The ignorance of today’s Americans, about the way their country’s government was designed (By The Founders) to work, is not only lamentable — it is dangerous

If you are one of those Americans decrying partisanship in the US Congress and you are educated enough to read this article, then there is NO EXCUSE for your ignorance.

Yes, I understand the Public School System in America rarely teaches American History and in many cases they don’t even teach European or World History and they certainly do not teach “Civics” anymore. (Pause) OK, for those of you younger folk who have NO IDEA what “CIVICS” is — the simplest explanation is this: Civics is the study of the rights and duties of citizenship. In other words, it is the study of government with attention to the role of citizens in the operation and oversight of government.

Back in the day, we actually studied Civics in High School. THAT is where I first got the idea in my head that I actually had a say in the way the US Government is run. It is a right I have exercised over and over ever since. I fear it is a right a large portion of the US population doesn’t even realize they have – because they were never taught CIVICS and never studied American History or European History and/or World History. You see, the combination of these three studies is dangerous to the ruling elite in America.

Those of us, who HAVE studied the history of this country and HAVE studied the Constitution and the government of the US –and our role in it — are extremely dangerous people. We KNOW when our leaders are snookering us, as they are today, for instance.

I have come to believe there is now, and there has been for some time, a deliberate effort to keep you and the generations that follow completely ignorant as to your constitutional rights — and even more important, how your government was designed, by the Founders of this country, to work.

Today we hear calls for “bipartisanship” from the Socialists/Progressives in Congress. They KNOW the Congress is SUPPOSED to be PARTISAN! That’s why there is more than one political party. Since the days of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson there has been partisanship in the government of the US.

Let us establish, right up front, that the Founders intended the government to be partisan. They intended to make the process of law-making a slow and tedious process. The idea was to insure that laws were not passed in “the heat of the moment” or, as we like to say today, as a “knee-jerk reaction.”

If there was no partisanship in Congress laws would be flying through the hoppers of both houses and onto the law books, willy-nilly, and we would very quickly become a dictatorship of some kind. That would indicate that there was NO OPPOSITION to the ruling party. The representative republic, that is America, would cease to exist almost immediately. The ruling party would simply take over the government and run it as they saw fit and if you disagreed you would have no say, whatsoever, in the matter. I must say, our current government bears a great deal of resemblance to a dictatorship today.

Take a good look at the ruling party in America today… the “Marxists.” Oh, they prefer you call them “Progressives.” But be aware of this: the title “Progressive” has been used for decades in America as code for Marxist or Communist.

Now observe the manner in which the Obama Regime rules America. As Obama could not dissolve the Congress, as he gives every indication he would LIKE to do, he created a cadre of “Czars” to do his biding. These Czars did not have to be vetted by the Congress and there is no advice and consent from the US Senate sought.

The Czars exist only to do Obama’s bidding and they answer ONLY to him. I suspect as soon as someone challenges Obama’s “politburo of Czars” in the courts, they will be found to be unconstitutional and he will be ordered to disband them. That does not mean, however that they will not continue to serve Obama informally.

IF the AMERICAN people were up on their constitution and IF they had any knowledge of how their government is SUPPOSED to operate under that constitution, they would be demanding that Obama do away with his Czars — or be impeached for abuse of power, abuse of the office of President, and abuse of the American people.

But there is no hue and cry. Why? Ignorance. How is that possible? It is possible because the Public School System is run by the labor unions which are closely allied with Obama’s political party and his Marxist philosophy and they have turned the Public School System’s classrooms into Leftist Indoctrination Centers for America’s young.

Our kids are being indoctrinated in the same Progressive/Marxist philosophy favored by Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, et al. THAT is way they are ignorant of the constitution and the constitutional way our government is supposed to work — and that is why they do not understand partisanship in the Congress.

Boiled down — the American electorate is split between conservatives and progressives/Marxists. We both have strongly held beliefs and every individual has certain core beliefs that dictate how he/she sees the world around them. It is totally ludicrous to insist that we stop arguing. To do that, one side, or the other, would have to completely dominate the other. If and when that happens, democracy is dead.
Let’s face it. As long as Congress is busy fussing and arguing with itself, the people are somewhat safe. Actually, the only time I feel safe these days is when Congress is in recess.

Remember, when you hear someone arguing bipartisanship in Congress, what they are actually saying is they want the opposing side silenced so only their argument is heard. As I said, that spells the doom of democracy. In America partisanship is a GOOD THING. Bipartisanship is just plain dangerous to freedom.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at:

http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

longstreet1862@gmail.com

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WesternFront America

My father used to say that there was no defense against stupidity. He was a very smart man. When he entered kindergarten in the early 1900’s, he spoke his parent’s native language of Italian. The teacher seated him beside a boy who spoke both English and Italian, and he learned English. Nobody gave it any more thought than that.

Dad passed through the K-12 grades in Newark, N.J., and then worked his way through New York University to gain a degree in accounting. Then he studied some more and was among the youngest men to become a Certified Public Accountant. All that study and hard work helped him survive the Great Depression. It is a classic American story.

In his time, American education was as basic as it comes. You learned the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic..

You were taught, not just history, but something called civics, lessons about the way the nation was governed and why our republic was a leading example of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

In a report by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, released in November of last year, more than twice as many people (56%) who took the test knew that Paula Abdul was one of the “American Idol” judges than where those famous words came from. Only 26% identified Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as the source.

Of the 2,500 Americans who took the test that included college students, elected officials and other randomly selected citizens, nearly 1,800 flunked the 33-question test on basic civics. The elected officials scored slightly lower than the public with an average score of 44% compared with 49%; less than half.

There are two great threats facing America today. One is the vast ignorance of our history and of the way we govern ourselves, and the other is the growing numbers of functionally illiterate Americans.

For that we must put the blame squarely at the foot of our debased educational system and for that we must understand the threat is the result of the deliberately dumbing down of the system by the teacher’s unions. I do not blame teachers, some of the most under-appreciated people in our society. They are the victims of an educational system whose demise began in earnest in the 1960s.

Recently, in October, the New Jersey Education Association had an advertisement that celebrated a “character education program”, taking note of a school that received “the prestigious School of Character designation from the Character Education Partnership.”

“The advertisement went on to note that “those values include the affirmation of human dignity, the welfare of the individuals, and the desire to serve the common good. Character education strives to promote basic human values that transcend religious or cultural differences.” In other words, a totally secular approach that, for schools in America today excludes beginning the day with a prayer, bans the singing of Christmas carols, and deemphasizes individual achievement.

“It is not intended to usurp the role of families in teaching values,” the advertisement said, but that’s exactly its purpose, going on to note that “Standardized tests cannot measure character, so it does not always get the attention it should.” What is not getting attention is the ability to read and write English well, American history, civics, and other subjects the schools are failing to teach.

As commentator, Greg Lewis, recently noted, Arne Duncan, President Obama’s choice for Secretary of Education, led the Chicago schools as Superintendent, but only 17% of Chicago’s eighth grade students are reading at or above their grade level. “It is almost impossible not to teach a child how to read,” said Lewis who pointed out that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, illiteracy was barely 1%. Today it is 20% or higher.

The single worst piece of legislation to come out of the last administration was “No Child Left Behind” that requires a teach-to-the-test, one-size-fits-all approach to education, coast to coast. The rise in the tutoring industry outside of our schools is testament to the failure of NCLB. Far too many high school graduates arrive in colleges today requiring “remedial” courses in the most fundamental lessons that our schools are failing to teach.

In a recent edition of School Reform News, published by The Heartland Institute, it was noted that one third of all students entering college today must take remedial courses in those subjects that, in former times, they would have mastered by graduation from high school. We are literally cheating generations of young Americans of their birthright with the present education system.

It’s not as if today’s parents of school-age children don’t know there’s a very real problem. The results of an Associated Press survey, released in June 2008, revealed that “The views of the general population echo concerns from business and college leaders, who say they have to spend a lot of time and money on remedial education for people who completed high school but don’t have the skills to succeed at work or in higher education.”

“Overall, the majority of those surveyed said the quality of U.S. schools has declined over the past 20 years.”

“The vast majority think classroom work and homework—not standardized tests—are the best ways to measure how well students are doing.”

Americans who have passed through our schools for nearly fifty years know what the problem is. Meanwhile, in Congress, every manner of legislation is under consideration to deepen and worsen the problem. Many attempt to reach into the pre-school years of childhood development to seize control of the very youngest children.

One called “No Child Left Inside Act” (HR 3036) would inject all manner of environmental propaganda into the curriculum, further eroding the time today’s children have for the fundamentals, and scaring the hell out of them with more apocalyptic nonsense about global warming, It is the work of Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD).The Greens have invented “a nature-deficit disorder” to hide the fact that intend to continue indoctrinating children with the dubious science they use to advance their agendas.

This debasement of education produces a population unable to understand the forces at work in order to make them compliant and complacent voters who will accept more and more laws that undermine the Constitution and enslave them with the belief that the State knows best.

This is why so many people continue to believe that the Earth is warming despite ample evidence that it is cooling. Similarly indoctrinated, these people oppose all forms of energy production except those—wind and solar—least capable of providing the billions of megawatts the nation needs.

“We have met the enemy and he is us,” said the cartoon character, Pogo. The enemy is the National Education Association, a union that has complete control of the Department of Education and at the state level too. There’s still time to turn this around, but we are running out of it.

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.
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WesternFront America