Criminals will target ID cards as the ”gold standard” of identity theft, a police chief said yesterday.

The assumption that they are foolproof will make them more enticing for forgers, said Colin Langham-Fitt, acting chief constable of Suffolk.

He also questioned the erosion of individual liberties and privacy.

“There should be a debate about the ongoing erosion of civil liberties in the name of the fight against terrorism and crime,” he said.

“Are we all happy to have our cards monitored wherever we go, to be on CCTV and to have our shopping tracked?”

Mr Langham-Fitt added: “With all this surveillance available, the question needs to be asked – are we happy with that? Does it make us feel better and safer?

“I haven’t got the answers but I would welcome the debate beyond the cliched response of, ‘If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about’.”

His comments undermine Government claims that the police support ID cards and other surveillance measures.

Mr Langham-Fitt, in an interview with the East Anglian Daily Times, said the cards could become “the gold standard of ID crime” and “it could raise the standards and stakes for those who wish to clone them or subvert the system”.

A Suffolk police spokesman said Mr Langham-Fitt was not representing the views of the force but expressing “personal” opinions.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The Government recognises that some people are concerned about the scheme infringing their civil liberties – that is why there are stringent safeguards built into the Identity Cards Act.”

Further questions were raised over the security of confidential information with the disclosure that the personal details of Indians applying for British visas could be obtained via the Foreign Office website. Channel 4 News reported that an identity thief or a terrorist could obtain sensitive information that could be used to apply for an ID card.

Damian Green, the Tory immigration spokesman, said: “This is yet another IT shambles from the Government with serious implications for security.”

Mr Green added: “This Government cannot even run a simple online visa application system without betraying all the sensitive information.

“What hope has it got of protecting the integrity of the National Identity Card Register?”

[…]

Telegraph

I choked on my Espresso when I read this.

When the police come out against something like this you can bet that it is in serious trouble.

He may be expressing his ‘personal opinions’ but it is clear that Mr. Langham-Fitt understands PERFECTLY what the NIR and the ID Card scheme means to ‘The British way of life®’. It means its end.

It is heartening that someone in the police is bucking the current mania for ‘security’ (which in the case of ID Cards is actually Security Theatre) and is actually THINKING about what is really happening. He cannot be the only one. I certainly hope that pieces like the Frances Stonor-Saunders email have been circulated amongst his colleagues. If the police come out against it, it cannot EVER possibly work.

Gordon Brown…BACK DOWN!

You read that phrase here first!

Sir Patrick Moore has identified an alien species that threatens to destroy intelligent life – the women who have taken over the BBC.

The veteran astronomer celebrated the 50th anniversary of The Sky at Night with a withering attack on the female executives he believes have dumbed down the corporation.

Sir Patrick’s outburst echoes criticisms raised by Alasdair Milne, a former Director-General, who provoked a furious response when he accused a female-dominated BBC of producing “terrible” programmes.

Sir Patrick, 84, was asked by the Radio Times if television had got better or worse during a career spanning the medium’s life. The answer was worse – “much worse”. He said: “The trouble is that the BBC now is run by women and it shows: soap operas, cooking, quizzes, kitchen-sink plays. You wouldn’t have had that in the golden days.”

They have even destroyed sci-fi, Sir Patrick’s personal passion. He said: “I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC – making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching.”

And don’t sit Sir Patrick in front of a Sophie Raworth bulletin. He said: “These jokey women are not for me. Oh, for the good old days.”

He recalled: “There was one day (in 2005) when BBC News went on strike. Then we had the headlines read by a man, talking the Queen’s English, reading the news impeccably.”

Fortunately, Sir Patrick has a solution. Institute a gender divide and create BBC Bloke.

He said: “I would like to see two independent wavelengths – one controlled by women, and one for us, controlled by men. I think it may eventually happen.”

Soaps could then safely be produced and watched by women. Sir Patrick said: “I was in hospital once and I watched a whole episode of EastEnders. I suppose it’s true to life. But so is diarrhoea – and I don’t want to see that on television.”

Sir Patrick has an ally in Mr Milne, who ran the BBC between 1982 and 1987. He said the domination of television by women was the reason it had so many “dumb” lifestyle and makeover programmes.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1760061.ece

In other countries, they have separate busses for men and women….there might be something to this ‘Sharia’ after all!!!

Mr. Nimmho as an article about the Climate Change Hoax that has everyone without ‘O’ Level physics whipped into a frenzy.

Emissions need to be cut to zero, if only to save us and every other mammal from having to inhale them, and to stop everyone being enslaved to the gas pumps and their owners. That alone is a reason to do something right now, but what is emerging from this Climate Change environmentalism hysteria is a framework within which everything is rationed and I mean EVERYTHING. People will accept it as necessary because they will have swallowed the lie about Climate Change, and will be hysterical with fear, just as they were made to be afraid of OBL. The OBL hoax is now over, and now they have an even better bogey man; one that cannot be so easily put out of mind.

Think about it. If everyone is convinced that every act of consumption has to be rationed, we will all have to be issued with ration books, or their modern equivalent, ID cards linked to centralized databases, where everything you consume is recorded so that you do not exceed your ‘carbon footprint’, ‘plastic footprint’ etc etc.

They are going to substitute the cause of ‘security’ for the environment as the reason why you should give up all of your rights. Street cameras will be there to monitor criminal flytippers of garbage and not terrorists.

David Milibland has brazenly let the cat out of the bag on this one, laying out the plans well in advance, presumably so that they can claim that they have been ‘open’ about this all along.

This brings me to the reason why I am posting this. If you are old enough, you will remember ‘The Energy Crisis’ of the 1970s when hysteria was whipped up about oil. It seems that we are in the middle of a dusting off and replaying of this ‘Energy Crisis’ scenario, revamped for a new generation; one that is not old enough to remember the first, and one which is significantly intellectually and morally inferior to the one that fought off the first attempt.

Read about it yourself.

A good piece is here. Infowars has an old article about this that perhaps even they have forgotten about.

The fact of the matter is this.

Wether or not Climate Change is happening, the answer is not to control people, but to control the very small number of huge businesses that cause all the pollution. For example, the outlawing of the combustion engine as it is now, will begin the process of getting the fumes out of our air, but of course, that means radically altering one of the worlds biggest and most powerful businesses and lobbying groups, and they won’t stand for it.

You never (until very recently) hear calls for the banning of energy sapping technologies, and it is only now, way late in the game that the incandescent light bulb has been put on the chopping block; that extremely beautiful but wasteful thing that every schoolboy knows is a farcically wasteful technology.

Billions are being spent on war, when that money should be spent on refurbishing and replacing the electricity distribution system so that it is more efficient. I could go on, but really its just too obvious. This is really about a pretext for exerting control on the individual down to the level of garbage. Of course, no one says that the companies that package food like this should be forbidden from doing so, thus in a single motion reducing the amount of garbage out there. And how about the utterly loathsome plastic ‘carrier bags’ that plague Britain? Those symbols of poverty should be outlawed immediately. Americans have used paper shopping bags for generations recyclable, don’t suffocate anyone…I mean, really its so obvious.

Like many people, I am not buying into any of this bullshit. I already hate cars and the oil business and all the people associated with it. I hate the fumes, the noise and the brutish culture that surrounds cars, especially in the UK.

I don’t trust any of the people who are delivering this message. They are far too keen to control the population and not the polluters. Their motives are suspect. These are the same narrow minded, imagination-less dorks who claimed that meteors do not come from space, and that man would never land on the moon. And those are the ‘scientists’. I wont even go there on the thick as shit pop-stars and celebrities that are riding along on this roller-coaster of lies. I wonder how many of these morons would go for forced sterilization to protect the environment from overpopulation?

Mr Nimmo ends his post thusly:

No doubt most of us here in America will “take climate change seriously” after we are crowded into Malthusian “sustainable” ghettoes resembling something out the dystopian science fiction film Soylent Green.

Have you seen ‘Soylent Green’? You really should look at it. If you have ever been to an overpopulated city in a ‘Third World’ country, you will recognize some of the scenes. It’s not pretty.

What was so great about America was that it produced work like Soylent Green, but also inspired everyone with dreams of escaping earth entirely. It was seen as absolutely inevitable that we would colonize space; we all expected it, and were ready to line up for it.

All these dreams, all the imagination is missing from the words of the people screaming about Climate Change. And that, to me is the saddest thing of all.

Statement on the Iraq War Resolution Before the U.S. House of Representatives February 14, 2007 by Ron Paul:

This grand debate is welcomed but it could be that this is nothing more than a distraction from the dangerous military confrontation approaching with Iran and supported by many in leadership on both sides of the aisle.

This resolution, unfortunately, does not address the disaster in Iraq. Instead, it seeks to appear opposed to the war while at the same time offering no change of the status quo in Iraq. As such, it is not actually a vote against a troop surge. A real vote against a troop surge is a vote against the coming supplemental appropriation that finances it. I hope all of my colleagues who vote against the surge today will vote against the budgetary surge when it really counts: when we vote on the supplemental.

The biggest red herring in this debate is the constant innuendo that those who don’t support expanding the war are somehow opposing the troops. It’s nothing more than a canard to claim that those of us who struggled to prevent the bloodshed and now want it stopped are somehow less patriotic and less concerned about the welfare of our military personnel.

Osama bin Laden has expressed sadistic pleasure with our invasion of Iraq and was surprised that we served his interests above and beyond his dreams on how we responded after the 9/11 attacks. His pleasure comes from our policy of folly getting ourselves bogged down in the middle of a religious civil war, 7,000 miles from home that is financially bleeding us to death. Total costs now are reasonably estimated to exceed $2 trillion. His recruitment of Islamic extremists has been greatly enhanced by our occupation of Iraq.

Unfortunately, we continue to concentrate on the obvious mismanagement of a war promoted by false information and ignore debating the real issue which is: Why are we determined to follow a foreign policy of empire building and pre-emption which is unbecoming of a constitutional republic?

Those on the right should recall that the traditional conservative position of non-intervention was their position for most of the 20th Century-and they benefited politically from the wars carelessly entered into by the political left. Seven years ago the Right benefited politically by condemning the illegal intervention in Kosovo and Somalia. At the time conservatives were outraged over the failed policy of nation building.

It’s important to recall that the left, in 2003, offered little opposition to the pre-emptive war in Iraq, and many are now not willing to stop it by de-funding it or work to prevent an attack on Iran.

The catch-all phrase, “War on Terrorism,” in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against criminal gangsterism. It’s deliberately vague and non definable to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere, and under any circumstances. Don’t forget: the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with any terrorist attack against us including that on 9/11.

Special interests and the demented philosophy of conquest have driven most wars throughout history. Rarely has the cause of liberty, as it was in our own revolution, been the driving force. In recent decades our policies have been driven by neo-conservative empire radicalism, profiteering in the military industrial complex, misplaced do-good internationalism, mercantilistic notions regarding the need to control natural resources, and blind loyalty to various governments in the Middle East.

For all the misinformation given the American people to justify our invasion, such as our need for national security, enforcing UN resolutions, removing a dictator, establishing a democracy, protecting our oil, the argument has been reduced to this: If we leave now Iraq will be left in a mess-implying the implausible that if we stay it won’t be a mess.

Since it could go badly when we leave, that blame must be placed on those who took us there, not on those of us who now insist that Americans no longer need be killed or maimed and that Americans no longer need to kill any more Iraqis. We’ve had enough of both!

Resorting to a medical analogy, a wrong diagnosis was made at the beginning of the war and the wrong treatment was prescribed. Refusing to reassess our mistakes and insist on just more and more of a failed remedy is destined to kill the patient-in this case the casualties will be our liberties and prosperity here at home and peace abroad.

There’s no logical reason to reject the restraints placed in the Constitution regarding our engaging in foreign conflicts unrelated to our national security. The advice of the founders and our early presidents was sound then and it’s sound today.

We shouldn’t wait until our financial system is completely ruined and we are forced to change our ways. We should do it as quickly as possible and stop the carnage and financial bleeding that will bring us to our knees and force us to stop that which we should have never started.

We all know, in time, the war will be de-funded one way or another and the troops will come home. So why not now? […]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul369.html

You can watch a part of it on LiveLeak, which is where I found it, whilst trawling around in there.

Yesterday I watched the 20th episode of ‘Heroes’, which is nothing less than a blatant accusation that the mythical ‘911’ was staged in order to transform America into a Fascist police state at the behest of an impostor president who is in fact, not a human being.

As you read earlier, the Movie ‘Sniper’ is a work of sedition.

This and the many other events happening are signs that we might actually see an end to the dark times. There are only a very few people left who do not now accept what is happening. They are people with something to lose, like the journalists who lied to everyone, or the bespectacled villains that infest the newspapers and TV.

If things are going to be put back into place, it needs to be done quickly. They are now saying that the EU and the USA are to be joined in ‘a single market’ where the regulations will be ‘harmonized’.

What this means, inevitably, is that the countries in the EU will be the losers, and it is Britain that will be forced to adopt american standards of law and practice, not the other way around.

This will be a total relinquishing of everything British, to be washed away by a tidal wave of Coca-Cola.

Now you can see why all the countries are pushing for new ID cards to be implemented at around the same deadline. They are going to put everyone into a giant meat-grinder, and in order for this evil machine to work to their monstrous specification, they need everyone to have a single form of ‘harmonized’ ID to interface with their vile system.

But I digress.

It seems like there is an awakening going on, starting from the top and outside, working in. People with big platforms are now weighing in with unambiguous fully charged salvos against the insanity that has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

When Fox news finally gives up the ghost then you will know that the info war has been won.

What is the best advice you ever received about hs or what is the best advice you would give someone starting out?

1. Help your kids learn to love learning.

Before PS or formal HSing, every kid was an inquisitive, question-asking, examiner of bugs, clouds, people, rocks, and all other things. Sometimes, especially if coming out of school, kids need a lot of time and a little bit of help to regain their love of learning. Give former PSers plenty of time to deschool- yes, a month per year of formal school is a pretty good estimate. Encourage all children to learn by allowing them to direct their own interests and learn from them. Reading can be learned just as well (and much more enjoyably) from a treasured comic book as from a dry textbook.

2. Kids learn in different ways and at their own pace.

So figure out their learning style and rejoice in their learning. Stop comparing them to a preconceived notion of having to learn XYZ by a certain grade or age. You are going to be with them a lot and you will know what they know and what they don’t know right away. No need to worry that they will graduate missing something essential.

3. Learning is a lifetime journey that does not end at age 18.

The real challenge is to help your children learn how to teach themselves. What they don’t know, they will take the initiative to teach themselves as the need arises. We naturally have to do this as adults, so let your children do this also.

4. If a child can learn it, so can you.

If a child can learn to read, you can teach them. If a teen can learn algebra, so can you. If you choose not to or are unable to learn together, then you can outsource a subject- hire a tutor, have them take a class, have a sibling teach them, even let them teach themselves.

5. The most important things children ever learn are NOT found in a textbook.

Yes, being a good reader, having basic math skills, and an understanding of the world around us are essential to “graduate” from homeschooling. BUT- just are important are things that are not found in the average textbook: honesty and integrity, a good work ethic, kindness and empathy, a curiosity about their community and world around them, a love of learning.

6. Socialization is knowing how to act appropriately in various situations and is best taught by adults who care about the child.

Socialization is not the same as having a social life. Remember this when you hear the dreaded “S” word from others. Your homeschooled kids will have as many friends and activities as they want and you allow (and likely more time than their PS peers to enjoy them).

They will be socialized by their parents and other caring people who will help them learn appropriate behavior in different situations- at home, in public, in informal and formal activities. They will have many opportunities to learn and practice social skills as they will be interacting with the real world on a regular basis.

7. There is no perfect curriculum.

Once you let go of that notion, you will save a lot of money and have peace of mind knowing that whatever you use, your child will learn from it because you can change and adapt any book, course, or activity to suit your child’s learning style and interests.

:-) Mrs. D.

About

@Spider:
‘I understand the concept of the “movie-plot-threat”, but what is the alternative? To do nothing?’

Doing nothing (that wasn’t already being done before 9/11) would be better than what we have now.
Deaths from terrorism are so rare that it’s not worth doing anything to reduce them. In a typical year, at least 44,000 people die from medical errors in US hospitals. About 50,000 people die from motor vehicle accidents. Doing something about one of these might actually save some lives. How many people died from terrorist attacks in the USA last year?
Estimates of the number of people in the USA who died from obesity last year range up to 300,000 (I know, it seems incredible, but google for “death rates usa” or something similar). So your couch, if it’s temptingly comfortable, is about 200 times as dangerous to you as Al Qaeda is.

A comment from the Schneier blog.

This of course, also applies equally to gun ownership.

When you apply logic to these problems they can be put into context and then the right thing inevitably follows. When you think feverishly, reactively and at the behest of the news agencies, then you make mistakes of the sort that have created this dystopic nightmare scenario world that we are living in.

8 results for: sedition

se·di·tion      /s??d???n/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[si-dish–uhn] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation –noun < ="luna-Ent"> =”dn” 1. incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government.

2. any action, esp. in speech or writing, promoting such discontent or rebellion.

3. Archaic. rebellious disorder.

[Origin: 1325–75; < L séditi?n– (s. of séditi?), equiv. to séd- se- + -iti?n- a going (it(us), ptp. of ?re to go + -i?n- -ion); r. ME sedicioun < AF < L, as above] —Synonyms 1. insurrection, mutiny. See treason.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Dictionary.com

Fora TV has a great clip of Milton Friedman speaking on the problems facing american schools. I found it on the Principled Discovery blog. He is a very funny man!

Principled Discovery rebuts the remarks in the clip adequately; its great however to hear a talk like this, by a seasoned speaker with vivid illustrations littered throughout the talk.

Naomi Wolf was born in 1962.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree – domestically – as many other nations.

Only the weak minded and people who never watched Star Trek re-runs have a hard time ‘considering’ this. This person is of the exact age she needed to be to have this built in apprehension. Also, the American Constitution and its founding fathers designed the country SPECIFICALLY to stop the emergence of tyranny; every REAL american understands that ALL government, ESPECIALLY your own is capable of turning to tyranny. Americans of her generation were taught about this ever-present danger in great clarity; everyone who did ‘social studies’ class was given lessons in this, in healthy distrust of government. it is bewildering that an american of that age can even say this.

Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government

You did, and you forgot!

– the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors – we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled.

It is only finally outsourced when you have no guns. In the UK until recently, access to the text of the law was restricted to lawyers….but I digress.

Because we don’t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of “homeland” security – remember who else was keen on the word “homeland” – didn’t raise the alarm bells it might have.

It rang alarm bells ALL OVER THE INTERNETS YOU NUTCASE.

Where were you when your country was hiring ex Stasi nastyman Markus Wolf to help design programs at the ominously named ‘Homeland Security‘?

This essay is too little too late…more on that down below.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable – as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

AND THEN DO WHAT?

We need to look at history and face the “what ifs”. For if we keep going down this road, the “end of America” could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before – and this is the way it is now.

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … is the definition of tyranny,” wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

Guardian

YES you need to look at history.
NO there are no ‘what ifs’ to face, IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED YOU NUMBSKULL.
NO You are already at the end of the road.
NO if you are feeling this ONLY NOW you must have been living under a rock at the bottom of this hole.

And finally

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO !!!!!

You need to stand your ground, fight for your nation take up your GUNS.

Taking up a BANNER against FASCISTS will achieve ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

You need to kick out the people who have ruined that country and put them on trial, and then cleanse the legislation of all anti-american laws.

Also, because there are millions of pig ignorant fascist facilitators in your midsts, who will follow anyone as long as they can have beer, and some who will actively fight you to keep their illusions and [burst_into_song]fascist baby utopia[/burst_into_song] illusions you are OBLIGED to TAKE what is rightfully yours, just like the founding fathers did.

They specifically ensured that you should have access to guns for PRECISELY THIS PURPOSE.

GUNS, not BANNERS.

There are MANY people who are WAY ahead of you Naomi, and its a good thing that you are finally waking up, but honestly, you and your type are and have been PART OF THE PROBLEM.

Penn & teller tell it like it is, in their usual style.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”””God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Thomas Jefferson.

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.
        — Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1785. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.
         — Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1796. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;
        —Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. Memorial Edition 16:45, Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.

No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
         —Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution, 1776.

The thoughtful reader may wonder, why wasn’t Jefferson’s proposal of “No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms” adopted by the Virginia legislature? Click here to learn why.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

         —Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.
         —Alexander Hamilton

Quotes from the Founders During the Ratification Period of the Constitution

[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

         —James Madison,The Federalist Papers, No. 46.

To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.
         —John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States 475 (1787-1788)

John Adams recognizes the fundamental right of citizens, as individuals, to defend themselves with arms, however he states militias must be controlled by government and the rule of law. To have otherwise is to invite anarchy.

The material and commentary that follows is excerpted from Halbrook, Stephen P. “The Right of the People or the Power of the State Bearing Arms, Arming Militias, and the Second Amendment”. Originally published as 26 Val. U. L.Rev. 131-207, 1991.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.

         —Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).

Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.
         —Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

During the Massachusetts ratifying convention William Symmes warned that the new government at some point “shall be too firmly fixed in the saddle to be overthrown by anything but a general insurrection.” Yet fears of standing armies were groundless, affirmed Theodore Sedwick, who queried, “if raised, whether they could subdue a nation of freemen, who know how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?”

[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it.

         —Richard Henry Lee, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

The Virginia ratifying convention met from June 2 through June 26, 1788. Edmund Pendleton, opponent of a bill of rights, weakly argued that abuse of power could be remedied by recalling the delegated powers in a convention. Patrick Henry shot back that the power to resist oppression rests upon the right to possess arms:

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.

Henry sneered,

O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone…Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation…inflicted by those who had no power at all?

More quotes from the Virginia convention:

[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually…I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor…

         —George Mason

Zacharia Johnson argued that the new Constitution could never result in religious persecution or other oppression because:

[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.

The Virginia delegation’s recommended bill of rights included the following:

That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

The following quote is from Halbrook, Stephen P., That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals…[I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

         —Albert Gallatin to Alexander Addison, Oct 7, 1789, MS. in N.Y. Hist. Soc.-A.G. Papers, 2.

Gallatin’s use of the words “some rights,” doesn’t mean some of the rights in the Bill of Rights, rather there are many rights not enumerated by the Bill of Rights, those rights that are listed are being established as unalienable.

Roger Sherman, during House consideration of a militia bill (1790):

[C]onceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.
         14 Debates in the House of Representatives, ed. Linda Grand De Pauw. (Balt., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972), 92-3.

For post-ratification quotes, see GunCite’s: Quotes from constitutional commentators.

WACO, Texas (CNN) — Zero tolerance, huh? Gun-free zones, huh? Try this on for size: Columbine gun-free zone, New York City pizza shop gun-free zone, Luby’s Cafeteria gun-free zone, Amish school in Pennsylvania gun-free zone and now Virginia Tech gun-free zone.

Anybody see what the evil Brady Campaign and other anti-gun cults have created? I personally have zero tolerance for evil and denial. And America had best wake up real fast that the brain-dead celebration of unarmed helplessness will get you killed every time, and I’ve about had enough of it.

Nearly a decade ago, a Springfield, Oregon, high schooler, a hunter familiar with firearms, was able to bring an unfolding rampage to an abrupt end when he identified a gunman attempting to reload his .22-caliber rifle, made the tactical decision to make a move and tackled the shooter.

A few years back, an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Mississippi, which was a gun-free zone, retrieved his legally owned Colt .45 from his car and stopped a Columbine wannabe from continuing his massacre at another school after he had killed two and wounded more at Pearl.

At an eighth-grade school dance in Pennsylvania, a boy fatally shot a teacher and wounded two students before the owner of the dance hall brought the killing to a halt with his own gun.

More recently, just a few miles up the road from Virginia Tech, two law school students ran to fetch their legally owned firearm to stop a madman from slaughtering anybody and everybody he pleased. These brave, average, armed citizens neutralized him pronto.

My hero, Dr. Suzanne Gratia Hupp, was not allowed by Texas law to carry her handgun into Luby’s Cafeteria that fateful day in 1991, when due to bureaucrat-forced unarmed helplessness she could do nothing to stop satanic George Hennard from killing 23 people and wounding more than 20 others before he shot himself. Hupp was unarmed for no other reason than denial-ridden “feel good” politics.

She has since led the charge for concealed weapon upgrade in Texas, where we can now stop evil. Yet, there are still the mindless puppets of the Brady Campaign and other anti-gun organizations insisting on continuing the gun-free zone insanity by which innocents are forced into unarmed helplessness. Shame on them. Shame on America. Shame on the anti-gunners all.

No one was foolish enough to debate Ryder truck regulations or ammonia nitrate restrictions or a “cult of agriculture fertilizer” following the unabashed evil of Timothy McVeigh’s heinous crime against America on that fateful day in Oklahoma City. No one faulted kitchen utensils or other hardware of choice after Jeffrey Dahmer was caught drugging, mutilating, raping, murdering and cannibalizing his victims. Nobody wanted “steak knife control” as they autopsied the dead nurses in Chicago, Illinois, as Richard Speck went on trial for mass murder.

Evil is as evil does, and laws disarming guaranteed victims make evil people very, very happy. Shame on us.

Already spineless gun control advocates are squawking like chickens with their tiny-brained heads chopped off, making political hay over this most recent, devastating Virginia Tech massacre, when in fact it is their own forced gun-free zone policy that enabled the unchallenged methodical murder of 32 people.

Thirty-two people dead on a U.S. college campus pursuing their American Dream, mowed-down over an extended period of time by a lone, non-American gunman in illegal possession of a firearm on campus in defiance of a zero-tolerance gun law. Feel better yet? Didn’t think so.

Who doesn’t get this? Who has the audacity to demand unarmed helplessness? Who likes dead good guys?

I’ll tell you who. People who tramp on the Second Amendment, that’s who. People who refuse to accept the self-evident truth that free people have the God-given right to keep and bear arms, to defend themselves and their loved ones. People who are so desperate in their drive to control others, so mindless in their denial that they pretend access to gas causes arson, Ryder trucks and fertilizer cause terrorism, water causes drowning, forks and spoons cause obesity, dialing 911 will somehow save your life, and that their greedy clamoring to “feel good” is more important than admitting that armed citizens are much better equipped to stop evil than unarmed, helpless ones.

Pray for the families of victims everywhere, America. Study the methodology of evil. It has a profile, a system, a preferred environment where victims cannot fight back. Embrace the facts, demand upgrade and be certain that your children’s school has a better plan than Virginia Tech or Columbine. Eliminate the insanity of gun-free zones, which will never, ever be gun-free zones. They will only be good guy gun-free zones, and that is a recipe for disaster written in blood on the altar of denial. I, for one, refuse to genuflect there.

From CNN.

[…]

Of course, in the UK, forks and spoons DONT cause obesity.

Sporks do. :p

Schools handing out morning after pill to under-age girls backed by Ofsted
By LAURA CLARK 12th April 2007

More schools will be encouraged to hand out the morning-after pill to underage girls after a strong endorsement of the service from Ofsted inspectors.

Around one in three children already has easy access to condoms and emergency contraception – without their parents’ knowledge or consent – thanks to sexual health clinics based at secondary schools.

Many more heads are expected to set up contraception services in their schools following Ofsted’s warm endorsement in a report published yesterday.

The education watchdog declared that school nurses ‘provide a valuable service’ distributing contraception and advising pupils on birth control.

Inspectors even complained that progress towards establishing the centres had so far been ‘modest’.

Last night family campaigners warned the initiative may simply encourage promiscuity.

They pointed out that more than 20 studies have failed to find a link between better access to the morning-after pill and a fewer teenage pregnancies.

By 2010, ministers want every secondary school to have access to a nurse providing emergency contraception and advice as part of a drive to reduce the number of teenagers becoming parents.

In its latest report on the state of sex education, Ofsted inspectors said handing out the morning-after pill was more effective at reducing teenage pregnancies than promoting abstinence.

‘There is no evidence….that “abstinence- only” education reduces teenage pregnancy or improves sexual health,’ their report said.

‘There is also no evidence to support claims that teaching about contraception leads to increased sexual activity.’

The report said: ‘School nurses can arrange visits from their colleagues in the community and work with them to promote health and improve young people’s access to health services.’

It added: ‘School nurses can also provide a valuable service, particularly in terms of providing emergency hormonal contraception and advising on other forms of contraception.

‘Progress towards establishing such centres has been modest, but many extended schools are now providing a good range of services.’

Norman Wells, of the pressure group Family and Youth Concern, was concerned about the resulting message to children. ‘In putting its faith in sex education and contraception to deal with high teenage pregnancy rates and the crisis in sexual health among young people, Ofsted is blindly following the dogma at the heart of the government’s teenage pregnancy strategy,’ he said.

‘Ofsted has swallowed the lie being peddled by the sex education and contraceptive industry that using contraception is the mark of sexual responsibility.

‘No less than 23 studies from ten countries have found that increased access to the morning-after pill has made no difference to unintended pregnancy and abortion rates, yet Ofsted continues to fly in the face of international evidence.’

Margaret Morrissey, of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said school nurses gave children the chance to talk to someone impartial outside the classroom, where they may be embarrassed to ask questions.

But she added: ‘When it comes to things like morning-after pills and condoms there are many parents who will be concerned if they are not informed.

‘The majority will be quite devastated if they suddenly found that their kids were on birth control pills and they didn’t know anything about it.’

Official figures show pregnancies among under-18s rose in 2005 to 39,683 – up from 39,593 in 2004 and much higher than the 35,400 recorded a decade earlier in 1995.

Children’s minister Beverley Hughes welcomed the Ofsted finding that the quality of personal, social and health education, which includes sex education, had improved.

But help was also needed on the homefront. ‘We are taking steps to improve the support we give to parents to talk about sex and relationships,’ she said.

Daily Mail

So, Ofstead makes a ‘societal preference‘ to promote promiscuity and by extension, call your daughter a whore, but this is all OK [whine] because its good for society to stop teenage pregnancy [/whine].

Consent of the governed, a SANE voice, says:

With the establishment of school health clinics and national control of education creeping its way along in our country, we will not be too far behind with the implementation of these kinds of programs, funded by our tax dollars. School clinics in some places might already give out birth control and abortion referrals. Some states have policy on this and others do not. As it is now, kids cannot and may not buy a coke from a school vending machine in CT (Connecticut), but they can get an abortion without parental consent. Something is definitely wrong with that picture.. it not only throws parents out of the picture completely but also may further enable kids to engage in risky behaviors, because they know they can just as easily abort the “consequence”. Many people will say.. well kids will have sex anyway, so let’s give them tools to deal with “the consequences” without their parents even knowing. How can the schools enable sex between minors which is also a crime in many states?

[…]

Putting the moral and religious issue of abortion aside, I think the minimization and exclusion of parents regarding this issue is reprehensible. Undermining parental authority and consent is just really wrong, in my opinion. Yet, parents are supposed to be held responsible if their kids break the law or go truant from school?? How come parents are responsible in some instances and not allowed to be included in others?

I would think that school boards should be held liable for the results from negligent referrals regarding “sexual health” of a child. What happens if a child is harmed by either referred procedures or school administered medication like the Morning After pill? Schools and taxpayers will naturally be averse to this type of legal and economic liability.

[…]

For me as a parent, it is yet another reason to homeschool our kids, and be able to more directly and effectively deal with our kids without government enabling of bad behavior and without government inserting itself into the picture.

[…]

Consent of the governed

A refreshing blast of cool fresh air on a fetid sticky stinky summer day in the city.

Now, there are those blockheads who say:

This is a sensitive subject, far more than truancy or otherwise. The addition of sex into the equation adds a completely new element. I can think of plenty of examples in which it would be in the student’s best interest to keep sexual activity from their parents. One notable example would be a fundamentalist religious family in which any child from the resulting pregnancy would be shunned along with the child’s mother, forcing both into a hard position as social pariahs.

Personally I would rather give students the ability to decide what happens in their body without pressure from parents who’s motives may not always be the child’s well-being.

And this is the problem. This man, this idiot, a commenter on Consent of the governed blog to this post, is clearly not a parent of a female. He probably isn’t a parent of any kind. No parent would think it is appropriate that their child was given access to these abortion drugs, let alone the information that accompanies them.

Each family, each parent is responsible for imparting this sensitive information in the way that they see fit. School should not have regularly scheduled sex education for minors. When you are doing your biology GCSE however, reproduction should be taught, but that is different to sex education which is what is being pushed in schools.

But I digress.

This MORON has a vote. He can vote and express his opinion that, “Personally I would rather give students the ability to decide what happens in their body without pressure from parents” which means anything from forcing your daughter to be implanted with sterilizing drugs without your consent to, by the doctrine of ‘societal preference‘, YOUR DAUGHTER being given abortion drugs without any referral to you as the parent. He can justify your daughter being taught things that come directly from pornography, without your consent.

Now, having thought about that, and being repulsed as a parent, you might think, “to hell with that, I am going to home school my daughter. I don’t agree with any of this at all, and since I can’t be there to monitor the class and swoop her out when these vile lectures begin, I have to remove my daughter from that system entirely”.

But some other brain dead schmuck has expressed his ‘societal preference‘ which means your daughter cannot be home schooled, or, that home schoolers must follow a state issued curriculum, so YOU end up teaching your 11 year old pornographic sex tricks, that she will be examined on by the state.

That is what happens when unthinking people exercise their ‘societal preference‘, for ‘the good of society’. Organizations like Ofstead, which cannot introduce programs to solve literacy and numeracy problems approve giving out contraceptives to children, because they ‘think its right’. And next, they want to go straight into your house to provide ‘help on the homefront’, i.e. telling you how to teach your children about the most vile and repulsive behavior imaginable, right in your own home.

These are the same people, the ones who blithely express their ‘societal preference‘ who then say that it is wrong that children are becoming sexualized. Once again, they want it both ways; they want the schools to be teaching pornography and perversion, they want children to have free access to abortion and contraception, and EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION, but they also want children to be children.

Its just plain stupid.

This is the TRUE problem of ‘societal preference‘. It is the means by which everything is dismantled and the all powerful state gets into every nook and cranny of your life…even your pants…your children’s pants and their minds.

Only the most sick, twisted, perverted and deluded of people think that any of this is correct.

You cannot be FOR ‘societal preference‘ and AGAINST schoolchildren being manipulated and brainwashed. Its is an ‘either or’ situation. If you are FOR ‘societal preference‘ then you are FOR these repulsive and diabolical schemes. If you are AGAINST ‘societal preference‘ then you are against the state:

• telling you what you can do in your own house
• controlling you as a parent in ANY way
• mandating that you can or cannot own a gun
• stipulating what you can and cannot ingest
• forcing your children to attend state schools
• issuing compulsory Identity Cards
• outlawing species of plant
• engaging in mass surveillance as found in the UK/USA
• using secret travel ban lists as found in the USA
• setting up random checkpoints

And all the other things that we really really and rightfully hate.

What is it that you REALLY want? What are the consequences of your ‘societal preference‘? This is what you have to consider VERY CAREFULLY before you give any control over to the state.

Gun control: the bloggers’ view

Matthew Weaver
Tuesday April 17, 2007

After the deadliest mass shooting in American history you might think that Virginia Tech killings would prompt a rethink about gun control in the US. But No. If anything American’s stance of the right to bear arms is hardening, judging by what the bloggers have to say.

Trish and Halli, two harmless looking old ladies who post “great recipe” suggestions from Idaho, argue that some of the 32 deaths could have been prevented if guns had been more freely available. Halli posts: “If some students and faculty had been carrying their legally permitted guns today, it is likely that a few deaths would have occurred. However, in at least two instances the murderer chained classroom doors closed and proceeded to fire at students. In all likelihood an armed student would have stopped him before 32 people had been executed.”

Similarly Frank Staheli argues that if more students carried gun there would be fewer spree killings.

The National Rifle Association is reluctant to be drawn on the issue, But Gun Owners of America demands a end to gun-free zones in schools and campuses. It says: “It is irresponsibly dangerous to tell citizens that they may not have guns at schools. The Virginia Tech shooting shows that killers have no concern about a gun ban when murder is in their hearts.”

So what about the politicians? The leading Democratic presidential contenders all steer clear of advocating gun control. Instead Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all turn to prayer.

According to Robin Toner on the New York Times political blogging site the Caucus says that Democrat hopefuls don’t want to harm their chances of election by calling for gun control as Al Gore did in 2000.

John Nichols in the Nation argues that US has failed to learn the lesson of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine.

Raised in Chaos calls for a deeper examination of the malaise in American society She says:

“The issue is not guns, and while I personally believe there should be no need for them in a “civilized” society, and that fucking ANYONE shouldn’t be able to pick up a rifle and a pack of Cheetos at your local Wal-Mart, this is not the context in which to have this debate.

Instead, when a man with a gun (and do we know yet if he was a student or not?) strolls into a college dormitory at 7 a.m. and starts shooting people at random, we really need to take a critical look at the kind of society we live in.”

[…]

BBQ was taking the ‘why have they not banned guns line’ from the outset, and these same morons are also dismayed by the thinking of people like Paul Craig Roberts:

[…]

Guns have been around for a long time, but these crazy shootings are a new development that point to a failure of culture to produce people with a sense of responsibility and self-control. When I was a kid, a youngster could walk into a local hardware store and buy a gun. There were no restrictions. If a kid was so young that he couldn’t see over the counter, the store owner might call a parent for approval. We all had guns, and we never shot ourselves or anyone else.

One of my grandmothers thought nothing of me and my friends playing with the World War II weapons my uncle had brought back. My other grandmother never batted an eye when I collected my grandfather’s shotgun from behind the door and went off to match wits with the crows that raided the pecan trees or the poisonous cottonmouth snakes that could be found along the creek that ran through the farm.

My grandmother never worried about me until I got a horse, a more dangerous object in her view than a gun.

We also all had knives, which we carried in our pockets to school every day. We never stabbed anyone and very seldom cut our own fingers.

We often had fights, more often wrestling each other to the ground than fist fights. No one ever thought of pulling a knife or a gun on his antagonist. Parents and teachers did not exactly approve of fights, but they considered them natural. We were not arrested, handcuffed and finger-printed for being in a fight. […]

You need to read the entire article.

My brother kept guns at the age of 16; an M16 and some handguns. We had a ball with them. I did shooting at school as a sport. Guns are not a big deal, and they are not the problem. They are actually a huge amount of fun and a fantastic sport to be involved in.

‘Matthew Weaver’ says attitudes are hardening. Actually, everyone is fed up with the illogical and absurd newspaper lead idea that because someone snaps and goes berserk, we should all pay a penalty by having to suffer a raft of new and hastily drafted regulations.

Its appalling and sad when crazy people do stuff, but the law abiding should not be made to suffer a reduction in the quality of their life because a single nut-case does something terrible.

It is this same knee jerk mentality that allows people to think that its OK to ban home schooling because there was a single instance of a family that didn’t pull it off ‘correctly’, or the genocide of a whole breed of dogs because one owner let his dog bite a little girl. It is madness to live that way.

It is the criminals who should be made to conform to community standards, not the community being whittled down to the level that assumes everyone is a potential mass murderer or dog fighter.

Now that YouTube has money behind it, Google can expect legal action from a whole bunch of people… some of it justified.

That was truly insightful, at least for me.

Google’s core business model revolves around “fair use” and similar provisions of copyright law. I think they are most vulnerable in this area– look at Belgium. So Google needed to buy YouTube for a couple of reasons related to this.

The first is because YouTube’s business model also revolves around many of the same “fair use” provisions, and if YouTube loses its upcoming court cases, the fallout could fatally poison Google’s business model. It would be very hard for Google to immunize itself from any judgments against YouTube that changed the interpretation of copyright law. Purchasing YouTube allows Google to directly counter such an attack with all its resources. It also decreases the likelihood of such an attack, since all the ambulance chasers who were smacking their lips in anticipation of an easy meal from YouTube’s carcass are now slinking away, looking for easier prey that won’t be able to fend them off for years with delaying tactics.

The other reason that occurs to me is that the most important part of strategizing any conflict is choosing your battlefield carefully. Google is under constant threat of serious litigation over copyright concerns. Google has just bought a battlefield where these litigations can be played out, that is comfortably distant from the fields of green where Googles’ cash cows graze.

I expect that Google is developing the muscles it needs to directly influence copyright legislation, and I expect it is also going to be increasingly influential in copyright litigation as well (intervening with friend of the court briefs, etc). This all seems to be part of Google’s mission statement: [google.com] “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

[…]

Scribd

Michael Pakaluk is a professor of philosophy in Cambridge, Mass. who is currently helping to homeschool his 16-year-old daughter.

Over 2 million children are now homeschooled in the United States. On standardized tests, homeschooled children outperform matched peers in the public schools by a wide margin, and they are comparatively more successful in getting admitted to competitive colleges.

Strikingly, homeschooled children do not show the “black/white” test-score gap that is the bane of public and private schools. Likewise, homeschooled children perform equally well regardless of gender.

In light of these ever more widely appreciated facts, perhaps you have considered homeschooling your own children. If you have, a good place to look for assistance would be the Web site of the Home School Legal Defense Fund. But here I simply wish to state the case for homeschooling. Why should you consider it?

From my own experience, I count the following reasons as the most important:

1. It’s efficient. A homeschooled child typically finishes in 2-3 hours the work done in an entire day of public schooling. He can spend the rest of the day reading, playing sports, doing hobbies, practicing a musical instrument, and even helping out with chores.

2. It’s inexpensive. A mere fraction of the tuition of a typical private school is sufficient to pay for a homeschooler’s supplies, books, music lessons, foreign language instruction, gymnastics instruction, pilgrimages — and a cultural excursion to Paris or Rome.

3. Homeschooling tends to develop good habits of reading. Because of the influence of electronic media (television, radio, iPods, Internet, cell phones, video games), few public school students are now developing good reading habits. In contrast, homeschoolers display almost an opposite trend: on average they read widely and voraciously. Yet reading is the most important single determinant of the quality of a child’s education.

4. Homeschooled children more easily become friends with their parents. It’s natural of course for children to grow up admiring, respecting, and eventually becoming friends with their parents. But this natural process is frequently blocked when children are sent to common schools, where, because of peer pressure, they are taught to view their parents as overbearing, uncool and unreasonable.

5. Homeschooling requires that the father play the role that he really should play in his children’s education. The experience of homeschoolers is that the mother’s efforts during the day need to be reinforced by the father’s assistance in the evening — perhaps by his teaching a more rigorous subject, by checking homework. This ‘‘reintroduction of the father’’ into education proves tremendously helpful for children to become serious about their studies.

6. Unity of studying and religious belief. The best education is one in which there is no strict compartmentalization. Homeschooled children are free at any point of the day to consider the relationship between faith and reason, between what they believe as Christians and what they are learning about the world. In contrast, the practice in public schools, where children are effectively taught that there is something “wrong” in speaking publicly about God, does tremendous damage to children, and leads them to suppose that there is no truth in matters of religion.

7. Homeschooling tends to foster a lively patriotism. The reason for this, I think, is that homeschoolers often regard themselves as reasserting, in their own lives, the reality of rights that are prior to the state: the right of parents to educate their own children; the right of religious believers to seek an education which is integrated with their faith. Homeschooling parents will therefore turn to the Founding Fathers as sources of inspiration. Homeschoolers believe what the Founding Fathers taught, and they teach these things to their children as truths that are vitally important to believe.

8. Homeschooled children can enjoy the innocence of childhood longer. Let me put the point bluntly. If you would prefer that your child not learn about (say) oral sex and condoms, then nowadays you should consider taking your child out of common schools before the third grade (more or less), because by that age there will be children in the class whose parents let them watch sit-coms which regularly deal with such things, and who will talk about them in school.

9. Homeschooled children socialize better. Yes, the truth is actually the opposite of the common criticism, that “homeschooled children do not socialize well.” Homeschooled children learn to deal easily with people of all ages — babies, parents, friends of parents, and the elderly. They acquire a mature, “adult” mentality from an early age. (I know I’m in a homeschooling household when I sit down to talk with a friend and find that his teenage children actually want to sit with us and listen to our conversation!) In contrast, there is absolutely nothing less well-suited to good “socialization” than placing a child with hundreds of other children who are exactly the same in age. Remember that “homeschooling” has been the norm for nearly all of human history; compulsory education in common schools is a recent phenomenon, dating from about 1850.

What am I advocating then? Am I advocating that all children should be homeschooled? No, the parents’ decision about their children’s education should be made on a case-by-case basis, and reviewed each year. What suits some children will not suit others. What works in some households will not work in others.

What I am saying is that homeschooling is a very good thing, and that every parent should give it careful consideration as possibly the best option for their child.

[…]

The Pilot

A lurker says…

I’ve been following the postings on home schooling on Blogdial with great interest and today I saw the topic linked to below on the BBC “Have your say” website regarding new powers for teachers. If ever there was a need to justify home schooling, this might prove to be another good reason.

What struck me most is this sentence in the BBC’s invitation to comment:

“Previously, teachers had been allowed to restrain pupils under common law with the same authority as parents.”

the next thing that struck me was how many people agreed that it was a good thing (discipline may well be, but it seems to me that we used to have that without needing a law to enforce it).
———-
From the BBC’s Have Your Say Forums:
Have Your Say
Will new powers for teachers make a difference? How far should teachers be allowed to go? New legal powers for teachers and schools in England to restrain and discipline unruly pupils have come into effect. The new law allows teachers to physically restrain and remove unruly pupils and impose detentions outside school hours and on Saturdays.

Previously, teachers had been allowed to restrain pupils under common law with the same authority as parents. This new measure is the first major change in guidelines on discipline in a decade.

What is your reaction to this new law? Do you think teachers should be allowed to physically restrain their -students? Send us your views.
———–
I had not heard anything about such a law anywhere until I saw this as all news coverage seems to be focused on the Iran hostages (I wonder what other laws are being sent through at the moment that I’ve missed).

You guys are probably much more up to date on this kind of thing than I am, but it strikes me that as things stand now, if this law actually exists and has been passed, the Gov’t gives teachers more powers in disciplining a child than it gives parents.

If this is the case, then it would appear that we are well on our way to having children removed from their parents and put into the hands of the state. Not physically removing removing them – if they did that parents may actually realise what is going on and might protest and also the state would have to house and feed them – but by shifting the disciplinary control from parents to teachers in schools they are weakening traditional family bonds.

Children tend to develop respect for those who can stand up to them (real authority figures) – be they teachers, parents, uncles aunts, the next door neighbour etc. If teachers are given more power than parents, then those are the people that children will develop a relationship with, respect and let themselves by guided by. Home will be a place that they go to watch, eat, sleep and eventually report on to the appropriate authorities should the parents not be behaving in the manner the children have been taught is good and proper by their teachers.

In a more alarmist interpretation, this might also give teachers the power to “adjust” students’ behaviour for questioning them, knowing more than they do or simply not towing the line that the teacher wants them to. By being able to restrain them and bring them in at all hours, particularly hard cases (as smart, literate kids with independent views might be regarded) could be worked on extra hard to see the error of their ways and bring back them into the fold.

If such a law actually has gone through, it smacks (no pun intended) of socialisation pure and simple. Get them young, get them impressionable and soon you will have your New Labour Youth. Who knows, in time they might even start wearing uniforms and help inspire or guide others to follow in their righteousness footsteps.

Have you heard anything about this? Am I getting overly worried?

Bye for now,
*****

No, I do not think you are being overly worried…just thinking…and thats always good.

The problem with this goes right back to the relationship between the citizen and the state. Teachers in the state school system are servants of the citizen. Their relationship is one of a servant, obeying the commands of the parent, who is the citizen and the person who is paying for the school service through her taxes.

What has happened is that these and other public servants have forgotten who and what they are, and they have ideas above their station. They need to have their attention brought sharply into focus. They need to be reminded that they must at all times adopt the position and attitude of a servant and never as a dictator, director or owner.

Teachers have a special place in society as most trusted and valued servants; the profession of teacher is one of the most honorable and important occupations in the world, but the high regard in which we hold them does not grant them power over us or the children that are entrusted to them. They remain servants whose job it is to carry out the will of parents.

Here is an example of a teacher forgetting this. I know of a school in the USA, a private school, where one of the tutors took it upon himself to pronounce to his class of 8 year olds, just before Christmas that,

“there is no Santa Claus; your parents buy all the presents and put them under the tree while you are asleep”.

The children came home with this knowledge, and of course the parents went ballistic. This teacher betrayed the trust of the parents that sent their children into that class, and, because it is a private school, that teacher was FIRED immediately for breaching that trust. The facts of Santa Claus are irrelevant; no teacher has the right to divulge sensitive cultural information without the consent of the parent. The true nature of the Santa Claus fable was not part of the curriculum, and by going outside it, in this heartless, senseless and stupid way, that teacher did harm, even though he was telling the truth.

Because he was teaching in a private school, the parents had a remedy. Children in the state schools are taught all sorts of things without the parents consent or approval or choice, and there is nothing that they can do about it. This is absolutely wrong, and it is one of the factors that is pushing parents to remove their children from environments that are out of their control.

If you cannot give control over the agenda to parents with children in the state schools, fine; leave the parents who want to go private (wether this be private school or home schooling) alone. They can find their own ways of educating their children, and this is their absolute right.

This new law is fascinating. What they are trying to do is put humpty dumpty back together again. Instead of doing it the intelligent way, by removing the legislation that caused the problem in the first place they are adding more legislation to fix the problems caoused by ever zealous legislation.

The laws that stopped corporal punishment, and which shackled teachers are the cause of all the discipline problems with the feral youths running wild in the cities. Everyone knows it. This patching exercise is absurd and is actually an admission of the failure of the child centered ‘philosophy’ brought in by nincompoops and tinkering social engineers who are now not able to clean up the mess they have created, let alone admit that they were wrong in engineering the environment that caused it all.

Once again, what needs to be done is to roll back the law and the school systems, including the examinations, to a 1950s state, when things actually worked. This is not a new idea, and there have been informal experiments to see how the wild children of today would fare in a 1950s school. Everyone knows that the situation has been in steady decline. Now we are almost at the bottom of the cuve, with teachers being assulted as well as the students, and everyone not knowing what do do about it except run for the hills.

The depths to which this insanity has sunk could not be made up by Brian Aldiss:

Police send four police officers to tackle boy, 11, who called schoolmate ‘gay’

When two policemen turned up unannounced at Alan Rawlinson’s home asking to speak to his young son, the company director feared something serious had happened.

So he was astounded when the officers detailed 11-year-old George’s apparent crime – calling one of his schoolfriends ‘gay’.

They said primary school pupil, George, was being investigated for a ‘very serious’ homophobic crime after using the comment in an e-mail to a 10-year-old classmate.

‘Terrified’: George Rawlinson with his mother Gaynor, who is a magistrate

But now his parents have hit out at the police, who they accused of being heavy-handed and pandering to political correctness.

“It is completely ridiculous,” Mr Rawlinson said.

“I thought the officers were joking at first, but they told me they considered it a very serious offence.

“The politically correct brigade are taking over. This seemed like a huge waste of resources for something so trivial as a playground spat.”

Cheshire police launched the investigation last month after a complaint from the parents of the 10-year-old younger boy who received George’s e-mail.

They said their son had been called a ‘gay boy’ and were concerned that there was more to the comment than playground banter and that their child was being bullied.

As a consequence, two officers were sent to the boys’ school, Farnworth Primary, in Widnes, Cheshire, to speak to the headteacher who directed them to the Rawlinsons’ home in nearby St Helens, Merseyside.

George told his parents that the comment was in no way meant to be homophobic and that he had simply been using the word gay instead of ‘stupid’.

Mr Rawlinson, 41, who runs his own business, and whose wife, Gaynor, also 41, is a magistrate, said his son was terrified when the police arrived at their home.

He feared he was going to be arrested and locked up in a cell because of it, he added. “I feel very aggrieved about this,” Mr Rawlinson, who has lodged a formal complaint against the police, said.

“We are law-abiding citizens who have paid taxes all our lives.

“I’ve constantly contacted police about break-ins at my business and never get a suitable response.

“George was really upset, he thought he was going to be locked up. This just seemed like a huge waste of resources for something so trivial.”

Inspector Nick Bailey, of Cheshire police, said no further action would be taken against George. However, he said the force had been obliged to record the incident as a crime and that they had dealt with it in a ‘proportionate’ manner.

“The parents of the boy believed it was more sinister that just a schoolyard prank,” Inspector Bailey said.

“We were obliged to record the matter as a crime and took a proportionate and maybe old fashioned view.

“Going to the boy’s house was a reasonable course of action to take. This e-mail message was part of some behaviour which had been on going.

“The use of the word ‘gay’ would imply that it was homophobic, but we would be hard pushed to say it was a homophobic crime.

“This boy has not been treated as an offender.”

This is a latest in a series of incidents where police have been accused of heavy handedness for interviewing or threatening children with prosecution for seemingly trivial crimes.

Last October the Daily Mail revealed how 14-year-old Codie Scott was arrested and thrown in a police cell for almost four hours after she was accused of racism for refusing to sit next to a group of Asian pupils in her class.

Teachers reported the youngster, from Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester, after she claimed it was impossible for her to get involved in the class ‘discussion’ because only one of the Asian pupils spoke English.

She had her fingerprints and DNA taken but was eventually released without charge.

The incident followed that of a 15-year-old boy from Burnley, Lancashire, who was arrested, thrown in a police cell, hauled before the courts and landed with a criminal record simply for throwing a snowball at a car.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was prosecuted under a little used 160-year-old law last March, and fined £100 in a case which provoked a public outcry.

My emphasis, and that is from today’s Evening Standard. Like I keep saying, you cant make stuff like this up.

These people’s priorities are completely inside out and upside down. They cannot be trusted to run anything, let alone a school, and what’s worse, they will not admit it, and they now want to bring this insanity right into every home. Only a mad dog would allow them to do this, and of course, ten years down the line, when Americans have 50% home schooling, the imbeciles here will say, “Me Too®” and then Home Schooling will suddenly be their idea.

But I digress.

There needs to be a roll back, no question about it. New legislation means more trouble. Legislation does not solve problems, structure solves problem, the type of structure that used to exist in the UK, and which was a natural excrescence of the citizen, the family and their central position in society.

Once again, beer guides us. Its foam is lofted above the beer because each bubble does its own thing cooperatively an automagically. You cannot make a head on a glass of beer by setting up complex rules that have to be monitored and obeyed by the bubbles.

Let the bubbles be bubbles and the foam will be frothy and the beer will be beer.