Uncommon Sense

politics and society are, unfortunately, much the same thing

How experts make us dumb

Think for yourself! That’s a common sentiment promoted today especially in western civilization. While I notice the concept is frequently promoted I’m not sure the advice is put into practice much.

On the one hand atheism is said to be on the rise in the United States, and Europe is well known for reaching a post-Christian era. One might interpret this as an indication people actually are thinking for themselves. On the other hand, intellectual laziness is astronomically high and still growing, and so is fear of challenging a politically correct narrative.

Experts promote this tragedy in our society and the rest of us help them do it. Experts often try to make themselves appear sophisticated and smart by using elevated jargon when speaking to people outside their field of expertise. Of course it makes no sense using buzzwords for a highly specialized discipline when speaking to the uninitiated, at least not if the goal is to effectively communicate. But the goal evidently is not to effectively communicate. Instead the goal is often to intimidate or impress, or both.

Emotionally charged controversies are the preferred playground for this intellectual pretense. Experts in economics, the soft social sciences, physics, etc. often tout their credentials and experience in ways intended to discourage disagreement. Experts often see what they want to see and blithely dismiss dissenting views rather than discuss specifics. Granted, even experts are only human, so when they make mistakes they typically don’t want to admit it any more than you or I would. And when the general public treats the expert opinion with skepticism we should not be surprised to be met with some form of expertism: the allegation that because we are not experts in the field we cannot possibly know what we are talking about; so our views don’t count for much.

So we, the uneducated masses, apparently cannot know that one of the most basic things a medical professional ought to do before administering care to read the patient’s chart (failing to do this turns out to be an alarmingly common mistake). And we, being chronically uneducated, cannot know that a nation cannot pull itself out of an economic slump by spending its way into oblivion – since numerous experts insist it can.

So while experts try to bully the people into thinking we cannot know what we are talking about when we disagree with them, we the people often end up reinforcing this myth as well.

In physics, for example, Stephen Hawking, arguably one of the smartest people in the world, asserts the universe created itself out of nothing. Think about that. The cosmic equivalent of spontaneous generation is this expert’s preferred explanation about how the universe got here. And people who don’t understand the math, don’t know what he’s talking about, and most of whom haven’t even read his book The Grand Design blindly accept Hawking’s word for it. There is no empirical evidence of any kind supporting Hawking’s explanation. It isn’t even testable (which means it doesn’t qualify as science) and most people who accept this idea have never heard any criticism of it (from religious and secular people alike, from philosophical and scientific view points). Many people unquestioningly believe it simply because Hawking said it. So much for thinking for oneself. This is blind faith, the unthinking, mindless approach to the world which theists are typically accused of practicing. But because Hawking’s explanation doesn’t need God it automatically gains credibility where, scientifically speaking, it has not earned it.

Additionally, Hawking has pompously and erroneously argued that philosophy is dead. Of course, the unthinking masses willing to believe his theory of the universe are not likely to recognize the flaw in this philosophical argument. Merely saying “think about that statement” is not likely to have the intended effect so I’ll explain it.

The statement “philosophy is dead” is not something that can be scientifically tested. In fact, Hawking’s comment is itself not even a scientific statement, but a philosophical one. So he uses philosophy to claim philosophy is dead, thus proving his own statement false. Hawking, as brilliant a scientist as he is, makes basic, elementary errors in his philosophy. Instead of showing philosophy to be dead, Hawking reveals his own ignorance and bias on things outside the area of his expertise, and raises questions as to the reliability of his expertise as well. We should not be surprised to find Hawking mistakenly believes the premise of his “The Grand Design” is scientific, when in fact it is inherently philosophical. As Einstein said, the man of science makes a poor philosopher. Hawking proves this publicly for all the world to see.

Climate science suffers from much the same problem. Chris Landsea, former chief scientist at the National Hurricane Center, in 2005 resigned from his position with the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due to the panel’s willingness to embrace poor science and political corruption of the scientific process. On the other side of the coin, the former chair of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri (who resigned in 2015 due to sexual scandals) declared climate change is his religion. But if you were to suggest climate change has been happening for as long as the planet has existed you can be sure to be labeled a “denier” or “anti-science”. Climate science is riddled with propaganda and corruption, and dissent is punished. Yet we are supposed to think climate science is real science, pure and incorruptible. Look at how many stories we’ve read or seen touting global warming doctrine as if it were infallible, all with the knowledge we are likely to be ridiculed if not worse for challenging that doctrine. What else does it mean to claim “the science is settled” if not to try to stop people from thinking beyond the narrative?

We now have a narrative conflating the latest views of gender with civil rights. Anyone who bothers to question this narrative is instantly labeled a bigot. As with gay activists, transgender activist rely on bully tactics to silence those who dare think for themselves on these issues. The threat of ruination was the hallmark of activism on the gay marriage issue, where any independent thinking would be labeled as unthinking hatred and punished. The what 0.3 percent? of the population that may be transgender gets to force the rest of us to accommodate any number of questionable premises. Never mind if the majority are made uncomfortable; the concerns of 0.3 percent trump everyone else’s concerns. So don’t bother asking thoughtful questions like what happens if straight male pranksters or perverts (falsely claiming to identify as female) see this latest social issue as an opportunity to exploit? Recording video of women in the restroom or shower and posting it online is one of the less egregious problems we are inviting upon ourselves, but such a violation of privacy is no small thing. Yet as long as the rights of the 99.7 percent are ignored while we are misdirected with a questionable narrative, we can pretend everyone is being treated equally by the rash effort to change public policy to accommodate the ever changing feelings of a tiny minority.

Andrea Mitchell (NBC News) shows us another example of experts making people dumb. For months, Hillary Clinton has been playing the gender card to help her presidential campaign. She portrays herself as a defender of women. But because our society tends to blindly accept the dominant narrative of the major news sources (CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, NYT, etc.) most people simply forget what happened even a few weeks ago. For example, during the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton had his panoply of sex scandals (the allegations turned out to be true) Hillary defended her husband by defaming any woman who spoke up about the sexual abuse. We were told absurdities like a “vast rightwing conspiracy” was out to get her husband. Contrast that with her more recent comments about how survivors of sexual assault have the right to be heard and believed. Not only do many forget how Hillary treated survivors of sexual assault in the 1990s, there is one case in particular which receives little attention at all.

Juanita Broaddrick’s story got scant attention. President Clinton denied her allegation that he raped her. He also denied all the other allegations of various forms of sexual harassment and assault. Yet, this denial seems to be enough for Andrea Mitchell to think Broaddrick’s story has been “discredited”. When? How? By whom? Mitchell doesn’t seem to realize that hiding from a story is not the same as discrediting it.

In light of the Bill Cosby sex scandal I challenged some liberals on social media. I pointed out how they are surprisingly concerned with allegations against him, given their profound lack of interest in allegations against Bill Clinton. And this was confirmed, with admissions that they didn’t care about the allegations against the former president. Callous excuses such as “it was just one allegation” were thrown about.

But hold a second. The idea that women would lie about sexual issues like this was unconscionable prior to Bill Clinton’s presidency. For those who don’t recall the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings, HBO is sure to skew your view of history even further with a loaded dramatization of questionable historical accuracy. In point of fact, the Clarence Thomas scandal received exactly the opposite response from liberals. There was little concern for evidence of any allegation. Instead, the concern was over the “seriousness of the charge”. The American people were supposed to believe women don’t lie about this sort of thing, so the allegation should be taken at face value, making Thomas unqualified to take a position on the SCOTUS. For President Clinton, the situation was exactly the opposite. We were told a man’s personal life doesn’t affect his professional life (his sexual abuse somehow does not disqualify him to be POTUS) so the allegations should have no impact on his right to be president, and women apparently lie all the time about sexual abuse. So which narrative is true? Andrea Mitchell, acting as an expert in current events and women’s issues, would have you believe which ever narrative helps Hillary Clinton’s current campaign. So we are to ignore the defense of Anita Hill and ignore Hillary’s recent comments about survivors of sexual assault, and pretend Broaddrick’s allegations have been “discredited” though no one can show me how this was done.

In western civilization experts now enjoy an air of respect traditionally reserved for religious leadership. These experts cultivate a religious veneration for their views, and the rest of us let them. Many will gladly keep themselves uninformed (not bothering to do their own homework) and blindly accept what they are told by these experts, whether they be scientific, economic, social, or political experts. And we have to contend with fear and retaliation for not blindly following the predominant narrative of the day. The combination of willful ignorance and unquestioning acceptance of certain points of view makes people dumb. And it happens everyday in our politically correct culture.

Many people keep acting as if they are intelligent and well informed by blindly following the experts. The rest of us commoners with a mere public education are frequently and smugly treated as nincompoops for daring to raise inconvenient questions, all while the virtues of public education are continually sung from the rafters by those same sheep who keep buying what education experts are selling.

Given the frequent disagreement among experts, even among those in the same field, perhaps blindly following them is not such an intelligent decision after all. It is stupid to say people who are thinking for themselves are not thinking, and stupid to say people who are blindly following the crowd are thinking for themselves. But what else should we expect from dumb people?

Please don’t be like that. Don’t be dumb.

corruption, culture, elitism, ideology, indoctrination, opinion, pandering, propaganda, tragedy

Filed under: corruption, culture, elitism, ideology, indoctrination, opinion, pandering, propaganda, tragedy

First Amendment battle at Weslyan University

original article: College student’s op-ed criticizing Black Lives Matter movement stirs controversy
September 25, 2015 by Fox News



“Is the movement itself actually achieving anything positive?” Stascavage wrote in his op-ed, “Why Black Lives Matter Isn’t What You Think,” published Sept. 14 in the Wesleyan Argus.



He said that certain actions by the movement’s extremists — like calling for more “pig” police officers to “fry like bacon” — should be condemned by the movement’s leaders.


– Wesleyan University President Michael Roth

The opinion piece unleashed a firestorm of criticism, first directed at Stascavage and later at the school newspaper and its editors. Stascavage said he’s been called a racist by students on campus, while some activists are calling on the school’s student government to defund the newspaper.


The university administration, meanwhile, defended Stascavage’s right to free speech over the weekend.

“Debates can raise intense emotions, but that doesn’t mean that we should demand ideological conformity because people are made uncomfortable,” Wesleyan University President Michael Roth wrote in a blog post along with Provost Joyce Jacobsen and Vice-President for Equity and Inclusion, Antonio Farias.

“As members of a university community, we always have the right to respond with our own opinions, but there is no right not to be offended,” said the post, titled “Black Lives Matter and So Does Free Speech.”

“We certainly have no right to harass people because we don’t like their views,” the administration said. “Censorship diminishes true diversity of thinking; vigorous debate enlivens and instructs.”

Stascavage, a sophomore majoring in philosophy and political science at the Connecticut university, said he knew his column would be controversial for posing “uncomfortable questions,” but said he never believed it would “hit nerves to the extent that it has.”

“The whole point of the article was to encourage people to think of alternative ways to get the Black Lives Matter movement to communicate their message effectively, instead of destroying a downtown district and screaming, ‘We want change,'” Stascavage told FoxNews.com Thursday.

“They are painting the police with a broad stroke as being racist killers,” he said. “I don’t agree with cheering when a police officer is killed. The rhetoric is starting to slide from a political movement to this mob mentality that leads us down a bad path.”


After the backlash, however, editors-in-chief Rebecca Brill and Tess Morganissued a lengthy statement apologizing “for the distress the piece caused the student body.”

“The op-ed cites inaccurate statistics and twists facts,” the two wrote. “As Wesleyan’s student newspaper, it is our responsibility to provide our readership with accurate information. We vow to raise our standards of journalism and to fact-check questionable information cited in articles, including those in the Opinion section, prior to publication.”


“I was very disappointed,” Stascavage said of their statement. “It looked like they just threw me under the bus.”

Brill and Morgan noted, however, that “The Opinion section is open to any writer who wants to share a view, whether or not the Opinion editors and the editors-in-chief agree with it.”



“I have learned more in the past 10 days than I learned in three years of college,” he told FoxNews.com. “Freedom of speech is critical for democracy.”

bias, bigotry, bullies, censorship, culture, discrimination, diversity, education, extremism, first amendment, free speech, government, hate speech, hypocrisy, ideology, left wing, liberalism, opinion, political correctness, progressive, public policy, relativism, scandal, victimization




June 17, 2015 by Michael Schaus














Any wonder Barack Obama loves the rag?




Can one support gay marriage and religious liberty at the same time?

note: I don’t support gay marriage like Lopez does, but I do support civil unions. Lopez is refreshingly open minded and honest in this piece, for someone who does support gay marriage.

original article: I Support Gay Marriage And Religious Freedom Laws
April 6, 2015 by Ramon Lopez

I strongly support gay marriage. Yet I also strongly support Indiana’s recent religious freedom law. Given that many in the media have characterized it as being “anti-gay,” causing state legislators to amend some of its protections away, this might seem like a contradiction. Therefore it’s important to clarify exactly what Indiana’s law says, does, and how it fits in with a vision of a tolerant and pluralistic society.

The Indiana religious freedom law is modeled after the federal Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA), passed in 1993 by a unanimous vote in the House, a 97-3 vote in the Senate, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton (there are two notable differences between the federal law and Indiana’s law that some critics have pointed out, and I’ll get to those differences in a bit). At the time, right-wing groups like the Christian Coalition joined with left-wing groups like the ACLU in support of the law, and it had remained a bipartisan commitment until recently.

The Historical and Legal Background of Religious Freedom Laws

To understand why RFRA was passed in the first place, we should review its historical and legal background. In 1963 the Supreme Court decided in Sherbert v. Verner that under the First Amendment religious objectors to facially neutral laws have a presumptive constitutional right to exemption. This means religious persons could sue for exemption from a law that compels them to violate their religious beliefs, even if that law did not specifically target their religion.

According to a 2006 study, governments meet strict scrutiny standards in nearly 60 percent of religious-liberty exemption cases.

If a law was passed that required all delis to serve pork, for example, conservative Muslim and Orthodox Jewish deli owners could apply for an exemption given their religious convictions. Although such a law may not be intentionally discriminatory, its effect would be burdensome to the practices of certain religious groups, as it would compel members of those faiths to violate their deeply held religious beliefs.

The Supreme Court determined that a “strict scrutiny” standard would be applied to laws that imposed a “substantial burden” on a person’s religious beliefs. Under this principle, religious objectors would be exempt from laws that burden their religious practices unless the law was the least-restrictive means of serving a compelling government interest.

A “compelling government interest” is typically understood to be an interest that is necessary, one that is an essential government function, not merely one that is preferable policy. It includes issues such as maintaining constitutional protections and preserving the lives, health, security, and rights of persons. To meet the “least restrictive means” standard, the state must show there is not a reasonable and possible alternative means to fulfill the compelling interest. Both before and after RFRA, the Supreme Court has kept religious-freedom exemptions narrow—members of a religion that forbids its members to pay taxes are not exempt from taxation, as the state can both demonstrate that such laws serve a compelling government interest and are the least restrictive means of serving that interest. According to a 2006 study, governments meet these standards in nearly 60 percent of religious-liberty exemption cases.

The Supreme Court Decision that Led to the Federal RFRA

In 1990, the court reversed itself in Employment Division v. Smith. Two members of the Native American Church had been fired for ingesting peyote, which some Native American religious groups use for religious purposes. Because they were fired for violating state drug laws, the former employees were unable to qualify for unemployment compensation. They sued, claiming that the state law prohibiting their use of peyote substantially burdened their religious practices, but in this case the Court determined that the First Amendment did not protect religious groups from facially neutral laws. Legislatures could carve out exemptions when passing laws that might substantially burden certain religious groups if they so chose, but religious persons would no longer have a presumptive right to exemption.

Since its passage, RFRA has disproportionately protected minority religious groups.

This resulted in a political backlash from all sides, culminating in the passage of RFRA, which reestablished the strict scrutiny standard. In 1997 the Supreme Court determined RFRA could not be applied to state laws—given that it went beyond the scope of Congress’s enforcement powers—but that it still applied to federal laws. Since 1997, 26 states have passed state-level RFRA legislation, with Indiana being the most recent, and another nine have constitutional religious-freedom provisions that state courts have interpreted to require the strict scrutiny standard.

Since its passage, RFRA has disproportionately protected minority religious groups—while Jewish, Muslim, and Native American religions only make up only 3 percent of the population, they make up 18 percent of RFRA cases. And while last year’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case grabbed headlines, earlier this year the court determined in Holt v. Hobbes that Arkansas’s policy prohibiting inmates from growing beards violated RFRA, as it substantially burdened a Muslim inmate from practicing his faith.

Three Objections to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law

There are then three main issues that are raised with Indiana’s RFRA law. The first is the more general question about whether a religious person should have a presumed right to exemption from a facially neutral law if it substantially burdens his or her religious practices. This issue not only applies to Indiana, but to every other state with a strict scrutiny standard, as well as the federal government.

As a pluralistic society, we ought to respect others’ religious beliefs, and make space for them to practice their values so long as it does not interfere with basic political requirements.


RFRA protections are particularly important when dealing with religious minorities. More widely represented and politically powerful religions may have the visibility and influence to ensure they are given legislative exemptions from facially neutral laws. But smaller and less influential religious groups, those without as much political clout, will have a harder time protecting their religious liberties and practices. When deciding between following a secular authority or a spiritual one, many people will choose the latter over the former. Giving space within the law to people of different faiths to practice their beliefs does not divide us, but makes us a more cohesive, open, and respectful society.

Many might agree that RFRA protections are important to maintain, but will argue that Indiana’s version went too far by legalizing these kinds of exemptions in private dealings. Unlike the federal version, Indiana’s law states, “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding” (italics mine). This is the second issue: Whether RFRA should allow religious persons to discriminate against private citizens.

Instead, Fight Job Loss for Being Gay

In this case, we should keep two things in mind. First, Indiana, like many states and the federal government, before adding its “fix” to its new RFRA had not listed sexual orientation as a protected status under civil-rights laws. Private businesses are prohibited from discriminating based on race, religion, gender, national origin, disability, etc., but in most states employers can legally fire someone for being gay. Even if Indiana’s religious-freedom law allowed for discrimination, it would be superfluous given that discrimination based on sexual orientation is already legal. That gay, lesbian, and transsexual persons are still subject to this kind of treatment is a national embarrassment, and all the energy many have expended on fighting RFRA would be better directed at expanding non-discrimination legislation to include sexual orientation and gender identity.


The second point is that although Indiana’s law goes further than the federal RFRA law in this respect, it would still not allow for widespread discrimination against homosexuals. If a restaurant banned gays from entering—and if sexual orientation were covered under civil rights protections—then the Supreme Court would easily find that the restaurant violated the Civil Rights Act. Preventing discrimination by private companies is a compelling government interest and there is no less restrictive way of preventing such discrimination than barring private companies from discriminating. Just as a religious objector is still required to pay taxes, given that there’s no way to collect tax revenue without actually taxing persons, so too would private businesses still be required to comply with non-discrimination protections. Religious liberty claims to discriminate have never survived judicial review under the strict scrutiny standard.

The purpose of the additional language is not to allow for widespread discrimination, but to protect the religious liberties of specific professionals who provide services to couples who are getting married—wedding photographers, florists, caterers, etc. This language was inspired by a case in New Mexico (among others), in which a wedding photographer was found in violation of the state’s Human Rights Act for refusing to photograph a same-sex wedding.

But there is an important distinction between a restaurant discriminating against a gay customer and a wedding photographer refusing to participate in a same-sex wedding. In the first case, the restaurant is refusing to serve a person because of their sexual orientation. In the second case, the photographer is refusing to participate in a ceremony that would violate her religious beliefs. As was noted in her petition to the court, the photographer had photographed numerous gay couples in the past, and did not discriminate based on sexual orientation. While the government has an obligation to prevent discrimination, it goes beyond its scope when compelling religious persons to attend ceremonies or other proceedings they find religiously objectionable. So while Indiana’s RFRA would not allow for discrimination of gay customers simply because they are gay, it would have allowed religious objectors to exempt themselves from participating in private ceremonies that violate their religious beliefs. (Its “fix” changed this. Private businesses may no longer exempt themselves from religious ceremonies they find objectionable.)

Toleration is easy when we support or are neutral about the belief or practice in question.

There are important limits on this kind of religious-freedom protection. It’s an open question whether someone who provides a product or service but does not participate in the wedding itself—like a baker—would be covered under this provision. I find it to be unlikely, and don’t think the protection should extend that far, but it’s an issue for us as a society to debate. Additionally, if the wedding photographer were the only professional photographer in town it would be reasonable for the state to compel her to lend her services to the wedding ceremony, given that the gay couple would otherwise be burdened by not having access to that service at all due to their sexual orientation. But the point I’d like to emphasize here is that this is a complex question between legitimate competing values, and any decision we reach as a society should hopefully take both into account. Toleration is easy when we support or are neutral about the belief or practice in question. It’s far more difficult—but even more necessary—when concerning something we ourselves find objectionable.

Why Individual Rights Extend to Corporations

The third and perhaps most controversial issue surrounding the Indiana religious freedom law is its explicit extension of these protections to corporate entities. Critics argue that corporations cannot have religious beliefs, and that by extending religious protections to corporations Indiana opened the door to legalized discrimination. But the points raised when discussing issue two apply in this case as well: Corporations, like individuals, cannot violate civil-rights protections by appealing to RFRA because non-discrimination requirements meet the two standards needed to override a religious objection. While the federal RFRA does not explicitly protect corporations, in last year’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case the Supreme Court decided that the federal law applies to “closely held” corporations, meaning the difference between the two laws on this point is not as much as many have made it out to be.

Most churches and religious charities legally take a corporate form, and it would be strange if religious liberty protections applied to members of a church but not to the church itself.

While treating corporations as if they have religious beliefs might seem strange, we rightly extend a number of individual rights to corporations. The First Amendment’s protections on speech do not only apply to individual journalists, but to the corporation of which they are apart—The New York Times as an institution is protected by the First Amendment as much as its members.

Most churches and religious charities legally take a corporate form, and it would be strange if religious liberty protections applied to members of a church but not to the church itself. When an exemption was made for Catholics under prohibition, the exemption was not extended to specific members of the Catholic Church, but to the Catholic Church as a corporate institution.

We recognize that corporations are forms of association, and persons do not lose their rights—religious or otherwise—when acting as an association, when united in a corporate body. Corporations can also be held legally accountable, just as individuals—a company as a corporate person can be sued for violating some law, or for infringing on the rights of particular individuals or other corporations. Although corporate personhood has been a controversial issue since Citizens United v. FEC, corporations have long been legally treated as persons. There is more that could be said on this point, but debating the merits of corporate personhood would require its own article. However, the basic point is that even though Indiana’s RFRA extends to corporations, it still does not allow for legalized discrimination against gay persons.

Be Generous In Argument

These are hard questions. I don’t want to treat my positions on this matter as final—there are strong arguments on the other side. I may also be mistaken in my analysis, moral reasoning and intuitions, or understanding of the law. But as fellow citizens we should avoid the tendency to paint these issues in the blackest of blacks and whitest of whites. We’re all working through these difficult questions together, and we should do so with compassion and goodwill. We should work to educate each other, and be open to hearing from others with whom we disagree—especially when we don’t understand how anyone could disagree.

The principle of charity demands that we consider the best the other side has to offer and assume they are operating in good faith.

Given how homosexual people have been historically treated, both in the United States and elsewhere, it is no wonder that gay-rights groups are especially attuned to any perceived infringement. And with rapidly changing views on gay marriage, the gay rights movement finally feels like it has the wind at its back. But those of us who support gay rights should be careful with our rhetoric and with the battles we choose. Not everyone we disagree with is homophobic, and not every law proposed by opponents of gay marriage will damage the cause of gay rights.


We should keep one last important thing in mind when engaging in broader debates about gay rights. You don’t change minds by labeling everyone who disagrees with you a bigot. Plenty of the opposition to gay marriage may be rooted in homophobia, but there are a great number of kind and generous people who—due to religious beliefs, cultural norms, or (yes) rational arguments—still maintain the traditional definition of marriage. Criticizing those who disagree with us as morally ignorant is easy, but a healthy public discourse requires that we treat them fairly. The principle of charity demands that we consider the best the other side has to offer and assume they are operating in good faith.

This should apply to all political debates, but particularly to those contentious moral questions—gay marriage, abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, and all the intersecting issues around race and gender. If we wish to change others’ minds, we have to be open to changing ourselves. Public discourse, like tolerance, is a two-way street.

abuse, culture, first amendment, freedom, homosexuality, ideology, justice, legislation, news media, opinion, political correctness, politics, public policy, reform, religion, tolerance


Students Opposed to LGBT Agenda Shamed in Classroom

February 09, 2015 by Todd Starnes

Teenagers at a California high school were publicly shamed for disagreeing with speakers allowed to push an LGBT agenda during an English class, according to several upset parents.

The Queer Straight Alliance at Acalanes High School, in Lafayette, lectured students in several ninth-grade English classes on Jan. 29 about LGBT issues, according to Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which is representing the parents.

During the class, the students, ages 14 and 15, were instructed to stand in a circle. Then, they were grilled about their personal beliefs and their parents’ beliefs on homosexuality, PJI alleges.

“The QSA had students step forward to demonstrate whether they believed that being gay was a choice and whether their parents would be accepting if they came out as gay,” PJI attorney Matthew McReynolds said. “Students who did not step forward were ridiculed and humiliated.”

PJI is a law firm that specializes in religious liberty cases. They are representing several families who had children in the freshman classes — some of whom also are angry because there was no parental notification of the LGBT lecture.


During the lecture, the Queer Student Alliance provided students with the names of the gay and lesbian teachers at the high school. They also had students line up to demonstrate where they fell on the “gender spectrum.”

“It was an exercise in gender fluidity,” the parent of one child told me. “They told the students that one day they could come to school feeling like a boy and the next day they could come to school feeling like a girl.”

Students were given a handout with LGBT terminology – including words like pan-sexual, demi-boy and gray gender.

Demi-boy/girl is defined as someone who only partially identifies as a man or woman. Gray gender defines someone who feels as though they sort of fit inside the gender binary, but that their gender is more hazy and undefined.

“Acalanes High School and the district have defied common sense, ignored the law and broken parents’ trust,” McReynolds said in a prepared statement. “These administrators are acting like schoolyard bullies. If they think intimidation is going to work on us or these parents, they are greatly mistaken.”

“It was a public outing,” one parent told me. “My child is being raised in a family with conservative values. We are a Christian family. What bothers me the most is the school is being dishonest and secretive about what’s happening. My son’s value system and our belief system is not being respected on a many levels.”

And from a very practical point – she wants to know why the Queer Student Alliance was allowed to take over an English class.

“There’s no other club at the high school that gets face time in front of freshman English classes for an entire period,” the parent said.

So why is Acalanes High School outing students who may not agree with every facet of the LGBT agenda?

Superintendent John Nickerson tells me it’s all about tolerance.

“The classroom instruction in question was part of a tolerance workshop led by peer educators under the supervision of teachers,” Nickerson wrote to me in an email.

That’s all well and good – but were the teenagers academically qualified to teach a class on issues like “gender fluidity”? Why weren’t the teachers teaching the class? And what about the allegations that students were bullied by the Queer Student Alliance?

“We are aware of the concerns and allegations raised by two parents and the Pacific Justice Institute,” he wrote. “We are investigating the situation, learning activities and classroom environment.”

This happens to be the same high school that invited a “pleasure activist” from Planned Parenthood to teach sex education to the freshman class. Students were encouraged to ask each other questions like “Is it okay if I take my pants off?”

The parent I spoke to bristled at the notion the LGBT class was about tolerance.

“They are tolerant of everyone except people who have Christian values,” she told me.

PJI sent a letter to the school district demanding an explanation of what happened. They believe the classroom lecture violated the privacy rights of the students.

“It should be self-evident that, as a fundamental privacy right, students cannot be ‘outed’ during class time by being made to declare their beliefs and feelings about sensitive sexual matters, any more than a student could be required to announce their sexual orientation,” PJI wrote in their letter to the school district.

Has it really come to this, America – forcing students to declare their allegiance to the LGBT agenda? Maybe they should just stick to teaching English in English class.

original article: Students Opposed to LGBT Agenda Shamed in Classroom

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abuse, bias, bigotry, bullies, censorship, children, diversity, education, free speech, government, hate speech, homosexuality, hypocrisy, ideology, indoctrination, intolerance, left wing, liberalism, opinion, oppression, pandering, philosophy, political correctness, relativism, sex


Can your school-aged child read?

December 4, 2014 by Kim Dallas

Many students are unable to comprehend the written word, and teachers can only do so much.

I teach high school English, and I am begging you to please read to your children. Read everything. Read baby books when they are babies. Read picture books when they are older. Ask your middle-schoolers to read street signs, billboards and marquees during every car ride. Ask your teenagers to read your water bills, junk mail, newspapers, magazines, recipes and catalog descriptions. Read everything like your life depends on it.

Why?  Because your children can’t read.

We are in the midst of one of the greatest literacy crises ever encountered, and we are fighting an uphill battle. Every day I experience firsthand what it means to be illiterate in a high school classroom. At best it means sleeping away a unit; at worst it means depression or aggression. Average students with average abilities can fervently text away, but they cannot read.

Recently, I gave a unit test where students could use all their notes and their short story on the test (not my standard practice). The results: abysmal. I didn’t think the test was too difficult until I started doing some investigating and made a shocking discovery. They couldn’t even read the test. Don’t think it’s your child? Ask your high school teenager to define the following: superior, ridicule, flippant or mundane. Now imagine your child taking the ACT or SAT. Now what?

I teach nearly 200 high school juniors each day. If we give them all the same book to read, they often do not read it. Ask them why, and they say: “It’s boring.” Translation? “It’s too hard.” They also may say they have no time. As educators, we can only do so much with the limited resources we have. I understand I have an obligation to teach in an exciting and rewarding way, but my tech-savvy students are beating me down, and I need your help.

What can you do?  Model reading in the home. Visit the library. Go to the bookstore. Share your reading experiences with them. Encourage them to read their assigned work. Offer your help with comprehension. If you struggle with reading, please share how you face this difficult challenge with success. They need your help. I need your help. To succeed in school, students must read on their own. Our future depends on it.

original article: Can your school-aged child read?

bias, children, corruption, culture, education, ideology, indoctrination, nanny state, opinion, reform, scandal, tragedy

Filed under: bias, children, corruption, culture, education, ideology, indoctrination, nanny state, opinion, reform, scandal, tragedy

America needs less statism

The Hillsdale Collegian recently published an opinion piece by Kate Patrick titled “Hillsdale needs a little more socialism.” Coming from Hillsdale College I found this title in the student newspaper quite curious and decided to read it. I found myself a bit shocked at the presumption reflected in the piece, given the sorts of things taken for granted in order to promote socialism, especially in relation to the philosophy at Hillsdale College. So I stayed up a bit late to comment on their website. Below is an updated version of those comments.

Quite an ironic piece, here. I’d like to address several points about John Strinka’s comments and about Kate Patrick’s framing of the issue. (Note: I am neither a Hillsdale student or alumnus. I don’t personally know anyone who attends or works at Hillsdale. I am merely a passerby. My knowledge of Hillsdale College is limited to some resources Hillsdale makes available to the general public.)

First, the opening Strinka comments in Patrick’s article lament how socialism tends to be misrepresented. The irony in this first quote is that the bulk of Mr. Strinka’s comments on capitalism are a gross misrepresentation of it. And this is no accident, Mr. Strinka’s pointedly anti-capitalist perspective is riddled with a rosy colored picture of socialism and government.

According to Patrick, Strinka says “Capitalism [teaches] that humans are commodities to be bought and sold.” If that’s his opinion, I’d like to offer a similar swipe at socialism for comparison. If I stated “socialism teaches that people are cogs in a social machine, and not really people but merely demographics”, I imagine Mr. Strinka and many socialists would object to such description. But policies promoted by socialists and their lauded remedies to society’s ails often seem like this is precisely what big government statists (socialists) believe. If Mr. Strinka insists his complaint about capitalism is accurate, I likewise insist my description of socialism is accurate.

Another Strinka quote: “At this point in American history, corporations can buy government policy.” That’s nothing new, and it was praised as a grand thing when the railroad began asking for government intervention to curtail competition from the trucking industry, and it is lauded today when corporate interests harm the competition under the guise of helping people. Under the pretense of fairness and protecting people, government has gladly embraced corporate entanglements – because these types of entanglements allow government to grab more power.

So what’s the problem with that? I believe P. J. O’Rourke said it best: “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.” And he’s exactly right. Government regulation of industry invites, nay, begs for industry to attempt to leverage such intervention to its favor. The very thing government regulation of industry is supposedly meant to cure ends up exacerbated by it instead. The Law of Unintended Consequences often raises its ugly head with the implementation of well intended policies trying to manipulate society.

Another comment from Strinka: “Democracy has been eaten up by corporate interests.” While I’ve admitted corporate interests have infected the political process (in no small part a self-inflicted problem by government itself) I notice Patrick includes nothing in her article from Strinka or anyone else about how political interests have infected business, education, health care, the environment, national security, national defense, the IRS, the interpretation of the Constitution, and on and on. Democracy has also been eaten up by political interests.

Another comment from Strinka: “We see a free-market system that has failed to distribute the goods”. The sad fact is, no one knows such a thing. There are very few people alive today who have ever seen capitalism or a free-market system at work. For generations Americans have seen only a hybrid of socialism and a free-market, with the pendulum swinging toward the former at an accelerating pace. As it stands, socialists and other Marxians conveniently blame all of society’s ails on anything other than government intervention.

After Patrick lends plentiful space to air Strinka’s misrepresentation of capitalism, she continues with some curious comments of her own.

I was expecting to find the term “crony capitalism” in this article, and I was not disappointed. The definition of crony capitalism Patrick offers is, to no surprise, one from a rather socialistic perspective. You’ll notice in her article that crony capitalism is presented as only a capitalism problem. It is not. Crony capitalism is a capitalism AND a government problem. It can’t happen without both sides of the coin. The term is designed to misrepresent the problem in the first place. A more accurate label would be crony government. Simply calling it cronyism should suffice but it is more expedient to Marxians of all stripes to indoctrinate us all into thinking cronyism is exclusively a result of capitalism.

And there is further socialistic bias in the term crony capitalism. There is an implied assumption that without corporate interests, Democracy (in this context meaning government) would have no corruption, or at least wouldn’t have nearly as much. I find this rather hard to believe because behind this implication an even more fundamental yet flawed belief: money is evil and government is good.

Let me propose an idea. Actually, it’s not my idea, it’s a very well known axiom:

Money is Power

Effectively, at the end of the day, this is true. But the reverse is also true: Power is Money. And we all know what is said of power, and absolute power. Why is it then that Marxians see corruption in money but not in power? In the name of ridding the world of corruption, socialists see a problem with concentrated wealth and see concentrated power as the solution.

In this article we predictably see morality ascribed to wealth. But money and wealth have no morality – they are merely ideas and tools. Just as government has no morality, it is also an idea, but it tends to have more muscle behind it which is physically real. The only morality associated with wealth or power is that which people bring with them.

But where do Marxians typically focus their concern about corruption? At capitalism, not at government. Notice one of Patrick’s own comments: “Without proper regulation, the rich and powerful do what they want, according to Strinka.” Who is getting the blame for corruption in that statement? I submit this statement is not intended to make the reader think of government, but only of capitalism; to make people suspicious of freedom.

Another of Patrick’s own comments: “After all, it was improperly regulated capitalism that got us into the ugly state we’re in now.” Do we really know that or do we find the conviction of a love of big government here? How do we know it wasn’t government intervention itself that got us into the ugly state we’re in now? Among those not blinded by a love of government, there is plenty of evidence to suggest it was in fact government intervention that caused many problems we’re experiencing today.

Faithful statists have been lead to believe such allegations against government have been proven false, even though they haven’t. But there is such profound support for big government in politics and in the news media that repeating this lie has done its job.

Patrick does offer a token admission that socialism has its flaws. Unfortunately in today’s political discourse, those who express concern for government corruption are often dismissed or marginalized as anti-government right wing extremists. The fact that government corruption is also a vast plague on society hardly appears to be a second thought among socialists. Government incompetence makes the situation even worse, but that is a discussion for another day.

And why do Marxians defend an ever increasing government goliath? Because they trust and prefer government. That is not capitalist propaganda, that is an overt sentiment proudly embraced by socialists who believe government is benevolent. One of the greatest concerns I have about intermingling compassion and government is that the socialist love of government almost always wins out over anything else. Given the choice between (1) helping people but doing so unequally vs (2) harming people but increasing some abstract fairness quotient, lovers of government (Keynesians, Marxists, Socialists, Communists, Fascists, etc.) would choose the latter. And yet we are supposed to think liberals of all stripes are compassionate people (who happen to define “sharing” as confiscation of wealth under threat of imprisonment and “helping” people as regulating away their freedom).

Socialists lament that capitalism intermingling with government leads to corruption, but the solution to this corruption is power. Concentrated wealth can be a bad thing but is concentrated power really the solution? Socialists, Marxists, Communists, and others who believe life can be made fair if only there are enough laws also tend to believe government knows best and that people need to be forced to do the “right thing”. The essence of government is the use of force so those who value freedom and civil liberties ought to be cautious (not eager) about the use of government power.

Seeking government intervention first is anti-American. Trusting government more than liberty looks like freedom-hating. Trusting government to regulate itself but mocking the idea of a self-regulating free-market looks like the attempt to destroy everything America stands for. Pretending the free-market means only corporations (in order to justify government taking more control) and ignoring the other half of the “free-market” equation (the people and their freedom to choose) is a severely misguided view and not one that leads to a better society.

This differing view between a statist, big government mentality and a limited government, big liberty mentality has divided Americans to a point of tremendous hostility. But it is not the pro-free-market voice that is causing this. The “small capitalism, caps on business size, widespread ownership of private property, and farm-centered communities” voice is by far the predominant one in the nation, if not (thankfully) at Hillsdale College. The pro-freedom voice is largely squelched all across the American plain. Hillsdale College is fighting an uphill battle. If the pro-freedom mentality at Hillsdale is a “bubble” it is not because Hillsdale insulates itself from views differing from those it prefers, it is because they are an air pocket trying to elevate a country sinking into a sea of statism. The big-government view lives in a bubble protecting itself from outside criticism. It can be found almost anywhere, save a few bastions of freedom such as Hillsdale College.

One last point. Capitalists and lovers of freedom would like to see a “divorce [between] big business and politics” just as socialists would. But capitalists do not seek the use of government policy to achieve it, or if they do it is only where absolutely necessary for government to get involved. Sound-minded capitalists (which are the vast majority of capitalists) are rightly concerned about corruption of government and business.

I would also like to see a divorce between compassion and government, as this is the single largest category of spending in the American government. If corporate money corrupts politics I humbly suggest political control of the social safety net is just as corrupting of American society if not more so. Strinka is not “reacting to capitalism gone wrong in American society”. He is reacting to a leftist, statist, government-knows-best distortion of capitalism. I would like to know Strinka’s opinion of real capitalism, but I doubt he’s ever actually seen it (none of us have).

I used to be an advocate of the laissez-faire free-market approach. I no longer adhere to a libertarian view of the market place. I now support a more conservative approach to the free-market, one which requires input from a sphere outside both economics and government. Neither a self-regulating market nor a state-regulated market will achieve the results any compassionate person ultimately desires. That requires a moral component not really found in either of these approaches. Dr. Ralph Ancil of the Roepke Institute makes a good argument for where to find the best solutions to society’s problems.

bias, bureaucracy, corruption, cronyism, culture, economics, education, elitism, freedom, government, ideology, nanny state, opinion, oppression, pandering, philosophy, politics, public policy, socialism, unintended consequences


In failing to stop the Islamic State, U.S. ignores the lessons of Auschwitz

August 18, 2014 by Marc A. Thiessen

The worst part is that all of this could have been prevented. Just a few years ago, the Islamic State (then al-Qaeda in Iraq) was a spent force, defeated both militarily and ideologically thanks to the 2007 U.S. surge, and the Sunni masses who rose up to join the United States in driving them out. Then President Obama’s complete withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2011 took the boot off of the terrorists’ necks. And, as Hillary Clinton recently pointed out, Obama’s “failure” to act in Syria “left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.”

Now, after standing by and allowing the Islamic State to established control in an area the size of Belgium, Obama has finally launched limited strikes — but only to prevent the Islamic State from overrunning U.S. diplomatic facilities in northern Iraq (for fear of another Benghazi), massacring Yazidis and controlling the Mosul Dam. Obama insists that “there’s no American military solution” to the rise of the Islamic State and that “it’s time to turn the page on more than a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Obama may be tired of war, as were Hitler’s enemies. But the Islamic State is not tired of war. It has been explicit about its intentions. The lessons of history are clear.

The free world ignores such barbarity at its peril.

full article: In failing to stop the Islamic State, U.S. ignores the lessons of Auschwitz

anti-war, crisis, diplomacy, extremism, foreign affairs, government, hate crime, hypocrisy, ideology, islam, military, opinion, philosophy, political correctness, politics, president, public policy, terrorism, war


We must like oppression

Most people agree that money effectively is power. This doesn’t necessarily mean power over others; it could just as easily mean self empowerment – freedom. By this reasoning we can say wealth is freedom, and few would disagree with this premise.

This idea that wealth is freedom is one reason behind the progressive Occupy movement. In the leftwing mindset wealth is not created, it merely exists. And there is a vast but limited quantity of wealth in the world. In this mindset only so much wealth can be distributed, so it should be distributed as equitably as possible. After all, wealth is freedom, and fairness demands we all be equally free.

In the progressive mindset a concentration of wealth in the hands of only a few is tantamount to oppression of the rest of us. The prime imperative of fairness requires this inequitable distribution of wealth to be rectified. So far, this philosophy is at least consistent, making sense with itself even if not with reality. But this is where the philosophy begins to turn on itself. What a leftwing mindset neglects is that if money is power, power is also power.

The power to control other people is not liberty. It may be a “freedom” of the powerful to control others, but to be controlled is not “freedom” except the freedom from the burden of making one’s own decisions. Most of us would acknowledge that, in order for liberty to exist, there must be limits on our individual freedom so that we do not infringe upon the liberty of others. That means government is necessary for liberty to exist.

No one is “anti-government”. Not even anarchists. Anarchists, for what ever reasons, seem to be easily swayed from a supposedly total non-government ideal to a total government ideal. This devotion to absolute freedom is no devotion at all, but merely an excuse for some other agenda, often one they are not even aware of because anarchists seldom bother to think through that far. Even in a world of no government, laws evolve. Clans or gangs form, and a pecking order results. If there is a leader, there is someone telling others what to do. That is not anarchy. True anarchy does not exist among the human species for very long – if at all.

Limited government is not anarchy either, and no one supporting limited government is calling for the dismissal of government. In fact, those favoring limited government do so because they believe too much government results in tyranny. And they’re right. Just as there is such a thing as too little government, so there is such a thing as too much government. That means in order for liberty to exist, there must be limits on what government can do.

But the language used in modern politics doesn’t match the real life situation. Limited government advocates are called names like anti-government. One cannot support limited government (which, by definition, is supporting the existence of government) and be anti-government at the same time. Those making the accusation of “anti-government” pretend to support liberty. This is a remarkable contradiction. Accusing someone else of being anti-government so as to support more government, in the name of freedom.

Power is power. And as the saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And how does government accomplish any of the things it does? By exercising power over others. Government is the practice of telling other people what they can and can’t do. When government passes a regulation or law telling you what you can or can’t do, that is a choice taken away from you. Sometimes this is necessary, other times we are told it is necessary when it is really not. Diminishing your choices can be considered diminishing your freedom. That can be necessary when your decisions affect others, but even then laws should require a high standard of justification. Today it seems a majority of our fellow citizens gladly and quietly comply with anything government wishes to do.

In order to do its work, government must also be funded. How does government fund itself? By taxation. What is taxation? Taxation is the confiscation of wealth.

Now, as mentioned before, wealth is freedom. Does this mean taxation is the confiscation of freedom? Yes it does. Money you earned that was taken from you is wealth you no longer have. Confiscating money is also confiscating opportunity. Those advocating more government and higher taxes “on the rich” have no idea they are promoting greater confiscation of freedom from us all. If raising taxes or cutting taxes for “the rich” applied only to “the rich” we might be able to make a different argument. But “the rich” is a political ploy that easily shuts down most people’s capacity to think for themselves, as it is designed to do. The term “the rich” can garner instant emotional support for anything hiding behind the propaganda, without question.

Those advocating higher taxes or more regulation typically suggest that without such government intervention businesses would cause tremendous harm because they are greedy and corrupt. Because government doesn’t have a reputation for being greedy or corrupt, and it never causes any harm, right? We are to believe government does only good things when trying to act on our behalf.

You may like the idea of an Obamaphone provided to other people free by the government, but you may not like actually having one. If you’ve seen one of these free government phones you realize it’s crap. If you spent your own money on a phone you probably would never purchase one like the Obamaphone. You would want something better. The idea that the government is helping us by giving us crap is backwards. We have no idea of the opportunity cost involved in providing poor people with a free sub par phone.

If you’ve ever seen government housing you would probably have the same reaction as you would to the Obamaphone. At first you may feel like a good person for supporting giving housing to the poor, but you would be unlikely to ever purchase similar housing for yourself with your own money. Government programs offer typically sub par services and products to the people.

But in the name of fairness American society sprints leftward toward a progressive utopia, with ever increasing taxes so government can provide us with more sub par crap. Those relying on food assistance, government housing, social security, government education, etc., the many social assistance programs, know very well how trapped people can become by being so dependent on government crap. And we want more sub par handouts, the latest being health care.

We are paying, by force of law, for inadequate government hand outs and some how we consider this a great thing. The idea of allowing people to keep their own wealth is considered dangerous in our society, which contradicts our attitude of letting government have ever increasing power. If concentrated wealth in the hands of a few is a bad thing, why is concentrating both wealth and power in the hands of government such a good thing? We have to get government approval to do so many things in life. We don’t even know how many taxes we pay. Even the IRS can’t keep up with all the tax rules and regulations Congress has passed into law.

The United States government is so massive, and confiscates so much wealth in the form of taxes (not just income taxes) we have no clue how much liberty has been taken away from us (just in the form of money, not to mention in regulations). Liberty, not hand outs, is what makes it possible for people to raise themselves out of poverty. We need not presume poverty is a life long affliction. So one might wonder if liberty or prosperity are really the goal here; perhaps fairness trumps these things, in which case liberty and prosperity are forfeited so society can be made more economically equal.

Progressives tell us they support freedom. And they do, as long as we’re talking about pleasure. The political left seems to favor almost moral anarchy concerning anything related to having fun. But they also want every other aspect of life regulated. While screaming for the freedom to have sex with who ever you want or to put what ever substances you want into your body, on the other hand they want government to regulate or tax your right to make a living, to protect yourself, to travel, to practice religion, what health care you’re entitled to, what food or drink you can consume, and more. We’re even seeing increased regulation of what we are allowed to think and speak. And all this under the guise of fairness.

I don’t call this trend fairness. I call it oppression. For generations now conservatives have been ridiculed as a people who want to control other people’s lives. And there is some truth to that, since one application of a “conservative” mindset holds that regulating oneself is the best form of regulation – if we would bother to do it. But today it is progressives who devote themselves to controlling people. While calling for freedom they are the very champions of oppression, through the mighty hand of government. Progressives call paying taxes an act of patriotism, when in fact it is the confiscation of freedom. They call wanting less regulation of life dangerous and greedy. Somehow how wanting to keep more of your own money is greed, but wanting to take more of your money from you is not greed. Punishing the rich while exempting our rich government and rich politicians and treating them as heros does not match the supposed desire for fairness. Treating success as evil and something that needs to be changed is not a desire for freedom. And what is the recommended agent of change? It is government intervention, which inevitably decreases freedom. Apparently, our society likes oppression, because we demand more of it every day. But let us not call it oppression. It sounds much better if we call it fairness or equality or even social justice.

Get your “Concentrated Power” swag here – wear and share uncommon sense. This message states the following:

Money, effectively, is power. If concentrating wealth in the hands of a few is such a bad thing why is concentrating power in the hands of even fewer such a good thing?

Mugs, stickers, shirts, stationary, and more. Help spread some sense back into the world.

Filed under: bailout, culture, economy, elitism, entitlements, freedom, funding, government, greed, hypocrisy, ideology, left wing, opinion, philosophy, public policy, regulation, socialism, unintended consequences

Has anyone at Time Magazine ever read the U.S. Constitution? Ever?

June 28, 2011 by Aaron Worthing




The Constitution does not limit the Federal Government.
The Constitution is not law.
The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment emancipated the slaves.
That the original, unamended Constitution prohibited women from voting.
We have only declared war five times.
Alexander Hamilton wanted a king for America.
Naturalization depends on your birth.
The Obamacare mandate is a tax.
When I am done with this post, I am going to make a bleg where I ask you to try to help get out the word about this egregiously incorrect cover story. So stay tuned to the end (or jump ahead if you feel like it).

But first here, point-by-point, is proof that each one of those statements are errors.

read the full article here

10th Amendment, bias, constitution, corruption, documents, false, first amendment, fraud, health care, ideology, indoctrination, left wing, liberalism, lies, news media, opinion, pandering, political correctness, propaganda, relativism, scandal




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