Big Brother is Even Under the Christmas Tree

According to the December 5th 2006 Rock Hill Herald, a mother in Rock Hill, South Carolina called the police to have them arrest her twelve-year-old son for unwrapping his Christmas present, a Nintendo game, without permission. The police came into the home to arrest the child for petty larceny.

The mother gave over her responsibility of disciplining her son to the state. This scenario of a parent relinquishing her role is being repeated throughout the nation. The vacuum created by dysfunctional parents is continually being filled by government workers. The state has been allowed to intrude into many aspects of our personal lives.

Instead of informing the parents that the situation is merely a family matter, the police wasted manpower and money to invade what should be the sanctity of the home. This diminishes the rights of all parents to raise their children without the state’s interference.

The more adults act like children, the more we are treated as children by our ever expanding government. We are being commanded by the government what to say, where to smoke, how to transport ourselves and our children and what we can eat. There are hate crime laws, smoking laws, safety seat and seat belt laws and laws regarding food with trans fats. The mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg, championed a recent law to make trans fat illegal in city restaurants. He apparently believes the state should prevent us from choosing what to eat.

As long as we do not impinge on the freedoms of others the US government has no constitutional powers to strip away our liberties. We have to continually battle to maintain them.

Behaving in a decent and concerned manner to ourselves and others would eliminate most of the pressure for government to impose these restrictions on our ability to choose. However we are abdicating freedoms by not doing what is right for ourselves and others.

Too many of us are obese. Many possess little personal discipline eating too much of the wrong things. Instead of our acting rationally or loved ones informing us of our destructive ways, our government officials are aggressively inserting themselves to perform the functions of protecting ourselves from ourselves.

We cannot blame government for becoming “Big Brother” in our personal lives. Even though many bureaucrats are prone to be social engineers creating ever increasing programs to correct the frailty of human nature, the real culprit in the loss of our personal freedoms is us.

We are often unwilling to fulfill our obligations and rarely willing to stand up to voice our objections to the loss of our right to be free. Most laws are not protecting us rather they are limiting our freedoms.

Believe it or not, if we do not stay vigilant we can anticipate environmental activists to pass laws taxing our breathing to cut down on CO2 emissions.

These obscure laws will continue unless we speak up. It is our fault for not restraining government from its natural inclination to expand into every facet of our lives until it becomes totalitarian.

We the American people can take the following steps to keep government in check:

• Fulfill our responsibilities in our home, business and community.
• Learn history and teach it to our children. Government schools are either teaching revisionist history or none at all.
• Teach and demand our children meet obligations at home and school.
• Be aware of local and national current events to fight against further erosion of our power.
• Make your opinions known to government representatives by contributing money, telephoning, emailing, and voting to let them know what we demand.
• Object to others when you feel their behavior is inappropriate or harmful. Politically correct thinking and behaving is lowering our national standards by causing self-censorship.

Keeping our rights and freedoms takes work. Regardless of utopian promises there will never be enough quality governmental workers or innovative programs to perform all the functions of the parents. Socialistic governmental programs have not and will never surpass the level of even mediocre families.

Living moral responsible lives and voicing our objectives is the answer to keeping government off our backs and out of our homes.

Smaller Schools are Better for Educating Florida's Students

Americans are in love with bigness for bigness’ sake. We indulge ourselves with gas guzzling SUVs, 3000 plus square foot MacMansions, a multitude of purchases to stock the ever-increasing mini storage industry and huge, fancy-dancy factory-like schools that warehouse our children. However, largeness is not always better.

“For example, if Florida, a state with unusually large school districts-decreased the size of its districts to the national median, it could increase its graduation rate by 5%.” Jay P. Greene, Education Myths, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005, pg, 103. Modern schools are too big to do the job of education effectively.

The consolidation of neighborhood schools began in the 1950s. The impetus for this transformation of our schools was “economy of scale” to decrease cost per student. Although there might have been initial cost savings, the average enrollment of each school increased five fold. This was due to closing the smaller schools and relocating students to bigger schools usually further from their homes and communities. The impact on our ability to deliver quality education has always been difficult to measure in dollars saved. Research over a half century has demonstrated we might have been “penny wise and pound foolish.”

The education director of the Gates Foundation said, “Small schools are absolutely essential in improving education especially for inner city schools.” Teresa Mendez, “Is a Smaller School Always a Better School”, Christian Science Monitor.

Researcher, Craig Howley of Ohio University, “In four separate studies of seven states, they repeatedly found that poor kids do better if they attend small schools. In fact in the most recent four state study, the correlation between poverty and low achievement was ten times stronger in larger schools than in smaller ones in all four states.” Howley replicated the research in West Virginia, Alaska, Montana, Ohio, Georgia and Texas. Diane Weaver Dunne, “Are Small Schools Better Schools?”education-world.com.

In a research project by the Bank Street of Education,” Small Schools Great Strides,” revealed the benefits from attending small schools regardless of the level of community poverty.

The advantage of small schools over large schools dating back to 1964 shows:

• Safer environment
• Better attendance records
• Higher student achievement
• Greater teacher satisfaction
• Better graduation rates

Knowledge Works Foundation.

The reason for the positive results of schools with less than 400 students is the natural establishment of a community. Everyone knowing each other decreases the emotional isolation and fear students experience in an overwhelmingly large school environment.

More frequent interactions between students and teachers leads to closer relationships and a greater sense of physical and emotional security. Academic and behavioral issues are more easily identified and resolved by teachers when they know in depth the personalities of the students. As the teachers see the student’s growth coming directly from their efforts, job gratification soars. This positive feeling of helping others inspires them to go the extra mile.

It is difficult for a student to fall between the cracks in this world where students and teachers have constant involvement with each other. There is little opportunity for anonymity.

Large schools do not have to be demolished to develop smaller, more manageable ones. It is only necessary to partition the buildings into separate enclosed areas each with its own principal, faculty and staff. By creating schools within a school where everyone knows everyone else respect, appropriate expectations and accountability are naturally fostered.

Massive schools may superficially impress the public with their elaborate architecture, “bells and whistles” and opportunities for specialization. Although small schools lack this glamour, on closer examination they are more effective in almost every variable in educating children.

Proactive Immigration Policy for the Benefit of Our Children

Our congress has approved the building of a 700 mile double security fence. This is not to keep our people from leaving as in Cuba, North Korea and other totalitarian nations, but to prevent people from entering our country illegally.

Too many of these people are not entering this country with the desire to be Americans. There is no commitment to assimilation. There is no urge to learn English or about America’s “exceptionalism”. They would rather retain their culture and take back to their native land whatever they can. They do not want to “pay their dues” to be part of America.

America loves hardworking people who come here for greater freedom and economic opportunity, not gangsters or freeloaders. We are a nation of immigrants who chose to sacrifice to become citizens of their adopted country. We have thrived by opening our arms to immigrants from all over the world. These immigrants transformed America into an economic super power.

The overwhelming majority of our citizens are not racist. However we are against aliens who sneak into our country without obeying the laws that our immigrant relatives followed. My father, with his mother came to America a year after my grandfather settled here. All of them had to pass through Ellis Island. They were interviewed by government bureaucrats to determine their suitability. Some of the immigrants had an X marked on their backs. This meant rejection and return to the country of origin.

These people who were deported did not merely cross a border on foot but were sent back on another long journey across the ocean. The screening was to weed out criminals, mentally and emotionally defective and diseased people as well as those who possessed anti-American sentiments.

All nations have a right to an immigration policy to protect and strengthen their nation. They do this by establishing a criteria for entering their country legally. We previously have had a generous immigration policy with common sense restrictions to prevent the overburdening of our society. There is no constitutional right to provide an illegal alien with free medical care, education, college tuition or welfare. Even citizens are not entitled to a “free lunch”.

Our economy will not be destroyed, as many anti-immigration reformers believe, by preventing illegals from entering our country or deporting those who break the law. The illegals who pick our crops, wash our dishes and work in other menial positions can be replaced by legal immigrants.

The USA is in an enviable position for selecting immigrants. It is almost everyone’s first choice as the place to emigrate. We can choose from the cream of the crop of interested immigrants worldwide. We can benefit from new blood to revitalize the middle class. It has to be the right type of mixture to blend into a unified nation.

E pluribus Unum- (from many- to one) should be our immigration guiding principle to maintain a strong and healthy nation. This will return us to the melting pot philosophy that has served our country well. The melting pot leads to assimilation while the “salad bowl” concept leads only to conflict and disunity.

Recent immigrants can retain certain aspects of their native culture while becoming productive and patriotic Americans. Accomplishing this will take the following steps:

• Determine through a systematic study the type, number and nation of origin of the immigrants we desire. The age, education and occupation should be factors in this selection process. Ireland has recently accepted 150,000 highly educated and motivated Polish immigrants into their country. We should do no less.
• Establish a modern Ellis Island here or develop a series of screening facilities in our embassies throughout the world.
• Require English proficiency to become a citizen.
• Eliminate dual citizenship that promotes divided loyalties.
• Deport any illegals who violate another US law including voting illegally.
• Enforce Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Reform Immigration Control Act that places sanctions against employers especially large international corporation’s hiring of illegal immigrants. This will create a disincentive for illegals to come to America.

Our immigration policy should be for the wellbeing of our entire population not the narrow interest of international corporations. These corporations can corrupt any policy by their money and lobbyists. Our middle class, not elites, should be heard in congress to put us back on the right immigration track.

We will pass our nation onto our children whatever condition it is in. Our children deserve an immigration policy that benefits America’s future interests. We, the people, not large corporations or the international elite, should determine these revisions.

Let us continue to demand that our representatives formulate and enforce laws that select the best and brightest foreigners to experience the American dream.

Control Your Child Not the World

The National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that eighty percent of parents surveyed did not think alcohol and marijuana are available at parties their teens attend while 50% of teens said the parties they attend did have both substances regardless of living in a city or suburbia. Heather Gehlert, “Parents Misjudge Teen Access to Drugs and Alcohol”, Tampa Tribune, August 20, 2006, p. 19.

Parents do not know what their teenagers are doing even though they might know where they are. As children get older they eventually face many forms of temptations of which parents are unaware.

Modern parents are under the illusion they somehow can protect their children throughout their lives by imposing their will to control the child’s world. This unrealistic notion is based on the following premises:

• The children will be under their direct supervision throughout the parent’s lives.
• Their power will be sufficient to dominate other authority figure’s attempts to discipline their child.
• Their lives must end simultaneously with or only after their child’s as they will always be there for them.

This juvenile and illogical thinking can be seen when a father races onto the football field and knocks down a child on the opposing team of his son’s Pee Wee football. A mother gives a verbal tongue-lashing to her 6-year-old daughter’s friend at school because the daughter was not invited to her birthday party. A thirty-five year old college graduate divorcee moves back into his parent’s home rent-free since his parents feel responsible for his inability to function as an adult.

Instead of teaching their children “how to fish”, modern parents want to catch, prepare and personally feed their children the fish. A more mature strategy is to teach the children to be independent fishermen. The wisdom of teaching a child how to behave when the parent is not there should be obvious. Although many modern parents are under the impression their omnipresence as a parent of a young child will continue as the child grows into a teenager especially now with the use of cell phones and cars with global positioning systems. It will not.

Parents are running interference for their pampered children attempting to protect them from the hard knocks of life. The over-controlling of their children’s lives robs them of the unsupervised interactions with their peers that helps children gain coping skills.

Controlling the home environment is do-able. The parent can determine the people who enter the house, the food eaten, the sleep schedule and almost every aspect of an infant’s life. However, there is no way a parent can directly monitor a child through adulthood. No matter how hard parents work at choosing the right preschool, sit in viewing rooms watching their child do drama, gymnastics or karate their child will be confronted by peers and authority figures in ways the parent does not appreciate.

As the child gets older it becomes impossible to micromanage his world. Sleep-overs, bring dropped off at the movies, attending concerts or just hanging out in shopping malls creates situations that cannot be directly supervised or evaluated by parents. Instead of attempting to over-protect our children it is better to teach them to do the right thing even when the parent is not there.

Parents need to share the wisdom of their experiences with their child. Children should be taught to develop a moral compass through moral training. Obedience, responsibility, empathy, pain, will power and critical thinking training take the sacrifice of time and energy of the parents. This training provides correct thinking and behaving that is essential to function at the highest level. People who have learned how to befriend, avoid, compromise and confront depending on the situation will have the ability to be successful.

Children should be prepared at home for life outside the home. When parents apply their skills at child rearing they will train their children to develop self-control and function well without the parent’s direct involvement. Children who possess a strong foundation in moral values and competencies will be able to achieve their potential.

Parents, do your homework when your child is young. You will be able to relax as they mature and reap the benefits of your work by thankfully watching them fly on their own when they reach adulthood.

Human Rights for Terrorists

Are we in a war against terrorism?

Can the loss of this war result in the end of our constitutional rights by our victorious enemy?

People answering “no” to the two questions above would have no urgency to protect America. They would grant terrorists the same constitutional rights as American citizens and would focus on winning over the hearts and minds of “the Arab street.” The UN anti-American bias and the State Department’s undermining the war effort would be highly valued. National sovereignty, the military and border security would be low priorities. Our humiliation in the war would level the playing field of America’s dominance ushering in a one-world government to fill the vacuum created by our downfall.

People answering the two questions “yes” would have a different set of priorities. Survival would be the overriding objective. All resources would be provided to military and intelligence gathering agencies. Victory to preserve our freedom, prosperity and leadership of the world would be the goal.

These two diametrically opposed viewpoints indicate we are in a Culture War as well as a War on Terror.

Many elites are more concerned with impressing others instead of doing what is right for the American people. They are arguing to allow terrorists to see classified information exposing our tactical strategies to our enemy. This grandstanding for national and international audiences jeopardizes all of us. These self-centered actions are weakening our nation.

Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, is worried about clearly defining the Geneva Convention for it would “encourage the world to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism and put our own troops at risk.” Mr. Powell ignores the reality that leaving the vague and subjective language of Article 3 of the Geneva Convention places our interrogators at risk of criminal charges for doing their job to protect Americans. He does not seem to understand that the barbaric behavior of terrorists towards our soldiers will not be any more humane no matter what we do.

Beheading, cutting off limbs, dragging soldier’s bodies through the streets will not be reversed using “kid gloves.” Any handcuffing of our efforts to win will be seen as weakness. The Geneva Convention of more than 50 years ago was a treaty to protect a nation’s soldiers from facing a horrific fate by hostile armies. Terrorists are not covered under this treaty.

Even if terrorists were recognized by the Geneva Convention it does not mean our soldiers would be protected. John McCain would say that the Viet Cong did not follow the Geneva Convention in Vietnam. A nation of law does not mean it has to agree to international law that would hamper self-defense. Thwarting a terrorist plot though harsh interrogation is preferable to deaths of innocent citizens. This is not humane. It will only prolong the killing and the war.

A divided Supreme Court unilaterally undermined our ability to protect ourselves. By changing the rules of fighting this global war it usurped the power of the office of the president to do his duty as commander and chief. It arbitrarily assigned the legislative branch to define the procedures for military tribunals.

John McCain is the spokesman who states no valid intelligence can be gained from coercive interrogation. John McCain insists that torture does not produce truthful information. He demands the end to any form of coercion including many used by local police officers. Loud music, sleep deprivation, water boarding and even grabbing a suspect’s shirt could be “an outrage upon personal dignity.” The same John McCain said on page 198 of his book, Faith of Our Fathers, “I should not have given information on my ship and my squadron and I regret very much having done so.” His torture as a P.O.W. produced accurate information for the enemy.

Torture does work. Brian Ross investigative reporter for ABC News, stated on the O’Reilly Factor on September 20, 2006 that Kalid Sheik Mohammed and eleven other high level terrorists gave valuable information after tough interrogation methods were used. You cannot use the manners of Emily Post to fight homicidal terrorists intent on killing innocent people.

The advocating of “human rights for terrorists” who vow to annihilate us is contrary to self-preservation. Traditional Americans are either scratching their heads or are outraged by this suicidal thinking. U.S. citizens have constitutional rights: the right to self-defense and the freedom to debate how we want to conduct ourselves in a war without an identified nation or soldiers.

Americans should demand their leaders do their patriotic duty to protect us from cultural and terrorist enemies. Divided we fall even with our constitutional rights. United we will stand with our rights intact for our citizens not the enemy.