you have a right to be a capitalist asshole. but just know (and be willing to admit) that i’m MORALLY SUPERIOR because i’m willing to give….i choose to help even though my help may be lost in bureaucracy.

This was a comment left on an article I stumbled. The comment, that socialists are “morally superior” because of their willingness to give made me stop and think about the journey a person takes to get to this point.

The statement is, of course, outrageously laughable. The very foundation of socialism is immoral to the core. Socialism starts with the use of force to deny one party property so another can have it. It demands, at the point of a gun, that a producer surrender their property to another who has given nothing in return. How is this morally superior?

For example, Barack Obama is promising to give every American a $1000 “emergency economic stimulus” check, which would be funded from “windfall profits from Big Oil.” According to the commenter, Obama holds the moral high ground because he is “willing to give.” But how did Barack get the money to “give?” Did he produce something? Did he provide a service?

No. The foundation of his plan rests on the use of force to take what another has produced, the profits of “Big Oil,” and is followed by the redistribution of wealth he had nothing to do with creating. For the socialist to be willing to give, they must first be willing to loot. They must first be willing to use force to take the property of a citizen or group of citizens.

A capitalist creates a product, or offers a service, for a price. If the price is too high for the public, no one buys it and no one is forced to. The price, when correct, allows the capitalist to pay for the material used in the product, plus a little profit.

Profit. In the mind of a socialist, this is a foul word. Indeed, profit is a word used today to demonize people and organizations. It is the capitalist’s desire for personal gain that leads the socialist to believe they are morally superior, because the socialist’s actions are done for the “common good.” But socialists, as we have already discussed, have nothing to give unless they have already looted it from another. Capitalists give freely from their profits , not what they steal from another at the point of a gun.

Andrew Carnegie is one of the greatest capitalists of all time. He is also one of the greatest philanthropists. From 1901-1919, he spent his time giving away the fortune he amassed. When he died, he had donated “$350,695,653 (approximately $4.3 billion, adjusted to 2005 figures) of his wealth.” Following his death, another $30,000,000 was donated to various charities.

What have the most successful socialists given to civilization? A high body count.

Capitalism does not force anyone to buy a product. It does not force anyone to surrender property without consent. Capitalism demands that the people involved in the trade come to terms between each other, make the terms of the deal acceptable between the two parties, and then the deal is completed. If one party doesn’t accept the terms, then the deal isn’t done. No one is forced to do anything.

Meanwhile, those ever ready to use force for the common good are just as ready to proclaim their moral superiority. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, being morally superior is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t. Even if you type it in all caps.

This is right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook:

Sen. Barack Obama has launched an all-out effort to block a Republican billionaire’s efforts to tie him to domestic and foreign terrorists in a wave of negative television ads.

Obama’s campaign has written the Department of Justice demanding a criminal investigation of the “American Issues Project,” the vehicle through which Dallas investor Harold Simmons is financing the advertisements. The Obama campaign — and tens of thousands of supporters — also is pressuring television networks and affiliates to reject the ads. The effort has met with some success: CNN and Fox News are not airing the attacks.

Later in the article:

The Obama campaign plans to punish the stations that air the ad financially, an Obama aide said, organizing his supporters to target the stations that air it and their advertisers.

Here’s the ad:

There is nothing in the ad that is false. The facts are clear and listed in the ad.

When Obama was asked about it, he shrugged it off by saying it all happened when he was eight years old, and it was ridiculous to try to connect him with it. But it wasn’t eight years ago when Ayers said:

”I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. ”I feel we didn’t do enough.” Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970’s as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago.

That was published the day the Twin Towers fell. Respectable? Mainstream? How about this photo?

Or better yet, how about him stomping on it, with a smirk:

The facts are, as reported in the Boston Globe:

Barack Obama’s political career was launched in Ayers’s and Dohrn’s home, when a group of “influential liberals” gathered in 1995 to meet the young organizer who was Illinois lawmaker Alice Palmer’s chosen successor. In the years that followed, Obama and Ayers would serve together as (paid) board members of the Woods Fund, a leftist Chicago foundation, and appear jointly on academic panels, at least one of which was organized by Michelle Obama. Ayers would even donate money to one of Obama’s political campaigns.

Arguably, none of this would matter if Ayers and Dohrn had long ago repudiated their violent extremism. But they have always refused to apologize for their monstrous behavior. “We weren’t extreme enough in fighting against the war,” Ayers told the Chicago Tribune in 2001. In a memoir published that year, he exulted: “Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon.” America, he said after Sept. 11, “is not a just and fair and decent place. . . . It makes me want to puke.“

Here’s a video from Powerline Blog that shows more quotes and details the relationship between Ayers, his wife and Obama:

This is a guy Obama says is mainstream and respectable? Now, new documents shine brighter light on the relationship between Ayers and Obama.

The Globe asks a question that Democrats and Independents need to consider:

Is this Obama’s idea of “respectable” and “mainstream” political thinking? If so, doesn’t that tell us something about his judgment and standards?

After all, the whole foundation of his campaign is based on his judgment.

Other posts on the relationship:

• Stop the ACLU thinks Obama doth protest too much.
• Ed Morrissey explains “Why the Obama-Ayers connection matters.”
• Saul Alinsky’s “RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.” Michelle Malkin shows how Obama is using that rule to go after GOP donors.
• Stop the ACLU has additional coverage.
• The Sundries Shack details how the Obama campaign is using threats and intimidation to squash the issue.
• FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog, where I found the Powerline video, gives us a look at Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s thoughts: “They’re friends. So what?”
• Ace of Spades HQ says Ayers found the bombings to be “restrained” and “not a big deal.”

What about the murder of police? Is that a big deal?

• The Jawa Report has the same quotes, saying “This is the next Jeremiah Wright, and Camp O! knows it.”
• Hugh Hewitt writes, “Like he did with Wright, Obama will now try and persuade the public that this isn’t the Ayers that he knew, but the voters aren’t fools.”
• American Thinker show another side of “Bill Ayers - Liar and Unrepentant Terrorist.”

This could be the undoing of the Obama campaign. It’s no wonder he’s trying so hard to keep this ad off the air. It seems to have touched a nerve.

Barack Obama has a plan for fixing the American health care system. Posted on his website, he has laid his plan out for everyone to review. Only, he has left out a few details.

Obama starts by naming three distinct issues with American health care. First, there are a lot of people who are without insurance. According to Obama’s website, there are “47 million Americans” without insurance, including about 9 million children.

But there are a few details he forgot to mention. Out of that 47 million people, about 10 million of them are not Americans. According to page 29 of the Census Bureau report “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005 (pdf),” 9.487 million people in America without insurance are “not a citizen.”

Out of the 37 million Americans without insurance, the same page of the report shows 8.3 million who are uninsured make between $50,000 - $74,999. Another 8.74 million make over $75,000 or more. Is it fair to say that these folks should be able to afford health insurance? Understand there are different costs of living across the country, but if you make $50,000 in Newark, New Jersey, that’s like making $35,000 in Des Moines, Iowa. There are people in Des Moines making less than that with health insurance.

I know. I was one of them.

After dropping those 17 million people, we are left with 20 million people without health insurance, or 6.66%. That is no small number, but it is a detail that needed to be pointed out. Also worth pointing out is that means 93.34% of Americans are insured in some manner.

Obama’s second issue is “Health insurance premiums have risen 4 times faster than wages over the past 6 years.” An article from Reuter’s supports that claim. How will Obama’s plan address this problem? He will simply create “a new national health plan” with “affordable health coverage” and “affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles.”

The question is how?

According to The Cato Institute, Obama’s plan is similar to the law Mitt Romney signed in Massachusetts, which called for “increased regulation, a government-designed standard benefits package, and a new pooling mechanism.” Obama calls his the “National Health Insurance Exchange.” Romney’s was called The Connector:

The Connector is not actually an insurer. Rather, it is designed to allow individuals and workers in small companies to take advantage of the economies of scale, both in terms of administration and risk pooling, which are currently enjoyed by large employers. Multiple employers are able to pay into the Connector on behalf of a single employee. And, most importantly, the Connector would allow workers to use pretax dollars to purchase individual insurance. That would make insurance personal and portable, rather than tied to an employer-all very desirable things.

These are things mentioned in Obama’s plan. According to his website, the “National Health Insurance Exchange” will:

• act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible.
• require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and have the same standards for quality and efficiency.
• evaluate plans and make the differences among the plans, including cost of services, public.

When you see the similarities between the two plans, it is distressing when you see what has happened with The Connector:

the Connector’s board has seen itself as a combination of the state legislature and the insurance commissioner, adding a host of new regulations and mandates.

For example, the Connector’s governing board has decreed that by January 2009, no one in the state will be allowed to have insurance with more than a $2,000 deductible or total out-of-pocket costs of more than $5,000. In addition, every policy in the state will be required to phase in coverage of prescription drugs, a move that could add 5–15 percent to the cost of insurance plans. A move to require dental coverage barely failed to pass the board, and the dentists-along with several other provider groups-have not given up the effort to force their inclusion. This comes on top of the 40 mandated benefits that the state had previously required, ranging from in vitro fertilization to chiropractic services.

Thus, it appears that the Connector offers quite a bit of pain for relatively little gain. Although the ability to use pretax dollars to purchase personal and portable insurance should be appealing in theory, only about 7,500 nonsubsidized workers have purchased insurance through the Connector so far. On the other hand, rather than insurance that “fits their needs,” Massachusetts residents find themselves forced to buy expensive “Cadillac” policies that offer many benefits that they may not want. (Emphasis mine.)

This is just the opposite of what is needed to solve the problem with high insurance premiums. The Wall Street Journal shows how different states have created insurance mandates and how those mandates affect the cost of coverage:

New York requires every insurance policy sold there to cover podiatry. Acupuncture coverage is mandated in 11 states, massage therapy in four, osteopathy in 24, and chiropractors in 47. There are an estimated 1,800 or so such insurance “mandates” across the country, and the costs add up. “It is always the providers asking for the mandate; it is never the consumer,” says health policy guru John Goodman, who has testified before legislatures considering such rules.

What’s more, states like New Jersey and New York add two more ultra-expensive requirements: “Guaranteed issue” allows people to wait till they are sick and then buy insurance; “community rating” prevents insurers from charging different prices to people of different ages and health status.

It’s important to note that Obama’s plan features “guaranteed eligibility. No American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions.” It is features like this that make “insurance so expensive that millions of people are exposed to financial ruin because they aren’t allowed to buy basic policies focused on catastrophic costs.”

How expensive? A 2004 study by eHealthInsurance.com found that a typical insurance policy ($2,000 deductible, 20% co-insurance) for a family of four could be had for as little in as $172 per month in a reasonably regulated locality like Kansas City, Missouri. But in New York that family’s only option–managed care–would run $840 per month, and in New Jersey family policies run a whopping $1,200-plus.

Rather than break down the barriers between the states and foster competition between the companies, Obama’s plan threatens to abolish the barriers and create a universal mandate, which would not lower premiums, but raise the cost to the taxpayer, as seen in Massachusetts.

According to MedicalNewsToday, the cost of the plan rose from an expected $472 million in the first year to $625 million. This was because of “higher than expected enrollment in government-sponsored programs.” Governor Deval Patrick has asked for “$869 million for the program for fiscal year 2009, compared with previous estimates of $725 million.”

How does this affect the Massachusetts taxpayer?

Costs also have increased for residents. Monthly premiums for partially subsidized coverage increased by an average of 9.4% going into the second year of the program, according to state figures. Premiums for people purchasing private coverage without a subsidy increased by an average of 5.1%.

And they don’t even have everyone covered yet. Obama’s plan is estimated to cost “$50 billion to $65 billion a year, when fully phased in.” His campaign said “the revenues from rolling back the tax cuts were enough to cover it.” He is going to raise taxes to fund it. He has also added that savings from implementing the plan will help fund it. It is impossible to predict how much they have underestimated the cost, but the government rarely comes in under budget, especially with new programs. This one will be no different.

Obama’s third issue tackled in this plan is the lack of emphasis “on prevention and public health.” Ironically, there is very little in his plan concerning this problem. Aside from initially mentioning that “less than 4 cents of every health care dollar is spent on prevention and public health,” the plan doesn’t really address this issue in detail.

When initially reviewed, the Obama plan seems well thought out, but when closely examined, it doesn’t get into the details on how the plan will be implemented. There are words such as “require” and “force,” which should cause even liberals to stop and consider the power of such terms when wielded by the federal government.

But what it boils down to is huge federal bureaucracies attempting to control the price of health care. And as I have written before, when you have price controls, you will have shortages, followed by rationing.

We already have health care rationing in America, though it is currently limited to one state. With Obama’s plan, it could easily spread across America like a virus.

The great equalizer.

In 1991,

[George Jo] Hennard drove his 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck through the front window of a Luby’s Cafeteria at 1705 East Central Texas Expressway in Killeen, yelled “This is what Bell County has done to me!”, then opened fire on the restaurant’s patrons and staff with a Glock 17 pistol and later a Ruger P89. About 80 people were in the restaurant at the time. He stalked, shot, and killed 23 people and wounded another 20 before committing suicide. During the shooting, he approached Suzanna Gratia Hupp and her parents. Hupp had actually brought a handgun to the Luby’s Cafeteria that day, but had left it in her vehicle due to the laws in force at the time, forbidding citizens from carrying firearms.

Dr. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp testified before Congress, before a smug Chucky Schumer, and told her story:

The law prohibited her from carrying a firearms. In other words, the law prohibited her from defending herself. Consider that for a minute, will you? When a law is passed that prohibits you from carrying a weapon, it is inhibiting your ability to defend yourself. Should the government be in the habit of doing such a thing? You are told that you should depend on the police for protection. Where were the police when Hennard was shooting up Luby’s, when Columbine was being attacked, when Virginia Tech was being massacred?

Don’t misunderstand me on this. I’m not saying the police did anything wrong. I’m saying had the people who were there when it started been allowed to defend themselves, the violence might not have been as bad.

Recently, Texas Governor Rick Perry supported the idea of teachers carrying guns in school.

“I’m pretty much a fan that if you’ve been trained and you are registered, then you should be able to carry a weapon. Matter of fact, there’s a lot of instances that would have saved a lot of lives,” Mr. Perry said.

The governor is a staunch advocate of right-to-carry provisions and has advocated allowing licensed gun owners to carry them into places where they can currently be banned, such as college campuses, churches, bars and private businesses.

Some would find the idea abhorrent. I find it acceptable. As I have stated before, I want guns allowed everywhere. We need to fight back against the meme that guns kill.

It is difficult for me to understand how a population accepts laws that disarm them, that put them at the mercy of madmen and criminals. We need to instead return to the words of our Founding Fathers, in particular Thomas Jefferson, who said:

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

Jefferson understood that in the hands of a law abiding citizen, a firearm poses no threat to another man. Ironic that the party that Jefferson founded is the party most active in prohibiting the use of guns for self defense.

Hat Tip: Learn About Guns

The history of the Earth, according to L. Ron Hubbard:

Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.

Xenu the alien ruler Now Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were overpopulated. Each planet had on average 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of all the overpopulation so he had a plan.

Xenu took over complete control with the help of renegades to defeat the good people and the Loyal Officers. Then with the help of psychiatrists he called in billions of people for income tax inspections where they were instead given injections of alcohol and glycol mixed to paralyse them. Then they were put into space planes that looked exactly like DC8s (except they had rocket motors instead of propellers).

These DC8 space planes then flew to planet Earth where the paralysed people were stacked around the bases of volcanoes in their hundreds of billions. When they had finished stacking them around then H-bombs were lowered into the volcanoes. Xenu then detonated all the H-bombs at the same time and everyone was killed.

Hubbard then goes on to explain how Xenu collected all their souls, took them to the cinema and told them they were God. These “body thetans” live in us today, and cause most of our problems.

No, I’m not making this up.

When I first read this, I remember thinking, “Why would you go into a tax collector’s office, if you saw that nobody was coming back out?” Honestly, wouldn’t that be a red flag? I think that everyone getting audited at the same office, and no one coming out after the audit would make me think something was afoot.

Fast forward from the days of Xenu’s reign to modern day China, where you could apply for a permit to protest during the Olympics. There are around 1.3 billion people in China. One hundred forty-nine of them would become a body thetan if Xenu were around:

According to the rules governing protests, today is the last day anyone could apply for permission to demonstrate during the Olympic Games.

The state-run New China News Agency said Monday that the applications received since Aug. 1, a week before the Games opened, included such things as labor disputes and inadequate welfare.

But 74 of the applications were withdrawn because the problems “were properly addressed by relevant authorities or departments through consultations,” the news agency said, citing an unidentified spokesman for the Public Security Bureau.

Two other applications were suspended because they did not provide sufficient information and one was rejected because it violated laws against demonstrations and protests, the spokesman said.

That in and of itself isn’t that bad. The government says you can apply, then doesn’t approve any. What is very Xenuesqe is arresting those who apply, and then assigning them “reeducation through labor.” Oh, and they are elderly:

The two women, both in their late 70s, have never spoken out against China’s authoritarian government. Both walk with the help of a cane, and Ms. Wang is blind in one eye. Their grievance, receiving insufficient compensation when their homes were seized for redevelopment, is perhaps the most common complaint among Chinese displaced during the country’s long streak of fast economic growth.

But the Beijing police still sentenced the two women to an extrajudicial term of “re-education through labor” this week for applying to hold a legal protest in a designated area in Beijing, where officials promised that Chinese could hold demonstrations during the Olympic Games.

They became the most recent examples of people punished for submitting applications to protest.

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge told the press last year “You will see that the Olympic Games will change China.” How absurd. It didn’t take long for the Chinese to show what a communist state is all about.

Internet? Censored. Religious freedom? Banned. Unattractive children? Not good for the state.

Oh, they also executed 374 people during the Olympics.

“According to reliable estimates, on average China secretly executes around 22 prisoners every day - that’s 374 people during the Olympic games.

“Everyone involved in this year’s Olympics, especially the IOC, should be pressing China to reveal the extent of its use of the death penalty, to reduce the 60-plus crimes for which it can be imposed and to move toward abolition.”

Chinese criminal law professor Liu Renwen estimated that 8,000 executions took place during 2006 in China…

Generally, China uses a hollow point bullet to the head as means of execution. At one time, they then charged the family for the cost of the round. You can be executed for tax fraud, small scale drug sales and “crimes against national symbols and treasures, such as theft of cultural relics and the killing of pandas.”

It’s stories like this that should be talked about by Matt Lauer and the other China pimping talking heads in the mainstream media. When you hear that a “very high percentage of the people in China are happy with their lot in life” or about China succeeding “the Communist way,” understand what that really means. It seems that 1.3 billion Chinese (minus 149 or so) understand that when Xenu calls you in for an audit, it’s best to just say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Imagine you jump through the hoops to become a doctor. First, you get into college and spend four years getting your bachelor’s degree. Then, you have another four years of med school. After eight years of school, you have another three years or longer in residency before you are even on your own. We are talking about 11+ years of hard work before you can treat people by yourself.

After all that time, you finally open your own shop. In comes a gay couple and asks to be impregnated. You give one of them fertility pills, teach her how to knock herself up, but tell her that your religious beliefs prevent you from doing the deed.

Should you, as a doctor, be forced to perform a medical procedure that you don’t want to perform?

In California, you are:

Justice Joyce Kennard wrote in the ruling that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state’s law, which “imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations.”

In the lawsuit that led to the ruling, Guadalupe Benitez, 36, of Oceanside said that the doctors treated her with fertility drugs and instructed her how to inseminate herself at home but told her their beliefs prevented them from assisting her further.

The case drew numerous friends of the court briefs from a wide variety of religious organizations, medical groups and gay civil rights organizations.

The court said the the lesbian couple’s right to not be discriminated against trumped the doctor’s right to religious freedom. I say the court is wrong. The doctor should not be forced to perform this procedure.

As a private business owner, you should not be forced to provide anything to a person you don’t want to provide it to. This goes for a black business owner who doesn’t want to sell stuff to whites, or a homosexual who doesn’t want to serve straight folks. The government simply should not force them to do something they don’t want to do.

Opponents of my position will say that I am advocating discrimination and racism. I can see where they would think that. I see myself as looking out for minorities. Who is the smallest minority in America? In the world?

The individual.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

- Ayn Rand

You may not like the idea that a person can refuse service based on bigotry, but I dislike the idea of government forcing anyone to do something they don’t want to do. I’m not advocating bigotry, but the freedom to be a bigot if you choose.

Let me try to explain this better. If I go to a doctor, and they say they are not going to treat me because I am a Christian, I don’t want that guy treating me anyway. Not only will I not go to that doctor, but I will tell my family and friends what happened. If there is a market for him, he will survive. If not, then he goes out of business. I would not consider asking the government to force him to do something he didn’t want to do.

If a doctor wants to risk his or her career by refusing service to homosexuals, they should have that right. If a black business owner wants to put a sign in his window that says, “African Americans Only,” go for it. Let the market and the people decide whether they stay in business, not the heavy hand of government.

Which is worse: to allow businesses to say, “I’m not going to serve you because of X, Y or Z…” or to have government say, “You are going to serve everyone who comes to you, regardless of your religious beliefs.” I don’t want anyone to be discriminated against, but I think the latter is the more dangerous scenario.

What do you think? Should businesses be forced to serve anyone, even when they don’t want to serve them?

The Nazi Party didn’t take control of Germany until 1933, but the Hitler Youth were numbering over one thousand members as early as 1923. By 1925, they ballooned to five thousand members. Less than ten years later, they numbered over two million.

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” - Adolf Hitler

Hitler understood the power of controlling the youth of the country. He used many different methods to increase his influence over the young, from setting himself up as a father figure, to holding huge rallies and directing their focus at a specific “enemy.” He also worked to keep them ignorant, letting them learn only what he felt they needed to know.

In 1937, Hitler ordered all German children into the government schools. He said:

“The Youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of innoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled. This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.”

Homeschooling was officially outlawed in Germany. Hitler wanted the state to have total control over the education of the nation’s youth. He knew that they were the key to his success, the key to a totalitarian rule.

Today in Germany, decades after his death, parents are being persecuted for homeschooling. The German government is still enforcing Hitler’s laws. And they are once again becoming more aggressive in their methods of enforcement.

“…bring the child, if necessary by force…”

When Melissa Busekros was 15, she didn’t do so well in math and Latin. Her parents were told she would have to repeat the 7th grade at Ernst High Gymnasium, which was a public school. She and her parents decided to tutor her individually at home, and she continued to participate in music and the school choir.

The school expelled her. Her parents continued to educate her at home.

Social workers, and police officers, knocked on their door in early 2007 and demanded the parents turn her over to them immediately. They offered the parents a ruling by the Erlangen Court, which read:

“The relevant Youth Welfare Office is hereby instructed and authorized to bring the child, if necessary by force, to a hearing and may obtain police support for this purpose.”

Melissa was taken to a psychiatric hospital, interviewed for almost four hours, and then released. However, it was only a few days later that the social workers, with 15 police officers, once again took Melissa into custody. This time she was diagnosed with “school phobia” and placed in a psychiatric hospital. From February 2007 to April of the same year, she was in the custody of the state. When she turned 16, she simply walked away from her foster parents and returned home. The state had no authority in holding her anymore. But they did begin demanding payment from the Busekros family, for the time they held Melissa.

Since then, the situation for homeschoolers in Germany has gotten worse. On July 5, 2008, German President Horst Koehler signed BGB 1666 into law. This law “establishes the standard by which family courts are to determine whether custody of parents can be taken away.” The Jugendamt, the German youth welfare office, now has the power to remove children from the home when they are “endangered.” German administrative agencies and courts claim that failure to send children to school is “endangerment” and the German high court says homeschooling creates “parallel societies” and called it an “abuse of parental rights.”

Jurgen and Rosemary Dudek homeschooled their seven children despite the laws in Germany prohibiting it. When initially brought before a judge, they received a fine. The German prosecutor, Herwig Mueller, appealed the ruling, telling the family, “You don’t need to worry about the fine, because I am going to send you to jail.”

On July 18, the Dudek’s were sentenced to 90 days in jail.

The Gorber family homeschooled their children also. While Mr. Gorber was visiting his wife, who was in the hospital due to complications from the birth of their ninth child, the Jugendamt, with police help, raided the family farm and removed seven of the children from the home. When Mr. Gorber returned home, he found his home empty, save his 21 year old son and paperwork informing him of the seizure of his family.

The siblings reported that the 7-year-old was gripped around the waist by a youth home music teacher, dragged kicking and screaming across the courtyard and thrown into a van. The terrified 3-year-old clung to his 20-year-old sister so tightly that even the police and Jugendamt could not separate them. Both had to be taken to the youth home, where at last the little fellow’s strength gave out and he could be taken into custody.

The children then received psychological exams which all reported that they were normal and well-functioning. Although these evaluations attested to appropriate parenting, the judge indicated that he was unwilling to allow the other children, all of school age, to return home because he did not believe the father’s assurances that he would enroll the children in school.

German homeschoolers have two choices. They can continue to homeschool and hope to remain undetected, or they can flee the country. Some are choosing the latter. The Plett family had their children taken from them and once their children were returned, fled to Austria, then Canada. Klaus and Kathrin Landahl found it necessary to flee Germany when they were informed they had lost custody of their children for homeschooling. They retreated to the Isle of Wight.

The clearest statement on the situation is illustrated by the Mahjoubi Assil family, who fled Germany for the freedom of Iran:

“As a family with a gifted and talented child, we fled Germany … with two suitcases and with the last of our money being spent on our flight to Iran,” a letter from the Mahjoubi Assil family to “supporting friends” said.

The family includes the father, Khosrow Mahjoubi Assil, the mother, Lydia Keller-Mahjoubi Assil, and the son, Marian Mahjoubi Assil. It was written by the mother on behalf of the family.

“As things stand now, Germany is unworthy of membership in the European Community, or to speak on Human Rights in the international arena. The shadows of the Third Reich and the ideology of Adolf Hitler – if not worse – still drift over Germany,” the letter said.

When you turn to Iran for an increase in liberty, things are indeed amiss. Luckily for Americans, things are not that serious here. Not yet, anyway.

…through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move… - John Dewey

John Dewey and the NEA

John Dewey, considered the father of modern education, was a fan of the early Soviet Union’s eduactional system. In a December 5, 1928 issue of the New Republic, Dewey wrote of “the marvelous development of progressive educational ideas and practices under the fostering care of the Bolshevist government.”

Dewey is also quoted as saying, “Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.”

In 1932, Dewey wrote “Individualism Old and New”, where he stated, “We are in for some kind of socialism, call it by whatever name we please, and no matter what it will be called when it is realized.” According to Wikipedia, Dewey opined:

…that fixing the problem with culture is one in the same with that of liberating the individual; by abolishing culture driven by private pecuniary gain and reaffirming the importance of community and industrial cooperative control, Dewey argues that the individual will be harmonized with his communities and liberated to achieve true progress.

Two years later, Dewey was named Honorary Life President of the National Education Association (NEA). Today, the NEA is the largest labor union in the United States. It is also one of homeschooling’s biggest enemies.

The National Education Association has voted to abolish homeschooling every year since 1988. NEA resolution B-75, passed in 2007, read:

Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used. The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools.

This is similar to other resolutions it has passed. In the eyes of the NEA, the government is the sole authority on what should be taught and who should be allowed to teach it. It is this socialist mentality that has created the negative view of homeschooling in America, as illustrated by the Second District Court of Appeal’s decision.

“…parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children…”

In March of this year, a California court essentially outlawed homeschooling in the state. Justice H. Walter Croskey of the Second District Court of Appeal said, “California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children.”

He continued, “Parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling under the provisions of these laws.” Why, in the court’s eyes, was it necessary to send children to public school rather than educating them at home? Justice Crosky cryptically explained:

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare,”

Compare what a judge in modern day California said with what the Nazi Minister of Education, Bernard Rust said in 1935:

Teachers are directed to instruct their pupils… and to awaken in them a sense of their responsibility toward the community of the nation.

This attitude manifests itself across the nation, from judges to social workers:

• Utah: Judge Scott Johansen threatened to take the children of a homeschool family if they did not have them enrolled in public school and have them in class every day. He told the family that homeschooling fails 100% of the time.
• Tennessee: A homeschool mom is arrested because a relative, her mother, lied to a local attendance officer and told him her grandson was not attending the school he was enrolled in. The boy was never enrolled in school, and even though the attendance officer knew he had yet to reach compulsory attendance age, he prosecuted the family anyway.
• Virginia: Gerald and Angela Balderson of Warsaw, Va were arrested after they removed their eight year old son from public school in order to homeschool him. They had given notice to the superintendent, but the district still called the law on them.

In one instance, a social worker in Michigan demanded entry into the family’s home and that they be allowed to strip search the children. When the mother refused to allow entry, the social worker threatened to get the police and shouted over the mother’s protests. What could have been so important that it was worth violating a citizen’s Constitutional rights?

The family was accused of “only allowing their two boys to listen to Christian music.” The tipster said that the children “ate their cheerios dry” and received nearly all their “socialization through their church.” The tipster asserted the children were not in school. Furthermore, the anonymous tipster said the “fourteen- and ten-year-old were seen outside playing without adult supervision” and the mother “pinched and hit her kids in church to keep them quiet.”

Situations involving social workers demanding entry into private homes or demanding to see children without the presence of parents has become such a concern that the Home School Legal Defense Association has written a list of tips on how to handle the situation. Every day there are more parents who need such advice.

Homeschooling is a growing trend in America, “growing at 7 to 12 percent annually, with perhaps more than 2 million students being taught at home.” What is the reason for this? Homeschool dad Benjamin Marshall sums it up best:

“We wanted to be the main and driving influence in our children’s lives.”

As do a majority of homeschoolers. The problem is that there are many who want that title, and are willing to destroy your right to educate your child to get it. Hitler said, “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” That is still true today. It makes you wonder why some fight so hard for ownership of today’s youth. Or, maybe it makes it even clearer.

The Border Patrol Union Local 2544 is reporting on their website that the Mexican Military was again across the border, and this time they held a member of the union at gunpoint:

A Tucson Sector Border Patrol agent was held at gunpoint by the Mexican military last night south of Ajo. Mexican military personnel crossed over the border and pointed rifles at him. Backup units arrived from the Ajo Border Patrol station, and the Mexican military personnel eventually returned to Mexico. Unfortunately, this sort of behavior by Mexican military personnel has been going on for years. They are never held accountable, and the United States government will undoubtedly brush this off as another case of “Oh well, they didn’t know they were in the United States.”

The Associated Press confirms the union’s claim:

Four Mexican soldiers crossed into a remote area of Arizona and briefly held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint before realizing where they were and returning to Mexico, U.S. authorities said.

Border Patrol spokeswoman Dove Crawford said the incident early Sunday on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, about 85 miles southwest of Tucson, was in an area where the border likely was marked only with barbed wire.

This isn’t new. As the Union continued, “A few years ago the Mexican military went a step further and put a .50 calibre rifle round through the rear window of a Border Patrol agent’s patrol vehicle south of Ajo. Nothing was ever done. Nobody was ever held accountable.”

And it happens all the time. The video to the right is from a year ago.
They discuss the incursions into America, where the Mexican military is escorting drug smugglers and coyotes and firing on our border patrol agents.

From 2006, Newsmax reports:

Texas law enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents engaged in an armed standoff with Mexican military personnel and drug smugglers just inside the United States along the Rio Grande yesterday afternoon.

Also in 2006, Chris Simcox of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps videotaped Mexican Military members retreating back to Mexico.

It has happened more than 250 times since 1996. That is, it has been reported or seen 250 times. Who knows how many times it has actually happened.

The Mexican military is crossing the border into the U.S.

That’s according to records NEWSCHANNEL 5 obtained using the Freedom of Information Act. The 29-page document shows the Department of Homeland Security is tracking the occurrences.

It includes sightings of men dressed in Mexican military uniforms. The document states Mexican government personnel crossed the border more than 250 times since 1996. Some of that activity happened in the Rio Grande Valley.

The union makes note of the fact that the Mexican military usually crosses the border in Humvees, donated to them by you and me, Joe Taxpayer.

Why is it outrageous for us to have our military on the border when Mexico is crossing into the country and pointing guns at our agents?

It’s time to lock it down.

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

If there is a chief spokesman for the far left, it has to be MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. It is difficult to think of a talking head that is more fawned over by liberals. On his nightly cable television show, the #1 show on MSNBC, he “analyzes” the news and adds his own angry, leftist flavor. One of his segments is to name a “Worst Person in the World.” People such as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Bill O’Reilly and Robert Novak have made the list.

Recently, he named Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia the “Worst Person” for his role in the Heller v. DC verdict, which allows people in Washington, D.C. to have a gun to defend themselves. Terrible, I know. In naming the conservative justice to the top spot, he said a couple of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. First, he said:

Despite years of fog created by the NRA and right-wing organizations, that isn’t very complicated: For the purposes of forming a state militia, you’re entitled to keep and bear arms. Obviously, those would have to be the kind of arms in use in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was passed — the musket, the wheel-lock, the flint lock, the 13th century Chinese hand canon. Stuff like that.

According to this Constitutional scholar, “arms” invented after the ratification of the Constitution are not covered by said Constitution. The irony here is that he was exercising his First Amendment rights on a medium first used for news over 100 years after the ratification of the Constitution. This point of view is rejected even by members of Democratic Underground, which are not exactly known for their right of center opinions:

if you are going to read “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” as applying only to technologies available in 1791, then you can’t very well read the First Amendment as applying to technologies developed since 1791. Or the Fourth Amendment (guess we don’t have any protection against warrantless searches of our homes by millimeter-wave cameras or ultrawideband radar). Or the Fifth Amendment, which must only apply to torture technologies available in 1791. etc.

Hard to believe I’m saying this about a post from DU, but excellent point.

Another point that should be made relates to the left’s attitude towards the Constitution as a “living, breathing document.” It is the liberal position that the Constitution, as Al Gore said, “was intended by our founders to be interpreted in the light of the constantly evolving experience of the American people.” Somehow, this attitude applies to every part of the document except the Second Amendment. How is that possible? It isn’t.

The other comment that Olbermann made in his bit was almost as stupid as the first:

Scalia, of course, simply decided that the militia part of the Second Amendment is some sort of quaint anachronism that he could happily ignore.

Scalia understands what a militia is, as defined by our Founding Fathers, far better than the ex-sportscaster turned liberal blowhard. If he had any respect for his viewers, he would have taken the time to simply Google it. He could have learned what the Founders meant when they wrote “militia.” For example:

• Patrick Henry said, “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun.” “
• George Mason, who along with James Madison is called the “Father of the Bill of Rights” said, “I ask you sir, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people.”
• James Madison said, “A WELL REGULATED militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.”
• Thomas Jefferson said, “No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
• Tench Coxe said, “Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American… The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
• George Washington said, “A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”

It wasn’t difficult to find those quotes and it isn’t difficult to see through Olbermann’s argument. He could not have been more wrong. His perspective on the Second Amendment and the Constitution is childlike and insulting. He has either insulted those who watch him, or exposed them as Constitutional and historical morons. My guess is it’s a little of both. Either way, he would be well advised to take a little of his own advice and, on matters of the Second Amendment, “shut the hell up.”

Whenever I write an article about the dangers of universal health care, I get the usual mantra from the socialist defenders of the plan. Two great examples taken from my Newsvine additions include:

• That is also an example of what is slightly wrong with the Briton system, not a reason for them to toss it all out…. Also note that as I have said, it is NOT a system that the US would model it self on for Universal Health Care.

and

• If you think that your HMO is more concerned for your health than your government is you’re nuts. The moment your HMO is making life or death decisions for you you are no longer +profitable. Government at least hopes to keep you alive for taxes and your vote.

One example I have used is the story of Colette Mills in Great Briton. She was battling cancer and needed Avastin to help with her treatment. The National Health Service denied her access to the drug, sentencing her to death.

Debbie Hirst has the same experience. When she wanted Avastin, she was also refused treatment.

As I have been told repeatedly by the glassy-eyed Obamatons, this could never happen here.

But it has already happened here. Introducing Barbara Wagner, cancer patient under Oregon’s Health Plan:

Last month, she found out that her lung cancer, which had been in remission for about two years, had come back. After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that could slow the cancer growth and extend her life, Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn’t cover the treatment, but that it would cover palliative, or comfort, care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide.

The plan she pays her taxes for told her that they would not treat her, but they would kill her. I thought they cared about the taxes she paid, or the votes she cast. Sorry. They care about the bottom line. See, this plan was designed to ration health care.

When the Oregon Health Plan was established in 1994, it was expressly intended to ration health care. A prioritization list was drawn up, with diagnoses and ailments deemed most important — pregnancy, childbirth, preventive care for children — placed at the top of the list. At the bottom are procedures such as cosmetic surgery, which would not be covered.

“We can’t cover everything for everyone,” said Dr. Walter Shaffer, medical director of the state Division of Medical Assistance Programs, which administers the Oregon Health Plan.

“Taxpayer dollars are limited for publicly funded programs. We try to come up with polices that provide the most good for the most people.”

The advocates for government run health care never talk about this side of the subject. They never talk about government bureaucrats sitting in an office somewhere, deciding who lives and who dies, deciding who gets treatment that will save their life and who gets the death penalty.

What they tell you about is the evil corporations and Big Pharma. Well, when the system failed Barbara, it was the evil corporations who came to her rescue:

The story appears to be a happy ending for Barbara Wagner, who has been notified by a drug manufacturer that it will provide the expensive medication, estimated to cost $4,000 a month, for the first year and then allow her to apply for further treatment,

Don’t tell me the plan offered by Obama isn’t like this. It doesn’t matter. It will become this. Fear mongering? No. Reality. The plan offered by Obama is modeled after the one currently running in Massachusetts, the same plan that is running millions of dollars over budget :

With all the newly insured people coming into the system so rapidly, we are having trouble finding enough doctors to treat them, and we are having trouble finding the money to pay for it. In fact, some estimates show that the new law is under-funded by as much as $150-$200 million.

When the costs of this plan keep rising, you will eventually have shortages. After shortages come rationing. Then you have what you read above, only on a national scale. They will try to fix the problem by taking more of our property via taxes, but there will never be enough. Dr. Walter Shaffer is correct. They “can’t cover everything for everyone.” But the free market can. And there lies the solution.

But it requires government to do something it rarely does: remove itself.

Barack Obama is a money generator. Last month, he raised $52 million dollars, more than twice what John McCain raised. He is destroying McCain in fund-raising, but I still don’t think you should be donating to McCain’s campaign. He’ll get his financial support from the Republican National Committee:

John McCain’s presidential campaign is trying to ease Republican concerns that he won’t be able to compete financially with Barack Obama in the general election.

In a conference call with reporters, campaign manager Rick Davis said the campaign, the Republican National Committee and a handful of state victory accounts are on track to raise a combined $200 million for the primary period.

John McCain will have enough money to compete. And if he doesn’t, the 527s can compensate for what he lacks. If you are like most Americans, you don’t have piles of expendable income looking for a home. You need to get the most from your donation, and your donations are better spent on the tight Congressional races.

Regardless of who wins the Executive branch, liberal legislation will have a friend in the White House. John McCain is a fan of cap and trade programs which experts say would do great damage to the U.S. economy. He wants to get the federal government more and more involved in the free market, blames Wall Street for the housing crisis, describes oil company profits as obscene, thinks the government should be able to prevent citizens from selling stocks, even when they want to sell them and determine what companies pay their executives.

He is in no way a free market thinker. And Barack Obama is simply a Marxist. What seems to be most important this election is getting a conservative/libertarian minded Congress to stand in the way of an increase in Washington’s reach and power.

The campaign donation that you were thinking of sending to John McCain can be better used in Senate and Congressional candidates where Republicans have a chance to hold onto, or gain, seats. Candidates like Sam Graves, who work to minimize earmarks, could use your money. Tim Bee of Arizona could possibly unseat Democrat Gabrielle Giffords and Steve Greenberg (R) of Illinois could beat Melissa Bean (D).

While it is expected that the Democrats will gain seats, there is a lot of time between now and the election. The number one issue today is the cost of oil and gasoline. The Democrat’s answer is alternative fuels and they refuse to even discuss drilling. Imagine the effect ads like the one to the right will have on undecided voters. It could be a year for Republicans to take back a few seats. Those seats will be important if another attempt at amnesty is tried, or if Barack wants to implement universal health care.

The tight Congressional races have a more urgent need for your campaign donations. Come 2009, conservatives in Congress will be fighting against the Executive branch on many different issues. Let’s make sure there are enough of them.

There is a lot of buzz about a new technology being touted as a possible solution in the “climate change crisis.” It is called a CO₂ scrubber, and it removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Just one would take a ton of CO₂ out of the air every day. I mean, everyone is talking about this. And when I say everybody, I pretty much mean Glenn Beck. Other than him and some in the blogosphere, the subject is almost non-existent. Just Google “