not possess proper documents and identification are subject to arrest as illegal aliens. (read the rest here)

America's Toughest Immigration Bill Is Signed Into Law In Arizona

April 23, 2010

PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the toughest illegal immigration bill in the country into law on Friday, aimed at identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants. The governor’s move unleashed immediate protests and reignited the divisive battle over immigration reform nationally.

The law, which opponents and critics alike said was the broadest and strictest immigration measure in the country in generations, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime. It would also give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have decried it as an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against Hispanics regardless of their citizenship status.

The political debate leading up to Governor Brewer’s decision, and Mr. Obama’s criticism of the law — presidents very rarely weigh in on state legislation — underscored the power of the immigration debate in states along the Mexican border. It presaged the polarizing arguments that await the president and Congress as they take up the issue nationally.

Governor Brewer said the new law strengthened Arizona:

"This law represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix. It protects all of us, every Arizona citizen and everyone here in our state lawfully and it does so while ensuring that the constitutional rights of all in Arizona remain solid."

The law would take effect 90 days after the legislative session ends, meaning by August. Court challenges are expected immediately.

Sponsored by Russell Pearce, a state senator and a firebrand on immigration issues, SB 1070 has several provisions.

It requires police officers “when practicable” to detain people they reasonably suspect are in the country without authorization and to verify their status with federal officials, unless doing so would hinder an investigation or emergency medical treatment.

It also makes it a state crime, a misdemeanor, to not carry immigration papers. It also allows people to sue local governments or agencies if they believe federal or state immigration law is not being enforced.

The Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles called the authorities’ ability to demand documents Nazism. While police demands of documents are common on subways, highways and in public places in some countries, including France, Arizona is the first state to demand that immigrants meet federal requirements to carry identity documents legitimizing their presence on American soil.

Governor Brewer acknowledged critics’ concerns but sided with arguments from the law’s sponsors that it provides an indispensable tool for the police in a border state that is a leading magnet of illegal immigration.

She said that racial profiling would not be tolerated, adding, “We have to trust our law enforcement.”

Among other things, the Arizona measure is an extraordinary rebuke to Janet Napolitano, who had vetoed similar legislation repeatedly as a Democratic governor before she was appointed homeland security secretary by Mr. Obama. Her successor, Governor Brewer, is a Republican.

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The unchecked flow of illegal aliens has seen Phoenix become the kidnapping capital of the nation, and is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, including the recent murder of Arizona rancher Rob Krentz.

An anonymous commenter on al-Reuters had this to say:

While the law is not perfect, the fact that a state with so much at stake in terms of protecting legal residents and visitors is willing to move beyond the federal stalemate needs to be applauded.

The ability to protect their legal citizens from the thousands of illegals that cross over the borders and either stay within the state or move on to virtually every state in the country is a priority for them. From a financial standpoint, this law will help to reduce everything from the education budget, the state supported healthcare services and the continued law enforcement costs behind battling the drug cartels and human trafficking organizations that have been holding turf wars in the streets and communities of the major cities within Arizona.

In reality, this should not be a state’s individual responsibility but rather a federal mandate that we enforce the existing laws on the books and establish a zero tolerance policy that keeps those who seek to avoid the US laws. But Arizona is now forced to go it alone and enact policies that are extremely sensitive and tip toe along the fine line of legal and ethical actions. Unfortunately, those who choose to knowingly break the US laws will pray on the kind hearted humanitarian nature of the general US public. What is even more arrogant are those who actually believe some ancient position that the borders should not exist for them because at one time they lived on this land and therefore they don’t need to follow this sovereign nation’s laws.

It is foolish to think that the police will have enough time to simply pick people randomly out of the crowd simply because they see a potential illegal immigrant. What most of the complainers forget is that they are required to carry a drivers license and proof of insurance while driving and if stopped, they need to present all of these as part of the initial discussion. If you walk along a public street and are not doing anything illegal, don’t expect to be stopped. Create an incident, do something potentially illegal and if someone calls the police expect to be questioned and asked for documentation. Don’t carry identification and regardless of your color, race or religion and you can expect to be subjected to further questioning or police action.

Who else is to blame? Try the Mexican government. Filled with corruption and a lack of real interest in seeing the more than 12 million returning to their country where they would seek public and social services, education and job opportunities. They are far more content to reap the benefits from the billion’s of dollars that make their way back across the border to the extended family members who remain behind.

From a business point of view, this is purely a one-sided deal. Mexicans can simply cross the border and create their own business opportunities, purchase land and become homeowners, yet a US company cannot enter Mexico autonomously and establish a similar opportunity. We must secure a Mexican partner and are often relegated to leasing land and homes for long term contracts that have no rights should their be a regime change.

Look north of our country’s border and to find work in Canada, you must first prove that only you can do the proposed job and that no Canadian is available to fill that position.

Both Democrats and Republicans carry an equal amount of blame because illegal immigration has supporters on both sides of the political isle. Some seek a legal path to naturalization for the sake of more votes. Others have large supporters who enjoy the benefits of a second class workforce that is forced to accept lower wages and poor working conditions in exchange for looking the other way.

For anyone reading this post, understand that I am for legal immigration where anyone who wishes to follow the prescribed steps to becoming a citizen should earn our praise and support. What I am not for is those who somehow feel entitled to what the US has to offer and somehow should not be subject to the existing immigration laws, regardless of how challenging they might be.

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So now, boys and girls, it's ILLEGAL to be an illegal immigrant. Fascinating. Before you know it, it'll be illegal for illegals to work illegally in the sovereign state of Arizona. Wait, what? It always has been illegal?

So what's the difference?

ENFORCEMENT. Good job, Guv'nuh.

Ron Paul: Obama Is Another Corporatist, Not a Socialist

"The race is not to the swift."—Ecclesiastes ix. II.


Ron Paul: Obama Is Another Corporatist, Not a Socialist

New American
Written by Steven Yates
Tuesday, 13 April 2010 11:59

The idea that President Barack Obama is a socialist is popular among many conservatives; all of us have seen automobiles sporting the bumper sticker reading, Don’t Blame Me; I Didn’t Vote For the Socialist — obviously referring to Obama. Not so fast, says, of all people, Ron Paul (R-Texas).

Addressing the Southern Republican Leadership Conference during its third day, Dr. Paul told the audience, “The question has been raised about whether or not our president is a socialist…. I am sure there are some people here who believe it. But in the technical sense, in the economic definition of a what a socialist is, no, he's not a socialist.”

Dr. Paul continued, “He's a corporatist. And unfortunately we have corporatists inside the Republican party and that means you take care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country.”

What he means, and whether or not he is right, depends on what we mean by socialism and what by corporatism. In its classical usages (classical here meaning within classical Marxist usage and its derivatives) socialism means: an economic system that is abolishing or has abolished the private ownership of the means of production in favor of public (i.e., state) ownership, with all wealth shared.

In this classical sense, Obama is clearly not a socialist. Nothing he has done, not even in the recent healthcare bill, seems aimed at abolishing private ownership of the means of production.

Much of what he has done since taking office, however, has vastly increased government control over the means of production — e.g., when he personally demands that a CEO step down (think General Motors). Is this what we mean by corporatism? Ron Paul described the healthcare bill as containing many corporatist provisions: “We see [corporatism] in the financial institutions, we see it in the military-industrial complex. And now we see it in the medical-industrial complex.”

Corporatism is often seen as monopolistic capitalism in which business and governmental elites partner with each other. This isn't too far from the mark. Business elites possess what we might call the power of the purse — they have the money. Governmental elites possess what we might call the power of the sword — they write the rules. We might debate which one, if either, is truly dominant since both scratch each other’s backs and benefit handsomely from having thwarted both genuine marketplace competition and a truly open political and electoral process.

Corporatism hardly began with the current administration, of course, or its predecessor. In an article published in 2002, which deserves far more attention than it has ever received, commentator Robert Locke outlined the basic ideas behind corporatism and traced some of its history and influence.

According to Locke, corporatism “has the outward form of capitalism in that it preserves private ownership and private management, but with a crucial difference: as under socialism, government guarantees the flow of material goods, which under true capitalism it does not.” (Emphasis in original.) Corporatism does not really trust the marketplace to provide. It manipulates the marketplace “to deliver goods to political constituencies [which now include] basically everyone from economic elites to ordinary consumers.”

What has made corporatism so tempting is thus not hard to see. Locke explains further:

Big business, whatever its casuists at the Wall Street Journal editorial page may pretend, likes big government, except when big government gets greedy and tries to renegotiate the division of spoils. Although big business was an historic adversary of the introduction of the corporatist state, it eventually found common ground with it.

The first thing big business has in common with big government is managerialism. The technocratic manager, who deals in impersonal mass aggregates, organizes through bureaucracy, and rules through expertise without assuming personal responsibility, is common to both. The second thing big business likes about big government is that it has a competitive advantage over small business in doing business with it and negotiating favors. Big government, in turn, likes big business because it is manageable; it does what it is told. It is much easier to impose affirmative action or racial sensitivity training on AT&T than on 50,000 corner stores. This is why big business has become a key enforcer of political correctness.

Locke traces the history of corporatism to the idea that the marketplace is not really self-regulating, since the "big boys" will not "play fair"; hence economic activity requires outside management, be it through regulation, subsidy, or control over the monetary system. The first major corporatist enterprise of the 20th century was none other than the Federal Reserve, a private corporation that is embedded within the federal government — as its own literature states, “independent within the government.”

Then, in the 1930s, the (Fed-caused) Great Depression further eroded confidence in the marketplace to deliver material goods without government intervention. That period gave us Social Security and Medicare: the beginnings of the intergeneration redistribution of wealth we have been stuck with ever since. As political constituencies both large and small have grown, the corporatist edifice has grown along with them, often with the full support of the mainstream voting public both liberal and conservative.

The Left likes corporatism for three reasons, says Locke: (1) it satisfies government’s (i.e., politicians’) lust for power; (2) its machinery makes redistribution of wealth to favored constituencies possible; and (3) it enables politicians to accomplish this while remaining personally affluent.

The Right likes corporatism for three different reasons, says Locke: (1) big business can achieve enormous profits, capitalist-style, while unloading some of the cost and risk onto government; (2) the merger of business and government enables those at the helm of big business to influence government in ways favorable to themselves (e.g., thwarting true competition, which big business has seen as a nuisance since John D. Rockefeller, Sr. was heard to pronounce competition a “sin”); and (3) this merger seems able to minimize or dissipate whatever social unrest its policies create in the masses.

Locke provides several examples of corporatist endeavors besides the Federal Reserve. Some are even more obvious in today’s post-bailout climate: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the insurance industry generally (especially evident given Obama/Pelosi-care!), real estate, federal financing of scientific research, agricultural price-supports, and many others; we would probably want to add to our list so-called "free trade" agreements (e.g., NAFTA, CAFTA, etc.).

The point to all this is that if we going to criticize the Obama administration’s economic policies, we need to be sure we have its economics right — and if we are paying attention, we see far more continuity with past administrations than we do change. There have been no fundamental changes, despite candidate-Obama’s mantra about “change you can believe in.” (For this reason, many on the Left have grown as uneasy with this administration as any Tea Partier, even if for different reasons.)

Isn’t corporatism just a form of fascism? Yes and no. The most famous quote attributed to Italy’s Mussolini (the quote appears to be apocryphal) is that “fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Under fascism, unlike socialism, government did not assume ownership over corporations but controlled them, allowing nominal ownership. I would submit that if there is a difference, it is that in the English-speaking world more of a partnership between the two has emerged, and over a longer period of time — perhaps born of the quiet realization that many in the upper echelons of the corporate domain are as interested in power as any statist authoritarian has ever been, and that the two can achieve far more working together than they can separately. Working separately will, in fact, ensure that the two will butt heads more often than not.

Corporatism may be thought of as “soft fascism,” which is oligarchic but not totalitarian. Part of its genius has been to win acceptance from the voting public through (1) having created a mass and organizing it into groups, or political constituencies; (2) delivering goods to those constituencies; (3) all the while creating a sense of security for them if they play ball; and (4) (although the idea calls for a
separate article) corporatism has sponsored “public schools,” further encouraging its acceptance through consistent ratcheting down of education not just about our founding principles but absent clear thinking about economics and even personal finance, while ratcheting up the current mixture of pop culture and job skills training (e.g., school-to-work, no-child-left-behind, etc.). The vast majority of teenagers educated this way will not question the system; the few who do can be safely marginalized.

Ron Paul has been the one Republican operating clearly outside the corporatist mindset. This might help explain why he and his supporters have been marginalized within the Republican Party, the mainstream of which serves corporatist interests. There are probably Democrats who are not corporatists. Dennis Kucinich might be an example.

All of which brings us to the question: If corporatism really is the best name for the economic system currently throttling America, can it be fought — and perhaps undermined? Of course, we have to identify it first. Most people have never heard the term. Then we might argue that corporatism is, in the long run, unsustainable: Social Security and Medicare, those two 1930s corporatist standbys, are both technically broke and on the federal equivalent of life support. As Baby Boomers retire, the situation will grow progressively worse! It was not without reason that Keynes said, "In the long run, we are all dead." Corporatism incorporates Keynesian economics and encourages massive spending by both government and consumers as the key to rising prosperity without looking far into the future. When people will not spend, generally because they cannot spend, there is an incentive to get money into their pockets; otherwise the economy falls into crisis. Spending money one does not have creates debt. The temptation is to monetize government debt. The result is the slow erosion of our dollars' purchasing power. The dollar in fact has lost 10 percent of its value in just the past year. Massive and still-growing indebtedness has the potential to be our downfall and the downfall of corporatism.

These considerations are all imminently rational, but the corporatist edifice we now live under has been built up under such a long period of time — several generations, in fact — that dismantling it all at once would precipitate chaos. Moreover, the public is now accustomed to it. They fear the loss of their safety nets, and might argue reasonably that they spent their lives paying into Social Security and are now
entitled to benefit from it. Healthcare costs are indeed astronomical; moreover, without Medicare (or some type of government aid), they would be priced beyond the reach of many elderly people. These are the main reasons Social Security and Medicare are politically untouchable, and that any politician proposing to abolish them would be rejected immediately by the majority of voters except for libertarians.

This issue is much larger than Obama. One way or another, he'll be gone in a few years. The problems will remain, and would have worsened even if McCain had been elected in 2008. How do we “turn back the clock”? Can we?

Robert Locke offers these troubling thoughts:

With these two different kinds of trust [in the self-regulating nature of the marketplace, and its ability to deliver material goods] gone, corporatism becomes not only worthwhile, but necessary. Crucially, it becomes psychologically necessary, independently of whether government can deliver on its promises, because people instinctively turn to government as their protector.

Anyone who is serious about getting rid of corporatism must explain how they are going to restore these two kinds of trust or persuade people to live without them. In particular, it is almost certainly useless, as verified by the fact that government has grown under every postwar Republican administration, to try to nibble away at big government without renegotiating the social contract that underlies it. If we don't have a plan to renegotiate this social contract, we must face the fact that the electorate will demand that it be respected.

Photo of Ron Paul: AP Images

Hating the Government

Hating the government finally goes mainstream

By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
Washington Examiner
April 15, 2010
(AP)

Three years ago, the Republican establishment piled scorn on the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. Today, he is in a statistical tie with President Obama in 2012 polling. His son, an ophthalmologist who has never run for elective office, is well ahead of not only the GOP's handpicked candidate for Senate in Kentucky but also both Democratic contenders -- all statewide officeholders.

What happened? Did America sudden develop an insatiable appetite for 74-year-old, cranky congressmen from Texas? Is the gold standard catching on? Paul will not likely be the next president. And his son still faces the most arduous part of his journey as Democrats spend millions to paint him as soft on defense, lax on drug enforcement and too radical on welfare programs.

But there's no doubt that hating the government and the powerful interests that pull Washington's strings has gone from the radical precincts of the Right and Left to the mainstream. It turns out that watching Goldman Sachs, the United Auto Workers, public employee unions and a raft of other vampires drain the treasury at America's weakest moment in a generation will make a person pretty hacked off.

After Barack Obama's election, Democrats assumed that the American people were battered, bruised and ready for a morphine drip of European-style socialism. Republicans, shocked by their stunning reversals, figured the Democrats were right and started looking for technocrats of their own.And in a political system fueled by special-interest money, it was hard for the leaders of major parties to imagine anything other than an activist government. After all, if you pay for someone to get elected, you don't expect him to just sit there.

Just 18 months ago the leaders of both parties were quite sure that Obama would be the popular, transformative president he aspires to be. The Republicans who emerged from the wreckage of November were certain to look a lot more like Charlie Crist and Mitt Romney than Marco Rubio and Ron Paul. But Crist's embrace of Obamanomics seems to have utterly destroyed his chances at a Senate seat that was once his for the taking. Romney, considered a near lock for the 2012 Republican nomination, has seen his candidacy badly damaged by a populist revolt against the passage of a national health care plan that looks like the one he designed for Massachusetts.

Obama, who said that passage of his health plan proved that Washington could still do big things, finds himself deeply at odds with an electorate that is not confident of government's ability to do anything at all.His election has turned out to be not the result of a national lurch toward government intervention but his own skill at disguising his policies, the failures of the Republican Party and the bursting of the lending bubble.

A year ago, the tea parties caught most everyone by surprise.It was a conservative flash mob and hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets.Republicans scrambled to get to the head of the parade and Democrats claimed that it was all a put-up job by their enemies in the special interest wars. The press tried to treat what had been a spontaneous outburst as if it were a traditional political party and asked all the questions they teach in journalism school: Who's in charge? Who are they opposed to? Is it racist?

This year, the political parties and the press will not be caught off guard. Republican politicians will address tea party rallies, Democrats will denounce the supposed puppeteers of the movement and the press will look for hate speech.

But few will glean the real meaning of the protests or the booming support for Ron and Rand Paul. It's not about the Pauls themselves or the guys with the "Don't tread on me" flags It's about the people at home who might not be willing to march in the park or join the next Paul money bomb, but who don't blame the folks who do.

Libertarian sentiment has finally gone mainstream. A movement that said that people should do whatever they wanted as long as it didn't hurt anyone else couldn't compete during the culture wars that began in the 1960s. But after two wars, a $12 trillion debt, a financial crisis and the most politically tone-deaf president in modern history, Americans may have finally given up on big government.

Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of the Washington Examiner. He can be reached at cstirewalt@washingtonexaminer.com.

Our Government Is Stealing Our Children

Artificial Stupidity

Thomas Sowell

March 10, 2010

The American education system focuses more on politically correct crusades than intellectually correct arguments.

A woman with a petition went among the crowds attending a state fair, asking people to sign her petition demanding the banning of dihydroxymonoxide. She said it was in our lakes and streams, and now it was in our sweat and urine and tears.

She collected hundreds of signatures to ban dihydroxymonoxide, a fancy chemical name for water. A couple of comedians were behind this ploy. But there is nothing funny about its implications. It is one of the grim and dangerous signs of our times.

This little episode revealed how conditioned we have become, responding like Pavlov’s dog when we hear a certain sound, in this case, the sound of some politically correct crusade.

People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid. Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators.

Educational institutions created to pass on to the next generation the knowledge, experience, and culture of the generations that went before them have instead been turned into indoctrination centers to promote whatever notions, fashions, or ideologies happen to be in vogue among today’s intelligentsia.

Many conservatives have protested against the specific things with which students are being indoctrinated. But that is not where the most lasting harm is done. Many, if not most, of the leading conservatives of our times were on the left in their youth. These have included Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, and the whole neoconservative movement.

The experiences of life can help people outgrow whatever they were indoctrinated with. What may persist, however, is the lazy habit of hearing one side of an issue and being galvanized into action without hearing the other side and, more fundamentally, not having developed any mental skills that would enable you to systematically test one set of beliefs against another.

It was once the proud declaration of many educators that, "We are here to teach you how to think, not what to think." But far too many of our teachers and professors today are teaching their students what to think about everything from global warming to the new trinity of race, class, and gender.

Even if all the conclusions with which they indoctrinate their students were 100 percent correct, that would still not be equipping students with the mental skills to weigh opposing views for themselves, in order to be prepared for new and unforeseeable issues that will arise over their lifetimes, after they leave the schools and colleges.

Many of today’s "educators" not only supply students with conclusions, but promote the idea that students should spring into action because of these prepackaged conclusions, in other words, vent their feelings and go galloping off on crusades, with neither a knowledge of what is said by those on the other side nor the intellectual discipline to know how to analyze opposing arguments.

When we see children in elementary schools out carrying signs in demonstrations, we are seeing the kind of mindless groupthink that causes adults to sign petitions they don’t understand or, worse yet, follow leaders they don’t understand, whether to the White House, the Kremlin, or Jonestown.

A philosopher once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of one’s own ignorance. That is the knowledge that too many of our schools and colleges are failing to teach our young people.

It takes a certain amount of knowledge just to understand the extent of one’s own ignorance. But our "educators" have given assignments to children who are not yet a decade old to write letters to members of Congress, or to Presidents, spouting off on issues ranging from nuclear weapons to medical care.

Will Rogers once said that it was not ignorance that was so bad but "all the things we know that ain’t so." But our classroom indoctrinators are getting students to think that they know after hearing only one side of an issue. It is artificial stupidity.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

The 'comedians' referred to are , of course, Penn @ Teller, and the video:

The Sun Is Responsible For Climate Change

Nobel peace prize winner Rajendra Pachauri gives a press conference with his organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Rajendra Pachauri: Media went gaga over greenhouse guru

By Paul Mulshine/The Star Ledger (NJ)
February 28, 2010


At the height of the ’60s silliness, the Beatles flew off to India to seek enlightenment at the feet of a guru named the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Their enchantment didn’t last. After they noticed that this master of the metaphysical had managed to acquire his own helicopter to ferry him around the foothills of the Himalayas, the Beatles bolted. As John Lennon was headed to the airport, he penned a parody titled "Sexy Sadie" about a temptress who "made a fool of everyone."

Too bad Lennon’s not around to write a song about the latest guru to emerge out of India, Rajendra Pachauri. Pachauri is a railway engineer by training, yet somehow he managed to work his way up to the chairmanship of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

That’s the group of global-warming alarmists that was recently forced to retract a prediction that the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035. It turns out the claim had no more basis than the Maharishi’s claim that his followers could levitate.

The London Daily Telegraph reported the other day that a United Nations committee will shortly be announcing that an independent panel will investigate the IPCC’s role in what has come to be known as "Climategate."

Though I consider myself a cynic, I confess even I was shocked when I found out that the global-warming guru is a mere railway engineer. I learned that when I was speaking recently to a scientist skeptical of climate-change alarmism, Princeton physicist William Happer.

"I think the best way to restore the credibility of the IPCC is to have some resignations." said Happer. "Someone has to resign and it has to be Pachauri."

Maybe Pachauri could get a job at NJ Transit overseeing the tracks that lead to within walking distance of the Happer Laboratory of Atomic Physics in Princeton. One of the odder aspects of the media coverage of the climate-change controversy is that such serious scientists as Happer and fellow Princeton physics whiz Freeman Dyson have been treated as some sort of kooks while the alarmists led by Pachauri go unquestioned.

In fact, says Happer, climate science involves some of the most complicated questions of physics and astrophysics imaginable. The science simply can’t be reduced to the simple formulas promulgated by the IPCC, which he termed "an advocacy group for global warming alarmism that masquerades as a scientific organization."

Happer points out that the tiny amount of CO-2 that man has introduced into the atmosphere could create only a correspondingly tiny rise in temperature. The climate-change crowd gets around this by contending that the CO-2 results in an increase in the amount of the most important greenhouse gas, water vapor.

But there are experts in that field as well who disagree. Among the most prominent is Don Easterbrook, a scientist at Western Washington University who is an expert on the "Pacific decadal oscillation". This is the flow of water vapor over the planet’s largest body of water, the Pacific Ocean.

When I called Easterbrook the other day, he said there is evidence that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is decreasing, not increasing. And while the climatologists are dismissing the blizzards that keep hitting us here on the East Coast as anomalies, Easterbrook predicts we’d better get used to them.

"The next decade is going to be colder, no doubt about it," he told me.

Easterbrook based that not just on the Pacific currents but on the possibility that we are entering a "grand solar minimum," a decline in sunspot activity. These seem to come along every 200 years or so, and they create mini ice ages, Easterbrook said. "And it’s global cooling, not global warming, that’s the real killer," he said.

Who’s right, the expert in laying tracks for the Chittagong choo-choo or the expert in the Pacific decadal oscillation? I’ll leave that for you to decide.

As for me, I like to focus on something that we journalists should be focusing on: the question of cui bono. That’s a Latin phrase that translates as "in whose interest?" In whose interest is all this alarmism?

Obviously, there are people like Al Gore who trade in carbon credits. Then there are the environmentalists who want to force their agenda on the world. There’s even the nuclear-power industry, which wants to use the threat of global warming against the aforementioned nuke-hating environmentalists.

And then of course there is that railway engineer from India. He is a follower in a long tradition of producing mantras for the masses. And he has performed his task admirably.

FREEDOM AND THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION

Are The American People Too Dumb To Fail?

Call me a far-right whack-job if you want: I don't care. It is becoming clear that the power of the people will only come, ultimately, from the readiness and willingness to use guns to wrest control of our destiny from the powerful elite. A show of force is the only thing which will cut through the demonic hold of the powerful elites who control Washington. But it will take more than a feel-good tea-party-venting grass-roots revival of American Patriotism. It will take commitment - at the individual level - to act in accordance with conscience. If we allow Washington to take away our guns & ammo, then, ipso facto, we will have lost the battle for freedom. Power comes from a willingness and ability to use force.

Charles Krauthammer - nice name - provides the political background noise which we are up against if we continue to let Washington game us.

The great peasant revolt of 2010

By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
Friday, February 5, 2010

"I am not an ideologue," protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions.

Compare his 2010 State of the Union to his first address to Congress a year earlier. The consistency is remarkable. In 2009, after passing a $787 billion (now $862 billion) stimulus package, the largest spending bill in galactic history, he unveiled a manifesto for fundamentally restructuring the commanding heights of American society -- health care, education and energy.

A year later, after stunning Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health-care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a "jobs bill."

This being a democracy, don't the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don't they understand Massachusetts?

Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking "in the plain words of plain folks," because the people are "suspicious of complexity." Counseled Blow: "The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, 'Mr. President, we're down here.' "

A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are "a nation of dodos" that is "too dumb to thrive."

Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself "for not explaining it [health care] more clearly to the American people." The subject, he noted, was "complex." The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.

Then there are the emotional deficiencies of the masses. Nearly every Democratic apologist lamented the people's anger and anxiety, a free-floating agitation that prevented them from appreciating the beneficence of the social agenda the Democrats are so determined to foist upon them.

That brings us to Part 2 of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement and self-interest.

It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good. A 2002 New York Times obituary for philosopher Robert Nozick explained that the strongly libertarian implications of Nozick's masterwork, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia," "proved comforting to the right, which was grateful for what it embraced as philosophical justification." The right, you see, is grateful when a bright intellectual can graft some philosophical rationalization onto its thoroughly base and self-regarding politics.

This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama's social democratic agenda -- which couldn't get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts -- is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.

By contrast, Democratic opposition to George W. Bush -- from Iraq to Social Security reform -- constituted dissent. And dissent, we were told at the time, including by candidate Obama, is "one of the truest expressions of patriotism."

No more. Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. "They made a decision," explained David Axelrod, "they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed" -- a perfect expression of liberals' conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country's, that their idea of the public good is the public's, that their failure is therefore the nation's.

Then comes Massachusetts, an election Obama himself helped nationalize, to shatter this most self-congratulatory of illusions.

For liberals, the observation that "the peasants are revolting" is a pun. For conservatives, it is cause for uncharacteristic optimism. No matter how far the ideological pendulum swings in the short term, in the end the bedrock common sense of the American people will prevail.

The ankle-dwelling populace pushes back. It recenters. It renormalizes. Even in Massachusetts.