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| August 2000 | Volume 7, Number 6 |
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| August 2000 | Volume 7, Number 6 |
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In This Issue: |
One of the problems of getting old is that you miss out on so many of the exciting new things that young people enjoy. Often this is because of what is new to them is something that has been tried again and again in the past-and has turned out to be a bummer again and again.
One of the many idiotic ideas that reappear in our public schools in new verbal guises is the idea that the school should be preparing young people for the world of work. Since every old idea has to have a new name, this is now called the “school-to-work” (STW) program, sponsored by the federal government and spending billions of tax dollars.
This used to be called “vocational guidance” and the idea goes back at least 90 years, when the gurus of so-called progressive education said that schools spent too much time on academic subjects and not enough time on “practical” things that would be “relevant” to the kind of work and life that students would go into after finishing school.
In the latest reincarnation of vocational guidance as STW programs, 8th graders are given tests to determine what kinds of jobs they are supposedly suited for and they are asked to make career choices. Such choices are premature by at least a decade. Some of the best liberal arts colleges allow-and encourage-their students to take two years of general education in college before deciding what subject to major in.
Such choices are too serious to make without some solid basis. You may be fascinated by chemistry experiments in high school, but that is very different from saying
| "What we really need is a school-to-school program, not programs in which schools pretend to be what they cannot possibly be." |
He’s a charmer, that Harry Potter.
The adolescent hero of J. K. Rowling’s series rides a broom, owns an Invisibility Cloak and magic wand and has cast a spell over young readers the world over. He’s got modern-day witches enchanted, too.
“For once, the witches aren’t ugly old hags,” said Michael Darnell, a computer programmer from Canada, who has been a practicing witch for 25 years. “For once, they’re the protagonists rather than the villains.”
Darnell is one of the thousands of North American adherents of Wicca, a faith linked to witchcraft. No one knows how many people practice Wicca, but estimates run from 300,000 to more than 1.5 million people following what they describe as a nature-based belief system that existed in Europe before Christianity.
However, witchcraft has always had a darker image in popular culture, often linked to devil worship and decried by some Christians as an affront to God. From Shakespeare to Salem, witches have usually been portrayed as evil, curse-casting troublemakers.
Not in Harry’s case. He and his friends go to school to learn witchcraft and have all kinds of magical adventures along the way. In his world, the non-witches are the weird ones-a welcome change for witchcraft practitioners.
“If somebody wants to write about us as being fun, interesting, magical people, we don’t mind that at all,” said Jane Raeburn, a writer who has been practicing Wicca for 10 years. The Potter books don’t actually deal with the philosophical precepts of Wicca or any specific religious tradition.
Instead, Harry and company fight the good fight against the forces of evil aided by the stereotypical pop culture of witchery-flying brooms, magical instruments, spells. That in itself has been enough to concern some Christian parents. Last year, the series topped the list of books that parents or certain groups tried to have taken off the shelves, according to the American Library Association. The books were removed in some schools after parents raised concerns.
Editor's Note: Why would we want our children to read books glorifying witchcraft? There are wonderful imaginative books on the market that touch the heart and soar the spirit. An alternative to the Potter books: C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Nardia
American families are in the crosshairs of the United Nations (UN) because the UN knows that if they weaken families, they break the back of the American culture. And they know that they must circumvent the U.S. Constitution because it protects American families. The method they use is called “consensus,” a process that prods participants into a pre-determined outcome or conclusion.
Here is how it works: President Clinton appoints leftist bureaucrats who travel the globe to reach “consensus” on a myriad of Marxist-oriented global treaties, which he then implements using executive orders and federal agencies. It is Clinton vs. the Constitution; he is the imperial president.
American feminists have a special love for the UN and the scam process of consensus, while they despise the U.S. Constitution because they think it is a patriarchal document. Since Phyllis Schlafly defeated their aim to add the anti-family Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution, they have resorted to the UN and the “consensus” process to accomplish their goals.
The UN treaty that embodies the failed ERA is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The purpose of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China was to push for ratification of the CEDAW treaty.
Let me tell you how bad this CEDAW treaty is. Article 10 would make it a federal responsibility to ensure “the elimination of any stereotyped concept of the roles of men and women at all levels and in all forms of education…by the revision of textbooks…and teaching methods.” Should the UN have the authority to rewrite American children’s textbooks and revise American teaching methods? I don’t think so.
Article 11 would globally implement comparable worth, a feminist plan to force employers to pay workers subjectively for “equal value” rather than according to the objective standard of equal work. Whom do you trust to determine the amount of your paycheck: the free market or government bureaucrats?
A committee established by Article 17 calls prostitution a “reproductive right,” directed Kygystan to legalize lesbianism, and Libya to reinterpret the Koran so that it falls within committee guidelines. They also criticized Belarus for instituting Mother’s Day saying it advances a negative stereotype.
The CEDAW treaty was signed by President Clinton, but has not been ratified by the Senate. The treaty has 165 signatories; in the Western Hemisphere, only the U.S. has stood against the feminists. Our best weapon in stopping this boondoggle is Senator Jesse Helms, who heads up the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and refuses to let it come to the floor for a vote.
The UN, however, is relentless in its quest to circumvent our protections by the U.S. Constitution so that it can lob arrows at American families. And it has found the perfect issue to do so: the environment. Since EVERYBODY wants clean air and water, the environment is the perfect UN and feminist issue. With it, they can abuse EVERYBODY.
The good news is that since 1970, America has made substantial improvements in environmental quality. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows a 42% decline in toxic releases since 1988. New cars today emit less than 5% as much pollution as they did in 1970. Regardless, President Clinton issues executive orders and directs federal agencies to implement many un-ratified UN environmental treaties.
The UN treaty that deals with global warming is the Kyoto Protocol developed around the theory that man’s activities, especially burning fossil fuels, cause the earth to warm, even though science has NOT proven the claim. If implemented, the Kyoto Protocol would have a greater impact on economic issues than on the environment because it would redistribute American wealth around the globe.
This is how it would work: 38 industrialized nations, including the U.S. would be bound to reduce their use of fossil fuels. That would force American industries to move to non-industrialized nations NOT bound by the Protocol; i.e. Mexico or China. The Kyoto treaty would cost Americans as much as $30,000 in lost income per family and up to two million lost jobs over 10 years.
In 1999, there were 4,538 new rules and regulations produced by federal bureaucracies.
Even more regulations would be imposed if the 1997 Kyoto treaty is ratified, but the extent of damage cannot be determined until the UN decides how it will operate in practice. Its “rulebook” is set to be completed in The Hague in November. Many hope that George W. Bush’s election would mean the demise of the Kyoto Protocol because he has called it “ineffective” and says he will not seek its ratification.
The UN Treaty on the Rights of the Child, signed by President Clinton but NOT ratified by the U.S. Senate, would be disastrous for every American family. Article 13 states, “The child shall have the right to freedom of expression,” which could mean that a child would have the right to throw a temper tantrum, get a tattoo or use filthy language to “express” himself. Article 14 says, “States parties (member nations) shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” which could mean the child would have the right to join a satanic cult against his parents’ wishes.
UN treaties that rob property rights violate your family’s freedom to provide, protect and pass on an inheritance. They use terms like “sustainable development,” “biodiversity,” and “smart growth” to distract environmentally conscious Americans from their real purpose which is to rob them of their Constitutional rights. “Urban sprawl,” for example, means that communities direct their growth toward cluster “villages” by withholding roads and sewers and declaring almost all the farmland, mature forestland and land near water, “preservation” areas that cannot be developed.
Religious freedom is under attack by the UN. A group call United Religious Initiative (URI) is working toward a single religious concept that embraces all faiths. Traditional religions would be forced under the umbrella of the URI creating a world religion. The theology would probably be Gaia goddess worship (the feminists like the idea of God being a woman), who believe that created things (trees, plants, animals) are objects of worship rather than the Creator of those objects.
The UN has no concern for your family’s protection from foreign threats as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. U.S. military personnel are serving around the globe as UN peacekeepers, in many cases, under a foreign commander. Texan Michael New was given a dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Army because he refused to dishonor his country and his uniform by ripping off the American flag and replacing it with the UN insignia and serving under a foreign commander.
A new UN International Criminal Court (ICC) has its sights set on EVERY American citizen, regardless whether the U.S. ratifies the treaty. The ICC could target American military personnel and all other citizens, yet our Congressmen would have no authority against them. Its 18 members would have jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the undefined crime of aggression. It could impose ALL UN treaties on ALL nations if it chooses. And the way the Court is funded would allow “justice” to be sold to the highest bidder.
The UN is not a friend of the American family. To defend the family, we need to elect a President who will appoint negotiators to UN conferences who will adhere to the U.S. Constitution-IF we choose to participate at all. America’s national sovereignty and family sovereignty must be our top priorities.
What you Can Do: We will learn more about what the UN has in store for us at the Millennium Summit in New York City on September 6-7. This international summit will be attended by heads of state and co-led by former Soviet dictator, Mikhail Gorbachev. TEF President Cathie Adams and Eagle MerryLynn Gerstenschlager will be there and plan to give reports on Marlin Maddoux’s “Point of View” radio show. In the meantime, please pray for Sen. Jesse Helms, his successor, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as, our next President.
The absence of the left on the radar screen of American politics is one of the wonders of the age. What happened to all those activists who went to war against the system in the 1960s, and who took to the streets to promote the West’s defeat in the Cold War? How is it that our universities boast more socialists and Marxists than the former satellites of the now defunct Soviet bloc? Who organizes the party line that promotes the rhetoric of class, race and gender warfare in national political debates?
The list below is the beginning of an answer (bet you can think of more). Everybody agrees there is a Right in American politics, and everybody thinks they can name the players. It is time to take a balanced view of the political process and identify the political left.
Who are the left? Socialist, “progressives,” gender feminists, critical race theorists, “critical” theorists of all stripes, opponents of welfare reform, proponents of an expanding welfare state, members of the coalition to lynch Clarence Thomas and also to save Bill Clinton, the tax-the-rich ideologues, Christian-haters and PLO-supporters, reflexive bashers of white Americans and American-haters in general.
And: anyone who uses the term “oppression” to describe any set of social relations in American today. And: any knee-jerk-name-caller who responds to this list by invoking the specter of Joseph McCarthy, which is the left’s favorite tactic for choosing debate on its political agendas.
National Figures: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Marion Wright Edelman, Sydney Blumenthal, John Sweeney, Julian Bond.
Senators: Paul Wellstone, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Christopher Dodd, Pat Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, Tom Harkin, Robert Torricelli.
Members of the Congressional “Progressive Caucus”: Represenatives Lynn Woolsey, George Miller, Henry Waxman, Maxine Waters, Eleanor Holmes, John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, Barney Frank, David Bonior, John Conyers, Major Owens, and Charles Rangel among others.
Organizations: Earth First!, National Lawyers Guild, American Civil Liberties Union, Children’s Defense Fund, NAACP, NEA, People for the American Way, National Organization for Women, Democratic Socialists of America.
Institutions: MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Asner Family Foundation, Emily’s List, Feminist Majority Foundation, Institute for Policy Studies.
Ideologues: Betty Friedan, Catharine MacKinnon, Derrick Bell, Angela Davis.
Academic Bases: Women’s Studies Programs, English Departments, Black Studies Departments, Critical Legal Theories, Cultural Studies, Modern Language Association, American Association of University Professors.
Magazines: The Nation, Village Voice, Harpers, In These Times, New York Review of Books, Dissent, Science and Society, American Historical Review, Monthly Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Kirkus Reviews.
The biggest issue on the highways and byways of America is the high price of gasoline at the pump, in some areas higher than $2 per gallon. Who’s to blame? Is it a presidential campaign issue?
Al Gore, struggling to pull himself up from bad poll numbers, is trying to blame George W. Bush because (a) he is from Texas, (b) he once ran an oil exploration company, and (c) he has received some (perfectly legal) contributions from oil companies. Gore’s charges simply do not stand up.
If we want to play that game, Gore is the vulnerable one. He and his late father received much money and many financial favors from Occidental Petroleum and its founder Armand Hammer, a notorious friend of the bosses of the former Soviet Union, and Gore still controls $500,000 in Occidental stock.
Gore may even be happy about the rising gas prices. He made clear in his book, Earth in the Balance that he wants to rid the world of the internal combustion engine.
The real place to levy the blame is OPEC, the 11-country oil cartel (plus Mexico) that conspired to raise the price of oil. OPEC is a criminal price-fixing conspiracy and, if its members were reachable by U.S. laws, its sheiks would be in jail. OPEC is not selling us oil at free market prices. It has monopolized the oil market by engaging in illegal practices that are exactly designed to kill off the competition.
However, OPEC is part of the global economy that we’ve been told is the wave of the future. OPEC is part of Clinton’s plan to “integrate our economy” with other nations and to seek interdependence with other countries in the new global market, and that includes being dependent on foreign oil.
Clinton just failed to advise us of the price of his plan.
There isn’t any shortage of oil in the Middle East. The OPEC rulers don’t even need to drill any more wells. All they need to do is turn the spigots to increase or decrease the flow of oil, which is exactly what they’ve been doing.
In 1997, they opened the faucets wide to increase the flow of oil and to drive oil prices down to historic lows. That had exactly the effect they planned; it discouraged U.S. investors and drillers from the exploration, U.S. production was cut back, and 30,000 Americans lost their jobs.
Now, in 2000, OPEC turned the faucets down in order to decrease the flow of oil and drive up the price. So Americans, whose domestic production has been curtailed, are paying extra tribute to the OPEC sheiks to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year.
Some politicians, at both the congressional and state levels, are toying with the idea of cutting or suspending some of the taxes on gasoline. That would affect only a small part of the big gasoline price increase and, anyway, why let a criminal cartel stop us from repairing our roads?
These countries owe us. Don’t you remember? We went to war in 1991 to save Kuwait from being taken over by Saddam Hussein. U.S. ships and planes are defending Saudi Arabia today.
In 1994, the U.S. taxpayers bailed out Mexico with $50 billion. Then, we organized a $40 billion bailout of Indonesia. Most of these countries are still getting handouts from our foreign aid program and from those alphabet-soup global lending rackets.
“Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,” spoke the Bard. And George Washington warned us, “There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.”
But maybe there is more behind this story than just greed and ingratitude. In looking into the causes of the oil price increase, Congress should start by investigating what could turn out to be the biggest scandal of the scandal-ridden Clinton Administration.
This is the published news report that OPEC oil ministers quietly told national security advisors on Capitol Hill that the oil production cutbacks, which is the cause of the price increases, were made at the request of the Clinton Administration. How’s that again?
Can it really be true that the Clinton Administration asked OPEC to institute cutbacks in order to raise the price of oil? What could possibly be the motive of such duplicity?
The wealthy OPEC sheiks don’t need additional money, but the increase in the price of oil on the world market immensely benefits debtor nations such as Russia, Mexico and Indonesia. They are now able to start paying back some of their overdue loans to important Western bankers.
The American people have gotten very tired of taxpayer bailouts of corrupt foreign regimes that enable powerful U.S. investment bankers to collect on their foolish foreign loans. Raising the price of oil that we pay to foreign producers is a devilishly clever scheme to give the big fellas another subsidy from the U.S. taxpayers.
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