The Eco-Radicals’ REAL Motives
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” –– H.L. Mencken
The driving force behind the eco-radicals’ fierce efforts to strangle the free market with environmental regulations is their virulent hatred for a free, prosperous economy. Yet behind this hatred is an even deeper one. To understand why they try to wreck our economy, you have to grasp the shocking fact that many eco-radicals hate the human race and Western civilization. They hate the fact that you, your family, your friends, and millions of other human beings live and prosper on this planet.
Most of us are naive about the environmental movement. We believe that when eco-radicals say we should “protect the environment,” they mean we should protect it for people. What they really mean is that we should protect the environment against people. People are the enemy. Rats, swamps, and old-growth forests must be protected against you, your family, and the rest of the human race.
To confirm this, just watch nature programs on public television. In every program I’ve seen, human beings are depicted as the enemy. These programs portray humans as vicious, violent destroyers of birds, wildlife, forests, rivers, and oceans. Nature is seen as “pure,” “fragile,” and “innocent” (including child-eating hyenas and alligators). Environmentalists or their sympathizers create these programs, so the programs reflect the environmental movement’s deepest attitudes toward the human race.
If environmental groups valued human life, they wouldn’t try to cut our oil supplies by banning drilling in arctic wastelands or off the coast of Florida and California. They wouldn’t ban the hunting of alligators that kill children. They wouldn’t file lawsuits against housing developments that give people shelter, to protect kangaroo rats.
They wouldn’t have lobbied Congress to ban DDT, the pesticide that saved the lives of millions of people worldwide from malaria. They wouldn’t ban logging in northwest forests to protect spotted owls, a ban that destroyed over 30,000 logging and sawmill workers’ jobs.
Here’s what one environmentalist had to say about loggers losing their jobs:
“Loggers losing their jobs because of Spotted Owl legislation is, in my eyes, no different than people being out of work after the furnaces of Dachau shut down.”
In other words, forcing owls to move to another forest because you cut down trees they nest in is just as evil as murdering six million people in gas chambers. Owls are as important as six million human lives. If loggers unintentionally kill a few owls, they’re as evil as the murderers who ran the Nazi gas chambers. Therefore, we should have no sympathy for loggers who lost their jobs. Here’s another quote:
“Somewhere along the line . . . we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along[emphasis added].”
In other words, this eco-radical wishes the human race to die out—for your family, your children, your friends to die, so that the “sacred” Earth will be free of the “plague” of human beings.
These are quotes by radical environmentalists. These quotes eloquently reveal the eco-radicals’ utter hatred and contempt for the human race, and for human life and progress on this Earth. Are these the kind of sick people that we, and State and Congressional legislators should be listening to?
I knew that the environmental movement values swamps and kangaroo rats over human life, but I didn’t realize how sick this movement really is until I read a shocking article in the New York Times. It seems that in Brazil, “endangered-species” regulations forbid hunting “protected” wildlife. This ban includes the dreaded jacaré and caiman, two Brazilian alligator species.
The jacaré is a vicious, prehistoric, man and child-eating monster who inhabits the Amazon River Basin. In the high-water season, alligators infest the riverbanks near where Mrs. Ramos lives. One evening in August, an eighteen-foot jacaré emerged from the lagoon to forage for food in waters flowing around the stilts of her house. The New York Times article described what happened to Mrs. Ramos’s son:
“Gilson (Mrs. Ramos’s 17-year-old son) went down to tie up his canoe,” said Sidecley Conceicão Andrade, a barefoot, 12-year-old neighbor. “In the dark, he thought he grabbed the canoe, but it was the jacaré’s tail. It took him away and ate him up.”
Can you imagine the horror of being eaten alive by an alligator? Can you imagine the nightmares and searing pain Mrs. Ramos must feel when she thinks of her son? Well, Brazil’s environmental regulations killed her son and hundreds of other innocent victims of alligator attacks.
Imagine that you lived in Florida and were the parents of a beautiful little girl. How would you feel if an alligator protected by the Endangered Species Act snatched your daughter and ate her alive? How would you like hearing your little girl crying for her mommy or daddy while the alligator ripped her to pieces? I apologize for describing such a horror in detail, but I want to bring home the real meaning of environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act. If you want to picture the essence of many eco-radicals’ contempt for human life, just remember what the jacaré did to Mrs. Ramos’s son.
Radical environmentalism and its strangling regulations threatens our health and our lives. But environmentalists can hurt us only because most of us have fallen for their propaganda. The problem is that we’re a good-natured, but sometimes naive people. We give everyone the benefit of the doubt, including environmentalists. We think eco-radicals are normal human beings like we are, and couldn’t possibly mean what they say. That’s what the world thought about Hitler—people didn’t believe what he said in his book, “Mein Kampf.” But we can’t be naive any longer.
We have to judge eco-radicals by their words, values, and actions, and recognize that the agenda of too many environmentalists is evil. The only way to stop them is to de-fang them, to take away their power, to repeal most environmental regulations and abolish the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Miscalculation of a Thief and Rapist
“Jimmy, let’s hit that big, brick house on Chester street. It’s the biggest house in the neighborhood. Remember when we followed the pretty young wife the other day? Remember the expensive jewelry she was wearing? Remember the Mercedes she was driving? There must be a fortune in that house, Jimmy,” said Benny Doland, his mouth almost watering.
Benny Doland was tall and skinny, about 30 years old. He had small, narrow eyes, a long nose, and heavy, wet lips. He had a high-pitched voice and his hands moved erratically as he talked.
He was talking to Jimmy, his partner. Jimmy Greeves was short, barrel-chested, around 27 years old. He had cold, brutal eyes, a small nose, and a thin, tight mouth. He looked at Benny Doland with contempt. “Yeah,” he said, “the little wifey was sure pretty, wasn’t she Benny? I sure would like a piece of that.”
Benny looked at his partner with fear. He had seen that look on Jimmy’s face before, and he remembered what happened the last time they hit a house. Jimmy had raped and strangled the pretty young wife in that house, and left her for dead on her living room floor. Jimmy Greeves had raped her five times. He had spent so much time raping the girl, that they didn’t search the house to find the cash and jewelry. They left empty-handed. Benny didn’t want that to happen again.
“Jimmy,” he said, “remember what happened the last time? Please, Jimmy, let’s keep our minds on robbing the place, not the girl. O.K?”
Jimmy looked up at his partner with a sneer. “You just case the joint and find the loot in the house, Benny. I’ll take care of the pretty little wife.” Jimmy looked at the cold eyes of his partner and didn’t say anything.
Then Benny said, “Jimmy, what if they have a gun in the house? What if the husband has a rack of guns and his wife knows how to use them? I don’t want to get killed just trying to rob a house.”
Jimmy Greeves looked at Benny with contempt. “You idiot, don’t you read the newspapers? Our friends in the State legislature just passed a gun-control law that forced all gun owners to hand in their guns to the cops. Ain’t that grand? We always used to worry about getting shot when we hit a house. Now, we don’t have no more worries. If I could, I would kiss the moron politicians who passed the gun-control laws. They give guys like us a free ride. All we have to do is break into the house, and the house and pretty little wife is ours for the taking.”
Benny’s wet lips smiled at the thought. “Yeah,” he said, “I forgot about that. You’re right. They just passed that law. And all the obedient law-abiding citizens in this town turned in their guns. Do you believe that? I guess they think they don’t have to worry about guys like us any more. I guess they think the cops will protect them. Ain’t that a laugh, Jimmy? Yeah, Jimmy, let’s hit that house tomorrow night. Remember, we saw the husband with his packed bags riding off to the airport yesterday. I guess he’s going on a business trip. The wifey will be all alone.”
Jenny Hanson loved her house, her husband, and her two little daughters. She was 25 years old, with beautiful blue eyes, a delicate nose, and a wide, sensuous mouth. Her dark, lustrous hair flowed over lovely shoulders. She had a lush, curvy body that she tried to hide under sweatshirts and baggy jeans.
But Jenny Hanson also had an inner core of steel. She was raised as an army brat. Her father was a Marine Corp colonel who loved his daughter to distraction. Because he loved her so much, because he saw how beautiful she was, and because he knew how men were, he taught his daughter how to use guns from an early age. Jenny Hanson was a deadly shot.
Jenny had a close friend growing up, Betty Draper. One night, when they were teens, she witnessed her friend Betty being raped by a gang of drunk teenagers. Jenny had managed to escape before the gang could get her, too. That terrible night was etched in her brain, in her heart. Later, her friend Betty had committed suicide.
Sweet, lovely Jenny therefore kept several loaded pistols in her house. She kept them hidden and locked up, so her daughters could never find them or reach them. When the State legislators passed the gun-confiscation laws, her father had called her from his base in Colorado. He told her, “Honey, the hell with those damn politicians. The government in Australia just confiscated all handguns. Guess what? Rapes, robberies, and murders are way up there. What else could you expect? Jenny, I forbid you from handing in your guns. Do you hear?”
Jenny said, with love in her voice, “I know, my wonderful, protecting Daddy. You didn’t have to tell me that. Do you think I would give up my guns because some gun-control morons want to take away my right to defend myself and my children? May those bastards be damned for disarming us. Especially for disarming the women in this town. Now every woman on my block is threatened by rape or robbery because they can’t defend themselves with a gun. Don’t worry, Dad, I have my revolver armed and loaded. Good-night, Daddy.”
Her father, on the other end of the line, was proud of his daughter. “O.K. sweetheart, I was just checking. You know how I am. Good night, and call me if you need anything.”
“O.K, Dad,” Jenny said.
At 9:15 p.m. the next evening, Benny Doland and Jimmy Greeves broke a back window on Jenny’s house. What they didn’t know was that Jenny had a good alarm system. She was upstairs in Sara and Melissa’s bedroom, reading to them from their favorite book. When she heard the alarm go off, she got up very slowly from the bed. Sara and Melissa looked up at their mother with fear.
“What is that noise, Mommy?” Melissa said. Jenny looked down calmly at her daughters and said, “Sara, Melissa, I want you both to stay in your bed and be very quiet. I have to see where that noise is coming from. It’s very important that you be quiet so I can hear the noise. O.K, darlings? Do you promise?”
Sara and Melissa both nodded their little heads yes and watched as their mother walked slowly out the bedroom door. They heard the outside key to their door lock, something their mommy had never done before.
Jenny walked to the master bedroom, went into the closet, opened a stepladder, then took away some big boxes on the top shelf. Behind the boxes, was a small locked box. She took out a special key, opened the box, and removed the fully loaded revolver.
She calmly walked out of the master bedroom and down the carpeted stairway to the big living room. She heard the voices of two men whispering to each other. She heard drawers being opened, cabinet glass being smashed, and she heard curses too. She knew the men would find nothing. All their valuables were hidden in a secret safe under the floor in the master bedroom. The men’s voices were angry, she knew, because they had found nothing.
Jenny switched on the light to the living room and came down the stairs. The two thieves, startled by the light, turned around and saw this beautiful woman slowly, calmly walking down the stairs towards them. What astounded them most was that the girl seemed to be totally unafraid. She held her right hand behind her back as she walked towards them.
“Get out of this house right now,” Jenny said. She faced the two men with utter calm. “There are no valuables here,” she said. “They are all in our bank vault. You will find nothing, here. If you leave now, I won’t call the police.”
Jimmy Greeves was astounded. This ripe plum was giving them orders. He was also angry. He said, “You bitch. Where’s the cash? Where’s the jewels? Don’t give me that crap about the bank vault. We saw you wearing those expensive jewels. We tailed you.”
“I told you there is nothing here.” Jenny said. “Those jewels are fake. There isn’t more than $100 cash in the house. Now get out, or I will call the police.”
Jimmy Greeves’s eyes turned cold. He took in every curve of her body, lusting for her. He wanted her even more for being so arrogant. “O.K., just for being nasty to us, me and Benny are going to have some fun with you. You won’t mind, will you, bitch? We know you pretty little housewives always lust for bad guys like us. You asked for it, so now you’re going to get it.”
Jenny was seeing her friend Betty after she was raped and beaten. She was remembering the phone call Betty’s mother made to her six months later, telling her that Betty had committed suicide. Jenny looked at the short, ugly thug approaching her and felt the steel rising in her.
She took the revolver from behind her back and pointed it straight at Jimmy Greeves’s chest. The thug’s eyes opened wide with shock as he saw the pistol come up. She fired twice, point-blank, and Jimmy Greeves flew backwards from the impact of the bullets. He lay dead on the floor in front of Benny Doland, whose startled eyes were wide open. Benny looked down at his dead partner, then looked at the barrel of the smoking revolver in Jenny’s hand. What scared him most was the calm, merciless look on Jenny’s face. He panicked, and ran screaming out the front door. Jenny watched him run with a grim smile of satisfaction.
When the police arrived, they arrested Jenny for unlawful possession of a handgun.
WHY RAPISTS & ROBBERS LOVE AUSTRALIA’S GUN-CONTROL LAWS
SCENE: Melbourne, Australia:
“Sir, what are we to do about all this crime?,” asked Captain John Downey, Melbourne’s Chief of Police, to the Australian Minister of Security, Percy Sumner.
Captain Downey, tall, forty years old, square shoulders, close-cropped hair, and brown eyes, was speaking to the Minister in his huge office overlooking Melbourne Harbor in Australia. Minister Sumner was fifty years old, a short, heavy-set man, with a red, round face, brown hair, round eyes, and a small mouth.
One wall of the office had a huge map of Melbourne, with yellow, red, and blue pins stuck on the locations of recent crimes. The yellow was for burglary, red for rape, blue for murder. Alongside this map was a chart showing crime rates for each of the three crime categories. The chart showed a definite pattern — crime rates had been increasing in Melbourne over the last five years.
Downey said, “I don’t know what to do anymore, sir. No matter how many police we put on the streets, no matter how much we increase prison sentences, the crime rates keep going up. I don’t understand it, sir. I don’t know how to stop it.”
Minister Sumner tightened his little mouth. He said, “It’s all those guns out there on the streets, Captain Downey, that’s the problem. We’ve forced every gun owner in Melbourne to register every gun and rifle they own. We’ve planted our agents at gun shows. We’ve started suing the gun manufacturers. It’s those damn guns. If so many Aussies didn’t own guns, the crime rate would fall. I’ve been discussing this issue seriously with the Prime Minister, Captain. We have agreed that the only solution is gun confiscation. Confiscate every gun in Melbourne and the crime will stop. No guns, no crime, right Downey? That sounds like common sense, doesn’t it?”
“Yes sir,” Captain Downey said eagerly, “that’s what I’ve been suggesting to you for the last year. Another reason we want to confiscate the guns is because when we make drug raids without warrants, sometimes our men get shot as intruders. Some home owners actually have the gall to try to defend their homes against our boys, who are just doing their duty. I don’t want any home owner with a gun in his house. We should also make it a crime for a home owner to use a gun to defend himself in his home against a burglar. If we let him have that right, you never know when he might use that same gun against one of our men who break down his door on a drug raid.”
“The same goes for the women. We can’t allow them to carry a gun, either in their home or on the streets. If they think a mugger is threatening them or might rape them, they should contact the police. We’ll be there within an hour. What if the woman owned a gun and didn’t know how to use it? You know how stupid women are with guns, Minister. We can’t trust them with a gun. And women are so careless, they’ll leave the gun lying around the house where children can find them. It’s worth confiscating everyone’s guns, just so one child doesn’t die from a gun accident.”
Minister Sumner nodded his round head vigorously in agreement. He said, “Good ideas, Downey, I’ll suggest them to the Prime Minister. I think we’ll be able to get the confiscation laws passed in about a month. Thank you for your time, sir. I’ll talk to you again in about four months. By that time, our wall charts should start showing a big decrease in crime. Good day, sir.”
“Good day, Minister. Thank you for your help in this matter. We’ll put a dent in the crime, wait and see.” With that, Captain Downey confidently walked out of the Minister’s office.
FOUR MONTHS LATER:
In the same office. Outside the window, the late afternoon sky was dark and cloudy, and the two men were having another heated conversation.
“Look at the charts, Captain Downey. By God, look at them!,” said Minister Sumner. “The graphs are going straight up, there going off the wall! What in blazes is going on? Our crime rate is triple what it was four months ago. Didn’t you confiscate all the guns in Melbourne, Captain? What the hell is going on?”
“Yes, sir, we did confiscate all the guns,” replied Captain Downey, pacing nervously in front of the Minister’s desk. “I just don’t understand it. We put out the confiscation order the day after we spoke at our last meeting. It was in all the newspapers. We think most law-abiding Melbourne citizens complied. Our local police stations report that over thirty thousand registered guns were handed in.”
“Thirty thousand, did you say?,” asked the Minister. “I thought our gun-registration rolls showed ninety thousand register guns in Melbourne. Why only thirty thousand handed in? What is going on? Didn’t you indicate on your confiscation orders and newspapers ads that anyone not handing in their guns would be subject to prosecution and five years in prison?”
“Yes we did, sir,” stammered Captain Downey. “But all of a sudden, every owner we contacted said they had lost their gun, so couldn’t hand it in. What are we going to do sir, get search warrants to search the homes of sixty thousand gun owners? If they’re hiding their guns, we probably won’t even find them.”
“Not only that, sir, as usual the criminals are not paying attention to our confiscation laws. They get their guns illegally, like they always have. We’ve caught a few house burglars and interrogated them, sir. They have been going on a rampage. They used to hit a few houses a week. Now they are hitting a dozen a week, sir. We were puzzled.
We asked them why? They just looked at our interrogators with contempt, like our men were idiots. What do you think they said, sir?”
“What?,” asked Minister Sumner?
“They thanked me, sir.”
“Thanked you, Captain? What the devil do you mean? Why did they thank you?”
“Because, sir, they thanked me for the new gun confiscation laws, and the laws forbidding home-owners from owning or using a gun for self-defense. They thanked me for making their job so much easier and safer. They said they now just knock on the mark’s door, pretend to be the gas man, barge into the house with their guns drawn, and loot the house. They said they’re not afraid of getting shot anymore by the home owner. Some of them had the effrontery to tell me to thank you personally, sir,” Captain Downey said with outrage.
“They did, did they?,” Minister Sumner said, getting red in the face. “We’ll see about that. I’m going to suggest to the Prime Minister some new gun-control laws. I want him to give us the power to make random searches without warrants in every house and apartment in Melbourne. I want him to increase the prison terms for gun possession to thirty years without chance of parole. I want him to forbid all gun clubs and guns shows — that’s probably where the burglars and murderers get their guns.
I’ll also ask him for the power to confiscate anyone’s car, home, or bank account who is caught with a gun. That will solve the problem, by God.”
“But sir,” Captain Downey protested meekly, “we’re already getting hundreds of complaints about the increasing, heavy-handed tactics of our gun squads. There’s been some nasty newspaper articles mentioning our Constitution, ‘rights of the people,’ and all that crap.”
“The hell with that,” Captain. “What do we care about so-called ‘rights?’ We have a crime spree. It’s an emergency. Our efforts must not be thwarted by silly notions about rights and Constitutions. Guns are killing people every day. That’s all that matters.”
Captain Downey said, “Yes, sir. I hope you’re right. I surely do. I am just a little afraid of civil unrest, sir, that’s all.”
“To hell with civil unrest, Captain, said Minister Sumner. “That’s what our riot police and prisons are for. We know best how to solve this problem, and we won’t let a bunch of agitators stop us. I will ask the Prime Minister to put my new suggestions into place immediately. You’ll see quick results.”
“Yes, sir. I hope you’re right, sir. Please let me know when the new laws are in place, sir, so my men can start enforcing them.”
“Very good, Captain. I will do so. I will then meet with you in another four months. Good day, Captain.”
“Good day, Minister.”
Of course, four months later, in that same office, the charts where now going ballistic. Crime rates were soaring. Australia had gained the international distinction of having the second highest crime rate in the world (after England, who also has strict gun control and confiscation laws).
LAND OF THE FREE? — NOT ANY MORE
In our daily lives, most of us believe we are free Americans. The average person can still go about his business, travel where he wants to go, and freely choose his goals, friends, and career. We still have freedom of speech, the press, trial by jury, and many other liberties our Founding Fathers wrote into the Bill of Rights and Constitution. We are still freer than any other people on Earth.
Yet, consider the following:
We may still have fundamental freedoms of speech and the press, but America is in a transition from liberty to despotism, a halfway house on the road to tyranny. We already have economic tyranny in America. If you add up all the taxes you pay, including income taxes, Social Security, sales, real estate, gasoline, telephone, and dozens of other hidden taxes, government loots over forty percent of your hard-earned income in taxes.
Yet, only a hundred years ago, the average worker paid no more than five percent of his income in taxes. In 1901, there was no income tax, Social Security tax, or most of the other taxes you pay today. In the Middle Ages, medieval rulers took about 20 percent of their serfs’ produce. Our government now taxes us worse than serfs. If government claims the right to forty percent of your income, it claims the right to forty percent of your labor, and forty percent of your life. In effect, the people we “elect” have put us on a chain gang until May 10th of every year, working for the bureaucrats.
Most parents may not see it this way, but local governments, in effect, kidnap your children through public-school compulsory-attendance laws. They force you to send your children to government (public) schools that waste twelve years of your children’s lives and turn them into illiterates. They then tax you to support these so-called “schools.”
“War on Drugs” government SWAT teams can break down your door in the middle of the night without a warrant, based on the drug tip of a malicious, anonymous informant, then threaten you in your own living room. Drug laws dictate what we can or cannot put in our own bodies. These laws tell us we do not have the right to smoke marijuana, even if we have cancer and the marijuana alleviates the nausea from chemotherapy drugs.
Government tells us we cannot commit suicide if we have terminal cancer with excruciating pain, nor can a doctor assist us to commit suicide. By these laws, government tells us it now owns our bodies. These laws deny our right of free choice for important personal decisions in our lives.
Try building a new home for yourself, and you will run into a hornet’s nest of building department inspectors, zoning commissions, environment impact statements, and local agencies who will tie you up in knots. Try starting a small business and you will need government licenses and approvals. Local, State and Federal tax authorities, like vultures, will then devour your profits with their ever-increasing taxes.
Taxes loot your hard-earned money to pay for dozens of “entitlement programs” such as Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, corporate subsidies, welfare programs, health care for illegal immigrants, and now a “welfare” program for the entire population of Iraq called the Iraq war. Your voluntary consent is not required for these programs. Government forces you to pay for them.
Federal, State, and local police agencies use asset-forfeiture laws to steal the cars, homes, businesses, and bank accounts of innocent people under the pretext of a War on Drugs. Victims of drug raids then have to prove their innocence and sue the agency to get their property back. Asset-forfeiture laws have turned too many local police departments into agencies for legalized looting.
Anti-gun politicians make thousands of gun laws that restrict a woman’s right to protect herself from a rapist, a homeowner’s right to protect himself from a robber in the middle of the night, or American citizens’ right to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees our right to bear arms is under massive assault. It may be only a matter of time until we lose this right altogether.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations can control who an employer hires, fires, or promotes, how much he has to pay his employees (minimum wage), and what their “conditions of employment” must be. This same agency can sue an employer into bankruptcy for “discrimination” or other “infractions” of its regulations.
Because of the recent Supreme Court “Kelo” decision, your property rights have become null and void. Now any developer who wants to put up a new shopping center can get your local government to condemn your home, and your neighbors’ homes, through their power of “eminent domain.” Local government bureaucrats can now demolish your home, not for public use like a highway, but to let a private developer profit from your land and pay more taxes.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can stop a home builder from building homes, a farmer from farming his land, a rancher from grazing his cattle, an oil company from drilling for desperately needed oil, or a logging company from cutting down trees to give us lumber for new homes. EPA regulations sharply jack up the price of oil and destroy property rights in America for a great and noble cause — to protect “endangered” species like the Alabama mud rat, mosquito-infested swamps called “wetlands,” and “delicate” frozen Arctic wastelands that look like the surface of the moon.
The Food and Drug Administration forces drug companies to spend over $500 million and seven years to get approval for a new drug. It puts pharmaceutical companies through a regulatory torture chamber that strangles the development of thousands of new, life-saving drugs. It has made SWAT-team raids on vitamin stores to “protect” us from Vitamin C and other dangers.
Federal agents can persecute a religious sect they don’t like, as the Feds did in Waco, Texas. They persecuted these people partly because the sect owned allegedly “illegal” firearms, firearms the 2nd Amendment says they had the right to own. After slaughtering innocent women and children in a ball of fire, none of the Federal agents were ever prosecuted or sent to prison for their actions.
Finally, in response to the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Federal government passed an “anti-terror” bill that created secret military tribunals. These tribunals will be like medieval star-chambers, where defendants’ legal rights will be ripped to pieces, and trial by jury will be denied.
These tribunals have set a terrible precedent. It is only a matter of time before government prosecutors expand the vague definition of “terrorism” to an ever-widening list of “crimes” that can be used against American citizens. Government judges and prosecutors will then be able to try and convict Americans without the “messy” need for juries, proof, evidence, or the presumption of innocence.
Does all this sound like “the land of the free?” Government in America is a growing tyranny. It is a government that would shock our Founding Fathers, a government they would consider a greater tyranny than the British monarchy they fought a revolutionary war against. Worse, whatever freedoms we have left are being taken from us at an ever-accelerating rate.
If you, my reader, do not see this, it is not your fault. Your liberty has been taken from you gradually, one new tax and regulation at a time. You have become accustomed to the taxes and regulations. You think they are “normal” and therefore nothing to complain about. You mistakenly believe that because you elect your representatives, and because they enact laws based on majority rule, that their laws, taxes, and regulations are moral and legitimate. It is like your wife or husband not noticing you have gained thirty pounds over the past five years because they see you every day, and the weight gain was gradual.
So it is with gradual tyranny. But if Americans living 150 years ago suddenly came back to life today, they would be shocked, for they would see the stark difference in their freedom.
President Obama continues to waste hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to protect the “freedom” of the Iraqi people. Well, how about first giving Americans back the freedom that is their birthright, the constitutional freedoms our Founding Fathers fought and died for?
Still think you’re living in the land of the free?
THE ECO-DOOMSDAY PROPHETS
The human race is heading for ecological disaster because of its increasing and all-pervasive assaults on our air, water, and land. Pollution is everywhere. Our industrial civilization is heading toward environmental collapse, and mankind’s fate hangs in the balance.
Does this scare you out of your wits? It’s intended to do just that. This scenario from a second-rate horror movie is passed off as scientific fact by a new breed of doomsday prophets, the radical environmentalists. Read and take heed — the end is near. Here is an example of a typical environmentalist scare story:
“The present course of environmental degradation, if unchecked, threatens the survival of civilized man. Yet the evidence is overwhelming that the way in which we now live on the earth is driving its thin, life-supporting skin, and ourselves with it, to destruction.”
Environmentalists’ doomsday predictions would be comical, if it wasn’t for the fact that these scare stories have frightened local, state, and federal legislators into creating a massive, poisonous layer of regulations. Environmental regulations violate our property rights, restrict our personal liberties, threaten our standard of living, and throw thousands of Americans out of work.
Environmentalists concoct end-of-the-world scenarios all the time. These predictions are calculated to scare us, and usually turn out to be pure fantasy, exaggerations, or deliberate distortions of the facts.
The mother of all doomsday stories, of course, is global warming. For over thirty years, environmentalists have scared us with this one. It seems that car exhausts, forest clearing, power plants, and other industrial activities increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Increased carbon dioxide will allegedly create a barrier in the atmosphere that traps the Earth’s heat, creating a “greenhouse effect” As a result, the Earth’s temperature will rise, causing glaciers to melt, seas to rise, worldwide flooding, and calamity to the human race.
As expected, there are many reputable scientists who think this theory is nonsense. Other scientists have their own theories that totally contradict global warming.
“Kenneth E.F. Watt, professor of environmental studies at the University of California at Davis, theorized that an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should lead to global cooling, not warming. Watt argued that carbon dioxide will heat tropical oceans, leading to additional evaporation. This will produce denser and more widespread clouds at high elevations, which will decrease the amount of sunlight that penetrates the atmosphere. Some scientists believe that the Earth is warming, but attribute the change to causes other than carbon dioxide production. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences, suggested that solar activity may have caused global warming, and Reid Bryson, director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, believes that dust and smoke are the primary causes of climate change.”
There are also many scientists who question whether the Earth has gotten warmer over the last hundred years.
“Temperature measurements may be biased by the effects of urbanization; weather stations are located in urban areas, where heat-absorbing buildings and pavement can raise the readings one to two degrees above the surrounding atmosphere. After correcting for the “urban” effect, a study by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that there was no statistically significant evidence of warming in the United States [italics added]. Andrew R. Solow, a statistician at Woods Hole, pointed out that because monitoring stations tend to be located on land rather than oceans and more are in the Northern than in the Southern Hemisphere, temperature readouts are not really global at all. Ten years of weather satellite data have also shown no evidence of global warming [italics added].”
There’s little valid evidence of global warming. Instead, there’s solid evidence that the Earth has not been warming. Since 1978, a temperature-measuring satellite called Tiros II has been orbiting the Earth 24-hours a day. Guess what? The satellite’s measurements showed no significant increase or decrease in the Earth’s temperature. Scientific temperature measurements from Tiros II show no global warming trend in the last fifteen years. In other words, global warming is a myth.
Many eminent scientists agree that global warming and other environmental scare stories are just unproven theories. Prior to the Earth Summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, scientists from around the world issued the Heidelberg Appeal. In the Appeal, scientists asked government leaders at the summit to be careful. They asked the leaders not to make serious environmental decisions based on pseudoscientific arguments or false and non-relevant data. More than 250 scientists, including 27 Nobel prize winners, issued the Appeal on June 1, 1992. Today, 2,300 scientists from 79 countries, including 65 Nobel prize winners, have signed the Appeal .
Former governor of Washington state and former chairwoman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, also thought that global warming is nonsense. In her wonderful 1993 book, “Environmental Overkill: Whatever Happened To Common Sense?,” she said that it was unlikely that carbon dioxide would cause any significant changes in worldwide temperatures. Jeffrey Salmon is executive director of the Washington-based George C. Marshall Institute. In the July 1993 issue of Commentary, he flatly stated that he found no valid scientific evidence to prove that man-made gases are causing the Earth to warm from a greenhouse effect.
In short, we are being conned. Government takes billions of tax dollars out of our pocket to enforce massive environmental regulations that, in most cases, protect you from nothing.
I could describe many other eco-scare stories, but I think I’ve made my point. These doomsday prophesies are either distortions or exaggerations of unproven facts. Unfortunately, radical environmentalists and the liberal media spout this eco-nonsense so often that we start to believe them. That’s the problem and the danger. Panicked, short-sighted Congressmen believe the scare stories and then pass environmental regulations that strangle our economy and destroy our property rights.
It is time that we see these environmental scare stories for what they are — a tactic by left-leaning environmental radicals to destroy the thing they hate most. What they hate most is our liberty, property rights, and the free-market that can make life for human beings on this planet a joy instead of a brutal struggle for existence.
THE “FAIR SHARE” CANNIBALS
The idea of forcing someone to pay his “fair share” of taxes through progressive income taxes applies only to a society of cannibals. It applies to a society where the majority has the right to devour those people who earn more than others. Paying your “fair share” in taxes implies that all of us have a responsibility to support the rapacious Welfare/Entitlement State, but some of us have more responsibility than others. It implies that the more money you earn, the larger your “fair share” should be, simply because you have more to give.
In other words, the “fair share” principal embedded in our progressive income-tax code brings to America, the “land of the free,” Karl Marx’s dictum from his Communist Manifesto, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
This dictum is the philosophy of socialist looters who are consumed by envy. This policy simply justifies stealing from those people who earn more than others. And since there’s always someone richer or poorer than you, the progressive income tax leads to universal looting, on a massive scale. Through the progressive income-tax system, everyone steals from the next victim above him on the economic ladder. Paying your “fair share” of taxes appeals to looters or parasites who have no idea how wealth is created or why it’s wrong to steal.
To see what fair share really means, imagine the following. You have $10,000 saved in your local bank. You worked for ten years to save this money. The bank then gets a new “progressive” manager. The manager finds that most of the bank’s customers have less than $500 in deposits, which he thinks is grossly unfair. So he makes new rules for the bank. He sends you a letter telling you that he is going to “redistribute” your $10,000 to all his poorer depositors so that everyone has their “fair share.”
Do you think the bank manager should be arrested or sent to the loony bin? What if the government passes a law that lets him get away with this theft? You know that the bank manager has no right to “redistribute” your money. Does the government? Yet progressive income taxes do exactly the same thing the bank manager did.
In 2005, if you earned $80,000, you now pay a 28 percent income-tax rate, or $22,400 in Federal income taxes. A person who earns $28,000 a year now pays a 15 percent income-tax rate, or $4200 in Federal income taxes. If you pay $22,400 in income taxes, do you get five times more in services from the Federal government than the person who paid only $4200 in taxes? No you do not — you get the same “services.” In effect, those who earn higher incomes are looted far more than low-income earners to pay for Welfare/Entitlement programs that are now devouring our country. By what right?
What is the excuse that liberals make to justify this legalized looting of people who earn more than others? Simply this, that low-income earners need more money for all the goods and services they are “entitled” to. Since higher-income earners have more money, they claim, these higher-income earners have a moral “duty” to hand over their “excess” money to the “less fortunate.” In other words, they say “you have the money, we want it, so we’ll take it from you, and we’ll use the progressive income tax to do this. In effect, the federal government becomes a fence for stolen property.
Well, any mugger does the same thing when he puts a gun to your head and says, “your money or your life.” The mugger sees that you have money, he wants it, so he has decided to take your money at the point of a gun. Our government income-tax collectors are simply legalized muggers who loot our money through the progressive income tax.
In a free society, the taxes a person pays should depend on the services he gets from government, his agent. We should only pay for services that we personally use or benefit from. We could devise a system where each of us paid taxes for government services we bought – a voluntary trade between a citizen and his agent. But this system would be possible only if America had a small, limited government.
This goal is entirely possible. In 1914, the entire federal government’s budget was only $725 million. The 2005 fiscal-year budget was over $2 trillion, a 2000-percent increase from 1914. Why the incredible difference? The income-tax revolutionized the role of government from limited agent to safety-net builder. It gave government the income-raising tool it needed to create our devouring Welfare/Entitlement State.
We could have a contractual tax system if we reduced government to its size in 1914. A contractual system would be easy then, because the budget would be so small. Imagine that the annual federal budget is $750 million because we phased out regulations and entitlement programs. To be more realistic, let’s increase the budget to $75 billion (one hundred times the amount in 1914) to account for inflation, defense costs, and the general increase in population.
The United States today has a population of about 250 million people. If we had a simple flat tax calculated by dividing the total budget of $75 billion by the population of 250 million, the tax per person would be $300 a year. Do you think you could afford $300 for taxes? This figure also excludes money the federal government collects from other taxes, such as excise, tariffs, and user fees, which were its primary taxes before 1913. These extra taxes would further reduce the income taxes needed and give government more funds to work with.
Most of us would be so happy about our low tax bill that we wouldn’t want to bother with a complicated contractual tax system. We would be happy to pay the $300 and be done with it. Except for this small tax, you could keep everything you earned. Add up all the taxes you now pay and then subtract $300. Everything else would be yours.
But low taxes are possible only if we totally reject the philosophy behind the Welfare/Entitlement State. We pay heavy taxes only because we have thousands of regulations and entitlement programs and millions of government bureaucrats. The Welfare/Entitlement State and out-of-control government can be swept away only when we reject the idea that helping others is a moral and political duty instead of a personal choice.
Until then, the Welfare/Entitlement State forces us to help others at the point of a legislative gun. Our paychecks and savings accounts are no longer private property to be scrupulously protected and used for our own benefit. Instead, liberals assume that your salary, profits, and property are collectively owned. They assume that your income is a national resource they can give away to anyone who “needs” it. They assume that the only person who has no right to your money is you, the person who earned it.
Are they right? Should you let them get away with that? Does your hard-earned money belong to you, or to any looting moocher who wants to steal it from you? The next time you go into a voting booth, ask yourself these questions. Every liberal, most Democrats, and too many Republicans believe in the welfare-state philosophy. Vote only for those who don’t believe this.
WHY RAPISTS AND ROBBERS RAN FROM ONE FLORIDA TOWN
“Mayor, we’ve got a big problem on our hands,” said Police Chief Bud Anderson to Mike Branden, mayor of Palm City, Florida, a small city of 200,000 old-fashioned Americans, sitting in the middle of the Florida panhandle. It was a beautiful spring day in April.
Bud Anderson was a handsome man, in his thirties, dark brown hair, blue eyes, a wide, easy mouth. He wore a light-blue short-sleeve shirt and jeans. Mayor Mike Branden, also dressed casually, was in his forties, tall, and well-built. He used to be an orange-grower, his family going back generations in Palm City. He had a weather-beaten face, strong mouth, and calloused hands the size of mitts. He had just been elected mayor in November and won the election on his promise to clean up crime in the city.
Over the last five years, the city had become a little Silicon Valley, with computer companies moving in by the droves because there were no corporate taxes in Florida or in Palm City. The city was prospering, and the newly-rich computer millionaires and their employees with stock options were all building big, fancy houses by the river. The money and big houses had attracted the thieves. The city crime rate had been exploding, especially home burglaries and rapes. All the women in the city were scared and up in arms over the crime spree, and wanted something done. Mayor Branden promised to do something about it.
“Bud, tell me what you think the problem is,” Mike Branden said. “Tell me what you think we can do.”
“Well, Mike,” Bud Anderson said, “I think the thieves and rapists have it too easy. They’re smart. They case the mark’s house carefully before they break in. They only break in when they know the wife is home alone. But that’s not the real problem, Mike.”
“The real problem is that the women are defenseless. You may not know this, being so new as Mayor, but about five years ago the previous Mayor passed gun laws that made it illegal to have a gun in the house, and illegal to use one against a burglar. He also made it illegal for anyone to carry a concealed gun outside the house. That’s when our troubles started, Mayor.”
Mike Branden grew up with guns ever since he was a boy. He belonged to the National Rifle Association. He loved skeet shooting, and bought his kids their first rifles when they were eight years old. He taught them how to shoot straight and how to use a gun safely. His wife also owned a rifle and handgun, shared his love for skeet shooting, and was a crack shot. Mayor Mike Branden was not a college graduate, but he had guts, common sense, and imagination. He immediately saw the problem, and the solution.
“Well, I think we’ll change those gun laws, Bud. Thieves and rapists have it too easy around here. They know they can rob houses and rape women with no risk.
Let’s put the risk back. Let’s see what happens when they get shot if they break into a house or bother one of our women. I’m sick to death of all the gun laws in this country, so let’s try a little experiment. I’ll convince the City Council to revoke our gun-control laws. Next, I’ll convince them to pass a new law requiring every man and woman in Palm City to own a handgun or shotgun, and know how to use them safely. I want a pistol and shotgun in every home. I want every woman walking around town with a concealed gun in her purse or under her dress. Let’s see what happens when we change the laws. Let’s see what happens when we give the victims a way to defend themselves.
I also want you to put a series of ads in the Palm City Gazette and Daily Press that announces the new laws, so everyone knows that every Palm City resident will soon be armed. I want you to set up gun safety and training courses on the local firing ranges, so we know that every woman in this town will be dead shot.”
Bud Anderson’s eyes lit up with admiration for his new Mayor. He had been wanting to revoke those gun laws for the last five years, but never dreamed of the daring plan the new Mayor now wanted to put into action.
“That’s a damned fantastic idea, Mike. You’re going to make a hell of a Mayor. I think the citizens in this town are going to love you. They’re going to have a great time learning how to use a gun again, especially the women. I know the women will form gun clubs. They’ll probably want to buy designer guns with pretty colors. Hell, I might even buy a pearl-handled 45 myself.”
Mike Branden laughed out loud at his Police Chief’s boyish enthusiasm. He said, “I think the new laws should be in place in about a month, Bud. Let’s meet again in about three months and you can tell me whether we’ve had any success with the plan.” Bud Anderson gave a mock salute to his Mayor, said “yes, sir,” and walked out the door into the Spring sunshine.
THREE MONTHS LATER:
It’s a hot July day in the Mayor’s office, and Police Chief Anderson and Mike Branden are having an enthusiastic conversation.
“Mike, mother-of-god did your plan work! The crime rate has dropped like a rock in Palm City. Burglaries are down 80 percent. Rapes are down 90 percent. I’ve never seen anything like it. It all started about two months ago, Mike. There was a burglary gang that had been hitting most of the houses. Well, about ten of them have been shot, three killed in the last two months. As soon as the burglar alarm goes off, the women took their guns from their purses and started shooting. I’ve interrogated some of the thieves we caught. They’re pretty stupid and don’t read much, so they weren’t aware of the new gun laws. They thought we were still operating under the old laws. You should have seen the shock on their faces. They were mad as hell. They never expected pretty young housewives to be spraying them with semi-automatic fire. They were mad as hell at you.”
“Then there were the rapists who didn’t know about the new gun laws either, the ones who prayed on women at night in the shopping-mall parking lots. Did they get the shock of their lives! About twenty of them have been shot already, five killed. They just came up to the women, brazen like, thinking they could get away with anything like they used to. Then the girls suddenly pulled out their pretty pistols and started firing away. You should hear how the women laughed with glee and pride when they told me their stories. They told me how thankful they were to have their guns. I think all the women in this town love you now, Mike. It’s a good thing you’re already married.”
“I think the bad guys are getting the picture, Mike. Burglars and rapists are getting scarce in Palm City. Matter of fact, I just got a call from Ben Radley, Police Chief at Hampton Bay. They still have the same idiotic gun-control laws we had here. Seems they’ve been getting a sharp rise in house burglaries and rapes there. Looks like our bad guys are moving on to easier ground in Hampton Bay. I sure feel sorry for the people in that town right now. Ben Radley wants to talk to you real bad. He wants to know how you got crime down so fast in Palm City. Who knows, Mike, maybe what you did here will spread all over the country. I hope so.”
“One other thing, Mike. Every teacher and principal in every public school in this town now carries a concealed gun. Every one of the kids know this, and they now feel real safe in the schools. They’re not worrying anymore about one of their deranged teen-age friends suddenly going on a shooting spree, like what happened at Columbine High School. If anything happens, they know they don’t have to wait an hour for the cops to show up. They know the teachers and principal can protect them. Did you know math and reading scores are going up at the schools, too? It’s the damndest thing.”
“Mike, I think you’re going to be Mayor in this town for as long as you like. I hope you stay on forever, because Palm City folks are really grateful to you. At first they were a little skeptical about your plans. But now, after they’ve seen the results, you couldn’t get them to give up their guns anymore. We’re even getting calls from newspapers, magazines, and TV stations all over the country. CNN wants to interview you, did you know that? They called me this morning. You’re becoming a celebrity, by god!”
Mike Branden laughed out loud. “Me, an orange grower, a celebrity? Forget the interviews Bud. How about we go fishing this afternoon after work? It’s getting kind of quiet around here, just the way I like it.”
Bud Anderson, grinning, stuck out his hand to shake Mike’s big, calloused hand, for he now counted Mike Branden as a good friend. That afternoon, they caught a dozen trout at Briar Creek lake. It was a fine afternoon.
Your Child’s Life Can Be Ruined If They Can’t Read Well
It may seem obvious to many people why literacy is so important in our technologically advanced society. However, many parents may not fully realize the emotional pain and life-long damage illiteracy can cause their children. Literacy, the ability to read well, is the foundation of children’s education. If children can’t read well, every subject they try to learn will frustrate them. If they can’t read math, history, or science textbooks, if they stumble over the words, they will soon give up reading out of frustration. Asking children who are poor readers to study these subjects is like asking them to climb a rope with one arm.
Kids learn to read in their most formative years, which is why reading can profoundly affect their self-esteem. When children learn to read, they also start learning how to think abstractly, because words convey ideas and relationships between ideas. How well they read therefore affects children’s feelings about their ability to learn. This in turn affects how kids feel about themselves generally whether a child thinks he or she is stupid or bright. Children who struggle with reading often blame themselves and feel ashamed of themselves.
As Donald L. Nathanson, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College noted: First reading itself, and then the whole education process, becomes so imbued with, stuffed with, amplified, magnified by shame that children can develop an aversion to everything that is education.
Often, poor readers will struggle just to graduate from high school. They can lose general confidence in themselves, and therefore the confidence to try for college or pursue a career. Their job opportunities can dry up. Their poor reading skills and low self-confidence can strangle their ability to earn money. They can struggle financially their whole lives. If they marry and have children, they can struggle even more.
Life for illiterate adults can easily degenerate into misery, poverty, failure, and hopelessness. According to a 1992 study by the National Institute for Literacy, “43 % of Americans with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty and 70 % have no job or a part-time job. Only 5% of Americans with strong literacy skills live in poverty.” As Dr. Grover Whitehurst, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, said, “Reading is absolutely fundamental. It’s almost trite to say that. But in our society, the inability to be fluent consigns children to failure in school and consigns adults to the lowest strata of job and life opportunities.”
By the 1850s, before we had compulsory, government-controlled public schools, child and adult literacy rates averaged over 90 percent, making illiteracy rates less than 10 percent. By 1850, literacy rates in Massachusetts and other New England States, for both men and women, was close to 97 percent. This was before Massachusetts created the first compulsory public-school system in America in 1852. What is literacy like in our public schools today?
In 1995, a student teacher for a fifth-grade class in Minneapolis wrote the following letter to the local newspaper: . . . I was told [that] children are not to be expected to spell the following words correctly: back, big, call, came, can, day, did, dog, down, get, good, if, in, is, it, have, he, home, like, little, man, morning, mother, my, night, off, out, over, people, play, ran, said, saw, she, some, soon, their, them, there, time, two, too, up, us, very, water, we, went, where, when, will, would, etc. Is this nuts?
In 2002, the New York State Education Department’s annual report on the latest reading and math scores for public school students found:
· 90 percent of middle schools failed to meet New York State minimum standards for math and English exam scores.
· 65 percent of elementary schools flunked the minimum standards.
· 84 percent of high schools failed to meet the minimum state standards.
· More than half of New York City’s black and hispanic elementary school students failed the state’s English and math exams. About 30 percent of white and asian-american students failed to achieve the minimum English test scores.
· The results for eighth grade students were even worse. Here, 75 percent of black and hispanic students flunked both the English and the math tests. About 50 percent of white and Asian-American eighth graders failed the tests. These illiteracy rates are now common in public schools across America, not just in New York City.
In short,as shown by the New York State Education Department’s annual report and other studies, student illiteracy rates in many public schools range from 30 to 75 percent. This is an education horror story.
That is what illiteracy can mean, what it does mean for millions of public-school children who can barely read. Does any parent want this kind of future for his or her children? I argue in Public Schools, Public Menace that our public school system is the primary cause of this tragic illiteracy, and one reason why these schools are a menace to our children.
A great movie to see that shows the tragic consequences of illiteracy is “Stanley and Iris” with Robert DeNiro and Jane Fonda. After you see this movie, you might think twice about keeping your children in public school. There are wonderful, new, low-cost private schools that are alternatives to public school, that parents can take advantage of right now.
Read more information about “Public Schools, Public Menace.”
Parents — Want Your Child To Hate Reading? Keep Them In Public School
To teach children how to play the piano, you have to teach them the basics of music — keys, notes, chords, melody, and harmony. With these tools learned, your kids can experience the joy and sense of accomplishment from playing their favorite songs on the piano.
To most of us, driving a car seems effortlessness. Our eyes, hands, and feet work together seamlessly, automatically, without conscious thought. But we first had to learn the basics of driving when we were young. Remember back to your father’s driving lessons? He taught you how to turn the steering wheel, where the gas and brake pedal was, how to stay in your lane, turn signals and stop signs, use of mirrors, keeping to speed limits, looking ahead. All these basics took time and practice to learn. Now, those of us who have been driving for many years, take these basics for granted. We drive “automatically” and with skill.
The same process applies to another skill—reading. Read a book or a newspaper and it seems effortless. Yet such skill comes from constant use, from constant practice of basic skills learned at an early age.
What are these skills? To read, you have to recognize words on a printed page, yet there are millions of them. Enter the wonder of the alphabet and phonics. It is by recognizing letters and their sounds that a child puts letter-sounds together to form words. Since all words are built from only twenty-six letters, the huge task becomes greatly simplified. The child need not memorize the word, only sound it out, read it, and find its meaning in a dictionary.
As in driving a car, reading is difficult at first. But, once learned, the skill becomes automatic, unconscious, effortless, and we read quickly without sounding-out every letter of every word. In the end, with practice, we read effortlessly, and all the knowledge of the world is open to us. Without learning the basic skills, however, reading is not possible.
Enter educrat “experts” who think otherwise. “Don’t adults read without sounding out every letter of every word,” they ask ? “So why teach children phonics? Why put children through the boredom, drudgery, and hard work of phonics and spelling drills? How can reading be “joyful” if literature becomes drills?,” they say. “Why wound children’s self-esteem and self-expression with tests and standards and high expectations?”
“If we have children memorize whole words instead of drilling on the alphabet and letter sounds, all this pain is gone,” they chime. “Do not teach them to sound out M-O-T-H-E-R. Have them memorize what the whole word looks like—teach them word-pictures, teach them hieroglyphics, so they “recognize” the word in a book. Have the child read “Dick and Jane” learning books that repeat each word a hundred times, so the child comes to “recognize” it. Do this for each word.”
“If the child can’t grasp a new word because he cannot sound it out, teach him “pre-reading” strategies,” they expound. “These “strategies” will help him “guess” what the word is. Have him look at the title of the story. Have the child look at pictures, look for “clues,” look for “patterns” in the story that make sense. Or skip the word and come back to it. Or ask a friend who also cannot read it. Or finally, when all else fails, ask the teacher. Anything,” say the learned educrats, “except actually sounding out and reading the word.”
This, the educrats say, is the “centered,” “self-esteem-enhancing” way to teach reading. Meaning and context—not basics. Group discussions—not letters, sounds, drills, and independence.
This is your whole-language method (now called “balanced literacy” or some other deceptive name). This is the hieroglyphics of Egypt transported to your children’s classroom. This is our educrats’ pet “reading” theory, foisted on 45 million public-school children-victims across the country.
The results were inevitable—half the nation’s high-school grads cannot read a bus schedule. Businesses lose $40 billion a year for remedial reading classes for new employees fresh from high school. Thirty percent of Americans functionally illiterate. The child who is taught phonics is able to read thousands of words in a few semesters. The “whole-word” child-victim is able to “recognize” only a few hundred words. Thus we have the crash in reading skills, the dumbing-down of our kids, the millions of frustrated teens who drop out of school, turn to crime, and end up in prison because they can’t get a decent job.
Yet, in the face of such failure, such disaster for our children, the educrats turn a blind eye and a deaf ear. In the face of reality — massive denial and rationalization.
Buy why? What do they gain? There is always a reason for irrational behavior, and the educrats have many.
Educrats think phonics believers are extremist Christian Rightists or educational simpletons unable to understand the “complexity” of the educrats’ so-called learning theories. Yet, let reality be the judge. The children who learn phonics read far quicker and better than the “whole-word” readers. And the “complexity” educrats proclaim is a self-serving fantasy of their making, designed to ward off competition. Educrats think they are gurus with special skills no parent can possess. Rather, they are education buffoons who don’t know how to teach phonics to your kids any longer, or don’t want to bother.
Educrats claim that phonics and rules will turn kids off to the joy of reading. Just the opposite is true — when a “whole-language” victim-child tries to read the many words he was not taught to “recognize,” he will give up in frustration. His frustration will end his reading and his ‘joy” in reading. The phonics-trained child can read any word and any book, and the joy of reading follows from his skills
This learning of basic skills need not be a struggle. What turns kids off? The insufferable boredom, the mediocrity of the educrats’ teaching methods, unchanged for 50 years.
Children learn the alphabet and letter sounds with delight at home. Sesame Street, “Hooked on Phonics,” the Internet, learning channels on cable TV, creative reading books especially made for kids by learning entrepreneurs can make learning letters and sounds a delight.
Phonics and drills are a drudge in government schools because educrats don’t have the time, skill, desire, or imagination to make them otherwise. Rather than blame themselves or their government-run system for failure, they blame everyone else. They now claim it is the child’s fault (he has attention-deficit disorder!), the parents’ fault (they don’t get “involved!”), or “society’s” fault (racism or “not enough money for the schools!”).
Educrats also say that drills and basics, tests and standards, are “unfair” to kids, cause them stress, and threaten their self-esteem. Just the opposite is true—real self-esteem comes from achievement, not from a teacher’s hot-air, feel-good compliments. Achievement needs tasks, content, ever-increasing complex skills children learn with guided effort. Joy, not stress, is the result of achievement. And what is more important than for children to learn that rewards come from effort and perseverence? Educrats hate phonics and true reading skills because their teacher colleges don’t train them in the phonics method. Teachers who are not taught the phonics method will naturally feel inadequate to teach phonics to children. It is not the teachers’ fault. Rather, the fault lies with educrats, teacher colleges, and educational theorists who have contempt for phonics.
Phonics and drills requires a “teacher-centered” approach in the classroom. This approach requires greater effort and responsibility on teachers and schools to create lesson plans that show real progress in reading skills. The teacher-centered approach requires teachers and educrats to constantly test and evaluate both students and themselves.
The “whole-language” reading method, in contrast, is allegedly “student-centered,” meaning that kids get to sit around in circles and talk about their feelings rather than learn to actually read. With “whole-language” reading, educrats can claim there are no standards, no way to test reading skills and achievement. There are few rigorous tests, low standards, and no failing grades.
“Whole-language” reading therefore achieves the educrats’ ultimate goal — if there are no standards or objectivity, no one can blame them, no one can question them, no one can hold them accountable for their failure to teach our children to read. The educrats don’t want to grade their students’ performance because it allegedly hurts the kids “self-esteem.” I believe this attitude is merely a projection of the educrat’s primal fears—they do not want parents judging their performance and holding them accountable for teaching their kids to read. The educrats don’t want their fragile self-esteem threatened by angry parents who expect public schools to do one simple thing—teach their kids to read.
Government schools are designed to assuage the educrats’ terror at being judged by parents, and being forced to compete in a free-market education system. Government (public) schools’ ultimate purpose is to be a full-employment program for educrats—to give them guaranteed jobs without accountability to parents. It is to placate these fearful educrats that our government schools dumb-down our children and turn them into illiterates with bleak futures.
So what can you, as a concerned parent, do to protect your child? As long as public schools are run by government and their educrats, they will never change. In my book, “Public Schools, Public Menace,” I tell parents about wonderful new education alternatives to public schools, such as accredited, low-cost internet private schools. Parents, I urge you to look into these alternatives, before your children are irreparably harmed by public-school whole-language, anti-phonics, “reading” instruction.
Surprise — Public School Class Size Doesn’t Matter Very Much
School authorities often complain that classes are too large. They claim that teachers can’t be expected to give their students the individual attention they need if there are too many students in the class. On the surface, this excuse seems to have some merit. Common sense tells us that in smaller classes, teachers can give more time and attention to each student.
However, many studies show that smaller class size does not guarantee that children get a better education. The pupil-to-teacher ratio in public schools in the mid-1960s was about 24 to 1. This ratio dropped to about 17 to 1 by the early 1990s, which means the average class size fell by 28 percent. Yet, during the same time period, SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) test scores fell from 954 to 896, a decline of 58 points or 6 percent. In other words, student academic achievement (as measured by SAT scores) dropped at the same time that class sizes got smaller.
Eric Hanushek, a University of Rochester economist, examined 277 published studies on the effects of teacher-pupil ratios and class-size averages on student achievement. He found that only 15 percent of these studies showed a positive improvement in achievement with smaller class size, 72 percent found no statistically significant effect, and 13 percent found a negative effect on achievement.
It seems to go against common sense that student academic achievement could drop with smaller class sizes. One reason this happens in public schools is that when class sizes drop, schools have to create more classes to cover all the students in the school. Schools then have to hire more teachers for the increased number of classes. However, public schools across the country are already having trouble finding qualified teachers to fill their classrooms. As a result, when reduced class sizes increase the need for more teachers, schools then often have to hire less-qualified teachers.
Teacher Quality and Teaching Methods Are Far More Important
As we might expect, teacher quality is far more important than class size in determining how children do in school. William Sanders at the University of Tennessee studied this issue. He found that teacher quality is almost twenty times more important than class size in determining students’ academic achievement in class. As a result, reducing class sizes can lead to the contrary effect of hurting students’ education, rather than helping.
Similarly, a study on class size by policy analyst Jennifer Buckingham of the Sydney-based Center for Independent Studies found no reliable evidence that students in smaller classes do better academically or that teachers spend significantly more time with them in these classes. Buckingham concluded that a 20 percent class-size reduction cost the Australian government an extra $1,150 per student, yet added only an additional two minutes of instruction per day for each child.
Reducing class sizes can’t solve the underlying problems with public schools. No matter how small classes become, nothing will help if the teachers are ill-trained or their teaching methods are useless or destructive. For example, if teachers use whole-language or balanced reading instruction, they can cripple students’ ability to read no matter how small the classes are. Even if classrooms had one teacher for every student, that child’s ability to read could still be crippled if the teacher used these reading-instruction methods. In fact, smaller class sizes could give the teacher more time to hurt (not intentionally) each student’s reading ability.
Here’s an analogy on this issue of class size vs. teaching methods: Suppose a horseback-riding instructor was teaching one little girl to ride. This instructor’s teaching method was to tell the bewildered girl to sit backwards on the horse, facing the horse’s rump, and control the horse by holding its tail. Does it matter that the student-teacher ratio in this horseback-riding class is one-to-one if the instructor is an idiot or uses bad teaching methods?
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