Early in 2009, commentators excoriated President Barack Obama
for his motivational speech to students, which was feared for its
propaganda value. Their anxieties were partly correct, but we
indoctrinate children through more overt methods. I looked through
Virginia's public school curriculum, the Standards of Learning, for
examples of what many professors would call propaganda.
The
journey starts in kindergarten, when "students should learn basic
concepts related to history, patriotism (and) national symbols."
First
graders "will recognize the symbols and traditional practices that
honor and foster patriotism in the United States by ... demonstrating
respect for the American flag by learning the Pledge of Allegiance."
Our
country does much that should make us proud and much that should make
us ashamed. But the SOLs implant unquestioned love for the country, for
which people are willing to do anything. In "Who Rules America?" author
William Domhoff maintains that politicians manipulate these symbols in
order to control the public.
We could think of other doctrines to
teach young children who are too young to defend themselves
intellectually. For example, we could mandate that they learn hurting
people is wrong, famously articulated by Jesus Christ, but this may be
too liberal or politically correct.
Third graders learn more
substantive information about "the exploration of the Americas,"
including "the }accomplishments of Christopher Columbus."
In "A
People's History of the United States," Howard Zinn analyzes Samuel
Morison's work on Columbus. Halfway through his book, Morison writes,
"The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors
resulted in complete genocide." As for his concluding paragraph: "He
had his faults and his defects, but they were largely the defects of
the qualities that made him great - his indomitable will, his superb
faith in God, and in his own mission as the Christ-bearer to lands
beyond the seas, his stubborn persistence despite neglect, poverty and
discouragement. But there was no flaw, no dark side to the most
outstanding and essential of all his qualities - his seamanship."
Most
American schoolchildren can name the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria but
only a few know that the Reagan administration sponsored terrorist wars
in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador (Google the Nicaragua v. U.S.
court case, Battalion 3-16 death squad and El Mozote massacre).
High
school students must learn about the Nazi genocide while describing
"how early European exploration and colonization resulted in cultural
interactions between Europeans, Africans and American Indians."
"No doubt
the warfare, enslavement and forcible takeover of indigenous lands is
absent from such discussions of 'cultural interactions,'" said
international affairs professor Wilma Dunaway. She runs a Web site for
teachers dedicated to an accurate view of Appalachian history at
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/wdunaway/publications/diversity.htm.
Teaching
these elementary truths would break one of the goals of the SOLs: to
"instill in students a thoughtful pride in the history of America."
Third
graders also learn that producers use natural, human and capital
resources ("soil," "people" and "machines") "to produce goods and
services for consumers." Removing its own agency, our government
mandates that students learn "how physical features and climate
influenced the movement of people westward." Furthermore, the history
SOLs do not mention global warming, while the science SOLs sanitize it
to "potential atmospheric compositional changes due to human, biologic
and geologic activity."
Political science professor Richard Rich
noted, "It is stunning to me that we can consider people to be
'educated' when they do not understand the basic facts of the global
ecosphere on which we all depend for our very lives. How can we have
any chance of ceasing to destroy the earth life-support systems if we
do not know either how badly we have done this already or what forces
led us to do so?"
Their history of the Civil War deviates from
preferred methodologies; it is the only war when students are made to
look at the perspectives of soldiers from both sides. Why not a South
Vietnamese, Dominican, Haitian, Guatemalan, Iraqi, Cuban, Cambodian,
Laotian, Filipino perspective?
In "The Curious Case of American Hegemony," David Hendrickson
writes, "That messianic and Manichean perspective makes us blind to the
misgivings and fears of others, incapable of understanding how our way
of war generates intense resentment and hatred, and as ready to misread
enemy intentions as to view contemptibly the advice of friends."
Underlying
cultural assumptions manifest our indoctrination. In "Liberty and
Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which topped the bestseller charts
this year, Mark Levin writes, "The Founders believed, and the
Conservative agrees, in the dignity of the individual; that we, as
human beings, have a right to live, live freely and pursue that which
motivates us." Levin objects to "Statists" who teach the fact that our
country was founded upon slavery.
Or, as David Brooks wrote in
the New York Times last Friday, "Jefferson advocated 'a wise and frugal
government' that will keep people from hurting each other, but will
otherwise leave them free and 'shall not take from the mouth of labor
the bread it has earned.'"
Similarly, last month I wrote that we
should be horrified our government is violating some of the Nuremberg
Principles, which were enshrined after World War II explicitly to
prevent countries from committing the crimes of fascist Germany and
Japan. Judd Smith, a senior political science major, wrote a letter to
the editor saying he was "thoroughly disgusted," not that our country
is violating Nuremberg Principles, but that someone pointed it out.
The history SOLs stop in 1991. How much relevance can a study of history have without knowledge of current events?
A
graduating student would be obedient to nationalism, indoctrinated to a
cleansed history, and unaware of current events. This brainwashing is
probably internalized in the test makers as objectivity or benevolence.
The system is working exactly as it was designed.
Sociology
professor Joyce Rothschild said, "If K-12 schools simply parrot the
nonsense and talking points that are on TV, then it is hard to see
where children might gain any real insight into the history and causes
of the important challenges we face as a nation and as one world."
In
George Orwell's "1984," government censors throw incriminating news
clippings into trash chutes called memory holes, which connect to an
incinerator. Censorship is much more open in Virginia.
Journeys of the Heart ADOPTION SCANDAL in Marshall Islands
From 2007-8, I lived in the Marshall Islands, an isolated Pacific island nation. The day before I left, my host uncle came to me in private. "Seven years ago, my daughter was born in the capital. When my wife and I were raising her, an American came to me asking for our baby. Because it is our culture, we agreed. Do you know when she will come back?"
He gave me the name and address of the adoption agency, Journeys of the Heart, whose agent had taken his child. When I returned to the United States I began contacting agency personnel, who did not respond. Each time I wrote, I clearly described the tragic details of the story and asked them to forward my requests for information to the adoptive family. Finally, I received an e-mail from the executive director, Susan Tompkins. She wrote: "Journeys of the Heart does not provide family contact information, as this would be illegal and unethical." I replied that kidnapping was unethical.
In 2002, seven U.S. adoption agencies were working in the Marshall Islands. After a law was passed to prevent corrupt adoption practices, the only agency to receive a license was Journeys of the Heart. Its Web site proudly advertises "Marshall Island (sic) Child Adoption Going Strong." It continues, "The birth mother and her family generally welcome any contact including visits, phone calls or the required letters." As for visits, the island I lived on receives a boat that offloads food every two and a half months. Anybody who has been to the Marshall Islands knows that the majority of people do not have any access to telephones or mail. But for kidnappers, the facts are of no consequence.
The agency's main goal is to get "as many of the world's children out of harm's way as possible." By this logic, it is harmful simply to live in poor countries, which apparently can't approach our own moral and cultural superiority. Thus, any baby living in a poor country is a legitimate target of such supposedly progressive ideals. We can be reminded of a similar humanitarian vision stated by Christopher Columbus: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending (to Spain) all the slaves that can be sold." It seems the worst aspect of colonialism is still our manifest destiny.
For carrying, bearing, beginning to raise and giving up their infant, the young mother and father received nothing. The reason is simple: for adoption companies, giving birth parents nothing is more profitable than giving them something. This is what happens when children become commodities, and agents are paid based on commission.
I was hoping that what happened in the Marshall Islands was an anomaly. But instead, the conditions are generalizable. The practice of concealing the "illegal and unethical" adoptions behind the front of legitimate agencies is called child laundering.
In 2008, the Hague Adoption Convention entered into force in the United States. The Preamble reads in part that "each State should take, as a matter of priority, appropriate measures to enable the child to remain in the care of his or her family of origin." However, this law is not followed in practice. David Smolin, the foremost expert on child laundering, argues in "Wayne Law Review" that in most cases, adoptive parents "spend thousands of dollars (or tens of thousands of dollars) to arrange an intercountry adoption, when aid of less than a thousand dollars would have kept the child with their birth family." But no law requires that this option be offered. Ethan Kapstein notes in "Foreign Affairs" that the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states "that the placement of children should not result "in improper financial gain for those involved in it.'" Unfortunately, the United States and Somalia are the only United Nations members not to ratify the CRC. Thus, paying commissions per child is legal, with predictable consequences.
Last year more than 4,100 children were adopted from Guatemala, America's top baby "supplier." But for the last six years, the country has failed to meet its obligations under the Hague Adoption Convention; thus, as of March 9, 2009, the U.S. stopped accepting adoptive babies from Guatemala. This ban is part of a larger cycle. Smolin contends that in the past 20 years "40 percent of those significant sending nations have virtually dropped out of the intercountry adoption system, apparently due largely to scandals related to child" laundering. Therefore, it is possible that the majority of international adoptions are thefts (I couldn't find statistics).
An April 4, 2009, New York Times article notes that our demand for babies from China, the second-biggest (and soon to be biggest) child "supplier," contributes to a lucrative market in abducted children that may number in the "hundreds of thousands." Some parents "post fliers in places where children are often sold and travel the country to stand in front of kindergartens as they let out." Tragically, in the future we should expect that an adoption scandal will rock the Chinese market as well.
Anecdotally, recent news of celebrity adoptions has spurred interest in international adoptions. Those who support this trend may want to take a closer look. Madonna's recent move to circumvent Malawi's strict adoption laws resulted in a court ruling on Friday banning her adoption of another child. To do so, she must fulfill the country's 18 month residency requirement, designed to prevent child laundering. Ironically, the court allowed her to keep the first child she adopted from Malawi, which she reportedly obtained through donating $3 million to the child's orphanage. I have no doubt that international adoption is often a loving and sublime experience for all parties involved. But the other day I wrote my host uncle's urban relatives a letter: "Please tell him his baby will never come back."
He gave me the name and address of the adoption agency, Journeys of the Heart, whose agent had taken his child. When I returned to the United States I began contacting agency personnel, who did not respond. Each time I wrote, I clearly described the tragic details of the story and asked them to forward my requests for information to the adoptive family. Finally, I received an e-mail from the executive director, Susan Tompkins. She wrote: "Journeys of the Heart does not provide family contact information, as this would be illegal and unethical." I replied that kidnapping was unethical.
In 2002, seven U.S. adoption agencies were working in the Marshall Islands. After a law was passed to prevent corrupt adoption practices, the only agency to receive a license was Journeys of the Heart. Its Web site proudly advertises "Marshall Island (sic) Child Adoption Going Strong." It continues, "The birth mother and her family generally welcome any contact including visits, phone calls or the required letters." As for visits, the island I lived on receives a boat that offloads food every two and a half months. Anybody who has been to the Marshall Islands knows that the majority of people do not have any access to telephones or mail. But for kidnappers, the facts are of no consequence.
The agency's main goal is to get "as many of the world's children out of harm's way as possible." By this logic, it is harmful simply to live in poor countries, which apparently can't approach our own moral and cultural superiority. Thus, any baby living in a poor country is a legitimate target of such supposedly progressive ideals. We can be reminded of a similar humanitarian vision stated by Christopher Columbus: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending (to Spain) all the slaves that can be sold." It seems the worst aspect of colonialism is still our manifest destiny.
For carrying, bearing, beginning to raise and giving up their infant, the young mother and father received nothing. The reason is simple: for adoption companies, giving birth parents nothing is more profitable than giving them something. This is what happens when children become commodities, and agents are paid based on commission.
I was hoping that what happened in the Marshall Islands was an anomaly. But instead, the conditions are generalizable. The practice of concealing the "illegal and unethical" adoptions behind the front of legitimate agencies is called child laundering.
In 2008, the Hague Adoption Convention entered into force in the United States. The Preamble reads in part that "each State should take, as a matter of priority, appropriate measures to enable the child to remain in the care of his or her family of origin." However, this law is not followed in practice. David Smolin, the foremost expert on child laundering, argues in "Wayne Law Review" that in most cases, adoptive parents "spend thousands of dollars (or tens of thousands of dollars) to arrange an intercountry adoption, when aid of less than a thousand dollars would have kept the child with their birth family." But no law requires that this option be offered. Ethan Kapstein notes in "Foreign Affairs" that the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states "that the placement of children should not result "in improper financial gain for those involved in it.'" Unfortunately, the United States and Somalia are the only United Nations members not to ratify the CRC. Thus, paying commissions per child is legal, with predictable consequences.
Last year more than 4,100 children were adopted from Guatemala, America's top baby "supplier." But for the last six years, the country has failed to meet its obligations under the Hague Adoption Convention; thus, as of March 9, 2009, the U.S. stopped accepting adoptive babies from Guatemala. This ban is part of a larger cycle. Smolin contends that in the past 20 years "40 percent of those significant sending nations have virtually dropped out of the intercountry adoption system, apparently due largely to scandals related to child" laundering. Therefore, it is possible that the majority of international adoptions are thefts (I couldn't find statistics).
An April 4, 2009, New York Times article notes that our demand for babies from China, the second-biggest (and soon to be biggest) child "supplier," contributes to a lucrative market in abducted children that may number in the "hundreds of thousands." Some parents "post fliers in places where children are often sold and travel the country to stand in front of kindergartens as they let out." Tragically, in the future we should expect that an adoption scandal will rock the Chinese market as well.
Anecdotally, recent news of celebrity adoptions has spurred interest in international adoptions. Those who support this trend may want to take a closer look. Madonna's recent move to circumvent Malawi's strict adoption laws resulted in a court ruling on Friday banning her adoption of another child. To do so, she must fulfill the country's 18 month residency requirement, designed to prevent child laundering. Ironically, the court allowed her to keep the first child she adopted from Malawi, which she reportedly obtained through donating $3 million to the child's orphanage. I have no doubt that international adoption is often a loving and sublime experience for all parties involved. But the other day I wrote my host uncle's urban relatives a letter: "Please tell him his baby will never come back."
NYT Mind Readers Discuss Obama's Principles and Santa Claus - Headline: "Secret 'Kill List' Tests Obama's Principles"
NYT Headline: "Secret 'Kill List' Tests Obama's Principles"
How do the New York Times mind readers know what Obama's principles are?
This reflects the standard position: 'principles' are the focus group-tested platitudes politicians mouth every four years, while what they actually do boils down to inexplicable deviation from principles and 'values.'
In other words, the folks who delude us with toothpaste and fast food advertisements also sell us canned candidates, and if one of them happens to have the peculiar habit of running assassination squads out of the Oval Office, well, he's still pretty much a nice guy.
Or, “the rhetoric of American foreign policy protects us against reality, that is, against the claim on our attention that any event or fact makes by virtue of its existence.”
P. Wander, “The Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70/4 (1984), pp. 339-361.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=1&hp&pagewanted=all
See also, 'Santa Claus Exists, Despite Evidence.'
Traditional Marriage Is between a Man and His Rib
There are a number of reasons to oppose traditional marriage. For one thing, it's impossible to turn a rib into a person.
Progressive Quote from Adam Smith
"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Part II, p. 112
http://books.google.com/books?id=-WxKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA112&dq=%22vile+maxim%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PVV_T-TcEJOk8ATOprmyBw&ved=0CFMQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&q=%22vile%20maxim%22&f=false
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Part II, p. 112
http://books.google.com/books?id=-WxKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA112&dq=%22vile+maxim%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PVV_T-TcEJOk8ATOprmyBw&ved=0CFMQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&q=%22vile%20maxim%22&f=false
Pros and Cons of Obamacare Are Just an Ideological Litmus Test
I think the health care mandate is just a litmus test. People fit it within their ideological framework and invent reasons to support it (justice! freedom!).
For example, the government already forces people to buy health insurance administered through private businesses. These programs are called Medicare and Medicaid. I don't read or hear any leftist Democrats arguing that Medicare and Medicaid are government overreaches.
Also, the government can conscript young men between the ages of 18-26 and force them at gunpoint to fight wars, leave their families, kill people, etc., by force of imprisonment. Certainly this is a far more egregious use of government authority than compelling people on penalty of having their tax refunds reduced [this is the only penalty which individuals will eventually face if they choose not to buy health insurance]. I don't read or hear any conservatives arguing that the government does not have the constitutional authority to conscript young men to fight in wars.
I think the Supreme Court arguments were just people trying to invent reasons to support (help the poor!) or oppose (the government will make us buy broccoli!) the law.
For example, the government already forces people to buy health insurance administered through private businesses. These programs are called Medicare and Medicaid. I don't read or hear any leftist Democrats arguing that Medicare and Medicaid are government overreaches.
Also, the government can conscript young men between the ages of 18-26 and force them at gunpoint to fight wars, leave their families, kill people, etc., by force of imprisonment. Certainly this is a far more egregious use of government authority than compelling people on penalty of having their tax refunds reduced [this is the only penalty which individuals will eventually face if they choose not to buy health insurance]. I don't read or hear any conservatives arguing that the government does not have the constitutional authority to conscript young men to fight in wars.
I think the Supreme Court arguments were just people trying to invent reasons to support (help the poor!) or oppose (the government will make us buy broccoli!) the law.
How the Free Market and Elections Work
This excellent article recalls an economic truism from the so-long-ago bailouts, best vanished down the memory hole: the "free market" is a rhetorical tool to delude the public and provide cover for cutting education, health care, pensions, etc., while businesses run to the nanny state with one palm upturned and the other clutching a copy of "Atlas Shrugged."
Or,
"'Free market is not always the same as pro-business,' said Barney Keller, spokesman for the conservative political action committee Club for Growth."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/business/with-bank-teetering-a-bet-on-the-gop-backfires.html
Or,
"'Free market is not always the same as pro-business,' said Barney Keller, spokesman for the conservative political action committee Club for Growth."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/business/with-bank-teetering-a-bet-on-the-gop-backfires.html
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