George Clowes Interviews John Taylor Gatto
Which Service is Best
A Soldier, a Sailor, an Airman, and a Marine got into an argument about which service was "the best". The arguing became so heated the four servicemen failed to see an oncoming truck. They were run over by the truck and killed instantly.
Soon the four servicemen found themselves at the Pearly Gates of Heaven. There, they met Saint Peter and decided that only he could be the ultimate source of truth and honesty. So, the four servicemen asked him, "Saint Peter, which branch of the United States Armed Forces is the best?" Saint Peter replied, "I can't answer that. However, I will ask God what He thinks the next time I see Him. Meanwhile, thank you for your service on Earth and welcome to Heaven."
Some time later the four servicemen see Saint Peter and remind him of the question they had asked when first entering Heaven. The four servicemen asked Saint Peter if he was able to find the answer. Suddenly, a sparkling white dove lands on Saint Peter's shoulder. In the dove's beak is a note glistening with gold dust. Saint Peter says to the four Servicemen, "Your answer from the Boss. Let's see what He says." Saint Peter opens the note, trumpets blare, gold dust drifts into the air, harps play crescendos, and Saint Peter begins to read the note aloud to the four Servicemen:
MEMORANDUM FROM THE DESK OF THE ALMIGHTY ONE
TO: Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines
SUBJ: WHICH MILITARY SERVICE IS BEST
Gentlemen, all branches of the United States Armed Forces are honorable and noble. Each serves America well and with distinction. Being a serviceman in the United States Military represents a special calling warranting special respect, tribute and dedication. Be proud of that.
Sincerely,
GOD, USMC(Ret.)
George A. Clowes at The Heartland Institute - Masters of Their Own Souls - Mr. Clowes interviews John Taylor Gatto about government schools. [market]
Clowes: What can be done to fix the public schools?
Gatto: There is no way to fix them. That's the point of my latest book, which took me eight years to write. It's an enormous system where no individual has very much influence, and the system has built-in protections against change. Even the current standards movement is certain to be only rhetorically realized because the system has its own structural logic, and that does not include excellence. To say that you're going to produce high standards by putting money, or pressure, or tests at fourth through eighth grade--that is Pollyanna nonsense.
All systems are the same regardless of what particular ideology drives them. The integrity of the system is considerably more important to the system than the mission it nominally holds. The American education system is a Soviet-style system, and just because we live in the United States is no guarantee that it's not a Soviet system. It destroys people wholesale while it provides for the world's most reliable domestic economy. That was in the original design of the system back at the turn of the twentieth century, and it has achieved those purposes perfectly.
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Gatto: I had no resources and I demanded of my students exactly what was demanded of me at Cornell and Columbia. I didn't modify my language or my expectations. I expected college-level performance, and I got it much more often than I didn't. I'm not saying that it wasn't without a lot of grief and argument, but most of the grief and argument was with the school administration and with my fellow teachers. Because when you get students to understand what they're capable of, they start asking questions in classes that have been dumbed down. "Why are you treating us like this?" they ask, "We're not stupid."
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It's significant that when the British owned North America, they took steps to prevent the development of the active literacies of writing and public speaking in the colonial population. If you can read well, and fluently, you can get access to the best minds that ever lived. But you can't change things unless you can convince others, and you do that only by writing and speaking. The British knew they could handle the odd fish that swam with a copy of Plato under its fin, but what they couldn't handle were people who spoke like Demosthenes or wrote like Shakespeare.
bob lonsberry - Why This War on the SUV? - Mr. Lonsberry shines some light on "various totalitarian groups" who are trying to take away our freedom to drive light trucks.
Steven Yates at LewRockwell.com - The Boiling Frog Syndrome - how America has been incrementally changed from a nation of freemen to a nation of tax slaves. [lew]
Myles Kantor at LewRockwell.com - Asa's Choice - Good commentary on the war on some drugs in the light of Asa Hutchinson's selection as head drug nazi. [lew]
It is to the continuing oppression of America that Asa Hutchinson, a Southerner but not a Southern conservative, chooses tyranny instead of Thomas Jefferson's truths.
Russell Madden at Laissez Faire City Times - Second to None - Mr. Madden imagines a country where John Ashcroft et al actually mean what their rhetoric implies about the second amendment, a country where the second amendment is once again as sacrosanct as the first. He also reminds us that the first amendment isn't worth squat without the second's muscle to defend it.
Yes! If only we could do with our weapons all the things we can (still) do with the items and actions protected by the First Amendment, we would be well on our way to a sea change in social progress. Such giant steps to restoring the actual meaning of the Second Amendment would rock the world. Bush and Ashcroft would be remembered in history and hailed as worthy successors of the Founding Fathers.
If, if—
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Ah, yes. Talk is cheap. For how many eons have we witnessed "conservatives" who proclaimed their undying loyalty and commitment to "freedom, capitalism, and justice"? And how far have we slipped from those ideals and deeper into slavery as conservative after conservative betrayed those very concepts in feeble attempts to cling to political power, selling out anything and everyone who dares to thwart their statist designs?
Fletcher of Saltoun at 2ndlawlib.org - A Discourse of Government With Relation to Militias - Written in 1698, updated for modern spelling and punctuation, this long piece reminds us that standing armies destroy liberty. Don't remember where I found this link.
Let us then see if mercenary armies be not exactly calculated to enslave a nation. Which I think may be easily proved, if we consider that such troops are generally composed of men who make a trade of war; and having little or no patrimony, or spent what they once had, enter into that employment in hopes of its continuance during life, not at all thinking how to make themselves capable of any other. By which means heavy and perpetual taxes must be entailed for ever upon the people for their subsistence; and since all their relations stand engaged to support their interest, let all men judge, if this will not prove a very united and formidable party in a nation.
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A good militia is of such importance to a nation, that it is the chief part of the constitution of any free government. For though as to other things, the constitution be never so slight, a good militia will always preserve the public liberty. But in the best constitution that ever was, as to all other parts of government, if the militia be not upon a right foot, the liberty of that people must perish. The militia of ancient Rome, the best that ever was in any government, made her mistress of the world: but standing armies enslaved that great people, and their excellent militia and freedom perished together. The Lacedemonians continued eight hundred years free, and in great honour, because they had a good militia. The Swisses at this day are the freest, happiest, and the people of all Europe who can best defend themselves, because they have the best militia.
William Norman Grigg at The New American - Disarmament by "Consensus" - reflections on the commU.N.ist "Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects." They've taken a large step towards confiscating our means of self defense and protection from tyranny. [sas]
In his address to the opening session of the Conference, [Under Secretary of State John] Bolton provided an important clue as to the true intent of the Bush administration — not by what he actually said but by what he failed to say. Immediately after pointing out, accurately, that the Second Amendment protects an "individual right" to bear arms, Bolton elaborated: "The United States believes that the responsible use of firearms is a legitimate aspect of national life. Like many countries, the United States has a cultural tradition of hunting and sport shooting." Conspicuously absent from Bolton's remarks is any reference to the right to self-defense, or the role of the Second Amendment in safeguarding liberty and denying government a monopoly of power.
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Once again, it is not the weapons that are "killing people and endangering communities," but rather the lawless people who use weapons for those malign purposes. Yet in most situations, the criminals in question act under the color of government authority. The UN will not be sending out commando teams to confiscate firearms from Americans as a result of the small arms conference. But because of the conference, an international "consensus" now exists that small arms are a global menace, and that America's gun culture is a threat to global "stability" that requires concerted international action. This represents, as Kofi Annan and his comrades pointed out, a "significant first step" toward the creation of a disarmed, UN-dominated world.
alexander cockburn and jeffrey st. clair at CounterPunch - Pirates of the Air and Seas: Scenes from the Drug War - a slight fictional change of the actors in recent news stories about the war on some drugs, displays graphically that the real actors are worse than pirates. [grabbe]
Want to have the spring's drug headlines wrapped up for you? The US Supreme Court defies the clear intent of voters in nine states and says medical marijuana is a no-no and a London newspaper reports that in London in 1995 a gram of cocaine cost around $120, but the same amount can now be picked up for about $80. The new drug czar, John Walters, picked after three months by former cocaine dealer George Bush (at Yale, in ounce bags according to one source) says the war on drugs can be won.
Mike Gaddy at Sierra Times - What Tyrants Fear - Feinstein, Schumer, & Kennedy all fear weapons that would allow freemen to defend themselves from government tyranny. That is why they created S.505, the 'Military Sniper Weapon Regulation Act of 2001', which classifies .50 caliber rifles in the same category as automatic weapons. It's been in the senate committee on finance since March and has only four cosponsors, so I don't think this baby is going anywhere, but it does clue you in to the fears of its creators. [sierra]
Ron Paul at Antiwar.com - Congressman Paul Denounces Unauthorized Airstrike Against Iraq - Dr. Paul reminds us that air strikes are acts of war. As such they require congressional approval. [market]
