CNN's Reuben Navarette: American Flag wearers were "Disobedient Brats".

Reuben Navarette's article was in regards to the Live Oak High School incident where five students who wore American flag inspired clothing were ordered to reverse their t-shirts or be sent home for the day. The boys refused, recognizing that their clothing is an expression of political speech and therefore protected under the First Amendment.

The main point of Reuben's argument is that wearing the American flag at an American high school on May 5th is disruptive behavior. Cinco de Mayo is not even a US holiday, for crying out loud. How is wearing US national colors on any day of the year in school "disruptive"?  These boys were making a political point. "Celebrate your Mexican national roots but don't forget that you are Americans." Or should be, who knows today with so many illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America in our nation? 

He then cited three cases that came before the U.S. Supreme Court that upholds the right of school administration to restrict speech. However, his citations of case law is disingenuous and I'm disappointed.

In Bethel School District v Fraser (1986), the court upheld that schools have the right to uphold community standards and were right to stop a speech that was filled with sexual innuendo. This was not a political speech issue and therefore not protected to the same standard. 

Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier (1988) documents a case where Hazelwood School District was determined to be innocent of violating student's First Amendment rights when an article about teenage pregnancy and use/non-use of birth control was edited from a high school paper, again because the subject matter was deemed inappropriate for the younger class members of the school. Not a political expression issue, and therefore not protected to the same standard.

Morse v Frederick (2007) was a school speech case in which the Supreme Court that First Amendment does not prevent educators from suppressing student speech, even at school supervised events, that can be reasonably viewed to promote illegal drug abuse.

Hey Reuben, how about citing some case law that actually deals with freedom of expression of POLITICAL views? Your argument is pathetic and I, a non lawyer, was able to rip it to shreds in fifteen minutes of Google searches.

To sum up, these boys were expressing their POLITICAL views by wearing those shirts on May 5th and as long as the display of the national colors is in good taste the wearing of such colors should never be deemed disruptive.

MacroEconomic Theory Rap

This is priceless.


Simply proof that anybody that is arrogant enough to think that we can design, much less control something as complex as macroeconomics shouldn't be working for the American people. The best we can do is bump the highs and try to shorten the duration or magnitude of the lows.

Adulation of the MAN vs. the INSTITUTION (Follow up to previous posting)

The American system of government is greater than any one man or even group of men. This why adulation for the MAN instead of the INSTITUTION is so scary to me and many who share my point of view.

Barack Obama's accomplishment of becoming the first American President "of color", especially considering our checkered history with the institution of slavery, specifically the slavery of Africans is momentous. But the accomplishment of Barack Obama pales when viewed in light of the greater context that our system permits any person regardless of creed, race, sex to achieve the highest levels of success and authority.

But are these children being taught to praise that system? I doubt it. I suspect that Dr. Denise King, the principal of the school where this song was recorded, would probably say that the American system is full of inequalities and injustices and that minorities are repressed. She is probably teaching children that capitalism is "evil" and "uncaring". She probably dwells on the mistakes of our nation's past, such as the nearly successful genocide of the Native American or the institution of African slavery.

I suspect she does NOT teach much about the indentured servitude (economic slavery) of Irish, Scots, Germans, Poles and Italians in the 1800's or the Chinese and other Asians in the late 1800's and early 1900's. I also bet she doesn't talk much about the current genocide taking place in both eastern and southern Africa, where Africans are enslaving or destroying whole other tribes of Africans solely on basis of clan affiliation. Or how about the sexual enslavement or mutilation of African women by African men? Hmmm? Or how about the current repression by China of Tibet and it's eastern Muslim population, or the destruction of millions of lives in Myanmar (formerly Burma)?

Then there's India with it's caste system. Does she spend much time talking about the purely social discrimination of the Bhangis ("untouchables") by the Brahmins, even though those people are genetically the same family? Or the "honor killings" practiced in much of the Islamic world? Or the outright racist attitudes of most Asians? To this day, Japanese print media depicts Africans with big lips and low foreheads and the book "Little Black Sambo" is a popular children's picture book. In fact, there is no redress for "hate crimes" in Japan because there is NO JAPANESE LAW protecting civil rights.

The American system of government and the society it has created is far from perfect. And by definition, a capitalistic economic system means that people will fail although that does not mean that those people are failures. People become failures only when they prove unable to overcome adversity. But in our society, which is now dominated by an arguably corrupt and non-representing representative system, the charged are still presumed innocent until proven guilty and people like Bernard Madoff or the CEOs of corrupt companies like TYCO, Enron or MCI Worldcom go to jail for destroying the financial future of others. While perfection eludes us what other nation on Earth presents as much opportunity as the United States? Even in decline with possibly our best days now behind us are still one of the freest, safest places on Earth to live.

So when I see children pouring out their adulation for only a MAN instead of the INSTITUTION, in my opinion I am justifiably concerned. If this is an innocent act then it's wrong. If it's purposeful then it can only be called one thing: INDOCTRINATION.

Showing Respect to the Office of President is Worshipping His Name.

There is a video on You Tube titled “(No background music} School kids taught to praise Obama.” The tape shows a class of students, about thirty or so, singing this little catchy ditty. According to the notes with the video, it was filed at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, NJ and uploaded on June 19, 2009.

Here are the lyrics to that song:
Mm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that all must lend a hand
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said we must be fair today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

He said red, yellow, black or white
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama

Yes!
Mmm, mmm, mm
Barack Hussein Obama

I have stated before on my blog and elsewhere that any person that is elected to the Presidency of the United States is worthy of respect, even if you are opposed to many of the policies or political views of that person. In my own case, I won’t ever represent President Obama as a monkey or a witch-doctor, as some of the 9/12 protesters did. I do not use inflammatory names when referring to Mr. Obama. But I have no problem with disagreeing with him on any policy he presents that grows government or limits personal freedom. Further, I have no problemexpressing those views on my blog and in personal conversations.

Prior to the 1970s, it was not uncommon at all for photographic portraits of the current U.S. President to hang in classrooms all across America. But during my public school education journey from 1966 to 1979 I do not ever remember singing a song about the man that held that office. We had our ditties about George Washington and Abe Lincoln back when those President’s birthdays were actually celebrated on the anniversary of their births. But a living currently serving President? Nope.

I find the lyrics in this song to be bordering on cult of personality worship:
“He said red, yellow, black or white All are equal in his sight.” This is almost demigod worship in its tone, much like the song “Jesus loves the little children”. This is a message to children that President Obama loves you no matter who or what you are. It is nearly cultlike. It is not the job of the President of the United States to love us. It is his job to protect us from all enemies foreign and domestic and to ever support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

“He said that we must take a stand To make sure everyone gets a chance.”
Who can argue with this sentiment? The problem here is that our children are being taught that there is blatant inequality in our culture, which I concede there is still some. However, the reality is that not everybody makes the most of the opportunities that life and our culture provides them. If opportunity for "minorities" was truly as bad as the progressives would have you believe, then why do Haitians fleeing abject poverty in their own country bypass Cuba, the Turks and Caicos, Jamaica and the Bahaamas, which are all far closer in order to emigrate to the United States? Why do hundreds of thousands of Mexicans flee to the U.S. in the face of the chance of capture, punishment or deportment? Opportunity! That's why!

But instead, for the sake of creating "nurturing" environments where our children are not subject to the "threat" of failure we are instead creating a whole generation of kids who do not know how to learn from their mistakes and overcome adversity using innovation, dedication and persistence. This school environment is emulated nowhere in the real world of employment. If you fail and give up, or repeatedly make the same mistakes you will be written up, demoted or terminated. But I digress...

I have no problem in teachers encouraging an attitude of respect for our President, but I am vehemently opposed to teaching our kids politics unless you will teach them by presenting both viewpoints equally or worse, adulation for a man who has yet to prove if he deserves the respect of the office that the People of the United States have already entrusted to him.

What's Wrong with our Arizona Schools?

The Goldwater Institute, a prestigious political think-tank organization centered in Arizona conducted an interesting test. They culled 10 questions from the 100 question citizenship test (USCIS) that all immigrants must take and pass with at least a 60% in order to qualify for U.S. citizenship. According to the Institue, the average immigrant passes this test with a 92.4% score. That means they only miss, on average, 8 of the 100 questions on the test.

Through a private research firm, they then administered this test to three groups of high-school age students in Arizona by telephone. They had 1,134 participants. The questions were not multiple choice. The participant had to provide the correct answer from memory.

Here are the questions:
1) What is the supreme law of the land?
2) What do we call the first ten amendment to the (U.S) Constitution?
3) What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
4) How many Justices are on the (U.S.) Supreme Court?
5) Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
6) What ocean is on the East Coast of the United States? <== I'm not convinced this is a civics question.
7) What are the two major political parties in the United States?
8) We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years?
9) Who was the first (U.S.) President?
10) Who is in charge of the executive branch?

I blew question 8. I got the other 9 correct. But Arizona high-school students. Not one student answered correctly more than 7 of 10. Here's how Arizona students did:
Question 1: Only 30% could answer this question correctly.
Question 2: Only 25% could answer this question correctly.
Question 3: 23% got this one right.
Question 4: 9% knew this answer. You've gotta be kidding me!
Question 5: Just over 25% knew the correct answer to this one. Again, you've gotta be kidding me!
Question 6: Surprisingly, over 40% of the students interviewed still got this one wrong.
Question 7: Slightly less than half of the students could not identify the two major political parties in the United States.
Question 8: I fall into the 85% who got this one wrong.
Question 9: Only 27% got this one right. Can you believe that 1.6% actually said that "Barack Obama" was the first president of the United States?
Question 10: 74% of those interviewed do not know who is in charge of the Executive branch of the Federal government.

Only 3.5% of Arizona high-school students that took this telelphone survey scored 60% or better on this test, which was only a subset of the 100 questions that must be correctly answered by an immigrant applying for U.S. Citizenship. And I suspect that the other questions are probably harder and more specific than the slow-ball 10 questions listed above.

Civics are not being taught in our schools. Period. End of story. How can young people be expected to think and act like Americans when they are not being taught how?

Yet I bet if you would ask 100 people on the street what Michael Jackson's most popular and best selling album was, I bet over 90% would answer "Thriller" (which would be correct.)

Our forefather's correctly identified that public schools were absolutely necessary in order to preserve the precious freedoms that we have been gifted with, by the brilliance of extraordinary men and the priceless sacrifice of American blood on numerous battlegrounds of freedom. Ben Franklin, in answering the question "What sort of government has been created?" answered "A Republic, if you can keep it.".

A primary objective of our public schools has been, until recently, the teaching of American civics. It appears that this objective has either been entirely suborned from the American public school system, or it is considered of no great worth by those responsible for administering our public schools. In either case, the result will be the same. An uneducated and untutored electorate, being ignorant of their rights as granted to them by the U.S. Constitution, will be unable to prevent those rights from being eroded away by those who wish for power to gravitate from us, the people to the professional ruling class and the elites (money, industrialists, or progressives makes no difference).

In conclusion, I will quote from the executive summary of this study which was entitled "Freedom From Responsibility: A Survey of Civic Knowledge Among Arizona High School Students".

"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished was freedom was from responsiblity, then Athens ceased to be free."